A decade from now,
            My words will only be a carcass even birds won’t want
            To pick at anymore.

I won’t be able to keep track of where my similes skip off to,
And maybe I’ll discover later that they crossed the street like a chicken
That wouldn’t know to look both ways,
Causing a six car pileup,
But never making it to the other side of the road as I intended them to.

Maybe my metaphors will age quickly,
            And ten years down the road
            Their doggy jowls will quiver with one last yawning breath
            As they collapse beneath the nearest tree from hip failure
            Resting at last beneath a pleasant summer sun.

I don’t like to think about it,
But I’ve entertained the idea
That perhaps I will neglect my words,
            Letting all the quatrains pass me by.

Yes, that is how my structured sentences will meet their end:
            With no periods
            But a blank space
                        Where your name should be.

I’d like to think that someday
            I won’t have this horrible need to write anymore
I’ll describe my perfect days because I want to,
Not to fill this void I made
When I handed out my consonance like candy
            And scattered similes in the air like skittles
            During that drought we had a while ago
When everything was black and white
And I thought everybody wanted
A taste of the colors I’m made of.

I like to entertain the thought that someday

Someday
            People are going to reach back through the decades and excavate my words
            And try to find deep meanings beneath all my poetry.
            Scholars will slit the throats of my similes,
            Claiming there was some philosophical point pumping through the jugular,
            And I might laugh somberly [a little] if they do.

            They’re going to find the rotted carcasses in the most random of places:
            A passenger seat,
            The floor by a bathroom,
            A stairwell,
            Under a tree.

I know that some might try to find the cause of death.
In fact,
I know they will.

But I’d much rather people look for the only reason of birth,
The only meaning behind all my metaphors,
I want these people to catch the quatrains I let pass me by when it hurt too much.

When it hurt too much
To just write-

I love you.

Not snowy seraphs of heaven above
Nor lustrous gems by heaven's stonking wall,
Shall outshine the eternal mark of love
Thou blazoned upon the skin of my soul.
Though midst my wake and dreaming hours I know,
Heaven's meanest pier is of burnished gold,
And celestial shores chatoyant than snow,
But all not as bright as the mark I hold.
For when fickle time in layers of life
Shalt shroud me, and away I must then run
To meet the judge of souls, lest lasting grief
Were my soul's fate, I mean to burn and burn,
   The fragrance of thy love could still linger
   Freshly upon my soul's fading ember.


#Decasyllabic
#Iambic pentameter
#Quatrains
#Couplet
#Shakespearean sonnet  

Kikodinho Edward Alexandros,
Jumeirah, Dubai, 14th.Jan.2018.

Da Dum Da Dum - melodic sonnet beat,
Ten syllables on each and ev'ry line;
Enough to put the reader fast asleep,
And don't forget the **** thing has to rhyme.
Just fourteen lines exact, no more - no less,
To revel in some tantalising plot;
Two short quatrains endeavour to address,
And introduce the who, the where, the what.
Then just four lines to tell a second tale,
That wends and weaves on some tangential route,
To set the scene that leads to the unveil
As if the reader gives a flaming hoot!
       A rhyming couplet finishes the tryst,
       To hit them with that all important twist!

In a wayward adventure in curiosity —
lured away from savvy of cooler judgment,  
he oversteps the bounds of reality 
into a state of altered awareness.

Overwhelmed by a rapid beginning
of a buzzing sensation — The Rush;
emanating from deep inside him, 
surging along the veins streaming 

euphoria through cells of his entire body:  
inside the body, with warm pleasure waves
flushing over the by now tingling skin —
soughing off all unpleasant feelings.

Mouth numbed, limbs heavy, and eyeballs 
rolling back from hitherto an unimaginable
state of bliss, he savours the calm explosions
of the pulsating bubbles in his head.

A magical moment of sheer ******* 
rapture—that ends in a lasting sedation—
during which he's dazed with wonderment
while covered by a cozy blanket of content.

He falls in love with the insidious drug.
And, he begins to relish its sweet fruition
in a seemly pattern of use that is put
in the shade to protect his best interests.

A stake in normalcy that seeks to restrict
his usage of the opioid to a social activity.
But soon enough he drifts towards a regular
recreational use: indulging on weekends,

floating, flying, and soaring in wonderful
ripples of pure delight, feeling very mellow
and satisfied, in an illusionary paradise of
forgetfulness where nothing hurts any more.

Bit by bit as time goes by his body builds up
a tolerance for the sedative, prompting his
intake of higher and more frequent doses
to feel as well as to sustain the desired effect.

This occurs because his body attempts to
adapt to the presence of the drug by quickly
breaking it up and purging it out of the system;
thus making it less potent as it was before.

At this stage of his drug abuse he's still able to
control whether to use the stuff or not, where
and when to use it, without stress. He could
also abstain from the opioid fairly responsibly.

But at the limits of his body's flexible response
to the dangerous substance, he begins to suffer
from its unpleasant side-effects that show up
a short period of time following his last use.

The pleasurable, but short-term, therapeutic
effects of the hard drug are now being
overshadowed by several of its undesirable
withdrawal symptoms that manifest as:

fatigue, irritability, cold chills/sweat, itchy skin,
muscle spasms and tremors, body ache, and
stomach cramps among others, with an
increase in his body's cravings for the opioid.

The onset of these torturous side-effects of
the stimulant marks the beginning of his body's
physical dependence on it, as he now relies
on the drug to fend off the terrible affliction.

He has bitten at the bait of pleasure oblivious
of the hook beneath it. The once casual user,
who had thought he could quit the habit at will
without stress, has progressed to problematic use.

The drug has become an integral part of a daily
routine that is gradually heading towards chaos.
Regardless, he's still able to go to work and
take care of his day to day responsibilities.

In time, a new sickness begins to fester inside
him: the opioid is tightening its grip on him,
as his body's physical dependence on it
is now generating his addiction to the drug.

This psychological dependence on the drug
has set in with anxiety disorder accompanied
by emotional and behavioural problems:
the duo classic signs of a progressive disorder.

The drug has become something he needs
to sleep or to fully wake up. His sleeping
pattern has also been altered; up at night
and intermittently dozing off during the day.

As dosage of the narcotic rises, so does
the torture of the painful lows and other
symptoms of addiction, making his cravings
for the sedative increasely more intense.

As it is, he's needs several hits of the drug to
make it through the day. All at once he wants
to use! He begins to look forward to using.
He would ingest the drug in risky situations

such as, while at the wheels of his car or
working at his job; always desperate to avoid
withdrawal symptoms as well as to revel in
the bliss of the drug's comforting warmth.

At times he'd skip work 'chasing the dragon':
pursuing the out-of-reach elation levels of
his initial euphoric high, swinging between
feelings of mediocrity and that of ecstasy.

Always, his body would afterwards crash
below baseline, barely able to cater for his
daily needs. The habit has long ceased
to be the fun that it was intended to be.

Like a vicious cycle the relief from the opioid,
which is not justified by external reality,
is being obtained at the expense of the
worsening addiction and a spike in distress

whenever his body is low on the drug.
The more he indulges on the sedative
to calm his racing mind, the more
its comfort zone seems to be desired.

Disoriented in the rigours of his vice,
he strays in the abyss of drug addiction:
a dark, weary place where priority disorder 
is dictated by events outside of his control.

It is this corrupted impulse control that
causes his sick obsession with the narcotic,
rendering him unfit to articulate rational
thoughts: a chronic brain disorder.

In this harmful shift away from reality,  
utmost in his mind is the insidious drug:
over and above his job, his goals, family,
love, friends, hobbies and personal hygiene.

Oddly enough the foremost essentials of life
like water, food, and sleep are also not spared.
He could be ill and he won't care.
No other thoughts can cohabit in his world.

Emotionally invested in his fantasy world,
the toxic substance has kindled in him
an inner turmoil — setting off an overriding
feeling of emptiness that aches in his heart.

The habit much harder to lose than it was
to find: an ongoing effort to wean himself off
the drug is being crushed by a dysphoric mood
and a sickly feeling that intensify in severity.

These horrifying withdrawal symptoms
are a result of the sedative's induced
alterations in the biochemistry of his
brain's system of reward and punishment.

Rather than a mild, blissful flow of the brain's
happy hormones, as is experienced while
one is indulging in a tasty food, on receiving
a great news, or while engaged in any other

kinds of novelty that fill us with a delicious
pleasure, the opioid whose chemical structure
is similar to that of the natural chemical
messengers of the brain, Happy Hormones,

by mimicking these primary drivers of the
brain's reward system the psychoactive 
drug sends a false signal of euphoria to
the complex *****, triggering an instant

and fast secretion of an abnormally large
amount of the 'feel-good hormones', that
begin to surge along its pleasure pathways
overwhelming the reward centre of the brain.

It is this huge outpouring of happy hormones
in the region that elicites in him a sudden
burst of energy, a pleasant state of mild
drowsiness, mental alertness, relaxation, ...

This already intense, euphoric effect of the
opioid is further amplified by the drug's
blocking of the pain partways of the reward
system, thus dulling his emotions and worries

by eliminating any feeling of sorrow, regret,
guilt, fear, or loneliness. Upon intake of the
mood-altering drug, he would feel warm when
cold, calm when angry, bright when grumpy,

filled when hungry and happy when irritable,
with almost a total refrain from the tendency to
view anything in a negative manner. This dramatic
result makes every normal thing look better

and brings forth a deep sense of satisfaction,
as though all his needs have been met.
However, this almost perfectly desirable 
body and mind experience is an artificial

feeling that only lasts a few hours at most.
When the drug's effects wear off, because
the brain, which has come to rely on the steady
supply of happy hormones, cannot adjust

all at once, it gets stuck in overdrive which
results in the withdrawal symptoms. It is so
because his brain, whose system of reward
and punishment has been tampered with,

seeks to counteract and accomodate for
the sweet thrills of the drug's euphoric high,
by secreting much less happy hormones while
the foodgate of pain hormones is thrown open.

Just like a huge surge of happy hormones
elicits unnatural levels of euphorical pleasure,
a spike in flow of pain hormones produce
in him the torturous withdrawal symptoms.

These unwanted side-effects whose rise and
fall are subject to drug levels in the system,
is the debt he has to pay for the supreme
bliss that is relished during his opioid highs.

It is all about his brain seeking to maintain
Homeostasis: a normal, healthy body function.
Once he's able to amerce with penance due,
he'll feel good again with no need for the drug.

Another flip side of the illicit habit is that over
time, the regular surge in happy hormones
disrupts the resilience of the reward region
of the brain, causing physical changes that

have drastically reduced his brain's ability
to produce the 'pleasure juices', or respond
to any stimulus other than the one being
triggered by the psychoactive substance.

This is clearly seen in his lost of interest in
activities that he once enjoyed, since his brain
suffers from lack of happy hormones which
influence one's capacity to be in a good mood.

Because the narcotic has also disrupted
activities in the control region of the brain,
his whole thought pattern, perspective and
behaviour, all radically change along with it.

It is this reprogramming of his brain that has
altered the interior reality of his mind, in ways
that result in him going into 'survival mode'
in the absence of the drug during a withdrawal.

While in this irritable, aggressive and erratic
state, he would forego anything and everything
to obtain the narcotic because he's thinking
of his drug use the same way an individual 

who is parched with thirst thinks of water.
This desperation in seeking out the drug as
a vital lifeline is due to his compromised brain
'thinking' it needs it as a matter of survival.

A habit he had maintained at the outset
because it made him feel extremely good
has tuned against him, quite often, coercing
him to use for the avoidance of pain.

The sedative as dear and painful to him
as an imbecilic child is to its mother,  
he continues on the foreboding route 
for which he has no power of deviation.

Despairing in the clutches of addiction,
the drugs traumatize him, they infuse
toxins into his spine, and he wouldn't
know whether he's coming or going.

He's kept on saying to himself, 'I'm going
to quit for good after using one last time.'
But that remains to be seen as the drug
goes on dulling his inner light day by day.

In a downward spiral that stuns those 
acquainted with him, he loses his job,
his car is repoed, and he's evicted from
a nice home that had been stripped bare.

Drowning in unpaid bills and desperately
in debt, having blown an entire life-savings
on the drug, the loss of everything and a few
remaining friends leaves him fatally devastated.

The dangerous drug has evoked a negative
ripple that is felt throughout all that he's
part of. An awful realization that settles in
with cold clarity, eliciting a lurch of dismay

over his dire ignorance about the drug
which has led to the ugly entrapment.
In deep, sorrowful thoughts consumed
with self-loathing he puts a curse upon

the day he first laid eyes on the hard drug.
With the best resolve he's able to muster,
driven by exasperation to kick the habit,
he strives to make his will like stone —

a facade that is soon razed by his urgent need
for the ****** to stave off withdrawal. With a
burden of guilt and shame that can't be faced,
he retreats into the haze of his own misery.

With more problems and stresses than ever,
he plunges from troubled life to no life —
completely losing touch with reality as the
disorder assumes a more dangerous form.

His fixation on the ****** has taken a turn for
the worst; besides his strong cravings for it
to ward off withdrawal as well as to experience
its euphoric high again, it has become more

crucial than ever for him to keep his emotions
constantly desensitised to life, by numbing
the agony of living to ease the passage of
day with purchased relief from the sedative.

Locked in this highly destructive pattern
of drug use, he would stop at nothing to
feed the habit: he would cheat, steal,
lie or betray no matter who to get his 'fix'.

Like the spreading of cancer in the body,  
his affliction has metastasized way 
beyond him, chipping away at the sense
of wellbeing of everyone around him.

As frequent and ready targets for theft
his family have to always watch out for him,
in a resentful relations in which they never
could feel at easy with him around the house.

Wallets, jewellery, gadgets, or any other
easy to carry household valuables, that are
not safely locked away, will go missing.
For days at a time he, too, will vanish.

He'd eventually return like the 'prodigal son'.
Always, he's found the door open after
prolonged periods of avoiding home, even
on occasions when he'd been kicked out.

In the many months gone since losing his
source of livelihood, he's been pushed
into a number of rehabilitation facilities,
but as yet has failed to clean up his act.

He's also been in and out of rehab thrice
following hospital discharges for drug
overdose. On the last occasion, he was
found passed out in the family's bathtub.

Timely arrival of the paramedics had saved
his life. Notwithstanding, a nagging urge
to 'use' continues to feed and reinforce
the habit after each discharge from rehab.

It's been most upsetting to the parents
who have had to watch him visibly change
before their eyes: from a good, healthy
son, who had always had his act together,

to as it is, a thin, patchy-skinned loner with
a baffled demeanour — who buries his head
in low self-esteem, to conceal the often
dilated and glassy pupils from mutual gaze.

Nothing points more to the helplessness 
of the family's plight than having to finally
admit to their little or no influence over
the ravages of the stigmatized disorder.

A harrowing experience for a household
whose life-savings, along with compassion
for him, have completely been exhausted
with no more tears remaining to shed.

The hurting family at the end of its tether
confronts him with an ultimatum:
to get his life in order or face the music.
Coldly, they all watch him leave home.

His descent into the final stages of rock-
bottom has been swift. He starts by crashing
on fellow addicts' couches and floors,
but soon his welcome quickly wears out.

Now among the ranks of the homeless the
hobo would wake up feeling sick, and his day
would consist of shoplifting, petty thefts,
begging, and struggling to find others ways

to obtain money in order to feed the habit.
At nights, even on stormy ones, the rough
sleeper would crash wherever there's shelter,
never worrying about waking up the next day.

A hellish existence on the street that has
provoked a string of run-ins with the law. 
Nabbed stealing on ill-fated occasions,
he's manhandled in a most indecent way.

Tired, hungry and sick, the erstwhile ray of
hope, who once had a strong sense of self,
is currently a nervous wreck who envisages
life through the lens of opioid stupor.

Much beyond his ability to ask for help, 
his hurting family proceed to rescue him.
Under the humbling load of drug addiction
he staggers into another rehab facility.

But the often slippery climb to recovery
is never easy. It's yet another chance for him
to submit to a slow and delicate therapy on
his brain — whose structure and functions 

are badly impacted by years-long use of
the drug. The healing process is a labour
of commitment and discipline, coupled with
patience to allow the brain to adapt back

toward normalcy by gradually regenerating
and rebalancing itself. In a gruelling task,
he's expected to learn to care for a body that
now must struggle to work in a different way.

Desiring to put their lives back together many
druggies have been able to crawl their way out
of the sinister shadow — a big chunk of them
through the guiding light of structured help.

Amongst them were 'walking corpses' whom
possessed by their 'enough is enough', are
enabled to find the inner fire vitally needed
to rekindle the cold embers of self-image.

There's the fella cast adrift feeling wholly
disconnected from self and the world;
he's mourning the loss of a vital lifeline
that has always helped him cope with life.

He had been through it several times before,
the fatigue, stomach cramps, aches, itchy skin, ...
But, he's in the early stages of withdrawal when
cravings for the narcotic are at their worst.

This initial withdrawal agony is the biggest
hurdle any addict has to overcome in the often
stop-start journey to recovery. If he could
somehow find the courage to suffer through it,

the fierce and ceaseless cravings for the drug
would be considerably reduced, making
them easier for him to deal with. Eventually,
they will dissipate the longer he stays sober.

He's being offered a way out of his captivity,
but he's unable to embrace the opportunity
with open arms because the addiction,
which convinces him the only option is to

indulge on the narcotic, is blocking him from
seeing the available escape route. It has shut
off his ability to get up on the inside to face
the seeming overwhelming barriers to sobriety.

Like one in the grip of Stockholm Syndrome,
he has developed a type of trauma bonding
with the treacherous drug: the more it enslaves
him, the more his irrational affection for it.

With his consciousness constantly revolving
around the insidious substance, he just
can't imagine a chronic user like him
being sober and happy again without it.

That being the case, he fails to see any point
in struggling to remain sober — when in such
times he's beset by an awful illness attended
by a serious depression that is no help.

Regardless of the wreckage of his past,
everything that is dear to him plus the very
essence of life on the line, he's left convinced
that giving up the destructive habit would

mean endless suffering and feeling deprived
for the rest of his already sad existence.
More than any other reasons, he just
won't quit because he's powerless to resist.

In default of any dreams of ever recouping
losses that are manifestly out of reach,
the drug with a firm grip on him serves 
as a buffer to keep his ugly reality at bay.

All that he wants is to return to the 'loving
arms' of the opioid, very much aware that
the feeling of the drug's high now that he's
in pain can be one of the best things ever.

But even so, as tempting as the desire to jump
the healing process may be, he's bitterly
mindful of the horrors of street life that
loom upon him with such frightening aspect.

Savagely trapped with no good choices he
slips into a real fear of relapse. In anguish
withdrawal and cravings plague him daily,
and they won't allow him a moment's peace.

Utterly incapable of rising from the ashes 
to hold it all together—no hope—
nothing to hope for—everything out 
of focus—mind spiraling out of control...

In a fit of extreme anxiety the now rampaging
urge to 'use' prods him, closer and closer, to
the brink of a nervous breakdown; and suddenly,
his need for a 'hit' becomes most vital as.

Sweating profusely and trembling all over
with fear clutching a pilfered smartphone,
forgetful of future suffering, the rehab
jumper hurries along the forbidden path.

All alone with the merciless companion: 
nowhere to go and no one to turn to. 
Wretchedly wretched in additive agony
the ****** fades away into nothingness.








AUTHOR'S NOTE


The Abyss Of Drug Addiction is written in 112 non-rhyming quatrains.

The rendition is a poignant story depicting the sad existence of many drug users. The verse uncovers and illuminates, step by step, the different stages of drug addiction and the mental processes of the unable to function drug users.

The paramount aim of the work is to shed some light on the sinister shadow of drug addiction: to unveil to all and sundry, especially teenagers and the youths, the hazards of drug abuse and the vicious downward spiral that can be caused by it. 

Just as the euphoric experience of all kinds of hard drugs differ significantly, so are their withdrawal symptoms. Despite their seeming surface unrelatedness, whichever hard drug it may be, the creation of an illegal and dangerous dependency in users is a common denominator.

[The Rush is described as a feeling very much like a heightened and prolonged ****** ******. A great relieve of tension. It is mostly felt when ****** or any of it's derivatives opioids/opiates is administered intravenously].

In quite a disturbing hyperbole, a ****** addict described the drug's EUPHORIC RUSH as follows:
"Take the best (******) ****** you've ever had, multipy it a billion and you're still no where near it... "

the attention deficit hyperactivity disorder
poem
is a strange animal

with lines
monosyllabically
short
and then
perilously   freakishly    faulknerically
long
but not to worry

the trick is to ***** around
with the readers' heads a bit
let them wonder
   what's going on
get them used to
   obnoxious departures
   sudden jolts
      of expression
   devious detours into
     obscenity, indecency

these are the
tourette's moments
of a poet's creative life:
a move to keep those with the
attention span of an infant gnat
awake  alive  responsive

some may expect poetry
to take them down
safe  bland  routes:
         a snowfall enhanced by red robins
         perched on a rustic fence

         a lake with canoeing lovers cooing
         in a shimmering moment
          
         heartfelt elegies
         quaint quatrains
         hip haikus

but can these images
really keep you entranced?

well, can they?

it isn't like i didn't warn you
or the horse you rode in on

for pennies, an app
to do the heavy lifting,
rhymes, pentameter,
all the quatrains ya ever needed

strained fever, emotions rampant,
insufficient and unnecessary conditions
for poverty poetry evocation,
even autocorrects insipid
really bad tiresome love poems,
après endless generation (degeneration?)

who needs you

you think
no such animal

you be write

for the art of life
cannot be mechanized

wrote a poem,
a wistful sad lament
on mothers losing children,
a prayer, a yelling, a condemnation,
the app was,
on this subject
uncommunicative,
un étranger
of silence
in all languages

you can buy love
but you cannot buy pain

too costly and
3D printers
give you plastic, disingenuous
wholly unsatisfactory

for a lousy $1.99
I'll write you customized,
supply the situation,
a few descriptive phrases,
60 minutes later,
et voila!

am you app,
am your scrivener,
don't do roses or violets
but yes to
rhythm and blues

will take
PayPal
PenPal
but no credit cards

you may take my words
as you own,
take my credit,
but I won't take yours...

I am app human,
bring me your lush, winsome,
plain vanilla, tutti frutti,
all acceptable,
for where the real stuff
comes from

I have only mined
the surface,
the veins beneath
richness for the asking

a series of quatrains*

Anchor’s bound for hell as it falls
Sadly I watch the fast rope slip
It is gone, I need a strong sip
From a sailor’s bottle, land calls

In a boat, earth and moon move you
these deceptive cargo ships hide
the stash of smugglers, I choose
To rock back and forth with the tide

Such fearless ships save lives at night
and daytime too but not for thanks
for it also ferries heartbreak
when lovers part on boarding planks

A message in a bottle lost
was found on a cold Cornish coast
The message read “darling please
know my love will swim across seas”

I daren’t live by sea much longer
Oh! what I’ve seen, fear gets stronger
with every lapping slurp I hear:
the drowned whispering in my ear

Once I fished in this bay of shells
My line was frayed from reeling sharks
A blue whale fought me three miles out
In his bowel I awoke at last

Boat or ship? For now ‘ships’ they fly
A rocking chair, without duty
They float, enchant, sink but don’t cry
shipwrecks are a thing of beauty

its not that i don't notice
i notice all the time
maybe you don't know this
i'm running out of my mind

Try not to panic
Its only forever
Treat it kindly
Plenty of water

This isn't any normal dream
its a full recollection of my fantasy
too much at stake to leave it alone
i've seen where we came from

Trippin on your legs
as i walk through
the living room
hope i didn’t wake you
im trying to avoid my doom

visiting a trip
towards memory lane
stop giving me lip
and quit playing that game

afterthoughts
and before feelings
emotion robots
and contact dealings.

i just found out
that snow is cold
the benefit of the doubt
is that experience is old

popularly singularity
has escaped me
i feel myself slipping
into unknown dreams

don't fret
you better bet
i'm not anyone
i'm someone

its not that i don't notice
i notice all the time
maybe you don't know this
i'm running out of my mind

your hypotheticalness
is getting out of hand
creating quite a mess
in the desert sand

rock-a-bye  ah-dult
and the branch broke
its not your fault
for being a dolt

dream of me
and be aware
it may be
a total nightmare

I trust that I can lie
To be the strong one
Who’s ready to die
But I’m not yet done

Here take this
A little piece of advice
Don’t talk about anything
When Silence will suffice

Homeward
Upward
Down size
Wrong size

long ways
to paradise
love stays
while you fantasize

magic trees....
thats all i have to say
they are scary
in every way...

Chaque fois que j 'escalade
Les parois des mots vers les pics inviolés
J 'emmène avec moi dans l'expédition
Mon éclaireuse d'élite.

Ma sherpa me guide et me prévient
Des chutes de sérac et des avalanches,
Cuisine les rimes embrassées, porte les alexandrins
Installe le campement des rimes embrassantes.

Alors elle se repose sous sa tente
Et, satisfaite, cure sa pipe
Tout en fredonnant inconsciemment
Ses deux quatrains suivis de  deux tercets
Tandis que que moi je suçote
Mes surelles poétiques confites.
.
Ma pisteuse pose ses pitons et ses broches à glace
Dans l 'ombre des cimes
Sans oxygène sans assistance
Dans les nuages de la haute poésie.

Nous avons ainsi planté nos sonnets
Dans les vingt-et-un sommets continentaux
Ma sherpa c'est mieux qu 'un sur-homme
C'est une sur-femme, une sur-muse
Une sur-déesse
Une vieille briscarde
C'est Junko Tabei et Bachendri Pal
Et après chaque sommet qu 'elle franchit
Sans désagrément
Elle se retire sous sa tente
Et, satisfaite, cure sa pipe
Tout en fredonnant inconsciemment
Ses deux quatrains suivis de deux tercets
Tandis que moi je suçote
Mes surelles poétiques confites.

Parfois la chute d'un sérac imprévisible
Nous emporte, nous ensevelit et nous broie presque
Mais jamais ma sherpa ne se départit de sa pipe
Ni moi de mes surelles
Dans nos joutes poétiques.

The Poetry Barn wasn’t really a barn
It was merely an old farm house,
It sat on the acres of Eddington’s Farm,
Surrounded by sheep and by cows.
But Poets came over from Stuttersby Dell,
Drove over from Scatabout Wood,
To write in the air of the Poetry Barn
About things, when they ought and they should.

They came from Great Orton, they came from Rams Well,
They came from Glenn Wheatley and Grey,
The best and the worst of the poets you’d find
At the Poetry Barn, every day,
The rooms had been empty for many a year
So they all sat on bundles of straw,
And when they ran out they would send up a shout,
So some would go out and get more.

The mornings would see all the Elegies worked,
The Epics, the Odes and Quatrains,
The Poetry Barn would then grumble and groan
As the Dirges would enter the drains.
By noon the fair Sonnets came into their own
With just the odd wanton Lament,
When poets would seek out the culprit to find
One grinding his verse in a tent.

By evening they’d work on the Pastoral,
The Sestet, the Roundel as well,
And those at a loss after losing the toss
Would be stuck with the old Villanelle,
They’d all settle down when the Moon came up round,
And the stars twinkled boldly in rhyme,
When one asked the other, ‘pray, what rhymes with brother,’
And he’d say, ‘your Mom, all the time.’

The poems would stick to the inside walls,
Would tear at each other like knaves,
They’d fill up the aisles and lie flat on the tiles
And would damage the old architraves.
At night you could hear all the horses hooves
As they carried the good news to Aix,
And in came the wedding guest, him with the albatross
Counting his many mistakes.

I saw that they’d burned down the Poetry Barn
With one sad, incendiary rhyme,
A poet called Glover who wrote to his lover
‘My candle, you light all the time.’
The straw caught alight in his lover’s delight
And they fled from that bastion of verse,
I just penned this missal for someone to whistle,
The one that he’d written was worse.

David Lewis Paget

To write a sonnet doth Juana press me,
I've never found me in such stress or pain;
A sonnet numbers fourteen lines, 'tis plain,
And three are gone, ere I can say, God bless me!
I thought that spinning rhymes might sore oppress me,
Yet here I'm midway in the last quatrain;
And if the foremost tercet I can gain,
The quatrains need not any more distress me.
To the first tercet I have got at last,
And travel through it with such right good will,
That with this line I've finished it, I ween;
I'm in the second now, and see how fast
The thirteenth line runs tripping from my quill;
Hurrah, 'tis done! Count if there be fourteen!

the dead air shrieks
with a venomous lullaby
slams and reverberates
with salvaged impregnation’s
of speeding threads
a stimulus that empty’s
the insides of short lived
moments between reality
and imagination
provides for scattered
but orderly quatrains
that tremble with the sound
what is it? what is it?
it is the metallic blue guitar
the music of the band

By the end of this poem, those once vibrant
shall slough off in horizons of necrosis.
As I tap out completion,
their summer cedes to countless performances;
actors bow before the closing curtain of Autumn.

The maelstrom of summer-lovers lulls to a murmur
And the great Mevlana’s couplets and Khayyam’s quatrains
Float away on the formations of down-bound geese.
You’ll hear the Doppler shift of devotion’s goodbye
On the whines of the locomotive’s whistle.

By the end of this poem, the thistle fades
from heliotrope to gun metal gray.
The clandestine scent of “once-whens”
Wafts into a future of “now-agains.”
Yet, this new Fall is bittersweet.
Before another ******* of trees,
a red rose blushes in reminiscence.

By this poems end, I’ll be in love
with the chill of an approaching season
wearing the brightest flower in my garden of poetry
One last choke on the rising smoke
as the last painful stanza goes
Into the solemn procession
toward the sacred pyre of leaves.

By WILLIAM LOGANJUNE 14, 2014

GAINESVILLE, Fla. — WE live in the age of grace and the age of futility, the age of speed and the age of dullness. The way we live now is not poetic. We live prose, we breathe prose, and we drink, alas, prose. There is prose that does us no great harm, and that may even, in small doses, prove medicinal, the way snake oil cured everything by curing nothing. But to live continually in the natter of ill-written and ill-spoken prose is to become deaf to what language can do.

The ***** secret of poetry is that it is loved by some, loathed by many, and bought by almost no one. (Is this the silent majority? Well, once the “silent majority” meant the dead.) We now have a poetry month, and a poet laureate — the latest, Charles Wright, announced just last week — and poetry plastered in buses and subway cars like advertising placards. If the subway line won’t run it, the poet can always tweet it, so long as it’s only 20 words or so. We have all these ways of throwing poetry at the crowd, but the crowd is not composed of people who particularly want to read poetry — or who, having read a little poetry, are likely to buy the latest edition of “Paradise Lost.”

This is not a disaster. Most people are also unlikely to attend the ballet, or an evening with a chamber-music quartet, or the latest exhibition of Georges de La Tour. Poetry has long been a major art with a minor audience. Poets have always found it hard to make a living — at poetry, that is. The exceptions who discovered that a few sonnets could be turned into a bankroll might have made just as much money betting on the South Sea Bubble.

There are still those odd sorts, no doubt disturbed, and unsocial, and torturers of cats, who love poetry nevertheless. They come in ones or twos to the difficult monologues of Browning, or the shadowy quatrains of Emily Dickinson, or the awful but cheerful poems of Elizabeth Bishop, finding something there not in the novel or the pop song.

Many arts have flourished in one period, then found a smaller niche in which they’ve survived perfectly well. A century ago, poetry did not appear in little magazines devoted to it, but on the pages of newspapers and mass-circulation magazines. The big magazines and even the newspapers began declining about the time they stopped printing poetry. (I know, I know — I’ve put the cause before the horse.) On the other hand, perhaps Congress started to decline when the office of poet laureate was created. The Senate and the House were able to bumble along perfectly well during the near half century when there was only a Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress — an office that, had the Pentagon only been consulted, might have been acronymized as C.I.P.L.O.C. instead of being renamed.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/15/sunday-review/poetry-who-needs-it.html?_r=0

Language is the raw material
Transformation into art
Leaping through Alice’s looking glass
Breaking metaphors apart

Is it dark inside a poem
From whence it first sprang
Deeply repressed panic
Without judgment rang

Bringing pressured speech to light
Images of love and pain
Through clearly heightened senses
Uninhibited refrain

Where verbal acrobats spiral
Words on a poet’s page
That remind us and disturb us
In desperate outrage

With the pathos of a clown
On a winding rocky path
Reminders of death’s nearness
Terror spinning with a laugh

Pictures painted with premonitions
An atmosphere heavy in despair
Remnants of previous poets
Are blinding the reader in its glare

Quatrains moving merrily
Using images and tone
Making shapes with language
Shaping irony unknown

With tones bright and beautiful
Its matrix darkly savage
Through visual impressions
The reader’s heart is ravaged

Freedom of imagination
From whimsy to terror can bring
Surprising facetious word-play
Delivering irony’s sting

A psychological awakening
The tenderest love infused with dread
Blazing pathways joyous and dangerous
Irrevocable loss lies ahead

A telling detail without warning
Takes us to disturbing turns
The risky business of being born
Poets’ authority burns

It brings you to your senses
Through supernatural realms
Exploding realization
Its resonance overwhelms

Allusiveness to brutal honesty
It may sometimes misconstrue
In an abyss of isolation cries,
“What else can a poem do?”

If any item
should retain
eldritch  potency
in this present age.

It would be
bacon.
wild magik
is released  
by the fat
contained
within its
thick sliced rind.

Glamor can be
released
in simple
domestic rituals.

All you need
is a pan
& a heat source.


Many magi
have reported
in secret books
about bacon’s aid
in seeing
the future.

When bacon cooks
within a  simple pan.
It sizzles
prophetic quatrains
of coming days,
and often is served
with well-cooked omens.

Seers
have reported
the auspicious energies
properly displayed
when bacon power
is properly
presented.

When the curl
of bacon
properly
interweaves
the tips of tongue…

For in
the   tingle
the taste bud
apprehends
the shape
of  infinite spaces;
where the future
is foretold
within
the chew
of inward knowledge.

Polymath Pretender

the master of absolute complete nothing
these quatrains tell the tale
of a pretender who is suffering
whose life is worn and stale

reach up and raise your chalice
these tainted words used as a phallus
some intentions of twisted mental malice
lying naked in his ivory palace

is this the fade from faded glory
a very sad and ancient story
of repeating repeat offenders
these single-minded polymath pretenders

Gomer LePoet ....

Geese are
Not gifted
Spellers.

They write
Poems
In their eggs.

The letters
Cannot
Be separated
From their yokes.

In the court
Of the Blue King
Atrocious spelling
Is called “Goose-spelling.”

Turn of phrases
That cannot
Be separated
From its image.

Conversely Wicked spelling
Is known as Dragon-spelling.
Where quatrains
May spontaneously combust
Burning the finger
Of luckless scribes.

The greatest poem in the whole wide world
Is all about a boy and a girld.
They love each other very much
And spend the poem kissing and such.

My poem should be about true love and pain
And maybe a scene in the middle with rain.
The girl and the boy might have a brief fight
But be ready to apologize by the morning light.

The words are not especially lyrical.
A college professor would find it hysterical.
But that doesn't matter, and nor does the meter,
Though you don't know what a meter is either.

The rhyme scheme is awful but no one will notice,
The everyday reader just wants it to sound close.
We smart people care so much more about story;
So what if the actual technique's derisory?

No intimate struggles with life and death
Or Shakespearean references that no one would get.
Just make it appealing with predictable rhyme
And too many words which ruin the rhythm of every line.

Write quatrains in sing-song that should have been couplets
And only use subjects that are okay in public.
But remember the rule that is chief above others:
Don't use a word that would frighten your mothers.

If you follow these steps, then you too can be great
And have all your scribblings inscribed upon slates.
The world will declare you a king among men
And the words are pure gold that escape from your pen.

For the greatest **** poem in the whole wide world
Is supposed to be all about a boy and a girld.
And no one suspects or cares if it's garbage
As long as it's the same degrading, puerile drivel we've grown to expect.

survival of disappearance
stranger than the way it is
with unknown translation
like an escaped oblivion
or quatrains from a vanished book
written on yellow paper
with purple-black ink
casting shadows among the shades
that group the lime trees
in their huddle of powdered gold
gathering scattered thoughts together
in an epitaph to the vanishing of
extreme affection and devotion
that passes away
in the hand of the wind

Withdraw to depths you don't know
Dark forces you
At night when you are sleepless
Who plays your dreams

There was a barrel of anger in our house
They said,you not  opening the cover
I wouldn't have listened anyone
Now the halter is in my neck

I am a master poet,
No quatrains can compare.
Me and my youngest son
Solved Samson's Riddle together,
Wouldn't Samson's wife wish
We both were there.

(CARSr. 3-12-12)

My feelings are true
They are my life's blood spring
but irrelevant.

Couplets and quatrains
or free form self indulgence
It's my time to waste

Five- seven- five lines
stacked to challenge my ego
poor pedestrian.

Here I go again
my ink is not innocent
my soul is tainted

Why do we do it?
What is there to gain from this?
What is the **** point?

I undress my self,
and Adonis, I am not!
better look away

This is what it's like
to expose myself and dare
to pretend it's art.

nothing ends
it changes way
bandit today
not in the mountain

We are in last corner
no the speed limit
we will beat ourselves
other competitors from us,don't

shall i mindless words
form into function, wander
forward without thought?

lead me on, then, muse
hushing unheeded warnings
of writer's folly

i who have no/thing
to cheer on, no one being
caring close enough

yet hundreds, thousands
read, call, respond and react
to fresh-cut poems

both sweet and pungent,
taste vaguely oriental, 
smell hints of five-spice

as american
as melting *** and quatrains,
common meter, rhymes

cheeseburger and fries,
routine, familiar and
to each their own taste

flavored by flowered
blossomed imaginations
of poets living

and dead, whose poems'
lovely bones breathe still haunting
my quiet spaces

and take tangential
leaps ricocheting into
inspired lunacy

skeleton crews man
poetic voyages, launch
flights of uncertain
direction, take reason to
illogical conclusions.

My Comments On A Thesis Titled:

Capitalism *****! Cold War Starts Up Again! Nuclear War Looms! (See Note #1 below)
By Wolf Larsen on March 27th, 2014, 6:32 pm

Hi Wolf,
It is very pertinent that you have posted this thesis in "In the Trenches" section of the AT forum and it seems that you have also raised some valid points about what has been or is going on in the world these days. A lot of people will perceive the current world situation as a foregoing fulfillment of Bible prophesy no doubt and there is a religious program on TV called "Tomorrows World" that raves on about such things and what is or will be taking place. While I am a little more condescending towards your views expressed here than in the Poetry section with the The Rats and Cockroaches Will Inherit The Earth (See Note #2 below) piece submitted on the same date I am much more optimistic about what is happening in the world. Though as a matter of caution or fact I have to say that your views given in the above piece (the one posted in this section) need to be treated with respect and deserve some credit in the way you have presented the whole argument in this thesis. There is no doubt that things are reaching boiling point and that sooner or later something is likely to happen which may depict a "worst case scenario" in the future but what if we, the one's who are seeing the impending catastrophe about to unfold, take preventative measures and not allow it to happen. I will quote here one of my couplets in support of what I have just said:

Simple Observation #128
To reverse the trend, where possible, of an adverse condition or situation
one must take certain specific opposite measures with due consideration.

We have all been reminded in the past due to what has been handed down to us in the form of Scripture or Bible Prophesy, fictional tales and other "end time stories" that when we (as individuals or humanity as a whole) don't do the right thing a bad thing follows and this is universally known. This has been going on for thousands of years since the dawn of mankind and civilization but as far as the present time goes it has reached exponential proportions due to the ever increasing global population with consideration of all the new technology being invented and produced along with nuclear weapons that could if unleashed decimate the whole planet. The other matter I wish to point out here is that if we don't stop or try to reverse the trend of things moving towards our own doomsday or self destruction as a whole then the forces of nature will get to us in the meantime. This has been happening lately with ever increasing frequency since the industrial revolution started almost 200 years ago due to our plundering of natural resources and the resulting in mass polluting of the environment and the air we breathe. We have in fact been upsetting the natural balance and harmony of nature on the planet, which is really a living entity still evolving just as we are, and because of this it is reacting in ways that are manifesting such as cyclones, earthquakes and other natural disasters let alone all the so called climate changes that are slowly but surely taking place as well.

We have a huge battle on our hands that is taking place on two fronts:
the first being outer dealing with our own progress involving technological advancement which isn't a bad thing provided we do the right thing by nature and the environment and this is not really happening as it should and could be,
the second being inner dealing with our own stupidity and ignorance in the form of pride,(including anger and jealousy) greed and lust for power. I hereby quote one of my quatrains in support of what has just been stated:

Quatrain #93
With all of the technology that's around these days
have we not in fact become enslaved by its ways?
It should be used towards the immediate benefit of all mankind
eliminating poverty, hunger, disease and to enlighten the mind.


I also agree with most if not all of the things that Miss Take (Doreen) has mentioned in her comments under this topic as well.

Regards
George K.

what letters we write
so easily
mr meaning
my feeling
my trust

words friendly
mean
obtuse morose obscure
confound

they echo smells
touch
promote sell the
next big thing
paint scenes.

Words obstinate
obscene
immature still
describe something.

The world revolves
in languages but words
are universally
renowned.

They call all of us
near, if on the tongue
of Shakespeare
raise hairs
on necks

from here to everywhere
if writers write
the quatrains quite
quiet, secure
hear
all that
a
word
is.

Faire fondre au bain-marie
En remuant avec une maryse
Votre chocolat coupé en petits quatrains
Dans le café
Incorporer votre élixir de muse
Laisser tiédir.

Prendre une rime riche
Mise à tremper depuis la veille
Séparer les voyelles des consonnes
Fouetter les voyelles avec des mots pimentés
Monter les consonnes en neige éternelle
Avec une pincée de musc glacé
Et fouetter jusqu'au sang
Verser les voyelles dans le chocolat
En remuant énergiquement
Incorporer délicatement les consonnes en neige virtuelle.
Mélanger doucement avec une virgule éphémère

Verser votre mousse dans de petits ramequins
Réserver au frais pendant trois heures minimum
Déguster votre mousse d'élixir de muse au chocolat
Avec du melon et de la pastèque bien fraîche