"microcosms" poems
Your eyes are so ******* captivating
and every time you blink,
it’s like a kaleidoscope
of the sweetest colors
and all our memories together.
My, oh, my,
I see microcosms of cosmos in those eyes.
Stop looking at everyone else.
Those galaxies
are
mine.
May 31, 2014
May 31, 2014 at 11:23 AM UTC
In the springtime
Come walk with me
Hold my hand
Hold me close
Walk under trees
With new buds blooming
Walk over puddles
With old ice melting
Walk along pathways
Of bustling microcosms
Walk through fields
Of flowers reaching for sunlight
__________________________________________________
In summertime
Come walk with me
Hold my hand
Hold me close
Climb up the mountains
Breathe in thin air
Descend into valleys
And search Nature’s secrets
Let flames warm you
Let stars awe you
And never stop growing
But stay as you are
__________________________________________________
In autumn
Come walk with me
Hold my hand
Hold me close
Botanical tableaux
Delights all the senses
And reminds us
Nothing stays the same
Don’t fight the breeze
Let your curly hair surrender
But in joyful revenge
Crunch leaves under foot
__________________________________________________
In winter
Come walk with me
Hold my hand
Hold me close
Wear a vest
To keep your heart warm
But dance in the snow
And honor every ray of sun
Speak only in whispers
So I have to lean in
And visit me often
Because a year seems so long
__________________________________________________
I miss you
Come walk with me
Hold my hand
Hold me close
Oct 2, 2013
Oct 2, 2013 at 4:28 PM UTC
Three striped cats daily demonstrate awakening:
a) BijaChen: startles by pounce onto bed or banging of sunlit window blinds;
b) BlueMonsoon: prefers annoying whining coordinated with scratching at blankets;
c) LadyFiona: chooses a prickly psychic stare into my sleeping consciousness to disrupt dreams. (she must have been a witch's cat).
Sleep you say?
Mr. Rooster, lover of Flathead Lake cherries,
rehearses a solo operetta while strutting sharp grey claws inches from the screen door.
Doze off?
Thirty small brown-red-yellow-speckled birds usurp seeds at the swinging feeders in frenzied unharmonious clatter,
While the low moan of iron hinged gate closes pale hay and tall horses into the corral.
Rest?
Urgently a growling lawn mower slashes green strands of life and delicate insects from their microcosms of Little Earth,
And calico barn cats dive from rafters onto feed sacks to devour the crunch of breakfast.
Lao Tzu speaks no sound, eyes watch
Two butterflies sweep though moist morning monsoon air.
Jul 13, 2014
Jul 13, 2014 at 1:46 PM UTC
House plants are hostages
we take while we rob
the bank of life for
all the experience notes we
can carry safely away.
We are using the funds
to build our vivarium
homes, microcosms of
the world beyond our walls
where we first glimpsed
the scheme.
The machinery of the world,
greased by blood and sweat,
remains beyond our control
while at large, yet
under our close supervision
we coax submission
out of our captives for
our own enjoyment:
selfish, ambivalently cruel
benefactors, dispensers of
our plants' waters of life.
Dec 7, 2013
Dec 7, 2013 at 7:13 PM UTC
When my body turns to dust,
I want the earth to know it.
My knees will filter sunlight,
sparkling shards of broken glass
to feed the turned, fallen leaves.
From my hands will rise a steam,
lost from ghosts of wilted dahlias
and pulling beads from snail shells.
Softening footsteps in numbing silence,
my scalp will take root in boulders:
a lichen stretched anew.
The crunch of my nails will lilt,
a filling sound which bleeds the heart.
My heart, itself, a rotten composition
(spoiled as tender and cloying fruits)
will slip through Her fingers,
drench Her purpose in richness,
and swallow my searing in depth.
My skin, taken first as appetizer,
breeds microcosms of tiny dancers
and will never forget that feeling.
Collapsed and empty, one lung and the other
will cease to feed themselves,
twisting from entrepreneur to altruist.
Other sundry organs, bones, hair and ligaments:
a donation of retribution,
payment for what was stolen,
recompense for an unforgivable abuse.
It is all I have, and it will be everything.
Oct 1, 2013
Oct 1, 2013 at 1:55 PM UTC
Skimming through the water, like a bird on wing.
Feeling the currents flowing, water spilling along my flanks.
Surging into the deep sea, searching for sunken ships,
Lost treasures to those above, merely decrepit scenery below.
Perhaps, more, to the sealife that shelters there.
This fantastic ability, to relate to earth's final mysteries in the deep.
Granted me, through a fluke of nature, gills filtering,
Scales protecting, tail and fins propelling forward
To ever deeper realms.
Hardly noticing the increasing pressures
Feeling tides pulling, seeing unfathomed sea creatures.
Appreciating the beauty and the power of the deep sea.
Triton may reside here, only stories to those above.
But the mysterious, deepness of this realm, begs belief in other gods.
Continuous exploration of this vast world,
Only brings me a small portion of its bounty.
Birth, life, death, cycling forever.
Brilliant design of creatures and systems,
Only glimpsed from above.
Denied to those who seek to categorize and quantify.
Life is not averages, statistics, and clinical review.
Being judged in labs by coated strangers.
Life indeed is deep, resounding, complex in every detail.
Microcosms of universes existing in harmony
Beneath waves brushing the sky.
Oct 10, 2010
Oct 10, 2010 at 8:55 PM UTC
I find comfort in the bottom of a swimming pool,
the streams of light overhead
quietly drinking in the water,
lapping at this microcosms feet.
The familiar weight
in my ears drowns out the noise,
The coolness against my soft skin
feels weightless and beautiful
the eventuality of breaking the surface
is almost sorrowful
No one can touch you here,
like a stone you sink slowly,
you are cut free from the ties
that have held you for so long
and just like the tiny bubbles
you'll race towards the curving surface
and into the light
and realise you were never meant to breathe here.
Not long is left and you break through,
only wanting to escape
back to where everything
was so clear, and so simple.
But, although out of the water,
and into the hands of a new morning
the fingers still curl around your neck,
and you realise
you’ve been holding your breath for a long time
and you're still holding it
And you wonder
if you’ll ever breath again.
Sep 20, 2014
Sep 20, 2014 at 7:11 AM UTC
alone, there are worse things,
like being an artist
trapped between microcosms,
unable to make eye contact,
or wasting away in suburbia,
stuck on photographs
of Venus and Cetacea,
or reading Bukowski to
a room full of preachers and
PTA goddesses,
or mourning the specimens
spread and pinned to a board.
yes, there are worse things
than alone; did I mention
slithering black nights
and the touch of bare skin
when you've forgotten
how to love?
it's too late to realize
such small truths,
we simply adjust.
Nov 11, 2012
Nov 11, 2012 at 1:06 PM UTC
Of the two lamps in the room,
my glassy eyes can only tolerate the dimmed glow
of the lower light from the right,
my face basking in the slowly rotating,
barely blowing air from the fan above me.
My face feels flushed,
but not from the semi-sticky early summer heat,
but from the fact that
every time I come back to this room,
I'm reminded of why I left.
The lawyer in me could generate a list,
pros longer than any construction of cons,
yet your name will always reverberate
in the unforgotten corners of my subconscious.
You never loved me like I did you,
and even my romanticized version of you never
saw me the way I
still feel the ghost of you.
I can still feel the crisp fall air from your balcony
and recall the albums and conversations that
complete the track list
of my unrequited love story.
Sometimes it was real,
sometimes it's real,
sometimes it's a dream,
sometimes it's a memory.
And this is the essence of you and me;
it's more questions than answers,
smoke and mirrors and
smoking to make things clearer.
I've never been the same
since you,
but I also don't know how I can ever
get over someone I never really had.
You were mine in microcosms
that were macro extraterrestrial galactic;
was it real?
were we real or
was it all [science] fiction?
May 19, 2019
May 19, 2019 at 1:16 AM UTC
There were microcosms at stake
each time they met--
tiny worlds obliterated
by every hasty touch.
They were fools.
Inherently flawed
and playing God.
Fighting their own insignificance.
But their premeditated destruction
was all-encompassing
so they, too,
fell through the cracks.
Apr 17, 2013
Apr 17, 2013 at 3:48 PM UTC
Pointless nostalgic,
my only talent is echoing
onto amniotic microcosms,
where singing is the abortion,
of any cerebral commotion.
No courage in my veins
to float on the vibes
of a carcass that remains of me.
licked clean with the searing cure
of a lion, by then confused
with the dense effect
of another space, burned to the ground.
These new sunsets cry raw drops of clay,
still hanging by the thread of these horizons,
while balance bet everything,
on the frustrated sound
of unspoken words.
Apr 1, 2016
Apr 1, 2016 at 7:37 PM UTC
we were in mutual coordinate
in natural synchrony of our own microcosms.
we were bathed in showers
of the starlit cloak that greets us before the morn.
we were slowly revolving
around our own mutual center of gravity.
we were slowly spiraling
as we near each other's force of attraction.
we saw each other spiraling toward
an event horizon, of which escapes are to no avail.
we were hurtling towards each other,
bracing no impact, but with arms wide open.
we danced 'til the night has passed,
and slowly have i realized the truth of it all.
we danced a moonlight dance,
but it was i, alone in my mind's delusional figment!
Sep 27, 2018
Sep 27, 2018 at 5:05 AM UTC
In the heart of the cavern, light
that stands ancient behind time, beyond
phenomena, the observer of melodies;
This is where it all began,
those aeons lost when the mollusc
heeded the call to man.
Inward, stalked by worry and loss,
an inversion of the lines of time:
beyond the zero point of recollection,
where zoom microcosms of possibilities
a realm not realm, but like that
an existence beyond existence.
Here, arose an affliction, in
curled expanses that exist as some among
an infinitude of potentials,
worldlines, some dark and featureless,
others growing and meaningless
and some like here where sentient,
observatory, a shadow grows around
the probing ray of infant awareness.
and so the ascent, from light to light
through alleys of darkness. Vast,
the beginnings and interludes
between phantasmagoria; What
accedes of in slumber, the knowledge
of things and nothings.
And up even until the day when
the babe says 'mine'.
Apr 9, 2015
Apr 9, 2015 at 5:21 PM UTC
Men with rambling fever
Are born not bred
Their diagnoses are terminal
No cure but to go
And they sell their souls to the devil
For a train to hitch a ride on
And they'll die along the highway
While their women stay home
Remaking beds
That have never been slept in
I slept in this morning
Even though I didn't need to
I stretched my limbs
Out into the ocean
Trying to stay afloat alone in my bed
And through my spyglass
I still couldn't find the edge of it
No body of land to stand solidly on
I concluded that beds must be round
Orbiting microcosms floating through apartments
I got up and didn't tuck the sheets in
I got up and didn't make it
I didn't make it through college
Because as soon as I got settled
Into my air mattress
I un-made it
Everything called my name
I tried to ignore the voices
I tried to avoid them
But the mattress deflated quickly
The sails inflated cleaner than a cloudy day
The maps on my wall needed navigating
I had too much exploring to do
I've read about explorers
Men who made their fortunes
Hunting gold and looting temples
Never returning home
Because the beds they left, they had already met
Men who mapped the oceans
And gave their names to continents
Practically for free
I will freely admit that I'm like them
Unable to stop myself
From risking it all
For a chance at nothing at all
Unable to stay in one place
For long enough
To make my bed and lie in it
I will freely admit that rambling fever
is not ladylike
I will freely admit I'm an
Unsettled woman
I will freely admit
I shed lives and beds with purpose
I shed lives and beds like skin
Jul 14, 2013
Jul 14, 2013 at 5:52 PM UTC
So I watched the dolphins jumping in the bow wave..
And there was no other way to say at it, they were playing
There is no reason to spend the energy needed to swim faster than our boat, or jump above the waves
But they do it
Creatures of the surf and current, but they must feel the same joy
What else could inspire them so? We're not so different.
Our brains have similar structures
All of us are ghosts in our shells, or are our shells what gave rise to the ghosts?
Are we even that much?
Mechanisms driven by chemical, physical, and electrical reactions
Life as an equation, playing out its course on a vast scale
Cells multiply and divide according to fluid mechanics at the earliest stages in development
They arrange themselves as dictated by protein sequences forming
Bodies which are microcosms, ecosystems within ecosystems
See the tortoise with the world atop its back
We are wind dancers on the beach
Wave swimmers of the sea
Sun takers of the earth
See the earth as a cell
Alive and pulsing at the fringes and from within
Time unfurls before us as the night sky
And we are driven by the forces around us to exist
to fall, break, feel, let go, run through the rain and... be
Laughter, art, math, music, dance, and everything else are ways of making life more bearable
Ways of playing with the world, arranging shapes and sounds and ideas into interesting new patterns
Dancing in the bow wave
But what are we really playing at, and why?
I think we play at being infinite
and infinity plays at being us
Dec 24, 2013
Dec 24, 2013 at 4:48 AM UTC
*the controversy swirls
creation opposes evolution..
does new dialogue suggest
new truth in sight..?
those creation days with
evolution eons backdrop
seem as quantum jumps..
yet within those days
find sequential building..
an evolutionary microcosm
in our genesis..?
then in evolution's depth
some leaps appear
fossil record blanks..
quantum microcosms
in darwinian time..?
perhaps a middle gestalt
quantum evolution..?
third eye discovering
new Light...?*
Feb 13, 2013
Feb 13, 2013 at 11:35 AM UTC
Our preconceived notions
can’t seem to be left at the door
as we all seem to meet each other
for the first time, hand shake in check
psychiatrist inspecting psychologist
who to take, what to take, can we partake
in this guessing game of assumptions;
all because we are deeply insecure.
Yes, perhaps the writer even the reader
can take heed even implore the words
from abstracts, to ideas set forth to type
font, confront abound the reflective recollections,
as I form sentences and you figure the syntax.
Seeping through the membranes that we have solely
constructed from the libations and gluttony from opposite
heads to tails; phobic forming channels flipping
ratios of eyes on you, and yourself so to be social
concentrates every weekend, only to dissipate.
What has been lacking is simple genuine
conversation of good morning, how are you ?
exchanging information so to know
one another - that is being social.
The microcosms we place ourselves into are nothing more
than are fathom facades we trace as perimeters so to measure
how much we can let people into our already egocentric lives.
Don’t contest that statement, to some level we all have absolved
in our own thoughts everyday, that we lose sight perhaps
what we see with our eyes should be understood logically
with conscious from the back of our minds.
Tip this scale for which we wait, taking to memory
that we heal as we initiate, and take ourselves
into each others weight, so we can carry on.
Nov 10, 2010
Nov 10, 2010 at 9:09 AM UTC
Last night the moon
Wept her warm tears
For me, and they burned
Dime-sized holes in my
Coverlets. This did not
Concern me, as I knew
That the laborious breaths
Creaking through my
Ivory-wrought sternum
Will soon overturn
In substance.
Strip mines line my
Stomach, and the little
Traffic director inside
Me has declared that
No substance should fill
The hole that should
Hold, wishing to gnaw
The profound depths
That paralyze have
Tunneled to my core again
I was never ready to go
Spelunking, but then
Again, no one is ever ready
For the darker side of the light.
May 30, 2013
May 30, 2013 at 2:28 AM UTC
I nod pleasantly,
Not absorbing anything -
The wash of pub chat.
Hard tales from hard lives,
Flowing freely; dredged up
As the beers sink down.
I am an island,
Sinking beneath a haze of
Alcohol - lost; alone.
So many pretty things -
So few opportunities
To consolidate!
An alcoholic
Re:lives his past endlessly,
But forgets the now.
Those maudlin souls weep
Into their beers and berate
Lives they have wasted.
In isolation
I observe; ignored, immune;
Free to contemplate.
Pub microcosms
Reflect society's woes
Better than the news.
Friends and foes alike
Are welcome at my table -
But they must behave!
The cute barmaids laugh
At my idiotic quips -
But none take me home!
Knob-jockey's posing
And idiots simpering -
Lonely souls fishing.
The popular seek
Fawns to flame their ego and cry
When bucks out grow them.
My own company
Can become stale, but at least
I'm not one of them!
Their contempt washes
Over me, but I'll survive -
Laughing all the way!
Do I appear as
These Others? Reliant on
Mates to make me cool?
I see the Cougar -
Self-proclaimed, but warranted -
Prowling for fresh meat.
The sounds of the World
Can break asunder against
My protective walls.
Much information,
Absorbed inadvertently
At the pub - Useless!
Mar 9, 2014
Mar 9, 2014 at 4:04 PM UTC
I am young,
but I must move slowly.
Wind rushes through me, stirs up
my little cells like waking monsters.
They crank and churn like broken clockwork.
Buried somewhere is the infinite teenager, floating in ecstasy.
She is God.
She is omnipresent and whole.
She is endless abundance.
Walls in my body burst forth
with life and movement:
Vibrating atoms and sprawling bacteria.
I am human.
Thick like sludge, I wade through the day.
I mine for gold in a swamp,
Microcosms and meta-cosmos
spinning frantically in static.
Under microscopes, life moves still
but here, everything dances.
Nov 20, 2014
Nov 20, 2014 at 12:21 AM UTC
Microcosms
of one day ventured
2 days gained
the scientific leap of faith
involved in the test tube generation
distills any desire
certain people have
for a little spirituality
in their life.
Although science's progress marches on.
The thirst for something intangible
become more intense in some of us
and more ignored by certain slightly plastic academicians.
Let's don't dehumanize ourselves anymore
by things a frying ourselves though as I call it
anal-lysis, (at the ass-sembly hall, for example)
and making a mockery of mankind.
Otherwise another Christ will emerge
There'll be another ***** and Gomorrah
and the hands of time will
be set back 2000 years
Charles Sturies
Mar 20, 2017
Mar 20, 2017 at 2:37 PM UTC
A temporary wealth
is all that I am ever allotted.
A brief understanding,
as well as an ability to be understood.
We entertain ourselves
with coarse language,
crude humor,
a commitment to behave
as we know we should,
for a while anyway.
Even now,
our respective grasps
on whatever it is
that we are allowed to share
during this day’s task is tenuous,
at it’s very best.
There are count times,
microcosms of malcontentedness
that lead to slight infractions
here and there.
We,
I learn daily,
are in passing.
Always, in flux.
We are not pals
and
never shall we abide one another
as more than men,
in conflict
and resolution
at the same time.
It is not a death,
their exit,
usually anyhow.
There is no pall that befalls us.
Each of us is birthed
into the life of the other;
in an effort to facilitate
a change in each other,
I believe.
An impact,
like an iceberg shipwreck,
rescuing and rewarding the passengers,
most of whom would rather drown themselves outright.
None of us can swim.
We don’t know how.
We barely know what it means
to live as society says we should.
The rules change more often
than we can keep up.
Yet, we grasp
and
cling to basic, vague understandings
in hopes of surviving
despite our best efforts otherwise.
We work together,
tumultuous,
listening fecklessly,
recklessly hoping for
the best possible outcome.
It is quite the undertaking.
This,
this performance,
this penance,
the doing of this
is how we invest,
how we spend our temporary windfall.
We learn,
together,
to be human.
Not that we ever actually were not so.
We learn,
however,
to be ourselves,
incandescent inside of our own skins.
Together, but with lives outside of mine,
for the betterment of all of us.
I learn to be a better humanist
than perhaps I would’ve
if I’d never been endowed
with
this temporary wealth.
***
-JBClaywell
©P&ZPublications 2021
May 23, 2021
May 23, 2021 at 5:14 PM UTC
nobody writes love letters anymore
between dings and likes and clicks and whistles
our hearts are splayed on boring screens
and i’m supposed to tell you all
of the multitudes by which i love you
in 140 characters or less
in a brief “i love you” text
i don’t want to “@” you
i want to touch you
i don’t want to message
i want long form soul searching
in these short bursts, i can’t tell you anything.
i can’t tell you how, sometimes, in the middle of the night
i hear noises and i can’t tell if they’re coming from inside
or outside of my house or my room or my head
and when i am scared i wrap myself around my sheets and wrap my
blanket around me
and think hard for a placebo feeling of your arms on my back and
your gun on my nightstand.
i can’t tell you how, sometimes, in the early afternoon
i forget to take my meds and my legs will shake
and my eyes will go blank and my heart will bare knuckle box my sternum
and flittering lashes and fluttering fingers
dangle off of me like hanging branches
in a bluster
and in those moments, before i can walk to the cabinet
and pop my pills
i hold the big, rugged floral pillow on top of my body
close my eyes
and think of you telling me, “hey, it’s okay”
and sometimes it gives me the strength to slink off of the couch
and wobble to the kitchen.
i can’t tell you how, sometimes, when you’re gone
nothing fills the void where you used to sit
on the edge of my messy bed and tell me
that it’s okay that i got drunk again and maybe i’ll do better tomorrow
i have done better so many tomorrows to date
and i regret not spending one with you sooner.
i can’t tell you how when i think of home i think of nowhere
i can’t tell you how when i think of someday i think of nothing
i can’t tell you how much it means that
in these microcosms of time that i cannot visualize or trivialize or make sense of
where the clay won’t stick and the nails won’t enter
where there is only shimmering dust in a tiny tornado
and a lot of hope and mystery
i can’t tell you how much it means that you are around.
j.l.
Jun 11, 2016
Jun 11, 2016 at 2:04 PM UTC
Phenomena that can stare
into the eyes of humanity
through any blindfold.
Uncertainty.
A realm of questions
with no answers.
What is the color of a mirror?
In a perfect world
it would be a smart shade of white.
In a perfect world.
That doesn't exist.
Why is darkness correlated with evil?
When children blow out birthday candles
with a promise of another 365 days
and the hope of each day
being better than the last.
Does infinity have a limit?
Or does it simply meander
through an endless void
of universe?
Never striving to reach on point.
One goal.
One moment.
Are we really in control?
Living for a reason?
Or are we simply microcosms of infinity?
Apr 16, 2015
Apr 16, 2015 at 12:03 PM UTC
Sunshine
Rainbows
Unicorns
Copulating
Microcosms of childhood fear
Wonder
Wonder about sunshine and rainbows
Wonder about whether or not mythical beasts procreate
Wonder about your childhood fears
Wonder why I would be telling you to wonder
We can be wonderful together
Jun 29, 2017
Jun 29, 2017 at 5:10 PM UTC