"penumbras" poems
What thoughts I have of you tonight, Walt Whit-
man, for I walked down the sidestreets under the trees
with a headache self-conscious looking at the full moon.
In my hungry fatigue, and shopping for images,
I went into the neon fruit supermarket, dreaming of
your enumerations!
What peaches and what penumbras! Whole fam-
ilies shopping at night! Aisles full of husbands! Wives
in the avocados, babies in the tomatoes!--and you,
Garcнa Lorca, what were you doing down by the
watermelons?
I saw you, Walt Whitman, childless, lonely old
grubber, poking among the meats in the refrigerator
and eyeing the grocery boys.
I heard you asking questions of each: Who killed
the pork chops? What price bananas? Are you my
Angel?
I wandered in and out of the brilliant stacks of
cans following you, and followed in my imagination
by the store detective.
We strode down the open corridors together in
our solitary fancy tasting artichokes, possessing every
frozen delicacy, and never passing the cashier.
Where are we going, Walt Whitman? The doors
close in an hour. Which way does your beard point
tonight?
(I touch your book and dream of our odyssey in the
supermarket and feel absurd.)
Will we walk all night through solitary streets?
The trees add shade to shade, lights out in the houses,
we'll both be lonely.
Will we stroll dreaming ofthe lost America of love
past blue automobiles in driveways, home to our silent
cottage?
Ah, dear father, graybeard, lonely old courage-
teacher, what America did you have when Charon quit
poling his ferry and you got out on a smoking bank
and stood watching the boat disappear on the black
waters of Lethe?
Berkeley 1955
8.4k
Trees hold the deep earth together way below with crooked fingers of the underworld and catches foul above
Upward to the heavens on finger towers,
clapping on winds they shake their dander
And the makers of green bras on mountain tops
They are the landlords of ground,and air beasts, and
incumbent giants of the ages
They whisper being puppeteered by winds of old
They are the alchemists of oxygen
They are dangling playgrounds
They are the Autumn crunches beneath our feet
Trunk etchings by bards, trees reflecting
cultures' dissemination
We walk under penumbras that deny the scorch of summer
as cool water douses fire, so too, shade douses heat
Watching trees in my pleasant reverie I observe how they
help break the carpeted land, bringing about a certain diversity in moving tranquility and rustling of their songs
Oct 1, 2014
Oct 1, 2014 at 7:20 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
a deluge,
a flood,
water flows
as a seedling
drowns itself in a word
inaudible deaf
the fertile ages like a promiscuous fire
buried with flames
passion bound to the world
by passion it is also released
man the animal
speech craft of a deserted tongue
filtered thoughts retreat
to fallen realities
sorrowing confusion revolves
around the charred light
burn the natural flower
let loose the animal craving
drink of the chalice
from the fictitious mind
all the world on fire
animalistic morality
the flame circles
the weeping lion
amidst the penumbras skin
they weep for the magnetic night
burning inside a compassionate luminosity
man/animal
a surge of atonements
for the rage inside us
Jan 17, 2016
Jan 17, 2016 at 2:50 PM UTC
That tiny
red brick townhouse
somewhere
away from London.
Bathed
in fogged sunlight.
Watery air.
rays
in penumbras.
At the window
she is
a conflagration
of
soft yellow lasers.
The ivy creeps up the windows
from a
bottomless
rug
seeping
out of the basement grates
in
green
scrambling
capillaries,
they want to be burned
in the sun.
What joy
a snake
like me
feels
in a daydream
set in
his innocent London,
to be supplanted
by fear
lazing
with her legs up
***
open,
***** smiling
vertically
and
her
red-pink ****
an apple
on scratchy bedsheets.
Dec 1, 2011
Dec 1, 2011 at 7:56 PM UTC
Pull me down into your moonlit lakes and stormy penumbras in your brilliant eyes
Smother me with your petrichor and evanescant forever afters and a fleeting eternity
Tempt me with the galaxies in your orbiting existence and questions--questions and gossamer mysteries
Be my eloquence of my stutter, my elixir to my poison, my epiphany for my existence.
Feb 23, 2015
Feb 23, 2015 at 6:03 PM UTC
A whisper ghosts silently
Down the stygian hallway.
Follow Me
Rushes through her ears,
Silencing her thoughts as her heartbeat crescendoes.
Tempted,
She peers into obscurity,
Hypnotized by dancing penumbras.
Veiled in the shadows lie the Universe's secrets,
But she draws back.
Merely a glimpse is enough,
And she returns to evanescence.
Jul 8, 2014
Jul 8, 2014 at 12:50 AM UTC
In speculating a plumage’s stinging or sorting
yesteryear’s chromosomes glint of antiques
resplendent as rivulets at The Moonlit Square
that shimmered beneath penumbras of fear
A stained moon foreshadowing
Jahan Ara’s Chowk for Silver Wear
The canals blocked, choking with Change
Glistering new arrivals, effusing of Change:
the tryst carries grave integrity within veins
branching across peninsula for pumping reigns
Ours is the Strange Acquiesce
where a fledgling’s plumage unfurls
toward velvety notes of wealth
A perennial disruption of equilibrium
From Smack to Silk Route till Here
Before Iwans, Jhajjharis, or intricate Basti
its plumage swayed from Golden Age
burdened through pronouncements as
Gujarata-Pratihara; Pala; Rashtrakuta:
the peninsula that sustains formidable histories
shall commemorate edifices lost by centuries
Together We Ruminate: What state must it bear this day?
traversed across periods
sorrowed by time
plumage seeks to retire
in search of rhyme
Mar 15, 2015
Mar 15, 2015 at 1:58 PM UTC
you were too much like a nectarine
in early summer. All poreless and bright
and insinuating sweetness. Filled me up
with your secret eruption then shut me down
with your sleek silver tongue. Lava barricaded my eardrums,
enhancing my blood, fire in your eyes.
I was a plum, stealing forth
in the wake of your Augustine heat. My tender skin
gave way to your deft touch.
But then I bit down,
tasted the flesh beneath your glossy sheen
and oh how it betrays you!
So yellow and unripe, so taut with newness,
still clinging to the brightness of dawn,
spring-frozen with fear of the darkness
of my nectar.
Today I woke up with a magnet
in my pitted stomach. Echoes of
cold metal scour my throat. That love-
-less twang in the aortal penumbras--hope,
a refuge swallowed by the ephemeral night.
I always knew
you were too much like a nectarine
in early summer.
Jan 4, 2019
Jan 4, 2019 at 8:56 AM UTC
There are stars here!
There are stars here, my friends!
And as I lie among the streetlight-
-cast penumbras staring at the
Pentahedral crystal hammock jungle gym
I am with them!
I am with them in wonder
In joy in amazement in ecstasy in open-
-eyed revelation of truth
As I realize I was born not
In a city of shadows
But in a city of such blinding brightness
That I could never marvel at the darkness
and the darkness is beautiful here.
Perfect halogen moonbeam outlines of imperfect
Bodies frolicking in selfprescribed madness
Spinning in the chemical centrifuge
Until lights become light and
encircles us
endlessly
Creating its own central outward
Gravity
As I become you become me
And we sail this endless sea of
Blackness
And we fall ever deeper into the great
Singularity
everconsuming everlasting
All Encompassing
Feeling Grasping Gasping
Growing
Seeing
Darkness.
Instruments of depravity
Forged great, twisted
Spinal curvatures held proud
And feared by the mighty
For our words poison their youth
Revealing our shadowy enlightenment
Clarifying with murky water
Promises of intangible tangibilities.
Beautifying chaotic tangled
Masses forming perfection in
nebulous
amorphism.
Downward, Downward
Circling ever downward
Spiraling veraciously downward
Downward the holy!
Downward the giving!
Downward unto Heaven!
Downward unto Hell!
Downward unto Creation!
Down.
Where the soul becomes concrete
And the concrete vague
synesthetic
bliss.
The Darkness is beautiful here.
6 September 20l0
Oct 3, 2010
Oct 3, 2010 at 5:37 PM UTC
A- ‘Dusk roofed me!’
B- ‘No! You are in Blister Effect!’
****
A- ‘Why?’
B- ‘Two penumbras overlap!’
****
A - ‘What?’
B- ‘You are in wider sources of light!’
****
A – ‘Then what?’
B – ‘It attracts and unites!’
****
A – ‘But umbra is there!’
B – ‘It is with everyone, you can’t confiscate!’
‘It will hark back about nimbus- to shower – dispense water’!
Jun 26, 2015
Jun 26, 2015 at 12:57 PM UTC
Olhei o exterior, a descoberto, no costume dos dias,
Olhar de lince, penetrou perante os espetros ocultos,
Tudo aquilo que se via, imaginava real, o que fazias,
E porque o era, nada mudava afinal nesses vultos!
Sem medos, nem costumes delirantes, tudo era normal,
As sombras não se escondiam nas penumbras do dia,
Nem o sol deixou de brilhar no pleno dia que eu vivia,
Acordar de criança, desejoso de o ser, como água termal!
Perdeu-se o tempo, constrangido com riscos e desafios,
Falava-se de tudo e para todos, sem nosso silêncio crismal,
Aquelas vestes de antigamente, tribunal, hoje é ponto final!
E a realização dos sonhos são isso, desafios lógicos e sentimentos,
Delira o corpo, com o satisfazer da mente, coisas duradouras e belas,
Se cresce desejo, se sonho quando te vejo e aprecio teus encantos,
Solto-me no ar, voando e planando, pelas nossas vestes, paralelas!
E longe te aperto aqui, mundo que conheci, seguro no bolso,
Seu fecho de saco impermeável e por demais, mais durável,
Aquece-me o presente, com sonhos para futuro, sustentável,
E, teus sonhos, meus, minha, vida tua é sem troca ou reembolso!
Autor: António Benigno
Código de Autor: 2013.10.02.02.26
Oct 2, 2013
Oct 2, 2013 at 6:53 AM UTC
A un niño, a un solo niño que iba para piedra nocturna,
para ángel indiferente de una escala sin cielo...
Mirad. Conteneos la sangre, los ojos.
A sus pies, él mismo, sin vida.
No aliento de farol moribundo,
ni jadeada amarillez de noche agonizante,
sino dos fósforos fijos de pesadilla eléctrica,
clavados sobre su tierra en polvo, juzgándola.
Él, resplandor sin salida, lividez sin escape, yacente,
juzgándose.
Tizo electrocutado, infancia mía de ceniza, a mis pies, tizo yacente.
Carbunclo hueco, ***** desprendido de un ángel que iba para piedra nocturna,
para límite entre la muerte y la nada.
Tú: yo: niño.
Bambolea el viento un vientre de gritos anteriores al mundo
a la sorpresa de la luz en los ojos de los reciennacidos,
al descenso de la vía láctea a las gargantas terrestres.
Niño.
Una cuna de llamas de norte a sur,
de frialdad de tiza amortajada en los yelos,
a fiebre de paloma agonizando en el área de una bujía;
una cuna de llamas meciéndote las sonrisas, los llantos.
Niño.
Las primeras palabras abiertas en las penumbras de los sueños sin nadie,
en el silencio rizado de las albercas o en el eco de los jardines,
devoradas por el mar y ocultas hoy en un hoyo sin viento.
Muertas, como el estreno de tus pies en el cansancio frío de una escalera.
Niño.
Las flores, sin piernas para huir de los aires crueles,
de su espoleo continuo al corazón volante de las nieves y los pájaros,
desangradas en un aburrimiento de cartillas y pizarrines.
4 y 4 son 18. Y la X, una K, una H, una J.
Niño.
En un trastorno de ciudades marítimas sin escrúpulos,
de mapas confundidos y desiertos barajados,
atended a unos ojos que preguntan por los afluentes del cielo,
a una memoria extraviada entre nombres y fechas.
Niño.
Perdido entre ecuaciones, triángulos, fórmulas y precipitados azules,
entre el suceso de la sangre, los escombros y las coronas caídas,
cuando los cazadores de oro y el asalto a la banca,
en el rubor tardío de las azoteas
voces de ángeles te anunciaron la botadura y pérdida de tu alma.
Niño.
Y como descendiste al fondo de las mareas,
a las urnas donde el azogue, el plomo y el hierro pretenden ser humanos,
tener honores de vida,
a la deriva de la noche tu traje fue dejándote solo.
Niño.
Desnudo, sin los billetes de inocencia fugados en sus bolsillos,
derribada en tu corazón y sola su primera silla,
no creíste ni en Venus, que nacía en el compás abierto de tus brazos.
ni en la escala de plumas que tiende el sueño de Jacob al de Julio Verne.
Niño.
Para ir al infierno no hace falta cambiar de sitio ni postura.
1.1k
Rayos iluminadores...a veces.
Penumbras...otras muchas.
Himnos que desaparecen
en el vacío anodino
con rumbo desconocido.
Haces fotónicos fugaces
iluminan momentáneos
el espíritu y el tiempo.
Al frente de la nada sónica:
el silencio,
veloz como la luz
cómplice de algunos movimientos.
La penumbra, sin embargo, plácida
se disuelve lentamente con las noches.
Cuando la luz solar pierde su derroche,
la oscuridad se mata
con fluorescencias de avenida.
Jorge Gómez Arias
Jun 24, 2012
Jun 24, 2012 at 11:08 AM UTC
Sol espledente de primavera,
a cuyo beso, fresca y lozana,
la flor se yergue, la mariposa
viola el capullo, la yema estalla;
sol espledente de primavera:
¡yo te aborrezco! porque desgarras
las brumas leves, que me circundan
como rizado crespón de plata.
A mí me gustan las tardes grises,
las melancolías, las heladas,
en que las rosas tiemblan de frío,
en que los cierzos gimiendo pasan,
en que las aves, entre las hojas,
el pico esconden bajo del ala.
A mí me gustan esas penumbras
indefinibles de la enramada,
a cuyo amparo corren las fuentes,
surgen los gnomos, las hojas charlan...
Sol espledente de primavera,
cede tu gloria, declina, pasa:
deja las brumas que me rodean
como rizado crespón de plata.
Bellas mujeres de ardientes ojos,
de vivos labios, de tez rosada,
¡os aborrezco! Vuestros encantos
ni me seducen ni me arrebatan.
A mí me gustan las niñas tristes,
a mí me gustan las niñas pálidas,
las de apacibles ojos obscuros
donde perenne misterio irradia;
las de miradas que me acarician
bajo el alero de las pestañas...
Más que las rosas, amo los lirios
y las gardenias inmaculadas;
más que claveles de sangre y fuego,
la sensitiva mi vista encanta...
Bellas mujeres de ardientes ojos,
de vivos labios, de tez rosada:
pasad en ronda vertiginosa;
vuestros encantos no me arrebatan...
Himnos vibrantes de las victorias,
notas triunfales, bélicas marchas,
¡os aborrezco! porque, al oíros,
trémulas huyen mis musas blancas.
A mí me gustan las notas leves...
las notas leves... las notas lánguidas,
las que parecen suspiros hondos...
suspiros hondos de almas que pasan...
Chopin: delirio por tus nocturnos;
Beethoven: sueño con tus sonatas:
Weber: adoro tu Pensamiento
Schubert: me arroba tu Serenata.
¡Oh! Cuántas veces, bajo el imperio
de vuestra música apasionada,
Ella me dice: ¿Me quieres mucho?
y yo respondo: ¡Con toda el alma!
Himnos vibrantes de las victorias,
notas triunfales, bélicas marchas:
¡chit! porque huyen al escucharos,
trémulas todas, mis musas blancas...
Sol espledente de primavera,
lindas mujeres de faz rosada,
himnos triunfales...; ¡dejadme a solas
con mis ensueños y mis nostalgias!
Pálidas brumas que me rodean
como rizado crespón de plata,
vagas penumbras, niñas enfermas
de ojos obscuros y tez de nácar,
notas dolientes: ¡venid, que os amo!
¡Venid, que os amo! ¡Tended las alas!
975
(a Shakespearean sonnet by MysticRiddleton)
Lake of mirror from beneath,
On thee reclines the wet gray cotton sea
Glowing faintly overneath
Projects penumbras of the tree
Pictures alter by the angle
Heaven slithers swift as I
Near and closely leans in angle
Sees thy creature eye to eye
Alas! The radiance that makes thee luster
Decides to pluck thee bit by bit
Pictures fading by the mirror
Lake of mirror, be not beat!
Keep thy stagnant lake, oh mirror
Let thou ripple with some vapor.
Sep 26, 2017
Sep 26, 2017 at 10:55 AM UTC
Como un rayo de luz que alumbra en las oscuridad , asi te alumbrara Jehova si lo buscas con gratitud .
El siempre sera la luz en medio de las penumbras , y en esa oscuridad el te alumbra con su poder y su luz.
Aug 5, 2015
Aug 5, 2015 at 1:18 PM UTC
In the valley of penumbras
at the round table
black knights cheering
at the right hand of gods
Lucifer in between
dancing melancholically
07/29/2016
Jul 30, 2016
Jul 30, 2016 at 2:35 PM UTC
I am settled in the arugula palace
Everybody in the same scattered image
Seeking reconstruction or construction of the mind
I write this for myself to be unwinded & unrolled
He's a shifting plane of bisecting geometries
Now a thin woman shuttling kids in a minivan
Smoking newport cigarettes & feeling mucous gather in the sore spot in her throat. Her husband who is overworked & penniless--a clown frozen in a shipping container underneath a hi-low. He is fetching up the scraps of industry from inside a concrete bottle. He is messing with the intersecting circles coming off the streetlights. He is stacking up assumptions, wishing to be freed. Wishing he could reach that frightened child-monkey loser in the parking lot. He is clawing @ sensations he will never be able to name. He is secretly wishing for a vision. Secretly wishing to be known. He is tied & tethered to the clean-up crew. They are silent pretenders nodding at the recycling bins--never emptied. There he is formatted. There his eyes go staring out. There a picture--but what's a picture now that it's all beyond control, no longer static, no longer a container or reminder but rather a cloud passing, a moment's pause, a temporary fascination? A posing, a posturing, a big a-Ha!--fuck you! Stranger. You are not a part of me. The danger is madness. The danger is control. There are no static images. No peaches. No penumbras. No mandalas, maps, organizations or rebuttals. There is only standing water in the basement. There is only diet pepsi car keys hanging on the edge of a golden cloudburst.
Aug 22, 2016
Aug 22, 2016 at 5:35 PM UTC
Siempre sabía que eras demasiado como una nectarina
a principios de verano. Tú: sin poros y brillante e insinuando dulzura.
Me llenaste con tu erupción secreta, luego me apagaste
con tu lengua plateada y elegante,
lava palpitante en mis tímpanos,
realzando mi sangre,
con fuego en tus ojos. Yo era una ciruela, vagando hacia su calor agustín. Mi piel tierna cedió a su toque hábil.
Pero luego lo mordí. Probé la carne bajo tu brillo brillante.
Y ¡oh cómo te traiciona!
Tan amarillo e inmaduro, tan tenso con la novedad,
Aún aferrado al brillo del alba,
primavera congelada con miedo
de la oscuridad de mi néctar.
Hoy me desperté aquí con un imán en mi estómago.
Ecos de metal frío recorren en mi garganta.
La falta de amor, el dolor que
corre entre las penumbras aórticas--
la esperanza, un refugio tragado por la noche efímera.
Siempre sabía que eras demasiado como una nectarina
a principios de verano.
Jan 4, 2019
Jan 4, 2019 at 10:14 AM UTC
You feel stories are always unsolicited. You do not want them.
You want to feel the agony of the moment – all the more the electricity of it. A moment mottled by
rain this ordinary Thursday afternoon, or the dust eloping in the wind as we drove past 50 in the middle
of the night, you telling me I do not clean my car thoroughly, like that of a lady’s. You feel stories pose
no importance. Say, at the edge of our seats or at the jagged lip of a cliff – you would dare say jump,
alone, unwound, unfettered, resolute, obvious and available in truancy, out of incalculable fear of
existing – you took the plunge and claimed it’s all the same. Apertures frantic with dazed visions of
fondness. Vertical leap, cutting through the vague sky. Keeping some sense of freedom, yet we are not
as free as we think. You do not want a story. You do not buy its thrills. You chortle at the idea of lasting things because they have hands that are clenched and frenzied. They brand. They are territorial. You are no territory. You are an island, adrift somewhere, breathing on its own in between penumbras of want
and coasts of dread. You feel characters do not change scripts. They change how you say things. Say, when he told you were needed, and I told you that you insist your forceful importance – you felt the need
to dab into the air and spire through the thickness of the dark, flamboyant with the color of freedom, you said, pale as a dove, I am free. Finally, the man might have left somewhere without you knowing it, and just as you are unclenching your wings, you project your pace into the sky like an unseen margin in the invisibility of all invisibilities – it is impossible to look away. You felt stories are not needed. You wanted experience. The end of a dull knife, the sound of a .45 shot into the sky as the police circle the filthy streets of Quezon City. You in your Chuck Taylors, running, looking for some tough nook to hide in – omen of another rain in sight. You remembered when you first bathed in rain and laughed a laugh so impossible with high notes and shrills – you laughed away like you were not coming back, because there is no need for a story. Now left to wondering in the vastness of the room before me, was it something
to be believed? A broken orchestra enters with its surrendering music and everything is ended. I fell asleep, still dreaming of running away.
Mar 25, 2016
Mar 25, 2016 at 12:33 AM UTC
In the night I am joined.
A drink summons a row of faces,
unrecognizable they come to me as penumbras.
A swirl of half crescent grins and grimaces cry out in pain.
I am ****** into a hole of submission,
here are all the allegorical creations living inside of me.
These things stand tall, bare and judging.
Laughing and watching as I fall into a bottomless grip called “inevitability".
Breathing raw, dank ideologies.
Manifesting nasty, stubborn idiosyncrasies.
I am freed by another drink
And the pleasant reality
that sometimes moving on
means laughter.
Aug 1, 2019
Aug 1, 2019 at 8:00 PM UTC
I walked among the garden, passing by where long ago you once planted daisies—how those buds once bloomed. I walked a-ways farther until I came to a hearth, torn asunder. Its warmth gone cold and gray. The air about the garden is murky and slick, and I can feel it hang low in the snood of the evening mist. Up ahead I see where the path narrows, and like a siren it lasciviously calls out to me. It lies barren beneath the wet winter wind that blows restive. I know that it knows the way not. The wind sets the tawny leaves to caper and dance this way and that. And laconically they cross atop the worn-out grass. The sun now set save for the trailing penumbras, that set ominous among the darkening clouds like floating tundras. I catch a chill and realize for the first that I am out here alone; among the ancient pillars in the shadowy garden that I have for so long known. Why is it that year after year I must return here, is it to visit you, set things straight, or is it to recover a thing I might have lost to the atavistic gait of chaos and time? I know not—it is not for me to know. But, out here among the spectral shadows I am returned to the primordial. The nonpareil decay of clay and dust.
Apr 1, 2018
Apr 1, 2018 at 8:46 PM UTC
las aguas de tu vientre cantan al fondo del país/
así estás hecha/
hoy que la lluvia duele
en todo el mundo te posás/
¿dónde escribís tus estaciones?/
¿las trémulas de tu candor?/
¡panadera!/
¡brillás para que nadie sufra!/
¡amigas compañías que empiezan en tu piel!/
¡cómo penumbras del furor!/
¡así a tus pechos viene el ido!/
¡el que pasaba por tus jugos contra
la olvidación!/
¡apretando los huesitos prestados/
446