"quotidian" poems
the other day
I occupied a chair
at a sidewalk café
watching the vanity fair of the quotidian
float by in quickly changing apparitions
an endless flow of different ages, nations, fashions,
skin colors, miens, ****** expressions, postures & gaits
kept passing through my field of vision
it made me wonder why
some people get so furious
when they just hear about
not even meet
the ‘others’ different from themselves
that they start dropping bombs and shooting rockets
I think they rather should be curious
and eager to discover
how the immense variety of humankind
can help expand a locally grown mind
and recognize
that we are all of the same kind
Jun 5, 2016
Jun 5, 2016 at 5:20 PM UTC
Dear diabolic debutante / Spawn of the unfathomable abyss of blackness / Daughter of dreadful dead desire / Black-shrouded sinister sister of celestial gloom before whose imperious gaze the heavens fall silent / Whip-lash girl-child of the graves whose pallid visage kindles the myriad infernal fires / Autocratic vampiress of lunar doom whose winding-cloth enfolds the thousand horrors of blood-drenched nightmare / Thou that wanderest the cypress-crested hills of funereal necropolises / Whose icy glance cracks the ungraven tombstones of utter desolation / Empress of night and madness / Who stalks the locked and shadowed hallways of unhallowed thought / Whose burial-boat glides the still waters over Lethe’s silent depths to the unglimpsed isle of eternal mourning / Whose parapets tower above the fiefdoms of quotidian banality / Whose flying buttresses overlook the Stygian waters of the forgotten drowned denizens of damnation / Whose unshackled dungeons open to worlds of regal splendor / Whose spires pierce dark skies where oblivion buries the ruined cities of revelry under the drifting clouds of leaden time / Oh maiden of melancholic alchemy whose petrified passions transmute base metal into pure gold…
May the gibbous moon of equinox shine its baleful eye upon you; may you tread in sacramental calm the winding starlit paths of somnolent cemeteries; may my unmixed metaphors unveil in delirium their parabolic mysteries before the smoldering altar of your uninterpretable allegory; may the favor of your scorn forever lay me out, embalmed, undead, on the cold stone of merciless reality. Behold: in cryptic script of spectral apparition, in tracery of coded illumination, amidst the dawning rays of torment I write thine unknown name on the threshold of daylight. And from within the mortared wall of self I speak forth from my sepulcher the Sibylline utterance,
unsought, unheard, undreamt:
JUST WANTED TO SAY ‘HI’ !
☻
Sep 10, 2015
Sep 10, 2015 at 9:15 PM UTC
In the twilight of immeasurable hope
I run, I pace, I stagger.
A moon of sorts tucks its hefty beams
Behind the gauzy, twisted zephyr,
As if teasing that its crisp, round, clarity
is merely an echo of a distant, convoluted story:
a myth.
One moment I am carrying out my quotidian realities
Unfiltered, unbridled, lucid,
Running my fingers through laughing waves
of golden, auburn richness,
Letting my wavering, billowing hair
slowly melt into the quavering, trembling wind…
When suddenly-
I am caught in the labyrinth of veils.
I, with my hair and my warmth,
I am auriferous.
And these sheets, oh these hangings!
They float like century-worn cobwebs
And they ensnare me so.
This is where the tangled messages
And mangled mixed signals
All wriggle themselves into form
And make their zombie graveyard.
And yet there are sparks,
Little voices trapped in burning baubles
Shining like the ever-loving soul of the universe,
Which whisper the stories of the moon-thing
Beyond the borders of this haze-land.
Sometimes I attempt to fashion
these ethereal sparklings into my hair.
They suggest insanity, so close to my ears,
And I can’t fill my soul with enough…
I cling to the faith that they will lead me out
Into the amaranthine beyond.
I come back here often,
Always hoping that today will be the day
That the beams from above
Will reach to seek me.
For that, I will love the mists,
And carnally sip away
At the nebulous, crepuscular,
Pools of Fantasy.
But in retrospect,
I should never have told you
That your name means “Purple” to me.
Sep 30, 2012
Sep 30, 2012 at 1:35 AM UTC
I would like this life of endless
Greyhound time schedules to cease.
What self-inflicted alien abduction
tore me from the valley of my birth,
leaving me to wander empty streets,
each the branch of a coppiced maze?
I grow weary of quotidian fastfood buffets
downed with the aid of espresso baristas.
My legs have lost the muscle-memory
that strode the river cliffs with no regard.
Time to end the sleepwalk of forty years;
rejoin the forward guard of Iroquois.
Oct 18, 2012
Oct 18, 2012 at 10:47 AM UTC
More a French shave than five o'clock shadow,
the young artist's way of backing off,
announcing danger, an air of the unexpected,
as the King snake has evolved to feign the Coral.
Yet, where camel hair touched canvas calm,
where quintessential light met quotidian ennui,
not the advertised blackened rose or orchid,
rather the sizzle, the honeyed-heat of azalea.
Each stroke portended floral intifada,
pastel yellows and oily greens igniting
upon a fired-umber background,
threatened to melt the easel into tar.
I stood gape-jawed, nodded approval,
eyeing the second creation within a single flower.
Feb 19, 2012
Feb 19, 2012 at 8:25 PM UTC
all and everything burns around us
a wall of flames consuming the world
a personal hell projected into reality
a final reckoning for our collective sins
none are absolved not even the innocent
an angel’s dream the beginning of the end
overwhelmed wrung out by the quotidian
too tired to fight too tired to care
we lay down and wait our turn to die
Oct 5, 2021
Oct 5, 2021 at 3:59 PM UTC
This things are made for idling
transparent in their quotidian splendor:
A Buddha statue at the receptionist desk
golden skin, red robes
welcoming all yogis with its gaze
eyelids closed
The candle, a guardian of an aim
an intention that moves within a flame
over the palms of the wooden hands
Incense smoke dance softly around the entrance
like a dream seen from wakefulness
immersive enhancer of the humor
filling the place with soft calmness
Nag champa smell
and serious air
The bamboo doors
from Monday to Sunday
open the way to Indian sounds
and the voices of blooming teachers
guide the way
until shavasana
when practitioners become gently moving statues
and glowing air goes
breathing in and breathing out
daily efforts and daily hopes.
Nov 21, 2013
Nov 21, 2013 at 12:17 PM UTC
in today´s virtual worlds we take our avatars
to meet with others of their kind
in that cute coffee shop in neverland
hoping that one of many current superheroes
shows up for a quick drink before another dangerous task
like fighting dragons threatening fair damsels
killing the blinded one-eyed giant
defeating hordes of wild insurgents
saving our planet from superior but evil aliens
old fairy tales and myths
it seems
have donned contemporary virtual garbs
changed names and weapons
to happily exude their fascination
on yet another generation
hungry for adventures
that take them far away
from their quotidian battles for survival
Apr 26, 2018
Apr 26, 2018 at 5:05 PM UTC
The time of year has grown indifferent.
Mildew of summer and the deepening snow
Are both alike in the routine I know:
I am too dumbly in my being pent.
The wind attendant on the solstices
Blows on the shutters of the metropoles,
Stirring no poet in his sleep, and tolls
The grand ideas of the villages.
The malady of the quotidian . . .
Perhaps if summer ever came to rest
And lengthened, deepened, comforted, caressed
Through days like oceans in obsidian
Horizons, full of night's midsummer blaze;
Perhaps, if winter once could penetrate
Through all its purples to the final slate,
Persisting bleakly in an icy haze;
One might in turn become less diffident,
Out of such mildew plucking neater mould
And spouting new orations of the cold.
One might. One might. But time will not relent.
1.7k
I'm unable to feel, to be human, to reach out
From inside my sad soul to my fellow earthly brothers.
And even were I to feel, I'm unable to be useful, practical, quotidian, definite,
To have a place in life, a destiny among men,
To have a vocation, a force, a will, a garden,
A reason for resting, a need for recreation,
Something that comes to me directly from nature.
So be motherly to me, O tranquil night . . .
You who remove the world from the world, you who are peace,
You who don't exist, who are only the absence of light,
You who aren't a thing, a place, an essence or a life,
Penelope who weaves darkness that tomorrow will be unravelled,
Unreal Circe of the fevered, of the anguished without a cause,
Come to me, O night, reach out your hands,
And be coolness and relief, O night, on my forehead . . .
Oct 4, 2013
Oct 4, 2013 at 1:05 PM UTC
Mystery girl, let me make an ansatz about you:
You are like an anti-gravity wave -
the farther I go, the more I pine for you.
Some kind of growing exponent:
yes, you are the solution I ignore in my
quotidian root-finding mission;
Ah, the annihilation, those killer eyes!
Now I see, we inhabit orthogonal planes.
Your uv, to my uw, you are IR to my ivy.
Wonder-woman, let me make an ansatz about you:
You are elegance. Ripple-play at pebbles,
those dimpled cheeks.
Deliciously symmetric. Alpha 180, no Beta
at all - well not Cartesian.
Guess it's subterranean, Artesian,
in the k-space, transform domain,
my mind-space, where, girl,
you are a wonder of beauty and grace.
Magicienne, let me make an Ansatz about you:
You are the particle for Love waves. A lovelet.
Dressed in that kaftan when you walk in,
I will sublimate. Ether-maker, you solve
the Hamiltonian, I see now how matter's made.
Feb 10, 2015
Feb 10, 2015 at 10:40 PM UTC
She looks up, a puzzle piece falling out of her hand.
A hint of a frown mars her face.
She is used to this by now,
And yet it isn't the same.
He picks her up, hugs her
Bright smile, a contrast against his sad eyes
The quotidian questions are asked
It is rote to them by now
One question always stays in her head
One she knows not to ask now
“When is Mommy coming home?”
She’s a kid, but she isn’t curious anymore.
Mar 11, 2015
Mar 11, 2015 at 1:23 AM UTC
"THE AGE OF BLOOM"
the evening is busy
growing the garden
the grass works tirelessly
at its quotidian task
only time
seems asleep
silence casts
a long shadow
leaving it to evening
to hurry along a tree’s leaves
and to shade in a sky
with a blue blackness
making a night that fits
together bit by bit
supplying just enough
gravity for an apple to fall
into the lap
of the classical statue
the flowers practice
their colours
like actresses
waiting in the wings
the stars craok
every frog - a ventriloquist
the white statue laughs
unashamed of its ******
as are the lovers
Feb 19, 2019
Feb 19, 2019 at 6:24 PM UTC
*I am the quarry of my benighted psyche.
So crumbled by the fiendish enactments.
I dread the very persona
i've impersonated.
The damaging mentation have
inebriated my nous.
Clambering off from this lineament
is my quotidian.
I wish to be devoid from this self.
As it ingests my soul.*
Jul 7, 2015
Jul 7, 2015 at 1:16 AM UTC
when we consider
in one of the rare quiet moments
of our hurried hectic times
what keeps us busy throughout all our days
we may discover that there is not much beyond quotidian chores
that occupies our schedule
the job, career, the family, the children
mow the lawn, chat with the neighbors,
go to worship, bowling, Sunday school
etc., etc.
small time we give to figuring out the meaning of it all
what is it that we want
when we have reached the peak of our career
when our kids have left the house
live elsewhere without need for our care
what is it that is left
to strive for and achieve
pragmatically speaking
it may be useful to become alert
and contemplate such matters
alongside our busy years
at least some time before
we find ourselves
close to the edge
that points us into different spheres
Jul 26, 2016
Jul 26, 2016 at 5:35 PM UTC
The sun cheerfully rises every morning
As does my hope
Coffee flavored with a hint of ambition spiked in the liquid caramel drizzle
The curtains are drawn back
Just like my despair
Hidden beneath all of my "to-do's" and "do-later's"
A cluttered mess I hope to never sift through
Three missed called from an old enemy Depression and I'm too busy to ever call back
I crave my quotidian omelet like I crave a fulfilled life
Inside, surprises delight my enchanted taste buds
And my appetite for being alive is heightened with the spices electrifying their energetic flavors
Caffeine sparking my newfound devotion to activity and business to leave no room in my schedule for sadness
But as the sun sets every evening
My hope and beliefs are suddenly invisible in the vacantly somber sky
The stars shine like my thoughts
Ricocheting ideas in the back of my mind
Inching their way forward like the caterpillar in the cage
As the darkness sets in, my eyes adjust in a timely matter
A form of classical conditioning I picked up on early in my life
My irises only responding to the anchors holding me down
I vent to the moon all night about my confusion and unhappiness
And it laughs at my tears, begging for me to "wait and see" when the sun comes up
But I hone in on the negativity surrounding me like the pictures of him and the music of the crooks in the night
We aren't all bad people for feeling this way
To choose a side is to choose night or day
To choose a connotation for my life
My autonomic response is negative
Night and day are merely metaphors for life
And every aspect I experience on a daily basis
It's enough insanity to drive my car off the cliff at night
Only to rise to the top and reverse it all in the morning
Waiting around to make your own sunshine in the world of darkness is complex and seemingly impossible
To fall to an impasse or to rise against?
Ask me in the afternoon how I feel
And I may end up letting you know
I am a night owl
No matter how hard it hurts me
Jan 27, 2014
Jan 27, 2014 at 9:09 AM UTC
not until
not so long ago
I recognized
that saying thanks
only with wordless deeds and gestures
may not be enough
we need to
hear
GRATITUDE
spoken out loudly
in words
silent appraisal
is not enough
over time
so I speak out
in deep appreciation
of your hard work
to make us
stay together
against tall centrifugal forces
the division of
distance and time
distress and separation
barriers of the quotidian
multiple obligations
I thank you
for being with me
even at times
when you are almost
beside yourself
I thank you
for being with me
and being you
* * *
Aug 28, 2015
Aug 28, 2015 at 3:50 PM UTC
mixed stirrings
hard to place this constant ire rising from ashes of a fire not quite, yet felt
stir into that melting *** the sum of miscellany unknowns
all wrought from the unsweet gifts of quotidian sighs
no need to wrap the present, baby, for it's already here
twinkling in the birth of every moment
we hardly know it nor acknowledge
so busy wrenching pain from secret places the darkness loves to keep
yesterday brought unsought smiles of outer space dust
then space in pushed into the blue spit bubble of crayfish folly
and fear frozen into place on cauldroned cheeks
as tendons pulled fury tight on a cocky bounty's cry
I want to carry that sweet loading joy
which scorches my receptiveness in astringent non reciprocation
I die to please that spangled energy so much
which holds back its cagey kernel, far from my prying hands
I kneel to take in out of the blue blessings
which fall slapdash on this preoccupied trajectory, forever waiting in sozzled hope
I take the package you flash and cast heavy
which leave sweltering whiplines across my insides
all fine, all just a fine melange
beneath your magic fontanelle lies a sunken cache
there are painfully few privy to that miracle
I live in hope of neither looping nor taking
but just to be happy to bear witness to the shiny array of your gem stock
you are like none other, inimitable and hard gemstone (inside)
a mix of purity stirred in crazy, along with star shine and fire sparks
my angel with honey eyes
Dec 8, 2013
Dec 8, 2013 at 2:34 PM UTC
Can you settle for more or less if today was your last day
And what would be your retort if you were denied another chance?
How life introduces sobriety and the impending inevitability
The interstice and it’s ingress that encloses before your eyes
The demanding pouring of importune time
That soothing allaying sighs that evoke incalculable alleviation
If someone were to impart as they closed their eyes
As they died with a commital of happenings with not enough time
As to burden you with the impression of only one chance
It would seem and with the impending inevitability
Of your death which would subito compromise the day
A bearding contrivance plight of obligations engagement and commital no alleviation
An abecedarian dossier concealed for a long time
All this time the inevitable coinciding incident only for your eyes
The emotional habituation was of quotidian rendition each day
Of how trivial things take us on a dance with only one life one chance
With your attention and awareness on the answer the inevitability
Of what you are becoming with each passing second for each
Thought which transpires and no alleviation
Is there an epoch a replicating limn a depiction of our linear time
As we perpetrate and pursue progressively for our alleviation
Engaged to staying the course the day
Stirring closing in on our deliberate objective determined chance
Which remained for a terse duration from the inevitability
In which at the atrium of this erstwhile portage of a duvet to belabor
To stifle firsthand with your eyes
The variant from this domicile from this residence on a day
Is the vagabond to perish in yonder with no alleviation
Once man was a brute dullard or a curmudgeon spinster at a time
Which offers a mute disconnection ragged miscreant the inevi
Naivety or absent mindedness to somnambulist and its silhouette
Notwithstanding change
The quagmire and it’s nightmare the ingrate delighted with coined
Shunned eyes
Reputation with a flagrant obscene defilement galvanizing
The alleviation
At the heart of this lies another chance
A precocious inevitability
A man who lies to die another day
The annihilation in desperate want for from those argent eyes
To the starving newfangled optimism which in its sheen
Shines sunshine dulling the ocular orbs of time
Forwithal in befuddlement remain here
The time if infringement to comprehend the volatile vertigo
And the inevitability
The harrowing of hell
Glance at the shinning suns in her eyes intention considers change
After you heal and left are the cicatrix
Will you plunge further for alleviation
Or on the intent of regression once again
From long ago to another distant day.
Jan 23, 2019
Jan 23, 2019 at 9:20 PM UTC
In grandeur of eminence the Sun celebrates her power
In the thick forest of the darkest the Moon flourishes in her glory
The tidal wave is in tinder of a brand new glory, catching fire of a mad harmattan, refining gold and diamond in the expansive field of a glitzy pearl
And transcendence on our way it's roaring of the tidal wave, uprooting dark moons and burying scourging suns in infernal graves!
See our warriors surfing on the tidal wave of this season of victorious glory,
manifesting us to the world, declaring the glory of the Glory, shooting pearly flames in clouds of glory and power
As quotidian stinging tides are being uprooted in routing defeat with eerie eruption of volcano of joy and power in uncommon grandeur.
Oh! Alluring sun of glory
Oh! Alluring moon of majesty
Festooning our sky with power-stars
As rain of victory drowning us in splendor!
Oh! Tidal wave of beatific season, harvesting us barn-full glory at morning dawn of the victory crow!
Jun 4, 2019
Jun 4, 2019 at 3:17 AM UTC
to hold
the other's happiness
higher than your own
to lie in each other's arms
trembling with joy
always tell the whole truth
even though it may hurt
try to really listen
to each other's words
stand by each other
in times of sorrow
love the children
like your own
love each other as
you love yourselves
say it
when you need time for yourself
before the world falls apart
escape from the quotidian
with a sudden caress
on doors closed for a while
rap gently
tell tenderly
each other's fears
and smoothen the frowning brow
with kisses
think of the little things
at breakfast
understand contradiction
as the sign of life
only the dead
contradict nobody
not even themselves
Mar 17, 2015
Mar 17, 2015 at 12:49 PM UTC
How do I feel with my own two hands
small as they are, and the circumstance
bids me to wrap tape over my bleed.
Raise your glass high so my eyes could see
all the straps pulled up my own two feet
and the days lay dead underneath white sheets.
Scars underground in the earth beneath
pushing up daisies towards the sky
Shame overwhelms me in surprise
while black hues slowly blinds each eye.
Let’s trade my hours for more time
we’ll barter tears until we’re dry
If one breath can push out wistful sighs
then one death can end an entire life.
I’m much too distant from the end
and far too fearful of the light.
If every muse made any sense
I’d be weary and troubled by their lies.
But I find it easier to pretend
as quotidian wishes escape the mind.
We’re both caged in suspension yet
over silence in this unspoken compromise.
Aug 30, 2012
Aug 30, 2012 at 3:13 PM UTC
why do you pretend to be so tough, projecting a hard exterior, when i so clearly see the little girl behind a paper tiger. a little girl who wants to be loved unconditionally, protected fiercely, embraced heartily in her father’s arms, is that what i see in you, a reflection of me, a little boy, afraid, alone, craving intimacy, fearing, distrusting to love and be loved.
take my hand, let me lead, let me be the man, missing from your life, let me be an example, to witness, to rebuild the trust, that has been lost, remove your armor, slowly, piece by piece, let me see the child that you protect so fiercely.
learn to trust, allow yourself to be vulnerable, you have to give to get, trusting another is difficult, you are not to blame, there is no shame, being a child soldier, in an adult world, a veteran of lecherous wars, having your emotions manipulated selfishly, mangled carelessly, becoming cynical, suspicious in order to survive, leaving you disillusioned of the world, disgusted in those you need and want, depressed with the reality of a ruthless society.
we are older, wiser, bolder, the wounds have crusted over, healed, leaving scars as reminders, of what we want, but can not get without giving, patiently tilling, turning another’s heart in the spring to harvest in summer.
it is frightening to show our true selves to another, perilous in what is required to develop the craved intimacy, frightening in escalating, arduous in sustaining, and reciprocating personal level of self disclosure.
we anesthetize ourself with drugs and alcohol, or distract ourselves with mundane things, quotidian tasks, to numb the deep need, the intense yearning for emotional connection, the warmth and security of being held like a child in mother’s arms.
you have to give to get, to love to be loved, to accept to be accepted, for “the greatest thing you'll ever learn, is just to love and be loved in return (1).”
(1) Nate King Coles (Nature Boy)
Dec 1, 2019
Dec 1, 2019 at 12:37 PM UTC
**“Won't do no good
To call the police.
Always come late,
If they come at all.”**
Thank you, Tracy.
Thank you for shining a light,
Drawing the world’s attention to the gulf
The gross variance in policing,
As it is practiced as we move from
One area of the city to another,
From one part of town,
Across the tracks to the
Wrong side of town,
Not the neighborhood where
Cops get out of the squad car after dark,
Ring your doorbell & politely remind you
Your garage door is open.
I refer, of course, to the same
Neighborhood with the best schools,
Libraries, public parks, and other
Fine & dandy amenities
Enjoyed by some its municipal citizens.
I send greetings from reality &
Say “Thank you, Tracy”again.
Now I’m hip to an area of town where
People have to shoot it out for themselves,
Where people contend with a
Quotidian Death Camp or Gulag,
A daily killing-field of extreme
Predatory desperation.
We’re taking a quintessential peek
Through a Social Psychologist’s lens,
Namely Abraham Maslow’s
“Hierarchy of Human Needs;”
Categorically speaking:
The ladder’s bottom-rung.
We’re talking basic human survival, here.
BTW I actually learned a lot in college, & besides:
**** You! I’m a Harvard graduate.
One last time I say
“Thank you, Tracy.”
I actually learned & continue to learn a lot,
From getting high & listening to music.
Life at the bottom of the barrel?
Sloshing it up with the
So-called “Dregs of Society,”
Which, by the way,
Would be a great name for a band.
Cue omniscient narrator:
Google "I want to Be a Pornstar.”
But I digress.
We were talking about a frightening alien planet,
A no-where place to be for
An intelligent young black girl,
Hoping for a fast car out of there.
Sep 28, 2016
Sep 28, 2016 at 5:49 PM UTC