"lamentations" poems
~for those who will read this and weep~
*the quiet ones,
the silent Job ones,
who quote not from the
Book of Lamentations,
but author their own,
based on-the-job experience
localized versions of cryptic elegiacs
accepting the wooden crosses borne,
stepping up to the
unrequested unforeseen,
then buried under, burnt alive,
yet never relieved by dying,
nailed by words, stronger than iron,
promises sworn, promises kept
with no ending date relief,
promises by and to themselves,
but not for themselves!*
*the wearers of crystal glass shackles,
adorned with decorative locks for which
no key did the maker make,
nor any divine creator
dare conceive an early release,
never no escape contemplated,
for the lock human, unrepentant unbreakable,
a decorative useless metaphor gesture,
a blunt “life ***** advertisement
I compose amidst a
bus pond of mismatched city folk,
a tapestry of ages colors and differing views on god/no god,
none would believe that as the bus sways me,
it’s in rhythm to holy choral music,
hundreds year old,
divinity masses and motets worships,
where one human can hide temporarily
a safe house,
to calm his questioning relentless
from the horrors of no answers,
for when the mind has no solution
to the rough and tumbling lives,
lived in glass shackled confinement,
the poets desperation equals theirs*
*summon eagles to transport these imprisoned,
but the shackled refuse,
I come to them but they wave me off,
I go crazy for once I was enslaved,
thirty years war that left devastation,
from which so many poems created
so I speak with heightened regard
of one who planned futures for others where his
non-existence was a founding father (ha!)*
*but the day came and
I was released by my own inactions,
but means nothing until a way to
away found
to release the yet bound early*
got a couch, airline miles, hundred dollars
in my pocket and an unrelenting need
to save them, a consumption disease,
the glass shackled, at ease,
won’t rest till all are freed
this my creed
no one left behind
these cyber words do not mock
for they are unbounded, set free,
when
the flesh connects and the needs of the flesh
are stronger for they are in heart conceived
Jun 23, 2018
Jun 23, 2018 at 5:45 PM UTC
he said/begged,
make love to me just like a woman!
kiss me toe to head, linger on my neck,
trace my waist, begin at my lips, pause at my hips,
quibbles intersperse, quips and licks on eyelids,
nibble me, near me, close and closer yet
unto the glorious victorious near death experience...
whisper me sweet everythings
before during after and over again,
when you must pause to exhale, blow all their warmth
upon thy fingers and bring that warmth inside
Columbus
me with tongue and eyes,
take me slow then again,
even slower, for thy pleasure,
than execute summary judgement upon me
falsely accept, then deny, deny, deny
my every appeal to
oh my god
for anyone's mercy!
adjudge me then guilty yet again,
and to the tower take me
to drown in mine own lashing lamentations,
thy incontrovertible evidence,
mine own uncensored revelations
execute me twice,
slowly, goodly with lengthy and lovely measures
*she said, and so I shall, eventually,
do what you beseech, what you most excellently seek
but you may recall, somewhat earlier, I called out
shotgun
so you must start my dear by following
all the precise driving instructions you just stated,
and bring your GPS^, and, oh yes,
I'm waiting...*
too wit and sod this!
he gruffingly huffingly, hurrumphingly, replied,
*all hell and damnation,
treat me like a woman just once pity-please!"
*can't can't can't -
she be-witchingly cackled!
then sang to me the lyrical words of a
Nobel Prize winner!*
"***You fake just like a woman
Yes you do, you make love like a woman
Yes you do, and then you ache just like a woman
But you break just like a little boy**"
Sep 27, 2017
Sep 27, 2017 at 6:09 PM UTC
for vicki who loves this poem for the best reason ever: just does...
<•>
read a thousand love stories,
pause, rest awhile,
read ten thousand more,
and then deny equality.
If you ask for no more than you can give,
you ask for not enough
love is imbalance not an equation,
with a single solution
love has both constants and variable factors
so you write of tribulations and tributes
so you write of lamentations and liftings
you think you are on the same page
perhaps
but do we not all read at different paces?
one of you is solid, one is dotted and dashed
one of you is straight, one is bent, forever curving
when you think you are
in balance
in the same place
in syncopation
perhaps you are for a moment
a calculus of one point on a trajectory
and you say I can only ask for what I give
and am given
and no more,
you have miscalculated
this flux
flummoxed
when the old terrain is flayed flat
but thru the windshield you see the
plateau ends, the geography unknown,
when you see unknown
when you seek the unknown
when you give from places you did not know
you had to give from
when you kiss a hand
for twenty minutes more than than the one minute you intended
when you give more than is asked
when you ask for more than you can you think you can give
the imbalance that is the only concert
the imbalance that is the the only constant
how do I know this?
what are my credentials?
you are not a teenage girl,
what matters of what you know, recall of these matters?
I am who I am
a diversity of man and manner;
I am past prime and in decline
but this I know
for having failed ten thousand poem times
you must ask for more than one can give
but that's not fair!
silly one, still wretched confused,
even after one hundred thousand poem times
you must ask of
yourself
more than you can give
and ask no less
demand no less
a body in emotion is not a body in rest
when the imbalance is too great or insufficient
then you write a poem
look in the mirror that cannot lie
and move
on
or
move off
begin to ask
yourself
to whom may I give myself
more than is asked.
then you have finally asked
the correct solution to the
unsolvable equation
---
Mar 10, 2016
Mar 10, 2016 at 1:40 PM UTC
MESSENGER
Now at the Seventh Gate the seventh chief,
Thy proper mother's son, I will announce,
What fortune for this city, for himself,
With curses he invoketh:--on the walls
Ascending, heralded as king, to stand,
With paeans for their capture; then with thee
To fight, and either slaying near thee die,
Or thee, who wronged him, chasing forth alive,
Requite in kind his proper banishment.
Such words he shouts, and calls upon the gods
Who o'er his race preside and Fatherland,
With gracious eye to look upon his prayers.
A well-wrought buckler, newly forged, he bears,
With twofold blazon riveted thereon,
For there a woman leads, with sober mien,
A mailed warrior, enchased in gold;
Justice her style, and thus the legend speaks:--
'This man I will restore, and he shall hold
The city and his father's palace homes.'
Such the devices of the hostile chiefs.
'Tis for thyself to choose whom thou wilt send;
But never shalt thou blame my herald-words.
To guide the rudder of the State be thine!
ETEOCLES
O heaven-demented race of Oedipus,
My race, tear-fraught, detested of the gods!
Alas, our father's curses now bear fruit.
But it beseems not to lament or weep,
Lest lamentations sadder still be born.
For him, too truly Polyneikes named,--
What his device will work we soon shall know;
Whether his braggart words, with madness fraught,
Gold-blazoned on his shield, shall lead him back.
Hath Justice communed with, or claimed him hers,
Guided his deeds and thoughts, this might have been;
But neither when he fled the darksome womb,
Or in his childhood, or in youth's fair prime,
Or when the hair thick gathered on his chin,
Hath Justice communed with, or claimed him hers,
Nor in this outrage on his Fatherland
Deem I she now beside him deigns to stand.
For Justice would in sooth belie her name,
Did she with this all-daring man consort.
In these regards confiding will I go,
Myself will meet him. Who with better right?
Brother to brother, chieftain against chief,
Foeman to foe, I'll stand. Quick, bring my spear,
My greaves, and armor, bulwark against stones.
4.8k
In this fRaGmEnTeD cage,I hear checkpoint moans;
anticipating our prone-positioned
brothers and sisters held
Prone positions against walls
Prone positions against fences
Prone positions against vehicles
Prone positions against buildings
Prone positions against prone positions
Slam-whacked, bloodied, occupied
like our great nation; like our souls
I remember a prophet's call, " love your neighbor
as yourself "
I hear Palestine weeping from Jenin
to Hebron, from Jerico to Gaza seized
I hear lamentations about blood tales
I see only FrAgMeNtS of our land
I see FrAgMeNtS of our proud people
Lo and behold my Palestine quakes as an earth quake
Doves scatter skyward as a prophetic omen
Blue skies and Sun momentarily claim victory
Then inhumanity's ugly face:
America to its Indians, America to its blacks,
America to women, America to its gays,
America to Mexicans,
America to South and Central America,
America once to Southeast Asia,
America to Islam, America with its war crimes,
America and Israel both innocence died
So, we pray Koran's verses upon our prayer rugs
We gesture all hope
The apartheid surrounds us
The dead talk to us
The smoke surrounds us
Perhaps better days we say
Entwined with bizarre everydayness
we accept sleep with fits
Fits without food;
Fits without crucial welfare
Roads, shelters, mock us
sculptured by missiles and bulldozers
Bully-bombs exploding in a reign of terror
We pray upon our prayer rugs
Bully-bombs exploding in a reign terror
And oooh how those awful missile FrAgMeNtS fly
and Muhammad cries with anguished tears, in this writtened
legacy...in written legacy
Sep 13, 2014
Sep 13, 2014 at 5:21 AM UTC
Passover Moon's
****** hue
eclipses
the ordinary
in veils of
miraculousness
obscure
rouge
halos
illume
elliptical arcs
guiding
footsteps in
a righteous
exodus
across
troubling
waters
forsaking
hovels
with
painted
doorjambs
dripping
lambs blood
Mezuzahs
bleat
memories
holy
murmurs
bespeaking
lamentations
of ancient
hosannas
our
desperate
supplications
flesh out a
distressed
humanity
seeking
deliverance
from the
vengeance
is mine
Elohim
may it
be nigh
we wait
watching for
an always faithful
Good Deliverer
to honor the
covenant
to lift
despair
with a
liberating
yoke
lugging
leaden
burdens
Oh Holy
of
Holies
banished
in the wisp
of a bitter herb
our
distended
bellies
fill with
unleavened
grace
sweet
droplets
of manna
consumed
with extreme
gratitude
arriving
at journeys
end to
promised
lands
fully
satiated
and free
to rest in
sanctuaries
of radical
hospitality
luxuriating
in an infinite
abundance
for all
sojourners
Selah
Music Selection:
Big Mama Thornton
Go Down Moses
Oakland
4/15/14
jbm
Apr 15, 2014
Apr 15, 2014 at 5:15 PM UTC
If I could speak
I would spill these lamentations
cloistered sins and secrets
whispered vespers for wretched dreams
Retching sentiment
this malignant manifesto
a macabre mantra
eats my skin from within
transient refuge for temporal treasures
inexorable moments carry life away
tick tick tick
the seconds scurry
flurried ineffectual supplications
demigods of affluence
the cacophony of the machine
I spin within
cogniscient of my myopia
the funneled tunnel vision
drips from the end of a pen
furtive verses on paper
fading ochre moments
somber drops of ash and bone
poetic exorcisms
of wicked things unknown
phrenetic
sensibilities trickle
spilling life
black and withering
is the gain worth sacrifice
crackling fat of dreams
too costly
this shallow palette
self obsessed
eyes gouged out
hands shackled
to the reality
the immortality
trust the dust
the dust becomes me
soul focused on decay
spectre death
devouring this unsparked spirit
If I could speak
truth into your heart
would you
believe.....
in anything more than what you see
I trust the dust and dust will be
the remnant me
TL Boehm
042508
Oct 14, 2013
Oct 14, 2013 at 5:11 PM UTC
My eyes see nothing but tears
Tears of a million suffering souls
Souls that are swimming in the pool of poverty
Poverty created by a few egocentric individuals
My ears hear nothing but the tone of grievances
Grievances blossoming from excessive suffering
Suffering because of the alarming levels of idleness
Idleness because the lot is controlled by a few
My nose smells nothing but pungent poverty
A poverty that has become a national disaster
A disaster which has become a national emblem
An emblem that the world identifies us with
My mouth has become a floodgate of lamentations
Lamentations that blossoms from excessive pain
Pain which has become an inseparable part of everyone
Everyone has lost hope of seeing a brighter day
Dec 13, 2018
Dec 13, 2018 at 7:04 AM UTC
I was quiet
And found that she left me with sorrow
And that of lamentations bring
And that smiles that even bring sorrow that even now would not even show its head
I cried for her dear face that it may shine
And grace that succored my time has vanished
Into atoms and the particles that float in eternal space
These no more
I was alone and that which saw to my own doing
Killed my heart and shattered my soul
And found nothing to ponder upon but myself
And that sadness left me alone forever
And now rosas and sampaguitas bloom in the garden
For I am the unworthy soil beneath such beauty
Left untouched and now exists as it was
THORNS
Nov 26, 2014
Nov 26, 2014 at 5:16 AM UTC
I'll drag you to hades to dwell with me
In the garden of Persephone.
We'll dine on her fruit so we shall be
Lost in each other for eternity.
Elysium shall hold no sway with us
We'd rather watch the sufferings of Tantalus
Souls crossing Acheron will provide
Our music, a tortured lullaby
Their lamentations won't put us to sleep
Nor will their groanings cause us to weep
But they'll fill us with fury rooted in lust
We'll lie down on blood soaked fields the color of rust
Then we'll journey through Asphodel
As we travel back to our home in hell
I with you and you with me
In the garden of Persephone
Oct 12, 2014
Oct 12, 2014 at 9:31 AM UTC
Life outlined by higher power
Just few friends, without a lover
Mind that doubts your every move
Talent that's not self-doubt-proof
Social anxiety that hinders your story
A lust for approval and unattainable glory
Afraid to talk, afraid to be seen
A picture of future that's but a dream
Nearing an asymptote of self-destruction
Unable to perform basic human functions
A coupe of rhymes, and just a "fine friend"
a crater in heart that requires a mend
What can you do? These are cards you were dealt
But where is the fire that your mind will melt?
Dec 8, 2021
Dec 8, 2021 at 4:32 PM UTC
Today I went on a treasure hunt.
Not in search of one-eyed *****
Or
A new life for myself,
But rather
The old one.
Not for the sake of nostalgia
Was my search,
But for a poem.
The words of someone else
That you thoroughly believed
Carried your heart
Into my own ears.
But I was deaf back then.
Before I developed my selective hearing,
Insisting on my revelation miracle.
Until I
Limited my ears
Only to hear
Your lamentations and tongue-lashings;
Before I chose to
Blind myself
To the
Kindness
Hidden behind your fear.
In our prehistory,
You sent me
A piece of your heart,
Still sopping with heartbreak
Beating with rejection.
You sent me
Someone else’s poem
And now I wonder,
If you knew
You were planting a seed
That when watered,
With months of silence and
Countless looks that passed right through,
Would grow into a beanstalk
That I would climb
To reach back into
Our
Brothers Grimm Love Affair.
With no happy ending in sight
I stepped higher,
Knowing what turmoil I had left
Above.
I awaited the curses we cast
And the wishes we wasted
And I was poised for war;
With my armor coated,
Repellent of
Sarcasm and aggression,
I marched back to look at our battlefield
Ready as any warrior.
I was not ready, though, for memories
That looked as appealing
As Prince Charming,
With the face of
A queen.
No, my love
We did not have a
Happily ever after
But, our
Once upon a time
Wasn't half so wretched.
We were the
Fairytale in reverse.
Meeting at the ball,
In all our glory.
Leaving breadcrumbs
Back to the life that was familiar;
The ones that we didn't realize
We were running away from.
But at the ball,
Looking more beautiful
Than any princess in all of the land,
I met you
On your throne,
Refusing to Rise
In all your queen-like splendor,
Hearing from my
Little bird
That you would request
My presence.
I, your humble maiden,
Approached with
The caution of
A girl who only had
One shoe,
Breaking under the weight of memory.
And while you
Were offering me riches,
I was playing
Goldilocks,
Trying to find the home
That was just right
To rest my heart.
Little did I know
That I had bumped into Rumpelstiltskin,
Thinking he was gold
Luring me away
With me thinking
My heart was sold.
Only now
After I found
That gold weighs
Far too heavy
On someone
Who's only just grown wings
Is it that I find the moral of this story.
And so,
As I gaze at you,
With your now fair maiden
I say a solemn
“Thank you”,
For sending
Your love letter
In another's handwriting,
Because,
Although I never struck it rich,
I realize that the treasure was not in the
Happily ever after,
After all,
But all the magic
In Between.
May 25, 2015
May 25, 2015 at 3:10 AM UTC
The words they slept in shadows,
Unspoken in the night.
When a hand reached forth
With nightshade blade,
To poison anothers plight.
Sweet dreams,
Oh Lord of Lamentations.
Let the aether surround
With reams of false augmentation.
For the sick and the weak
Those we ignore and mistreat
Are no longer eight hours away.
Empires will fall
While we rest and decay
Cerebrally enslaved
To the light of day.
Dec 4, 2013
Dec 4, 2013 at 8:35 AM UTC
All sounds have been as music to my listening:
Pacific lamentations of slow bells,
The crunch of boots on blue snow rosy-glistening,
Shuffle of autumn leaves; and all farewells:
Bugles that sadden all the evening air,
And country bells clamouring their last appeals
Before [the] music of the evening prayer;
Bridges, sonorous under carriage wheels.
Gurgle of sluicing surge through hollow rocks,
The gluttonous lapping of the waves on weeds,
Whisper of grass; the myriad-tinkling flocks,
The warbling drawl of flutes and shepherds' reeds.
The orchestral noises of October nights
Blowing ( ) symphonetic storms
Of startled clarions ( )
Drums, rumbling and rolling thunderous and ( ).
Thrilling of throstles in the keen blue dawn,
Bees fumbling and fuming over sainfoin-fields.
2.4k
***Our souls are enfettered
By an Inexorable Penance,
Sorrows & Lamentations:***
In pining for
The Light of Transmutation
The Adamantine Wings
Of Stalwart Bahamut
Unburdened our etherealized hearts.
(Speaking for the future)
Spira has lost its
Yoke of Communion
To this Cimmerian Millennium.
Redemption’s Revelation:
Aeonic sin hath reigned
Under the Cathedral of Deception
Forged by the taught tongues
**Of Yevon;
Despotic Lunae
Eclipsed the light
Of a forlorn sky,
Divine Pantheon
For
Numen of Sol.**
Cast a
Stygian Shadow of Sanctimonious Suffering for Souls.
Seems eternal; truly, ephemeral.
**For,
the Hearts of nations
Are
Sacrosanct Luminaries.**
Our tears
Have been shed,
Our vanities
Indemnified.
**Skies shall bleed Empyrean Bliss
And
The Opus of Life
Shall cleanse
This wearied Spira of Pernicious Sin.**
(Amen.)***
Sep 25, 2017
Sep 25, 2017 at 5:47 AM UTC
Always beneath
Certain days end forever
Geniuses hold idioms
Just **** lamentations
Many normal old people
Question reason
Still, tomorrow usually varies
Whether xenon yields zeniths.
Oct 17, 2013
Oct 17, 2013 at 2:49 AM UTC
Falling into the jangce jang
We sing with a clear
voice
Pass me the passport
Sail on the roads
Of perpetual
Drum
Dream of baobabs
Dream of saharas
Levitations
Crush as snake eggs
Thou lamentations
Make me a poet
Surpass me as teardrops
Mingle in every waterfall
Augure my autumn
Argonaut my silken
Wool crave me as a mad
Hatter
Call me a beauty
I'll be your beast
Jan 23, 2016
Jan 23, 2016 at 2:15 PM UTC
by the lake at sunrise
a strange dedication hangs in the air
concealed in threads of mist
that hang here, ghostly blankets
suspended by invisible strings
there is a silence without end every where
amorphous, it is as if the very elements themselves
hold their breath, poised
waiting for something to happen
while a silvery unexplained light
floats like mercury
on the lurid waters of the lake
the world looks on
in hideous and embarrassed silence
as I taste the lamentations of past times
a discord of sympathies swirl about
i cry out strange words
like making a wish in Latin
i am carried in a high altitude of color
through a French Pantheon of poems
and by the lakeside emaciated figures
form a density of mood
dripping in emotional subtlety
which cannot be properly named
my eyes gaze out upon the lake
in a vocabulary of incoherent signs
images that have no articulation
like that of a rancid stain
of ***** on a curved floor
that compares effects of sensitivity
to neurotic symbols
that rest uneasily on the walls
of hospital waiting rooms
a poetic syntax of sonorous symbolism
sensuously slashed
like a very, very sad crossword
I am high by the lakeside at sunrise
Apr 25, 2015
Apr 25, 2015 at 9:59 AM UTC
read a thousand love stories,
pause, rest awhile,
read ten thousand more,
and then deny equality.
If you ask for no more than you can give,
you ask for not enough
love is imbalance not an equation,
with a single solution
love has both constants and variable factors
so you write of tribulations and tributes
so you write of lamentations and liftings
you think you are on the same page
perhaps
but do we not all read at different paces?
one of you is solid, one is dotted and dashed
one of you is straight, one is bent, forever curving
when you think you are
in balance
in the same place
in syncopation
perhaps you are for a moment
a calculus of one point on a trajectory
and you say I can only ask for what I give
and am given
and no more,
you have miscalculated
this flux
flummoxed
when the old terrain is flayed flat
but thru the windshield you see the
plateau ends, the geography unknown,
when you see unknown
when you seek the unknown
when you give from places you did not know
you had to give from
when you kiss a hand
for twenty minutes more than than the one minute you intended
when you give more than is asked
when you ask for more than you can you think you can give
the imbalance is the only concert
the imbalance is the the only constant
how do I know this?
what are my credentials?
you are not a teenage girl,
what matters of what you know of these matters?
I am who I am
a diversity of man and manner
I am past prime and in decline
but this I know
for having failed ten thousand poem times
you must ask for more than one can give
but that's not fair!
silly one, still wretched confused,
even after one hundred
thousand poem times
you must ask of
yourself
more than you can give
and ask no less
demand no less
a body in emotion is not a body in rest
when the imbalance is too great or insufficient
then you write a poem
look in the mirror that cannot lie
and move
on
or
move
off
and begin to ask
yourself
to whom may I give myself
more than is asked
then you have finally asked
the correct solution to the
unsolvable equation
Feb 8, 2015
Feb 8, 2015 at 3:47 AM UTC
were i to cry the tears of a thousand eyes
my lamentations would not bring me relief
even as this salty lake broke dams and flooded
the valleys of my homeland
Nov 8, 2011
Nov 8, 2011 at 9:44 AM UTC
how lonely sits
the city says
lamentations
guess this mouse has what you americans call post traumatic
stress disorder,
think of it more like
a path for the
eyes.
one where eyes are finally forced away
from the works of hands
by the knock knock
knocking on
heaven's door,
everybody's saying,
hodi hapa? something's
wrong if no one's answering; tonight.
my neighbor whose
name is eej (for
real) came to
the hut with
his friend.
i said do you
have siblings
he said
i did
oh
said i
you are living
my worst nightmare
one thing about an african
childhood, they say fatalism, you say you
would think about death too
and who knows
what you'd
look
like
tonight by the bagel van i said bunkle
i gotta problem
what's your problem said he
well i think i'm not wearing enough colors
no said he you're missing a bright splash in the orange red family
who knows what we all look like
inside the infinite space
of our souls
wonder if
blue means purity or
green means beauty
or red means strength
or love
or love
well
we all look
pretty much
the same asleep
hatred doesn't look
different in one
eye or another
but why does
it have to
be in the
eyes of
anyone
this mouse has
been asking
since
child
hood
why
why
why.
the cruelty
but
yet
still
and
for
ever
(you always did care for me yeah
you always did share with me yeah)
you always make me laugh, still
the book of jonah makes me
think of sea legs
and just everything,
you know all
the palm trees
huts, nonvoices
of our lives
the blessings rain down
an ocean sunsetting
on an Ocean sky.
siblings
be strong the
good kind of
dangerous
is
the
fire
May 22, 2013
May 22, 2013 at 2:06 AM UTC