"purgatorial" poems
In the last months of March 2014,
Soldier Othello the Moroccan moor
Was in Stratford-upon-Avon at the graveside
Of William Shakespeare the English bard,
He was observing the anniversary
Of Shakespeare and his European brother Cervantes,
He had in his pocket another charm and amulet
Given to him by his paternal grandfather,
This time round not a charm for love portion,
But a mystique totem to raise the dead from dusts,
As Othello himself has hitherto over-matured
Above the painful torture of *** with aristocrats,
He has left it for the Jewish aristotrash; Frantz Kafka,
Whose torturous appetite for *** with German women,
Was the sorriest eyesore of his thespic efforts.
Like Jesus at the grave of Lazarus
Othello groaned by shouting; William the son of John!
No response, he shouted again; Shakespeare the bard!
Then the mystique powers of Othello’s amulet
Electrified Shakespeare back to life,
What is your problem you black moor,
The ***** of Morocco, the soldier
Who beguiled Desdemona into betrothal,
Not because of glory of your work,
But due to charms of your love portion
Bequeathed to you by your witch mother,
What brings you to my sepulchre,
For only to perturbed my purgatorial peace,
What brings you!?
Questioned Shakespeare the bard.
Am no longer the moor, blackness is class
But not the race, as race is bankrupt,
I come here to salute you with good news,
That your European brother, Alfred Nobel,
Currently rewards thespic bards like you,
Whether black or white, blue or green,
The ***** bards from the natural forest,
He also rewards, so wake up and pick the prize!
Retorted Othello in virtue of truth,
And also tell me the native bricks
Of your beautiful architecture;
Where and how did you mold thy bricks?
Your brown English bricks that walled your culture;
***** clown, leapfrog, mercurial, oxymoron,
Falsitafity, Shyllocking, colleaguery and window,
Cauldron, graymalkin, woo, betroth, infatuation and so on.
From underneath his sepulcher Shakespeare broke
A violent gaggle of laughter as if he was ten English skeletons,
You Othello you are still a beautiful moor
Whose foolishness time has not condemned to oblivion,
You are as a fool as I created you ; I will only teach you
One brick, the window , that you go and put on
Your wind disturbed African huts,
Put the wind door on your hut,
And be flexible in your tongue
To give it English elegance
Combine and shorten wind and door
To get your cultural brick of; window !
Apr 11, 2014
Apr 11, 2014 at 9:39 AM UTC
Alliteration isn't cheesy
Not for me.
When I use words to stave off the clutching squeeze of
A panic attack
I can write:
"There is pressure on my chest and I feel anxious."
or
"Pain presses me into purgatorial prayers."
Alliteration becomes the stutter into which I
Skid to a stop
Jan 18, 2019
Jan 18, 2019 at 6:18 PM UTC
Red,the colour of danger, a warning, to stop.
Red, stalks my memories, my dreams, my now.
Red, the colour of blood, of becoming a woman.
Red, the colour we are born into, the blood of mothers.
Red, vibrant, primary, primeval, purgatorial.
Red, a more frightening colour than black,
Red, the colour of life and death
Red, the colour coursing our veins.
Apr 3, 2014
Apr 3, 2014 at 9:40 AM UTC
hand
grasping other
has-been hands
life
I'll split galaxies
they break
cherry lips
dead men
(redemption)
def leopard
dead-- beats
&
radishes
hovering
out of life
&
in
to
purgatorial
dreams
of
****
death
(bare--
skeleton)
May 20, 2015
May 20, 2015 at 8:18 PM UTC
The morning came slowly on that third day
The sun wondered how it might be able to shine through such darkness
The tears of the earth came early in the dew that morning
The flowers began to bloom in an open defiance to the earth
Perhaps the decaying body of the Lord gave them new life
The birds sang songs of jubilee that morning, as if there were reason for joy
Did they not know that the Light of the World had been snuffed out?
Did they not know that the one who fed them had gone away?
Did they not know that their creator lay below them dead in the ground?
Or did they sing defiantly knowing what we yet did not know?
Much like it had been in Bethlehem decades before, the world was silent
Breaking the silence like the Divine Child’s cries, somewhere a child cried
As if this child knew that his Lord lay dead below the earth
As if he could feel the thick darkness that surrounded him
But then, in defiance like only a child could bring, the first laughter in days
The new world was cold, dark, and bitter, and a child dared to laugh
While the rest of the world cried and mourned the death of their only hope
This child laughed while the birds sang and the flowers bloomed
It was as if they did not know that the Life of the World was still dead
Rather, though, it was as if they had read the prophets of old, and believed
When the sun finally rose, it could not shine through the thick darkness
We lived in a dark purgatorial world where we awaited the judgement
What a terrible judgement that must be coming toward us
We, who drove the nails into His hands, and gave Him over to death
But then, a glimmer of light comes upon the horizon
The light was not the rising of the sun, but some holy other
Those disciples who had run away while He hung on the cross ran again
This time not away from their Savior, but toward that otherworldly light
When they came to where He has been buried, they fell upon their faces
The brightest light to ever grace this old world poured out of the tomb
Then they heard a voice, the voice of the Risen Lord
‘Rise up you men of earth’ He said to the men lying facedown
‘Rise up oh you sleepers!’
‘Behold the Light of the World is upon you’
It was then that the world began its slow change
The cosmos, which had fractured so long ago in Eden, began to mend
Dead men rose to new life
Dark places were then filled with life
The world became a new place where the old had passed away
Every crack and crevice filled with an uncreated light never before seen
For the Lord has risen from the dead!
Indeed He has defeated death!
And forever, we shall keep the feast !
Alleluia!
Apr 16, 2017
Apr 16, 2017 at 7:46 PM UTC
Who are these? Why sit they here in twilight?
Wherefore rock they, purgatorial shadows,
Drooping tongues from jaws that slob their relish,
Baring teeth that leer like skulls' teeth wicked?
Stroke on stroke of pain, - but what slow panic,
Gouged these chasms round their fretted sockets?
Ever from their hair and through their hands' palms
Misery swelters. Surely we have perished
Sleeping, and walk hell; but who these hellish?
- These are men whose minds the Dead have ravished.
Memory fingers in their hair of murders,
Multitudinous murders they once witnessed.
Wading sloughs of flesh these helpless wander,
Treading blood from lings that had loved laughter.
Always they must see these things and hear them,
Batter of guns and shatter of flying muscles,
Carnage incomparable, and human squander
Rucked too thick for these men's extrication.
Therefore still their eyeballs shrink tormented
Back into their brains, because on their sense
Sunlight seems a blood-smear; night comes blood-black;
Dawn breaks open like a wound that bleeds afresh.
- Thus their heads wear this hilarious, hideous,
Awful falseness of set-smiling corpses.
- Thus their hands are plucking at each other;
Picking at the rope-knouts of their scourging;
Snatching after us who smote them, brother,
Pawing us who dealt them war and madness.
2.2k
As I walk towards the shrine of blood and gold,
Reeking of the fallen and of the old
Unbeknownst to what might lay beyond,
A ******* in what comes after, a ******* in what came before.
This sack of maimed flesh that you see
A conquered ***** of the soul
This skin worn by all but one
A temple broken down to the bone.
Where once was a mind delighted,
A crown of jewels, of dreams of flight and
Of merriment and of might
A child of the stars that I once was
Burnt embers of olden coal that I am now.
Hence here I lay, astray, with no greed
No rage, no radiance and no leads
A destitute of life, fed and dressed
A king of the barren, a pastor amongst the wicked and unblessed.
And as I stand now at the altar of the fallen ghouls,
From suitor to gatekeeper of my own poisoned muse
Guiding sheep to a slaughter frayed
A purgatorial monument, unraveled and unswayed.
Nov 7, 2020
Nov 7, 2020 at 1:29 PM UTC
Walking in America
Walking underwater from the waist-down
With a head full of quicksand
I’m among the few remaining souls
Left to burst and burn in this wasteland, purgatorial
As newspaper editorials camouflage me in a whirlwind
And the remains of everyone I’ve ever known and loved sting my eyeballs
What will be my grand undoing?
Talking to thineself
As I embark on a quest where free will is His divine’s bile duct
Was all of this at His behest?
And all of the survivors now share a common theory:
Hell is outer space where nothing happens
Heaven is this dreary place- Heaven is chaos
I need some sea and sand and land to curl up and protect myself in
But even if I outstretch with no bullets flying at me
The bugs and weird fishes will probably kick me off their property
Nov 27, 2011
Nov 27, 2011 at 11:30 PM UTC
Hunched spines slouched with an air of indifference against backs of rigid chairs
Anxious toes tapping on linoleum floors
A generation of Attention-Deficit-addled youth, subdued with medication because they think our eyes dart too quickly
Minds fluttering more rapid-fire than individual thought can account for
What is “unique” when everything stems from mimicry?
We think ourselves philosophers (only because we’re naïve enough to make assumptions like that)
All that our naked minds can bear is a sliver of the reality we suffocate in
We reject conformity by conforming
We discard typecast by creating stereotypes
We critique and self-doubt and are relentless in our own auto-denigration
Yet still, we see ourselves as infinitely superior
Because we’re the sum of earth’s 3 billion year journey
We’re the product of every galaxy and star-birth
We’re a shred of every molecule of humanity
We’re the chosen ones, we’re evolution.
We’re ragged, fraying edges
The living definition of a walking contradiction; hypocrisy in motion
Our pens are still doodling in the margins of our notebooks
We march to a syncopated beat with heads held high but eyes cast low as we count our steps and avoid stepping on cracks
Our heels drag with the showmanship of nonchalance but the eagerness in our fingertips betrays us
We’re all just kids caught in the purgatorial limbo of high school
We’re all just trying to pretend that we’re more than we are
We’re mostly hoping that someday we’ll prove our parents right
Mar 29, 2013
Mar 29, 2013 at 10:04 PM UTC
Floating, adrift.
Like a speck in a kid's book
A dandelion seed in the air
Minus the grace.
A purgatorial lack of gravity
Empty.
I guess you were my earth
And now I'm lost in space.
But it's time I made my world,
And stop abusing yours.
Sep 28, 2011
Sep 28, 2011 at 10:52 AM UTC
a yellowish shroud
is placed hurriedly
upon starched white sheets
revealing vicious contrasts
where the cullan trees lie
where the cullan trees lie
its Hessian appearance
an omen, a foretold event
like breathing deeply in a silence
amidst the history of a great disorder
where the cullan trees lie
where the cullan trees lie
violent ink stains
on folding parchment
embalm themselves
upon the thickness of a sorrow
where the cullan trees lie
where the cullan trees lie
placed deep within
shallow subterranean depths
of an enigmatic being
that is both engineering and entrenching
where the cullan trees lie
where the cullan trees lie
its perplexing sensations causing
a wonderful ingrained passion
to erupt with imponderable abstracts
where truth does not exceed exception
where the cullan trees lie
where the cullan trees lie
the shroud provides a false tranquillity
where there is no longer breath
imposes itself unobtrusively
with wonderful staccato caresses
where the cullan trees lie
where the cullan trees lie
it proclaims an innocence of salvation
yet gives gauge to spectacular routes
and an enormity of misconceptions
amid prestigious beatifications
where the cullan trees lie
where the cullan trees lie
oh sweet smelling blue abyss
oh deluded reality
dressed in a winding sheet
of meaningless words
where the cullan trees lie
where the cullan trees lie
wrapped in phrases of falsehood
amidst this purgatorial fog
a twilight world of mysterious ailments
maintains a world of external restraints
where the cullan trees lie
where the cullan trees lie
creates and emptiness, a vacancy
provides an intoxication of vision
a strangeness of sensation
a world transparent
where the cullan trees lie
where the cullan trees lie
read the sentences of silence
breathe the perfume of never fading flowers
and see for the first time
the unfinished likeness of others
where the cullan trees lie
where the cullan trees lie
Aug 7, 2014
Aug 7, 2014 at 6:11 AM UTC
When your youthful command of language
is not enough to convey
what swings its jaws inside you,
when you stand pulling from your shelf
volumes written by the great and inimitable—
names that inspire centuries of admiration,
minds that managed what you cannot,
their icy clarity pummeling you
like a stream of fists,
you of tremble and grief
and writhing weariness—
when your age prohibits you from expressing
your apocalyptic, purgatorial verve the way you want it,
you don’t stop trying,
you don’t stop trying,
you let the sun drop and rise
and then
you launch your body at this wall again,
you bruise yourself willingly and determinedly,
you throw your whole weight into the crash,
you work up a fury of hope, an improbable recklessness,
you keep going and going and going and going
never mind the blood in your mouth or bells in your ears
because you are the whale that beaches itself by choice
and you are right to be this way,
you are brave to keep looking for gold
Apr 7, 2015
Apr 7, 2015 at 5:59 PM UTC
5/13/2015
There happens to be a tremendous peace in a spring night late in the season, sultry humid mornings and days seem brash in comparison to this light blue thing clouds crawling across the sky to the tune of mourning doves and woodpeckers. I cannot remember primaverial scenes before last year's. It seems spring is the shortest, the frigid isolation of winter is so permanent and branding that I can recall every individual one since perhaps '11. Fall and summer always seem to blend into a purgatorial gloaming paste. Throughout all these seasons one always feels he is a single pedestrian (or is there another name when one is wholly alone?) walking down winding drives and straited cremated avenues. Perhaps it is not so common– perhaps it is me, but even when walking in deltas of human life one in winter feels alone. But writing this by the Japanese oak under the beak of a woodpeckers I feel the same apprehension. It is me, I have decided.
Jun 28, 2015
Jun 28, 2015 at 12:47 PM UTC
[Part 1]
So far behind
Though it seems I lead the pack
My heart does beat
My lungs, they breathe right back
I am alive.
Sometimes it is as if
Death has arrived at my door
Progress has come to a halt
My dreams deprived of anything more
Am I alive?
I am become a stagnant pond
Where wind will howl not,
nor warmth bid his welcome---
The cold, it chills the marrow of my bones
Am I dead?
From my purgatorial porch, I perch to view the news,
My peers about me move along with time
Whilst I float in drollery, prentending to flow the same---
Apparently convincingly so
I cannot be dead.
Mind and muscle try, but do not succeed
There is no regress,
But they dig a deep ditch,
Down in which I have made my mess---
I am stuck.
[Part 2]
Each success is one step ahead
Each failure, three lessons to learn
Overcoming mistakes should put them to bed
And the next two steps are two steps earned
I can get out!
Eyes see forward, not behind
Let the brain leave the bad in the back of its mind
So then it may focus on what it has gained
The next few steps are the few that remain
I am alive!
[Part 3]
So far behind
Though it seems I've led the pack
I need not worry
To accept the gruesome facts
I will make it!
I am not standing water
Nor am I stuck between life and death
I am alive, *********
Hear me take a breath!
I just have to snap out of it and get back to walking.
Jun 21, 2017
Jun 21, 2017 at 5:51 PM UTC
He suddenly became quiet.
He didn't feel like getting any of his thoughts
out into the world anymore.
He felt that nothing mattered
and that his presence was defined
only by the clothes he wore and
not by the words that wore him out.
He started wearing shirts. Up 'til the last button.
He became numb
and all of his dumb
fears
became brave
in one instance.
No one recognized his face anymore.. for a while now. They were concentrating on other things,
and when he finally recognized the truth
that was staring at him from the mirror,
he decided to hit the "snooze" button.
He couldn't find any reason to get out of bed in the morning,
nor to go to sleep at night.
He was in limbo,
in a purgatorial state of mind,
with one foot set in irrelevance
and the other one stepping in the **** of inadequacy.
He felt weak
and small,
although he was never thin,
nor fit.
He still loved everyone and wanted more from them,
even though nobody wanted more of him.
He often felt like the screaming guy in Munch's painting
- surrounded by color, light and everyone's rear end -
Oh, what a wonderful state of mind!
He stopped setting up his alarm.
It felt useless - everything had already happened, anyhow.
His life started showing the MUTE button in the corner of his internal screen.
He suddenly became very quiet
but despite all the silence that was surrounding him NOW,
there was a lot of noise in his head.
Apr 19, 2018
Apr 19, 2018 at 11:34 AM UTC
You are the ship in the desert sand
The linings engraved in my hand
With the fragile trust I used to hold
The fire that burns my naked soul
In that ship I've been to places
Been to places in my head
Hard places with alien faces
In the soft of my own bed
In my purgatorial with myself
You are the last battle I won
The constant war of withdrawal
Which I lost before it had begun
You are the moon in the morning sky
My white orb when the noon is high
My blazing tempest summer fire
My mind's last dying desire
The pain that no longer lingers
The sand slipping through my fingers
Nights spent in wishful thinking
Remembering tears and fitful blinking
But I thank God that you were born
My perfect floating blizzard snow
My poetry given flawless form
Of whom I so selfishly let go
Mar 18, 2014
Mar 18, 2014 at 2:46 PM UTC
Eternal December.
The clouds explode and heaven cries.
Razor ice falls, cuts my skin.
I give crimson rain to the earth.
Rogue winds come, time falters.
Trapped in December.
I fall, the snow embraces me.
My eyes locked in oblivion.
My awareness filled with purgatorial nightmares.
Falling. Always falling.
Frozen memories of love and happiness.
Painful existence making itself aware.
Enslaved to my own mind.
Chaos beckons me to her *****
Living in an eternal December.
May 1, 2010
May 1, 2010 at 7:30 AM UTC
He plays for himself, and
For the Danube.
Alone, on a field of stairs
He sits with brass on his lips
In the purgatorial wilderness between
The roiling streets and the
Roiling water. He can touch neither, and
He is both. The sound does not carry.
Why is he on the edge? Why on
The seventh step? Why here? Why
Now?
Who used to sit beside him?
For whom did he used to play?
Dec 20, 2019
Dec 20, 2019 at 2:37 PM UTC
I walked away from absolutes
Emotions bleeding out
Determined never to return
Preferring the sting of the hailstone
Whipped by the wind of a cyclone
The relentless hard reason I thought I served
Began to liquify and poured through my hands
The truth exposed it not as a liar
But a murderer of souls
Satiating for a long season
Before withering and void of any hope
I floated in a purgatorial ocean
Uncaring, unfeeling, not even knowing
I was waiting
I thought I saw a chasm
But it must have been a reflection in the sunlight
A signal flare to let me know
The enigma is still there
Now I don't believe love has a feeling
Maybe joy, maybe passion
But never true love
Love doesn't channel feelings
Love channels absolutes
Now I can't walk away again
The next big storm might do me in
Love will find me joy and passion
In exchange for sacrifice and service
I must only believe
The absolutes are truth and wiser than I
Everything else is just waiting to die
Nov 20, 2014
Nov 20, 2014 at 11:10 PM UTC
Silence,
beautifully cherished between soundless glances
or love locked eyes
of after sheet trances.
for you once said to me,
“silence my dear,
is not the absence of sound
but the presence of something else.”
both capable of taking me to my greatest heavens,
or paving my quiet path to hell
this fact and uncertainty both
fills me with joy
and frightens me to my very core.
for it feels as if you’ve taken my words for nothing but fairy lore.
yet, I stay mute
I’ll sew my lips shut
stuck in this purgatorial
entrenched rut-
deafened,
by the screaming silence.
Jul 6, 2018
Jul 6, 2018 at 7:22 PM UTC
It's me who should know better
It's me who should make the sacrifice
It's me who should be strong
when others won't.
for what?
When did I get so used to
burn every inch of myself out
for acception and love
that no one grants me?
for what?
It's me who knows better
It's me who makes the sacrifice
It's me who is strong
as it's the only choice
for what?
When did it get so hard not to
wear everything on my sleeve
as opposed to hide them so
I won't be noticed?
for what?
It's me who is the fool
It's me who is the attention-seeker
It's me who is the weakling
still painfully invisible.
no reason, no consequence
no beginning, no end
after all, I'm the girl who can't hurt herself
who can't heal herself
who can neither exist nor perish.
It's me who is the utmost liar
no savior, no captor
no one, no one, no one.
Jan 23, 2019
Jan 23, 2019 at 12:25 PM UTC
Slanted
Why do I slide?
Slide down a rabbit hole, Alice's hole, Layne's hole
A burial of open air, dirt imagined, smothering the thought
that slipping into any other pool besides this self-administered poison
is directed squarely at others, not me, oh god not me.
A brain's bitterness more toxic than vinegar on the tongue
Misery that slimes, oozes, creeps, and constricts every thought
My thoughts, not my own, converting my hands to someone else's
And I watch. Trapped. Sliding down the now speeding slope.
That which stalked and surprised, but I cannot blame.
Cannot predict. Cannot battle. I'm slanted.
Slated to slip down slides of sloth, slowly.
Shredding into sharpening shouts, shifting into panic.
Pleas. Please. Pleasing Pleas.
Can't cope, can't cut, can't control.
Wait. At the bottom is a light.
But whether to heaven or hell
This purgatorial slide carries me all the way
Slanted.
Jan 15, 2019
Jan 15, 2019 at 5:51 PM UTC