"immortalised" poems
From Alan Lomax to the commercial art and now the money machine.
At the turn of the century; when sound recording 1st became available to the masses, recording a song was an opportunity for folk to reach out; and tell the world something up front and personal.
It meant that people were able to put themselves on “The record” A way of leaving a permanent audio statement, an epitaph, an audio sound bite immortalising ~ life, mood, emotion captured and bottled for all eternity.
(A medium that conveyed messages from artists and storytellers of all kinds)
A recording was also a great addition to "The family album" something more tangible, a window to a real person, with a real life, a message and a point of view; a legacy, a blast from the past.
Few people expected sound prints to be re-designed, homogenised, formulated, copied, repackaged and that art and the message would be played over and over again by new artists in the form of "cover music" or that the style of the messages would become secularized, seperated into distinctive groups, or constrained by an elite clique or commercial genre.
Labelling and streamlining art & music mostly benefits the commercial art & music industry; and no longer the artists and creators.
I've no problem with good business, or the multi-billion pound industrys that have gained commercial success.
However the process of mass homogenisation, product synthesis, marketing, streamlining and then packaging fashion, sound and synthetic culture to sell a product, leaves very little room for creative people to just be creative.
A medium originally open to many for self expression, a historical record, an archive, a voice, a personal message;
Is now just a vehicle for advertising and perpetuating a genre of nonsense, so much so that there is now more white noise immortalised than messages.
To re-cap ~ I Think that creativity and expressionism; like story telling conveys moods and messages from the present and past!
Artists and musicians should have the opportunity to create and produce more information than they copy; thus creating a richer more colourful tapestry, whilst not devaluing the message of their predecessors!
Purcy Flaherty.
Jan 9, 2018
Jan 9, 2018 at 10:38 AM UTC
I am but willing prey to the wiles of the full grown moon.
She guards the night sky...
While I patrol these grounds...
Grieving over the seconds that have gone too soon.
I am a vessel... all emptied and barren.
what once was full,
now echoes faint
the glories of yesteryears.
Afloat still, adrift upon the currents... aimless and sullen.
I am a ghost... haunting no one but my own.
Immortalised...
Anchored...
to a body of mist and haze...
Occupying this space where worthy wind had once blown...
I am a beggar offering nothing but my open palms.
Hope etched tight
into my knackered knuckles
and calloused digits.
Please... take them in yours...
soothe them...
grant me your touch, your coveted balm.
Jul 13, 2015
Jul 13, 2015 at 10:28 AM UTC
I was 17 when it happened
I trusten them
It was going well
Until it wasn't
And a fun day with a friend became a nightmare
They invited me over
To play on their xbox and watch tv
But watching tv became perverse
Their hand drifted towards me
And became an uninvited guest that I never wanted
It all went too fast, too unknwn too wrong
I became a stranger in my own skin
No longer aware of what was happening
Like a passenger on a ride
Watching my own body a few feet away
It was suffocating the corruption of what he did to me
Years later i still remember his body on top of mine
And the smell of sweat is still **** in my nose
And i try to distract myself from the uncontrollable shaking that i can't stop
But all I can think about is his hands on my throat
And the fear that still lingers today.
Till this day i have never spoken of this
But today I have immortalised the day that I wish to forget.
Oct 3, 2022
Oct 3, 2022 at 3:48 PM UTC
.
**•••••••
•here lies
the rema-
ins• that once
beat with superb lustre•
caring not for worldly gains•on-
ly undying hopes of pairing with
another• but fate had tipped the scales, not in his favour
•when it sent an oncoming car to share the same lane•
driver was behind the wheel but alcohol had taken over•
causing the car to swerve recklessly
in the rain• the last few moments
was punctuated with a deaf-
ening sound•his
day began
not know-
ing death
was writ-
ten from
the start•
so here li-
es he, whose
heart had thus
been crowned •
his love is immortalised with this tombstone as his heart•
••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••**
Nov 22, 2015
Nov 22, 2015 at 10:02 AM UTC
Many a notion I'd lay in indelible ink.
How the morning sun would harvest the contours of your face.
Accentuating...
Elevating...
Revealing...
Your majestic beauty.
Reminiscent of a different time and place.
Many a thought I'd pen in indelible ink.
When your breath meets with mine,
they'd hold their own conversation.
Deeply entranced,
In an everlasting dance
that would last forever.
Exchanging gaits of grandeur,
great longing and pine.
Many an inkling I'd etch in indelible ink.
The way my moon never gets eaten.
It'll balloon to its fullest...
Beaming it's brightest.
Seeping from its edges,
gushes forming rivers...
Bathing my earth in heavenly silver.
Calming the thundering hooves...
In my heart with rhyme and reason.
There are but three words...
Words so sacred I dare not utter in vain.
Proclamation so heavy my chest could hardly
hold in rein.
I've immortalised them here...
But in invisible ink...
Because no one would understand...
Of emotions so grand.
No one would have a clue...
That...
Aug 14, 2015
Aug 14, 2015 at 11:15 AM UTC
*I love the look of words
written down line by line;
their flirtatious teasing
along feint ruled ivory.
The gentle drop of letters
below unrestricting lines;
the emotion immortalised
in each cross and dot.
Most of all, I admire
the finality:
the beauteous dedication
and commitment
of that pen... to this paper.*
Aug 25, 2015
Aug 25, 2015 at 6:44 PM UTC
For Idil Ibrahim
In memory of Tim Hetherington - 1970 - 2011
I cannot stay and speak my truth while the front line has no voice.
The carpet doesn't share substance with the blood-clumped
dust of Liberia; Red wine doesn't stain nations and it hasn't
changed the world.
I cannot stay and walk these steps while the fragile youth stand.
Our Sunday morning route doesn't cover landscapes of wounds
and bodies; Central Park has never felt a thousand welted
feet march for death.
I cannot stay and see your face while molten plastic scars her world.
Your delicate eyes have never seen the darkness of a child's grief;
Our democracy cannot fathom the searing, slow drip after a family
massacred.
I cannot stay and feel worthy of your love while injustice goes unseen.
My lens has immortalised what we held dear, but is yet to capture
the human condition; I spoke to you like I spoke to them;
Through decades of mortar fire I spoke to them.
Apr 23, 2015
Apr 23, 2015 at 10:08 PM UTC
Light up our backs,
bonfire,
burn,
burn us down
until we float
to the ground
as ashes,
ashen dust,
till death do we
ignite
the lives of those around
us
like city lights
or stars that
don't go out.
Outline.
Framed.
Posture
picture
perfect
Hanging
in this moment,
immortalised,
ageless,
free
like the flames
which lick
the velvet skin of
night,
engulfing our
shadows
as we stand
with our backs to the
stories
they told
- children
of the fire.
Nov 30, 2014
Nov 30, 2014 at 3:54 AM UTC
Early days as a flaneur;
I recall the couple
On the Metro
When I was still innocent
Of its labyrinthine complexities;
Slim pretty white girl,
Clad head to toe
In new blue denim,
Wistfully smiling
While her muscular black beau
Stared straight through me
With fathomless, fulgorous orbs;
And one of them spoke
(Almost in a whisper):
"Qu'est-ce que t'en pense?"
Then it dawned on me...
The slender young Parisienne
With the distant desirous eyes
Was no less male than I.
Being screamed at in Pigalle,
And then howled at again
By some kind of wild-eyed
Drifter who told me to go
To the Bois de Boulogne to seek
What he clearly saw as my destiny;
Getting ****** in Les Halles
With Sara
Who'd just seen Dillon as
Rusty James,
And was walking around in a daze;
Sara again with Jade
At the Caveau de la Huchette.
Cash squandered
On a cheap gold-plated toothbrush,
Portrait sketched at the Place du Tertre,
Paperback books
By Symbolist poets,
Second hand volumes
By Trakl and Deleve,
And a leather jacket from
The flea market
At the Porte de Clignancourt.
Metro taken to Montparnasse,
Where I slowly sipped
A demi blonde
In one of those brasseries
(Perhaps)
Immortalised by Brassai;
Bewhiskered old man
In a naval officer's cap,
His table bestrewn
With empty wine bottles
And cigarette butts,
Repeatedly screeched the name
"Phillippe!" until a bartender
With patent leather hair,
Filled his wineglass to the brim,
With a mock-obsequious:
"Voila, mon Captaine!"
I cut into the Rue du Bac,
Traversed the Pont Royal,
Briefly beheld
Saint-Germain-l'Auxerrois,
With its gothic tower,
Constructed only latterly,
In order that
The 6th Century church
Might complement
The style of the remainder
Of the 1er Arrondissement,
Before steering for the
Place du Chatelet,
And onwards...Les Halles!
Jul 26, 2015
Jul 26, 2015 at 6:18 AM UTC
He stands
A silhouette against a lifeless flat expanse
His flaccid tallow-yellow hands clasped awkwardly across the rails
The skin is white beneath his nails
The fear beginning to ferment
His shallow-knuckled grip indicative of lunatic intent
Intent to finally insuate his end into the books
To compensate for all the awkward silence and dead looks
Insinuate himself amongst indifferent carbon molecules
His skin and sinew separate from all the inconsistencies
Immortalised in asphalt now
A martyr on the asphalt now
Away from death and listing eyes.
Jul 2, 2012
Jul 2, 2012 at 12:02 PM UTC
We rode to Ta’if on a flying carpet
— a Toyota with a missing hubcap
sweeping through fattened clouds
which clung to the hilltops like grazing bison
arriving on the otherworldly plateau that wore
the death shroud of an old hermit’s mystery
which our Prophet reached in sandals as ******
as the deck of a Nantucket whaling ship
Arabian Himalayas. He climbed like a yak
and the Lord strengthened his steps
Our taxi driver — as lost as the cheque in the mail —
poked at his satnav and called his mates
The Almighty’s beloved followed the angel and
never lost his way. He strained with pain
Our driver’s mirrored eyes intruded while we
held hands on the back seat and yawned
The Lord smiled down upon his aching friend
and eased the pain in cramping calves
A sagging mosque now hunches where the ignorant
had cast away the chance of a lifetime
Oh think if they had taken him in — Medina
would sit as a happy king on a mountain throne
I immortalised my love in a photo in that mosque
praying as a saint where our hero had struggled
I adore my captured shaikha and the memory
of when we followed in the footsteps of our Prophet
Apr 19, 2016
Apr 19, 2016 at 1:12 PM UTC
In bareness life sheds
Melting our essences
To fear our termination
In caskets it all ends
In excess life mends
A regeneration read
Generations transpired
For eons we existed
In neutral life tends
Unscripted to rest
Reassessed to subsist
Repressed to matter
Thou shan't fear death
Embraceth thine destiny
Immortalised in shrines
Till the universe climaxes
Mar 5, 2016
Mar 5, 2016 at 6:54 PM UTC
We were washed in the dim glow of moonlight,
Our heartbeats calm and tranquil,
Serenity beat around us,
And soft melodical jazz that thrilled.
It was a beautiful night,
One that transcended the bounds of reality,
We felt as two stars transported,
Into a sweet magical galaxy.
I felt your soft satin skin touch upon my hand,
And a innocent desire took hold of me.
I put your hand upon my shoulders and grabbed your waist.
We twisted and spun to the sound of jazz,
Our bodies synced in rhythm and grace,
As if two stars that burned for long,
Had collided in a charming embrace.
Your moonlit body glided across the floor like a graceful swan,
Practised and perfected in its movement and poise,
As I looked upon my fate with head upheld and flashed a grateful smile to it twice.
And we whirled and twirled,
Every second abuzz with magic and delight,
Our bodies weary and sweat drenched,
Yet, our soul's thirst unquenched.
As we slowed down,
I had an ardent desire to never halt,
And In that moment fate immortalised us,
And we became the two dancing stars who never stopped.
Apr 25, 2017
Apr 25, 2017 at 6:16 PM UTC
I want
to be written about.
Immortalised
in the scrawling of
a pining boy’s
pen.
Encased, no,
enshrined
in verses of
a stars-for-eyes
poet.
Enwreathed
in flowers of
words that
a hopeless romantic waters
everyday.
Is it
much
too much
to ask?
Apr 30, 2015
Apr 30, 2015 at 3:25 PM UTC
My playlist on Youtube writes itself into a poem
It elicits Love, Lust, Loss anger along with a few other emotions
Ratatat takes me on a tour of Rome
PHOX shows me how to dance in Slow Motion
John Denver joins me on the tour of Country Roads
Highlight Tribe encourages me to Free Tibet
Bioshock Infinite do I dream of with Schyman Elizabeth
Kavinsky with his beats, urging me to Outrun
Lose Sight now and again with Andrew Bayer and Ane Burn
Abandoned Pools take me down the memory lane in Clone High
Foo Fighters whisper in my ear that I too can Learn To Fly
COCAINEJESUS, Akira, beats and samples; I have PINEAPPLEKISSES
Cloud Nothing reminds me that I should Stay Useless
Discover A Little Opus as I take a ride on Little Comets
Sky Rabbit opine and observe the present In Our Times
Joey Badass shares with me his funky ideals of *World **********
Coheed and Cambria describe brotherhood in Key Entity Extraction
Geroge Ezra sings an ode to fathers in Listen to the Man
Perfect shows me the other side of the coin with Simple Plan
The Peppers tell a story of starting over covered in Snow
Shakey Graves says takes a chance and Roll the Bones
John Wayne Gacy Jr. the serial killer is immortalised by Sufjan Stevens
Imagine Dragons, the subconscious and fears come alive in Demons
Owl City tells a fantastic fable about insomnia in Fireflies
Ellie Goulding finds sweet slumber even in dark times in Lights
Sep 23, 2015
Sep 23, 2015 at 8:24 AM UTC
You're searching for even the slightest validation for your inexcusable actions, transient in both values and the physical realm, collecting conquests and usurpees like how one might collect trophies from animals they hunt, faces frozen in a false expression with unseeing glassy eyes as they are forever immortalised in your sick collection to be made a mockery of long after the passage of time takes it's toll on both the images and the subjects.
A calculated maliciousness disguised as an indecisive personality, you are a bottom-feeder grafting onto the bellies of whomever are blissfully unaware or trusting enough to swim by you; but your own is yellow as a summer's day is long; not from just cowardliness, no, but from **** (sans the vinegar), and I wish I could compose this prose into something a little less hateful and a little more tasteful, but I won't spare you another second of my time, I'll erase you from my mind.
Nov 10, 2015
Nov 10, 2015 at 7:26 AM UTC
our love i feel is an ancient love
from a smaller world of greater ideal
a love so touched by the stars above
never to fall so as to become so real
our love i feel is an ancient love
an unspoken word of a long lost tongue
flies on the wing of an immortalised dove
to transcribe in dreams and nightly song
yet this night is upon, this night is cold
and sleep she refuses my welcome plea
this ancient love a story no longer told
white winged doves carry my angel free
now what is left, what is there of me
bereft of meaning, vanquished by decree
yet i will treasure each harbored memory
consigned to sail our love through history
Aug 23, 2017
Aug 23, 2017 at 11:49 AM UTC
if you were to halt me in a street and ask
what defines a mystery? i'd have no trouble
in dropping equivalents, metonyms:
a puzzle, conundrum, crux, enigma,
a commodity beyond human understanding.
but truthfully, impartially, justly
when i muse over the question alone
the webs of instinctual response can be brushed aside
replaced with an inherent yearning.
i seek to know why perfection spawned
so intangible in an age where, like the
illegible scrawl of a faceless war leader,
each detail is immortalised
in a pixel, a photon, a sound wave.
you and i, we're not acquainted in the flesh
but the mystery continues, of how a translation
of your features on a screen can captivate me,
can steal into my heart and run away with my breath.
i would swear of your existence on the stars,
take a cosmic oath.
but how am i to know, with you there and me here?
prove yourself to me, please
to be more than an empyrean deception
Feb 19, 2014
Feb 19, 2014 at 1:14 PM UTC
Well Perhaps Mary will come to me.
Perhaps her skin will melt so close to mine that I will feel her sorrow,
And I will feel the ongoing agony that grips her heart and torments her mind.
Perhaps I will feel the coldness of the shadows that she casts under the burning light that he attempts to enlighten her with,
Perhaps she will whisper the screams of her life and fill me with her surrender.
And I will see through her aged eyes and feel her hollow damp cheeks.
Perhaps I will lay down with her and see her dreams unfold in burning skies and hear her longing voice call out to him,
Perhaps the air will become too thin and through choking sobs she will wait for the moment that never comes.
And I will feel her immortalised blue tears run down run down my face and feel her worn hair on my shoulders.
Then she will be gone.
And just leave the lingering smell of broken beauty as my heart dawns and the silence whispers across my skin.
Mar 25, 2013
Mar 25, 2013 at 9:16 PM UTC
No grecian urn nor sculpted monument
can live beyond the realms of space and time
But in these lines of skilled form and content
you will live on, the centre of my rhyme.
Ozymandias, mighty king of kings,
colossal statue turned to desert sand
Yet, Shelley’s verse awoke these lifeless things
immortalised this man from antique land.
Both clock and scythe circle with the seasons
We cannot escape Fortune’s deadly wheel
None are free from Nature’s laws and reasons
Yet. in this verse you are divine and real
Your beauty and worth forgotten never
You will live in this poem forever.
Jan 11, 2015
Jan 11, 2015 at 3:08 AM UTC
i've been awake since 6am
i'm running on two and a half hours of sleep
i've been on the road since 7am
and i'm writing this at 1pm
i'm thinking about greggs sausage rolls
thinking about where i'm going in life
thinking about when this road will end
thinking about slowthai's yugioh cards
thinking about how much i love frank ocean
thinking about how i interpolate milo lyrics to fit my life
though i probably couldn't tell you what his words mean
thinking about how i drift from one person to the next
desperately searching for a new friend to cling to
thinking about why i didn't shave my face
for two weeks i was scared that with a blade in reach
i'd be tempted to slice my throat
if i drowned, would my body float?
thinking about how i should cut my hair
thinking about how i can act cuter
thinking about that coil girlfriend
but maybe i'll go for a boy instead
i burned my mouth on a greggs sausage roll again
so it looks like it's all going to plan
sometimes i view greggs as a temple
and the sausage roll is my zen master
i find solace in cheap british bakeries
just like how i find peace in a black man's philosophies
today i'll get my groceries from the nostrum grocers
and write poems at the apex of my sleepiness
this road is only going one way
and i can't go back to pick up the pieces
so i collect what i can to stitch together a new tapestry
made out of the few remaining pieces of the old me
maybe one day driver will say i have perfect hair
thinking about how excited i am to read tallen's messages on discord
it's nice hearing about his l5r discourse
thinking about how i promised to deliver instrumentals for quetzal
but i never did get started on them
thinking about my friend gabe's new album
and how i wish i had richard dawson's falsetto
and how i wish someone would hug me
but if i admitted that, that'd feel pretty needy of me
i don't know when this road will end
maybe i'm stuck on here forever
immortalised in the asphalt like a dead bird
approach me like you would your dad hanging in trafalgar square
i used to smile in every selfie
now it's a chore to smirk at all
but it ain't all bad
i might make curry on saturday
or maybe i'll make chicken soup
and it'll be better than hers
because i'll make sure to remove the bones
Sep 14, 2019
Sep 14, 2019 at 5:08 PM UTC
What is our most prized possession
If not the chamber of memories
That we so fearfully keep
Within the confines of our minds.
Every inch of our power
Lives in a constant struggle
To guard this chest of fading treasures
From the writhing hands of time
Yet we have become so caught up
In this twisted dance
With the ticking clock,
that we have forgotten
these memories are naught
but disintegrating ghosts,
whom desperately cling to us,
as a shipwreck survivor
clings to driftwood,
hanging from our thoughts
on trembling strings
-soon to snap.
Despite all our efforts
They will never be immortalised
-and so we are condemned
to drown
in a sea of nostalgia.
Mar 8, 2015
Mar 8, 2015 at 8:48 AM UTC
I massaged my temples
And cursed my heart.
I loved you,
And yet the pages remained blank,
The pen still held ink.
Quick romances in coffeeshops
Always found themselves
Immortalised
But you,
My one, my only,
Could drift away forever
With no memory to tie you down.
Only a broken poet
Is unable to write about the one they love.
You are a dangerous lexicon.
Excitement and passion wrapped up in confusion;
You baffle me to the depths of my being.
You can't find your way into my poetry
Because how can I fit a poem within itself?
You may lay your head against my breast,
Press your perfect lips against my neck,
Stain my shirts with your tears,
**** my sorrows with your smiles,
But you are too pure for any of my words.
I am a poet, but my love for you is beyond the reach of poetry.
Dec 23, 2015
Dec 23, 2015 at 5:52 PM UTC
You could have seen her complexion,
in the reflection of my eyes from a mile away.
Just like the sunrise, I sensed her light, as if she smiled with rays.
What a way to start the day, blinking years but it was timeless,
It was priceless, I was infirm, she produced a cure like a scientist.
Any part of her body can touch my skin and make me shiver.
To resist her, its like taking off your jacket in a Siberian winter.
Immortalised in pictures and scriptures we had written,
We ruled our land but with powerful questions are great answers that are hidden.
Apr 7, 2015
Apr 7, 2015 at 6:03 PM UTC
Good cannot exist without Bad,
No Light without Darkness,
Says the learned, Bull **** I say,
Human Justification all that is,
Good is absence of Bad,
Not the counteracting force,
Not the Balancing Parameter
True Good is a hard find,
You know why ?
Good cannot be Glorified without Bad,
Good cannot be Immortalised without Bad,
A Good that needs Glory,
is Never Good.
Nov 30, 2015
Nov 30, 2015 at 4:29 AM UTC