"garlanded" poems
Soon I will be done with the ledger of my adolescence
The sun is still in his puberty, though older than me
The moon is still in her perfection, a blessed queen
I have bejeweled you with the sweat of my love
And have garlanded your beauty with rubies and pearls….
Today you are the ocean of love,
And I the sunny heat of summer.
You came that day, Expecting for your arrival
Sun poured shower of anguish on my amethyst Panjabi
Out of the blue You appeared like an expected spring
In her colorful curcuma domestica costumes.
Your locks under the veil of spring’s yellow umbrella
Still counting the days, the nights, the ongoing time,
Sometimes my heart in quest of a Time –machine….
We took the weight off our feet under a Blessed tree
I touched your hand joining my two palms
The cold current of spring was soaring there
My ill-fated heart could not Kiss your "Petals of Blood"
I drowned, I drowned in my own made ocean……..
Sep 26, 2013
Sep 26, 2013 at 2:43 AM UTC
How far is it?
How far is it now?
The gigantic gorilla interior
Of the wheels move, they appall me ---
The terrible brains
Of Krupp, black muzzles
Revolving, the sound
Punching out Absence! Like cannon.
It is Russia I have to get across, it is some was or other.
I am dragging my body
Quietly through the straw of the boxcars.
Now is the time for bribery.
What do wheels eat, these wheels
Fixed to their arcs like gods,
The silver leash of the will ----
Inexorable. And their pride!
All the gods know destinations.
I am a letter in this slot!
I fly to a name, two eyes.
Will there be fire, will there be bread?
Here there is such mud.
It is a trainstop, the nurses
Undergoing the faucet water, its veils, veils in a nunnery,
Touching their wounded,
The men the blood still pumps forward,
Legs, arms piled outside
The tent of unending cries ----
A hospital of dolls.
And the men, what is left of the men
Pumped ahead by these pistons, this blood
Into the next mile,
The next hour ----
Dynasty of broken arrows!
How far is it?
There is mud on my feet,
Thick, red and slipping. It is Adam's side,
This earth I rise from, and I in agony.
I cannot undo myself, and the train is steaming.
Steaming and breathing, its teeth
Ready to roll, like a devil's.
There is a minute at the end of it
A minute, a dewdrop.
How far is it?
It is so small
The place I am getting to, why are there these obstacles ----
The body of this woman,
Charred skirts and deathmask
Mourned by religious figures, by garlanded children.
And now detonations ----
Thunder and guns.
The fire's between us.
Is there no place
Turning and turning in the middle air,
Untouchable and untouchable.
The train is dragging itself, it is screaming ----
An animal
Insane for the destination,
The bloodspot,
The face at the end of the flare.
I shall bury the wounded like pupas,
I shall count and bury the dead.
Let their souls writhe in like dew,
Incense in my track.
The carriages rock, they are cradles.
And I, stepping from this skin
Of old bandages, boredoms, old faces
Step up to you from the black car of Lethe,
Pure as a baby.
3.6k
Sings a small boy whose hair is tousled by the wind,
As too the folds of his mother’s peplos and the robes of clouds,
When Greece gathers in silence like the stillness for a deposed crown,
And all Athens around, the song of eiresione for firstfruits of Autumn,
Singing boys with the olive branches of colored wool and garlanded gourds,
A fall-bird to wander the Ionic sky, foretelling of new sunrise.
How that joyful ancient voice still haunts the songbird of sunset.
Apr 2, 2023
Apr 2, 2023 at 11:21 PM UTC
I keep such music in my brain
No din this side of death can quell;
Glory exulting over pain,
And beauty, garlanded in hell.
My dreaming spirit will not heed
The roar of guns that would destroy
My life that on the gloom can read
Proud-surging melodies of joy.
To the world’s end I went, and found
Death in his carnival of glare;
But in my torment I was crowned,
And music dawned above despair.
2.7k
Today I have followed the strange Damselfly,
Down to all ponds on my father’s marshland,
Not to live the blissful Waldensianism like Thoreau,
But to come down unto discovery of wonders
Readily displayed in the ****** manners of the damselfly
Sub-dragonfly that was conveniently called damselfly,
It is dark and white in pearly texture,
Like the Palmyrene Queen dear Zenobia,
Damselfly move as a pair on every time
A female and a male like a musical duet,
The Female has a lock on the ******
As the males does; tight lock on the sheath,
Keeping safe its ***** away from robbers,
The female damselfly has key to unlock
The cryptic lock system on the ***** sheath
Of the garlanded male damsel fly,
The male damselfly too has the key
That can only unlock the cryptic lock system,
On the ****** of the female damselfly,
Their lock and key functions within,
The specific species of the damselflies,
All this evolved to block out the thieves
The predating dragonflies of other species,
Intending to steal *** with the damselfly
With no other reason but to darwinize the damselfly,
Willie Topaz Mcgonall is the damselfly with Male lock
Billie Burroughs ghost is a dragonfly minus any key
African poetry is the damselflies with female poetic lock
Both have keys on each other’s custody of culture.
Sep 24, 2014
Sep 24, 2014 at 5:33 AM UTC
God visited our house last Sunday
a bright papaya orange butterfly
welcomed Him,
fluttering in loops like a kite
as He stepped out of His car
Embracing our dear friend Jon from
New Jersey
He entered our pagoda
indeed, not as a guest but
as an embodiment of God
The early afternoon was garlanded
in loving, intimate, animated conversation
and a delectable lunch was served to our
beloved brother
This was topped off with nectar sweet
chocolate coconut prasadam
Everything from matters of the spirit
to soul stirring S.R.F. devotional songs
chanting sublimely
suffused our heavenly day
Even the backyard birds turned out
in large numbers
their cocky red, brown and
sky blue heads
peeking curiously through
the patio door
craned to catch a glimpse
of our divine companion
Jon, His mellow, prayerful eyes
blessing all His gaze fell upon
leaned back comfortably in
the recliner chair
like a long lost friend
returning home ~
Feb 27, 2014
Feb 27, 2014 at 10:51 PM UTC
Clearing ivy,
pulling up handfuls of
choking bindweed,
uncovering delicate
wildflowers in
neglected garden corners,
and there’s this
tiny bird
lying in the dirt.
Feathers sparkle
pretty and golden,
as fairytale light
falls through
parted vines.
Surely dead,
but then
- like Snow White
surfacing from
magic apple-induced
dormancy -
the bird moves,
woken by the kiss
of sunlight and
being witnessed,
and seems to breathe.
A gloved finger’s
exploratory, leathery ****
a moment to realise,
then disgust,
sharp recoil.
A wing lifts;
gleaming feathers
parting reveal the
crawling mechanics inside,
the writhing, parasitic mess
behind the sick illusion,
the briefly faked miracle
of something
like life.
Away over a fence,
Union bunting
***** erratic and jarring
in a neighbour’s garden.
In a stuffy town hall,
the town band is practising
God Save The Queen, but
still can’t keep time.
Our betters wave to us from
high palace balconies
and golden coaches, and we
cheer them for it.
There’s such hunger, such
pain and desperation out there,
you can feel it, if you
forget to stop yourself.
There’s so much tragedy and injustice,
you have to go numb or go crazy.
There’s no future we can see,
and the past has been rewritten
to reflect the views
of focus groups,
fascists and fantasists.
And there’s a bird
lying in the dirt,
garlanded by fragrant petals,
feathers flashing like jewels,
so dead
it looks like
it’s breathing.
Jun 3, 2022
Jun 3, 2022 at 7:31 AM UTC
Winds of May, that dance on the sea,
Dancing a ring-around in glee
From furrow to furrow, while overhead
The foam flies up to be garlanded,
In silvery arches spanning the air,
Saw you my true love anywhere?
Welladay! Welladay!
For the winds of May!
Love is unhappy when love is away!
2k
The moon called upon my madness anew,
I closed my eyes and fought against the chains
That kept me waiting, waiting here for you.
You gulped down my world without so much a chew,
Enveloped everything with your scent, became my raving bane.
The chains, the chains garlanded in lilac and rue,
Alone keep me from going moonlight-mad, so they do.
The gentle ice face of the mother moon keeps penetrating my brain.
That kept me waiting, waiting here for you.
This is the stage set for the heavenly wars Ares loves to brew,
The battle fought over our love so strong that left it slain.
The chains, the chains garlanded in lilac and rue,
The chains, the chains made of silver came askew,
Like your hands in mine and whatever feelings may still remain,
That kept me waiting, waiting here for you.
My madness has awoken the moon-bird blue,
Soon it will fly down and cut through the silvery veins.
The chains, the chains garlanded in lilac and rue,
That kept me waiting, waiting here for you.
Apr 7, 2015
Apr 7, 2015 at 1:01 AM UTC
Sweet dimness of her loosened hair’s downfall
About thy face; her sweet hands round thy head
In gracious fostering union garlanded,
Her tremulous smiles, her glances’ sweet recall
Of love; her murmuring sighs memorial;
Her mouth’s culled sweetness by thy kisses shed
On cheeks and neck and eyelids, and so led
Back to her mouth which answers there for all:—
What sweeter than these things, except the thing
In lacking which all these would lose their sweet:—
The confident heart’s still fervour: the swift beat
And soft subsidence of the spirit’s wing,
Then when it feels, in cloud—girt wayfaring,
The breath of kindred plumes against its feet?
1.6k
How far is it?
How far is it now?
The gigantic gorilla interior
Of the wheels move, they appall me --- The terrible brains
Of Krupp, black muzzles
Revolving, the sound
Punching out Absence! Like cannon.
It is Russia I have to get across, it is some was or other.
I am dragging my body
Quietly through the straw of the boxcars.
Now is the time for bribery.
What do wheels eat, these wheels
Fixed to their arcs like gods,
The silver leash of the will ----
Inexorable. And their pride!
All the gods know destinations.
I am a letter in this slot!
I fly to a name, two eyes.
Will there be fire, will there be bread?
Here there is such mud.
It is a trainstop, the nurses
Undergoing the faucet water, its veils, veils in a nunnery, Touching their wounded,
The men the blood still pumps forward,
Legs, arms piled outside
The tent of unending cries ----
A hospital of dolls.
And the men, what is left of the men
Pumped ahead by these pistons, this blood
Into the next mile,
The next hour ----
Dynasty of broken arrows!
How far is it?
There is mud on my feet,
Thick, red and slipping. It is Adam's side,
This earth I rise from, and I in agony.
I cannot undo myself, and the train is steaming.
Steaming and breathing, its teeth
Ready to roll, like a devil's.
There is a minute at the end of it
A minute, a dewdrop.
How far is it?
It is so small
The place I am getting to, why are there these obstacles ---- The body of this woman,
Charred skirts and deathmask
Mourned by religious figures, by garlanded children.
And now detonations ----
Thunder and guns.
The fire's between us.
Is there no place
Turning and turning in the middle air, Untouchable and untouchable.
The train is dragging itself, it is screaming ---- An animal
Insane for the destination,
The bloodspot,
The face at the end of the flare.
I shall bury the wounded like pupas,
I shall count and bury the dead.
Let their souls writhe in like dew,
Incense in my track.
The carriages rock, they are cradles.
And I, stepping from this skin
Of old bandages, boredoms, old faces
Step up to you from the black car of Lethe, Pure as a baby.
Aug 7, 2013
Aug 7, 2013 at 10:35 PM UTC
There is no lord within my heart,
Left silent as an empty shrine
Where rose and myrtle intertwine,
Within a place apart.
No god is there of carven stone
To watch with still approving eyes
My thoughts like steady incense rise;
I dream and weep alone.
But if I keep my altar fair,
Some morning I shall lift my head
From roses deftly garlanded
To find the god is there.
1.5k
Thou spinster of the silken night
Why slide beneath that sylphen cloud,
Why hide the blush of pallid cheek
To mask your secret smile in shroud ?
Pale crescent love of velvet void
A vivid splash of pinprick gems,
Suspended in black solitude
Such beauty midst celestial friends.
Lovers kiss beneath your spell
Hand in hand they stroll the lane
Garlanded in silver light,
Ensnared within your crescent’s reign.
Thou siren voice doth wax and wane
These very oceans sing your song,
As seabirds ply your ebbing tides
And global winds blow clear and strong.
Lunar light threads through tree boughs
Casting lurid shadows bare,
Causing wolves to crouch and howl
At living, moonbeam shards in air.
Oh sister of the silent night
Feel the haunting call of owl,
Scan the forest’s shadowed light,
Gild the snow clad mountain’s cowl.
Thou spinster of the silken night
Rest thy secrets in thy soul,
Fade as shadows blend to day,
Relenquish all to sun's control..
Marshal Gebbie
Victoria Park Tunnel
14 January 2011
Jan 13, 2011
Jan 13, 2011 at 6:40 PM UTC
.
*Alas we are cast into an ocean of grief,
prey to the monsters that lay deep beneath,
to shake and rattle the core of our beliefs,
rendered shipwreck shattered by jagged reefs.
Are we to grace our souls 'pon Neptune's teeth,
adorned and garlanded with a salt kelp wreath,
should our existence be so stunted and brief,
I beseech to expire like a storm silent leaf.*
© Pagan Paul (03/03/19)
Mar 7, 2019
Mar 7, 2019 at 8:47 AM UTC
by Siegfried Sassoon
1886-1967
In me past, present, future meet
To hold long-chiding conference.
My lusts usurp the present tense
And strangle Reason in his seat.
My love leaps through the future’s fence
To dance with dream-enfranchised feet.
In me the cave-man clasps the seer,
And garlanded Apollo goes
Chanting to Abraham’s deaf ear.
In me the tiger sniffs the rose.
Look in my heart, kind friends, and tremble,
Since there your elements assemble.
Nov 18, 2014
Nov 18, 2014 at 2:17 PM UTC
By night, these figures mute, in the whispers
come alive, guardian deities to ancient shrines:
tonight, though, after aeons by the gates, alert,
they begin to wonder, who do they guard?
Gods no longer visit these their abodes on earth.
Tall statues, of somber stone, much garlanded,
dusty, layered in withering flowers of neglect;
Out of season now, but the shadows at noon
are wet in tears, this longest day of deep sorrow
who did they fight for, to be remembered for?
Long has she suffered, matron, deity, enthroned
in the shrine, but trodden of the earth, cuffed
at her home, weighed down of custom, wearing
tradition on her bangle and ankle and bearing
honour in her veil, invisible shadow of the race.
Like the mythical stream of the distant lore,
has this ancient river, at last found her desert?
To that man holding the book in his hand,
thundering to the empty skies, I ask, what law
do you uphold when the jungle invades the land
Aug 23, 2013
Aug 23, 2013 at 2:42 PM UTC
Jasmine flows in lemon scented tendrils
Wafting on breeze in honeysuckle air,
Drifting in promise of delicacy hovering
Caressing pubescent delights from despair.
Delicate flavours of spearmint and juniper
Tilt in a torment of honeyed delight,
Garlanded avenues sweet and deliciously
Titivate nostrils till sensuous night.
Amorous airs in the warm summer evening
Poignantly poised in the lingering scent,
Romantically touching the tremble of senses
Released in a sigh of exquisite content.
M.
22 August 2015
Aug 22, 2015
Aug 22, 2015 at 12:30 AM UTC
give me, o do give me
any piece of the earth
let me show you
there's no dearth
of wisps of smoke
and peals of laughter
they quote with gleaming eyes
and are courted everywhere
there's no scarcity of shared experiences
in any measure or hue
and that's always true
i should be garlanded
i should be serenaded
wherever my fancy takes me
for in very truth is say to you
any which way in the world
is a corner of my room
thus see me weep in travail
but always to no avail
for the elite of the world
who would speak for us
though we have mouths to speak and things to say
are forever seeking ways to tell us we're different
but give me, o give me, any piece of this earth
and i shall be home in harmony with the breath of life
never again to be alienated by false councils
my heart will sprout into luxuriant shrubs
that dance each break of day
to songs of the universe
Sep 15, 2016
Sep 15, 2016 at 4:03 AM UTC
Mother rises
Garlanded
Grass-twined
The world greens and grows
with her every stride
Ageless youth carves stone
with her finger tip
Cup and ring
Sit and sing
listen as her heartbeat
turns the seasons
May 29, 2012
May 29, 2012 at 12:54 PM UTC
And darkest the night when all seems
lost, parts thick the blanket of fog;
Desiccated to the bone when
moonless in agony,
go emptied of Spirit the skies,
Broken in Her temples,
desecrated in the shrines
veiled, chained, burned at stake;
Scattered lays She,
as hope among the stars.
Among a thousand tribes risen,
to burst forth again,
Diana and Ishtar, Athena and Brigid,
crimson the rays that flood
regnal the horizon in waves;
Who casts time in the thrall of Her dice
fire cannot burn, nor weapons hurt,
who measures worlds in Her strides,
the black rose, Mistress of the night,
Garlanded in skulls of a thousand such
who know not Her might
whose hands sewn Her garment great
trampled death under Her thunder trail
Here She comes the ancient One:
Jan 5, 2018
Jan 5, 2018 at 12:17 PM UTC
The stillnesses of the aeons before
the world-times which stir in Him adorned of
skulls of all the forms that ever arose,
who knows of what age when first He walked here?
Staff in hand, for who walks His path is but
Him, garlanded in beads native to heights
of the times before time, clad of the ash
burned of tenses, master of dance, in whose
drunken steps rise, these universes vast:
auspicious, three-eyed the Lord of all.
Feb 23, 2018
Feb 23, 2018 at 9:58 AM UTC
I now know why the universe does not distinguish the days
Any more than we would a grain of sugar in a jar
I have dreamt and in that dream I awoke
To the language of everything I did not understand
I heard in its muffled voice, an infinite joke
As I smelt the sea thousands of miles inland.
I slept and in that sleep I saw me, as I’d once been:
Transformed from the dead, and free from transgression
I swam garlanded in the sea, and renewed by its briny waves,
The days had stretched forever along the coast
But I did not know then that nothing would last
How every atom that was me would accelerate through a new host
And that only dreams and memories could transport me
Back to the tang of the sea that day, and the scent of blossom
Yet I think that I finally understand now the reticence of the stars
To tell not of a future but reflect only their past.
Mar 2, 2017
Mar 2, 2017 at 11:05 AM UTC
Where do you walk to, Senora, across
mist-wet beaches moments before dawn?
Shy waves are savouring their lone time.
The sun, a truant kid behind the clouds.
Fisher-boats quivering in their dreams.
Where do you walk to, in your free
glowing tunic, garlanded of fresh flowers,
silken moist hair caressing the winds?
Now the leaves are awakening to stretch
in the breeze, now gold is abundant.
The trees have shot bird arrows of love
slow darting into the horizon blue. Not
enough answer, the Smiling tiara turn gaze
Jul 19, 2015
Jul 19, 2015 at 8:33 AM UTC
Brief and pitifully powerless is Man's life;
on him and all his folks’ race the slow,
sure doomsday falls pitiless and hellish dark
Blind to good and tops turvydom of evil,
reckless of inferno in the life’s destruction,
omnipotent matter rolls on its imperious way;
for Man condemned to-day to lose his dearest,
to-morrow is starkly beyond himself
only to pass through the gate of darkness,
for thus it remains only to cherish all,
ere yet the deadly blow falls centre-head,
the lofty thoughts that ennoble his whimsical day;
disdaining the cowardly terrors of the slave of Fate,
to worship desperately at the shrine
that his own hands have humanly built;
undismayed by the empire of brutality of chance,
to preserve a mind free from the wanton tyranny
that rules his outward life garlanded by ego;
proudly defiant of the non-combatable forces that tolerate,
for a moment his knowingness and his condemnation,
to sustain alone a weary but unyielding shrugged Atlas,
the world that his own stupid genius have fashioned
despite the conquering recconnoitre of unconscious power.
Nov 2, 2014
Nov 2, 2014 at 6:49 AM UTC