"quondam" poems
In the divet between mountains
Resides a wooden cabin – ostensibly an amalgamation of the scape
Adroitly - I - quondam female warrior flit
Down massive (ancient) hand-laid, hand-cut carved stone steps
Bounding from contingent step onto the dense pad of turned soil
Tacit compliance between gravity and soil holds footprints bound
A compressed deflating crescendo as pace ignites with bounds
Cadences of protuberant wildflowers and grasses erupt from swollen terra
A winsome chromatic menagerie, dispersed in ecstatic fistfuls
A venerably ancient ritual
My nascent clandestine vocation
Personally meted out - a beatification for my provisional sanctuary
Along glacier-fed stream
Lissome fingers shadow inert stalks –plucking dormant beginnings from their desiccated ligaments
I am austere and unadorned save for a festoon of pyrite flecks trailing my semblance
Residual gilding from my ante-meridian swim taken after requisite gathering of wild blackberries, goose berries, and rhubarb along oft-tamped path
The sun, nestling into its requisite apex endorsed my completion
I reclined into the hassock of soil, feeling the elements settle about with an embossment of my form
Imposing verdure arched subtly as compressed soil beckoned hyperbolic flux
As I lay within the basilica of opulent living columns replete with comestible bounty
Lingering dew honed inflections of sacrosanct petrichor in unison with piquant clover
Wild purple clover buds saccharinely tinted and inundated nestled nerves in mine cribriform plate
Birds pitched and galloped through the frond tips and beyond in the lapis expanse
Frequently snatching damselfly’s and assemblages of midges from their ephemeral drift
Auspicious rays transcended stippled diaphanous gravid clouds
Light inundated ether entered humbly into the cathedral oculus
Pyrite speckled terrain beneath, and my bare gilded form above
Cast a refracted aura about my sanctuary
Precipitously the elusive vaporous embankment distended further
Ashen atmospheric correspondence inaugurated liquescent sustenance to my mountain abode
And I -
Lingered beneath the descending gobbets, curls furled in a puddle
Fresh topsoil cupping my corporal topographic contours
Pressing blackberries into my mouth between smiles
Jan 26, 2014
Jan 26, 2014 at 9:13 PM UTC
Five little girls, of Five, Four, Three, Two, One:
Rolling on the hearthrug, full of tricks and fun.
Five rosy girls, in years from Ten to Six:
Sitting down to lessons - no more time for tricks.
Five growing girls, from Fifteen to Eleven:
Music, Drawing, Languages, and food enough for seven!
Five winsome girls, from Twenty to Sixteen:
Each young man that calls, I say "Now tell me which you MEAN!"
Five dashing girls, the youngest Twenty-one:
But, if nobody proposes, what is there to be done?
Five showy girls - but Thirty is an age
When girls may be ENGAGING, but they somehow don't ENGAGE.
Five dressy girls, of Thirty-one or more:
So gracious to the shy young men they snubbed so much before!
Five PASSE girls - Their age? Well, never mind!
We jog along together, like the rest of human kind:
But the quondam "careless bachelor" begins to think he knows
The answer to that ancient problem "how the money goes"!
2.5k
I do not like my state of mind;
I'm bitter, querulous, unkind.
I hate my legs, I hate my hands,
I do not yearn for lovelier lands.
I dread the dawn's recurrent light;
I hate to go to bed at night.
I snoot at simple, earnest folk.
I cannot take the gentlest joke.
I find no peace in paint or type.
My world is but a lot of tripe.
I'm disillusioned, empty-breasted.
For what I think, I'd be arrested.
I am not sick, I am not well.
My quondam dreams are shot to hell.
My soul is crushed, my spirit sore;
I do not like me any more.
I cavil, quarrel, grumble, grouse.
I ponder on the narrow house.
I shudder at the thought of men....
I'm due to fall in love again.
2.1k
She was bleeding, crying, and queazy
Fear alone kept her from leaving
Knee deep in lonely; emotionally depleted
Bluntly touching, there was no loving
Indifferently ******* he was no husband
Drunkenly cussing; brokenly crumbling
She'd grown cold, old, and withered
Blankly staring into the mirror
In which a spider had grown upon
Not even it could escape his palm
Ready to fold; she no longer quivered
Figuring no one would even miss her
She looked through bruises, hate, and hopeless
Paint brush loaded;
sharply focused
Fingered trigger;
predicting scriptures
Abusive liver;
idle dither
Quondam shadows become formless
To be adrift in that unknown ocean..
May 15, 2012
May 15, 2012 at 1:33 AM UTC
we are not human
we are beyond
all that fits into strands of dna
we are a phone call away and just at the beginning
writhing with excitement that plays like anxiety. we are the nervousness
that turns the body right left and left right left before introducing us to becoming asleep. we are the narrative to the lives of others. our passwords don't match but I refuse to let popular radio dictate our lives. we've ****** ourselves red and sweet, cauterizing our moral wounds with *** and sensuality. we scuba dove in the bedlam of ***** intrigue where I drank the pulse of your fingertips into mid-morning blackouts.
I don't know what you do, but I bleed foreign tongues. I mince words and reconnect them, the Swedes would be proud. Inside the ribs, beyond our teenage skin, between us we are always something better going unchecked but never unnoticed. we have been enlightened, summoned, and have three unchecked voicemails that we will lie about listening to should we ever be confronted about it. I don't ever want to be readdressed by consciousness, I am unhappy there and here
the Power lines
Under
unto us both
we may never meet those quondam girl and boy bent by prurient looks
Dec 28, 2015
Dec 28, 2015 at 5:46 AM UTC
Fluttering to the ground
An autumn leaf
Floating like a feather,
The embodiment of heavens heart
Ascending towards that quondam.
An aeon contemplating creation
Zoariums; moulded from dust infused.
Immortality desecrated
Their fane, desolate
Gods will mans dying nature.
The rivers rose above
The highest mountains quaked
As tears reign below
Upon the blood soaked amber earth;
To the cross his body nailed,
Hours fervently passed
Cloud vapour appearing to evaporate,
Bearing the weight of mortal sin
The saviour hanged; azoic.
The anatomisation of finitude!
Crowned man infinite,
Enlighting the darkest souls,
The lighest souls descent.
Bleating like a lamb
Twilights slaughtered salvation
Riding the thoughts of heavens dream;
Two empereal doves
Homeward flying.
1997 ELEETE J MUIR
Jan 11, 2014
Jan 11, 2014 at 12:18 PM UTC
Under the tree
Under the shade
I sat me down and wrote my poem
In the heat of noontide
The braze of summer
Reminiscence of my trials
Under the tree
Under the shade
I stood and sat
Stood and walked around
Aimlessly in heaviness
Wondering how, why and what for
Under the tree
Under the shade
I sat with my pen
And wrote my song immortal
Recounting my quondam thralldom
The genesis of my exodus
The Numbering of my lapidation
The Levitical ministry of providence
The Deuteronomic prospects of victoire
The Joshua-like expeditions and vigils
That brought triumph on enemy
And lead my feet to Canaan
Jun 18, 2012
Jun 18, 2012 at 9:32 AM UTC
I used to laugh and giggle
For no reason at all
I used to spit and expend,
Not caring how much you saw.
I was given food and clothes,
Without asking the type.
I would learn from anyone around,
Whatever the hype.
I would play on the grass
Without a worry for anything in sight.
I used talk to young and old
Without the slightest peek of a fight.
I used to not know,
How little it was that I knew
Now I wish I never learned,
Because I want to feel a laugh without reason
For that is the best reason of all.
May 16, 2015
May 16, 2015 at 5:20 PM UTC
The boy-king wanted to incinerate
A fell and meretricious thryrus.
His grandfather would venerate
The same staff, terrified of curses.
His mother’d slandered the drunk god,
But regretting feckless blasphemy
She counseled them to spare the rod,
Until they heard the divine decree.
Once the summoned prophet had appeared,
Blind, and clad in a frayed, goatskin cloak,
The monarch sputtered “It’s cursed, weird,
And wrong, burn it down to ash and smoke!”
The former monarch begged, “Appease
Bromius with primeval rite,
A lord who smites his enemies
A lord too terrible to fight.”
The daughter next, “His worshipers
Run mad, and slaughter their own kin,
Even children. The god massacres
Those who dispute his origin”
The prophet lifted up the staff
And tore the ivy from its tip.
“Rites, massacres, don’t make me laugh,
And immolation’s sponsorship.”
He swung the staff to test its heft,
And said, “I need a walking stick,
The drunkard has no bacchics left,
****** the goatish lunatic.”
At this, the grandfather turned pale,
And the repentant mother winced.
Matched severity cannot avail
If fear and butchery convinced.
A proverb soothes the quondam king
And the dowager, “He frightens you,
But moderation in each thing,
And that in moderation too.”
Nov 1, 2021
Nov 1, 2021 at 3:33 PM UTC
They told me to go to hell
So here I am; I'm no son of Sam,
But as you can see someone sent me
And I don't know how that came to be,
So please do tell where am I to go from here?
I find all this quite vitriolic
I was neither a ******
Nor an alcoholic,
I may have sung totally off key
And sometimes I did miss
Where I had to ***
But to hell
I never thought I'd fall,
Regardless that I was pushed
Devil may care Devil may cry
But I won't lie this can't be fair,
To whom do I call to send to press
This unjust event; circumvent
These hellish gates
For the pearly portals
That I see even from these depths,
A plea; please someone; anyone
Humans or immortals
Return me to the earth I walked
I'm sorry; I really am
But to hell? Future quondam
I'm glad now; awake and alive
I'll never again show undeserved blithe...
APAD13 - 023 © okpoet
Jan 27, 2013
Jan 27, 2013 at 11:26 PM UTC
I do not like my state of mind;
I'm bitter, querulous, unkind.
I hate my legs, I hate my hands,
I do not yearn for lovelier lands.
I dread the dawn's recurrent light;
I hate to go to bed at night.
I snoot at earnest, simple folk.
I cannot take the gentlest joke.
I find no peace in paint or type.
My world is but a lot of tripe.
I'm disillusioned, empty-breasted.
For what I think, I'd be arrested.
I am not sick, I am not well.
My quondam dreams are shot to hell.
My soul is crushed, my spirit sore;
I do not like me anymore.
I cavil, quarrel, grumble, grouse.
I ponder on the narrow house.
I shudder at the thought of men--
I'm due to fall in love again.
Jun 27, 2017
Jun 27, 2017 at 3:16 PM UTC
I like the word reminiscent.
Like an echo of a quondam.
Events that very likely happened
But are inevitably vanishing.
Passions still light the night
And northern lights wave in a psychedelic sky.
Is it reality or just a faint dream?
Once we lived on that bluish dot,
Covered with trees, down the Galaxy
Where the breeze danced with the sea
And just music could lull thoughts.
Perhaps after a Big Crunch and a new Big Bang,
With a little patience;
We might all be Revenants.
“So this is a good bye.”
Jun 29, 2021
Jun 29, 2021 at 7:55 PM UTC
Only in knowledge
you come to realize that
letting-go of your quondam burdens
can be quite liberating
You shouldn’t let pains sear
in your bone marrows
and hold you back
from roaming in the wind
Having a clear mind
gives you the power
to brush-off dirt
from your shoulders
so you can taste freedom,
freedom that savors like
a woman’s satin skin
Jobiranyc (9/9/2018)
Sep 9, 2018
Sep 9, 2018 at 3:21 AM UTC
For once I feel illuminated, liberated, iridescent.
I sense my low, dejected spirits have
Finally succumbed to the jocular nature
Which resides in my psyche.
Hateful sentiments float away
As black bubbles of negative memorandum
Of weeks quondam and unremembered.
A release comes through clockwork.
After the initial shock it hurt like hell itself
Picked me up in its spindly, flaming fingers
And flung my wretched subconscious
Through eight staggering blades of betrayal
“Et tu, Brute?”
For weeks I have picked up my shattered gasps
Tears ultimately cease, and I inhale
The crisp October breeze.
Nov 4, 2014
Nov 4, 2014 at 6:50 PM UTC
I was calling for your soul
but
you must have heard another voice
Dec 3, 2016
Dec 3, 2016 at 9:07 AM UTC
Snowdrops falling,
whining of the weight
of reality...
That the good old days...
Are old,
retired,
dead.
The bygone, lets spell this out in multiple avenues..
ancient, dead, departed, former, lost, antiquated
archaic, belated, dated, defunct
down memory lane, erstwhile, extinct,
forgotten
gone, gone by,
in oblivion, late, of old, of yore,
old-fashioned, old-time, olden
old fangled, one-time, out-of-date
previous, quondam, vanished,
water over the dam, water under the bridge..
This is a view of a reality that was
winding on to long.
Times are changing, we've become a people..
Not a race, a ethnicity..
That's a stigma straight away,
what ever continent you were born
to
A majority a minority.. were labelled to much.
Were one people under the stars, one humanity..
we all bleed, we all look for a love of another.
Lets just be us, people that don't see labels,
as we cut them off because the outfit we
now wear isn't in need of a stereotype..
Were just a different fit,
but all the same.
Human......
Jun 19, 2020
Jun 19, 2020 at 5:34 PM UTC
Word of the day - QUONDAM
Meaning - once, but no longer
______________________
There was a time
when all your tears
were supposed to be shed
on my shoulder.
There was a time
when my arms
were just meant
to hold you at night.
There was a time
when your poetry
talked about
you me and us.
There was a time
when one smile from me
radiated your heart
and made you smile.
There was a time
when more than anything
even more than yourself
you loved me.
There was a time
when leaving everyone behind
I used to come at your place
to make you laugh.
There was a time
when every second of the day
went by
thinking about you.
And now this is the time
when my shoulders are bare
and there is no head
on them to support.
And now this is the time
when my arms
are clinging to
the air around me.
And now this is the time
when your words
lack the one thing
which made them meaningful, me.
And now this is the time
when my smile
or my tears
doesn’t even reach you.
And now this is the time
when in this whole wide world
amongst all the people
I am the most hated by you.
And now this is the time
where I sit by my bed
all day all night
with the hope that one day you will arrive.
And now this is the time
when I still think about you
but your thoughts
have taken a wrong turn.
It once was,
a special kind of love
but it
no longer is.
May 8, 2018
May 8, 2018 at 8:25 AM UTC