"deferential" poems
Dad didn't want a coffin.
"Cremate my last remains,"
And so we did.
Cool and dry,
His ashes, urned,
Lie beneath the sod
And prairie sky
Waiting some clarion call,
Some trill of hope,
Bright, re-constitutional,
Faith-affirming.
Mother's wishes rise before us:
No crematory,
No embalmer.
Just her blanket,
Just a hole
Dug beside our Dad.
The law would let her wish be true,
But her children won't.
We're searching coffin plans.
Reverently grim,
Lovingly deferential,
Dutifully rebellious,
Solemn this journey be.
Pine boards to honor her thrift
But smooth and tight,
Rope handles, fitted lid,
Perhaps a little trim,
Perhaps a sheaf of wheat carved
For the old farmer she was.
We'll bury her,
Wrapped in her blanket,
Tucked securely in pine
Beside my father's ashes.
Like a grain of wheat she'll lie
Silent in her final say
Inside our final say
Waiting Resurrection Day.
Aug 5, 2018
Aug 5, 2018 at 6:11 PM UTC
this peculiar notion transmigrates into a startling potion,
one that creates, not slakes human thirst,
a consequential first position for those who are in possess
of a direct line to gods who hide in the pitch black,
perforce one must make discrete deferential inquiries
avec une politesse indirecte
just in case we are wrong
(honest aside:
as composition proceeds, ear buds fill me with
Music of Transmigration, notably Op. 11, of S. Barber making
contradicting souls passing through me tenable and malleable)
naturellment,
loud radio silence, was I naive to expect otherwise?
perhaps god is not the subject of this poem
but perhaps the author(!) who's
just keeping his "hand" in the poem game,
spoofing human memes,
with a spot of fun even in
New Z--l-and-other domiciles
after all who has more
nominalistic titles,
is cursed and blessed,
by almost everyone
at least once a day, and in
a thousand different names
with an impishly
cruel sense of what this human gig
it created.
is about
tonight
I am a composer,
tomorrow’s decomposer,
or just a funny named follower
ah,
the answer is in the
data
Apr 9, 2018
Apr 9, 2018 at 4:55 PM UTC
The decaying mansions of English language
Rot and recede
into teenage grasses
with each unspoken year
The hired help have left their hair unmown and surrendered their uniform dress
Content with the neglect of nature
taking its timely course
When the architects and master masons of linguistics
Survey their forgotten plans in the heaven of English literature
They are not dismayed
but patiently sit and sit
The pristine edifices of the classics
Once grand and clad in deferential brick
Stand scaffolded and unread
The doors unlocked, ajar and hopelessly inviting
Into the library of the English canon
The dusty cloak on the carpets of grammar
Sheets thrown over the disused armchairs of archaic words
Echoing the plink of the out-of-tune pianoforte of the perfectly crafted short story
Bathrooms of formal poetry
With the rusty plumbing of metre and rhyme
Whereas the temporary outhouses,
hastily arranged huts of slang and idiom
are adorned by the living grasses of new forms,
creepers of half remembered dreams
mulching leaves of half formed thoughts
forests of half forgotten loves
writhing in living incompleteness
Which will in turn harden and fossilize
And we can then rue the passing of our once organic lingo
Dec 14, 2009
Dec 14, 2009 at 10:18 AM UTC
The eulogies resound in stentorian tones for the great,
those of prominence, those who have ascended to the pinnacle,
those who have known power, and who have changed worlds,
whose names fall from the lips of every man, who are offered
unencumbered embrace, a deferential half pace backward.
But what of the good man, without position, sans societal perch,
whose wealth is paltry, accomplishment meager,
yet whose effort is no less herculean, no less courageous,
whose heart is no less pure, the good man doomed to failure
through paucity of talent, or missed opportunity,
or plain bad fortune, yet who resolves to continue, plod foot after foot to anonymous end, and whose name will not be voiced in so much as a whisper for all eternity.
Dec 5, 2018
Dec 5, 2018 at 4:48 PM UTC
I poeticize, proselytize
Punctuate and pontificate.
I write couplets and rhymes
And I really do it all the time.
I exacerbate and exaggerate
With no desire to intimidate.
I make similes and metaphors
Indoors and even out of doors.
There’s cussing and discussion
And sharp literary impressions
Through diversions, conversions
Allusions as well as conclusions.
And with luck, no delusions.
Just syllabically deft fusions
Of some deferential references
With a deft touch of reverence.
I rhyme thyme with fresh lime
And cardamom with cinnamon.
Sweetbreads and shortbreads.
Chicken bones and licking scones.
Rhyming pumpkins with dumplings
And matching up filets with filberts
Just as cocoa goes well with Kona.
Marmalade can be a good marinade.
I rhyme chrome wheels and automobiles,
Freeway off-ramps and Tiffany lamps.
Cellophane and vintage airplanes.
Flapper vamps and streetwalking tramps.
Also Cinderella coaches and cockroaches,
Nothing is unfair game to a busy poet.
As well as RCA Victors and boa constrictors.
Since I’m a poet, everyone should know it.
Mar 23, 2016
Mar 23, 2016 at 5:22 AM UTC
Maybe I'll write a poem
That totally rocks
Like maybe one about
Pick-up trucks
And good-old boys
Who drink and make noise
And ogle the girls that sashay by,
Leering and giving them the eye
For nothing but tosses of their heads,
Snarky sneers and icy "Drop deads".
Or maybe I'll write of high society,
Given to extravagance more than to piety,
Dressed in their finest, parading the street,
Deferential to all, light on their feet,
Dancing through life toward their urns of ashes.
Or maybe about old men wearing galoshes,
Smoking cigarettes in the snow,
Maybe there's more future in that:
Some things you never know.
Or maybe I should write about lovers and haters
Or apple pie and mashed potaters.
So many topics out there to choose:
The seasons, bananas, fantasies, the blues...
But maybe its not the subject you select
But how you present it that has the effect?
Sep 23, 2016
Sep 23, 2016 at 6:27 AM UTC
When I was a boy, the castles of education
soared impossibly large: Brick-laid with Blake, mortared
with Marx, wound round-about with subsidized ivy, rooted
in the 17th century.
And me, just me, on two legs, from 1981.
The flickering incandescence of rebellion started in
these fortressed halls; ideas more snapped than volleyed, until
at the end of our emotional tether, we society on our pale legs,
we sure did fall to a gust of reason.
Emotion pounded at the walls in every century; and minds, fortified with logic and stoney fact, beat back, beat down, beat away the
Crying, yelling minds. For tears do not make progress.
I was tender, careful, deferential in my youth—an idealist without ideas; merely the powder keg of emotion lurking somewhere beneath my epithelial smarts. Ready and willing to rain against the parapets of education with unsightly feeling.
And I stood, in my academic frock, at the feet of the great hall of learning. And I wondered if my legs could stand it.
Is it any wonder I was raised to be an intellectual?
May 5, 2019
May 5, 2019 at 10:39 AM UTC
Bright and polite
kids. Deferential
squirrels. Leaders of
leaders. Each man
his own man
living with his mate.
The great and the small,
all, the state.
On the other hand,
you find yourself
no hawk
but stuck
in traffic. Lack of
spirit, spiritual identity,
not free or free
philosophically about
no freedom. Caught
no sign
of letting go.
One. Bo-Peep's
sure Woody
is her man, an answer
to the question why
be a toy? Buzz too
would do.
Two. The men at least
have missions
leading other toys
through risky situations
sprinkler weather
or just play,
cleaning schedule.
So it goes
not homosexual
not hetero.
Not defined
by circumstance
or genetic material.
Gone beyond
the creator
to an infinity
that contains
him and us and our
collective minds.
Question is
can it exist
without us?
Would it matter?
Yes, if
that **** squirrel
gets run over.
Aug 10, 2015
Aug 10, 2015 at 10:49 AM UTC
Detached from ripples swaying
in the harmonious space of self.
Tasting the quiet, with only
an inaudible sense of deferential
nothing. I tiptoe fondly
into the gardens where
grows the leaves
of other times.
Like a lullaby without words,
I'm taken here and there,
in many and all kinds of
situations. Teasing
sighs from benign
retrospective
endearments
insist on
understanding.
"Wrap me in your arms,
oh delicious memories",
This I proclaim in
honest wonder.
Every second lived
is one more step
in strong direction.
Familiar guises
prodding and guiding
the footsteps
of release.
I am concerned
only with empty
pockets and lint
left like
photographs
of times both
then and now.
So to new days
and impressive
meanderings
do I linger,
ever glad.
Apr 27, 2016
Apr 27, 2016 at 8:44 AM UTC
Detached from ripples swaying
in the harmonious space of self.
Tasting the quiet, with only
an inaudible sense of deferential
nothing. I tiptoe fondly
into the gardens where
grows the leaves
of other times.
Like a lullaby without words,
I'm taken here and there,
in many and all kinds of
situations. Teasing
sighs from benign
retrospective
endearments
insist on
understanding.
"Wrap me in your arms,
oh delicious memories",
This I proclaim in
honest wonder.
Every second lived
is one more step
in strong direction.
Familiar guises
prodding and guiding
the footsteps
of release.
I am concerned
only with empty
pockets and lint
left like
photographs
of times both
then and now.
So to new days
and impressive
meanderings
do I linger,
ever glad.
Apr 14, 2016
Apr 14, 2016 at 4:49 PM UTC
It’s the absolute endless certainty that we are but mere humble servants to uncertainty
Can you hear how clever I think I am, adopting the tone of deferential observerr?
Thinking that my superior intellect and masterful insight of my psyche lend me the credentials to believe I, and only I, navigate the intricacies of every corner of this maze
Did not I design it, dare not I travel its path?
At dusk and dawn when my conscious is, I believe, mine and mine alone
And during the moonlit hours of slumber, still I believe I am the astronomer of my rêves
I am the craftsman, I stride my orbit, confident of every curve and angle
Foolish, arrogant narrator that I am – of that the author is certain!
Mar 13, 2016
Mar 13, 2016 at 10:33 AM UTC
Physique of my lover can I achieve such a naiad,
Soaked earth with the blackened river aves beneath,
My craving my ardor without end my steadfast love,
Sinuous languid as we ponder close to the shore,
The cups of her ***** as her eyes filled with lack,
Voice withering in a delectation tone of anxiety,
This moment appetences my desirable ecstasies,
It is not your Intellect that has drawn me to thee,
I voraciously long to hear voice your skin your laugh,
But a number of things that have cause me amiss,
It is but all of you my naiad it is your entire being,
This cognizance made me fall deeply in love with thee,
Things that not said take away from your lucid charm,
The sovereign nose of your deferential silhouette,
This is how you become it makes all seem so alive,
I want to masticate the enduring hue of your core,
Rumbling surge come closer to exasperate my Naiad,
I hope to find her once again along the Sinuous Languid,
By A. Guzaldo 07/16/2018 ©
Jul 16, 2018
Jul 16, 2018 at 8:58 PM UTC