"panoply" poems
These are the hard times,
the long stretch of coal-shed days,
the corrugated nights of the antinomian.
I retch at the old doubts and the panoply
of dustbins clattering bright,
their watchers simian in the morning ****
I dress as though dredging up greys,
monotone deep in the GB tradition:
now sandpit tea with oil stain floats
silt dreads the mass of a seven year clay.
Four weeks of shadows drown wind in a storm.
And dreams of my cottage
in days of such calm and late summer happiness
as brought cut corn and strawbs
and horse manure in hugs
until like Zulu tribesmen the birds appeared.
Hunched with expectation
Spears smiling like baddies they rushed me.
I woke pouring sweat like a workhorse
the weakest of defences laid up
my face pulling cellophane over French windows.
Feb 6, 2012
Feb 6, 2012 at 2:07 PM UTC
a rich panoply
of umber and gold
contrasting against
the conifers green
a glorious sight
to behold
one of the loveliest
ever seen
Aug 4, 2012
Aug 4, 2012 at 3:07 AM UTC
From depth to height, from height to loftier height,
The climber sets his foot and sets his face,
Tracks lingering sunbeams to their halting-place,
And counts the last pulsations of the light.
Strenuous thro' day and unsurprised by night
He runs a race with Time, and wins the race,
Emptied and stripped of all save only Grace,
Will, Love,--a threefold panoply of might.
Darkness descends for light he toiled to seek;
He stumbles on the darkened mountain-head,
Left breathless in the unbreathable thin air,
Made freeman of the living and the dead,--
He wots not he has topped the topmost peak,
But the returning sun will find him there.
3.7k
To be imbued with the conviction that empathic listening is a panacea,
by the surreptitious, murmurous harbinger and his mellifluous words,
provoked brooding that my comprehension of his susurrous eloquence was a mondegreen,
when this scintilla of sagacity left a fetching ingenue crestfallen.
By the surreptitious, murmurous harbinger and his mellifluous words!
I adopted a propinquity to this furtive, ephemeral epiphany,
but when this scintilla of sagacity left a fetching ingenue crestfallen,
I discerned this lagniappe beleaguered our dalliance.
I adopted a propinquity to this furtive, ephemeral epiphany.
When she became inured to petrichor I knew my method pyrrhic,
and when I discerned that this lagniappe beleaguered our dalliance,
I vowed to rectify the imbroglio for my quintessential cynosure.
When she became inured to petrichor I knew my method pyrrhic,
and I ruminated that her insouciance was only forbearance.
I vowed to rectify my quintessential cynosure of the imbroglio,
and fabricated a denouement to return her to halcyon incipient.
I ruminated that her insouciance was only forbearance,
until hearing her state our conflation made each a moiety of our own panoply.
She fabricated a denouement to return us to the incipience of halcyon
with ineffable felicity, and I remembered with ebullience my inamorata's words.
Hearing her state our conflation made each a moiety of our own panoply
provoked brooding that my comprehension of her susurrous eloquence was a mondegreen.
With ineffable felicity I found ebullience in my inamorata's words
and was imbued with the conviction that empathic listening is a panacea.
Nov 26, 2013
Nov 26, 2013 at 4:58 AM UTC
fem in isms,
i imagine Sapphic eyes:
bad *** advert coruscates elite
fairness sensing slavish blind
in gestate calm affirm
in genders More numerous of Windows--
Superior--for Doors--
O harsh judgement foiled,
as a foil, as unknown truth
foil-doubles in the brow,
abject symmetry to systemize
a fertile lack of sterile barrenness,
i am a mediatrix rend,
nirwaan, hijra wonderment aside
from transemotion's ground swells
demeaning to be understood.
i celebrate and face the same
to be what paperwork tests being
normal being, freely chosen
atom each belonging moves
an asterisk of paths
of mutate art of nature social darwin maze.
i imagine Sapphic eyes,
ginko soft they pile up all cobble
memories themselves concretely
cloistered fame
spray of salty waves,
macho screams symbol
for dismissal ease
for tearing at an inner unsaid war
with lists offense of proper taste
to what posterity intends
an undulation womblike seeming nourish safety sounds.
i imagine Sapphic eyes
past
debauched
meanderings
where hyster-clarity rejoins its titular
and reliable escapisms curl the lips
of maleness found
here and there smile sneer love
i imagine Sapphic eyes
linguistic pirouettes
congest that wisdom nonetheless
the moment passed on to a
feigning truth in pretty rhyme
ornamenting time with fine meter fine
vernacular chimes peter in
to juggle perspectival paradox,
redichotomize the twilight idols,
resolve the conflict like a dawn
Aurora,
i imagine Sapphic eyes
running plastic with Alaskan wolves,
toga floats to snow
to let us see the purest fairness form
a ****** circle,
Hypatia ascends from tenebrous grave,
Impregnable of Eye is pregnant now
with Wollstonecraft revered
in liberation's fount
families held exemplar gaze of
Taylor, ****** Cady,
Anthony resanctified
to vote entitlement's
empathic origins, waxen mold
of nascent categories,
narrow hands spread wide to panoply anew
the manifest evolve in true unknowns
Nov 23, 2012
Nov 23, 2012 at 11:56 PM UTC
Inconclusive patterns
Form indented regularity
In flowing drifts
A panoply of tropical orchids
In my mind
A menaced distortion
Straining forward
Like an isolated image
In an old photograph album
Disclosing only the fragments
Of an insoluble puzzle
Its atmospherics of frequency
Disturbs me somewhat
It is identical to hidden speech
Or the resistance to time
Of exclamatory reminders
Of forward motion
That momentarily fascinates
Then falls through a hole
In a central vortex of vision
This is the architectonics
Of a thought
That can never be articulated
Feb 9, 2013
Feb 9, 2013 at 11:38 AM UTC
Acquiesce here my love
Ameliorate my heart
The assemblage of circumstance provides dulcet ebullience
An efflorescent dalliance conflated into cathartic becoming
My bucolic bungalow made upon your callipygous
A young Life’s denouement
Your evocative elixir fetching
An erstwhile emollient embrocation
Your eloquent fingers find their way to frisson
My felicitous chatoyant gambols in glamor like a halcyon incipient made ineffable by the look of the ingénue
The labyrinthine inglenook lagoon leisurely lithe
The murmurous daffodils wink at the insouciance of your beauty
A panoply panacea, the half shadow complete as an epiphany
Quintessential to feminine riparian resplendence
Your mellifluous voice, an opulent offing, the sumptuous summery soliloquy of an angel
Cools my soul like the smell of earth after rain
Your propinquity ripples the scintilla of my spirit
Your surreptitious smile like a zephyr quietly whispers
Its redolent seraglio sempiternal in my thoughts
As skyward gazes like saccharine gossamer lilt with the knowledge of our raveling juxtaposition
a masterful pastiche, the cynosure of divine revelation
Nov 5, 2013
Nov 5, 2013 at 9:25 PM UTC
Monsoon's panoply,
a dimpled day's
smile;
windstrewn
gulmohars,
a blushing brocade,
'plop'-ing droplets,
a lilting cadence;
nostalgia
pervading through
the silver-scented
puddles of a
paperboat's elation;
July evenings
and
trinkets of
yesterday...
.
Jul 21, 2020
Jul 21, 2020 at 10:15 AM UTC
Through the fields of stars and through the black forest,
And always West, trailing behind them a glowing disk,
With their frizzy coats and gnarling smiles; the heroes try to **** them with meteors.
Scattered shards of stone-fire bits, and the ashen paw prints evading it,
…and the horse shines upon Lykaon’s grave.
Howling are the wolves of Phanes, their number growling with the rains.
And matching windy howling screams, with hoots and hollers inbetween…
The great horns point at the wolven den, from which Fenrir’s gaze sees all man’s sin.
And the flames of Cerberus lick the hori-zon;
…as he descends into Hell’s cave,
And the Drakon hungry for lycanthropes, he hunts the plains of Hades;
But the cunning beasts avoid him while calling out to the moon, over their master’s grave.
Calling out over Lykaon’s grave,
Cyclopean-cotton collects, a smoking pillar covering guide. Obscuring the light and now they are vexed, as the Lykos struck down, they have died.
And their flesh is what the Drakon does crave, as they are devoured on the stones of Lykaon’s grave,
…at that place known as Lykaon’s grave,
Struck down with asters
and gobbled-up,
over Lykaon’s grave.
Wyrd-wolven stars at night
…over Lykaon’s grave,
A werewolf at,
The entrance,
To the cave,
And that King,
…who stands before Lykaon’s grave.
Jun 14, 2016
Jun 14, 2016 at 3:00 PM UTC
It's alienation across the nation.
End of the break
the whistle's blowing
The sailors going only a short way
to heavens
Subterranean souls, yet
extraterrestrial minds
(I want to have a magnificent, celestial time)
Someone is dead
True, someone might be
curled in dread, somewhere
But the staff chooses not to
voice these concerns
to their guests
They-are-all
transported
to a place where their veins
don't show up blue
under that black light, yellow
dans-le-ciel
It's a dalliance for souls
(They are all lost.)
A denouement for souls
(How much does it cost?)
Better question,
who sends them here
(Every zephyr is cold)
who sends them here
to die and behold?
If I had a friend
they would ask,
"Why so alone?"
Because I move with the
Tintinnabulation across the nation.
People saying the most
cringe-worthy---
Like the nation
I fear I have become
an imbrication
repeating myself in every
application
Working on that steamboat
the-band-wagon
isn't as good as it gets
Saccharine, summery lake
Do we, perhaps, need to escape?
And, perhaps, we can.
Dominated as we are
by Society, who is crying in need
Believes we must be a
panoply!
Apr 1, 2015
Apr 1, 2015 at 4:34 PM UTC
Along a winding meadow way
Circuitous and pebble strewn
Towards a brook and down a slope
As morning sun outshines the moon
An expectation clogs the air
And all about the flowers turn
To face a wave of tidal light
To catch ablaze but not to burn
A dusky fragrance lingers still
And gathers calm as mercury
In solemn spots beneath the boughs
It lies in perpetuity
The weaving breeze is powerless
And banished by the canopy
Abiding there a myriad
Of all of natures panoply
Drift along now deeper still
A clearing basks amid the shade
An isolated paradise
A lonely little woodland glade
Where early spring regains the lead
And ferns uncurl a welcome hand
The nettles bare their jagged teeth
And offer up a reprimand
A dragonfly takes up my path
And leads me into humid heat
She weaves amid the reaching grass
And safely guides my straying feet
Between the rocks and rabbit holes
That litter my vicinity
The creatures in my path retreat
All sensing my proximity
A fallen trunk now blocks my course
Like driftwood on the shoreline, beached
Its peeling bark is spiraling
And pale in the sunlight, bleached
Enfolded in its limbs I am
As if they shaped themselves to me
As though a plan of ages hatched
And formed a place for me to be
**
Dec 21, 2013
Dec 21, 2013 at 9:02 PM UTC
I shall come back without fanfaronade
Of wailing wind and graveyard panoply;
But, trembling, slip from cool Eternity--
A mild and most bewildered little shade.
I shall not make sepulchral midnight raid,
But softly come where I had longed to be
In April twilight's unsung melody,
And I, not you, shall be the one afraid.
Strange, that from lovely dreamings of the dead
I shall come back to you, who hurt me most.
You may not feel my hand upon your head,
I'll be so new and inexpert a ghost.
Perhaps you will not know that I am near--
And that will break my ghostly heart, my dear.
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Adobe skinned mimicry of light,
Piece of pebbly lunar surface fallen
To misty ******* reverse panoply,
Spiny spar of stellar tapestry
Nimbly navigating mortared limbs
In sultry sea-cellar ballet,
Rocky roofed conspirator of clams,
Swarthy pirate, silent smithy of shells.
Aug 13, 2010
Aug 13, 2010 at 10:12 AM UTC
I have loved this time of year since the moment of my birth;
Its panoply of colored leaves that flutter down to earth.
I’ve loved the cool and bracing breeze, the fruits of harvest grown,
the sight of geese in Vee formation winging their way home.
My treks out to the cider mill for a warm mug or glass.
The times I’ve spent reflecting upon this year just passed.
I raise the collar of my coat against a sudden chill.
I feel cold winter’s icy breath drawing nearer still.
Please delay the Christmas tunes another week or two.
Oktoberfest is barely done, so sit and have a brew.
****** me not with chestnuts roasting on an open fire.
Winter just means shoveling, the snow piled ever higher.
Its days: short, dark, and dreary. Its nights are long and cold.
So I mourn Autumn’s passing with its gifts of red and gold.
Nov 15, 2014
Nov 15, 2014 at 10:12 AM UTC
Flies in the haze morning sputter and splay.
Water drops from leaves rolling with the blown
Blades. The windy whoo of the owls fade,
Blue buried eyes cradled in the hollow
Trees, the swamps seeker is quietly rustled,
Wings of panoply, spangle-speckle the wind,
Over the flames of autumn, talons thistle,
Crown the dominion of the fall, fade in
Sporting meadows colour, till the dive,
Balm of field, marsh, all ignites. Lever pale
Winds finger through the leaves gravely
And rake as you raid, shoulders that burning vale,
Casualties of insect, the lemming song sings
Mouse and vole flash, dark, sparkles the clearing.
Jun 2, 2012
Jun 2, 2012 at 2:31 PM UTC
*Orange Loom you leave again,
conflating royal blue and red,
calm and warm like an old friend,
but you were grey once.
Your yellow lilt is surely just a show;
an ephemeral, vestigial truth.
Is that you, brooding on the horizon,
pausing for your latest audience?
Your powerful symphony flirts
with your stagnant players;
a panoply of mountains
-expounding their own soliloquies-
and trees as straw-roofed bungalows.
The ocean floods your eloquence,
like an impending harbinger speech.
Your tame light evokes an urge,
something Great, magnificent and pure,
but you will return in time again.
Some will wait but all will learn;
your author's notes, or are they burned?*
Jul 5, 2012
Jul 5, 2012 at 12:20 AM UTC
Behold merrily dancing eyes! moonrise-hued that delight in surprise,
Waterfall-cascading hair, sleepily stirring from a golden lair,
Heaven-glimpsed in leafy disguise, powerless to resist I surmise,
Elven locks frame an Eden-parterre, a majestic Springtime fayre!
Banished Winter’s-strife, unveiled a collective bursting into life,
Love, laugher and blossom hold sway, a dress-parade in full panoply,
Nimble Elven hands serve as nature’s midwife, their deliveries run rife!
This is no chaotic affray, but the Almighty order we never gainsay.
Their unbridled gaiety I watch in wonder, but I feel such an intruder,
Stiff limbed I shake off love’s-hibernation, a lifelong affliction,
Shall I be welcome I ponder, or will they flee in panic and anger?
Their joyous souls offer salvation, unleashed a grim determination!
A rapturous-smiled greeting! handshakes and hugs - our first meeting!
Blinkers-away restores my sight, from this embrace I must not take flight,
Alas! this is mere wish-dreaming, awake my face is aglow and gleaming!
This kinship-reverie serves to ignite, a joy and happiness so eager to excite.
Gone are doubt-swirling mists, hopeful lips plead to be kissed,
This alluring Elven-dream, lures me into passion’s fragrant-stream,
No more envy-bound wrists, as I fiercely battle loves-duellists,
Folly pursuit of Crusading esteem? no courage with a steely gleam!
My brow burns with the fierce rays of Summer,
My soul plunges into despair, with the decline and fall of Autumn,
My feet are mired in the cloying-clay of a sodden Winter,
But heart-contentment sings aloud with the uplifting beat of Spring!
© Robert Porteus
Jun 20, 2021
Jun 20, 2021 at 7:00 AM UTC
ive been brooding,
lurking your pages,
thinking of how we would conflate so well..
do you think of me?
do you ever ask yourself, "does she exist?"
i admire your cynosure.
& i hope my eloquence impresses you.
will we ever be?
erstwhile.. maybe
im tired of relationships that are evanescent,
so when you get here, will you be here awhile?
i will imbue my love in you..
it'd require you to have interest in a non-ingénue being.
a being so brilliant that you will start to question your soul and the size of your crown, my King.
you will not become jaded,
inure,
for i am a Queen of lagniappe.
i will have you twisting and turning at the quakes of my soul..
is your mind as beautiful as mine?
is your soul as deep?
can we be panoply, i hope.
can our love be sempiternal..
wherewithal of our love.
Feb 13, 2015
Feb 13, 2015 at 4:02 AM UTC
With words, with countenance, and with manners
I shall build an excellent panoply;
and in this way I shall face evil men
without having any fear or weakness.
They will want to harm me. But of those
who approach me none will know
where my wounds are, my vulnerable parts,
under all the lies that will cover me. --
Boastful words of Aemilianus Monae.
Did he ever build this panoply?
In any case, he did not wear it much.
He died in Sicily, at the age of twenty-seven.
1.5k
Flies in the haze morning sputter and splay.
Water drops from leaves rolling with the blown
Blades. The windy whoo of the owls fade,
Blue buried eyes cradled in the hollow
Trees, the swamps seeker is quietly rustled,
Wings of panoply, spangle-speckle the wind,
Over the flames of autumn, talons thistle,
Crown the dominion of the fall, fade in
Sporting meadows colour, till the dive,
Balm of field, marsh, all ignites. Lever pale
Winds finger through the leaves gravely
And rake as you raid, shoulders that burning vale,
Casualties of insect, the lemming song sings
Mouse and vole flash, dark, sparkles the clearing.
Dec 14, 2013
Dec 14, 2013 at 1:24 PM UTC
You watch his tired eyes and matted hair
A paper coffee cup, an unfinished poem
He is inside the trappings of a panoply
Twitching a calloused finger towards discomposure
Watching as what is not there makes itself ever more present
Staring as moth wings of yearning marry the air
Letters scarce and doubt plentiful
Despondence is the new norm
The next day his seat is empty
A stranger takes his place
You watch her tired eyes and matted hair
Jan 6, 2022
Jan 6, 2022 at 9:18 PM UTC
this years Tony Awards
had the best ever emcee
he filled the auditorium
with a panoply of glee
his tap dancing routine
enthralled everyone
as did the comedy
stuff that he spun
he's a man of stage
and of silver screen
that Jackman chap
can certainly set a scene
Jun 9, 2014
Jun 9, 2014 at 7:39 PM UTC
Flies in the haze morning sputter and splay.
Water drops from leaves rolling with the blown
Blades. The windy whoo of the owls fade,
Blue buried eyes cradled in the hollow
Trees, the swamps seeker is quietly rustled,
Wings of panoply, spangle-speckle the wind,
Over the flames of autumn, talons thistle,
Crown the dominion of the fall, fade in
Sporting meadows colour, till the dive,
Balm of field, marsh, all ignites. Lever pale
Winds finger through the leaves gravely
And rake as you raid, shoulders that burning vale,
Casualties of insect, the lemming song sings
Mouse and vole flash, dark, sparkles the clearing.
Aug 23, 2013
Aug 23, 2013 at 1:46 PM UTC
“The Weight of the Untold” (Pradip)
<•>
6:55am: Jan 2 nine twenty twenty five
(read the comments first)
enveloped by the early mix
of morning’s hangover of dark
blue gray, window glints of a
sun playing peekaboo over the
yet there (!) Manhattan skyline,
the utter “ness” of the stilled,
unwritten, unstirred, uncolored
dim of medium shadowy light,
the quietude is an actual thing,
a warming coverlet of cozy peace
am I not forcibly compelled to
write of the weight of white spaces,
Pradip pokes my curious anxiety,
as I question my own words, that
he tosses back to me, so so oft
he ****** the cells of my fingertips
to peek, to bleed, then peck letters
from within, to comprehend my
museum artifacts of words,
the weight of their panoply
of mystery
How, how can the white weight of
our seemingly empty spaces tween
words, carry this burden on its,
bony shoulders, can’t we just let them
be, like the breaths exhaled, the
disappearing exhaust of being human,
is it necessary to carry knowing knowledge,
of what needs no body, isn’t the inexplicable
better left unimagined, there be so much tolling troubles, let them be left masked, they’ll appear as embodied black letters, of-when, their discord is accorded their moment of due…no more need to succumb prematurely
to this onerous lighter than air pressurized crushing atmosphere of reused oxygen
did I awake just to prove my existence, to offer up this combination of vocabulary of wondering, one more explication of the unknowns that are visible to the naked eyes, big, hard, factuals better left alone…and suddenly the morning light has arrived,
dear god,it will be a sun-filled sky,
and that weight, is modestly eased,
never fully erased, but you know,
I know, most of its occupants
even those
who won’t show their faces
And perhaps they should remain
hidden in the white spaces
between the letters and the words,
u. n. t. o. l. d.
Jan 29, 2025
Jan 29, 2025 at 8:07 AM UTC