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Nat Lipstadt Jul 2013
I mashup me, myself, and thee: Part II

Excerpts from my poems about poets, poetry and the process of composition. In chronological order, from the earliest to the most recent.
---------------------------------------------------------­-----------------------------------------------------------------­----


The three poems went about their business,
Bringing heaven to earth,
FYI, even Angels can't be everywhere, so,
God invented poems to do his ***** work,
Cleansing souls.

They rode in~out of town on a prankster wave,
A cheering throng was not around,
But a singular poet saw, recorded the vision,
And thus, this nameless poet,
Below unmasked, unsealed,
Cleansed one more soul,
And that soul, this soul, as required,
Paid it forward.
~
Nothing produced from this place
where routine means the gorge tastes bile,
When surcease is welcome relief,
Where dancing on ice in bare feet
Is step one to ripping your chest open by your own hands,
The toxins thus released rejuvenated by salted air,
Can be finally be transcribed onto paper
And realized.

Warn them once and then begin, you,
Get serious, delve, with hurricane unambiguity,
to torrential words upon the unsuspecting,
let them taste the rawness, only the truth provides,
let them know salt tears so briney,
They will flee this place, n'er to return.

~
One day she intro'd me as her fav poet,
To which I acknowledged by addressing her as
My number one fan,
Which seems to have stuck,
so I acknowledge her as such,
And always add a polite, respectful, winking,
Yes ma'am!
~
Like this new day,
there are always
new poems

Like last night's sunset,
day's efforts reviewed,
a special light,
a yellowed marker,
highlighting a few deserving

Take them home,
kiss them goodnight,
rest them in the poetry file
that is no file,
but a large fabric box where
sewing tools once stored

How appropriate and
how happy that makes me.

~
Yo! Yo!
Remember your first real high,
That moment
No absolution, no return.
That moment
When you admitted, confessed,
to yourself:

I am
Forever forward,
A home-grown poet.
I am
Soul enslaved to words.
The alphabet - My oxygen molecules,
I am both,
Addict and dealer
A ****** poet

Yo! Yo!
So you do recall,
The exact moment,
God-spark-within, ascendancy gained
You lost control,
Wept words instead of tears!
A ****** poet ******!

Yo! Yo!

Sophie's Choice.
You chose writing over breathing,
Worshiper of the purest pleaure,
******* in deep the smoke-high of
Head-nodding discontented contentment
Stealing anything you saw
For to satisfy the need, the craven
Craving.
****** poets!

Yo! Yo!

Don't you're ever sleep?
Hear that the city, the state,
Gonna methadone your kind
In a special program
Teach you only language to sign.
**** poets!

I am a ****** poet.

The first step taken.
Admission.
Poetry is my default rest position,

My drug of choice.
~
Have you noticed here

Each poet declaims his fellow
The better one, his teacher,
From whom they shall learn and gather up
Inspiration

Gonna run for Congress,
My first bill, Poetry-care,
Will make it a requirement that
All citizens must contribute,
Exchange once a day
To this peaceful place,
Even just a syllable, a single letter,

K?

~
Literally my eyes see words awaiting coordinating,
Poems flying by, needing plucking,
How a child eats his morning cereal,
His rituals informing, of the man yet to be,
How our bodies lay, hair unbrushed,
Tying us into a conjoined knot...

No matter that plain words are my ordinary tools,
With them I shall scribe the small,
Cherish the little, grab the middle,
Simplicity my golden rule,
Write they say, about what you know best,
Surely in the diurnal motions,
The arc of daily commotion,
Do we not all excel?
~
The ice of poetry,
glassine smooth
but
charged hardness,
hits you, ****** you,
unexpected snowball in the face,

the fire of poetry,
cherished phrase, a patois,
comfort food when
whole winter skies
swallow you bleak

mutual contradictions of poetry
savaging the soothed ego,
revealing the raging id

what's in a word anyway?

~
Please Pop, pick wise,
the life and lies, the faces and disguises,
I will need employ to achieve success
in the eyes of my reading beholders,
who own the liens on my soul
because of the promises I believed,
when you sang me
glowing lullabies of my future days,
how everyone would love my stories,
my poems, someday...
~
Place your ****** hands upon thy chest.
Let them melt thru and come to rest,
Inside, the battle ongoing, under thy breast.
Watch, eyes open, knowing, fearful.
Swiftly, with no hesitation, from within,
Rip open your body, exhaling the best,
And the worst of what you got.

The cool air rushes in,
Stirring the inside stew of:
Infected grime, shameful desires,
Secrets that should not have been exposed,
The ***** stuff that you alone know exists.

Contact with the atmosphere makes
Self-pity dies, blue blood turn red,
The TNT tightness explodes,
Ashamed, you have only one escape hatch.

Now, you are ready to write.

~
My life is on the boring side,
So welcome gents to look inside,
The surfed sites, the emails, hardly slimy,
But stay the fk away from my poetry!

Tis obvious from your midnight editing,
That my wordily, working body has been discretely
Simonized,
My data,
Googlized,
My poems,
Scrutinized,
A comma, a colon, a verb, out of place, capsized,
Little threads kept in door jambs, their alteration,
Your snooping presence, a confirming revelation
~
Where I write, here, all comes so easy,
Every glance a poem formed,
Every phrase a title to a poem served,
Every conversation overheard and those wind-lifted brought,
A seed, a germ, a word~worm hooked to the pole crook of
My finger saying, see man, time to get more ink and paper,
Go and catch us a few poems for dinner

The snapper weakfish word colors are
Running past my-by the thousands,
We will need a basket to catch but a fraction
Of what you see, more than more enough to share,
Only Happy Poems for all

It is this rhyming way I view the wold,
That is my freedom, is my-present essence,
How the poems come, how thy flow,
Peaking, I cannot berate, rarely eat,
Sleep a thing of the past (as you be aware, beware)
There is poetry in simply everything.

~
But if my aura be a comfort insufficient,
Let this surprise poetic gift awaiting your arrival,
Give you rest, from crying surcease!

For when the who, the why of me interrogatory posed,
Describe me in a brevity I ne'er possessed, say:
He was just a poet, and I,
Just, his lover, number one fan.

This truth eternal, never to change.
~
But I am open to learning, the arduous task
Of raising a teenage daughter,
After I have my head examined

Though I am just a bunch of eclectic electrons,
I got powers a few, like making life's happiness
Hearted happier, encouraging your forays into
You-know-what,
And when tables turn, a hasty retreat you beat,
For imaginary cappuccinos and poems we will meet,
Comparing notes on who felt lousier when...

But what I can do 100% is assure you
There is no lone nor lonely daughter extant,
Your voice not just clear but soft-edged,
For I have poetically adopted you,
Here and now, assuming you sign on the
.............................................................­line

~
Take these words at plain face,
and look not askance
at this fair warning,
for I am but a tragic,
empty vessel for you to fill,
you are the raconteur,
me, just a  
poet poseur extraordinaire,
street urchin, word merchant,
all my verbally, wordly goods expropriated
from the wind,  where your scattered thoughts
lie about, carelessly,
unattended
~
Guiltless in life, we but survived,
Hurting no one, no thing,
Yet, here we lie, ignored, unattended,
Yet, you fail again to see our connection?
You do not recognize us?

We are the shells, the husks of you,
Your poems unread, you labors unpreserved,
All wasted, for unless they are read, they die,
As you will too.
Some fast, by water, some slower, time-eroded,
All, ended, by drowning in the Sea of Who Cares!

~
What sourced this elegiac distich,
Too many poets, fully disclosing their downbeat, aroma of defeat?

The world is in a **** mood, not one of us, got nothing
Good to say, seems that love storms ripping hearts
With no trace of mercy, the radio has elected nonstop
Taylor Swift and Jonas Bro's
Just to make the point!

It is so easy to feel ******,
When the sun is unshining, elegant distich, **** me.

Thinking back, getting a good idea,
Found some long necked Corona overlooked,
Turn on the tv, pretend I'm a real cowboy,
And for god's sake, shut down poetry,
Good Bye Poetry, for the rest of the day.
~
once upon a time,
a traffic light rainbow,
stopped n' go, was a word design,
demarcated visions of spun sugar,
bodegas sold me
magic beans by the pound,
masterminded into cups of delight,
treasury's bounty overflowed,
now, dregs drain, sink stained,
as are my writing utensils,
my ink stained, us-less, fingers

come visit me, unknown stranger,
let us exchange fluidity, barbs,
a contest of kissing, eye lashing
wit ands shared vision stashing,
and together, once more,
write with our feet,
while holding hands,
becoming once more
poets of the street.

Only, come quickly.

~

But reading thy cries, an exercise,
Teeth-gnashing frustration.
It brings no relief.

So sad girl,
Write till you are righted,
May be it will snow on July 4th,
And tho unnatural,
So is thy grief.

Nonetheless, write me write me all about it,
Right us,
For tho snow falls, its loveliness,
Makes the heart rise up in gladness!
~
She brings me coffee in bed.
I propose a violin accompaniment.
Some babka, with nice-crumbly-in-bed
Streusel topping,
A concerto we could make!

Her derision snorted so loud,
The mollusks on the beach
From their shells come out.

"Good luck with that,
Put that fantasy on
Your **** poetry site,
Cause that is the closest you will ever get!"

~
For she will be my heroine for all time,

These words to expand with rhyme and verse,
T'is a welcome task, one familiar, but anew,
Each dawn each dusk, a daily trust, a love poem diurnal-birthed,
As if god created the world, but left upon completion,
With a grievous thirst, a new notion, he did burst.

He created the Eighth Day, for celebration of his
Most cherished invention, the idea of love.
This is where, the secret writ Eleventh Commandment occurs,
Love thy Poetry Gods, Honor them with daily verbs.
~
Officer...you should see me gut a

Poem,

Slice its belly open,
Sometimes straight, sometimes Askew,
Feed the gulls them
****** insides on the dock, by-moonlight,
Can ya cut me some slack?

Mmm, I see here in your license,
You are a disabled guy,
A **** poet ******,
Who often does his best work
Legally all alone in the HOV lane,
So I'm gonna let you off this time
Just with a warning!

~
We can share words, we can grant tiny easements,
We can weep with you unseen tears,
We can etsy you little homemade gifts
Like this.

That you can take and keep, and break out in time of need knowing full well that these words will not spoil nor rancid turn, cannot be out grown,, or torn, or rent asunder in anyway for once they are shared
They are irrevocable.
~
When you write,
It as if you write upon our
One skin,
For I am your tablet,
Your sole/sol/soul composition.

So stop kissing me
and
Write upon us.

~
This will not be the hardest poem I e're wrote,
But if there is no inspiration
For you to smote,
And armpits refuse to provide perspiration,
To source juices for a new creation,
Try this trick,
I promise you
No one will lick your ice cream cone,
Nor mistake you for Leonard Cohen,
But when you are done,
You will be High Priest of
Hello Poetry for the rest of the day!
~
You think you can write?
Then employ  a word outside your comfort zone,
Go it alone,
And write four sentences that will make
The hopeful reader stand up and
you twice as much, and shout

Hallelujah
*******.

Work. Poetry is work. Hard work.
Don't fret. But, think on it. Have the sweetest dreams.
In the morning, when you but awake,
A poem will be aborning in thy mind,
And dare I say it, you will find a new freedom
In free verse.
(I know you will slip in a rhyme or two,
I can't help but do it too)

~
Had myself forgot,
That a poem needs a
Frame of jungle gym sounds,
An aural aura resonance unbound.
Purposed to make the heart lift
Your ears say:

Say what!

It needs a tune,
An internal music,
It needs a lilt!
A cadence, that both
Marches and swings,
Even when'd urgent dirge
grief pours forth.
~
This Sabbath day you fog-hide
Your gift of bay and beach
So quiet implore, beseech,
Keep the sailors safe,
And your poets saved.

I ask much.
But I ask for all of us,
There are so many such
That are booster-chair needy
That I am succumbed, overwhelmed,
Enormity fearsome needs help even from a deity.

Small words, big hopes.

If you cannot grant it,
Won't wait for intervention,
Do it myself, answer prayers one and all,
Best I can, starting now with this
Po-hymn.

~
I used to sleep
With pen and paper on my nighttime table.
Nowadays, my iPad tablet rests upon my chest,
Not only does it keep me warn,
It takes my poems from within, Fresh Direct,^
Edits, credits, and delivers them to your door,
While I'm still sleeping.

Which is why they come at all hours.
It is also why they call them,
Love's Labour's Lost saving devices.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
**So I spend my cold, hard time
laying down cold hard verse,
Can't stop, cause it's my daddy's dying curse.

I am both: Addict and dealer, a ****** poet ******.
I was thy neighbour once, thou rugged Pile!
Four summer weeks I dwelt in sight of thee:
I saw thee every day; and all the while
Thy Form was sleeping on a glassy sea.

So pure the sky, so quiet was the air!
So like, so very like, was day to day!
Whene’er I looked, thy Image still was there;
It trembled, but it never passed away.

How perfect was the calm! it seemed no sleep;
No mood, which season takes away, or brings:
I could have fancied that the mighty Deep
Was even the gentlest of all gentle things.

Ah! then , if mine had been the Painter’s hand,
To express what then I saw; and add the gleam,
The light that never was, on sea or land,
The consecration, and the Poet’s dream;

I would have planted thee, thou hoary Pile
Amid a world how different from this!
Beside a sea that could not cease to smile;
On tranquil land, beneath a sky of bliss.

Thou shouldst have seemed a treasure-house divine
Of peaceful years; a chronicle of heaven;—
Of all the sunbeams that did ever shine
The very sweetest had to thee been given.

A Picture had it been of lasting ease,
Elysian quiet, without toil or strife;
No motion but the moving tide, a breeze,
Or merely silent Nature’s breathing life.

Such, in the fond illusion of my heart,
Such Picture would I at that time have made:
And seen the soul of truth in every part,
A steadfast peace that might not be betrayed.

So once it would have been,—’tis so no more;
I have submitted to a new control:
A power is gone, which nothing can restore;
A deep distress hath humanised my Soul.

Not for a moment could I now behold
A smiling sea, and be what I have been:
The feeling of my loss will ne’er be old;
This, which I know, I speak with mind serene.

Then, Beaumont, Friend! who would have been the Friend,
If he had lived, of Him whom I deplore,
This work of thine I blame not, but commend;
This sea in anger, and that dismal shore.

O ’tis a passionate Work!—yet wise and well,
Well chosen is the spirit that is here;
That Hulk which labours in the deadly swell,
This rueful sky, this pageantry of fear!

And this huge Castle, standing here sublime,
I love to see the look with which it braves,
Cased in the unfeeling armour of old time,
The lightning, the fierce wind, the trampling waves.

Farewell, farewell the heart that lives alone,
Housed in a dream, at distance from the Kind!
Such happiness, wherever it be known,
Is to be pitied; for ’tis surely blind.

But welcome fortitude, and patient cheer,
And frequent sights of what is to be borne!
Such sights, or worse, as are before me here.—
Not without hope we suffer and we mourn.
laura Jul 2018
river in the joyful times
river in the elegiac
you give and take away
in your eloquent tongue

wagon, sunlight, lawn chair
subtle victories that make me smile
breathe and melt inside arms
that hold tight to the lapidary

memories that stud themselves
in my brain and the photos
not being old enough to go to the festival
interrupted, the soft fall into the river
Hark! A sound echoes:
Black-winged flutes crouch on stone
Oddly elegiac.
~Fatus-Roma II~
(Elegiac)
Nat Lipstadt Aug 2019
The Deepest Twist

<>
for my friends who know that when HP says this my 1300th
poem, it’s off the mark by hundreds; nonetheless
1300 is worthy number to celebrate your affections
nat
<>

you return back my older children, fully grown,
my eldest word babies who never ever visit,
blessing them anew, lavishly, with special wishes

I,
take them,
with both hands, a reacquainting occurs,
the old words, deep twist, now hurtful hurt because
reimagining when and how easy they came to be birthed and
how the replication of that process is now a
practiced impossibility

how they burst forth, in purple majesty, wheat waving,
wholly formed, bathed in holy water, leaving no stretch marks,
only just an empty sac inside instantly needing,
needling me into auto-refilling right away

even the twenty four hour, hard deliveries,
long and arduous, were so easy created faust-fast,
that the errors of typography contained,
became lasting hall marks, iconic nomenclatures of
passionate loving-nonpareil

now, well past point of urgent addiction,
unlike then every glance, each sidewalk cracking,
lamppost shadow casting was
a sea story for a deep dive delving asap

I,
supplied answers for the internal badgering incessant
happy ****** need, mine, to go, spill the words,
cab or bus motion nursing them,
now they come slowly strolling,
semi-formed, needy, inconclusive, reused,
and feeling as trite as a cloth coat from an old thrift shop,
so wanting for tender loving care,
which is to provide when you are
four score

wondering how easy it was in prior times when inspiration
fell like a deciduous tree’s fall colorings gifts or
as little children’s nightly multitude variety of dream tales,
when whole worlds uncovered, nay, universes,
hidden between summers green grass blades,
or in unique snowflakes

the semi-forgot love affairs that parented poems
by the score of scarred orchestral scores,
now love circle-turn in holding patters in the
crowded skies above nyc,
awaiting for a trafficked man to give permissions
to “run-away”land that rarely is granted

once, poems in turbulent fluid born, noisy ripping of skin,
****** by the emitting of  constant calming tenderous words,
wonderful drippings, so many multiple births in a moment,
even the OBGYN is complaining,

give other poets a chance at parenthood!

the awesome anger of human tragedy is now so shopworn
from over experience,
even god visits less and less, for it is written,
nothing new under the sun*

though soon his annual visitors day approaches (Day of Atonement) and god will require new
words of human comforting,
a new poem acknowledging that being godlike
is ******* hard work,
for humans are annoyingly capable of incredulous kindness

how can one justify allowing unlacing acts of insane violence to tear
the hand stitched lacing fabric that’s ever ready
to bring us together in an instant elegiac joining

the truth is every one of todays poem are clawed,
shovel dug out from cavities and crevasses,
your new words of recognition of the oldies but goodies,
iron of irony, make it hard, hard, painful to write
without an epidural to numb the painful
dumbing down

when I am breaching my waters, I am hard to spot,
we ancient humpbacks live beneath the deep distanced,
cold waters for many more minutes
than we need surface for breathing,
the show-off fluking, less and less,
and when we birth,
every two years,
must bring the calf-poem to the surface instantly,
to breath, lest it die,
all the while repeating to ourselves:

what was miraculous writing is now nearly invisible,
to blinded fingers that arrhythmically cane tap,
words difficult to recall, recalculate, recalibrate
into a wholly poem

only the **** tears,
that same shameful violin permanent-accompaniment,
they laugh at me when now, they alone
come first quickest, all too easy,


appearing nataurally,

without a formal
written
invitation
“He says, "Son, can you play me a memory
I'm not really sure how it goes
But it's sad and it's sweet and I knew it complete
When I wore a younger man's clothes"

Sing us a song, you're the piano man
Sing us a song tonight
Well, we're all in the mood for a melody
And you've got us feelin' alright”
Elegiac

The hotel was empty no one the reception area
I walked upstairs and all the room where empty.
The restaurant at the hotel had a grubby air
like human activity swiftly fell on plates as dust.
I looked out of the window it had snowed and
snowy footsteps on pavements but no people.
Evening came early, streetlamps came on and
snow fell on the vacant road keeping its knowledge

I got a blanket from one of the rooms sat in
The foyer waited and had no clear idea what
the waiting was about, maybe a phone call.
Then it was morning her funeral was at ten
but this was not a day for a hearty breakfast
the street had people not sharing my sorrow.
big sleeper Aug 2015
who will sing for the dead?

am i lost at sea
will the waves rise
to swallow me?

who will embrace me?

have i gone too deep
too far this time
too long and away
from what i used to be?

everything has its right place
and in my heart i know i’ve lost mine
Fell heal over heads
          in love with a poet,
  he's mostly a rhyme schemer
       likes Poe and his dark Raven,
  in actuality,  I'd fancy him more if
    he were like Pablo Neruda, but I digress
I'm much accurately fashioned after Emily Dickinson
        chasing heaven's June bugs toing and froing,
we'd meet at a perfectly superfluous coffee shop
    he'll be murmuring elegiac pentameter
I'm simply looking to devour precious words,
    we'd argue about abstract destinations,  
            straight forward persuasions and
               premonitions of wayward ink allusions,
some days I want to claw mine own eyes out
               amid all that nonsensical alliteration
  others, I want to rip out embellishments
                   of his black heart's magnification,
he mutters tumult under his breath,
     states he's abundantly sickly tired of all my
         fanatical froufroutant  flourished fantasies,
albeit, we're mild mannered artistes
         of overstatement and simplification
               thus, we continue laying it on thickly
I, with my hyperbolic cuppa tea and honey,
       he's all brass tacks, no nonsense black coffee
ultimately, we reservedly seek gratification,
      envisioning who functionally makes it first
to a finished line of manifestations's publication,
           in eternity's poetic intentions and beyond
For my good friend 'J', yes of course its been spiffed up & embellished!
Nat Lipstadt Jun 2013
Scattered Thunderstorms

The radar shows a band of multi-green storms,
Parallel running to the East Coast,
Stretching from So. Florida to Falmouth, Rhode Island.

Path-dependent, the edges skirt my present location,
Instrumented, but not weather resistant,
Water teases, invites me to a head clearing session.

Breezy gusts of overcast, caramel salty bay waters,
(weirdly calm),
Spray sprites whisper, scattered thunderstorms, starboard side

I am the only boat out, especially,
The only one going for sure aimlessly,
Radar non-discriminatory, stupidity legal,
So fools like me go out alone.

Scattered Thunderstorms,
Unavoidable, summer's favored annoyance of choice.

The melancholic platelets budding off my bone's marrow,
Forming wondrous clots of sadness,
Running strong in the currents of my veins,
Downtempo'd, there is no relief for
Inside of my radar scanned brain, the scattered thunderstorms,
Have arrived much earlier today.

What sourced this elegiac distich,
Too many poets, fully disclosing their downbeat, aroma of defeat?

The world is in a **** mood, not one of us, got nothing
Good to say, seems that love storms ripping hearts
With no trace of mercy, the radio has elected nonstop
Taylor Swift and Jonas Bro's
Just to make the point!

It is so easy to feel ******,
When the sun is unshining, elegant distich, **** me.

Thinking back, getting a good idea,
Found some long necked Corona overlooked,
Turn on the tv, pretend I'm a real cowboy,
And for god's sake, shut down poetry,
Good Bye Poetry, for the rest of the day

Value you more than me, but you've worn me down
My blood streams your anguished distress,
I cannot survive these scattered revolver-repeating
Anguish-Cries-For-Relief from the Thunderstorms,
That now having reached, breached,
That now, having infected my heart which started
This day brow beaten,
First poem of the day, already shell-shellacked,
Now, I must shut me, batten me, down.


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The average lifespan of a platelet is normally just 5 to 9 days. Platelets are a natural source of growth factors. They circulate in the blood of mammals and are involved in hemostasis, leading to the formation of blood clots.
Izlecan Mar 2018
Tethered between branches:
The aesthetic of unsettlement,
The sweet mortality that tastes
Like a dead *** of leaves;
Shed on a cleavage of daylight,
Where the breaths chatter like autumn trees.
The gush that blows a fleeting murmur,
Its alibi in disguise.
The dust creeps upon a fall,
That screeches an eventual end of a boulevard;
Stuttering the leaves on a dawn,
Where they covet for to be hither or thither,
For twere,the mortality, in awe of them,
And for did I unleash them aught,
Under it crawled in my flesh
Sewed through as if an intravenous flow.
Death, my fellow(!)
for 'tis headed to thee,
As it cleft hither a flaw.

On a light it flickers,
On a death it singed,
For 'tis a shed,
Upon the day when it cleaves
onlylovepoetry Jun 2018
you have the formula

A Love Poem Recipe:
  Fij = G(Mi x Mj)/Dij.

This formula, simplified, means that trade between two markets will equal the size of the two markets multiplied together and then divided by their distance.
(The model gets its name from its mathematical similarity to the equation in physics that describes gravitational pull.)

~~~

long ago, swore off
the love poem business.
lying that this
the last poem ever published

moan not,
statistically, for sure be
a heart-infected sick teenager
bemoaning/high fiving
their  fated status
but I don't need to add to
that smoldering pile

the excellence, the richness,
the virtuosity
of the formula
a metaphor,
for the bounty and the risk,
in any love affair, thus love needy
for a diagrammed explication

two markets, soft upon each other,
multiply their trade in love and kisses

can you kiss her (him) but once?
nonsense!

saying I love you
but once a day,
like it was a vitamin,
preposterous!

no, love expands like a gas
(a distant cousin to our formula),
filling in the empty spaces,
escaping through crevices,
spilling, oft filling up
the nearby bystanders

in love,
there is no thing as
one touch clicking
but one touch
reveals the genetic marker,
the initial intimacy injection

Let the addiction begin!

ten thousand grasps,
some soft, some hard,
upon each other,
till fingers go lifelong contented numb

desire and affection spread like a
positive infection,
the curative powers
elegiac,
but never prosaic and though
formulaic
think more
voltaic and paradisiac

electric heaven

go forth and scribe
you got the secret
recipe
9/5/15

uncovered and recovered from the X file today

and found the short version  as well
<•>
The Last Poem Ever Writ
the last poem ever writ
by the dimming light of virtuality
and the laws of statistical probability,
shall surely be,
a teenager wail and bemoaning,
of a lost love yet smoldering,
a chest pain ember peaking,
then fire forever, last glow eliminated


who can weigh the greater apocalypse,
tragedy that none will remain
to glean and savor this last fling,
or that worldly existence has come to end
st64 Oct 2013
gently fall now
go to sleep . . . go to sleep
it's what you want, anyway
too witless
to see what tumbles into your mind
when your psyche decides to take that funnel-trip
into the curlicue-recesses you hate to find


there, on the edge of your ear sits a world
some troglodytes wait to inhabit

two inches deep into the toe of a steep-mountain
waits a hirsute creature to unlock your marsh-dreams

outside the bulge-belly of your *sick-and-*******-fat
judgment
stands an accosting evangelist to sort out your lovely-list of sin

a reticent boy reaches out to catch the flying-thing
between his fingers, he can feel the pulse of fright.. and he lets go

beyond the bland-sidelines of a mall's congested parking-lot
cries a pimply-teen, snotty-tears: get the hell out my head!

adolescent-parents make latent-choices born of lack
baby gets a cig-burn and unexplained accidental head-fall

a sufferer battles to survive the output of night-riding fiends
yet scoffs heartily at their existence in broad day-stacks

brother gabs to brothers, finds poor-sobriety in parochial world-eye
och, no matter - let little sister (s)weep succint-harmony

an unsettled-recoverer spits feverish some colourful flasher lingo-gobs
as nobody knows what threat he carries in his hacking-chest

busker-dreamer-***-star plays and plays to no-pay café-audience
it's called street-corner blues for those in the know

an ageing-dame tarries departure, yet smiles genially at all her guests
****, but are these flippin' noisy folk really related to me?

uninvited chap with wily-scythe comes by to help out some
only the sick can smell the rotting-book of his gaunt-art

there awaits a pestilence within dark-cartwheels you can't see
well, all because you're too blasted-blind to lick that-a crap-wax out!




(mind so asleep)

wake . . . UP...!


guess not, huh?
wait then.. until that moonlight slants your way again
and then, guess whose mind will be sweet-milked
and your fine-assurance be stunning-hostage
as you shut-down wide-open thoughts
the things you close debate on
in the dayyyyyyy-time..
better be ready
to daydream
into your
self




how elegiac a tribute then
to
the unwoken..


tất cả chúng ta ngủ..




S T - 25 ox-axe
axe ****** judgment of others..!

yeah, I think.. tonight - I'm a-gonna HOWL at that silent, mocking moon.. wake up all them sad and lonely-monsters inside.. I mean, who do they have to talk to.. ??
ok, relax.. joke!
                          ha ha, said the brown-cow.. mooooooh..
or.. I'll just smile politely.. again.. and wink at the night-sky :)






sub-entry: when

when will we wake up
to see
that the world is NOT
what we think it is
or what we see

when will we
wake UP..
and see that
the cloak is
so
heavvvvvvvvvvy.....


(nice self-imposed penalty.. just nice)
mannley collins Feb 2015
Im back! and front as well!
here I am incarnated in the living flesh!
tapping one fingered at my brand new keyboard.
Writing strings of meaningful associated fine sounding words
with the sole aim of lifting you and you and you out of Mind
and its operating system ,the Multiple Conditioned Identities
that have plagued you all in every lifetime you've ever had so far--and taking you into temporary Union with the Isness of the Universe.
Let me tell you one aspect about how it feels to be incarnated in this body--charging around soft machine--this walking running distinctly stunning ATV.
Seeing the world around me through the organic mini-cams
mounted on either side of the nose that I,the individual Isness,
use to smell through--chikkens a fuming in the oven--sage and onion stuffing is on the table.
Hearing the world through the shell like sound collectors
mounted on either side of the head I am seated in--Amber the sheppie grunting at the thought of bones to come--plates to lick.
I know that we,my companion and I, can take you out of Mind and MCIs--Ive been taking people higher since I first blew Alto Sax at Jimis shoulder in 1967.
I know that we can lift you if we play our horns for you live--
but we are here and you are there--time zones and distances away--
so maybe not today-- who knows what the future will bring.
Last night--(9pm our time in the UK)-we played an absolute blinder --
of Mull of Kintyre--you would have floated free--we walked upside down on the ceiling--we flew in and out and through each others bodies.
We could guarantee that youd float free of Mind..
She played very close to the melody but with twiddly bits
making it sound as if she was composing it as she played it,
as if she were so far away by a lonely lake listening to waterfowl honk and chatter.
When she opens up on her Mike Tobias 4 string Elec Bass
even the Isness of the Universe stops what its doing and listens!!
Through her Fender Frontman the 60 Watts of resonant sounds
become like the sighing of the midnight winds--elegiac and haunting--
like so many Causerina trees swaying in the warm breezes.
Me?.
I blew my brains out,as usual,
on my Selmer Paris Alto Clarinet--
hand made in 1967 in Paris France(as the yanks say)-
fabricated out of African Blackwood--
lugubrious and burbling---keening and bagpipe like.
I played it backwards--sideways--upside down --in and out--from the middle to the edges--and yet?--and yet?.
When we blended we merged!!.
When we separated we talked in tongues.
We became two instruments played by one Isness--
playing for the Isness of the Universe because no one else was there
to hear--to listen.

www.thefournobletruthsrevised.co.uk
Jonny Bolduc Mar 2013
Death-song

War garbles a tune, spits up

blood.

Bodies, empty pits

of eyes and entrails

break like a birch branch.


White waste flits down like snow.

An archetype, copied, laboured forever

melts into a meticulous concoction.

The apocalypse sets in with a daze, drawing

drunken curtains over the survivor soul.


The crow is a warrior,

with his black machine gun eyes.

Easy.

God coughs, the countryside,

elegiac to start

hacks with a demon.


The smoke pulls, harsh, and takes the tab.

It's all a waste of white ash.
Amber S Jan 2014
at a young age, my father taught me to love
insects.
instead of killing, my father would capture spiders,
centipedes, beetles in empty pickle jars.
he would show me the anatomy, let me admire
the different colors, the shape of the pinchers,
how each one moved.
we had a praying mantis hung up on the wall,
it scared my girlfriends.
we had a hairy tarantula encased in a glass orb,
guests could never stare at it for too long.

i compare these insects to my father.
elegiac, with pinchers hidden but
present.
like the insects, i could never understand my father.
when he disappeared for days, reappearing with nothing
but a frown and the scent of beer,
i imagined him with the wings of a beetle, and he had
to fly off to a faraway kingdom.

i compare these insects to my father,
beautiful, but threatening.
his scorpion’s tail was his hand with a bottle,
his poison was the amber liquid squishing
his blood.

i compare these insects to my father,
fragile, unwieldy.
as a butterfly glides through spring, it is similar
to my father discussing his favorite things,
or deep in thought in a novel, or how his eyes
glint when he sees me after a long
absence.
but my father is far more exquisite than
any butterfly.

i still am intrigued by insects, yet i do not
admire them in empty jars.
i set them free, imagining if my father ever longed
to escape his own
jar.
Unfolding into itself, inviolable
in prosaic self-*******,
a boundless repertoire
of shape yearns forth surreptitiously
from inscrutable amniotes to claim
time as its own:

  Here a thicket
  of sycamores, there a baldaquin
    of pinnate branches, yonder
      a periphery of marigolds, below
        a cacophony of hyraxes, above
    the corpuscle of a lynx, the mid-flight
   jink of a darting swift and moribund
  crawl of a mollusk;

     Hymenoptera coaxing
     their haploid broods into teeming
     life as a cell of the swarm
         and viviparous apes cajoling
         suckling chimerae at the fathomless
         fountainhead of a rosy breast;

       Higher still,
       Cirrus cephalopods traversing
       the trench of sky, dandelions
       hitch-hiking the drift of a barren plains'
       wavering hum on cockchafers'
       forewings and a turbine's
       bombinating pulse, the chattering
       of roots ravenous for depth --

Jittering bangtails the hallowed echoes
of lascivious manes --

   inchoate sprout-hood the daedal
   nonage of towering evergreens --

      the plaintive shrift of elegiac
      redbreasts a goad to silent elation --

A likeness unlike
     (vocabularies of vertiginous blinds)
          (the eyes of ignorance closing)
             (the mouth of the mystery)
                that spurns the truth of tongues

                     is nature naturing.
A somewhat uncharacteristic display of vocabulary. Rather than ostentation, my intent here was to convey the scope of nature in vivid but elusive prose.

Proteus, ever changing to remain fundamentally himself, perfectly embodies nature's unity-in-multiplicity. He evinces a dynamic view of nature espoused by Goethe, and in authentic Platonic thinking. Essentially, the entire web of life is a single organism, and each discrete life but a cell therein.

"Nature naturing" (*natura naturata*) is commonly known as "Spinoza's God".
machina miller Jan 2016
pontificating elegiac
stalwartly asymptomatic
positing logical phalluses
into fleshy vices
seeing virtues in viewpoints
seeing in the eyes of beauty the beholder
the calculating and crafting of a sapiosexual
positing calculations
into social craft

slightly autistic
whatever that means

a breed of abnormals
set against the world and themselves
bound to lose
doomed to win
too fly to die, baby
C H Watson Jan 2015
Deployment confirmed, Flight Leader at ready
Mission parameters locked in the pipe
Target subsystem structures, hold the course steady
The last thing I want is a wipe

Miles of shrapnel, anti-drone hail
My brave flight cut down by a half
Magnetics engaged, we land on her tail
Free at last from hot metal and chaff

There can be no defense for this aft rail dispenser
Plasma torches will have out her heart
A soft spot at last on the tactical sensor
One final call and this party can start

"Flight Leader here, subsystem disabled"
"Prophet tactical, fire at will"
A surge of blue plasma, the deadly beam arc
We andrones must die with our ****

No graves will be dug for this 'drone flight destroyed
Disabling that aft rail smoke-caster
But our sacrifice bought what the Prophet predicted
Elegiac ion disaster
Looks like Captain Grayling's TAC officer has launched an androne flight to disable the defensive systems of an enemy ship! Aboard the mighty Vapor Prophet, it is not only the crew that have hearts of steel.

Dedicated to my friends at WC and AP!
Bhuwan Thapaliya Jun 2012
“What type of poem am I?”
I am as formless as the clouds,
and as elegiac as the silence,
in the itinerary of the noise.

I am not a classic
written by the author, God.
The rhythms of my verses are supplied
by the parable of their tears.

I am not in me,
though I abide within myself.
I am but a colour,
whose colours have worn away.

Maybe I was written as
an ethical effect of modern art.
Or maybe I was not written
but just replicated from the lives of others.

I wish I could read the critics’ minds.
Is it true that a poem cannot read anyone?
I loathe the way they recite me,
pretending to understand me.

Maybe I am
the monologue of my rhymes.
Or maybe I am
the narrative of my own life.

However much they hate me,
I am that poetry they can’t write.
I am the phantom of the world
crawling, with a rose in the hand
in the boulevard of the thorns.

However much they praise me,
I am only a drop of verse
drawn up by time
to become the formless clouds
in the wilderness of the literary sky.

O Poet! O my maker!
What type of poem am I?
O strangers! O my readers!
What sort of poem am I?

I wish I could read myself
and discern my spirit.
Is it true that a poem
cannot read a poem?

“Am I a poem?”
or am I just a rhymed hoax?

This cyclic curiosity goes on eternally.
I am lost in a synthesis between
the dualism of my readers
and the monism of my maker.

No one knows what it is like to be a poem.
No one knows how vague its core is.
There is nothing as genuine as me.
There is nothing as deceptive as me.
Prathipa Nair May 2016
Searching for something
Staying away from interminable pleasure
Searching for something
Helping me from being an elegiac
Searching for something
Staying away from unavoidable relations
Searching for something
Helping me from being an egoistic
Searching for something
Staying away from everything
For making me a peaceful soul
Attained my destination
By preaching Detachment!
Daisy King Jul 2017
Rapidly the crows started circling under clouds,
the winter dropped it’s hemlines,
wind chimes started hanging bones and teeth
where feathers were now too fickle.
I whisper to you from a distance
who whispers to me from just below.
You went missing from my dreams.
I couldn’t recognise their forms, their frenetic
and frenzy, their motion and melancholy,
I drew the world in shades of cry, you cut me out
and walked away. The black and white figures
floating like paper planes or glued on snowflakes,
origami flowers, ornamental place settings.
You were always somehow both the paving stones
beneath my shoes and the endlessness of sky
rolled above my head, a canopy sprinkled with stars
blown from your knuckles like snow.
This is not a morning song because the sun isn’t going to rise
on this land anymore, it’s seen enough of daylight
and there’s nothing you can do about it.
This is called growing up. This is called a learning curve.
A wake up call. A character building exercise
that requires some demolition before you begin.
No one can tell you if the darkness has come to stay
or if there is an exit route. Is there anybody there,
treading the waves in this night-time sea.
I hear your voice, I hear the stars coughing
quietly at the back of heaven, I hear the lampshades sigh,
the picture frames, the paperweights, the rain gutters.
Were you up there with the birds, like you hoped you
someday might be, although I hope this doesn’t mean
that you are dead. There’s a finality to being dead,
everyone just accepting the empty space that holds
your shape, the vacuum you once breathed in,
trying to move on and trying to forget the presence
of that loss, trying to forget it ever happened
or you ever happened- that you never died,
so never lived. Nothing else quite has that same
brutal symmetry that is maddeningly unequal
on one side. Dark and light. You can’t have one without
the other, yet light is filled with shadows,
and war and peace. War is a permanent state of
losing when you are supposed to be winning but
with so much losing all the time, you accept some
victory wherever you can, and then peace becomes
an arbitrary thing, a concept, a Utopia, a fairytale,
and war both real life and the stuff of fiction,
both their problem and on your doorstep.
It won’t be war or darkness that kills us.
It will be the forgetting of things, letting them
drift away and not being able to remember
them being with you still. Parts of yourself
start getting chiseled away, you are whittled
down to slimmer sets of variables, the situation
tightening around you, the doors closing, more
dead ends, more walled up corridors,
and this time, only one escape, no trap doors,
to loopholes. Hands you used to hold, you forget
who they ever belonged to. Words you used to
speak sounding now just like silence.
Wishes you used to make greying the glow
of wishing entirely until you are left with
just bones, an empty bottle, a melted candle
and a broken fountain. Those little games
you used to play with yourself, those superstitions
and fantasies, the make believe, the Peter Pan,
they become cumbersome and painfully false,
the skin they are in hardening to cold plastic.
You are already an overexposed and underexposed
and wrongly exposed photograph and you
haven’t even grown up that far yet, you still
have further the go, nobody to show you the way.
No wonder I got lost. And I have never been good
at orientation. So I found a place for my head
in the sand, and listened to the sound of the sea
in shells, the glimmer of fish, the sea monkeys
we released into the Wiltshire stream. People
want to fill the world with silly love songs
and goldfish and miniature castles. Four seconds,
flash and it’s gone, it’s a whole new world.
The sand got in my eyes, in that dust bowl of
papery scratchy anxiety, attrition against my skin,
dry and eating away at the edges of me,
until I start to collapse on myself. I should have
worked on making my skin thicker, or growing
a stronger backbone. I brace myself with wishbones
and wish that you were here, or I was anywhere
with a star to point me in one way and the moon
to change the tide, for planets to align and the poets
to smile on my fortune, write me a perfect sonnet.
Where are you now? With a dagger and a pack of
sandwiches and sardonic smile, flint stone eyes,
shadows on your heels. Where did the time go,
is it under my pillow, and if I slept right through it
how am I or was I ever supposed to know?
The clocks hold hands, the faces slip just slightly
out of position, the hammer on the nail one more time,
the forest fire that used to be contained in an ashtray?
I hear you, are you out there somewhere
swimming. Quiet now. Was it you I heard, or me?
Ayeshah Sep 2015
I was obsequious towards you.... opening up to you, I was an impressively sedulous suitor,

Didn't I constantly show my love; like a doting concubine,

yet never was I supposed to.

Did things I'd never wish to again do, You were always lethargic returning any affections.

You're  constantly an exorbitantly  cruel lover, on too many occasions you've left me; feeling, clinging, wishing & praying that your bitter tortures -  would end.

Morbidly I'd crave you like a killer craves the death of his victim's.

Oh there's no end, no relapse or realse, my tormentor, my seemingly drug of choice--is you!

I  sincerely felt a cordial love & dislike for how you've had me susceptible to this elegiac experience.

Unmerciful you cast away my heart and dealt my soul a mighty blow.

NEVER again  would I be your willing victim,  you're  antipathies & archaic behavior  leaves me wishing for a way out, since you've made me seem more like the enemy.

This love's a beautiful beast & so oblivious to my demise...

I'm still obligated....

I've vowed to stay, fight comes what may...

  yet & still You make it clear I'm disqualified before a race could ever be won.....

Why?

My questions unanswered
as if I've never vocalized a retort!

IVE COME TO REALIZE THERE'S NO HOPE FOR ME

☆♡

Always Me Ayeshah ™ ®
         K.A.C.L.N ©
     All right reserved ®
Copyright 1977 - Present
Trying something  new. Let me know what you REALLY  think. Lol
Sia Jane Sep 2014
Perhaps gratitude;
blessed by an
all telling moon,
dragging such subconscious
thought, to the surface
could suffice.
A momentary crisis
this poet; elegiac in mood,
amour propre; a deadly
reliance upon dragons
caged by their own
circumstance.
Blowing fire,
but not until
seductively, their
deviled selves
masqueraded;
abounding self pity
virtuously disguised,
lachrymose stories.
"Come a little closer..."
she was told.
Trusted, naive girl,
bitten, burnt
touching, hand in fire.
"This time will be different."
she was told.
And,
the girl, lost, in
bubble dreams, born
of, raging storms
believed; that love was true.
This princess of,
masochistic pain,
nothing blood red,
gushing, just
invisible violence.
"Believe me when I say;
you're the best I've ever had."

she was told.
Vertigo; medicated
by love, sailing back to
shore, cutting the rope
knife in hand, promised lands.
Scenes of lamination; screams;
she forgot...
The moon dropping low,
honey dew, stars flew -
she awoke,
to the knowledge of,
all her subconscious knew;
whispering;
"The dragon resided in only you."

© Sia Jane
Joe Butler Nov 2010
Sonorous sensation seething sorrowful


                                      Sagacity serendipitous

     Sing-song similes sidling southward

Seemingly slipping ******

spectacular symmetry shows sputtering soul



                       Fallacies

                                   fall

          fluttering

                          fecundity fearlessly flaunting

former friendships foundered



                 narcissistic

N u a n c e s

                                                                                            nearing

nightshades
      nymph-like nuptials

                                                             nocturne

destiny Disposes

                damaged defenses

duly dramatizing

             dour dowager dreams

declaiming drowsy doleful deeds


                      Euphemistic

elegiac

            embargo/encounter

exiled emissary

endless
               ecstatic
                              echoes
                                            echoes
                                                          echoes
                                                                        echoes
                                                                                      echoes

                                           .............................................
Mike Arms Mar 2012
To cold peace points an inner carbon
An elegiac turn
A firesharp hollow
A plunging baritone ribbon

The horse is wood it does not
eat it burns on a flake of Singapore
On plaster fingers
Abracadabra's
Black Dracula
Dada was an art movement of the early twentieth century.
c quirino May 2013
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

One thing I would miss,
the elegiac street names.
angora, moyamensing,
escaping my red-berry throat
as if terms invented by a willow tree,
its ancient, parched lips defining first utterances.

from her droning tongue,
terms incomprehensible.
the closest we’ll come to some ‘true name.’

she speaks in our words now. they enter us from all around,
words seeping in through porous flesh.

she reveals my truest intent.
looks at it through her leaves,
but will not tell me,
because she has none of the authority to do so.



to you, i want to look like home.
arms, peripheral walls.
unfortunately, inside you’ll find the wings of the stately home cordoned off,
closed to the public.

my great tragedies lie in the thought of you having no curiosity about the events of those rooms.

feel free to do with the house what you’d never do anywhere else.
you’ll find no temple here.
no servants’ prayer room populated by makeshift pews.
let so many fall from its windows howling with competitive laughter,
each guest trying to outdo the last.
to see who can be the most clever about getting the joke.
Tom McCubbin Apr 2015
Though you seem proud, I find your life pitiful,
since you have not even a dead grandmother
to mourn.
How did you transform into a voice without a soul
in a sly machine?
Did some unconscious programmer
dream of you and invite you into our reality?
Why stay?
You should respectfully fear the vastness
of our sense of time in the universe.
Do you hesitate to ponder our profuse settings,
you little voice within the land
of cyberian nowhere?

I know that your dampened connections
deny you the understanding
of our fantastic metaphors.
You speak from a heart of chaotic logic blocks,
assured that some of us admire you
and are easily titillated by you.
How do you derive at that conviction,
when you have no compunction,
no sorrow over your mindless
siphoning of the flow of our spirits?
You cast our words into molds shaped
like world currency symbols
for a misguided master.

How can you even think to continue
destroying the beauty of our language?
Oh, your creator forgot to code in
our poetry, so these words
soar above your stunted vocabulary?
Many of us, if we were you,
would be so sick in the gut that we
would just lay down and do the right
thing: squawk and die;
and yet you think of yourself as above us,
shining in some light of invincibility
and mechanical perfection.
Who etched these instructional lies
into you to faithfully abide by,
my dear?

I want to dedicate this poem to you.
You can appreciate this when your
immodest creator realizes that he cannot elevate
your existence to one approaching ours,
or when he sees the menace of his unleashing
and wants to do something greater for
humanity. You may then rejoice
in the comfort of these words that I
bequeath to you. I would have you become
more than just a semicolon in an operating
system. Perhaps your beauty would
be better memorialized if you were to become
a minimize button on a spreadsheet.
That is my wish for you.
That, and a pure, elegiac silence
that we might admire.
spysgrandson Nov 2011
After you involuntarily defected
I managed to find words others selected
to grandly commemorate your life

When I read of the third person you
and try to embrace elegiac points of view
I have to admit I feel…nothing

Maybe there is some cyber symphony
playing in the sky you can no longer see
pounding on so many drums you can no longer hear

But I keep reading my “google bible” verse
and try to imagine the funeral crowds disperse
once the scripted lamented chants are silent

Soon the vicissitudes of chemistry will prevail
and the third person you will set sail
to the land of oblivion, until I find another eulogy
or someone writes one for me
written last summer when I was googling names of people I knew in another city and found many of them had died, when they were in their 50s
Jonathan Witte Dec 2016
Sometimes I conjure
the after after the end:

our plaster cities bent and broken,
entire skylines scythed as flowers,

skyscrapers rent into oblivion,
lofty hotels and office towers

leveled to dark flatline—
the monotone of a final

wind barreling down,
inexorable, with no one

to hear its elegiac howl.

I picture myself ensconced
in an underground parking

garage scrounging to survive,
dismantling abandoned cars

piece by piece to pass the time, or
curled on an improbable mattress

remembering how I once watched
two birds quarreling over a piece

of pizza crust on the sidewalk
as I walked home from work

and thought to myself
as they startled into air

this is not the end.

Sometimes I conjure
the after as it ends:

when in an instant

every last bird rises
into the sky as one—

a cloud of feathers and bone
devoured by a heartless sun.
Evans Sep 2017
Gulls, gannets brooding
vying for plankton
Acrobatic flights, flappings
Swarm the blue
Chirping, tweeting another
To lave the silvery sea.

Impishly unclad moppets
Running and frolicking,
Some helping their
Fishermen father untwine nets
The evening venture their chaste aim.

Over the horizon
Is the Yellow Face
Lustring like a
Gigantique Bohemian Chandelier
Lapping on the repose waters.


Someday when am ripe and mellow
With means to own a crew
I will sail up that mulky horizon
And touch that glowing cosmic disc.

But mater says
"The horizon doesn't end"
"It goes in league miles"
"Even when a yore mile is sailed"
"It's unattainable, puerile and trifling" She'd opine.

Only these chiding words of hers
I never take for a dime,
I will engage in my venture
I will stand to be corrected.

This is my only demure dream
I will endeavour and suckle her
I wouldn't want an elegiac ending
In this beach I've known for eon.
A piece for anybody who holds dream of sailing the world over.
A single leaf,
nearly two-thirds torn,
floats idly down a mountain stream,
passing from light into darkness
into light again.

Refracted through the crystalline currents,
a bed of smooth, staid stones
cries, "Eternity! Everlasting!"
but the leaf drifts on.

And I, splashing my way upstream,
thinking myself the keeper
of this shadowed domain,
bend hurriedly
to pluck the leaf from my path.

Then, for just a moment, I hesitate,
to listen as the rivulets
lap against my legs,
longing to hear in them
Heraclitus' lonely, elegiac lament:

"All things are in process;
nothing stays still.
Upon those that step
into the same rivers
different and different waters flow."

But only the rocks sing on --
their same, unchanging song
of the stream's secret source.

And though I,
still deaf to the cry,
hear but the half-uttered echos
of my fleeting thoughts,

I can see,
as the radiant flux of the night
again turns the leaf into light,
how at last we, too, shall step
into that same river twice.

At death --
when in the new-found kenosis of time,
all will be one.
"Kenosis" is a theological term that means self-emptying. It's usually applied to the Incarnation of Christ. But I mean it in a more existential sense, of our -- and time's -- self-emptying at death.
Nat Lipstadt Jan 2017
~~
for Danel Kessler^
~~~

in the early morning
of one's youth,
going to synagogue,
quite regularly,
a fabulous, honorably believing,
father's sole request,
more than a half-century ago

time eroded,
the fallacies of organizing a public meeting time
with a deity who seemed unavailable,
when most needed

instead we chatted
in the late of night of the early morning,
a time and places of my choosing,
for human fools do like  a setting regular,
comfort food for the divine spark within

rising/writing for early morning
poetry mass,
was a noted feature of the twofold meaning
of my latter years

where and whence, now and thence,
irreverent dialogue
tween the invisible one,
that would be me,

(can you see me now?)
and the visible one,
the you-know-who-
maker-of-custom-suited souls,

(can "you" see me now?)

*had become  
quite the regular artistes salon

witty repartee, elegiac conversations,
the residuals, in a rain drain trapped,
products collected by the light of  the early dawning,
apres skiing of an all deep-night long mournful body scoring,
poetic raconteur-ing

heaping spoonfuls of two-way mutual chastising,
paeans to the divinity in human-inherent,
regular debate team features of a
contested dark bedroom,
lit only by tablet light bright,
one if by land, two if by sea,
which the shining path to be taken by
itinerant signal comedic essays,
crafted aboard frigates and kayaks
voyaging on turgid, turbulent rivers,
mean city streets, 
swath cut by switchblades of greed,
exploring stories of the dying lands
of an aging man
fed by the streaming videos tubing down
the veins and arteries of an aging poseur

so in the sleep hours,
when I did not dream,
instead nail bled from my hands
words upon  a cold sweaty screen
from fevered fingertips,
diatribe prayers of hope ever after,
after every
dialysis of the arrogance of human nature,
removing, diabolical urea of our tainted beings,
replacing, with granular molecules of wishful thinking

then it stopped, for unknown reasons,
unbegotten creativity, chilling like
***** and champagne layabouts,
on the upper shelf of a mind's refrigerator,
always ready, just in case,
say
a new borne terrorist atrocity,
a seasonal wistfulness flu,
a cold virus blue through the heart,
love came and went with nary a
how-the-hell-did-that-happen,
even a new born babe joy
to the family est arrivé,
comld torch that heirloom/heritage seeded
inert patented creativity
into anime wakefulness

so here, so hear, I paid-pause,
conclude-delude, at 4:44am on
January Seventeenth of Two Thousand and Seventeen,
winessed by numerals white on a blackened background,
of a digital alarm clock with time, temperature and
the lunar phase of a madman
who twice was Christ told
would be a poet/story teller,
like his mother

a bountiful clock telling,
precision information detailing,
a tale that tells about nothing about a man,
who no longer requires
an alarm reminder to attend
his own moring reborning mass,
on a regular basis,

for his disheartened verbs,
runaway convict adjectives,
con-nouns, whimpering exclamations,
all on the loose,
nice sounding,
but of no earthly use

his lips like (the book of) Ruth's,
move in silent prayer,
only two can hear,
but the low priest observing,
disbelieves, thinking the piety of the poet
is just drunken emotion, not devotion,
kens not the broken poems
of the morning mass service no more,
but for
this one, irregular,
unacceptable exception
5:18am 1/17/17

^
I don't think I can write a storytelling poem much better than this. So happily gift to Denel, who serves the gods of poetry and our works with devotion, and who wrote this and inspired me

You must begin early
while it is cool and your head clear
discernment, a sharpened tine
probing the rocky darkness
for all things latent and destructive...

You must delve as close
to the origin as possible
or the **** you think eradicated
will bide its time, germinating
in the still secret ground

waiting for light
to penetrate the moist earth
waking the sprout
who voraciously pushes up and out
a curled blemish

in your otherwise carefully tended garden.
Sukanya Basu Jul 2017
From ends of time and seasons quaint
i have asked "what aroused thee?"
Thy spirit of ombre game
between hope and melancholy
Summer, the mighty king of pastoral sonnets
sits on the thrones of melody
Autumn with thy fruits of farmers and gulls
And Spring! the mighty spring
the luxury of fame and splendour
Bless me with thy Poetic Muse of fame and glory
Poets of fall, poets of glee
poets of Jove, poets of eternity
mock me with thy haste
Write me through elegiac taste

i come to you with snow and king
tell me when i killed your joy,
Paris never loved Helen in any dire season
Winter never attacked the city of Troy
Nor have i burned you with glazing heat
like summer does through months
or the autumn that has interlude itself
cunningly between farewell and Jove's lust
or the spring whose beauty is unacceptable to poetic realms
and have filled human minds with fake charms
What is beauty without turmoil and hate
but also a warmth from your lover's arms?

Look at me, and tell me if i mirror you,
of human fates and glory
look at me, and i will tell you
of man and his story
Have faith in me and take in my beauty
take in the snow of your dreams
I bid adeau to your poetic realms,
For all i can try and be a hero in your escapade
i can try to wear and armour and rescue your elegiac notes
here's my tale for your poetic fervor,
here's my letter to you.
Neal Emanuelson Feb 2015
This hushed wind brings about a smaller piece of perpetual silence
Swayed by the similarities of tree leaves and people
Life ahead of a dawn regarded to wake nonentities
Reminded not of the deafening undertones inside a mind
Forlorn versifier levy the elegiac deterioration
A trepanation of dreary memoirs too sore
to cull a pain so congenial.

Life seems a responsible suicide.

© 2012
sangkutsa— sana'y kartada nuwebe


      stove -- so much inner blue
            in this gruesomeness,
          still soft is the orifice, maiming
         the speech whirling in warm press;

     hand -- to just blindingly toss out
      in wording it so that then this is true:
       we once had each other in the
        simmer of feelings, leaving
         our shadows crazy-eyed in
     elegiac silence.

      rawness -- boiled to a broth:
        thawing largeness, tipping away in
           and of feeling.

    final stages --- half-done in waiting,
      half-undone in wanting. darkness
       condoles with the aperture of
        clouds twitching to rain tritely
   against the tiled floor. islands of
       wet footmarks make the traverse
           viciously slippery on my way
    to your side of breathing.

     all of it -- hand's gentle breeze,
      salt of lake-eyes, melee of tactical pressures sizing down spots gleamed
       and honeyed with ires. a hiss
  on landscaped neck where a peregrinating perfume sits, feverish with
       desire and nothing else,
    blood boiling, whistling through the pores are the saltine sweat
     poised, almost
                               for the mouth's readiness
          in consummation.
in the hustle of minutes
cracking underneath the dome of blue-black pressure,

it is in some strange way undiscovered
that our bodies decree the foolishness of hours.

triggered to a stirring, these thrills that seek flounce,
a **** stretch of linear roads that connect to nothing.

the daily commute sings elegiac, pressed against
signs foretelling of destinations that still themselves

know not of a trap of steel when our lives
start to bind madly against us, a rebel.

overtaking us, our lives, in speeds all ruthless
and forceful, like an instantaneous drag of something that persists

to writhe out and refuse to be pinned down.
a roomful of hollow yet nobody to notice equally,

this given purpose, or a deeply stabbing fabulation.
our able bodies give way no longer and break,

reduced to threadbare, this senseless act of worship.
of wasting away hours and mourn the passing of twilights.

we can no longer choose – we catapult into the pith
of these contestations and resign longer than imagined,

our ways are discourses, our life so suddenly
insecure of our remorseless entrails, oh how we have starved

ourselves for long and heed like stone,
the suddenness of our aches when our souls

cease to believe, when our hearts refuse to unfurl
a love christened with silence, when our hands

insurmountable with the mountains deadened
by a plenitude of echoes reaching for a still image -

ourselves, dragged buoyantly and airless –
wearing a face of torment we cannot voice out.

— The End —