"namesake" poems
a september bride her hollow sounds
fearfully echo on the leaf strewn trail
with intonations of a blushing bride to be
she makes a graceful vision
obscured only by her hamfisted collection
of undesirable father figures
who stand round the groom and brow beat
him with dire dreams
but his eyes are for her alone and
the tigers of her sensual rainforest
"lions, tigers and bears...oh my!" she whispers
into his eager ear with a sardonic grin
her hollow sounds both haunting and beautiful
they will stay with me as a soulsong
long after history has devoured her
namesake and words
a quick poet of the three line shoot from the hip haiku
pink glossy eyes all damp with remembered tears
she is the quintessential september bride
the long summer nights swayed her
the longer cold winter may undo her
but it is a girlhood dream that
she knits with papier-mâché knights and
bubblegum queens
she waits for me there
to officiate the proceedings
with a bottle of red wine and single red rose
wrapped in the tender notions of
loves sweetest kiss
Aug 25, 2014
Aug 25, 2014 at 4:55 PM UTC
Ah, the season of gifting.
Antagonist of year-long thrifting.
Tradition sadistic,
Materialistic,
Four quarters in pockets worth sifting.
This year I hereby proclaim
I shan’t be consumed by the game.
Cycle of curse
Purpose perverse
The namesake, an oversight became.
Christ’s birth did in fact begin,
Holiday distracted by sin.
Misguided it be
To forget idly
The sacrifice He made for all men.
We naively regard generosity
As holiday’s behavioral piosity.
But if dollars and cents
Are the tools of offense
Over shadow favor luminosity.
Water in Africa is *****
American child in poverty.
Politics aside,
Convenient homicide,
To enable the ills of society.
In the global economy we flaunt
Wealth by comparison, bitter taunt.
First world problems abound
Pass the turkey around
Central heating and air, what a jaunt!
What if this season we decide
To extend two palms open wide?
Sacrificing ourselves
Rather than stocking our shelves
Dying whispers echo true: “we tried.”
Don’t spend your money on me this year.
Not iPhones, not tickets, not Blu-ray or beer.
Instead know you can
Distribute more than
A snort, a lie, and a tear.
(optional conclusion to assist interpretation of last line)
Snort of derision,
Lies of provision,
Tears, even true,
Hardly subdue
Anguish deprived of tradition’s revision.
Dec 26, 2012
Dec 26, 2012 at 5:25 PM UTC
He has brutalised your beauty
And made you fragile.
Tears tremble on cobalt lashes
Bruised, bewildered
Goddess fallen,
Breaking as you fell.
You sought and brought happiness, warmth and abundance,
But lived, it seemed, a life of anything but.
Now facing a vindictive rage
You must remain stoic.
Your mythical namesake
Found no comfort or pleasure in retaliation, or revenge.
He is incapable of love
And will never back down.
You will need to find the strength to match
His angry bile with wile and guile
His iciness with fire,
Remorseful honesty shows him
A cold, and bitter liar.
Nov 27, 2013
Nov 27, 2013 at 4:34 PM UTC
the nature of this night
spreads its thin harvest upon my table
a gruel and water porridge feast
with the fanfares of her jaundiced hand
many more lined up with eager grin
for the warmth of paupers kinship
thin blanket wrapped round our shoulders
snow gathers at feet
she captures the moment on paper
the image of all of us gathered like when we were young
the grandiose illustration
with its brilliant colour fanfare with
jugglers and wine swilling laughing men blinded by drink
chorus line of female dancers who wear costumes of the hundred years war
lead the assault on the last bastions of the ignorance of bliss
all descrying that we can ill afford to be sleeping
while empires are built in our namesake
the so daintily shod soldiers whos feminine wiles misunderstood
have taken over the dancehall beneath us
and have taken up song
the grandiose illustration
caught by her pen on sketch pad
has leanings to the Marxist revolutions
and philosophys of the rhetorical
but in the end we join them and
drink the port sing the song
a thousand years of tales to be told
in the eyes of a single girls sweet thoughts
epic landscapes filled with noble men and storybook girls
the grandiose illustration
shows the two of us on the beach
with the sun racing down to touch the high towers of miami
and fill the laughing joys of thouse who toss and
tumble in the breaking waves
the nature of this night
in one small corner of the illustration
a simple window with the shade drawn
that says goodnight
Feb 6, 2014
Feb 6, 2014 at 1:03 PM UTC
I adore women
I refuse to apologize for it
I like the way their voices squeak in the upper registers
I like the fashions
I like the makeup
I like the aromas
Not the silly runway catwalk Biz that relegates them as awkward mannequins
adorns them in the impractical
and cloaks them in the absurd overreaching of the tired clamoring for something
new and unique
that which exploits their lithesome anorexic perplexing job requirement
I like the way they can shape shift, alter and assume new identities
I like the fact that some have mood swings and ***
I marvel that they can give birth
I like being aware that their 'water-weight' make's them grumpy
I'm astonished that they innately ovulate with the cycles of the moon
and that the Huntress Diana inherently acquired her namesake
Doesn't bother me a bit that "it's a lady's prerogative to be late"
or that opening a door for them is considered 'sexist'
I was raised with a sister and a mother
with lace and dainty frilly things
I caused them a lot of aggravation and consternation
I think they enjoyed it - nonetheless
somewhat
I refuse to apologize for it
May 13, 2013
May 13, 2013 at 12:00 AM UTC
So I've been thinking lately
What if
he's on a journey out to find himself
reading Hemingway and Emerson (his namesake) and roughing it at Walden Pond
smoking foreign cigars
and staring deep into coffee
to decipher the meaning of the swirls of smoke
that rise from it in the morning?
What if
he's asking ChaCha! the meaning of life
or trying out a new brand of shampoo
or attempting to set a high score on Tetris
or out burning down bridges just to see them ablaze
or doing volunteer work,
reading to disabled children at the local library?
What if
he's decided that this is all too much,
that he'd prefer to live in anonymity
trading his celebrity for secretarial work or carrot-harvesting
or breeding exotic fish
or renting out those inflatable jumping-castles?
What if
he's tired of all those books in Technicolor
all the paparazzi out to get him
and commercialize his favorite beanie
just because he's on vacation because he pulled some strings at the office
thus catapulting him into some movie set halfway across the world?
What if he's sick and tired of them hunting down his girlfriend
his dog
that random wizard mentor guy that's a deadringer for Dumbledore?
What if he would rather sit at home and watch the Game Show Network
and change his name to something boring like John instead of living up to a thinker's expectations?
Or maybe just the opposite, he's just watching Family Feud to pass the time because he WANTS to be a thinker
but doesn't know how?
Or maybe Family Feud just makes him lonely because he doesn't have a real family,
just that evil guy with funny glasses and ****** hair and an awful Hamburglar taste in clothes?
What if he's decided he's on the wrong path
and needs to turn his life around?
What if Waldo doesn't want to be found?
Dec 22, 2009
Dec 22, 2009 at 6:05 PM UTC
Aaj ke bacchon mein hi nahin,
Apitu badon mein bhi sanskār,
Naammatr ke bach gaye hain.
Not only in children of the day,
But even the grownups lack it,
Ettiquette is just for namesake.
Andar se wo aadar bhaav gūm,
Aur haan gūm hai satkaar bhi,
Badon ke liye sammān gūm hai.
That feeling of respecting is lost,
And indeed is lost that hospitality,
Elderly are no longer given the place.
Sep 23, 2016
Sep 23, 2016 at 11:14 PM UTC
With Body pretzled up, skins converged to form
branches of rivers, mouth slack and frozen to
a permanent scowl of delirium and manners-gone,
as many swears dripped from those dry, cracked lips.
One of my mothers – gumshoed from the alley’s way of family.
“Get gumption, girlie, because everybody is full of ****
I remember that lullaby, “A tiny turned-up nose, two lips just like a rose. She sits upon my knee, she means to the world to me.”
I spy the scar on my pinky finger from her cigarette.
Could the King be witness in the Room?
Were those buttons of hollow wood over her eyelids?
Wrung of cries – we didn’t see that coming,
though we heard the flies.
And Age’s stumbling rattle through the hallway.
Do you know who I am?
Do you remember me?
Should the window washer come another day?
This stubborn sovereignty over what is reality – the root beneath the porch, the fog on the windshield.
Loosen the grip on this natural plane,
Please --
Woman of my Childhood, harvester of my manners.
Stand until the grown-ups sit.
Look away and bow your neck.
This was called the boxing match between Industry verses Inferiority.
Not child through birth – no –
but life spawned by those
strung-high fists.
There’s finality in this phone-call.
I heard it happened an hour ago.
Treading grievances and grimaces, picking through a flowerbed only to stroke the weeds.
Lifting boxes of Lead from reality to the Bridge of Dreams.
Frankly, I stole the gumption from your knotted mouth and
still cannot cry.
In a splinter of reason – I cast out the fundamental jibes of sacred hope.
That promise held between dog and owner during business hours.
Except there can be no homecoming.
The sickest liquor on the alleyway fence.
May 31, 2012
May 31, 2012 at 7:08 PM UTC
I rolled in Michigan
strapped to a kayak in the namesake lake
vision obscured by freshwater
I plunged under the blue surface
out of my element
panicking as a fish out of water- in water
I reached for the release and
missed
but grasped swelling panic
Dread thoughts of
the end...
my family…
last words…
Still submerged- somehow a semblance of sensibility surfaced,
unlike myself
frightening fantasies flitted-
shot like skeets in the sky and
peace prevailed.
I stretched through the moist blindness,
found the release- my sweet release.
Gasp air.
Freedom from death's clutches
I see
my unpreparedness for death,
ability to survive
Fifteen seconds to find my inner calm, my inner panicked strength, the depth of my composure
fifteen seconds for reevaluation
Fifteen seconds
submarine style
to find who I really was and am
Arguments are made
that safety and tranquility are the best mindsets for
education
But,
safety lacks motivation,
tranquility lacks demand,
Life's trials breed introspection.
Jun 22, 2013
Jun 22, 2013 at 4:51 PM UTC
the protea magnifica
or queen protea
as it is also known
is a south african flower
of which until recently
i was shamefully unaware
a sprawling shrub
of varying height
dependent upon
influences of its growth
but a hardy plant
nonetheless
able to survive
and to thrive
under the starkest
of conditions and habitats
its flower is not delicate
like many others
but a symbol of survival
of resilience and growth
its boldest of blooms
an array of brightest hues
sending a message
of strength and power
courage and hope
yet the tightly held
closed cup of its petals
suggests a reluctance
to be noticed
an uncertainty
of it's own true beauty
perhaps in comparison
to its kingly namesake
Jul 15, 2023
Jul 15, 2023 at 11:14 AM UTC
Pistachio, when I first learned your name
It was long and reminded me of nothing—
The always-full ice cream bucket,
My third grade class and asking if your namesake
Came from a tree or a bush.
Feb 12, 2010
Feb 12, 2010 at 7:49 PM UTC
I remember when you first said my name.
It was like any other person saying it.
Except that
Which each passing time
It became more and more like a secret.
Something only you and I shared.
You would look at me,
In the eyes
Blue locked on blue
And say “Emily”.
And with each passing time,
Your mouth turned up more and more.
And then less and less.
I remember the last time you said my name.
It was like any other person saying it.
Except that
I had never wanted to be called anything else
More than I did in that moment.
Jul 25, 2011
Jul 25, 2011 at 9:26 PM UTC
A storm took your name
And wrecked havoc as I slept
And thought about you
Sep 14, 2014
Sep 14, 2014 at 9:11 AM UTC
...Frankenstein...dear Frank--green with disparity, confusedly amongst parts that
were sum...O Frank--never a creature under no sun could sow dark's reaping so.
Yours is a terrible Art...meat thrown to a black and white world.
Towering clumsily...wobbling that meat before a black and white world...you're
already spoken for by the precedent of your freakdom.
Your wear is worse than the ******* child moon wearing the sun's clothing...
O Frank!
Your awkward beauty...is as winter's very struggle towards spring--only to die upon
your feet while thawing.
You were never cerebral enough to have a clandestine affair with nothingness in motion...
your body's your confession.
You were struck alive...not dead...ALIVE...ALIVE--thunderously so, called an: IT!
Runaway automata...the collective unconscious of humanity's hypnotized waddle--
O Frank...where is your Heaven...where is your Hell?
You can neither be showered by, nor Fall from grace.
The longest-drawn pity to never be taken...O...the duration of your life...YOUR LIFE!
..."ALIVE"..."ALIVE"...cried your euphoric namesake...God taken step of, to play God to thee--
as such...yours is a terrible Art.
One of living-death...O Frank!
Konstantinos Mark
Oct 24, 2013
Oct 24, 2013 at 7:32 PM UTC
© 2010 (Jim Sularz)
Heave ** Aweigh, the ship’s anchor,
lads, climb-up, the tall ship’s masts!
Unfurl the sails white billowed,
all pray, the stiff trade winds blast!
Men briny from white-capped oceans,
Terra Firma’s, a distant quest.
Feel the salt spray, stinging the faces,
of the ship’s crew, tossed fore and aft.
We’re compelled to sail the oceans an’ seas,
with a plumb compass an’ a ration’s tack.
Tattoos an’ a gypsy squeeze-box melody,
the gale blows on our ruddy backs.
All hands scramble, to assemble on deck,
for the Captain rings-hard a muster.
Churning waves in our rudder’s wake,
luminous, with a strange glowing luster.
Land ** A calm, deep harbor,
a smoke filled pub an’ a bonny lass.
But the sea’s, our only steadfast lover,
an’ she beckons, to call us back.
We stand proud to call ourselves - mariners,
Men without fear, we tame the high seas.
Bright stars as our comforting beacons,
fair weather with God’s given speed.
By moon beams an’ dawn’s faint daylight,
we’ll turn our ship’s namesake back.
Heave ** Aweigh, the ship’s anchor,
Lads, climb-up, the tall ship’s masts!
Jul 8, 2012
Jul 8, 2012 at 5:06 PM UTC
Amidst the hordes, such mighty wroth:
my bloodline doth elate.
Posterity hath, though, borne aloft
my banner as the Great.
Springing forth my namesake there,
outhewn from Hellas’ opal,
that city which was brought to bear:
her name Constantinople.
For years to pass there was beholden
Thy glory all so clear.
The Great City’s holy site, golden:
there stood Hagia Sophia.
Therein however I bade Thee
to grant portent or sign.
Thou didst forsooth bequeath to me
one sacred and divine.
I stand upon the ever-brink,
Rome’s beauty lies thereunder.
Thy truth through me starteth to sink,
it striketh me like thunder.
The sun blindeth my weary eyes
as I gaze over yonder;
whereupon thou revealest me:
In this sign, you will conquer.
Jan 31, 2018
Jan 31, 2018 at 2:41 PM UTC
~for Bex~
in the flesh, not really, but I was...
ordered five bone china coffee mugs for you,
from the Artists Gallery, all scenes of nature,
painted by Canada’s Group of 7,
to go with the Lawren Harris mug,
'Lakes and Mountains'
from which I am currently sipping
for when I thought of you up north in Ontario,
I thought of my mom,
who was Toronto born and bred,
and the caramel oranges of fall
that have not yet arrived
in northern Manhattan,
but have already peaked in Ontario,
in late September
I smile,
while voyaging on the curving line of thought perusal,
at all the things that have already peaked,
someplace else,
and that have may yet, be late, arriving in my life
and I dream of:
all the poets who
I will never meet,
the living and the dead,
all the poems,
I will never finish, perhaps, n'ere to start,
never chance to speak, or chance to peak
all of you, sipping, from those real mugs of porcelain,
that are soon to arrive, via an imaginary railroad,
running on creosote stained ties of caramel orange,
built by a namesake, that I can no longer imagine,
but whom I knew
so well in my youth
my mug is sadness filled by
those stillborn verses that will never chance to peak,
but am comforted by the knowing,
as long as there is freedom to write,
that there is hope for one more poem
to be imagined, sourced from deep within,
drawn from the cool well water
of happy wishing
Oct 30, 2016
Oct 30, 2016 at 1:15 PM UTC
did you know that
there's no such thing as
a perfect name?
one day i'm catherine
and in the next breath, esther -
boudica, scathach, chiang;
virginia, sacagawea, rosalind.
i change like the ocean
so don't try to name me.
don't try to limit me.
you cannot keep me
from being great.
Jun 18, 2015
Jun 18, 2015 at 2:36 PM UTC
They gave me a name that didn’t suit me.
What’s funny is
the universe recognized that
before I did.
She paid me this compliment:
*“There’s too much person to you.
You can’t be tripped up with so many
syllables in something so trivial as a name.
Less speaking, more breathing,”* she said.
Four reduced to two.
Now I can exist in half the time.
I became “Bitsy.”
Which means I’m associated
with certain things.
Mainly tiny spiders
and brightly pattered swimwear.
It’s easy to be irked by that, you know.
Yet, I smile and take it,
because they raised me
with the patience of an idiot.
I get automatic cute points
just for introducing myself with a name like this.
Newcomers get giddy,
like hearing my name is equivalent
to receiving a box of kittens.
I always try to drop an expletive or two—
I just don’t want them
to get the wrong f#@%ing impression.
“Less speaking, more breathing.”
I instructed the universe
not to do me any more favors.
Aug 22, 2013
Aug 22, 2013 at 1:55 PM UTC
i've always wanted to apply for CSSSA,
but i'm too scared the rejection letter
will be the future shades of senior year
when i finally hear back from the mailman
who took my essays a year ago,
all bundled up in pre-approved envelopes,
stamped, addressed, received, thrown aside.
-
but that's not for two years,
so i don't know why i'm worried.
-
i've always wanted to do something,
not make something of myself,
even though the verb is the same in
spanish, with a reflexive difference.
-
in regard to this, a wise twenty-something (contradictory)
once told me to let myself feel instead of worrying so much:
"to put it less eloquently, feelings are like **** FEEL 'EM."
-
apparently i haven't felt in eight months.
-
so maybe in compensation,
i will apply to CSSSA,
though the deadline is the 28th,
and the assigned portfolio demands
an utter lack of procrastination--
not my strong suit, you could say,
as a month of homework is still
sleeping in my bed.
-
**** it's all due tuesday.
-
also, while walking home
i saw a norse god namesake
on a balcony-asgard, wreathed
in the byproduct of his last smoke,
and somehow, despite my inability
to feel, that just made me so sad.
-
Feb 3, 2013
Feb 3, 2013 at 12:50 AM UTC
my baby’s gonna have a loud mouth
like her namesake, katla, boiling lava lips
the two of us will scale those green spines
or ashy asphalt flumes
my baby’s gonna spit when she’s not fine
and fight the men twice her size
she’ll take them up the river
moonlit collarbone show, and pink wine
but my baby’s gonna be a strong guide
she’ll see the world, spreading magma riots,
smiling, soaked in smoke,
erupting all the time.
Jul 7, 2015
Jul 7, 2015 at 10:14 PM UTC
I believe in myths.
Every naturel blonde was first someone else. By that I mean, she was known as Norma Jean, maybe Katy, in high school (see reincarnation below).
My teenage glory days, when I was the king of cool,
will revisit when I am 75 years old, the man-in-demand (wink), wearing his lucky wide cord corduroys and letting my man-bun,
all the way down, at the prom in the senior citizen home, getting lucky, say once a month...
God, yup, after all, ***** cometh to me regular-like,
when he needs a poet~father to take his confession,
and pays me most excellently for refusing him forgiveness,
with the most excellent poem suggestions or lesser valuable things.
Love at first sight, of course, happens to me all the time,
twenty, thirty times when I am walking home. I tell ya, it's exhausting, the stress of living in the big city
Not only will I win the lottery someday,
will take down both, Powerball and MegaMillions,
in the very same week the odds for which
there ain't enough zeroes in HP's servers. (See God, above).
Reincarnation. One time they Hale(d) and then hanged me (my "namesake") and I said: " I only regret, that I have but one life to lose for my country." Well, the selfies all show oh-boy-o-boy, was I ever grinning and winking.
Only boys are bullies, girls get off easy, by getting called
just mean.
One day my city's teams will win the World Series, the Stanley Cup, the NBA Finals and the Superbowl all in the same year but only after I die and me, well, only after they will have buried me in Wyoming or France, just for spite, and nobody will hear me screaming.
My children will speak fondly of me even after they find out I died broke, well maybe not fondly, but they will most definitely call out my name, regularly.
After my demise, all the typoes in my poems will magically disappear.
All these good things will come to fruition, because I am a believer, and walked the humble path. The autopsy will also show that my tongue was permanently stuck to my cheek.
Sep 22, 2017
Sep 22, 2017 at 3:32 PM UTC
You share a namesake with Aphrodite,
the Sea,
that which sparks a flame inside me,
seeks to turn the waves to steam,
to drift away as if a dream upon waking,
to see that there truly is no breaking of hearts,
and to start the making of stars born to be us
through combustion.
The dust and rust on a cosmic sword
without a sheath is bequeathed again to the sea,
and the back and forth of wave and flame
rocks us to sleep;
where the steam weeps
and we meet.
Sep 6, 2013
Sep 6, 2013 at 2:30 AM UTC
Gripping dripping smearing love.
Over your eyes!!!
Over your ovaries, where babies, your clutch.
There's no time to nest,
Resist!
Resist
,
be the diode, resistor to heart plunge.
Plug up the sewer.
(more like a catacomb)
My heart's in the ****** cake.
The smell, Cytotoxic invades chemical response conformation.
We; bitten, by fangs of silicon,
the world takes us away from ivy
grown homes,
torn then seamed up jack o' lanterns always smiling orange.
Have you ever grown up from being 11?
It's the saddest thing you've seen.
You see a fledgling,
altricial,
awkward,
gawk/cock,
turn from a boy
to a lady.
Plump. Or . Musculate.
Slowly they regenerate their lady parts.
Regardless of gender.
Have you seen them bleed?
Some bleed white tears that burn the urethra.
Some, never grow up.
Transmogrified they call it.
Never to be beautiful again.
Angst entangles, ensues, makes doubt
pubescence is for flowers and hairs.
Namesake.
5th Grade.
Curious formation, curious nature
It's as if we are stalagmites of the future,
We decorate walls or cave ceilings to perform our correct action.
Too bad our self image is always garbled, confused by our refraction.
NEVER GRADUATE COLLEGE.
Mar 31, 2013
Mar 31, 2013 at 5:25 PM UTC