"misshapen" poems
Give them to me.
All the pieces of your broken heart.
Give them to me.
I'll take them.
All the rough-hewn misshapen bits of your shattered dreams.
Give them to me.
I will take them.
Give them to me.
They are wanted here.
All the parts of your misspent childhood. All the regrets of ticking seconds behind you.
Give them to me.
And we will build a cathedral. A stained glass window of who we are as tall and as beautiful as it should be.
Let me have them.
And we will make a mosaic that stretches as wide as the sky. Showing every color your heart gained from the bits and pieces left on the ground.
I will take them.
And forge a sculpture of how beautiful the ideas are that we cast out in our failings and we will cast it in our failings.
Let me have them.
And we will ***** a monument of all the small things in the shape that you remember them.
Towering. Looming. Striking. Beautiful.
Let me have them so we might bind the words said and regretted, (or worse) left unsaid in leather and call it scripture.
Our Psalms. Our Proverbs:
*“The tip of my finger dangles like my tongue. Wanting to touch something beautiful.”
“If it were not for him, it would have been us.”
“You were all my brightest colors.”
“I wish I were more like you.”
“I wish I were less like me.”
“I am sped.”*
And we will read them at dawn like litany.
Stretching our voices to the corners of the universe. Asking for the wishes you make when you are scared. Or alone. Or both.
That we may take them.
And make a blanket.
A blanket to cover our childhood and let it rest at last.
I will take them.
All the parts you no longer want.
Give them to me.
Because they are what make us beautiful.
Give them to me.
That I may forge them into pitch and feathers and craft mighty wings.
That I may take flight from your worry. And soar on the updraft of your misconception.
Give them to me.
I will take them.
Because I would rather burn like Icarus than to have never dared to fly.
May 5, 2014
May 5, 2014 at 4:02 PM UTC
Stress overwhelms you
Like a fire envelops a piece of wood
It spreads too quickly to stop
And once it's over
There is nothing left
But misshapen remains
Nov 25, 2014
Nov 25, 2014 at 10:04 PM UTC
I've never understood the concept of being unique
'One of a kind'
'Irreplaceable'
'Nothing can take your place'
Doesn't it all sound lonely?
Every 'unique' person leaves a 'unique' void
It's like trying to finish a puzzle with the wrong pieces
In the end the piece ends up misshapen
From years of trying to fit in someones unique place
A place where they just don't belong
Mar 9, 2015
Mar 9, 2015 at 6:39 PM UTC
I see you, monster...
In your sockets bore dead, dark eyes
They hold the blackest of stares
Nebulous swirling pits of demise
Thin lips would spout the most sibilant of hisses
Every so often would curl into a snarl
Dry and chapped, almost unworthy of kisses
Large, rough snout, jutting out like a crag
You sniff around tirelessly for easy targets
Preying on the unsuspecting minds of those under your flag
Tapering chin, sprouting strands of coarse hair
Unkempt and gritty from your last meal
Decaying teeth, crooked due to little to no care
Your face is cratered; tales of trying adolescent years
Wearing a face only a mother could love
Expressionless but it screams out your fears
Ugly jointed limbs that grew out of sync
Disproportionate, misshapen, grotesque
Little noggin with sparse hair, packed within, a brain that thinks
I hear you, monster...
As you stalk your sleepless nights
Nocturnal ambience be your playground
Lurking in the dark; places with no light
Bulky, heavy feet but deft and silent
Can barely notice when you're up and about
As if cloaked yourself stealthy, with steps ever transient
Respire you do, exhaling breaths so gnarly
Ingesting good air, converting into fervid, loathsome notions
With which you paint a portrait so ghastly
I feel you monster...
Deep within the recesses of my heart
Destroying and distorting all that was pure
Testing my will till I should fall apart
You're but the twisted manifestation of conscience
Feeding on my trials and nurturing them into vile abominations
I despise that of you but I seem to have developed dependence
I see you, monster...
You're horrid and beastly, an embodiment of absolute horror
I await the day that you would finally dissolve
For I am weary of seeing you staring back in the mirror
Sep 18, 2014
Sep 18, 2014 at 9:23 PM UTC
Elephant in the room, shoo the hell away!
Don't stick around; I wish you wouldn't stay
Don't mess with my head, inciting all I feel
I don't need you here, I want to heal
Stop blaring in my ears, your noxious lies
I'm sick to the stomach with my pathetic cries
Resist flapping your gigantic ears
They simply just fan the rage in my tears
Quit blocking my view with your sheer enormity
Get out of my thoughts so better I could see
Halt your incessant skin rubbing against my sores
Chafing me raw on top of my existing scores
Pull out your pointy tusks, they poke and jab
I'm bent in many places; I don't need more stabs
Take your infernal rear out of my face!
I'm self-destructing, counting up the days
Cease your retaliation, leave with no protest
Go find and sit yourself in someone else's nest
Drop your intentions to stomp me broken
I'm mangled enough; almost misshapen
End this mindless rampage...please
Let me iron myself straight, in peace...
Dear elephant, have you gone?
Thank you for the blight of my time, you've spawned
Sep 17, 2014
Sep 17, 2014 at 10:16 PM UTC
i am sitting and pressing green paint in misshapen swollen dots on my nail beds and thinking what if i mess this up? i am notoriously bad at fingernail painting and i ruin it and i am also afraid i will ruin myself by loving you.
yes, yes i hear you like a train. my head is all railroads and oceans, but i hear you puffing and whistling he does not love you, he would not love you, he loves her. long hair hazel eye i am not her i cannot be that girl i do not want to be his girl
but i want him to want me
oceans
trains
Mar 4, 2018
Mar 4, 2018 at 9:59 PM UTC
..
Save from the hidden nests of birds,
it was the only one there...isolated,
like an isle...crested on the leveled
top of a gorge...its way down or up
was through a hand-carved series of
steps on its slope...at its front was a
curved gorge......one would think,
it was trying to cross over
the cottage was small, weather-beaten,
desolate......its wooden walls seemed to
have shrunk...its faded colors proclaimed
its age...its having survived past storms....
from its window, the stream was seen,
and heard, flowing on and on between
these two precipitous valleys.
light came from the sun...and moon,
music was provided by the murmurs of
the forceful wind, the continuous flow of
water on the stream, the stirring of the leaves,
the crackling of branches and twigs, the birds'
singing in the spring...the pounding of heavy
rains on its roof...and countless other hymns
of nature......the dweller had heard them all...
beneath a lonely moon glow,
when nights were cold,
there hovered low 'pon its aged roof,
rounds of layered fog...like a series of
steps....like a stairway to the sky...
fog slyly crept, and wilfully shrouded
the cottage.....it vanished from view,
the two gorges and the stream, hushed,
in the dark loneliness of that secluded
spot......their vulnerabilities, trapped
inside....misshapen silhouettes...
in light and in dark,
the whistles of nearing and departing
boats....were wailing, haunting calls,
piercing the peaceful calm of the valleys, or,
maybe, the stilled complacence of the cottage,
or...of the one living in that lonely cottage,
...lost, or gone astray, now weary and worn,
willing to be found...longing to be reunited
.......with the light and warmth of love...
the cottage, the gorges, and the stream
would be loneliest,
without the cottage dweller...
Sally
© Rosalia Rosario A. Bayan
August 27th, 2018
Aug 26, 2018
Aug 26, 2018 at 6:51 PM UTC
my clumsy limbs
held together with wet cement
taught rubber bands
struggle to bind my flesh
I am but a mess of unimportant matter
another aimless being to fill the space
unique for my twisted thoughts
hysterically pleading with a calm face
speaking warped words i do not mean
lips sealed like the lid on my boiling ***
dumping oppressed feeling into its contents
bubbling over sweetly burning my raw skin hot
blistered I hide behind my cotton disguise
my misshapen body covered in a gruesome sweat
sickening wounds throb for the sight of others
witness my plague of dry sobs and cigarettes
and so i shriek silently like my sister and father
hold my tongue saturated with sour emotion
my poorly constructed moth-eaten being
self sabotages in a desperate motion
Aug 31, 2018
Aug 31, 2018 at 10:48 AM UTC
Funny the things we recall.
Images that flash through our brain.
Some most vivid for me were of an old man.
Skin like creased parchment paper,
Lined and yellowed with age.
The veins visible just below the surface,
of a thin nearly transparent veneer.
Liver spotted flecks of red,
Charted paths from the toil of many years,
Palms callused forever from a life time of labor.
Big fingers knotted and misshapen,
The two inch tip of one gone missing,
Saw taken, at age sixteen.
Looking at those old hands, one could hardly guess
That still there remained gentleness in their caress.
For an old dog, or a little grandson in need of some
Companionable affection or parental love.
Those aged hands could also make things,
Toy sailboats, and wooden trains,
complete with caboose,
And guard cow catcher.
A cool flute whistle that actually worked,
He said it was like the Indian’s made,
Out Oklahoma way.
And he would know,
He cowboyed there.
His hands taught me to tie my shoes,
Open and close my first pocketknife.
Those same hands could become birds,
rabbits, butterfly's, all sorts of things.
When projected up on the wall,
Silhouetted by a naked back light.
His hands knew magic too,
Pluck silver coins right out of my ears.
His tired face matched his hands,
visual weathered, creased and
wrinkled road maps,
Of 89 years of rugged roads traveled.
Yet, his lively pale green eyes remained
forever fraudulently youthful prisms,
Eyes and spirit of a much younger man within.
But it is his hands most of all I shall remember,
Their imposing look and their reassuring
touches of tenderness.
I shall never forget my grandfather’s hands.
Dec 12, 2013
Dec 12, 2013 at 3:12 PM UTC
This treasure was discovered in a bamboo thicket --
I washed the bowl in a spring and then mended it.
After morning meditation, I take my gruel in it;
At night, it serves me soup or rice.
Cracked, worn, weather-beaten, and misshapen
But still of noble stock!
5.5k
It was her grandmother’s,
on her step-mother’s side,
not really a relative at all.
A hideous thing, it was,
crudely constructed yards
of yellowing ivory, with
giant creampuff shoulders
and a scratchy hemline.
The bodice was decorated,
sprinkled with dull gems,
crusty pearls.
The veil was, by far,
the worst offender.
A gauze with blotchy
brown stains, misshapen
holes, gnawed by rats.
She bit her lip as her step-
mother wrinkled her brow,
poking at the skirt, the train,
hoping it would burst like an
odd bubble or
mushroom at
any moment.
Oct 20, 2010
Oct 20, 2010 at 6:03 PM UTC
Ophelia, Ophelia,
voracious daydreamer,
how dare you
upset this delicate orbit.
your hands were the kiln
for my sloppy and misshapen mind,
but that was nothing,
relatively, compared to the way
your eyes reflected lost souls.
my dear, it's a catastrophe.
now when the moon chides me,
and the stars reek of your smile,
I run my hands across
the fronts of empty dresses
that you wore years ago.
Ophelia, Ophelia,
I recall the way your eyes shone
like the peak of madness
and how your shoulder blades
touched in a subtly avian manner.
how simple are the remnants
of your existence, of your melancholia,
I cling to them like a ***** to touch-
and I know they will bring you no closer.
stale shadows haunt my lingering eyes;
where you should be standing
I see only lost time.
Ophelia, Ophelia,
smoldering star in my hindsight,
stone in my chest-
I'm sad to see you go.
Mar 3, 2013
Mar 3, 2013 at 8:53 PM UTC
appearances
appearances
appearances
we aren’t what
we seem,
are we?
but we are
what we seem
aren’t we?
how would
you know about
the drug-takers,
the child-rapists,
the murderers,
the doctors,
the racists,
the writers,
the sports-fan,
the obese,
the rage-filled,
the hateless,
if they didn’t
tell you?
what are they but
average joes
until they go
rob a bank
or
paint a master-
piece?
even
the very perfect,
like the president
or
your babysitter,
is probably hiding
something
maybe they’re
a *** addict
or a pill-popper
or a communist
but if you look
at them and
see a good little
child
or
a perfect
example of
human being
I highly
doubt that’s what
they really
are
I say this
simply because
people are not
perfect
but
society
refuses to let
them be their
misshapen
selves
so we hide it,
like all good
things,
and pretend
like we have no idea
what they’re talking
about
when somebody
makes fun
of our favorite
geeky tv
show
and that’s us
all appearances
all lies
all that we know
Mar 17, 2011
Mar 17, 2011 at 6:32 PM UTC
My kryptonite?
That's a good question. I'm no superhero, no, my limbs too fragile for any crime fighting, any dark lighting of the night, I can't be a Batgirl.
But everyone still has a kryptonite.
I jokingly tell people ice cream, or inappropriate musicals, or turtles, or writing. Writing is a good one. I will do a lot for the sake of the written word.
But that's not what truly gets to me, what breaks me down every time.
Change and love.
Changing love.
It begins as perfection, as bliss on a stick, like a Firecracker Popsicle, delicious until you get to the part you don't like, or, when you get to the end. All you have left is this disgusting flavor in your mouth or the taste of bark, and neither is pleasant.
Everything ends.
That's what kills me. That is my kryptonite. Endings.
In so many facets, this thing kills me. They are my favorite part of every story, but my least favorite part of my life. They are what I spend the most time constructing in a paper, but they are the thing I avoid the most in reality.
I have been taught, in my life, that everyone will leave. There's abandonment sewn into my heart that I'm not sure can ever be erased because, unfortunately for me, its always been true. Almost everyone has left me, and I can't help but assume the rest will leave too, until I am alone.
That's what I love about writing. When you write, there's characters, a new world, a new life. You're never alone, and you're never yourself. When you despise who you are so much, its a dream to try on a different coat and live another life, even if its for only a few minutes.
Another flaw of mine; getting off track. We began on kryptonite, and then I turned it into a tale about the wonders of writing. Typical Grace, distracted about words. Words, words, words, but are they real?
They're real to me, so I guess that's all that matters.
I guess it all circles back to my original kryptonite. Love.
I love too much and get hurt too easily. Its the struggle of my disorder and the folly of my far too large heart, far too large for my little body. Sometimes I wonder if my entire body is one larger, misshapen heart ***** I fully realize the heart is not where emotion comes from, but I'm certainly not all brain. Heart is the only ***** that makes sense. so strong, so vital, but so breakable.
Maybe that's why they call it falling in love, because even Superman can't fly away from it.
Its kryptonite.
Dec 7, 2014
Dec 7, 2014 at 3:59 PM UTC
The Emperor's new shoes
Painted imitation leather, polished and treated with care
admired and envied, all eyes drawn, especially yours.
Look at me, envy me, look how I dance.
Look at my silhouette marvel at how I make you feel,
Throw yourself to me, l make you feel so true
We are elite .
Walking stronger, dancing so much faster
How fanciful I am you,free unaffected
How do I make you look and feel, the emperor's new shoes,
Legitimizing your nobility
But how I pinch, and how I hurt you, how contorted you’v become,
How you twisted and bent to fit with me,
contrived , like me ,our artificial natural .
Your need for me and performance reflecting my own.
This illusion , only granted by me.
You never really chose, i led you to believe you are some king.
Your allegiance will not be rewarded the crest has to fall,
You can not always dance for me .
Remember i am painted and cannot become worn ,
I will not become comfortable for you,
I will not become misshapen from accommodation and give.
I will not shine if you dull me, my radiance is painted ,
Only you my emperor masked our deceit.
Now i leave you barefoot .
Jan 27, 2014
Jan 27, 2014 at 4:11 PM UTC
Today, suddenly, I reached an absurd but unerring conclusion. In a moment of enlightenment, I realized that I'm nobody, absolutely nobody. When the lightning flashed, I saw that what I had thought to be a city was in fact a deserted plain and, in the same sinister light that revealed me to myself, there seemed to be no sky above it. I was robbed of any possibility of having existed before the world. If I was ever reincarnated, I must have done so without myself, without a self to reincarnate.
I am the outskirts of some non-existent town, the long-winded prologue to an unwritten book. I'm nobody, nobody. I don't know how to feel or think or love. I'm a character in a novel as yet unwritten, hovering in the air and undone before I've even existed, amongst the dreams of someone who never quite managed to breathe life into me.
I'm always thinking, always feeling, but my thoughts lack all reason, my emotions all feeling. I'm falling through a trapdoor, through infinite, infinitous space, in a directionless, empty fall. My soul is a black maelstrom, a great madness spinning about a vacuum, the swirling of a vast ocean around a hole in the void, and in the waters, more like whirlwinds than waters, float images of all I ever saw or heard in the world: houses, faces, books, boxes, snatches of music and fragments of voices, all caught up in a sinister, bottomless whirlpool.
And I, I myself, am the centre that exists only because the geometry of the abyss demands it; I am the nothing around which all this spins, I exist so that it can spin, I am a centre that exists only because every circle has one. I, I myself, am the well in which the walls have fallen away to leave only viscous slime. I am the centre of everything surrounded by the great nothing.
And it is as if hell itself were laughing within me but, instead of the human touch of diabolical laughter, there's the mad croak of the dead universe, the circling cadaver of physical space, the end of all worlds drifting blackly in the wind, misshapen, anachronistic, without the God who created it, without God himself who spins in the dark of darks, impossible, unique, everything.
If only I could think! If only I could feel!
Oct 20, 2013
Oct 20, 2013 at 9:58 PM UTC
You are the type of boy whose got saltwater in his bloodstream, bones like coral, and a heart made of driftwood – and at this point I’m just hoping someday you’ll wash up on my shore. I have seen the broken glass and beer bottle caps tucked in the folds of your sandy skin. I know how you left cuts on the feet of those who walked all over you. They were never sorry and you always were. Everyone else was too busy molding you into mangled and misshapen castles, only to stomp on them. Your soul was tangled in a mess of seaweeds and deep-sea debris. No one ever saw the brilliance of the sun's reflection in your smile that made you more dazzling than a million diamonds. But I noticed from the beginning that you were more than a temporary vacation spot or a convenient photo-op. and the shark-infested waters in your head shrank to puddles when you spoke to me in words like waves. To this day I can’t figure out what I did to deserve to be the only one you’ve ever allowed to explore your ocean floors, but I am grateful. I pressed my ear to your chest like it was the mouth of a conch shell, and heard the entirety of your ache without you saying a single thing. Violent storms churned in your belly at the hand of faceless puppeteers; made seasick by countless careless captains. But the sky cleared instantaneously the moment I came aboard. The same sun whose rays you’d always been wary of, now kiss your face the same way i wish to, taking utmost care not to burn. Your laughter is a school of fish filled with more colors than I can count and the sound of your sleeping breath is an ocean breeze. I am in love with the perfect shoreline curve of your mouth. Every day I find various buried treasures in your hidden coves and sunken ships, and I don’t think I’ll ever tire of discovering you.
- m.f.
Dec 1, 2013
Dec 1, 2013 at 11:14 PM UTC
Cascades were dripping outside of this moving vehicle
White noise, patternless and arrhythmic
like magnified sounds of nails on a concrete wall,
made by souls desperate to cleave their way to dryness
This public utility vehicle holds spirits successful in finding this temporary heaven
Weathered, soaked and almost drowned
like panting dogs that managed to swim ashore from a shipwreck
caused by the iceberg that is the eye of the storm
This safe haven holds champions in a world of misshapen men
A woman clutches tightly on a bag of lime and her ever waning youth
Tired, but not eager to face Death
still closing her windows to his cat burglars
that come faster than the downpour of Typhon's tears
A homeless child comfortably sleeps on the far end of this ride
His innocence tested by fate
Too experienced for someone his age
instead of just playing in the streets he calls home
The jeepney driver has eyes on the road painted by Van Gogh
Unabashed, industrious and assiduous
determined to serve,
provide for a family whose stomachs hunger not but they hunger for his return
This other dimension nurtures alien thoughts and parallel thinking among beat down men
I do not know them but I can hear the cries of their emotions,
their longing to be felt and empathized with
Their voiceless cries are guns with a silenced nozzle
shooting at anyone ignorant who curiously stare at this minefield of a passenger jeep
Dec 19, 2015
Dec 19, 2015 at 12:19 PM UTC
Some days I think I could love you
If the grass was green enough
If I didn't associate your musk with the flannel
I search for at every goodwill
At every thrift store
Trying them on relentlessly
Button up, button down
As if each little plaid square could shrink my ******* smaller
Stretch my back vertically
Aesthetically speaking.
Some days I think I could love you
If was smaller and wiser
If I could believe in nothing
Rather than the absence of something
Every time I close my eyes and pray once more
Beneath the shadow of the hospital-tainted shower curtain.
Some days I think I could love you
If I remember the piercing blanch
Of whiskey burning in the back of my throat
If I recall the tears in your eyes on a mid-May afternoon
Standing closely in a gravel parking lot
Telling me "See ya later" instead of goodbye
Kissing my forehead, nose, and eyes.
Some days I think I could love you
If you told me it didn't matter how prominent my collar bones are
Or that it didn't take the catalyst of pickling my insides
******* a lonely man while you were away
To make you want for me.
Some days I think I could love you
When you trace the lines of my waist
Asking me not to lose any more weight
When you tell me I'm beautiful
That you envy my heaven
When you ask to see me simply to hear my thoughts.
Some days I think I could love you
If you told me you loved me
If that alone didn't set you apart from the rest
Aligning yourself a whole in one with the others
Only greater.
Some days I think I could love you
If I couldn't recall the misshapen line
Between a large vocabulary and eloquencey
Between a man and a frightened boy
Between an eating disorder and self-motivation.
Some days, I think I might love you
If I could silence my mind of all the fragrances of adultery
If I could leap elegantly past the fear of such a concept
Without wondering how I appear to you compared to the rest.
Some days I think I could love you
If I could forget that you can't
If I could remember how to open my own hatch
Without fear, as the key
If I could remember to love myself.
Some days, I think I could love you
Some days, I believe it.
Some days, I don't.
Nov 1, 2012
Nov 1, 2012 at 2:58 AM UTC
I am from first impressions as shaky feet grip unstable rock. The path winds endlessly in front of you with unsure direction. Moss devours the cool, ancient limestone. A satisfying crunch echos with each determined footstep over dried and fallen leaves. Sometimes not knowing where you are headed leads to the best destinations.
I am from beauty everywhere. For what is not beautiful in it’s own dilapidated way? Certainly the sun, setting over silent waters in a rainbow of peaches and soft yellows, is astonishing. But is not the misshapen tree, aged and withered with time, as pleasing to the eyes? Time has beaten and bruised it, and it still stands proudly, bearing every single perfect imperfection, for the world to see.
I am from adventure. Standing somewhere that no one has stood. Seeing something that no one has seen. Living something that no one, not a single person, has lived before you.
I am from a rocky cliff face. With water slowly deteriorating nature’s well-seen splendor. It seems that too many have made their way into the daunting dark cave, squealing with childish delight as they fly off the unsteady ledges. Yet every time you see it, it manages to feel like you are the first one who has ever set foot in that cool sea-cave.
I am from blend out, not in.
I am from water and time carved boulders. Not one the same as the next. Beaten by the endless undulating waves from an ever-full lake. Each one has a story a few million years long. Each fracture, crack, hole, scratch and blemish is just another page to a book still being written.
I am from what is the difference between ordinary and extraordinary? That little extra.
I am from that little extra.
I am from a warm spring night. Just listen. Can you hear it? Every lonely frog croaking, every peanut guzzling blue jay singing, every leaf dancing in the tender breeze has a story. Every footstep, every tree, every rock, every grain of sand, every soft wind has a story.
I am from I never want to put down this book.
Sep 3, 2012
Sep 3, 2012 at 10:59 PM UTC
Everyone is born with a lock on their heart and a key in their hand. But my lock was broken. No one could fit their key in, for my lock had been damaged as a little girl and the key I was given had been misshapen. Until you came along, your own key and lock had been broken many times as a child and somehow the exact dent that had made it impossible for you to find a fit had slipped perfectly between my ******* and clicked. Unlocking something I never thought would unlock. And my key, a key that had only been used once before without success fit inside your lock with a click as well. Each lock opening to show emotions we had kept so tightly closed. And as I looked into your eyes, each other's hearts open on display, I realized that maybe our "damaged goods" are only damaged to the wrong people. Because for each other we were the exact fit we needed.
Nov 7, 2017
Nov 7, 2017 at 9:16 PM UTC
I could punch myself in the face
or I could grow up.
None of us, or any of this
is perfect; it's okay to not
measure up. Measure to what?
The beauty of life is
that the definition is all my own.
No one can tell me what it is.
I am sitting in the sun.
I can smile.
I forgive myself.
I love
myself.
This is the best poetry I could write.
The beauty of poetry is
that the definition is all my own.
No one can tell me what it is.
I am a pearl, however misshapen
I may be the world is my oyster.
It's mine. It's mine. It's mine.
I could get used to that.
Mar 14, 2012
Mar 14, 2012 at 10:00 PM UTC
I am being pulled from left to right
Every candidate claiming to be the light
Promising heaven, earth and even twilight
Once they win they forget you and take flight.
Gun to our heads by the future leader
'Better vote wisely or become a casper'
Ballot boxes filled with forged paper
Hold your peace or it is a recipe for disaster.
If wishes were real, beggars would ride
Voted for a meal, while the politicians lied
my country is a deal, sold as a cheap bride
All they do is steal, it's time to say goodbye.
You know we are back to the embers'
there's always someone's blood they forget to remember
Misshapen chaos of well-seeming forms!
We are in a fine mess with honorable villions.
Sep 9, 2018
Sep 9, 2018 at 4:36 PM UTC
Let us not talk philosophy, drop it, Jeanne.
So many words, so much paper, who can stand it.
I told you the truth about my distancing myself.
I've stopped worrying about my misshapen life.
It was no better and no worse than the usual human tragedies.
For over thirty years we have been waging our dispute
As we do now, on the island under the skies of the tropics.
We flee a downpour, in an instant the bright sun again,
And I grow dumb, dazzled by the emerald essence of the leaves.
We submerge in foam at the line of the surf,
We swim far, to where the horizon is a tangle of banana bush,
With little windmills of palms.
And I am under accusation: That I am not up to my oeuvre,
That I do not demand enough from myself,
As I could have learned from Karl Jaspers,
That my scorn for the opinions of this age grows slack.
I roll on a wave and look at white clouds.
You are right, Jeanne, I don't know how to care about the salvation of my soul.
Some are called, others manage as well as they can.
I accept it, what has befallen me is just.
I don't pretend to the dignity of a wise old age.
Untranslatable into words, I chose my home in what is now,
In things of this world, which exist and, for that reason, delight us:
Nakedness of women on the beach, coppery cones of their *******
Hibiscus, alamanda, a red lily, devouring
With my eyes, lips, tongue, the guava juice, the juice of la prune de Cythère,
*** with ice and syrup, lianas-orchids
In a rain forest, where trees stand on the stilts of their roots.
Death, you say, mine and yours, closer and closer,
We suffered and this poor earth was not enough.
The purple-black earth of vegetable gardens
Will be here, either looked at or not.
The sea, as today, will breathe from its depths.
Growing small, I disappear in the immense, more and more free.
2.7k
Bare feet scuttle around on marbled floors
Painting muddy footprints on the white canvas.
Onlookers walk by in disgust, their noses in
The air as they click their heels in an effort
To avoid the unbecoming scene before them.
The feet are callused and shred, imprints of
Pebbles forever etched into the raw flesh
Of their nakedness. Was it worth it?
Yes. It should be.
It will be.
The gritty pavement is as hot as the
Sun, a burning star, a supernova lifetimes
Away. Their yellowed teeth are clenched tightly;
They are determined to stand despite the furious
Pain slowly eating its way into the
Soles of their feet.
Many scars and scratches from roads they have
Traveled are scattered across the bareness;
They are proud, for it is their art,
That is the measurement
Of their life.
At last, the final goodbye from the scorching day
Kisses their heads in a bittersweet farewell
And You see them smiling in the dark,
Blue eyes glowing with a brilliance You have
Never seen before. They are eager to
Run with their bare, misshapen feet
And jump with all their strength into the
Watery depths below.
You look around.
They are splashing in the waves,
The cool ocean soothing the pains
Of the day.
The corner of Your lip upturns with
A hint of a smile.
This is how they live.
And this is who they are.
Who then are you going to be?
Apr 10, 2014
Apr 10, 2014 at 4:31 PM UTC