"facelessness" poems
Dust motes and sweat stains
Faded graffiti over rusted steel plates
Advertising everything, from politicians to a massage parlor,
The engine roars disgruntled, in smoky rancor.
I stepped on your feet, said I was sorry
Tell me mister, could you tell I was lying?
Pushing through the rush-hour crowd
I finally found my footing and was proud.
Well, there’s something to be said for low expectations
A word of praise for cranky co-passengers.
Not that the polite ones aren’t fun,
When they smile and roll their eyes like they’re so done.
And it’s not that I’d ever expect sincerity,
At 10 on a rainy Tuesday morning
I’m not a nihilist, or even much of a cynic by default
But at 10am, I take nice with a bucket of salt.
I put on my headphones, crank the volume up to max,
Sway to the shrill screeching of pirated tracks
I’m sorry, did you say something? I can’t really tell.
It’s not you’re uninteresting, it’s just that this song is swell.
And maybe I could’ve made more of an effort
Gotten to know your name, exchanged toffees and emotional support
Maybe you’d have told me your story, if my ears were free
Maybe we could’ve found something worth a keep.
But you see, mister, it’s not you it’s me
At 10 on a Tuesday morning, I’m not the best company.
I hope, tomorrow, you’ll find a co-passenger worth your time,
As for me, facelessness suits me just fine.
Sep 12, 2018
Sep 12, 2018 at 5:47 AM UTC
Poems, the consciousness of minutes
Plucked like corn from the ear
Of language,
Between the here and now
Of echoes reflection,
A door to everywhere and nowhere
At the desk,
An escape from the peoples,
From the abyss that fills,
From the sulfuric melancholy
Where unconquerable ruins
Lay at the foot of memory
Armed with an assault of words.
The beneficent metaphorical
Divinities of the moments we
Connect like spinning webs,
You, me, him, her,
They, poets and every one else.
We compact time ripping off
The facelessness of vanities,
Provokers of thought,
Erupting the sensitivity and
Stirring the pit of emotion.
Every poet must know a lover
To cut the cord from the ink
And commit to the experience
Of the realised, words become
What we have done.
Nouns, pronouns, adjectives, these things
Are tools to the inner soul,
We become prophetic and speak
The Fallen,
We know the children of dust
And ignite the realised poem
In each of them,
This is how poetry exists,
How philosophy exists,
And love,
And even hate.
And if these things don't exist,
Then I do not exist,
Neither do you.
Somewhere in the darkness
A prisoner of words begins
Writing the light brighter
than any under the sun.
The first of first, her hair in the
Motion as she flicks slender finger
With her eyes gushing in a half
Smile, the music on the radio,
The memory of Mother, everything,
Everywhere, poetry is life,
It writes itself!
And here in this decalogue,
Every love survives,
Every pain manifest,
Streaking in the heart the
Blood races to the fingers and
Bleeds words to paper.
Every poem is a sacrifice,
Time, energy, pieces
Of you, pieces of I
Scattered in the penumbra,
We become as crystalline structures,
Transparent translation of the
Spirit that burns.
Every man and woman
Writes the experience,
Life and its unique constellation
Of emotions, enormously
We must write the world,
The poem is real,
The images speaks itself.
Poetry is life,
Deserve your poem.
Apr 6, 2016
Apr 6, 2016 at 5:24 PM UTC
Alexander K Opicho
(Eldoret, Kenya;[email protected])
My people have seasoned the art of begging
They don’t want to beg when begging is necessary
My leaders have compelled our people to beg
Begging that what they have leeway to graft
Begging is couth only when it’s necessary
But not because there is plethorae
Of willing donors who are not even better
Addiction to begging is a political syndrome,
Africa has to stop temerarious begging
Otherwise the burden of debt will erode
Your sons and daughters away
In to the ocean of facelessness
For the slave master owns controls
Only labour of the slave
But in contrast to the borrowing vice
The debt master controls the soul
Of the borrower.
Jan 18, 2014
Jan 18, 2014 at 8:53 AM UTC
dark leaps when
there is the frothing light
beaming a sizable aureole
on your face
this evening
and its palpable brigade.
dark is having your
inwoven dress free
from swaying
pressed against raucous
facelessness of things
rogue and renegade.
and when i have you
not, shining the light
and its intone,
wind felt like
stabs or
i in attendance
of a crazed vaudeville—
trapeze is the hinge
of the void
afloat, upstream, space-hovering;
a display of love
and not so much
is shown of the vertigo
trapped in a square,
a face
impinged in the seamlessness
of this fabulation
when you've gone
quickly fading out;
light is my remember,
o, dark my
forgetling.
Nov 3, 2015
Nov 3, 2015 at 7:15 AM UTC
born of blood
from a thorn
of a beautiful flower
from the love
of the horned
adorned
in power
cowering
in the vicious
maliciousness
of the constituents
in the deliverance
to my ridiculousness
saw
twisted shapes
and contorting faces
heard
blurred words
displaced
in hateful slurs
of aggression
and i cannot count the cases
in my tasteless confessions
in my reluctant concessions
in my brutal perfection
of my obsessions
imposed against my will
you're supposed to feel
what they do
right?
opposed to killing
for the thrill
but it sometimes
just feels right
shanky gone unscrupulous
shivering
his shimmied
blood on the walls
stuttering stanleys
still silly stringing
calling for candy
but missed last call
and fell to the floor
as Bruno butchered the boar
in a deplorable fashion
a crime of passion
we were hungry
rubbing our tummies
for the honey
of bee hives
jive turkeys
turning to bunnys
for good times
but we were alive
while others were not
fraught with darkling majesty
sparkling at the seraded points
disjointed
in Freudian
ointments
self anointed
as god
standing over
some butchered
brod from abroad
wiping the fog
of dislodged
eye sockets
from my grog
how you get
from there to here
isn't really a fair mirror
on my intention
i meant to
suspend her
just enough
to face f--k
and with luck
strangle her
but she prayed to be ripped down
in her own way
my f--king way
stripped her
of dignity
wimpering
in little cute sounds
who am i?
but the guy
who spaced
hit her
too many times in the face
and replaced her
facelessness
with ***** toiletries
disappointingly
underwhelmed
still in search of a fairy
to take the helm
and ferry me
from this film
disparagingly
just spare me
the tragedy and grief
blaring from the TV
as i mock
their expressions
in my lessons
of humanity
before the flock
to shelter
my anxiety or not
gonna be
a real boy one day
and conform
to the
wayward ways
the way
of sheep
sleeping
soundly
in decay
blue fairy
gonna
marry me
one
day
be
real
one
day
one
day
1
d
a
y
Nov 29, 2012
Nov 29, 2012 at 4:52 PM UTC
It’s night. Deepest darkest blackest night.
I feel the pinch and fear of one hunted,
the prey run out of options.
No help is given, though plainly demanded.
The thin veneer of civilization threatens to give way.
There is no escape from the knot in my stomach
because we’re hemmed in at all sides
and I’m panicking at the facelessness of my enemy,
as I evolve from woman to female.
What is the world where we aren’t what we thought we were?
From adults to children. From children to animals.
Stepping backwards. A warped progression.
Sterilize. Maintain. Control. Clean. Safe.
The world seems to whisper as if someone(thing?) is listening…
Big Brother(Sister?) the walls have ears(eyes?)…
KingdomPhylumClassOrderFamilyGenusSpecies.
AnamaliaChordataMammaliaPrimatesHominidaeHomoSapiens.
Two legs doesn’t mean you’re safe from
acting like you have four.
****
sapiens
Ecce, **** Fiat lux.
or else we’re doomed.
Intellect to instinct.
Man to mammal.
Walk on two legs now, can you afford to lose them?
Ad insaniam, ut illuminabit…
Vel in flammis tandem finis.
SUM EST.
Chaos is closing in. Can you cope?
Mar 6, 2012
Mar 6, 2012 at 12:53 AM UTC
the edge of green,
egress — conscious permission
of some inundation or cataract
and the raucous facelessness
of passing figures. army melancholia
in situ — past greens of dread
and red, some blue of course (in
dapple of sunlight bordering
sublimities)
i submit to its silence and no longer
ponder its requisites. draped
by fog, helm of pines. the zigzag of
deliverance swindling the disposable
line of fast-paced time-hover.
there's no god here. only the
wind, the trellis surmising a component
of nothing and happening,
and all ephemera cycling across
seasons forever changing and their
obsolescence of ways to retain their
positions until air frizzles
no
longer
than a bated breath.
Nov 6, 2015
Nov 6, 2015 at 10:31 AM UTC
on a hot day
on a cold night
trees moving systemically to the wind
left, right and center as a dance
leaves jumping for joy
cool breeze soothening the nerves
fat men under sheds
dark men in white shirts
facelessness of the dark makes children uneasy
chatter from girls, talks from boys
elders glued to radio
mothers in wrappers tending to food
promises made at the dark corners
babies snoring
the breeze stops
mosquitoes alert for food
wrappers make swoosh sound
legs,hand beaten in despiration to ****
the restlessness of the childeren becomes a burden
the radio an unending noise
life is weird
even on a cold night it can be hot.
akinwale damilare
Feb 3, 2017
Feb 3, 2017 at 8:39 PM UTC
getting real, no mere,
yet first, we shall
utter the unspeakable,
sculpt with our eyes
the faintest image,
hear silence's roundness
circumnavigate our mind's
trying verseliterations.
dream a dying thing;
a facelessness
nor a jell - thinking the
unthinkable,
so that in our desperation,
words morph into
anticipated things written
in lighted calligraph -
and with these, things unmoving
shall grow hands and commune to us
through transmogrifications
and cling onto us...
like a thing drowned in love,
or startled, whichever.
Sep 14, 2015
Sep 14, 2015 at 10:44 AM UTC