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harlon rivers Aug 2017
He knew the ache could not be recompensed
they knew it too the moment echoes fell silent
There was already not enough love
in a world grown dark as darkest past

It wasn't the color of his skin nor dialect
or the  journey of a  thousand  miles
Not the place that he'd come from
       back when ―  left behind

             nor a heart of gold,  
      that never became a home

The colour of  unwritten silence
had  eclipsed  the waning  light
On the run from who he'd become;
     ashamed for all he was,  
couldn't erase a lifetime that felt a waste ―
               trying to untie a Gordian knot

He saw his body as an entombing barbwire cage
    imprisoning  a  wellspring  of  love writhing deep therein

Immured at arms length from the outside world
    where  the soul of a teardrop  abides  within
                         its insignificance

Shielding the  inherent  maelstrom
                          from the innocent passersby
Buried thoughtfully for the greater good of all ―
for the unsatiated dream boundless love betides

Written  artifacts  exhumed  like  ***** secrets
a lifetime of stigma's stain swept under the rug;
just whispered words written from an unfinished life
few ever really looked deeply between the twisted lines
arising from the soul of just another passing stranger

The long road begets a suffocating silence
choking out,           extinguished love inhumed
Ashes  of what once had been life aglow of light
               forevermore shrouded
          like the dark side of the moon



rivers
August 20, 2017
Terry O'Leary Jul 2021
The wrapes of Grath adorn the path that slammer klingks had tread
when turning spades in everglades to flosticate the dead.
Along the way the snorbels bay at freebled sprutelned
that boogeymen had once again uphove above the shed.

The buildings tall that housed the krawl are pictured carved in stone
and all that’s left is now bereft of wrapes that might atone
for scabs that feed our wrinkled breed, distraught and lying prone.
Yes, flonk replaces merpeled traces deep inside, alone.

There’s no retreat from incomplete, so durbies never dared,
but streaped instead beneath their bed with franjent fangs unbeared;
they knew the past could never last although the trumpets blared,
for doogies, stripped, were ill equipped, no longer bald or haired.

Like cavaliers with gougejent spears, well triggered for a tiff,
slank vankulures with silver spurs embussed for grimp and griff
(no question why, for “we can’t die”, the oft regleated riff);
with little fuss the blunder bus krunged glimpfly off the cliff
and fetid breet of grim defeat gave Grath its final whiff;
the catapult had one result, all life lay lazelled stiff.

The plastic waves that washed the graves, now homeland for the rutch,
though faring worse when quenching thirst with warples in the hutch
were nonetheless, as frunks confess, so pleasant to the touch
exturbing sinks that watered wynx and onetime life as such.

Like burning blotters slurping waters, skindles sipped their fill
from koozing cracks between the tracks inhumed beneath the hill,
then spawned the spores of Grathic wars that profit from the ****;
their victory tales, like crimson crails, reside in dung and dill.

Those scrilly clouds that cowed the crowds neath radiation snapes
left little less than watercress beneath their coffin’s drapes;
yes, those unborn cannot adorn the pallor of the prapes
so scrundlemun tinge bibberun, we ones who reap the wrapes.

Yes, now-abandoned hetzelspan were once in time embroiled
with merikained that firps extained until the weather roiled.
What more, perchance, can happenstance inflict upon the koiled
when pendlesnips are in eclipse and wrapes of Grath are soiled?
This [will be/has been] written in the future (3121 CE) by our evolutionary progeny (in the ruins left, after our apocalyptic demise) and [has been/will be] sent back to us as a warning, through a warped space-time wormhole.

But yeah, we won’t pay heed…

Note that ‘language’ [is/will be] different then… so it might sometimes be a little hard to understand...

(too much koolaid???)
Tryst Jul 2017
I chanced upon old standing stones
Bedecked in lichen green
Arrayed in banks of marble rows
With walk-ways in-between
Each bore the scars of craftsman’s graft
Recording time and toll
One fading remnant epitaph
For each immortal soul

And earthward bound the sun polite
With mountain cap in hand
Fell silent as the hearse of night
Rode forth across the land
The distant city lights awoke
Like lanterns on a lake
A bubbled haze of smog and smoke
Above the city scape
 
Large crowds of late-night shoppers milled
Around the late-night stores
And roars of drunken laughter spilled
From dingy nightclub doors
The squealing cries of lorries lade
With goods to stock and stack
Were echoed by the cramped stockade
Of dwellings back-to-back

As one by one the lights went out
In windows dark and dim
Arrayed in banks of brick and grout
Old dwellings grey and grim
Stood sentinel to souls entombed
In plots devoid of green
The living mass of those inhumed
With walk-ways in-between
I smashed myself
Against a Rose
And shattered I stood.
That happens in LOVE!

I started believing in
PEACE and compassion
And realized that's the biggest WAR
I lead against my learnings
And it's destroying my LIFE image of "I"

Weeping, wallowing
I live my life
But in that longing of yours
I don't want to come out of
That torment...
What a joy it is
Thinking of you
LOVING YOU &
Wailing!

I found the softest earth
And dug myself in
To bury myself
I couldn't find that soft sand
But found my mushy self
To conceal my LOVE
Hidden from the world
Inhumed in your LOVE's secrets

Leave me in a crowd
And you'll find me in solitude
Leave me in loneliness
And my inner being will be crowded
With everything about you
Each and every small detail of yours
Will be swarming my heart

Without burning into fire
Have you ever seen a solid
Turn to air?
See me,
I have attained sublimation of self
By LOVING you

For you I FAST
The whole of festive season
Even though all ambrosia
Is presented on platter
I starve myself to death
Praying just one thing:
"When'll I be with YOU?"

Everyday
Five minutes of poetic life I live
And in those five minutes
All such things happens to me
In LOVE
The sky was lost in colors, everything was snowy white, sparkling with whitish clouds that were arranged on top of other pearly ones, which tended to break from the high stupor brought by the Cherubs and Seraphim to receive Vernarth and Alikantus. Arriving at the highest plain, Vernarth saw the Mashiaj who was waiting for him, he was wearing a white garment, and on his neck an ornament that the Hoplite Soldiers of Arbela had given them. When
Vernarth dismounted, and a Hoplomachus could be seen on his Lynothorax, which was the same medallion that warriors carried to face divine death in combat, donated by a Thraex, who had always accompanied him with the Kantabroi with the sulfur mists after dark. rusty battles, and that he wore a manica on his arm that seemed to point with the tip of his finger at chapter
XIX of the Apocalypse of Saint John the Apostle, on both legs an Ocrea labeling the chorus of hexameters that the Sybillas chanted to revive him. And his head rotated three hundred and sixty degrees carrying the Leonatus with another Helmet under his arms with oculars with grid and crest, on his right leg a Xiphos hung like a thelamo that hung from both angles of his legs to approach when carrying his horse thrown by his hands.

His belly heaved with anxiety, in his hands was a folder that Drestnia and Etrestles had written, which had condescended to him from the Koumeterium of Messolonghi, saying:

“All the cities of the world will be called Athens…, because from there you will arrive at Patmos where you are in all places. Everything is old because it soon gets dark, and the funeral address is the first death you had when you were an infant..., all the people who are with your majesty yearn for civility that you imply in the legacy of the deep Christmas in Patmos, with tablecloths, wines, rolls and thick Corinthian wines in their plausible Patmian creation,
leaving them in the corridor that reaches the end, where the alabaster replaces the burning manger..., as a story of two stories and battles, which are exalted narrating the wars after they are their dominated lands suspended in the waters of the Aegean, and tinged with an apparent unrealized pact. The whole the world will be called Patmos, where nothing and no one will defeat you
without first a dirge when the gargoyles of your veins sob, when their capitulation is filled with culture that swirls between the white tablecloths of Kissamos and Kimolos, behold where the Sarissas They will parade through the pantheon like thousands of solitary lances towards the perpetuity of the patrimony that doubles the clouds pregnant with liquid bronze, to be
scattered throughout Athens like marble shawl stoles carried by the Meltemi with the prudence of ennobling cousins shocks of the storms that augur your departure. Nothing of minimalism or arbitrariness that cannot be resolved in loopholes that are hidden among the requirements, in which all the threats have admonished the canopy fallen on your integrity, on the Cherubim who fights with his empty hands like a beautiful angel fallen at the dawn of Miletus, being already a state governed by the Hoplomachus with his dyed sword, where you can see what you can be more than a convention of gladiators, just like that and indeed disposed towards the courage of what the daring produces with the infamy of seeing you pray alone in his black stretch.

In everything you were left alone, favorable only to the disagreement of what you should be or do, then return what you can do, you are already a legionnaire who carries the world on his back struck down with his Corinthian Kantabroi. Why did you stain your tanned hands, why somehow did the Nikephoros bring victories that take time to come and go soon? Thirst for victories they bring vessels and flows incapable of satisfying you in the immensity of their anguish and everything is done just when what fits my thinking fills my belly, and what saturates the belly remains tied to the Rudder of your precocious olive trees, from so much that the drum sounds, it turns it into empires of stones that do not coin the subsidiary complaints of their warfare, if you dare to be hostiles who bring food for dinner and everything that spills the tediousness of piling leftovers where nothing else is huge what an insult to sigh.

Vernarth, the world of Messolonghi and its eternity comes to give you the admission of a Commander!, who negotiates with greatness and simplicity, just as you can understand each other from sixty-four springs that have closed the eyes of Pericles just like yours, where the laws will have to compensate and fill vessels that remain empty for this toast  "Stin iyia sas o Khaire" from
Elpenor to your house and health of a Nikephoros devotional or conquest to win over everything,... but stay drunk alive and be reborn in other taps condescending to mythological ups and downs, where the laws revive the second or third vigils of banquets that lead into the orbit of a Hoplite. Do I see you comfortable in the klismós that carry you to the Empyrium, where the scattered saliva mixed with wine is confused with models to take you to your new home? perhaps of particular or unequal equals or relative merits that will make it exist and will prevent the possibility of doing it again. In the eighth Messolonghi Cemetery a great riot has been made, she prescribes to pay you honors with Markos Botsaris at the head of which all the gold spilled on the table will be made with bows and arrows, shields, and spears to take them to Patmos and Athens by river sounds that sound from the Hékein or the formality of lavishing to do or utter, so that everything is in favor of desolate places that will not be felt by all of Greece when they understand that you carry all the cries of the Warriors who hide behind the moor so as not to see they sob, still feeling the drums of the compass of a victory where wine flows that are written in the stands of Epidaurus, signing the chaste peace with their Medical Wars. It seems good to you that the ghosts speak of democracies, and that they also govern them with the spill of satisfying public ovation that only does it with two or three flags, Oh Cóphade I dress in a foreign outfit that enlivens your lightness from head to toe, I want to see you come back to life on the plains without stopping riding with Alikantus, free from all stratagems and fantastic smells of lavender, and grasses toasted by the summer of the hall, oven of Athens. Do not be afraid, we have distances that
are difficult to overcome, it will be the expulsion of our hearts if we allow ourselves to be caught up in the irrigation of their vulgarities that always complain of open will, do not be afraid, Pericles entrusts your departure just like you at sixty-four, in such a Syntagma double of 32 who appreciates you right and left in our companies, with courage obsequiously in becoming where the wind rises in Abdera.

We can dare to say that we are a group of seven, in the association of 25 Syntagma men who will accompany us split... but not divided! That it is nothing more than death as a double life that is placed in front of you, that shows its opposite side of the Syntagma where victory and defeat offer omens of reviving in both fights, not all of us are saved by our annihilation, nor by their qualities of Picking ourselves up even among those defeated by invisible
conflagrations or just because of the excessive feeling that what ends or begins is not impregnated with beauty, we know that you will come at Solstices and Equinoxes are free of their austere plagues, and reborn from Aspasia or the social life of socialites that Your eyes are drawn from seeing so much beauty ignites in the theater that never ends, and for this, we know that we will measure what fits in your gallbladder, and the wine that we are ashamed to recognize in order to satisfy you, O Brother, receive from an entire nation and from the inhumed of Messolonghi how they will see you happy to come to visit us, whose boastfulness disappropriates panegyric Homer, with plausible lightning from all borders if it is that a Sycomo to makes your initial on its bark, granting a new star to Greece where you can observe that it bears fruit from where you cannot taste it, but you are going to affirm yourselves well from the trunk where you can write values that are similar by virtue of the Kashmar that points to the Aegean Sea.

An immortal never claims a sycamore, rather he claims it with probity that resembles the wealth of a story written by locals who know well that they are spring harvests. No one will be able to hold more praise than Drestnia, and I to receive you in our land clear of enemies and that they sit at our table for the mere fact of avenging challenges that speak of saving and retreating, of counterattacking with perseverance carrying in your hand what breaks the Light and becomes subject to you "The Xiphos Sword". At the end of the voices they are filled with hope and fortune of your sword that could stop time, and bring you made of meat in the herd of Mosul as a weak mischievous, for this reason, it is equivalent to our parents that they will enjoy our vows, such cenotaphs for the weak who have to live protected by vigorous walls that have to engrave in their narrow, empty, and perplexed urns Freedom from other unfortunates who did not enjoy it, who did not cower from dying on earth that does not recognize martyrs who are still destined to live glorious declining. How foolish it seems to you when the mouthful of bodies from the battlefield rise with the same to everyone's heaven, and from evils that become benevolent from so much miracle to live next to them, fearful right there before the city bailiff who does not dare to dare to bury you in their domains, to see you resurrected in the domains or district of the fearful ruler. Now take your halo, take it with your five senses, and make of it courageous thirds where your seal is declaring that no one will erase or forget it "
Kolawole Zainab Sep 2020
Check the holy books you preached  many
And swear you haven't breached any

Cogitate the words spilled from your tongue
If truly they could manifest for lifelong

Feel the air you inhale,If truly you merit breathing
Look into the mirror,If sincerely you deserve seeing

Walk in the darkness to find your way
If your pious heart lead not the helpless astray

Pray death never meet your deadly deeds
For the innocents will reap your soiled seeds

Anticipate the leader of the dead bands
Inhumed in the open caskets with your hands

Footprints shall reveal the paths legs treaded
Time shall tell when death killed the dead
Word Hobo Dec 2018
Selah    babes Reborn
Inhumed    in His bed of straw
Golgotha’s manger


gv 12.26.18
Form: Senryu

— The End —