"rampart" poems
Though life should come
With all its marshalled honours, trump and drum,
To proffer you the captaincy of some
Resounding exploit, that shall fill
Man’s pulses with commemorative thrill,
And be a banner to far battle days
For truths unrisen upon untrod ways,
What would your answer be,
O heart once brave?
Seek otherwhere; for me,
I watch beside a grave.
Though to some shining festival of thought
The sages call you from steep citadel
Of bastioned argument, whose rampart gained
Yields the pure vision passionately sought,
In dreams known well,
But never yet in wakefulness attained,
How should you answer to their summons, save:
I watch beside a grave?
Though Beauty, from her fane within the soul
Of fire-tongued seers descending,
Or from the dream-lit temples of the past
With feet immortal wending,
Illuminate grief’s antre swart and vast
With half-veiled face that promises the whole
To him who holds her fast,
What answer could you give?
Sight of one face I crave,
One only while I live;
Woo elsewhere; for I watch beside a grave.
Though love of the one heart that loves you best,
A storm-tossed messenger,
Should beat its wings for shelter in your breast,
Where clung its last year’s nest,
The nest you built together and made fast
Lest envious winds should stir,
And winged each delicate thought to minister
With sweetness far-amassed
To the young dreams within—
What answer could it win?
The nest was whelmed in sorrow’s rising wave,
Nor could I reach one drowning dream to save;
I watch beside a grave.
3.8k
The seed-at-zero shall not storm
That town of ghosts, the trodden womb,
With her rampart to his tapping,
No god-in-hero tumble down
Like a tower on the town
Dumbly and divinely stumbling
Over the manwaging line.
The seed-at-zero shall not storm
That town of ghosts, the manwaged tomb
With her rampart to his tapping,
No god-in-hero tumble down
Like a tower on the town
Dumbly and divinely leaping
Over the warbearing line.
Through the rampart of the sky
Shall the star-flanked seed be riddled,
Manna for the rumbling ground,
Quickening for the riddled sea;
Settled on a ****** stronghold
He shall grapple with the guard
And the keeper of the key.
May a humble village labour
And a continent deny?
A hemisphere may scold him
And a green inch be his bearer;
Let the hero seed find harbour,
Seaports by a drunken shore
Have their thirsty sailors hide him.
May be a humble planet labour
And a continent deny?
A village green may scold him
And a high sphere be his bearer;
Let the hero seed find harbour,
Seaports by a thirsty shore
Have their drunken sailors hide him.
Man-in-seed, in seed-at-zero,
From the foreign fields of space,
Shall not thunder on the town
With a star-flanked garrison,
Nor the cannons of his kingdom
Shall the hero-in-tomorrow
Range on the sky-scraping place.
Man-in-seed, in seed-at-zero,
From the star-flanked fields of space,
Thunders on the foreign town
With a sand-bagged garrison,
Nor the cannons of his kingdom
Shall the hero-in-to-morrow
Range from the grave-groping place.
3.4k
It is docking it is tocking in the winter garden locking
over still and heavy knocking that defies the very dew.
We see storms and angels crumbling under load of dearest kindling and the fire and gases burning in the skies where clouds are churning and the snow, hail, sleet, and ices come to split the air in slices as it settles over houses, villages, shoes.
Waiting huddling drawing the blankets hot and heavy with a fear of powerful nature in the windy savory few.
Now we see and hear the howling like a wolf entangles scowling as she tries to say her fowl and angry message to the blew.
I am never quite so settled as when all around me crumbles and the anger of the desert makes the inner anger moot.
And the people seem to gather in their individual lathers but they all believe the madness that the storm will never pass. But pass it does and finding with the dawn a calm descending, yes, a calm that is so different that it seems to crush our ears. We are happy to look outward and even hear a skylark and to see the streaming sun rays flitter over piles of snow.
Ever angled up in heaven we almost see a dragon or a cannon that's protecting rampart walls.
And we know that we are safe here but it was such a battle that the scars are not quite healed.
Oct 28, 2012
Oct 28, 2012 at 2:17 AM UTC
you loved me
like the way
the sun
loved the earth
you radiated upon me
giving me
a love
i could barely recognize
but then;
your words
filled with deceit
brought waters
i have never seen before
i have come to
realize
what face lies
behind your lies
the waves
know your
deceitful secret
and keep it well
the waves begins
to fill my body
how could one
endure an agony like this?
the waves
in my mind
have thickened
at the thought of you
water fills my lungs
i gasp for each breath
i begin to suffocate
waiting on death's bed
i begin to sink downward
in a effortless spiral
my body is now calm
just like when you left me
my breathing has slowed
just like our recent lack of communication
im must be on a sedation
my corpse has become lifeless
beginning to shut down
piece by piece
the water is a sinful poison
flooded thoughts
run rampart through my soul
scrambled images
i can barely see
screams
after screams
break my thoughts
of you
i will myself
to sneak just
a tiny glimpse of you
a small bit of euphoria left
it begins
to bring an unceasing pain
that my body cannot handle
i start to perish
but;
i can't seem to let go of you
just like you said i would
(b.d.s.)
Jun 6, 2014
Jun 6, 2014 at 7:16 PM UTC
A storm is raging on the frothy sea
Mountainous waves toss the vessel all around
The ravaging gales impale with a deafening blow
Raucous sheets of salty spray
soak and pelter to and fro
A bucket bails the raged sloop
She moans and groans as she’s flung about
A sailor sails ― A sailor endlessly bails
Engulfed alone in the perfect storm
Two oars are manned on the stormy seas
The halyard torn and ripped from mast
To row and bail is an impossible feat
It’s hard to tell when you've sprung a fateful leak
The captain mans the forlorn skiff
There'll be No white flag of surrender flown ;
" I will go down with my ship! "
A furious soul laments life’s toil
As violent waves crash the gunnels hold
He screamed out loud,
***" My time has come ! "
" My ship is sinking!!! "
" Her broken pieces ne'er to be found ..."***
The rampart boat, well fortified yet built to fail
Plummets from hills of oceans pitifully tall
Cracks are leaking where the lurid light gets in
But so does the briny water, will drowning soon begin?
Lost hope floats the helpless, fearless one man crew
His soul now guides the ether voyage ―
A vessel drifts lifeless on the empty calming sea
Nothing but it can be seen for miles of skies
The free board is deep the salty water high
Two apathetic oars lay silent, is a lost soul inside?
© Harlon Rivers
May 20, 2017
May 20, 2017 at 1:15 PM UTC
I can't trust my mind or my heart like you can't trust a post laxative ****
Seems like they've both been plotting against me from the start, planning to steal this soulful art
Like they know when it comes to the afterlife, reincarnation plays a big part
And with the knowledge and comfort of that truth they're ready to scrap me now like bad art
A defective throw away product that seems to have been bought at a dollar general corner mart
Then pushed around in a stolen grocery cart till interest fades and goes dark
I have to find the right end with no place to start, close my eyes and toss a dart
Then keep the blindfold on and let you tell me the score, not smart
Last time I trusted either of you ya fed me the equivalent of a week old shart
Through a feeding tube that I didn't need according to my hospital chart
Neglecting real issues when there's endorphins to bogart, losing my mind, watching my soul depart
I've lost and broken the both of you yet you still torment me, not even phased by my rampart
I never stood a chance, oblivious to the warning siren like Mozart, silent as I'm pulled apart
No one will think back on me but if they do I'll just be seen as another failed upstart
©2020
Dec 7, 2020
Dec 7, 2020 at 6:42 PM UTC
With the piquant poignancy of lurid allusion
I create a dynamically progressive matrix of collusion
Whose apex crux axis is beyond finite solution
And the endergonicaly adhesive pragmatics imbue a cohesively coercive illusion
For the inveterate hypotaxis of livid elusions
I portray a protensive conjunction of latent confusions
Whose effervescent effluence is vagile laconic effusions
And the sardonic impending preponderance conveys sabbat consortium delusions
From the endemic puissance of eclectic synectics
I derive a dialectically semantic sorcery of syntactics
Whose apothegm aphorisms are levity terse synaptics
And the lucidly collusive illuminism educes the aesthetics of geomancy's fatidic
Through the viable salience of kithe’s intrinsics
I exude a portentous pervasion acuity of linguistics
Whose apomixis anabolics are irrefragably felicitous orotund acoustics
And the aural auspice austerities infer axioms of manumission’s eidetics
By the hypercritical mitigations of anachronistic sociology
I purvey rampart ransack oblations of epistemology
Whose azure opulence articulations are futurity ostensive ontology
And the evolutional ontogeny metamorphisms incur a homogeny epiphany deontology
Oct 20, 2016
Oct 20, 2016 at 10:30 PM UTC
bingle bangle trip top
flipper wing ****
fingling zinger bop bop
tribble slapper bang
herpe derper webble wob
frankish glub glub beetroot
shingle rampart flip rob
wipple fishnet bangtoot
markly haper mushmouth
yungdid crassly freeten
biddle froto down south
sharple rag tag neepin
oddler dang trumpet
***** gnomey smashhash
villet bridle crumpet
creamy lopless bashrash
oh, the wonderful sounds of letters
amazing in your diversity
always makes me feel a bit better
but not as far as perversity
Jun 4, 2015
Jun 4, 2015 at 12:44 PM UTC
Delicacies of darkness,
Intricacies of energy;
Witches of woe
Insinuating that nothing we pass is past,
As all beginnings were long since begun.
Protecting an abnormality,
That would rather be condemned,
By self-centered ambition of men.
An insanity that turns her right, round again.
Now if now only.
Living by wick and glee of natural ability.
You would come and dare,
Old sentimentality and whimsicality,
Rampart of myths and misconceptions.
To indulge in mischievous play
Under the indigo sky,
By the light of a spiral of far fire.
The journey starts by stealing hearts
If only now you would come I should be happy.
Dec 3, 2016
Dec 3, 2016 at 4:39 AM UTC
4 bricks in a line on the floor
in case someone dared to knock at this door
shadows underneath come and go
but it won't be me they get to know
10 bricks now for added protection
a sign reads "leave, please no affection"
comfort here in the shade
"go away i'm not here, leave" i prayed
20 bricks and counting to avoid the foreseen
I learnt how to build at the age of sixteen
this is not the first, i've been here three times
fallen head first for emotional crimes
and i wonder why i can't muster the trust
when consistence and kindness has been my gold dust
and always when I need them the most
I’ll run, I’ll hide and become like the ghost
all because the notion of security
has become somewhat of a peculiar obscurity
7 seconds to put up all the defences
and here I’ll sit with the everlasting consequences
crying out at my own reflection
“here we are, did it again, severed an incandescent connection”
how can I change when this has been all I know
this version of love had been taught long ago
if not filled with rage and sordid behaviour
cut all ties, sabotage, this can’t be my saviour
and the reason I feel like I need to be saved
is I’ve danced too long with the morally depraved
who treated me well with sweet degradation
and made me believe in self deprecation
so these walls, after all, are for me and not you
quietly hoping you have the tools to break through
May 5, 2022
May 5, 2022 at 6:11 AM UTC
Trying so hard to numb the pain
Pick apart the horrid hallucination
Blood diluted by tears, falling like rain
Build the fragile walls of zion
Gilded paths strewn with broken memories
Penance paid, and I'll surely burn
Inflicted with this deceitful disease
All that's left is an empty urn
Upon a forgotten shelf, in your empty heart
My breath stirs a dead breeze
In the empty gardens of the souls rampart
Emotions twirled like leaves on trees
Pallid clouds against a moonlit backdrop
Silver shards paint the tattered scene
Seated in the mind, on a barren hilltop
Luminescence makes the pain gleam
As the village below so sweetly slumbers
It's guardian watches from darkened beauty
As the demon increasingly slaughters her numbers
Within city walls, lays the destroyed sanity
Dec 31, 2010
Dec 31, 2010 at 3:25 AM UTC
Hit me hard and break my heart into a million pieces
Cause only then will you see how much its worth
Don't settle for a dozen scraps, a hundred, or a thousand
Strike with passion and leave a mess upon the earth
Then watch me as I pick up every piece that was scattered,
From the loftiest clouds they perched, and crevices they slipped
Now take them from my hand and hold it in yours all together
And feel the weight of the million pieces that you had ripped
I want you to see how they still mold and form the same original shape
How a million pieces could be reattached and still reveal a heart
Yet, do not mistake their lightness for instability or lack of focus
They can also be diamond tough; my soul is the fortress, while it, the rampart
Its not some plastic easter egg thats only as good as its design
Not a false brittle shell, with a hollow and empty core
Each piece accounts apiece, a full apple with no worm
Every heartbreak meant to make it, love even better, than before
So if you're looking for commitment, let that be the trial
I'm not promising it'd be easy, it can only be worth the pain
It's only in shattered hearts, that subtle thoughts are brought to light
Neither the first nor the last, but I'd repeat it all the same,
If you're the one I'm about to gain.
Sep 12, 2015
Sep 12, 2015 at 10:36 AM UTC
It is in the midst of strife
when the burden weighs most heavy,
your innards writhe and twisted;
the discomfort tugging at you so intensely
you cannot help but feel the tightness in your throat.
It is in the thick of this black mist
when your hands pick and pull
upon the wisping thread inside your head,
unraveling the rabble of cowardice voices
which spill like venom on your thoughts.
It is the unsettling notion
you are alone in a vast and empty ocean
sinking, suffocating and claustrophobic,
your mind is brimming, overflowing,
afraid it might just crack right open
It is knowing
these thoughts which come pouring
from that fractious bore inside your skull
seethe with undisclosed emotions
and their exposure to the air could crush you whole.
Will you allow this shameful wave
to crash atop you with all its galling weight
and drag you under grain by grain?
Or-
Will you battle back the coming storm,
standing above the surging tide
a rampart refusing to forfeit a single inch
of your distinguished shore?
I say battle.
Battle with the erosive waters rising inside you.
Battle knowing fully at first you are destined to lose.
The hero must be humbled
before others see him as the hero too.
So battle **** it, battle you glorious fool!
Jan 19, 2018
Jan 19, 2018 at 8:49 AM UTC
I feel safer somewhere cold and dark
Like my lonely, ransacked heart
At times it has played the part
Tucked behind a fleshy rampart
Casting a stark silhouette,
Becoming somewhat of a trademark
Can't remember when it lost it's spark
It had to have been sometime, way back,
Before the halfway mark
The memory gets a bit hazy,
Especially when trying to recall the start
What I get to deal with now is,
Just how quickly it all fell apart
©2024
Mar 23, 2024
Mar 23, 2024 at 8:50 PM UTC
'Education' these days
Is about 'pure' information
And by information
I mean presenting facts verbatim
And by pure i mean it's taken
As truth with no contemplation
That behind all this initiation
Is nothing more than total indoctrination
Into cookie-cutter patriotic nations
I mean even the word information
Is unsettling with reiteration
Think of it
like this
Information
In-formation
IN. FORMATION.
Conspiracy? Could be.
Though that is another story.
For now lets call it coincidental consideration.
To keep in mind what's lacking
In a cold calculated system of education
I ask you and i beg
Where's the social validation
That everyone is different
In the way they treat a situation
That people are so vast and varied when it comes to inspiration
And still we wonder why kids in school
Get bullied, beaten and mistaken
Treated by their peers as some kind of social retardation
By other young minds bored and rampart with frustration
From a system failing day by day
Generation by generation
I mean is it no surprise from a society with a hellebent fixation
Upon competition
Survival of fittest
And human exploitation?
Of mantra screaming profit, selfishness, and lack of real cooperation
Nature over nurture and people under nations
That leave us standing divided and alone amongst as sea of potential collaboration?
And yet we're told to sing our anthems of patriotic proclamations
That we live in lands of freedom, justice, love and consideration.
So please believe me when i see
Your sense of self worth and participation
As something lacking emergent notions
When it's simply in-formation
What we need is real change via total non-cooperation
And to rest assured that our minds, and our childrens mind, and future generations
Are part of real solutions
And also full of inspiration
To take hold of our own thoughts
And redefine the importance
Of something we've all lost
Called self education
So please don't simply repeat after me
Don't seek my words as your savior or salvation
Just find your version of what it means to simply be
And forget what others see
As being in-formation
Dec 30, 2014
Dec 30, 2014 at 8:02 PM UTC
Am I not looking – looking to achieve
Perfection the world wants – what it so desperately needs
A perfection it yearns for and what it deserves
What it cannot acquire yet constantly serves
Like a bullet through the heart … through time and space
Past the coils of life through gestures, nods and superfluous gates
Guarding affections, guarding the heart … steel strong gates – a rich man’s rampart
Plastic smiles, contemptuous nods, illustrious masks intricately designed
Whitewashed catacombs of the walking dead
Represented as fine art in a collector’s shed
Time unravels, peeling paint, broken fences, broken gates
Locks torn open, curtains in two, windows broken, you get a clue
Of perfection’s illusion, of perfection’s cruel hoax,
From it’s tonic we drink, so drunk that we choke
Choke on its lies, choke til we die … die from within til it reaches outside
Banished like lepers rejected, diseased; no longer relevant – society’s ill-ease
- May 27, 2012 -
May 30, 2012
May 30, 2012 at 2:45 AM UTC
Slow sparks
Vegetable love
you are planted and, nature
mirroring nature,
grow
This snail love,
rippling, wavering, creasing itself to move forward
We knit ourselves,
pulling strand through
strand through
strand to tie ourselves in knots,
weaving ourselves into the fabric of this-
our foxhole, our fort, our rampart
That implacable Indian,
the stacks of shoes,
and the gritty plates:
the objects that know our rhythms
My secret bear/troll,
wild and woolly
growling our hidden jokes and unseen whispers
unscripted for once
unprepared
Like two sailors
we frantically navigate these waters,
desperate to drown ourselves:
shipwrecked,
submerged,
surfaced, and
returned.
Outside our cave we smile in code.
You and I and the Indian
keep our own counsels.
Aug 17, 2010
Aug 17, 2010 at 2:28 PM UTC
Thick fog breaks across West Point Lake ...
Bass boats and crappie fishermen , tour boats and skiers
skim across her blue looking glass , Wood Ducks test the skies
northbound up the Chattahoochee River , bank anglers anchor poles
along her fortified edges .. White granite boulders visible from the mid-line .. Indigo hope and dreams as starlings silhouette her morning miracle , shad minnows skim the blue mirror , visiting gulls feast along quiet shoreline . A tall Georgia Pine mirage forms in tranquil coves , early day crows call hysterically from the hardwood thickets .. Turtles occupy muddy banks , Whitetails quietly graze worked fields , dragonflies and monarchs incessantly toil beneath the strengthening heat of Summer , baldfaced hornets fortify their paper rampart high atop a lone River Birch ...
Feb 17, 2016
Feb 17, 2016 at 10:36 AM UTC
With the piquant poignancy of lurid allusion
I create a dynamically progressive matrix of collusion
Whose apex crux axis is beyond finite solution
And the endergonicaly adhesive pragmatics imbue a cohesively coercive illusion
For the inveterate hypotaxis of livid elusions
I portray a protensive conjunction of latent confusions
Whose effervescent effluence is vagile laconic effusions
And the sardonic impending preponderance conveys sabbat consortium delusions
From the endemic puissance of eclectic synectics
I derive a dialectically semantic sorcery of syntactics
Whose apothegm aphorisms are levity terse synaptics
And the lucidly collusive illuminism educes the aesthetics of geomancy's fatidic
Through the viable salience of kithe’s intrinsics
I exude a portentous pervasion acuity of linguistics
Whose apomixis anabolics are irrefragably felicitous orotund acoustics
And the aural auspice austerities infer axioms of manumission’s eidetics
By the hypercritical mitigations of anachronistic sociology
I purvey rampart ransack oblations of epistemology
Whose azure opulence articulations are futurity ostensive ontology
And the evolutional ontogeny metamorphisms incur a homogeny epiphany deontology
Aug 31, 2019
Aug 31, 2019 at 11:37 PM UTC
Silence,
In the mind
Is what he strives for-
Ushering sweet shushings
Destined to fall-
Desperately,
Hopelessly,
On deaf membranes-
Eardrums cluttered
And cloistered
By juggling run rampart-
Amuk.
The color of blood
Seeps down his forhead-
Sweatdrops glistening
Their crimson beauty-
Reminders that his sight
Is still unseen-
Cataracts unsheathed
Beneath Winter's chilling kiss
Of endless doubt and drought.
The frozen beauty captivates,
Encapsulates his mind,
And all his eyes roll back,
And his hands are useless.
Jan 11, 2018
Jan 11, 2018 at 1:25 AM UTC
By: Cedric McClester
I don’t think you actually understand
I’m from Bodymore, Murderland
Where crime is rampart and has the upper hand
And you can be killed upon demand
Drugs and bodies are all over the streets
But there’s no wire that defeats
This sad situation just repeats
Among poor people that one meets
We’re routinely profiled by the police
Who treat us as if we're savage beasts
We don’t have justice nor any peace
And that’s to say the very least
Our lives are very precarious
So pardon me if I occasionally cuss
Lucky you don’t have to live like us’
We're here today and gone like dust
It ain’t easy living on the bottom
Name your poisons and you know we got’em
Lost a loved one. someone probably shot him
The suspected police, I’m glad they caught ‘em
Yeah, things have gotten tragically out of hand
I’m not kickin’ either dirt or sand
I'm just talkin' 'bour Bodymore, Murderland
Even though you know that I can
Before the riot we were ignored
No one cared you can rest assured
Now they’re sayin,’ Oh my Lord
Even the White House is aboard
I guess we had to raise a ruckus
To get all eyes focused on us
Will they make changes, you know they must
They can't expect us to believe and trust
© Copyright 2015, Cedric McClester. All rights reserved.
May 2, 2015
May 2, 2015 at 10:31 AM UTC
The last Love letter
****** up inside this night
I strive for my escape
The darkness it bleeds with my every scorn
screams and apathetic shrills
The darkness goes on filling ink to my blood
My eyes encircled with blue rampart
Wrinkling skins over memories growing weary
I stay sinking down being ******
Spilling blood over my inks
The paper won't stay blank
it will play melencholic tunes of love
While I don't see the end to this engulfment
My desires will perish before light sees me
But this letter shall be my gift
to haunt you with my presence
for all suns and moons you swagged
Till you get your life crumbled
Jul 26, 2014
Jul 26, 2014 at 2:14 AM UTC
Me in the rain now wry dusk nigh
and hail next awesome seed
even lightning is on the way
that plaza carry street too
where crumbs last an entire day
if rampart ring side their wing
with a pigeon in flight that dine here
then my rapport commence with dance
but a lesson left to chance
dawn in these throes of thunder
but wake incredible desire
and shake an incredulous mess
though my excess horizontal
with wind and sea ex aequo.
Mar 1, 2017
Mar 1, 2017 at 4:10 AM UTC