"mishmash" poems
My couch,
Is death,
And avoidance is a second language,
Ask me do I speak it?
Conjoined twins,
Of misery and manipulation,
No calls,
Only cushions and customer's custom complaints,
From tomorrow,
The phone wont ring,
So I'll stay down this road,
Listening to headlines and headlights
Sing,
Moody music dwelling,
Where the lies and shame met in between,
Cut the cue, end the scene
The stage has been rebuilt,
We talked like teenagers,
And you told me that I've changed,
But the same,
Still that same number,
No more gap,
But your smile still kills,
Pain with palendromes,
We were here before,
And so again we,
Our fighting saying goodnight,
Street lamps in different cities,
Static.
I'm just fine,
Playing my part,
My mainstream maybe different,
But
Obsession has been overcame,
By the rising tide of a smile,
If the teleprompting signs shine through,
Meanwhiles and meditations
What can I do,
Except hope I'm reading,
The
Right
Script,
The couch,
It asks,
Where have you been?
I set down another,
chip.
Jun 13, 2018
Jun 13, 2018 at 1:41 AM UTC
A moment’s inspiration to grasp a building thought,
A panicked, surged excitement, now achieved, where once was naught.
In plucking crystal thought from the yonder crisp, blue air,
And coalescing mishmash into meaningful repair.
To seek a path of verbage realigning phrases bright
And feel the resurrection of creative works this night.
In pulling rich vocabulary from within the concrete hash
Concocting circumspection in this brilliant verse from trash.
Annunciating clarity and a purity of class
To haul yourself, abruptly, to get off your lazy ****
To burst forth in immaculate and spontaneous wordage clear
And blithely blow away your critics on their loathsome, leering ear.
Marshalg
11 September 2013
Sep 11, 2013
Sep 11, 2013 at 12:10 AM UTC
The Buddhists Teach
There is a door
Between the conscious and the unconscious
On the threshold of awareness
Where, from this sleepy place
Mind-door takes in space
A snap-shot of what’s around
The shapes and the sounds
Be it red, blue or brown
Sensory fed and felt and judged
A conceptual conclusion
Based on memory and illusion
Served up ofttimes with a bit of confusion
The sixth sense of inclusion
Transcending time and allusion.
Knock, knock.
Who’s there?
The unaware
From where?
Memory Lane
What a pain
Insane and mundane
Tainted and sainted
Familiar and unfamiliar
It’s the object and the flavor
It only makes sense
To bring in the other scents
Can you feel it
Through my poetry?
Because I have no other way
I’m sending you the sweetest berry
In bloom
And tea scented perfume
For some lazy afternoon.
Starting out so poetic
Descended into the prosaic
I’d like to stay in those high-minded places
Between the sheets of my faces
I’m at peace and war with myself
No one else.
I know I shouldn’t get attached
Shrug it off with panache
When I think about impermanence
Makes me cringe and
create another circumstance
A twirling happenstance
A devil’s dance
A devilish lance
It’s getting better
Like frankincense
Then it fades
Like the past tense
How does one let go
When clinging’s become a way of life?
A hunting knife couldn’t pry
My pathetic fingers lose
Holding on to
A hangman’s noose
I’d scream and rail
Holding on
To the nail
That pierced my travail
As life stomped and pounded
grounded me down
But, I wouldn’t let go.
Oh no, not me
Fool that I am
Was it a question of pride?
A fear of the night
The ego chasing its’ tale
Personal blackmail?
A forgotten memory
A mishmash
Lack of mindfulness
A Pandora's box?
Nonetheless,
I confess
A little bit of everything.
I tell myself
Baby steps
Baby steps
Baby’s need to let go
And fall and get up
Or they won’t learn to walk
Or talk or grow up
It’s baby talk
And baby steps
Knock, knock
Who’s there
No one
Then come on in
Naked and all alone
Rest on the threshold of time
Rest on the threshold of awareness
But, In all fairness
Don’t expect it to last
Such is the nature of impermanence
Only the bliss shall remain.
You can find it once again.
When you learn to let go.
But,
Don’t listen to my advice
As you can see
I’m still holding on for dear life.
Oct 9, 2018
Oct 9, 2018 at 12:30 AM UTC
The Mendacity of Beauty, Marvels of the Mundane
<1/1/2023 10:38 PM>
commissioned by Pradip^
<>
A special carnet permits the day,
though day itself unremarkable,
permissioning of a thousand,
even, tens of ten thousand
grasping new love poems
all mundane, all marvelous
an aborning of odes re the
vastness of sea, sandy sky,
multifarious penumbras of hewn hues,
vibrantly diverse, still, requiring the
expanse and pretense of “new”
adjectives and metaphoric
in combos recalculating
precisely, it’s the enormity,
of the difficulty of verbal capture
upon tablet of these natural treasures,
once, more, yet again, but in somehow in a new-never
quite-before conceptional~postulation-realization
I sojourn amidst both man made and natural beauty,
provoking, invoking, a steady stream of potable knowledgeables, performing as a hand-written-thank-you-note for the grace, the imagination of their mishmash existences addressed only to
“whom it may truly concern…”
I’m eager to confess that the poetry inherent in the
mundane, requiring not-so-easy mining, a sales taxing
innovation to capture the subtlety of less visible flecks of gold, that present a rarer challenge to the poet’s senses where glory abides in pyrite pebbles strewn and trod upon by most indifferently,
*ah, write of the marvel of the mundane,
**** dare you!*
<>
^Pradip: “writing of the mundane is mandatory for me…”
Aug 12 2022
Jul 1, 2023
Jul 1, 2023 at 11:10 AM UTC
I call it the Changeover;
like an analogue radio searching for a signal
sometimes it's clear
sometimes it's static
sometimes it's in between
somewhere between far away and near
somewhere lost in the middle
between Signal and Static.
Clear Day the signal reaches out its arms as far as the eye can see
and the ears can hear
and the senses can feel
and taste buds pop and linger
and revel in new experience
and comfort in knowing
and wrapped in wonderment.
Changeover Day is somewhere between Clear Day and Nowhere
struggling to tune in
backwards or forwards
or sideways or upwards
to something
to anything that resembles a signal
like hearing voices in another room
an argument through a wall
the indecipherable murmur of music
the clamber of ushered noise
the mishmash and cacophony
like a symphony of Morse code.
Static Day is dark day
there is no signal
no senses
no sound
only indeterminate fuzz
and the crackle of broken glass
and the foghorn
and the white noise
the confusion and delusion
the paranoia of shifting jigsaws
changing pieces that never fit together
can almost make out a face through the frosted glass
the smear like bird **** on a window
halfheartedly wiped with lackadaisical whimsy
and greasy chip shop newspaper.
In the Static there is no wind
no heart to beat
no empathy or sympathy
just
cold
hard
steel
out of place in a room of feathers and feeling.
You just have to ride out the storm
tell yourself:
it'll be calm soon
it'll be calm soon
it'll be calm soon
The Changeover
from Static to Signal
and the welcome return of voices
and breathing
and beating
and feeling.
Apr 18, 2016
Apr 18, 2016 at 7:40 AM UTC
Mishmash, that's my life sort of, I'm isolated
Companion, acquaintance, colleague
I left them, primly, nothing worth of trust
Not that I know, how many out there, bungled
It's been months since, I locked up myself
by my realm of picturesque creation
Zero delusion, illusion, hallucination
Not to tell no one, where am I
Glad to initiate, these, quarters of sanctuaries
Landed massive words, of
aspirations, ambitions, inspirations
lift up my life, soul, spirit
dwelling there, a hope
No matter how wrecked my previous is
I'm eager to take on new adventure.
Life must go on
Aug 30, 2015
Aug 30, 2015 at 8:00 AM UTC
I am often asked this question in comments, private notes and emails.
The short answer is: I don’t know.
I don’t know if there is an answer or if I’m the man to even try.
First, there are probably as many ways to write poetry as there are poets. I can’t imagine any one size fits all template. That is too horrible to contemplate.
Second, my method is actually a non-method. I will describe it, but I doubt it will be useful or transferable.
I have been a fanatical reader all my life. I still am. I probably read an average of three books per week. This has been going on for decades.
I have been reading poetry seriously for perhaps 43 years, including being taught how to read closely by some brilliant professors as an undergraduate and graduate student.
This has deposited an enormous mishmash of poems, sentences, images, phrases and fragments in my brain. Add to that mishmash decades of reading across disciplines, especially history, philosophy, religion and novels. Imagine that mishmash slowly marinading and fermenting.
From that random accumulation, without provocation on my part, poems emerge. There is no order to this and not much effort. I just channel what shows up. I do some retouching, but little serious rewriting.
And there you have it: my non-method. It should be obvious why I doubt it will be of much help to anyone else.
I can give a bit of advice, but only based on my experience.
Love words. Love to learn them. Love to play with them. Delight in them.
Read as much poetry as you possibly can. I doubt anyone can become a poet without doing this.
Be patient. It takes a while for the marinade to work. I’m 65 and I only began writing seriously eight years ago.
Find your own method and your own voice. You’ll know when that voice is authentic.
And then, sing out.
Mar 2, 2017
Mar 2, 2017 at 11:10 AM UTC
*I'm collecting each passing moment
with a pinch of salt and sugar
sprinkled in my memory*
One, two, three shakers full.
*but the sands of time keep slipping
through my mortal fingers*
I keep an empty jar on the top shelf.
*and everything else is a blinding mishmash
of my mind in the morning light.*
Please don't look under the bed, it's embarrassing
what I forget to think about.
Apr 7, 2015
Apr 7, 2015 at 10:55 PM UTC
I’m phased out to sepia, Pet,
The last cab on the rank,
My good looks and *** a memory, Sweet,
For which, I’ve you to thank.
One day blending through to next
Increasingly a blur,
Dissatisfaction total now
For things ain’t what they were.
Ignored by all and sundry
Quite invisible to they
Who converse in hieroglyphics,
Incomprehensible, I say.
Overtaken by technology
Can’t figure out the phone
Facebook, watch and wallet mishmash
Won’t leave us alone.
Confusion at the pace of things,
It’s all moving far too fast
Queuing up for life
Leaves us, inevitably, last.
But bitterness ain’t with me
For I’ve loved your churlish ways,
Tho we’ve sailed through life on cobblestones
That old sunshine warmed our days.
But now I’m phasing out to sepia, Sweet,
Cos I’m the last cab on the rank
One quick kiss before departure, Pet,
For which..... I’ve you to thank.
M.
Auckland
22 April 2015
Apr 21, 2015
Apr 21, 2015 at 11:43 PM UTC
after the rain
tide out
the sea
a sliver of mauve silk
in the distance
sand pockmarked
with footprints
like paintbrush stipples
a mishmash of patterns
naked to the sky
all pastel hues blended
with a slippery finger
ultramarine
into a violet yawn
into a lavender blush
into an apricot kiss
the mellow slosh of water
chatter
sun setting
as a pinkish glimmer
slithers over the beach
Aug 26, 2016
Aug 26, 2016 at 10:34 AM UTC
A conspiracy of co-existence.
Belittled in buckets of disaster.
A house full of twisted intelligence.
Decry the mind that writes for fun.
Fun and release.
No peace.
Demanding gang of children.
Sought explanations of the words that poets use.
Today's one was ominous.
The poet took it as a warning.
A threat of things to come.
And they both smiled and said..,
"You don't know what your on about."
A bucket of words this poet spills.
A mishmash of nouns.
Verbs with just a bit of adjective.
An adverb from time to time.
Occasional omnipresent onomatopoeia.
As if the poet doesn't know!
An awful lot of fun.
(C) LIVVI
Jan 9, 2015
Jan 9, 2015 at 7:43 AM UTC
He doesn’t understand that everything I take from him is a story, every word floating through the air, another line. He doesn’t know that my open mouth is the pen, my rolling eyes, the style. It doesn’t occur to him that he doesn’t know a thing about what his daughter might be thinking, because if he did, he would know what kind of novel she writes.
She is hardly a professional. She cannot fully comprehend metaphor, symbolism, allegory. For her, it becomes like another soul's voice, a trembling thing filled with a measure of ambiguity and a touch of wisdom, but still distant, still muddled. A lovely concept existing solely for the purpose of distraction.
No, for her, poetry must make sense from the beginning; it must make sense to everyone. If it doesn’t, then it is only words, a mishmash of thought and action made to look attractive. It is simple: if she hears a work is bad, it is bad, if she thinks a thought is stupid, the thought is stupid. Her reality is the true reality, thus, words are only a reality if they are hers.
So she writes underneath Bohemian pillows for now. The papers crumple in her hand at the slightest creak, lest the scrawling letters find her out.
Aug 10, 2011
Aug 10, 2011 at 8:54 AM UTC
There are things stuck on my mind.
Incomprehensible glueing, which
befog beleaguered fitting-in.
Becoming a mishmash, realization
bugs me. What to do with the cutouts?
Pictures of life instances that can't
be reconciled, just carried on and on,
blister and bubble within. No smooth
surfaces that cleanly represent
anything wholly identifiable are
depicted on bruised brain cells. Pity
it is. Pity I have become. Pity the
nitty gritty magazine photos slapped
together, an ugly collage called,
"Mercy Never Saw Fit."
It is an ugly art form, cutting up memories.
**** ****** survival, these themes
are hardly ever pretty. Art therapy
***** I'd rather paint a canvas black.
Mar 4, 2016
Mar 4, 2016 at 10:55 PM UTC
someday
will you walk into
my room
lie on my bed and
stare at the ceiling i stare at
every night
smell the
mishmash of
stale perfumes
on my clothing
play my guitars
read my books
touch my walls
clutch the afghans
i made in your
tight fists
and
cry?
or will you think
that somebody
made a mistake
and that mistake
wasn't me
leaving
but was you
staying?
Aug 14, 2016
Aug 14, 2016 at 7:26 PM UTC
<>
“I hear bravuras of birds, bustle of growing wheat,
gossip of flames, clack of sticks cooking my meals,
I hear the sound I love, the sound of the human voice,
I hear all sounds running together, combined, fused or following,
Sounds of the city and sounds out of the city, sounds of the
day and night”
Song of Myself (1892 version) by WALT WHITMAN
§§§
*Irony great, some say unto delicious, for my writing,
be a fusing of surroundings of silences, admixture of
inconsequential noises, atomic horn and geese honking,
sun rays speaking in tongues, my skin translating, both,
the sounds of the city, those of out of city, merged, both,
accessible, instant recall, stored for tongue tasing upon
these blank pages below, needy for wordy fulfillment,
copy and place these mishmash of cacophonous,
on a single page, simmer, blend and sauce, of course,
salt to taste, mine, author of this recipe being born,
born in the night, prepped by day, the lovely sounds,
kettle or pan, broiler, fryer, slow cooked on full flame
they are the melted butter sweetness crossing the span
between the body of the heartbeat, the ache of the brain,
shot out in rapidity, error’d and stain’d, their state natural,
for this mess of beans, collection of noises, stir my soul
where they contain’d, aromatic, fanatic, exotic, sticky hot,
only a singular harsh invades, the shrill of the voice human
this piece, this poem, a flavoring, a dish-not-to-be-repeated,
once consumed, spoiled milk, molded with Jello mold green,
back to hiding in place of unseen, of bravura masked as cowardice,
when crackle of easy wasted word cowards, daily spewed,
so precious these ingredients, these artful sounds, easy ruined,
chitchats of nothingness, parlous blasé wastrels, seize! cease!
take thy tongue, let it memorize all the oddities that fill your ears,
ecrivez! the cooing, smacking, the alliteration of snap, crackle, and
yes, pop! and if you can love the human voice, of that too, tho not me,
more beloved, the exterior symphony of kettle drum, soft cry of violin,
timpani tingling, guitar plucking, the voice of men, too oft abusing and abused by untruths, emboldened lies, they are the sounds
I love least, love to hate. a shrill disease, the TV liars...*
§§§§§
May
Manhattan Island
May 15, 2020
May 15, 2020 at 3:44 PM UTC
I have this list of things,
many ruinous, mundane things.
—2 cokes,
—1 bread,
—existential dread
I write them as they come,
tapped into existence by my fingers,
in a rush.
—People’s,
—Places’,
—Dog names
They bask in the otherness
that brings them together.
—Heartache,
—numbers,
—reminders
I feel protective of them,
the mishmash, ugly family of things.
—Mom’s birthday
—Father’s Day
—“I want to go away.”
Because I made them, and they know me,
the real me.
Jun 19, 2023
Jun 19, 2023 at 2:43 PM UTC
“Bang...Bang...”
said the clang
“Strum...Strum...”
said the drum
“Bong...Bong...”
said the flute
“Woot...Woot...”
said the gong
“Ding...Ding...”
said the strings
“Ring...Ring...”
the violins
Mishmash was the noise
till
“ “
said the voice
Apr 2, 2021
Apr 2, 2021 at 5:46 PM UTC
questioning my core competency
_______________________________
*man or woman, an irrelevancy,
we all believe that we possess
certain core competencies that
reflect our managerial skills, the
hows of how we organize and smooth
the daily mishmash of our otherwise
would-be-totally-hellish-lives*
minor stuff, that have the risk potency
of the skinny tail of the curve, where the
highly improbable
seems to happen as if regularly scheduled.
let the gas tank go to E, worse, unnoticeably,
but on a small isle, with no AAA, a single gas station,
in howling wind, and summer rain mael-strom,
forced to risk a brief trip over hilly terrain, fearful of
being gas poor on the stuck-side of the road, with
no one to call, no savior to summon, and my sense
of self, now shattered-glass on the side of the road.
*did I mention that the night prior when the situation
was yellow lit to get my immediate attention, I had
forgotten my instrumental human connectivity, my
Inshallah cell phone (1), at our dining out restaraunt,
making necessary a seven point four mile R/T detour,
to preserve my integrity, pride, communicability, and
the few(er) left, shards of my lesser antilles’ ego and pride.*
turns out that even on E, for long periods, you still
can go some distance for the car designers, all liars,
to nice people like me, leave a gallon reserve undisclosed,
for the vain and statically stupid of which I am a member.
more details of my ineptness, shameful, shall not be herein revealed, but when we meet, gladly be disclosed over alcohol.
*but it is now between the hours of nine and ten AM, and despite
imbibing 22.5. ozs. of Jamaican coffee, I return to bed,
having made it to the local station with gnawed knuckles,
and chewed lower lip,
lower the shades, announce to no one in particular, hello,
do not disturb, for-up-all-night-poet-ite, is exhausted the
exhaust of depression, for his core competencies have
been renamed, now and forever, his*
gored incompetencies!
p.s. E, having consulted the owner’s manual,
stands for more precisely ,
Empty Headed
Jul 16, 2023
Jul 16, 2023 at 10:14 AM UTC
a caper has the flower trifocal
and ties from the skies now leaner than haze
that romance mash on sand
only jasper there's midst of surfboard
the recumbent fashion of hers
and solely in this decampment
will bring safari to encampment
though she suffered triumph litany
with mishmash and hullabaloo
yet she'll pound the pipe
in her organic fangs
mays butter's a lot of bot
to ground those tears of Walloon
there a plunder from seaside saloon
Nov 8, 2019
Nov 8, 2019 at 10:10 AM UTC
You give me reasons to hate you,
But I am in love with the mishmash,
Held by the strings of your confusion,
Never, ever, to set myself free.
Oct 24, 2018
Oct 24, 2018 at 11:32 PM UTC
everything comes through the senses
even intuition is set to work by their prompting
images in dreams are a mishmash of cut up pictorials
gathered and reaped deep in the subconscious
imagination needs a starting point, this too through interaction
so what's left? everything is open to interpretation.
Feb 15, 2017
Feb 15, 2017 at 9:12 AM UTC
I believed in lots of things
When I was younger
I believed in a rosy cheeked, white bearded Santa Claus being the emblem of Christmas cheer with his gut busting ** ** **
Jollily delivering gifts and hope to those who trusted him and his eight reindeer to travel throughout the night, guided by nothing but the stars.
I believed in fairies and leprechauns being beckoned by the moonlight to foolishly mishmash my bedroom
Leaving a trail of multicolored dust to a gift that had been placed in a beam of moonlight the night before.
I believed in beautiful Princesses being locked away in towers surrounded by fire filled, demonic forests
As their Princes would gallop through the chaos on a stallion, slashing the evil with swords, rescuing the Princesses from their corrupt past.
I believed in a lot of things
That unfortunately aren't true
Now I believe in monsters that walk the Earth in human form, who make you feel safe with their glistening eyes, charming smiles, and tight hugs.
Now I believe in heartbreak so excruciating that it feels as if your ***** was a nuclear bomb just waiting to obliterate your body making your chest collapse into your sternum causing paralysis
Now I believe in no forms of magic aside from what I used to read in fairy tales long before I damaged my devotion and became tainted by the bitterness of reality.
I believed in lots of things
When I was younger
Jan 23, 2020
Jan 23, 2020 at 5:07 PM UTC