"enumerated" poems
Shall we pause to consider
the shudder of a butterfly's wings
that sets the hurricane spinning
or the descent of the final raindrop
that breaches the groaning levy?
Shall we ponder the moment before
a chorus of "maybe's" morphs
into the vain eloquence of history?
Roiling in the broth of chaos
a cluster of causes startles the surface -
unfurling a queue of effects
that dot the timescape
like rows of teetering dominoes.
Typhoons twist villages to ruins,
armies rise to victory or
succumb to the despair of defeat,
or a medical miracle is born
from the agile mind of a doctor
conceived in a Chevy's back seat.
So here we stand on the ridge of time
ourselves both caused and causing,
cradling the sphere of chaos in our hands -
uncertain what effect will be our being
after all our causes are enumerated.
Time will surely tell - as soon
as we tell time exactly what to say.
August, 2013
Aug 29, 2013
Aug 29, 2013 at 10:23 AM UTC
Millions of men with matchsticks
Brought their heads to
The oceans of kerosene
********** forged their existence
And they weren't able to retaliate
Thousand whispers of desire
Of living a peaceful life
Echoed among the mountains
And between the valley of death
Days were enumerated and artifacts collected
The stories seemed to be a passage full of euphemisms
A dystopian atmosphere took over their utopian views
The matchstick was struck
And humanity collapsed.
Feb 27, 2014
Feb 27, 2014 at 1:58 PM UTC
I see new growth emerging from an old tree's heart.
A new sapling sapping strength from what would enrich generic soil,
contributes something unknown to an unassigned
Future
Instead this exacting branch emerges to claim the universe for itself.
No longer can this unnoticed, rotting stump contribute to the greater good
but feed instead, a unique life so it may one day
die and have the chance to fill the old soul’s soles.
The unlabeled, non enumerated vagaries of our world
cowardly whinge in the background
while the assertive actions of the flowers
and falcons shout out loud for their own preservation.
Food chains serve as feeding trays for those cells
who have bound together with that joie de vivre
necessary to drive the generic engine of nature
in their direction. This predilection
to protect the potent and powerful
among us is not simple chance
but a predetermined proclamation
from our divine protectorate pushing
the proper paupers forward until they find
themselves ensconced in the holy foliage of nature's glory.
Apr 8, 2013
Apr 8, 2013 at 5:20 PM UTC
I didn't get much sleep last night
I wish you could guess why,
I couldn't get my heart off you
I couldn't control my mind.
When I consider your smile and laugh
The
Butterflies don't fly away
For lack of a better term they stay,
And
Grow.
That honey you call your hair,
The way your face wrinkles while you laugh,
You are something else entirely
An entity unable to be enumerated,
Entrapped, encroached upon,
Earthly, eager, but unearthy,
Eloquent and effortless,
Elevated above others.
To put it lightly,
I favor you.
and Admire.
Feb 1, 2016
Feb 1, 2016 at 11:18 AM UTC
Each moment lived in your absence wears upon my soul. Like the petals of an autumn rose, the shards of my broken heart fall away. I feel as if a great door separates us and, tho I know you are with me and I remain yours in fact, the physical distance is a pain beyond pain, one that should never be enumerated. Yet I endure the bittersweet sorrow of your absence in the hope of a brighter tomorrow, one graced by your dawn. I allow myself this pain in the hope that it might break me and those fragments of my being might fit through the key hole of my prison to find you and escape the barren winter to which I am banished. No victory can be declared without you in my life. I am irrevocably yours, now and forever.I am yours for time everlasting and my life shall remain ever thine, ever mine, ever ours.
Nov 24, 2011
Nov 24, 2011 at 4:33 AM UTC
I NEED MIRACLES
TO DILUTE MY STRUGGLES
WITH AN OVERWHELMING LIST OF IMPOSSIBLES
WAITING TO BE ENUMERATED AS PROBABLES
LEARNING TO BE PHYSICALLY STRONGER
PRACTICING TO BE MENTALLY TOUGHER
NOW HUSTLING IS MY ONLY INCANTATION
AS SUCCESS IS MY ADDICTION
Apr 1, 2020
Apr 1, 2020 at 4:44 AM UTC
~dedicated to Robert Lepage^, a master at remembering~
~
we enumerated our days thusly,
each one was commenced with skyward glance,
eliciting an epithet, a blessing or a curse,
none passed unremarked, the plainest even,
acknowledged with an indecipherable glancing
mmmm from the chest cut or purred,
quick withdrawn and quietly shared
thus recorded, our history disordered,
who can recall if it rained or snowed
on the last Sunday of July of 1998,
or even the sunset fabulous
that was its global signature signing of au revoir
of course, agreed, we remember the great hurricanes
as if they were births or deaths of our most intimates,
but the vast attended, unto mounds collected,
the ticket stubs of dead leaves, sunburns,
rain showered soaked ruined silk blouses
and pairs of good shoes, are not recycled,
but forlorn forgotten condemned men in
a life's imprisonment of an unmarked grave,
with no epitaph possible for no one knows what here lies
~~
written on Sunday March 26th, 2017 9:08am
Mar 26, 2017
Mar 26, 2017 at 9:36 AM UTC
Blood thudded in my ears. I scuffed,
Steps stubborn, to the telltale booth
Beyond whose curtained portal coughed
The robed repositor of truth.
The slat shot back. The universe
Bowed down his cratered dome to hear
Enumerated my each curse,
The sip snitched from my old man's beer,
My sloth pride envy lechery,
The dime held back from Peter's Pence
with which I'd bribed my girl to ***
That I might spy her instruments.
Hovering scale-pans when I'd done
Settled their balance slow as silt
While in the restless dark I burned
Bright as a brimstone in my guilt
Until as one feeds birds he doled
Seven our Fathers and a Hail
Which I to double-scrub my soul
Intoned twice at the altar rail
Where Sunday in seraphic light
I knelt, as full of grace as most,
And stuck my tongue out at the priest:
A fresh roost for the Holy Ghost.
Aug 31, 2016
Aug 31, 2016 at 6:38 PM UTC
“Why do you want it all from me?”
*I halt our conversation,
with wine redder than my boney elbows
in a glass tipped at swollen, drunk lips.
Hesitation knows me best;
my breath laps heady from my throat
and I blush from exhaustion & fear.*
“I am okay without it all. I don’t need anything from anyone.” I tell these lies often. You say nothing back. You've none to give.
*What is all! But an eternity’s worth of want, a list
of things cherished and bought in bakeries
or vacation homes, empty until wanted...*
that wine sat in my belly and warmed it
I didn’t drink water
I didn’t need it
I wanted much from you that night
the milk of conversation would never be enough
I wanted the soul, the songs, the sight of your eyes inches from mine illuminated by morning’s soft gracious dawn.
I wanted a ******* miracle to eat.
All, was something I never enumerated in you,
simply assumed, and realized soon after how
I would never succumb to wanting too much.
And now my plate lies empty.
I gave all I gathered to appease you;
you, and the trepidation you carried sea to sea.
I should’ve explained my red want.
How it was dried and mistaken for a cranberry,
how I lacked the effort to show you more, all
I craved all. But I found you had none to share.
Mar 6, 2021
Mar 6, 2021 at 7:44 PM UTC
A week's respite is quickly guilted by the call of institution,
resounding inside our ears, harangued to not be...
beguiled we sigh with inadequate sorrow
tricked into self-degradation, Then finally, we're back
Alas!
inside cozied up, yes man! Writing down enumerated tasked
unraveling us back to the scorn that earlier was reversed
Under a rough stack of paper
And an ever-beating heart
Under a disillusioned smile
And a blanket of anxiety
That's been pervaded by Ritalin
signed by the future I call myself to...
Smile!
sigh
relief
comfortably numb
Thank you sir
may I have another?
Mar 28, 2016
Mar 28, 2016 at 10:08 PM UTC
My poem has a number!
My dreams have come to be
For enumerated poetry
Is a wondrous thing to see
I’ve earned that single digit
For the poem that I penned
The only one I’ve written
With a number on the end
**
Nov 10, 2015
Nov 10, 2015 at 9:12 AM UTC
You came out of poetry,
your beauty enumerated by,
syllables of two lengths.
I wish I can write your form.
Arranging an eye catching detail,
you are in every spiraling leaf,
circling in and around its stem.
Are you showing us nature is not random?
You are in daisies” geometry,
even as pine cones are made in symmetry,
nearly completing the pineapples design as though it is rudimentary,
How I miss this visual isometry
Are you saying there is order in chaos?
Mathematics of last sum,
made in addition with previous one,
and one before the last,
is how we simplify you.
Are you showing that beauty lies in simplicity?
Showing how to go from strength to strength,
teaching us learnings are cumulative,
you are my new additive affection,
So, show me more!
Nov 9, 2019
Nov 9, 2019 at 10:28 AM UTC
Echoes engraved eternally
Every entity enumerated
Ensures eaches eggs engross even easier
Eventually encoding exact ends
Emerging exceptions erode
Ego emptied
Education excised
Evermore erased
Entropy's expiry
Oct 12, 2015
Oct 12, 2015 at 11:20 PM UTC
Naked branch:
Fall the last leaf
From another time.
Every second of the present
Escapes into the past,
At light and innocent pace
Of a careless blink.
It could have been the wind,
But it was enough the throw
Of a second by the world,
Without any regrets..
The leaf absent of life
It´s lost in the myriad already stretched,
Yet, much smaller
Than the one formed by the seconds,
Although impossible of being enumerated.
The outgoing moment,
Like the harmless blink,
Never was present
Before the decisive event
Pushed it into the past,
Less and less present.
Dec 29, 2016
Dec 29, 2016 at 4:57 PM UTC
This class was taught,
and thus begun,
before thought enumerated
an age for 1(one).
Stationary bobbling
w/ no teeth to gnash,
although, curiously affluent-
as green as grass.
Steps, each step,
became like broken glass-
whether left behind
at first stood last.
Each step/ these steps
a collective school-
each within their own
swimming laps...a pool.
Then unto today, whence...
how do we fare?
All unapologetically
w/ a thought to bear.
Dec 3, 2020
Dec 3, 2020 at 9:01 AM UTC
For a long time I’d been
straddling a high peak,
One foot on solid ground, the other
bare and slipping on the opposite slope.
But lately I've had both feet
on the slippery side,
hands firmly grasping the peak,
feet spread out below me
spinning and churning, unable
to gather a foothold.
Though I believe I could hold on forever
I fear of eternity in this state.
I wonder what's the point?
Perhaps to not hurt those who
would be hurt by my letting go.
Or perhaps the hope that
all will be well in due time,
I’ve been trained to believe it.
*30 years of scored and numbered ovals and oblongs,
constantly enumerated and venerated,
my little saints are prayers on a candied rosary.
30 years aware of where they are and
when they'd be mine.
No rest with or without.
Nothing will quiet their screaming.*
so I walk
and walk some more
at all hours of the night.
The neighborhood dogs know me well,
they no longer bark at me for
I am one of them now,
resigned to pacing fence lines in the dark.
Back home at 3am I stare at the ceiling,
legs spinning and churning,
clawing for the high peak.
When will it pass?
When will it pass?
Tennyson wrote, "It is better to have loved and lost
than never to have loved at all",
though I don't think he actually believed it
and neither do I.
Dec 19, 2019
Dec 19, 2019 at 3:14 PM UTC
He is to the Father
As sunlight is to the sun
The Light
Which enlightens everyone
He is the risen Son
With unlimited candle power
So be ready, He comes
At we know not what hour
Of books He wrote none
He wrote in the dirt, but we know not what of
But He hasn’t left us invictus
He has illumined the convicted
God will save with few or many
Through the narrow gate
Some will be granted entry
To the estate
Now few or many are not enumerated
He’s not a mathematician (not here)
Love and grace are not gradated
He’s not a statistician (not here)
From the first Adam to the penultimate Adam
We’re all stained with sin
But because of The Last Adam
We get to win
Copyright 2022
Jul 3, 2022
Jul 3, 2022 at 4:39 PM UTC
I found a song I like but I noticed you listening to it too
I only hope I can listen carefully and not have it remind me of you.
But the piano is synthesized like I was around you, the guitar grows quiet like you did when you enumerated to me what I deserved. It ends on a minor chord, and I remember you saying that was your favorite way for things to end, but I can’t imagine a worse way to leave my heart.
It’s waiting to come back to me with the chime of a major, the resolution of a key, the loss of dissonance and the fixation of an eardrum, I never wanted it to end.
But songs are short and so were we, and songs can be replayed, so so could we but there aren’t headphones for love, it can’t just be me.
Just leave me be.
Feb 24, 2016
Feb 24, 2016 at 11:42 AM UTC
I am not Shawn
I have ceased to be
And am instead
What you see now
When you see me
I am not Shawn
I am audacity
To speak my mind
To speak my feelings
To speak my truth
Yet ****** by all three
I am not Shawn
I am lunacy
My thoughts and logics
Played down or dismissed
In lieu of the only truth
Allowed to support another's reality
I am not Shawn
I am infidelity
Years ago guilty of this crime
But living today like yesterday
Is the present and
I need reminders of my culpability
I am not Shawn
I am cruelty
A now tolerated trespasser
To peace in a home
Built on hurt pride and offenses
Enumerated and idolized meticulously
I am not Shawn
I am the vocabulary
Of confused words
And claimed miscommunication
On one hand, suggested intelligence
But in conflict only ignorant inadequacy
I am not Shawn
I am expectancy
Placed uncomfortably
Into an imploring posture
As I seek morsels of golden attention
Choosing my words ever so carefully
I am not Shawn
I am a mockery
Whose tears have a faucet
And whose humility
Is reserved for moments
Of game playing and emotional treachery
I am not Shawn
I am mystery
It's suggested I'm harmfully hiding
That which oneness should know & see
When in fact it's the fault of judgment
He too hides within feigned transparency
I am not Shawn
I am fragility
Painted weak
Old and forgetful
Glances at my softening frame
Constant jokes of reverie
I am not Shawn
I am improbability
Haven't consistently grown
In areas of others' choosing
Not my own. Left to get it
Together spiritually, eventually...maybe.
I am not Shawn
I am hypocrisy
For blameless one may live
If the same offense may be found
In the person claiming offense
The mirror not inward facing but outwardly
I am not Shawn
I am an apology
For all the many actions
And faulty statements
Which so quickly offend the same one
Less prone to act just as responsibly
I am not Shawn
I am an enemy
Pushed away
Constantly distanced
An outsider and forced partner
In this abandonment dance and fantasy
I am not Shawn
I am make-believe
Merely an actress given a script
Fashioned of lines another prepares
For me
For I am not Shawn
You have given me a new name...
History
Dec 17, 2019
Dec 17, 2019 at 11:30 AM UTC