"preceding" poems
Living is a cross
That any one of the rock-faces
Comprehends.
We are drawn
To many seas.
We drown wholesomely
In the failures of confrontation.
The rain
Drenching
Our doorsteps
Has nothing to do
With the simplest desires
And lacerations
We bring
To the smallest acts
Of living.
The child
On the broken catwalk
Hearing the sounds of our hunger
Without understanding
Throws echoes back
To the earliest abandonments
Of love.
Minor devastations preceding
Horror
Resonate the ineffable.
The mothers that wake
At the slightest sound
And the fathers that
Smoke all night
And the rest of us who are
Vigilantes from the demons
Of oppressed sleep
Find at dawn the clearest
Images of bewilderment.
Even the best things
Collapse beneath the weight
Of ignorance.
Living is a fire
That any one of the wave-lashes
Comprehends.
_________
Source:
http://www.universeofpoetry.org/nigeria.shtml
16.3k
the sun
leaves the earth
with bright red,
preceding seemingly endless darkness.
only to return
with splashes of
pink and orange
giving rise to yet another beautiful day.
- v. m
Aug 5, 2018
Aug 5, 2018 at 10:16 AM UTC
We sit,
Witnesses
To Immolation,
Acknowledging Death.
Vap'rous vows now vanished;
Infidelity preceding
The wedding day,
Following after,
Covered deftly under
Lies compounding lies,
One holding true,
One never so,
And so we sit over
Coffee and Divorce,
Now that the truth is out.
We sit,
Witnesses to small talk:
"You may have the furniture";
"Insurance ends in May";
"Do you have a question?"
"There's nothing left to say."
We sit;
She leaves;
Her emptiness
Remains;
We three sit tight,
Uncertain,
Nothing left to say,
But still we sit musing
Coffee and Divorce.
Apr 27, 2014
Apr 27, 2014 at 1:45 PM UTC
I think it’s important to make peace with your long line of perpetually confused and self-indulgent ancestry once grasping at and fumbling through a life at which they, preceding you, assumed they occupied the centre of and sought to prove this to mostly anyone, with rapacious might and puerile visions of their own success story, which no matter how successful would always only occupy the dark corners of their blood-successors’ historical records of themselves, which is to say you, adding them up with other people who were once important to them and stuffing them into some numerical equation on which they occupy the left, and you the right side of the equal-sign, but all of which exists in the vast and endless vicissitude of spinning void, of which you both (and us all) occupy some cosmic equivalence (and importance) of the universes stray skin-cell, somewhere on the foot perhaps, unconsidered and left alone until we all disappear into the casket of an unrecorded history.
Mar 8, 2016
Mar 8, 2016 at 12:11 PM UTC
Morning Sunlight keens like a mother
cries for her dying child & leaves
abandon their trees
while fall presumes winter
will glower like black
ice
hard from
preceding
months,
where the promise
of spring seems
unattainable.
Oct 10, 2016
Oct 10, 2016 at 2:31 PM UTC
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
I
go
where e're
the road goes.
I can not depart
this journey called life, for I am
its sacred trek, and also its sacred traveler.
I am not the treacherous mountains, nor am I the peace filled valleys along the way.
I am merely the dash-
between the dates-
etched upon my tombstone-
the sacred space-
between my birth-
and my death-
The road goes-
where e're go I.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
*A Fibonacci poem is a multiple-line verse based on the Fibonacci sequence so that the number of syllables in each line equals the total number of syllables in the preceding two lines. 1,1,2,3,5,8,13,21,34, etc.. *
Mar 19, 2013
Mar 19, 2013 at 1:09 AM UTC
‘Tis a paradox life
One picks up a blade
without yet first conquering oneself
One judges
preceding the revision of oneself
One awaits heaven on earth
without attempting to create serendipity for oneself
One expects love
yet can’t foster the courage
to give it to oneself
The very sword that divides
the world
is the same sword that divides oneself
Earth hath no existence
save the reflection one gives
No isolation to be made of
Heaven, Earth, and Hell
since they coexist within
oneself
One may not be able to change the world
but
can’t one change their own?
Dec 6, 2018
Dec 6, 2018 at 9:09 AM UTC
Everything works better in the cold.
The vacuum of space fuels
perfection, zero point
energy yielding limitless.
Orbital and quantum mechanics,
these mysteries of ordered
chaos, the compression of
external combustion that
defies and evades physics,
were solved and forgotten
long ago.
Humans invented time to measure
everything, but now don't
know what the numbers mean.
The Nineveh Number has
lost its purpose, much like
we have lost its meaning.
Nov 13, 2013
Nov 13, 2013 at 9:51 PM UTC
"Most men lead lives of quiet desperation"
Fighting the blanket of oppression
Within and without themselves
The metaphorical blanket holding them
To a goal that is not of themselves
Tied to be someone they are not,
Trying to fill the wrong size shoes
Life planned out by superiors
Blinded by tinted glasses of lie and
False truths put on by others preceding
This suffocating blanket restricts and constricts
And holds the victim to one forced idea
Like blinders on a horse
Or a blindfold on a magician
Only a narrow, yet clear path is provided
A leap of faith must be taken to discover 'self'
Nov 14, 2012
Nov 14, 2012 at 9:54 PM UTC
well then shepherd in the mess why does that sharpened cowl of wheat surround those sweet yams in the satchel, some scene of loosening transgressions, no pear ripening itself one dull, and one unfulfilling afternoon, rolls down over its branch of sister and brother father and mother Bartletts from the stem, only to make its way into the bottom of that stretched out tawny hide. Where by the wayside every other nobody can see straight inside when a hand moves in, sweeps its fist and then goes deeply down into that can of rotten novelties we all hate, but you feel keeps us in suspense. I wonder will it ever end? Bells busting from the insides of their guts, another candy shock, up and bounces, popcorn kernels, roasted almond slivers, and some preceding green vegetable posted on the 8th St. Diner marquee display on 9th, another advertisement fighting at the sore, devoured hunger for that silhouette following closely behind the moistened wells where my brush dabs lightly into the cup before the gouache and paint mixture begin to dry, that is where I wait and wonder why? Why? Pained with hunger but besmirched with fright, skin sweaty, knotted like muslin yards growing weak against the coil. So humbling were the groans that nearly a decade crossed swiftly across his face, only five or ten minutes had passed before another twenty years flowed into the vast matrix of the rivers of blue sweat marked by estuaries, creeks, and streams across the brow, down the cheeks, and ultimately across the neck, lazing down into the chest, before settling its heavy panic soaking in the guts. Where a heavy glass brick has been vitrifying in the sun, never have two people seen the steamy and piping-hot quarry go from its conviviality and festivity of life, into this shriveled up tree having found its way into the prairie where giant winds bend its branches and enormous thunderstorms nearly strangle it with its own roots. Frisked by sin and pangs of nostalgia in which a thousand thoughts intersplice the whorls imprinted upon our brains.
Dec 11, 2018
Dec 11, 2018 at 6:57 PM UTC
I like stars,
they're pretty, truly
cruelly, in irony
ebony of the night
they undull
I like mornings,
their colors like
spikes of paint,
faint but majestic
elastic light waves
of four hundred fifty
six hundred twenty
plenty, of wavelength
I like the cold,
rolled into covers
lovers entwined
blind to a frail,
stale reality of
everything, basically
I like your reading
preceding these lines
vines and strings
of things plane,
mundane that I
try to hold onto
since I'm a bit loose
...Thank you dearly
kindly
sincerely
Jul 20, 2018
Jul 20, 2018 at 12:39 AM UTC
Adolescence is for love
Unconditional and perpetual.
Mother's arms and lullabies,
Father's kisses preceding goodbyes.
Thunderstorms
And closet monsters.
The safety of parents' pillows
Like home.
Love discovered and love new,
Daisies and playground sand,
Notes passed from one hand
To the next.
Little heart
That drums and stutters
To beat
I love you.
On starry rooftop nights,
With us cautious adolescent lovers.
Backseat romance,
And radio's tune.
The belief persists
That there is only now.
The past is still then.
The future is soon.
Aug 16, 2012
Aug 16, 2012 at 8:59 AM UTC
she spoke to me, on the daffodil sweetness of the pasture
while the grasses, waving, muttered their moist message on the wind
of rot, and renewal,
(but hold your lips, be still for an explosion of intimacy, for a moment)
'Are those a constellation?' she asks.
"The Pleiades."
'You don't know that.'
she doesn't care where the car begins, exhaling gently, to stop
and she commends its forward motion
(the keening love of a sodium light
and forgetfulness in every bone of my body)
I love the thrum of it, below my feet,
murmuring vibrato in the pedals.
They have a Huck Finn cave display at Disneyworld. In Adventure Island, or somewhere, or one of us, deep in the vastness of spines and fingers.
Its fiberglass walls are a portrait of America -
the glean of dew a reflection of that spirit
that drove us over the borders, the rivers, to Oregon,
so we could love under a naked moon,
and renounce our lives of glee, and security
for the bright unsettled plantation of the starless fields.
'You don't know a constellation from a cloud of dandelion seeds.'
But oh, my relentless pioneer love, I do - I know a constellation
is made of stars, and rough determination, and I know that,
love is a today thing, and we are yesterday people
that pain is tomorrow, and we will always be children of the dusk preceding
destined, dear, to find our love receding
Are you prepared, or will the wilderness this time swallow you?
Feb 23, 2010
Feb 23, 2010 at 10:46 AM UTC
You are the smell of the decaying leaves;
The leaves I long for when life is in bloom.
You are the soft thud of the door
As I slip out, unnoticed.
You are the breath I take, emerging from the frigid ocean,
And the light I illuminate upon my arrival home on the blackest of nights.
You are not, however the electricity,
Or lack thereof when the power surges in the midst of an essay.
You may be pleased to know that you are not that song
Overplayed on the radio that never fails to irk me.
You are also not the piu right before the mezzo forte,
For that is me. I am the piu preceding the mezzo forte.
I am the spare tire on the underside of your car,
And I am also the F sharp to the B natural, a few cents flat.
It may not surprise you that I am the negative sign you forgot to distribute,
And the feeling of snow seeping in through your boots.
You are not the feeling of snow seeping in a pair of boots.
You would like to know that you are the smell of a sharpie,
Uncapped for the first time, and you are the excitement of using it first.
You are even the taste of catching the first snowflake of the winter,
And eating the first s’more of the summer.
You are the chap stick, found in the pocket of the pants in the hamper,
Or perhaps even the twenty dollar bill in the other.
But I am the learner’s permit that went through the wash.
I am also the candle whose wick is drowned in its own wax.
I am not, however the smell of the decaying leaves.
You are the smell of the decaying leaves.
You will now and forever be the smell of the decaying leaves;
The leaves I long for when life is in bloom.
Dec 20, 2013
Dec 20, 2013 at 8:34 PM UTC
Spring. Same plants, same order.
Monday morning, open for business.
Tractor-trailers, day care centers.
Every leaf that’s coming out is out.
To tonight’s town meeting I will go unaware and foolish.
It’s delicious, the unimportance of my feelings.
Even our particular war was small.
Europe had one last a century.
Hubble photos of events 13 billion years ago
Do not put me in mind of the species’ insignificance.
Just the opposite having witnessed the universe’s birth.
But birth from what preceding state? God again rears his hoary head.
They say one must let go and will let go,
God will decide what tragedy you need.
Not every seed becomes a flower,
Not every branch breaks out a truelove knot.
While the ancient Romans wrote of love
The ancient Britons wrote of war.
The Romans should have been perfecting their republic.
No god could do that work for them.
The November moth's the fall cankerworm
Slender-bodied, beige, beginning life as the well known inchworm.
In our war more children may have died than would have had
the tyrant lived in fear and awe.
We'll never know because we can't help being here.
Aug 10, 2015
Aug 10, 2015 at 11:28 AM UTC
Touch
You cannot lift or load it,
over your shoulder, throw it,
to best assay its weight -
is it ponderous, full of big *** gravitas
or a snack, a parfait desert,
a haiku delight?
You cannot touch it,
but it can touch you,
It can grasp both your shoulders,
shake you from complacency,
put its hands upon thy throat,
gasp emit, a scream demanded,
paint whimsy lines on thy face,
from ear to ear.
See
With yours eyes, by a mere glance,
true reveal its length,
stanzas multiple or an itty bitty ditty,
but this gives no value clue,
Ogden Nash vs. Tennyson,
in two minutes make you laugh,
in twenty, make you beg, mercy!
Smell
Some Poe poems do stink,
befouled mushrooms in
a dank place, some require nerve to read,
but your olfactory be ill suited for
poetic deconstruction and criticism.
Hear
Wake you with kisses upon thy face,
inject love poems into thy ears,
straight to the brain verbal crack *******
yet even the hearing the whisper
of words from my lips,
is an insufficient,
sensorily speaking methodology,
of how a poem, to best comprehend
How then?
If touch, vision, smell and cursory hearing alone
can't essence capture, what then, weary reader,
is the supposed Laureate's approved analytical tool?
Taste
Each letter, a morsel in your mouth,
Each phrase, a fork full of pleasure,
Each stanza, a full fledged member
in a tasting menu,
Perfect only in conjunction
with the preceding flavor,
and the one that follows, and the one that follows.
Taste each poem upon thy tongue and then pass it on,
you know how....
Each word, whether chewed thoroughly,
or lightly placed upon a bud for flavor,
needs the careful consideration of your mouth.
Feel the light pressure of the tongues tip
upon the roof of your mouth
and the exalted exhalations of
air rushing past thy cheeks
as you messenger breath from
your chest to be shared with the world,
over the poem's interpreter, your tasting lips.
*As I lay each word down,
a brick by brick edifice construct
of mine own design, I am sated, fulfilled only,
when with I see your lips move
as you savor my words,
my taste you share,
and we are closer for it.*
***Deaf, dumb and blind,
all such travails can be conquered, assailed,
but when I cannot, no longer anymore taste
my poems upon thy lips, then I breathe no more.***
Mar 14, 2014
Mar 14, 2014 at 4:22 PM UTC
To
know love
is to be certain that
our locked gaze holds an intangible truth that words could never do justice.
The same way your stable palm
cupping my cheek makes the shadows
dance for more sunshine.
My heart finds it difficult
to make a logical appeal to my brain,
because the way you look at me is
unexplainable,
the way I feel when you squeeze my thigh is
irrational,
and the way we love is
enigmatic
To know with certainty
is to get lost in your eyes and be joyfully surprised that you always find me.
To love is to find felicity
in our mutual surrender to our greatest strength and weakness in each other.
To certainly know love is to discover
the simple satisfaction of your head in my lap,
my hands in your hair and our hearts elated
in a moment of peace.
To know
love certainly is
to feel
the sting of truth and appreciate it.
For without this truth
our locked gaze would not break down walls
that were built over years of pain
preceding this newfound freedom in love
Free to learn and grow without the fear of abandonment or rejection.
What is love if it is not everything
you despise and everything you need
compacted into one ridiculously handsome person with the power to destroy you....
but never could and never would.
For such destruction might
collapse mountains around the world.
Clouds would fall from the sky
Trees would split into two and then
Owls
couldn't perch on branches
to watch over me and you.
To know love is to be intelligently ignorant
To accept the inevitable torment of an equal
Yet refusing to let eachother go.
and
Certainly love
is never certain
But choosing to know love is
certainly, to live
Nov 14, 2013
Nov 14, 2013 at 12:15 AM UTC
Leading sounds of spring
Are now preceding the season.
Scattered platoons of yardmen
clunk aluminum ladders
that thunk debris littered roof gutters,
bang a size range of galvanized nails
into an exterior catalogue of materials
needing attentive appending.
The leaf blowers, the leaf blowers
exhausting NASCAR level roars
attempting to push back
last fall/winter into their calendared slots.
And the first nice day Harleys
rumble distantly along the gorge road below.
Mar 15, 2012
Mar 15, 2012 at 2:50 PM UTC
Pulsating honor doth corroded hearts impound
A blustery breeze echoes cries from each, preceding battleground
A recurring, eager parade of reporters, gawkers freely roam distant mound
Below, fatigued, tidy mass of steeled infantry; to death's throes bound
Neighing horses conditioned to mayhem the pageantry doth confound
On opposite ridges, mounted turrets prepared hell's fury to expound
On signal, a synchronized, concussive chorus doth its dark melody propound
Scraps of metal shards initiate; commencing another, toilsome round
After lengthy barrage, wits collected a more lethal volley to stound
Familiar, urgent order to charge christens hallowed ground
With youthful ardor a wide-eyed bugler doth the bridled expanse unbound
Shrieking rancor from recoiling rifles; a familiar anthem doth resound
Recurring cacophonous medley, weathered nerves drowned
Once more, a mass of flesh surges into the abyss with mortal hopes crowned
Anon, shattered limbs; gory wounds misery's cache compound
Jul 20, 2012
Jul 20, 2012 at 9:59 AM UTC
Press on the brakes
Red lights
Slow going.
Discouraging.
Just across the way
White lights shine
So promising.
Full of hope.
And happiness.
A color of encouragement
and a better day.
Yet sitting, stuck,
amid a sea of red.
Let me remind you
of the most crucial
detail you forget:
Behind every white light
glows a red.
And preceding every red,
just out of sight,
is a pair of white lights,
shining brighter than day.
Feb 3, 2016
Feb 3, 2016 at 2:54 AM UTC
Intertwined within us are our souls desires
We've become thoughtless consumers
Our eyes have overtaken our hearts
Countless evocation and solicitation cravings
What's the true essence of life
We must credit ourselves with a virtue of constraint
Consciously aware of the folly of greed
Competing for the consent of the masses
Continually corrupts our untainted soul
For without a soul what's the essence of life
Desire for credit has circumnavigated our default setting
Considerably actively commandeering our human condition
We've become complicit in this annihilation of what we hold dear
Our individuality disputed and tarnished
Lives crushed beyond recognition
The wide-ranging impact calamitous
What's the true essence of life
Thine benefits are transient
Yet the impact will leave an indelible mark
Preceding generations trod carefully
Afraid not to let the mud stick
We've been tainted by horrors
Yet we chose to flirt precariously with its allure
It's experience is of a blissful kind
It is however prudent to navigate cautiosly
Jan 12, 2016
Jan 12, 2016 at 6:16 PM UTC
In these restless days
we fight
for a bigger picture;
more broad of a scope,
to pull back the curtain.
We're building potential,
with preceding
relentless
force,
through these
mental worlds.
Strutting around
savvy *****
sauntering by
like we know
no better.
Selling ourselves
one phony token
at a time
to a Devil
wearing leather
stilettos.
Insulting our own
intelligences
by propagating
more absurd nonsense
to the masses.
We are institutionalized;
stricken
with a historic fate
that deep seated roots
reminds us
does not need
repeating.
Be the founder
of your mind;
your
house of cards.
Inhale completely,
releasing the one breath
that matters;
yours.
Smile and worry not,
you have only destroyed
the home
the misinformed
have built for you.
Pick up the Aces
and begin again.
Jun 8, 2014
Jun 8, 2014 at 3:12 PM UTC
There is a couch and it is where I fall.
My seventeen year-old legs,
bandaged with bumblebee knee socks,
arch like ****** pink lawn-flamingo joints.
Crookedness meets at
cigarette skin thighs: grape-kiss fingerprints,
like mental leprosy, projected.
My eyes meet at where fingers told me to stay
and where the knuckles followed.
Acorn ***** hair sleeps in a tuft,
woken by the brush of a thirty-three year-old soccer coach.
-
My Vans grip sandpaper tape,
preceding clicks: sliding up and down,
like graduation day maternal comfort,
like dirt-under-the-fingernails ************
Clicking wheels, sound waves
smacking across asphalt jungle.
Sounds escaping and reminding me
of how I'll never.
I'm not in love -- not sure if I can,
be affectionate towards the things
I don't understand.
I'm not in love -- even if I could,
I don't think I'd care like I should.
Jan 16, 2016
Jan 16, 2016 at 7:56 PM UTC
A late summer sun, sinking in the west,
Shimmering, ablaze with fiery colour,
Appearing suspended above the trees,
Greens transformed to reds and golds,
Summer’s daughter, borne on a breeze.
As I wander amongst treasured places,
Copses, glades; peace of a woodland path,
Breathing subtle scents, pollen filled haze,
Nature’s unstinting magic edging change,
Accepting the shortening of summer days.
Barely escaping before lengthening shadows,
Race to the door of my countryside home,
Animal calls echoing, preceding night’s rest,
Autumn shakes out her gown; smiles to see,
A late summer sun, sinking in the west.
Sep 16, 2010
Sep 16, 2010 at 10:41 AM UTC
Paris in the springtime.
Dark winter in the land of fall.
Of guns and bombs.
Machines that **** at will.
Whose will it is?
Is what we finding ourselves asking?
As human beings.
We implore the end to evil deeds.
Evils preceding war.
God bless the lost,
God bless the lonely.
If only he would.
Paris must survive.
Joie d'vivre.
(c)LIVVI
Nov 14, 2015
Nov 14, 2015 at 8:04 AM UTC