"disdains" poems
Basketball stands for war or battle.
That's why I think about the players'
personalities, in my foxhole or squad.
Danny and Ben are fast and smart. Dan
especially can pass making him master
and commander. To defeat them as we did
is pst satisfying. Ben's five year old son
disdains to answer my question
Why are you you?
But I'm not here
to catalogue the men's personalities.
I like them. But each of us has moved on
many times, when ___________ suddenly died
the games went on with hardly a mention
and his name has since been forgotten.
But even this, absolute mortality
of not just our bodies but our names
and souls is not what I came
to talk about. Yesterday, between games,
I asked Joe how Molly his daughter likes
the high school. He mounted an impassioned
defense of reading as the indispensable skill
when I suggested math, the scientific method
and history are essential too.
Also between games
Bob diffidently asked why my kids are bald.
I was moved by the care he took to satisfy
his curiosity, concerned the subject might be
difficult. He's a political science teacher so
I took the opportunity to ask What ails
the republic? Of course I answered myself
wanting mostly to hear myself talk about Iraq
and how empire is self-correcting. For once I was amusing
I thought, treating the subject with a light touch
heretofore lacking.
But none of this is what I came to say.
A new guy, long quick and strong, a
bulldozer under the boards with a good
outside shot if needed got into a dispute
with the other Bob who likes to tell people
what to do sometimes, about an offensive
foul Bob called which we almost never do.
The new guy said If you can't take it don't
play under the boards which is what I say
when I'm ****** and don't give a ****
Bob said You've been pushing and shoving me
all day. I said He doesn't want to be
pushed and shoved which got a wry
smile out of Danny as I put the ball in play.
Aug 10, 2015
Aug 10, 2015 at 8:59 AM UTC
I go to the door often.
Night and summer. Crickets
lift their cries.
I know you are out.
You are driving
late through the summer night.
I do not know what will happen.
I have no claim on you.
I am one star
you have as guide; others
love you, the night
so dark over the Azores.
You have been working outdoors,
gone all week. I feel you
in this lamp lit
so late. As I reach for it
I feel myself
driving through the night.
I love a firmness in you
that disdains the trivial
and regains the difficult.
You become part then
of the firmness of night,
the granite holding up walls.
There were women in Egypt who
supported with their firmness the stars
as they revolved,
hardly aware
of the passage from night
to day and back to night.
I love you where you go
through the night, not swerving,
clear as the indigo
bunting in her flight,
passing over two
thousand miles of ocean.
11.1k
How dull the wretch, whose philosophic mind
Disdains the pleasures of fantastic kind;
Whose prosy thoughts the joys of life exclude,
And wreck the solace of the poet's mood!
Young Zeno, practis'd in the Stoic's art,
Rejects the language of the glowing heart;
Dissolves sweet Nature to a mess of laws;
Condemns th' effect whilst looking for the cause;
Freezes poor Ovid in an iced review,
And sneers because his fables are untrue!
In search of hope the hopeful zealot goes,
But all the sadder tums, the more he knows!
Stay! Vandal sophist, whose deep lore would blast
The grateful legends of the storied past;
Whose tongue in censure flays th' embellish'd page,
And scorns the comforts of a dreary age:
Wouldst strip the foliage from the vital bough
Till all men grow as wisely dull as thou?
Happy the man whose fresh, untainted eye
Discerns a Pantheon in the spangled sky;
Finds sylphs and dryads in the waving trees,
And spies soft Notus in the southern breeze
For whom the stream a cheering carol sings,
While reedy music by the fountain rings;
To whom the waves a Nereid tale confide
Till friendly presence fills the rising tide.
Happy is he, who void of learning's woes,
Th' ethereal life of bodied Nature knows;
I scorn the sage that tells me it but seems,
And flout his gravity in sunlight dreams!
7.9k
The unpurged images of day recede;
The Emperor's drunken soldiery are abed;
Night resonance recedes, night walkers' song
After great cathedral gong;
A starlit or a moonlit dome disdains
All that man is,
All mere complexities,
The fury and the mire of human veins.
Before me floats an image, man or shade,
Shade more than man, more image than a shade;
For Hades' bobbin bound in mummy-cloth
May unwind the winding path;
A mouth that has no moisture and no breath
Breathless mouths may summon;
I hail the superhuman;
I call it death-in-life and life-in-death.
Miracle, bird or golden handiwork,
More miracle than bird or handiwork,
Planted on the star-lit golden bough,
Can like the ***** of Hades crow,
Or, by the moon embittered, scorn aloud
In glory of changeless metal
Common bird or petal
And all complexities of mire or blood.
At midnight on the Emperor's pavement flit
Flames that no ****** feeds, nor steel has lit,
Nor storm disturbs, flames begotten of flame,
Where blood-begotten spirits come
And all complexities of fury leave,
Dying into a dance,
An agony of trance,
An agony of flame that cannot singe a sleeve.
Astraddle on the dolphin's mire and blood,
Spirit after Spirit! The smithies break the flood.
The golden smithies of the Emperor!
Marbles of the dancing floor
Break bitter furies of complexity,
Those images that yet
Fresh images beget,
That dolphin-torn, that gong-tormented sea.
1.7k
Honor and happiness unite
To make the Christian's name a praise;
How fair the scene, how clear the light,
That fills the remnant of His days!
A kingly character He bears,
No change His priestly office knows;
Unfading is the crown He wears,
His joys can never reach a close.
Adorn'd with glory from on high,
Salvation shines upon His face;
His robe is of the ethereal dye,
His steps are dignity and grace.
Inferior honors He disdains,
Nor stoops to take applause from earth;
The King of kings Himself maintains
The expenses of His heavenly birth.
The noblest creature seen below,
Ordain'd to fill a throne above;
God gives him all He can bestow,
His kingdom of eternal love!
My soul is ravished at the thought!
Methinks from earth I see Him rise!
Angels congratulate His lot,
And shout Him welcome to the skies.
1.6k
In the darkly lit room
Hangs the smell of doom
As he babbles about his eyes
He seems bent on a mission
To paint a bleak vision
His elation isn’t disguised!
*I’ve them aplenty
My eyes bloodied
In surgeon’s needles
Retinal detachment
Cataract
Glaucoma
There isn’t a trauma
My eyes haven’t suffered*
His eyeballs roll
On the sclera
In perverse pleasure
*I don’t mind
If I go blind,
The misery around
Doesn’t make eyesight a treasure*
I haven’t met a man
To himself this inhuman
Treating the most valued lens
With such immense disdains
More than my suffering eyes
He says in glee undisguised
*I suffer your cruelty,
That’s when you say
It’s my way
To garner sympathy!*
Jan 14, 2014
Jan 14, 2014 at 6:16 AM UTC
The murmur of the sly hours seize
Panting the breath into violent grief,
Love that disdains
Leave anyone in despair.
True link thus detests,
All things in the world disdains
Other than dear ones loving heart.
Love must ever be known for sincere
That sincere love looks upon
Mutual striving towards each other
And the intensity of love looks upon
Being upfront in and out
With no taboos
In sweet surrender.
And the language of love looks upon
The cravings to meet each other in the eyes,
Desperately seeking to tell the love
And stare at each other until communicated
And love be spoken as they meet
And retreat in sweet dreams
Like shining stars.
Love is of the kind related to mind.
Falling in love is such a wonderful feeling;
It shines like a diamond
Inside of the mind.
When heart is broken, love is more cruel
Than diamond particles slowly gaped in
And times merriment forsaken.
If love is not timely sought,
Pain will never cease
And pangs of death imminent.
Love is not a gossamer in dew’d grass
But a magic web of encircled kindness.
Love is of the kind related to mind.
Oct 3, 2018
Oct 3, 2018 at 11:37 PM UTC
Look in thy glass, and tell the face thou viewest
Now is the time that face should form another,
Whose fresh repair if now thou not renewest,
Thou dost beguile the world, unbless some mother.
For where is she so fair whose uneared womb
Disdains the tillage of thy husbandry?
Or who is he so fond will be the tomb
Of his self-love to stop posterity?
Thou art thy mother’s glass, and she in thee
Calls back the lovely April of her prime;
So thou through windows of thine age shalt see,
Despite of wrinkles, this thy golden time.
But if thou live remembered not to be,
Die single, and thine image dies with thee.
1.4k
His feet carried him there with no plan but to see.
Beyond that, the ****** appendages were ******* useless.
But he can't blame his feet for the failures above,
In the brain that is always awash in a chemical storm,
Not of it's creation,
But rather, from failures up higher,
Where angels throw darts and roll dice with God,
(who disdains such a sport),
And anyway...
So, here he is again,
With a mind full of wonder,
When he wants only, sorely, for this:
To have something to say,
Through the fog and the chatter,
To find that within,
Which is real.
Apr 21, 2014
Apr 21, 2014 at 11:47 PM UTC
Normal events of life:
Natality, identity, wedlock, fatality
As disrupting events triumph the rhythm
Destroys the loop, making life aloof
There comes one wonder
Revisiting the events, one must ponder
Twists and turns, identity is profound
Discovered as it may be, but still unacceptable
Cuz normality Disdains And retains from interchangeable
But thou shall break this bubble
To free himself and feel more comfortable
Peers will judge, the true ones won't
Only they can understand but others don't
One may even find himself Alone
Smiling away in front of a thousand clones
Indeed they will stare,
Coldhearted,
Confused,
Look alike stones.
Their judgement pierced through before,
This time, this resolution has led to no more!
Health was draining, stooping below
Feelings of distress, sadness hollow
Complain and nag to achieve pity and sorrow
But what's the point of such negativity
It only brings bad news! Depression and lesser longevity.
So enough is enough! Rebirth is in order
A new soul emerges that can only grow stronger and stronger
Put it through a test,
Try it out,
Beat it down,
Bow down it shall no longer!
- By Ali Q. =)
Feb 1, 2016
Feb 1, 2016 at 3:36 PM UTC
I used to think
that those who swept
their issues ‘under the
rug’ were weak
and lacked the maturity
to address their problems.
Now, thanks to you,
I think that that anyone
who disdains
sweeping anything
under the rug—
is just lucky
to never have had any
problem
immense enough
that if their mind slips
for a second long enough
to so much as think about it,
it makes their insides curl.
Bitterly
I miss the naiveté
of not understanding
the appeal of living
at the mercy of the timer
rather than tempting
the bomb.
Jul 10, 2013
Jul 10, 2013 at 7:50 PM UTC
I read Noah brought the animals in;
And with them brought in
All our sins.
But virtues too were marched within,
And ever since we've worn their skins.
The jackal with his wrathful jaws,
Hides behind the jungle laws.
The peacock arrayed in full feathers,
Can hide his pride with his betters.
The snake that dropped from the tree,
Moults rejection with envy.
The toad, the food chain's first to feed,
Like fat cats fill themselves with greed.
The goat devours like the locust,
Feeding on with gluttonous lust.
The smallest snail in silken cloth,
Moves like justice, slow as sloth.
The pig avoids austerity,
While feeding on dignitarities.
Other animals Noah rescued
Saved humanity by their virtue.
The swan disdains adultery
By embracing life-long chastity.
The camel slurping with prudence,
Eludes drought through temperance.
Birds feed their fledgling adeptly
With mouth to mouth charity.
The ****** known to be a nuisance
Will dam your life with dilligence.
The dog whose loyalty is constant
Waits and wags with patience.
A horse that's never riderless
Will run all day with kindliness.
The gentle lamb of allegory
Is Christ-like in humility.
The ark may not be history,
But works explaining humanity
Through eons of mythology.
He didn't really bring them in,
They weren't in danger,
We're in their skins.
May 11, 2015
May 11, 2015 at 2:16 PM UTC
A little drunk, on new year's door,
She calls to say she might come back,
And I, who steeled myself before,
Say sure, and feel a little crack.
A frightened lover's midnight moan
Brings back the flood, the thunderbolt,
The once connected lips and bone,
The song, the night, ecstatic jolt.
I'm done with words that break & fall,
Need legs & feet & dampened hair.
Reluctant ink disdains the ball,
I'd know your motion anywhere,
Who moved my world with mortal sin,
And ushered chthonic rhythms in.
Feb 10, 2019
Feb 10, 2019 at 10:44 AM UTC
Made up his mind, he stood on the stool.
In silence and fear in the deepest of night.
For the demons of darkness
had driven him there.
There on his arm lies a mark that he made.
Next to the mark is a ticker that’s dead.
The time, like the ticker, turned tired and froze,
all while he stood by a knot that is hanging and down.
Looked at the knot that’s so steady and strong,
he thought of the things that have torn down his peace.
Words that have impaled the calmness of mind.
Looks that have peeled off the skin of his guard.
The masks people worn that of grins and of lies.
that did hide their cheeks and shaded both eyes.
The disdains and scorns of the loved ones and folks,
that worn out his heart that’s so tender and soft.
He looked at the cold and dark corner of room.
It looked back and told him “I’m coming for you’’.
As the corner got closer and tried taking in,
his soul started burning and so did his skin.
But then came a voice that’s so soothing and known.
When people hate on you, you’ve something they don’t.
Be full of beauty, but people bow fake.
For, they are so foolish and blinded to see.
They peek through the blinds that are tightly drawn.
It’s you who’s not fake that’s letting them known,
of all that’s so real and so good in this globe.
So, enslaved and entombed, they hide far away.
As these words started piling and filling his mind,
he struck by a ray of the rising sun.
Shocked by the glow of the breaking dawn,
stunned by the brilliance of yet another day,
he stopped all the thoughts and yelled like a knight.
‘’ Oh, **** it!! I’ll fight them one more night.’’
Jan 6, 2021
Jan 6, 2021 at 12:13 AM UTC
I miss seeing you smile.
To me it seemed that you laughed and kissed me for everything, but it was probably a mistaken impression, a
result of shock!
wonder!
Could you imagine my surprise,
how it could be unexpected?
How often is the soul’s desire met?
I can recall not ever, ne’er, near naught
save in amniotic baptism, had every
object subject—every ancient tissue
attended by an enzyme—every ray of
sun snuck between the blouse’s buttons,
around my mother’s ******* and
divined upon me was let there been.
I cut myself following consciousness
with my longest fingernail, did laugh
too convulsed, tickled by light did induce my birth;
I cried (they’ll confirm this), I
wept to rob my mother herself, so it seemed,
inhaled the endless time and limitless space.
You can imagine my surprise then
with your covered mouth at my joke.
To me it seemed as if I had body again, hadn’t had a hand to grasp, hadn’t a hand with to grasp; then,
like had putty-gilded muscles earthed
unearthed, did.
Have you ever seen creation?—
well, yes, of course, it did not except you.
As close to ex nihilo as your patience can manage
you would have seen the time and space
repel each other in a nail’s length
of chaos, Fiat Vita, about which there’s little to be said.
My patience breaks in breath, Fiat Lux: when
time and space colors the light and refracts
the matrix and gives fire to my soul for a body.
Rilke writes, “Every Angel is terror,” which we
love, “because it calmly disdains to destroy us.”
I know! I know! I bite my nails penitent still.
And my patience does extend yet further, still within;
before my birth following it:
Look! I can open you this door,
give you that,
carry you thus far,
lead you here,
can reach your smiling mouth
with a terrorized will to kiss withal!
I can endure as the “arrow endures the bow”;
as all matter collapses upon itself in effort to grasp itself,
so it does to grasp all itself in one grand handful;
as atrophy takes me from you as quickly as I give you it,
I am surprised to find that I have retained all of you;
not expecting that you might have hid me, too, where
I would overlook, where only you could go, where
the light silhouettes, for me can just stop breathing.
I can see without patience—as much as light allows
and just as long.
Mar 21, 2012
Mar 21, 2012 at 8:57 AM UTC
Intro
Words in play without meter or rhyme
Is poetry without respect for sounds or time
Like a military bugler playing his morning song
But jazzing it up, which for the morning sounds wrong.
1
Poems short of prose serve to play the edge
In which the abstract thought can its verses wedge
Poetry's an art - that can't be denied
But when ripped apart, leaves readers in divide.
On one hand we have free verse with all its liberties
Its flows, like ocean waves, give in to subtleties
The other hand holds form where order and beauty lie
Its sound there calms the mind and guides the reading eye.
Well, how can art transcend if it's to be confined?
Ask the poor man painting, what keeps his strokes refined.
Ask him what is richer: materials or mind-
How he affords true art: in color or design.
And could he paint with passion if he were also blind?
To what limit does art flow, that could liberty unwind??
2
If sentences were laid and in stanzas fitted to form,
The simplest thought now sparks, the layman poet is norm -
-A hand that holds a pen.. its wondrous poem adored
Ha! That relic sonnet lost 'cause the modern reader's bored.
The talentless recites: his poetry: my rage..
Where then is the poem, in the words or on the page?
I'll credit that the form of poetry can change:
Like ocean waves on shores where waters rearrange
And subtleties lay washed whence art can have a fad
And for a moment last despite what I think bad.
Words without art, conveyed for art-less brains
The verse that freely speaks as the older school disdains..
3
But rhyming, timing schemes of ancient preference
What novelty they yield in these times of rhyme suspense....
Just the thought of it and one can hear a beaten drum,
A percussive, tired sound for ears tired and numb
They're artifacts of effort that the ancients then called art
Confined to rhyme and metered verse, the caged poems impart-
Shakespeare, Wilmot, Behn, these are but forgotten names
A pantheon of "poets" whose works of words too tame
Did not taste the "modernness" that free verse giveth to thee...
The ghosts of poems past singing their songs but never free.
How lucky for us rebel writers, we laugh at silly rules!
Rule-less, ruthless poems we write with rhyme nor time as tools!
Jan 15, 2017
Jan 15, 2017 at 2:26 AM UTC
Portents
Just a stamp an impression briefly emboldened formed in darker green you are but the portal of dreams
Telling my heart of those things that can and should be the burgeoning of vast meaningful wonders that
Shimmer long ago they were told in storybooks now they are fused as electrical force burning singing
The mind allegory befits you with your stage here you are the perpetual page desire strikes stone the
Emerging statue reaches untold depths reveals sacred expression the many sides of you that are the
Yearnings of dreams that seek total enrichment against the back drop of insidious want and lack a smile
That creates worlds with borders do not the trees bow to such glory that your eyes alone hold every
Man holds these immortal conceptions gem studded treasures nothing has this form can anything be
Captured given life that possesses the very essence of laughter the flow of life bursting the enthralling
Wisp that from silence forges lives with volumes’ language a bell tolls with no sweeter sound it is love
Beheld and known from the poverty of human life riches explode within common steps divine rewards
Beckon from every pore we look and see the self centered interest that disdains all things when at arms
Length only through imagination can you delve into the reality of your world a beggar truly is a king
With all that lies before him and if so then common man is a participant of God if only we could reach
Out and unfurl the gold instead of a simple down trodden prisoner we would be deliriously happy if we
Could only see the true and indescribable carpet that flows ever so wide in each of our lives it is only the
Foretelling of even a greater and more noble future that awaits
Jul 7, 2012
Jul 7, 2012 at 3:04 AM UTC
I’m as bad as it gets
And as good as I feel
The fallout has left me to die
And I recently learned
She was only concerned
Of my requiem
Chaos stopped by
So the bomb’s embroilment
Greets at my door
To the monsters and passerby’s
And away in a plane
My dear love disdains
As a widow
She only cries
May 20, 2012
May 20, 2012 at 9:20 PM UTC
**Afternoon wanes,
only morning exists in this sun's
perverse mind, blackening.
Disdains bedfellow,
it’s in darkness I wake -
Only afternoons exist.**
Feb 26, 2012
Feb 26, 2012 at 9:44 AM UTC
He sits rigidly, like
a calcified projection
on his porch chair
as four butterflies
churn the invisible
atmospheric milk,
indifferent to language.
For he is the type of verb
that disdains noise,
motion or being.
He listens to a radio
tuned to silence,
the acoustics of
emotion, lacking adverbs
or adjectives, pure
as an oblivious ******
He listens with intensity
to that envelope
of silence and says
nothing, knowing that
words cost a great deal
and syntax calls
for a life sentence
ending with a period.
Already, the tense
of time stalks him.
Better to leave
the unsaid unheard,
that single noun:
death.
~mce
Sep 20, 2015
Sep 20, 2015 at 8:21 PM UTC
~for you~
~~~
when I put
twosome of twisted lips together,
long dragging one foot clubbed,
agony before the other,
but one hand obeys commands,
the other disdains, ignores,
one only eye-seeing, vision impaired,
and the body laughs at the notion of
paired coordinates
tongue disobeys desires,
limping thru life's everything,
thoughts locked down on pause,
mid-think is a cassette tape
in a seven-second delayed,
a fist cannot be unbroken, unwound
chorus of mockers,
herd of haters
rejoice in my diminution,
using my weakness for ammunition
for I am a stutterer,
just another you,
misstepping, fracturing,
the minutes of a life disastered,
suffered, sadly, no gladly hanging about
but I do not forsake hope
repair each word with the honor
of a slow enunciation distinguished,
ungainly shaped, yet soldier-motion forward,
in small poems and with one hand holding
for I am armed with certainty
as I stutter thru living,
more than awaiting, comprehending,
you, you,
understand full well,
that we are all handicapped
salvation arrives when
a touching whisper heard in one solitary ear,
you sir, you, are not alone
for who among us dare deny
we are all stutterers
Oct 25, 2015
Oct 25, 2015 at 7:07 AM UTC
dry drunk son,
sallow of complexion
victim at heart
nothing
ever his fault
disdains
flushes his family
away
daughter
mother of two
enables the addict
the shooter husband
every time
the poor thing he is
every time
and he still gets to
call the shots!
and she flushes the family
away as well
throws their love in the street
and the eight year old
granddaughter
and the three year old
boy
forage
climb the refrigerator
leaving footprints
literally
live in chaos
and filth
codependent
on the addict
and the family's flushed away
their love thrown in the street
and it's all about the addicts
and it's all about the addicts
and it's all about the addicts
and it's all about the addicts
and it's all about the addicts
and it's all about the addicts
nothing is ever their fault
and the family's flushed away
their love thrown in the street
and the children
what of them.......
what of them.......
what of them.......
cj 2016
Sep 3, 2016
Sep 3, 2016 at 12:44 AM UTC
On these lonely nights of fruitless sleep,
where my insomnia kicks in and worries slither from the
depths of my pillows,
I empty the bottle of cold, and effervescent oblivion.
I drown in the seas of sensations, vivid, stark and stale
as the tickling and the watering flush down my clogged throat;
flushing secrets I had not dared to voice.
I dwell on my heavy eyelids, waiting for the curtains
to drape over the ghastly blares of reality.
The world is muted, my ears are deaf to words not spoken
and laments suffocated to the howling airs of my torment.
I wait for the storm to cease, for the gears to run but my
weary mind is dulled and perplexed to horrors of past mistakes.
So, skittish and condemned, my heart disdains;
committing the same scenes, reliving atrocious crimes.
Mar 30, 2014
Mar 30, 2014 at 1:02 AM UTC
Oh, Love's infinity he often feigns.
The arrow's tip is buried in the heart,
Yet Cupid's weapon penetrates in part.
Though head pierce deep the tail outside remains.
As Love's infection spreads about through veins,
Its sweet eternal myth sets out its start.
Yet myths fade soon and hearts are torn apart,
And one who loved before so soon disdains.
Because the hand can touch the arrow's tail,
It pulls the length of it out from the soul,
The Mythic Love then dissipates to cold.
They all who buy the myth are doomed to fail,
Becoming merely halves who once were whole,
And fabled myths become a thing of old.
(C)2014, Christos Rigakos
Apr 5, 2014
Apr 5, 2014 at 10:18 PM UTC
Evolution changes
the mind of man
All insight martyred
for wider scans
The magic filtered
as books proclaim
What facts uncover
and time disdains
Evolution fosters
a weakened soul
Each process stifled
the gist untold
Forever whittled
in narrow canes
Tomorrow empty
—the past defamed
(Dreamsleep: August, 2022)
Aug 27, 2022
Aug 27, 2022 at 10:40 AM UTC