"excelsior" poems
Earthquake Poem
3/5/2014
What do you suppose an earthquake does?
Sure, there are the shakes and scares,
Seismic shifts accompanied by tectonic tears.
But ditch this global perspective,
Figure out what rips those ripples, detective.
Let’s see you pound at the ground.
Hit it hard, ‘til you hear a heavy sound.
Is that enough to fissure some asphalt?
Tell me, could you bring this spinning planet to a sudden halt?
I can’t say for sure, what an Earth-quake does.
Though I’ve been a victim,
Earth isn’t where my quake was.
An Earth-less earthquake,
On a planet whose name I’ve learned to forsake.
Wynn’s world wandered ‘round someone else’s orbit:
Drawn to its gravity like grapes grow on a vine;
Brightened by its solar system’s shining smile, so divine;
Emotional tides tugged in and out;
Guided by its mysterious moon’s midnight meandering about.
That’s right – an orbit with its own time flow.
Time that could stomp its heels and steal a spotlight,
Time that could manipulate a moment like jello, mayonnaise, or some other squishy substance,
Time that could crash course, while standing still,
Time that could reveal something you never knew.
What do you suppose an earthquake does?
A quake could be anything that makes you shake.
Think of quaking in fear, as an unknown figure draws near.
Think of a jittery heart, that’s been bit by a bullet.
Internal tears,
think of organs bleeding,
Think of needing,
solid ground,
but falling and time keeps stalling.
When a quiet little quiver promises to deliver,
its slight shock signal straight through the middle.
When a molten magma core fizzes its manic madness,
like a shaken soda.
When an epic eruption carries out its upward excelsior,
Rejecting the spinning without a stop.
Oh, the mountains will tumble,
The hills and valleys, they’ll crumble,
And gurgle in the raging rivers’ rumble,
As volcanoes churn out violent bubbles,
Stirring up all kinds of troubles,
For one person’s personal planet.
For one person’s personal planet,
These violent forces of nature can’t compare to an Earth-quake,
When the ground you stand on begins to break,
When you realize your senseless stability is fake.
When that little quake knocks your Earth awake,
It’s reality coming alive to take, and take, and take,
Because for love, you put everything at stake.
What do you suppose an earthquake does?
I’ll tell you – it leaves a wrecked world with a cracked core and scorched surroundings.
Just because.
Just because, love on Earth always comes with a quiet little quake.
Mar 6, 2014
Mar 6, 2014 at 1:44 AM UTC
Exposition
Exploration
Examination
Experimentation
Exhibition
Experience
Exercise
Excelsior
Explosion
Exposure
Expansion
Exceeding
Excitement
Excellence
except
Excessive
Expectations
Excuses
Exclamation
Excommunication
Excluded
Excreted
Exorcised
Expunged
Exacerbation
Exhale
Exit
Exeunt
Extinct
Ex-Star
Nov 30, 2014
Nov 30, 2014 at 3:06 AM UTC
Why is it that Poetry has never yet been subjected to that process of Dilution which has proved so advantageous to her sister-art Music? The Diluter gives us first a few notes of some well-known Air, then a dozen bars of his own, then a few more notes of the Air, and so on alternately: thus saving the listener, if not from all risk of recognising the melody at all, at least from the too-exciting transports which it might produce in a more concentrated form. The process is termed "setting" by Composers, and any one, that has ever experienced the emotion of being unexpectedly set down in a heap of mortar, will recognise the truthfulness of this happy phrase.
For truly, just as the genuine Epicure lingers lovingly over a
morsel of supreme Venison - whose every fibre seems to murmur "Excelsior!" - yet swallows, ere returning to the toothsome dainty, great mouthfuls of oatmeal-porridge and winkles: and just as the perfect Connoisseur in Claret permits himself but one delicate sip, and then tosses off a pint or more of boarding-school beer: so also -
I NEVER loved a dear Gazelle -
NOR ANYTHING THAT COST ME MUCH:
HIGH PRICES PROFIT THOSE WHO SELL,
BUT WHY SHOULD I BE FOND OF SUCH?
To glad me with his soft black eye
MY SON COMES TROTTING HOME FROM SCHOOL;
HE'S HAD A FIGHT BUT CAN'T TELL WHY -
HE ALWAYS WAS A LITTLE FOOL!
But, when he came to know me well,
HE KICKED ME OUT, HER TESTY SIRE:
AND WHEN I STAINED MY HAIR, THAT BELLE
MIGHT NOTE THE CHANGE, AND THUS ADMIRE
And love me, it was sure to dye
A MUDDY GREEN OR STARING BLUE:
WHILST ONE MIGHT TRACE, WITH HALF AN EYE,
THE STILL TRIUMPHANT CARROT THROUGH.
2.6k
For warm summer days
Spent in the company of friends
In earshot of ocean waves
With sandy feet and ice cream cones
For all the pretty girls
In smooth black dresses
With luscious lips and curvy hips
Walking in red stilettos or clean Nikes
For countless sleepless nights
Glow-in-the-dark paint fights
Movies till dawn
Plenty of sneaking around
For the memories we make
For the laughter we share
For the love we have (and lose)
For the God we know
Apr 29, 2013
Apr 29, 2013 at 10:33 AM UTC
64 hours passed by in a flash, sister
are you tryin' to sing and ****** me?
my hebrew sillables are all-black as bmf
sunset over wondaland, the magic city
residing at excelsior hotel, flowerfull mouth
french rap intro playin' me like harimah
sending me nudes from dubai to wondaland
shaped like a statue, willing, please, pleasure
booked dat ticket, let's go for it, babe
harima is on her way, in the meantime this cleaning lady is flirtatious like crazy, yeeeah her colleague a.k.a. boyfriend ain't working
last night, she gave me an intense glimpse
and her dude was in the same room, yup
so it's time for punishment, seldom signs
alrighty, passing babylon-thru, thruuuuhhh
wondaland keeps me trapped, i can't leave
you gonna see #trance24/7 on most walls
fiends dwell on pathways or they begging
beatdowns, runners, packs, rubix cubies
but on a hill, there is a house and in this
house, there are gangstapoetz, hihaho
in an iris, you might spot our place
simply take note of the... reflections
Sep 27, 2021
Sep 27, 2021 at 10:53 PM UTC
The shades of night were falling fast,
As through an Alpine village passed
A youth, who bore, ’mid snow and ice,
A banner with the strange device—
Excelsior!
His brow was sad; his eye beneath
Flashed like a falchion from its sheath;
And like a silver clarion rung
The accents of that unknown tongue—
Excelsior!
In happy homes he saw the light
Of household fires gleam warm and bright,
Above,the spectral glaciers shone,
And from his lips escaped a groan—
Excelsior!
“Try not the pass,” the old man said:
“Dark lowers the tempest overhead;
The roaring torrent is deep and wide.”
And loud that clarion voice replied,
Excelsior!
“Oh, stay,” the maiden said, “and rest
Thy weary head upon this breast!”
A tear stood in his bright blue eye,
But still he answered with a sigh,
Excelsior!
“Beware the pine-tree’s withered branch!
Beware the awful avalanche!”
This was the peasant’s last Good-night:
A voice replied, far up the height:
Excelsior!
At break of day, as heavenward
The pious monks of Saint Bernard
Uttered the oft-repeated prayer,
A voice cried through the startled air,
Excelsior!
A traveller, by the faithful hound,
Half-buried in the snow was found,
Still grasping in his hand of ice
That banner with the strange device,
Excelsior!
There in the twilight, cold and gray,
Lifeless, but beautiful, he lay,
And from the sky, serene and far,
A voice fell, like a falling star—
Excelsior!
1.6k
Incendiary asperity:
The world's existentiality
Agony, the Merciless & Mercenary
Scourging me entirely.
The Angst of the Aeons
Are the pedigree, the genealogy, the history borne to emancipate Me as a Vessel of Sanctity
For the valiant souls
Are the souls of transcendence, who revere in remembrance
The Amour of the Yore
My Vestibule Heart
Expands, contracts, being consecrated demands just as
Starry-Wombed the Cosmos, we
Must grow, burgeon through our learning & yearning, deserving & pining for the Promise of Morrow
For we were not formed
To wallow in sorrow.
As I gaze to the heavens
O, ***** and Gomorrah I remember
The Wife of Lot looks back forever: emblazoned as a Petrified December,
Then Fire & Sulphur descended, mankind nearly ended;
What is the lesson?
Of faith we are descendants.
Why do you
Roil my ravaged and brutally savaged soul?
Must bitterness be the wage for days spent having prayed
On my knees, for armistice, by The Empyrean One’s decree?
Though I have fallen,
I shall rise up
For the Fate’s Auric Visage radiates light upon the leaven,
Dost ferment the flesh dominating mine spirit.
Hearkening to
The susurrus of the Sovereign of Songbird’s Sacrosanct Love.
Let the Ethereal Tides of Time
Bathe me in baptismal & divine tribulation, trial
For a writhing while,
Sacrality is a war,
The Primal Instinct’s Immemorial Diminuendo.
Where has fake paradise of the Sylvan Shine
Those forested, emerald Eyes
That glisten in mine dreams gone?
Your visage twas my divine.
Though I am forlorn,
The Cosmo-Plexus of Empyreal Love hath sworn
To the Days of Yore
That I shall soar once more.
To my Enfettered Soul,
Excelsior.
Jan 1, 2019
Jan 1, 2019 at 1:20 PM UTC
You always had to me a look exotic
Though none could be more native
Nestled in our landscape here
Since ice melt these ten thousand year
No enemies, or so we thought
Warming, useful, strong yet supple
Ubiquitous, vigorous, unstoppable
What could harm you now?
Windy days you sway and clash
Skeletal click-clack in the canopy
But now it seems the common Ash
Must suffer life's fragility
Against this invading menace
You find you have no defence
The assassin fungus
chalara fraxinea
Jan 27, 2013
Jan 27, 2013 at 2:30 PM UTC
Toss these brackened antlers
to a Babylon of early crows
where slim repels of cirrus
lace the marches of Orion.
I wore you as an amulet
hard pressed upon my pestle arm
as charms of montane lunar drift
rebelled about your peacock gaze.
There is balsam on the Eastern run
in piquant writs of clementine ,
where jubilees of Persian mote
reveille in the waiting still.
As hieroglyphs of scrying palm
lay wraith about the cindered pane
you harried in ancestral bell..
The name of some forgotten God.
Aug 28, 2016
Aug 28, 2016 at 4:10 PM UTC
silver stars are softly shining
somewhere safe their light is leading
stop the wars and stop the fighting
let us journey home
are you lost, forlorn, and lonely?
is your courage fading swiftly?
let thy spirit not forsake thee;
home is waiting; come.
through the darkness and the shadows
heedless of the way the wind blows
undaunted by death, unstopped by sorrows
we choose the higher road
candles in the window burning
watch and wait for your returning
walk through night and into morning
don't stop til you're home
Feb 24, 2014
Feb 24, 2014 at 8:43 AM UTC
i can't exist
yet here i sit
pondering and wondrous
drums pound and clang
my heart the same
perceptible, still undertrained
i cannot lie
but always try
plunging over, horrified
so here no more
and there not for
pejorative excelsior
I've written less
to curb excess
predominant post-modernists
Oct 12, 2016
Oct 12, 2016 at 2:30 PM UTC
First take an empty shell
And carve to your liking
The contours of muscles and veins
And the strong jaw
All threaded with fur,
Then stuff it with excelsior
And anoint it with sharp cologne,
Dress the body in the finest blues and grays,
Kiss the tired hands that work
So you don't have to--
And talk
Because silence is a valiant listener.
May 26, 2015
May 26, 2015 at 8:43 PM UTC
You gave us a superhuman spider
and an insect of ant proportions.
You created the man of iron
and a man that can control it.
A pioneer of an epic approach,
you challenged a great authority.
By bringing forth enticing characters,
you lit a fire in those that followed them.
Everything about them is extraordinary,
and the passion radiated from the pages.
Thank you for all that you did, Mr. Lee,
you surely will be a man that we remember.
❝ Excelsior!❞
Nov 15, 2018
Nov 15, 2018 at 10:30 PM UTC
You have security behind your mind...
Never letting anybody close in fear of that you might get hurt...
Blocking all emotions towards other people...
This wall filled with sadness and fear like a solid concrete...
But I will chip away at this wall and bring you to this world...
With a violent concussion I will shatter this wall to bits in hope of the future...
A future where there is no need for you to be afraid...
Where you can live your life and not regret that in which you missed...
To go ever upward as the motto Excelsior is for told-
May 26, 2011
May 26, 2011 at 4:48 PM UTC
***Monday, November 11th, 2019
The pain in loss can be a deleterious scourge, undoing all the threads of light embedded in the heart. Who am I to contend with the ethereal tides of the cosmos? A juvenescent soul enrapt mine entity for but a moment, yet, soon thereafter, he was gone. Vanquished by the Winds of Undoing, he may never re-alight upon my soulscape; however, I must go on. Let dreams illumine the fulgent irides you are starry-eyed to see.
I must trust that all things are working out for their highest good. In me are all the answers that I seek; we are our own nexus to transcendence. Will I ever see him again? I am without certainty, but I shall arise triumphantly. Tears may yearn to cascade my countenance, but I will waxeth impregnable apropos of the deluge of sadness.
Who am I? I am the emblematization, the insignia of love. Christ truly abides within each one of us. If I am to truly attain my Apex Monumental, I must undergo tremendous sufferings; therefore, ne’er fathom that suffering is thine undoing, ―tis your making.
Press onward valiant warrior, love shall open every doorway. One day, thine Ultima Thule shall manifest itself before your eyes; moreover, the patriarch you never had shall be found in the Arbiter of Fates above. Never give up young one, for you are aeonically loved. Wisdom, Love, Justice, Power and all the virtues vested in this cosmos shall teem within thine vessel.
Sanctity is perhaps a notion, a theistic & ratiocinatively deific dogma. I fathom it an inordinately exclusive fallacy that maketh one feel holier than his brethren. Was any man or woman foreordained above any other? And if so, were they given not a privilege, but a duty? An anointing means one is set apart for a higher purpose, not a lionizing gasconade.
“He who dares to teach must never cease to learn.” It is true that the erudite has immense gift, but they likewise carry profundity of mandated travail. In each one of us, lie the answers we seek; therefore, we must introspect & retrospect in order to circumspect. We must search and seek, in order to find. Let the one who knocketh, have it revealed unto them, have it opened.
∞(Se’ Lah)∞
Excelsior Forevermore,
Sanders Maurice Foulke III**
Nov 11, 2019
Nov 11, 2019 at 6:43 PM UTC
Oh please, not sunshine and 'here I sit" blank-page laments
Season-change ballads and idle-moment thoughts.
My muses are all sedentary and lethargic,
Only speaking up to demand another grape
Fed from dangling fingers.
Sure, the sun is streaming nicely in the window
And a reluctant spring has given way
To summer-like days, as I sit and ponder.
But the tropes and exclaims of 'excelsior!'
Aren't going to cut it this time.
Gold-leafed chaises longues and silver goblets
Are stacked haphazardly on the sidewalk
A pile of plus-sized togae thrown into the mix
A cardboard box of minstrels' greatest hits vinyl too.
The bums are sent packing
And my poem is concluded.
May 6, 2018
May 6, 2018 at 11:33 AM UTC
All I did was gaze at you
But you looked at me worried
And then you touched my face
And gently wiped the tears that had somehow managed to betray my eyes and run down my cheeks
' don't cry for me...everything is over I am in a better place' you said
And I believed you
Then you leaned down and looked at my lips
As if asking for my permission
I met you in the middle
and as if the stars colliding I felt every emotion
I felt like I was swimming in the excelsior of life and youth
We parted
And you gazed at me
And I knew right then and there
That
This was where I want to be forever.
Dec 29, 2020
Dec 29, 2020 at 2:20 AM UTC
it's the 21st century and sometimes
it's hard to capture the gothic aura
of the 19th century...
which is why, perhaps, a chance
walk into the forest at night,
listening to demdike stare's
Tryptych album revives a sense of
what could have possibly been a novel -
mind you, if you ever stumbled
thereupon and found a trail
leading to a black mass at dusk -
heard the exaltation satanis in excelsior
like a mad barking to the heavens (or the pit)
followed by very audible murmuring
of a throng, and as the case was presented,
you too would slowly turn around,
walk a few metres in the opposite
direction... and then start galloping -
as far as i'm concerned, such events
are by invitation only - hardly a reason
in sight to gatecrash such an event -
too close for my comfort with
that audible murmuring.
Apr 8, 2016
Apr 8, 2016 at 12:08 PM UTC
Excelsior
is the magic word
that he used
for these long years,
no matter what.
Excelsior:
it was a motto
for people who were more
than just people
but the people
who were just that,
just people.
Like me, like you.
Excelsior,
was a word he sang
in images and text
with heroes
built with many,
shaped by many,
inspiring us many.
Titans were raised
and now he’s fallen
but he left us a gift
in a magic word:
Excelsior.
Nov 12, 2018
Nov 12, 2018 at 6:02 PM UTC
We will never forget
We hear stories and remembrances
People witnessing horrific moments and people jumping from windows
No matter where you live you were affected
Someday there will be a National Day of Remembrance so we never forget and remind those who were not born yet what happened
Until then, the tears flow and we remember
Excelsior!
C@rainbowchaser2023
Sep 11, 2023
Sep 11, 2023 at 10:44 AM UTC