"plangent" poems
Cold stoles the coast in geisha voiles
of pawned Atlantic mourning, where
The plangent skirl of larids
carry through the vast exquisite
plains of February emptiness.
Aloft on coronal ruin, she flew
in free form falling, between the spheres
she grew in brightness, and by her stroke,
the moping shale, appeared , as if transformed.
She blessed the face of stained glass saints
hung loud on hallowed walls, From a
palisade of glinting brinks, she
hauled deserted chapels into
parishes of lambent wake
their majesties , reborn.
Mar 18, 2017
Mar 18, 2017 at 3:47 AM UTC
.
*The unknown depths call out to me
promising oceans of tranquility,
so let me slip down silently
'neath the waves of a midnight sea.
Addicted to this supplicant swoon,
witnessed only by the waxing moon,
the descent into a liquid room,
as Sirens wail their plangent tune.
Surfing out the softest of tides,
'pon the crest of love my being rides,
to where the deepest of feelings reside.
I sink with ease most graciously.
So let me slip down silently
'neath the waves of a midnight sea.*
© Pagan Paul (04/02/18)
Feb 5, 2018
Feb 5, 2018 at 5:36 PM UTC
St. Margaret's bells,
Quiring their innocent, old-world canticles,
Sing in the storied air,
All rosy-and-golden, as with memories
Of woods at evensong, and sands and seas
Disconsolate for that the night is nigh.
O, the low, lingering lights! The large last gleam
(Hark! how those brazen choristers cry and call!)
Touching these solemn ancientries, and there,
The silent River ranging tide-mark high
And the callow, grey-faced Hospital,
With the strange glimmer and glamour of a dream!
The Sabbath peace is in the slumbrous trees,
And from the wistful, the fast-widowing sky
(Hark! how those plangent comforters call and cry!)
Falls as in August plots late roseleaves fall.
The sober Sabbath stir--
Leisurely voices, desultory feet!--
Comes from the dry, dust-coloured street,
Where in their summer frocks the girls go by,
And sweethearts lean and loiter and confer,
Just as they did an hundred years ago,
Just as an hundred years to come they will:--
When you and I, Dear Love, lie lost and low,
And sweet-throats none our welkin shall fulfil,
Nor any sunset fade serene and slow;
But, being dead, we shall not grieve to die.
2.2k
The night before I killed myself I tried to sleep but couldn't. The mantle clock sounded second ticks long-handed. Loud, long ticks.
I climbed up on the roof. Sat on shingles layered in leaves I'd promised but never got around to blowing off. The neighbor's cat stared at me across the way. A look as empty and weightless as I felt. She meowed one plangent note before she left me there.
Dark mistletoe hung unused from lintels long ago. You and I we stood there not sure of what to do.
The night before I killed myself I built a fire. Fed it the notes you wrote.
Declerations of love turned to ash without protest. Your pleas were next, their ashes floating up in black and white.
Columns of supplication falling cold and grey.
You never want to see me again; I saved that one for last, just as you did.
The night before I killed myself I searched my contacts. Only a few remained and still it felt crowded, filled with intimate strangers who'd stopped calling long ago. I tried to count the people who might care, but I came up empty handed.
The night before I killed myself the moonlight spilled on lawns manicured through quiet dedication only suburbs can posess. I enjoyed it once. Now the silent solitude I sought ran screaming, chased by racing thoughts and guilt I could no longer place.
That night I tried to tell myself to live, while the last lights flickered in my eyes. Ash is what's left when the fire dies.
Sep 23, 2015
Sep 23, 2015 at 9:27 PM UTC
It's a beautiful day,birds singing as I'm walking Mill Lane,
listening to a few Me Fein Refrains,
I'm whistling,feeling pretty fine and dandy,
with my eyes red rovering all the eye candy,
when I hear it,brakes shriekin'-women Shriekin',
a mans voice-Hoarse, "Jaysus Someone do somethin",
I spin on me heel,eyes centred as ****
wishing this was all a dream-A runaway Truck,
tires peelin' brakes smokin' rubber burnin',
A runaway load,it's not gonna make the turn and it's
**THEN that I feel true terror in me soul,
I see a little boy playin' at the edge of the road** ,
he's a sturdy little lad,stick in hand,
pokin' at the grasses growin' up from the path,
and he's right in the Path of the Truck from hell,
Theres no decision,I'm runnin' like a bat outta hell,
and it's then that I get a feeling it's a Lucid dream,
languidity covers me,no more screams,
theres a Figure in my way that's wasn't there the last breath,
then I'm literally starin' in the face of Death...
and I FEEL his thoughts as he turns blank Orbits,
on me and his words are like this "One Obit,
uary in my Ferry is my Task today,
do you really want to be the one who gets in MY WAY?(way way way),
and he can HEAR my thoughts,just as I heard his,
"get out the fuckin' way you long streak of ****
"you said one has to go,well that's fine with me!",
"I've got coins in my pocket if you need your fee!"
and with a glint in his eye and a plangent refrain,
he touches me centre forehead and declaims "NO PAIN"
Then things speed up and I'm off fists pumpin',
feet slappin' on the pavement head down, heart jumpin,
I'm not the Flash,but I can move it when I need to Run,
and the long drawn screech is a Hell of a starters Gun,
I'm across the road like a bolt from the blue,
grab the little Man and throw him,then BANG there I flew,
its all earth,sky,earth,then a terrible jolt,
but no pain as was promised as I come to a halt,
then his Mother is there(he's on her hip) and she's holding my(only)hand,
tellin' me theres ambulances and I'm gonna be grand,
but theres a Grand Piano layin' on my Chest,
and no pain,but to be honest here-I'm not at my best,
and just as I start to think of family and friends,
before Distress can manifest too much in my mind,
a tall RATHER BONY figure stretches out his hand,
and intones into me bones,"OFF TO THE NEXT LAND(land,land,land)"
Dec 29, 2016
Dec 29, 2016 at 9:01 AM UTC
After all this time, the rain has come again
soybeans bursting in the pod, dry brown fields.
The lake as low as it has ever been
clouds pass, thin wisps, withholding all they wield.
We too have dried, mere husks, once plangent
await cadences, intimacy's desires.
A chair rests on a deck, first child's salient
artifact of family life once resonant.
Not first love, but founded in maturity
enough, perhaps, to defy time's ravages.
Embarked with proclaimed mutual surety
to weather all a life's uncertain passages.
But, for now, we tender loves rebuff
and find the rain must prove to be enough.
Oct 8, 2011
Oct 8, 2011 at 1:53 PM UTC
The universe had flattened into a thin sheet,
And the black sea of destiny unfurled from the movements we made.
Your eyes penetrated through mine, ever so sweet.
While the galaxies rumbled in a plangent parade.
Your body touched mine.
The universe a vacuum; a canvas for our passion.
I felt divine,
The spiral of the planets dash in.
My breathe was short as you felt your way, urging close to bliss.
I bit my lip so hard it bled.
I lunged at the chance to capture this.
Your hands held my hair above my head.
Oh, the power to touch a star in bed.
Mar 14, 2013
Mar 14, 2013 at 4:05 PM UTC
The Neon chatter box
says lets all talk with the same tongue,
he said he was sorry for before,
his moustache quivered under this
sanguine strain.
Most of us are foxes
who glady forage through black sacks,
some of us sit bow legged
quintessence in a darkened room
and siphon others gloom away,
but there's no standard release clause
their eyes rock with the tide
until a printing press is sought
yet their Universal probity ignores
the jammy Neon chatter boxes duplicity
embossed as the stalwart he now wants plangent marching in step
Dec 15, 2012
Dec 15, 2012 at 2:54 PM UTC
To Garryowen upon an ***** ground
Two girls are jigging. Riotously they trip,
With eyes aflame, quick bosoms, hand on hip,
As in the tumult of a witches' round.
Youngsters and youngsters round them prance and bound.
Two solemn babes twirl ponderously, and skip.
The artist's teeth gleam from his bearded lip.
High from the kennel howls a tortured hound.
The music reels and hurtles, and the night
Is full of stinks and cries; a naphtha-light
Flares from a barrow; battered and obtused
With vices, wrinkles, life and work and rags,
Each with her inch of clay, two loitering hags
Look on dispassionate--critical--something 'mused.
***
The gods are dead? Perhaps they are! Who knows?
Living at least in Lempriere undeleted,
The wise, the fair, the awful, the jocose,
Are one and all, I like to think, retreated
In some still land of lilacs and the rose.
Once high they sat, and high o'er earthly shows
With sacrificial dance and song were greeted.
Once . . . long ago. But now, the story goes,
The gods are dead.
It must be true. The world, a world of prose,
Full-crammed with facts, in science swathed and sheeted,
Nods in a stertorous after-dinner doze!
Plangent and sad, in every wind that blows
Who will may hear the sorry words repeated:--
'The Gods are Dead!'
994
...A blue aurora full of brume, an atrabilious expression of grief
A haunting sight watched by the moon, sheltered by the cobalt reef
An arrantly perfidious man, where arrogance lies beneath
Distressing her and even then, apologies never escape his teeth...
‘Tis a broken song to sing, a bleak melody to ponder
The aching loneliness does bring, wounds not healing any longer
Tune flows out like streams of blood, lyrics sharp and somber
A poet’s hurt such as a flood, waves crashing ever stronger
Teardrops of the mighty flood, have now trickled to a river
Feet treading through the layers of mud, in their failing feat they quiver
A siren weeping ripples here, mourning love you refused to give her
That plangent song caresses ears, touch chilling as a shiver
Her throat burns yet she goes on, soft enough to make the earth quake
The very ground you step upon, rumbling with her tragic ache
How do you turn a blind eye, she’s been torn by your mistake
Her very soul does cry, while you can hardly even shake
She exonerates all you have done, furthermore she does beseech
Perhaps she’s lost but you’ve not won, alas her heart you shall not reach
A precious gem amidst the coal, enchanting those who wander near
The scene is stirring as a whole, dulling any calm presence here
A storm has passed tonight, though you still do not repent
Siren sings beneath blue moonlight, of the love she does resent
A lullaby to make you tremble, deep beneath the twisted torment
No longer shall she dissemble, all but you shatter at the poet’s lament
Sep 11, 2020
Sep 11, 2020 at 12:46 PM UTC
The water is icy cold
As I press the sharp blade--
A dagger given to **** a curse,
And to take my love for you.
The thought bites,
So does the silver,
Burying itself into flesh.
How could I do this?
How could they ask me?
Why would I **** my true love?
The ones that gave me this burden
Were more like me than you could ever be.
After the deed is done,
When you look down on me,
Will you see me for what I've done?
I can't bear the thought.
I say my last farewells,
Bubbles and a kiss to the night air,
Then I step willingly through the door.
Better I go than
Destroy your future.
You look up one last time
Before the curse shatters my
Bleeding heart.
Jul 4, 2014
Jul 4, 2014 at 11:37 AM UTC
Haze scatters blue light on a planet.
Frought women, livid, made into peonies by Aphrodites that caught their men flirting and blamed the women, flushed red.
Frought women, livid, chrysanthemums, dimmed until the end of the season, exchanged and retained like property.
Blue women enter along the sides of her red Torii gates,
belayed, branded and belled,
a plangent sound.
By candles, colored lights and dried flowers,
she’s sitting inside on a concrete floor,
punctures and ruin burnished with paper,
boiling burnt lime from lime mortar.
Glass ***** on the ceiling,
she moves the beads of a Palestinian glass bead bracelet she holds in her hands.
She bends light to make shadows against thin wooden slats curved along the wall
and straight across the ceiling.
A metier, she invents tinctures,
juniper berries and cotton *****
Loamy soil in the center of the room,
a hawthorn tree stands alone,
a gateway for fairies,
large stones at the base protecting,
its branches a barrier.
Its leaves and shoots make bread and cheese.
Its berries, red skin and yellow flesh, make jam.
Green bamboo stakes for the peonies when they whither from the weight of their petals
and lime in the soil,
she adds wood chips to the burnt lime in the kiln,
unrolled paper, spools, and wire hanging.
Wood prayer beads connect her to the earth;
the tassels on the end of the beads connect her to spirit, to higher truth.
Minerals, marine mud and warm basins of seawater on a flower covered desk,
she adds slaked lime to the burnt lime and wood chips.
The lime converts to paper,
trauma victims speak,
light through butterfly wings.
She’s plumeria with curved petals, thick, holding water.
Apr 26, 2021
Apr 26, 2021 at 2:48 PM UTC
Northern Lives Matter
Note the fine flowing plain lands
One where peace and order reigns
Residence to historic cultural affluence
That chaos admired from afar with pains
Homing the abiding partisan patriots
Entrenched in now ravenous blood hovers
Rustlers, insurgents effected their domains
Notorious bandits we once heard in fables.
Lives lost cruelly to obdurated elements
Imprinting images of guns and deaths
Voices raised; are our leaders ritualists?
Establishing innocent crime-made orphans
Spreading evils, afflictions and destructions.
Many a religious shrines turned death traps
And markets, farms; ransacking poor villages
That barely know governance and her benefits
Turned into flowing river of blood and tears
Emptying plangent hearts to quixotic elites
Rich in thoughts; gliding us to precipice.
Nov 6, 2021
Nov 6, 2021 at 5:43 PM UTC
Flickering like a tentative alpenglow corraded from profaned time
A whisper jostles through a crowded rumpus prescient of teleology and design
Jolting with pangs of panic a screech emanates from the brontides of tomorrow
A chagrin outpaces the gingerly apprehension of a peevish sorrow
Among the ruffled plumes quaffed from pedigree and put to disuse
A banausic electricity galvanizes the ****** of the amalgamated acuity pinched from the sordid, the obtuse
Refracted like off a darkened moon that clenches the darkness in an abstruse tomb
Combs through sentience of Saturn presiding over ineluctable doom
A silence louder than a plangent ****** of phantasmagoria debased
A looming victor erodes with the putrefaction of sworn and utter distaste
How to obtrude on the evening with triaged fulmination
Is an affront to the rudders of a piecemeal civilization in tatters with exacting doddering calculation
Graveyards bustle with the eidolons of scurrilous spite
Congregating around a blackened epitaph on an alabaster palace gilded in the swanky pinnacle of light
Scuttling the outmoded flanks of an abortive war
Against a henchman of state too ostentatious to hardly ever ignore
We clamber with insistence hoping on fortuitous deliverance
Yet we are deranged of the clasped distance between the crevasse of the clerisy and the satisdiction of futures passed with meticulous diligence
Absconding with furtive furrows on a wizened guild an entrusted world we helped build
We witness the silence creep over us like a trepidation contained as lethal killers of the cartel willed
That which frightens a self-fulfillment is a fatalism gone awry
Someday soon omens excavated from immolated tombs will beseech a more universal backlash, an alienated sorrow that will one day cry
But until that fetched disaster occurs
Let us meditate only on the process of emanation among wayward words
That dance with a destiny that the hegemony of momentary circumstance much prefers
Feb 16, 2018
Feb 16, 2018 at 2:19 AM UTC
"Days without you are torturing, nights without you are grievous.
I look for the comfort that I used to find in your lap. Where will I get you mumma? Where?", a scream lashed in despair echoed.
"I'll be the gallop to **** the dormant twilight,
I'll be the golden rays to snog your sleepy eyes,
I'll be the stretch of vitality,
I'll be the aroma of your morning coffee,
I'll be the shower of sprightliness to drench you with new zeal,
I'll be the savour of your breakfast and joy of a full square meal,
I'll be your steps towards glory,
I'll be the sigh after your every failed story,
I'll be the hop of excitement,
Acquainting a flunk, I'll be the screech of your lament,
I'll be the bliss you find seeing the sun going down,
I'll be in the sloth dispelling plangent words of azan,
I'll be the spectator of your big bright smile,
I'll be the witness to the every tear you wipe,
Never in your life you're alone,
Be it your hearty gale or saddening mourn,
Walking by you like your shadow,
Even beyond the eternity I'll follow", whispered her mother. :')
-Aparajita Tripathi
Jul 27, 2018
Jul 27, 2018 at 8:09 AM UTC
911 Carousel
by Michael R. Burch
“And what rough beast ... slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?”—W. B. Yeats
They laugh and do not comprehend, nor ask
which way the wind is blowing, no, nor why
the reeling azure fixture of the sky
grows pale with ash, and whispers “Holocaust.”
They think to seize the ring, life’s tinfoil prize,
and, breathless with endeavor, shriek aloud.
The voice of terror thunders from a cloud
that darkens over children adult-wise,
far less inclined to error, when a step
in any wrong direction is to fall
a JDAM short of heaven. Decoys call,
their voices plangent, honking to be shot ...
Here, childish dreams and nightmares whirl, collide,
as East and West, on slouching beasts, they ride.
Published by The Neovictorian/Cochlea, Mindful of Poetry, Gostinaya and Scholasticus/Fullosia Press. Keywords/Tags: 911, war, violence, retribution, twin towers, terror, terrorism, east, west, dreams, nightmares, error
Apr 16, 2020
Apr 16, 2020 at 4:49 AM UTC
we make our choices with honest conviction
and are persuaded that an angry curse
is just a matter for some plangent verse
or else results from sloppy bad male diction
all our desire is life with little friction
and we can't understand how the converse
happens how all our actions make things worse
just why the happy ending's only fiction
to tell this story would take me too long
so it must be cut short and that's a shame
since all the world is hanging on the tale
still all in all what hurts makes us more strong
and better able soon to win the game
while early victors in the end must fail
Feb 25, 2012
Feb 25, 2012 at 1:39 PM UTC
Potter’s clay, nymph, plum unplumbed, 1993.
Dahlia, ice, powder, musk and rose.
My source of life emerged in darkness, blackness.
Seashell fragments in the sand that makes glass,
The glass ball of my life,
Cracked inside,
Light reflected off the salt crystal cracks,
Nacre kept those cracks from getting worse.
Young ****** Autosodomized By Her Own Chastity,
Nymph, I didn’t want to give my body,
Torn, ***** ballgown,
To people who wouldn’t understand me,
Piquant.
Outside on the salt flats,
Aphrodite, goddess of beauty, pleasure and fertility and
Asexual Artemis, goddess of animals, and the hunt,
Mistress of nymphs,
Punish with ruthless savagery.
In my bedroom, blue caribou moss covered rocks, pine, and yew trees,
The heartwood writhes as hurricane gales, twisters and whirlwinds
Contort their bark,
Roots strong in the soil.
Orris root dried in the sun, bulbs like wood.
Dahlia runs to baritone soundbath radio waves.
Light has frequencies,
Violet between blue and invisible ultraviolet,
Flame, slate and flint.
Every night is cold.
Torii gates, pain secured as sacred.
An assignation, frost hardy dahlia and a plangent resonant echo.
High frequency sound waves convert to electrical signals,
Breathe from someone I want,
Silt.
Beam, radiate, ensorcel.
I break the bark,
Sap flows and dries,
Resin seals over the tear.
I distill pine,
Resin and oil for turpentine, a solvent.
Quiver, bemired,
I lead sound into my darkness,
Orris butter resin, sweet and warm,
Hot jam drops on snow drops,
Orange ash on smoke,
Balm on lava,
The problem with cotton candy.
Electrical signals give off radiation or light waves,
The narrow frequency range where
The crest of a radio wave and the crest of a light wave overlap,
Infrared.
Glaciers flow, sunlight melts the upper layers of the snow when strong,
A wet snow avalanche,
A torrent, healing.
Brown sugar and whiskey,
Undulant, lavender.
Pine pitch, crystalline, sticky, rich and golden,
And dried pine rosin polishes glass smooth
Like the smell of powdery orris after years.
Softness, flush, worthy/not worthy,
Rich rays thunder,
Intensify my pulse,
Frenzied red,
Violet between blue and invisible ultraviolet.
Babylon—flutter, glow.
Unquenchable cathartic orris.
Jul 5, 2021
Jul 5, 2021 at 5:04 PM UTC
Where is
The escape
From the shackle
That is the body?
There's a whole universe
We'll never experience
Because we're trapped in time
And physics
And scientific laws.
I want to create
Matter
From thin air.
I want to feel
Star explosions.
I want to inhale quasars.
I am not god,
But I am not man either.
A Career, money, taxes, security;
These are the least of my worries.
Each year spent in incarceration,
The soul dies....
How am I supposed to see value in this world
If I have cosmic eyes?
Feb 22, 2018
Feb 22, 2018 at 7:25 PM UTC
And when great souls die
Ocean hums a plangent hymn as it mourns
Cold breeze gently carries their ashes
Like scattered stars in the sky
One with the wind,
Until they find peace just beyond the horizon
Together with the sun as it sets
Giving us a colorful sky to remember as they leave
And at first light,
The sun rises with a breath of their legacy and name
While the heavens may still cry for a little while,
We'll sing endless elegies with the waves and clouds at night
For their true grave is in our hearts,
They'll forever be remembered with great admiration attached.
Mar 25, 2022
Mar 25, 2022 at 6:31 AM UTC
On the Center Island embankment
Mother Mallard sits on her eggs 24-29 days
One hour twice a day in the sunshine,rays
She must leaves her eggs unprotected
Starvation never realizes the unexpected
Mrs. Fiddle and Mr. Faddle
Had eight eggs under their care
Predation, Herons claimed seven there
A perfect duckling name Little Paddle
The only Duckling to survive
Fluffy, healthy, strong Full of energy alive
Fiddle and Faddle guarded Little Paddle
From dillydallying around
For a wild Little Paddle
Mischief can easily be found
All mallard ducks pair off The same way
Pecking order, preservation at play
Mother Mallards sit distant from the flock
Mrs.Fiddle Mr. Faddle and Little Paddle
Animal instincts stay distant from the dock
One fine day A mishap dismay
Wiggle and waddle they progressed
Refreshed, Digressed and obsessed
They search for their missing Little Paddle
Under a Elderly Mother Mallard’s wing
A small Beak seen it’s the cutest little thing
Out pops Little Paddle
squeaking and squawking “ here I am”
Fiddle and Faddle tired of worry walking
Mrs. Fiddle pitched a fit, spit and Spatial
A plangent tangent, of loss, of pain
But for a Little Paddle it was just a game
Harmoniously Honking all is right as rain
Mrs. Fiddle and Mr. Faddle
Have a heck of a time gripping the rattle
The parenting reins in the saddle
Growing quickly with giggles and gaggles
The adventures of Little Paddle
May 8, 2024
May 8, 2024 at 12:08 AM UTC