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John F McCullagh Jan 2012
Libyan Rebels ring the town,
poised to make their final ******.
The defiant wait with loaded guns,
The butcher tallies up the cost
Is this the Arab Alamo?
Defeat presaging victory.
Or just another episode
Of “I **** you and
You **** me.”

The world waits

In ****** anticipation

For their oil to be

Delivered
written towards the conclusion of the Libyan Civil War
To even commence to define how profoundly I fell in love with you, I would need the capacity of a thousand-page manuscript written in the most romantic idiom.

Each, and every retention of us is stowed into the back of my conscious, and concealed deep into my heart.

Every beautiful memory plays through my head like soft music.

I would say my heart is immovable.  There are days that I try to sojourn the thoughts of you, but its intolerable for me to do so.

I am so engulfed in your perfection. I do not think there has been a single day that you have escaped my thoughts.

I can feel your presence with me if I ponder our memories deeply enough. Your presence weighs heavily in my heart. It is as if part of your soul occupies its crevasses, and fills my cracks.

Your eyes are echoes of a hundred distant galaxies no man has ever revealed. Vast windows that reflect the constellations.

My heart is certain the universe resides in them.

As I begin to study your face, I feel like nothing but love can exist.

Your porcelain perfection never ceases to weaken me.

You weaken me with love, trust, and desire. Like the finest specimen created by the hands of Gods.

As I anticipate the connotation of love, the implication is “you”.

Even if the fire for what you feel for me dies, I do not reason the passion I have for you will ever dim.

I do not begin to recollect if I had ever felt this susceptible.

I let this passion be valued like the rarest stone.

I would give up the entire world if it meant I could have you in my life endlessly.

Your happiness is of grave importance to me, when I study your smile, I can overlook the darkness of this decaying reality.
  
Every heartbeat of time my mouth declares three unpretentious words.

“I love you”.

I say it like an invocation.

Not one moment did my tongue express profanity against these golden words of poetry.

I love you. “ I Love You” . And solitarily just you.  

I wallow in my own sorrows at the thought of the culmination, when we shall one day part at death's hand.

For I deeply distinguish that you love me equally, and this brings vast pleasure to my temperament.

I sense security in your encirclement, your heart is my home.

My heart qualms of my fragile weakness that I consume when I dream of you.

You make me susceptible to the sickness of love.

If love was a poem, you would be the title.
In dedication to the feeling of true love.
Mateuš Conrad Feb 2017
psychosis and osmosis....
   one the soul, the other
simply water...
      in dictionary
verbatim:
the passage of a solvent (ego) through
a semipermeable membrane (body) from
a less concentrated (thought) to a more
concentrated solution (soul) until both
solutions are of the same concentration (now) -
    and the end of a romance is?
the so called "madness"
becomes a topic less and less used
by writers of fiction,
  it becomes genuine,
it also means fiction parasites,
poets included, don't dare to tread
into a goose-march stepping into this Hades....
    you don't come round these parts by
yourself... unless you're hoping to
end up dead... or trapped by a dialectical
spiderweb with talking spinders...
       you dont get to type  this ailment out...
not in the same way you write the
word osmosis....
but then again, in the west you get to
be a victim of a crime: the criminal
       gets all the perks and you get
   Belgian mud to sniff,
while a monarchy gets to celebrate
its 65th sapphire encirclement...
               psychosis should be as clear as
osmosis...
                 in that we need water....
                    obviously very few people understand
this...
                dein die kopftod...
   i call an end to romantics with "madness",
well... given cancer has the prioraties...
                so the crowd might
congregate at Golgotha...
                  i say: walk the, ******* crab!
side-ways, yes, side-ways,
   like imitating suicide on a ledge....
you made enough money from the diseases,
true when under the scalpel:
dis- (negated) -ease (do i need
to exfoliate this?) -
                   i can only see a death of making
certain diseases a case for the worthwhile tale
of selling novels...
            i can't imagine exploiting
the said diseases... but if i was born with
a capitalist conscience, i'd hardly think of
possessing a conscience...
               i'd say death to the romance
of establishing a literary subject...
              i'd prescribe the Koran...
           as odd as it might sound...
you don't really hear how
psychosis can really be stated lorem ipsum
ad hoc...
   the first you hear is
         the miser medatitive attempts in
the medium, precipitating into paranoid
schizophrenia... no more medical than it is:
politico-journalistic...
                 psychosis and osmosis...
what's the difference... one engages the soul....
the other... water...
the ending is the same -osis...
   a verb, an activity self-explanatory
in a name... easily digested via journalistic
sensationalism...
        it becomes a death then the "mad" onces
realise you're herding them into a novel
and rather run a half marathon for
  the cancer victims...
   then ***** begins to turn sticky....
                 the hierarchy of diseases emerges...
cancer pharaoh... alongside the other adverts
for flu, smomking and lesser diseases...
then they tell you how Muhammad treated
the lunatics like modern Islam might deal with
Sufis...
                   some would care to say:
these people, are, not, money-dispensing
machines!
                        but then again...
who gives a ****... i don't even know or care
if you're conscious,
    i know that conscience is not part
of your consciousness, then i'm treating you
are semi-coordinate,
   probably sleepwalking through your so
called life...
   madess has no romance for a novel,
but since you testify to people being mad
only via a model... i can't but expect your novels
to later come from glamour models
writing their ghost-biographies...
   ghostwriters... auto- not near
unless bound to refining a.i.,
oh don't worry: only books written
as books necessarily sold...
                      this has gone beyond pimping
the pompous... it really has...
                  i can't even be prone to pomp,
i can't believe in writing a book
like i might don a cravat or a beefeaters' uniform...
      books have nothing
      grand about them...
writing them we're cheap ****... very much akin
to the last ruke on the chess board:
      lifestyle journalists with  a steady income
from being printed in newspapers...
did you know robots will replace 250,000 jobs
bound to the NHS and Whitehall?
    better write scrappy, ******-doo....
they might think you're human...
           then i guess it only sounds as the prompt:
write doubly human...
   for the added effect...
             write like those employed by newspapers,
esp. the opinion columns...
can shove it up their *****...
   drink theoir gin & tonics...
think their opinions,
   and replace their premature / non-existent
dialectics, by crushing ice-cubes with their teeth.
    i can only claim being human
by not romanticising "madness"...
                         i think it's a tabloid
venture that's, well... deservedly in need of a novel...
  i can only suggest the alternative:
stop the romance of "madness",
            and stop desiring to write novels about "it",
before you turn and realise
that your sanity was prone to stage
           the alternative... zeitgeist and insect
"typo" homily.
oh, it's there... but no one thinks those people
are half-as-cult-like as they,
         there's no "secret" / shadow bribing
someone from both ease, and from seeing
an ease for dis...
                     it's just nice, seeing people pray,
kneel...
                 play into the hands of a puppeteer...
who may or may not exist...
counter to all the intelligent arguments:
try merely existing, rather than living...
  try to state i think therefore i am:
            and move it away from forgetting
that you think, and simply live...
             most people who express life
hardly ever think...
                   well... you can't see thought:
meaning their life is not so cyclic
and at the same time limited...
               cogito ergo sum is equivalent to
Zeno's paradox...
     to occupy yourself with thinking
          is to de-occupy yourself with living...
you can try to prove with thought that you
exist, but in that same instance:
your thought means less and less...
since by thinking occupy a finite space...
   and with life about you taking its course...
your cogito becomes trapped in a noumenon...
since that your self cannot
                    express a phenomenon...
given the number of example trapped
in the category of **** sapiens,
this is as natural as taking antibiotics for
a flu... only that it's purely cognitive...
or rather: cogito per se...
            cogito per se ergo sum quasi se...
given non cogito est pseudo cogito ergo sum...
   mind you: there's no pseduo sum...
we already rule given we can't
turn into the abstract burial ground of hindus
that's a fire... and how we have strated
to build up a phobia for being taken into the earth
for insect food...
   even the pagans believed to give the body
a soul, a fire burial...
   if that practice remained, there would
be no reference to monotheistic ****...
       or we would turn into Chinese omnivores...
i find it bewildering that the Hidus and Chinese
have been so ****** patient with us...
count to 1 billion in English...
  years... probably another 1000 years to
reach that number of snooker-player plumbers
and carpenters ready like vulchers...
  cos we really needed that "perfected" aesthetic
of a web-page to really, really clog our brains...
thinking that it wouldn't precipitate into
a loss of body, a sudden loss of body,
  and the emerges of youth with mental illnesses
akin to premature depression, when depression
was the disease of the old, in the gravity cursing
toward, for ****'s sake! Homer!
    yes, the Greek poet!
                  how can you suddenly expect
to make mentala illness a myth, + a taboo...
when you prescribed people gym memberships...
and a complete lack of manual labour,
having exported it to China...
  the ******* on about?
      we're suddenly the new Marxist theory samples...
brains in pickle-jars...
     completely spineless!
                 we wanted both mind and body...
instead... the powers-at-be... told us:
you only need a mind... no body...
   body belongs to hamster... to the gym...
  well... but i really wanted to think crap and hammer
in nails all day... no can do... Chinese have it...
well...
                 what's the point now?
how else would Islam, not be agitated in prescribing us
a war?
           i still find it bewildering that the Chinese
and the Indians (2 billions, and counting)
are so patient with us...
                   still... you want to know why
there's an escalation in youth mental illness in the west?
you gave their bodies to the Chinese...
  no way in the world can their minds (including
my own) ever reach a plateau of an Einstein that
would be satisfactory for the authorities,
to move away from Einstein... and establish
a telekinetic norm (as seen on adverts).
Paul Sands Mar 2015
beggared on this taunted key
her eyes, benighted, smashed and hollowed,
no longer descry the encirclement
of strapping glass and steel

thus cowered beneath such plumb hauteur,
she finds herself now wimpled in
a creeping green
while her walls bleed of a jealous neglect

where flaked façade like dandruff drips
and grumbling brick works effloresce,
into her winter’s final stupor
there she rancorously slips

for who could love her now?

those weeds grown long around her feet?

yet still we look

through the fog
through the trees
through the dearth of honey bees to where
the dewdrops sit, like sugared spit,
upon this old maid’s bristled lip
Onoma Jun 2015
Watching a hawk flying
from my window...
I swore I felt it gliding
through my sky-mind.
One spacious encirclement
after another...
felt like white silk pulled
through a white cloud...
as my eyelids slid
downward by some
indeterminate pull.
Andreas Simic Jun 2022
Modern Warfare

Propaganda
Misinformation
Hearts and minds won

Cyber attacks
Encirclement
Diplomacy feigned

Bullying and intimidation
The UN meeting
Pleas for peace

Sanctions
Countermeasures
Advancement

Land grab
Rigged elections
Outrage

Headlines galore
Time passes
New normal tolerated

Status quo accepted
Mission complete
Rinse and repeat

Andreas Simic©
Mark Sep 2019
I wonder if an unusual flock of white crowned sparrows
Were there that day, that fateful day
Sensing, by which means I know not;
The carnage about to come.
In a frenzy of panic I can imagine the flutter
The unruly encirclement over the festivities.

Perhaps an onlooker gazed upon the sparrows
Momentarily captivated by crying white birds
Together with an eerie hush from the desert wind
Surmising that this is an ominous sign,
Could this be one last final thought of the departed.

For high up in the Mandalay, thirty-two to be exact,
Malevolence hailed down -hailed on a strip of the Mojave.
Smokey rounds undiscrimately raced, laced,
With hate into the music lovers.
Did the Red Rock echo the automatic distant mutter;
The disturbing sounds of mass tuned celebrators' dissarayed.

To what cause is there for such bareful morality?
What heart on 32 could not the feel the serenity;
Of the soothing, harmless country beat?
Then still, sought it fit to take many away
Away from their sacred land and kin.

Many souls - stunned by the sudden halt to dancing
Directed upwards, towards the sun
Yearning to return for one last goodbye.
Perhaps then, that same flock of white crowned sparrows
Native to the north - were grasped by the fallen
By some divine intervention.

Then to return to the scene in the Mojave,
Chirping farewell to the bereaved,
Gracing once again - the soil of the free land;
They loved, and perished upon.
Then into the abode - well above the desert sky.
2017, many deaths in a Vegas harvest  country music festival due to a mass shooting. Rest well in that desert sky
Mark Apr 2018
Past week, on the night of Tiw
an uneasy candle-flame wavered
censored by hushed air kisses
casting doubt upon an ode;
scribing the blessed years of youth.

This pine scented disturbance
no doubt - an Autumnal message;
that rear weathered doors
failed in the tempered change
curiously bidding, further venture.

Patio' marbles were shrouded
creeping with expired foliage
leaves tainted old hickory
near devoid of all famed ochre,
merciless to breaths of the fall.

That sombre mulched pattering
was alike wistful wondering;
of delicate and shadowy footfalls
from condemned, exiled seraphs
strung by moonlight rays.

The flavescent master glistened,
whilst duelling a clouded force;
enclosing in vaporous march
smearing pebble trailings,
the skirmish roused nostalgia.

For eerie quivers - of familiarity
wrought from the despondency,
as if epitaphed notions of old
were recited by alto whistling,
each note rekindling a memoriam.

An exhale of soulful proportions
sent adrift an essence;
a smouldering encirclement
of exhumed - solemnly recalls
taken from seasonal chapters of yore.

Those hearted ashes of distant times
cavorted - as sterling embers
with a phantasmic replica
of an adoration long gone,
duetting on pockets of melancholy.

Then beauty settled into a sepulchre,
caressed by grieving wreath petals
saddened by silken veil,
awaiting the fateful - dust and sand;
the remnants of embodied divination.

Revived dolor swelled from within
tiding from old, emotive cicatrices
buried deep and then deeper
until from this panoramic taunt
does this churned anguish vein.

A corrosive, timely hiss from Carpo
brushed the illusions past
as once - to a maidens' mortality;
a premature cremation of dreams
lingering the bitterness of decay.

As the pining sky orb retreated
so too - this observer with mourn
stuttering farewells to the nameless
then returned to the forgiving study
to immerse again - in better times.
Tiw is old English reference to Tuesday, Carpo is a god of autumn
In the teardropped dew of golden hour
as dusk-sun dips below the edge,
an angel of bronze upon a stone bower
keeps watch as nighttime’s fingers stretch.

Across the spans of painted sky,
one by one bright sparks appear:
constellations form as portraits high,
a hunter, two bears, points on the sphere.

These starry creatures connect the dots,
parade across the firmament
and crown the angel deep in thought,
twelve stars, a wreathed encirclement.

The hunter wheels around the dome
of charcoal sky. His thrice-jeweled belt
shines out to mark him as he still roams
in pursuit of where scorpions dwelt.

Above him run two starry bears,
one’s tail-tip pointing to the north.
Though he lays his trapper‘s snares
the scorpion always hurries forth.

The angel watches the hunt go on
as it’s been since this our rock was made.
She hums her part in creation’s song
that set it all turning on time’s old lathe.

There in the shade by moonlight cast,
this angel smiles at the pageantry
of starry figures marching past
to mark her maker’s majesty.
I always loved to stargaze as a kid and was fortunate to live in an area where there was little light pollution. My elementary school even had its own observatory (built and later donated by a local resident).
This was partly inspired by an angel statue I saw at dusk, which reminded me of stargazing.
It happened that the fight was lost
And she and her retinue took flight
Ferrying by night across the bay
To the island of the guarding light

Where in the small comfort
Of a deserted, half-ruined fort
Those who remained loyal
Made ready for their encirclement.

And as morning dawned, sails appeared
Seeking the promise of final vengeance
And she, taking counsel with her defenders,
Agreed it best to leave to avoid disgrace

Boarding a skiff brought full-sailed
To the wave-beaten broken walls
Of an ancient quay in shadow -
Breaking out into the crimson dawn.

And when those who loved her
Were overwhelmed and put to slaughter
Her enemies found her gone
With only her last pitiable treasures

Left for ransack and despoiling -
Though a servant boy, a beloved slave
Sought to save his life the while
By betraying the manner of her escape.

Then the winds fell quiet and the skiff
Became becalmed. At first sighted
And then hunted down by long ships,
The sea-hounds of their wronged lord,

Bearing down with their oarsmen
Chanting of her treachery and oath-breaking:
Of her poisoning of the cellar meads
At the treaty gathering for her betrothal.

She the long-limbed, wilful beauty,
Enchanter of the warder troops
Sent by her father to accompany her,
Unwilling to bend to the needs

Of dealings and the apportionment of lands,
She who took the gifts and dowry
And divided spoils among the conspirators
Promising the sacred ring to the boldest on her behalf.

Brought at last to the fastness keep
Of her dishonourable suitor and his father,
Her followers slaughtered or enslaved,
War now afoot across the wide lands,

She refused to kneel before the throne
And was cast down with violence
Summarily judged the instigator of evil
A harpy who had raised the flames of hatred.

At which the old king, at his son’s bequest
Asked whether there was anything to be said
And she in reply promised a song so wistful
And yet so wise it might save her life.

‘Sing then to those who you would ****
Those who may still die in battle at your behest’
Said the king:‘Let us hear the siren song
For you are surely now within our power’.

At which she rose upright to answer boldly:
‘Kinsmen and Foemen alike, I am no chattel
To be bought or sold, gifted or pledged,
To settle feuds or mark out or borders

And my song is only the song of freedom -
I was not the cause of your ****** skirmishes,
Your enmities and intransigence existed
Before I was bright-arrayed and brought in offering’.

Though my song condemns me, I save myself
For life is of little worth if lived beholden.

I dreamt and wondered on a distant land
While mystic witches cast a twilight spell
With oaths of runes and carven bones at hand
In deep reflection at the fateful well

From which the tidings from the depths unfold
A curse that any future life must fail
When those betraying honour see it sold
And stain of gold is left to tell the tale.

There are much better mortal gifts to gain
There is a prize my sacred self holds strong
A treasure that will grace an inner realm
To which the best of me may yet belong.

The die is cast as I affirm my right -
Safeguarding freedom in the fading light’.
Echoes here of Maori legend - and the temporary escape of Tamairangi (a high-ranking woman of strong character and great beauty) from her refuge at the pa or fort on the small island of Tapu-te-ranga in Island Bay, Wellington, evading her adversaries the Ngati Mutunga in 1824 - and of her being taken under the protection of the Great Chief Te Rangihaeata after he was beguiled by the charm and pathos of the wiata or poetic song that she sang to her captors.
Kate Copeland Mar 2019
I always leave the door open
the balcony my class room a fitting
room i don't know
to avoid claustration
an encirclement wherefore you feel
left out
no sounds no people no traffic no books
no songs no friends no barks no lights
I defer going to bed too.
Marshal Gebbie Aug 2023
Though the grass is burnt and gone and bees have wendt their way
Ideas in simple sentences have wrought their will to stay,
That axioms in paradigm have fled the room as wind
Since vacuumed words of ruefulness gave causal to rescind.

Yet, though the grass is burnt and gone futility took flight
Where those engaged in conversation, fled into the night,
Gone to leave us well adrift upon a mirthless sea
Where, but for motes of condescension, thee and I would be?

Grass is burnt, now sadly gone, skylarks sing no more
Our stage resounds in silence, due the absence from the floor,
Perpetration whispers soft and echoes to the still
And dryness blows encirclement, eternally, until.

M@Foxglove.Taranaki.NZ
Mia Mcdaniel Apr 2019
I would give up the entire world if it meant I could have you in my life endlessly.
Your happiness is of grave importance to me when I study your smile I can overlook the darkness of this decaying reality.
Every heartbeat of the time my mouth declares three unpretentious words.
"I LOVE YOU"
I say it like an invocation
Not one moment did my tongue express profanity against these golden words of poetry.
I LOVE YOU. " I LOVE YOU " AND SOLITARILY JUST YOU.
I wallow in my own sorrows at the thought of the culmination when we shall one day part at death's hands.
I deeply distinguish that you love me equally, and this brings vast pleasure to my temperament.
I sense security in your encirclement, your heart is my home.
My heart qualms of my fragile weakness that I consume when I dream of you.
you make me susceptible to the sickness of love.
If love was a poem, you would be the title.
To even commence to define how profoundly I fell in love with you, I would need the capacity of a thousand-page manuscript written in the most romantic idiom.
Each and every retention of us is stowed into the back of my conscious and concealed deep into my heart.
Every beautiful memory plays through my head like soft music.
I would say my heart is immovable. There are days that you, but it's intolerable for me to do so.
I am so engulfed in your perfection. I do not think there has been a single day that you have escaped my thoughts.
I can feel your presence with me if I ponder our memories deeply enough.
Your presence weighs heavily in my heart. it is as if part of your soul occupies its crevasses, and fills my cracks.
Your eyes are echos of a hundred distant galaxies no man has ever revealed. Vast windows that reflect the constellation.
My heart is certain the universe resides in them.
as I begin to study your face, I feel like nothing but love could exist.
Your porcelain perfection never ceases to weaken me.
you weaken me with love, trust, and desire.
Like the finest specimen created by the hands of gods.
as I anticipate the connection of love, the implication is " YOU"
Even if the fire for what you feel for my dies, I do not the reason the passion I have for you will ever dim.
I di not begin to recollect if I had ever felt this susceptible.
I let this passion be valued like the rarest stones.

— The End —