"sclerotic" poems
Edgar Allen settled evenings in the room at the rear
at a desk by the window where he could hear
breeze-rustled sycamore leaves sleeping
behind the neighbor’s house next door
through night’s florescent blue moon light,
its mist through low leaden clouds
he imagined the phantom he named Lenore,
and remembered lost Annabelle Lee
amore he'd left laid alone aside a blackened sea
hers, the voice of a tree speaking, hushed,
like distant waves rushed upon shore,
faintly whispering heart-secrets
the ardent couldn’t keep evermore
was it she who sighed with love’s breathless lips
to flicker the flame of a tortured oil lamp’s light
the words born laboring children
with pen put in service to cover past rent,
refill an empty flask of verdant absinthe
for a nine-dollar-half-column poem -
fodder for fickle romantics to tear over
before a performance of Bellini’s new Norma
hardened, our modern hearts
fattened on diets of swollen bellies
that belie the dour misery of starving
they’ve grown sclerotic and cynical,
hungry for suffering flavored substantial -
a greasy disaster to stain the paper wrapper
enclosing depths of the human condition
sophisticates, we dismissed puerile appetite
for honeyed songs of longing,
the ornamented confections of jealous angels
old drunken poets sang
until dark full comes, alone, and we’re small again
then shadows still speak to starry skies
and fairy tales may come alive
to suspend belief with secret dreams
of the dear, lost Annabelle Lee
Mar 13, 2011
Mar 13, 2011 at 12:59 PM UTC
An adamant introvert of inert thoughts
Dowdy and crapulous
Arrives in a fastidious yet effulgent
Didactic, contumacious world of education
Bilious in the beginning
Still taught an adroit sense of survival
Nefarious acts and risible happenings
There was a lesson in all
Zealous sclerotic soul
Learnt well, thought well
Contributed to goodness
Willfully abetted evil
The transcendence,
Luminous, loquacious
Cerulean peace within, built in blocks
Of love, respect and fear
A better heart, a better person
A better LIFE.
Jun 2, 2013
Jun 2, 2013 at 10:56 AM UTC
Part I
My body never prepared to run out of air
celebrate it?
I said Send.
I said it again and again. Send.
the world's loneliest flipping machine
withering from your obtusity.
I'm sclerotic.
Yes, yes that's it.
I want to stir you
strike you into soup.
I'll observe the dictionary,
every word will flow from me to you.
Flip, flip off the diver's board,
Blank and Blank by the shore
Color it in, out, up, down
I'm sclerotic.
Remember this, need this
counting people all in pairs:
I saw everything through sixteen vision,
bleary, misted with vanilla yous.
Soft skinned, little girls, hot and milds between their teeth
I don't hunt but I could.
Autumnal again and I'm just repetition
speaking of repressed rage.
Let us analyze the handwriting of every
colleague, drop out, ghost buster,
Coffee house inspired.
I'm sclerotic.
I'm walking through the forest and
you're not there.
Part II
I write because I'll die
I die, I die, I diee.
It's been too long since I went swinging
Missing my pour of moon to the tip top
of my new ceramic mugs.
It's all up for traps
the reindeer, the telltales, the chlorine.
Hyperextended among the cruel cats, where are the cool cats?
REVERSE back to nail polish
I got manicures as a little girl
Staring at my hair now
every shaved bit on my leg is its own waterfall. Hah.
I cry for my beauty
I was told I was wrong with
highlighters, colored ads,
illuminated in the eyes of old dogs.
Take a gulp,
I did and I walked
for every moment I regretted.
I walked.
Childish foolish acts, crimeful commitments.
I said Send. Send.
She said you might not like me but to never fret
you love me.
I'm walking in a tunnel
(Where's the light?)
and you're not there.
Part III
This is the beginning
of a low-budget film, black and white
this part is when the audience yells
"Someone fall in love already!"
I think there is something truly remarkable about me
(and you)
and the boy who cried wolf and
probably other people
too
I don't want my words to dissipate or fall
into space
disappear in the inners of the web.
I want them to creep in through the crevices
speak to the many as they
walk and see and notice.
I find a strange comfort in swinging at night in
an empty park
and a intriguing mystery the first time someone sighs my name.
I'm swinging in the park and
you're not there.
Jan 8, 2013
Jan 8, 2013 at 12:13 AM UTC
Phosphorescent light sets
into putrescent flesh,
Baking the body as it wanes,
the smell wafting
though the door
as disconsolate footsteps echo in the corridor.
Sclerotic hands reach,
Elbows screaming protest as shoulders contort,
reaching forward
reaching backward
sallow fingertips finding warm skin,
still swaddled in the opaque
veil of youth,
Tearing at its fibers with ravenous fervor.
Feb 12, 2013
Feb 12, 2013 at 1:08 PM UTC
Das Fuehrer gefüllt mit Flöte.
Listening 2 yawns,
meditating on medication,
lisping a cry to Das Führer,
I proffer a pray,
im morgen Früh, im morgen Führer,
im morgen nah; hören Sie mich.
Not 4 pleasure yearning 4 unright
Unctuous crimes. Not with U.
Not with boast (yet not with hate 2).
Hating the bath water with the babe
as it bashes Reaper's polemic
hellfire falling out of window;
Still me, in that kindness enters
my home, bowing cuz the doorway is 2 large.
Guiding in black ink,
writing a way
out of loyalties mouth,
out of sclerotic liver,
and contumacious throat.
I tongue an act, a play,
staying guilty in U,
saying guilty in Us.
Lemmings encouraged to revolt,
Offending in U,
Rejoicing only in Us.
Witness our joy, that Xanex protects
against dull moments, forgetting Us,
bland blessings rightly
Surrounded by Yawn's shield.
Feb 15, 2013
Feb 15, 2013 at 9:06 PM UTC
I write in runes. I mean to
leap the alphabet. The orbital
spin of time and me dizzy and all. .
I will write you tomorrow,
shake the mica off my
thoughts. You will not
walk with me among the
glacial shores of thinking.
I will return a fossil of
millions of years,
along the edges
of meaning. I am not
unfamiliar with your pace
along the beach where i
lie so still. It's why I will
write tomorrow when my
heart has ******
in the sun.
I don't see you
coming anymore to the sandhills of
Poems. It was always
difficult to reach you through
the tangle of my sclerotic
heart.
Tomorrow I will be a fragment of
loving you. I will hold the
thought until it fossil
freezes and I will lie on the
Beach of Remembering,
washed by eons of
poetry. I will write you
but all you will hear are the
echoes
of forgetting.
Caroline Shank
Jul 23, 2022
Jul 23, 2022 at 3:06 PM UTC
Meticulous, Prodigious;
Pedagogy, Melancholy;
Sanctimonious, Sacrilegious;
Fallacy, Facetious, Flippant.
Contumacious, Efficacious;
Equanimous, Calamitous;
Sclerotic, Spasmodic;
Fastidious, Feckless, Fecund.
Rebarbative, Pervasive;
Petulant, Redolent;
Wheedling, Withering;
Fulsome, Friable, Factotum.
Jun 22, 2018
Jun 22, 2018 at 7:11 PM UTC
Masses flooding
running, gushing
in sclerotic streets
from Heliopolis to downtown Cairo
and from the great pyramid
to the stone lions
of Pre-colonial royalty
over the river Nile
lost in the way for country heart
me, my soul, and couple of my friends
whom I lead to end arteries
of the city hemorrhagic
were shot by snipers
of Victorian
national police
and some years later,
I want to write a poem
let´s say cosmic
or universal
about that trio human
dream, death and deception
"Emilio, Lorenzo, Enrique
Fueron los tres en mis manos"
a cancer larynx revolution,
of bad alcohol and tobacco?
two holy hands of fate,
and one of eternal ************
and a bored Lenin setting behind a screen?
(the algorithm will do the masses
when the masses are ready to run )
but time as God
is a lazy surgeon
forgot a scalpel in my throat
and I am being cured of every thing
even the nasty hollow
of my tired voice.
Oct 5, 2019
Oct 5, 2019 at 9:58 AM UTC
studious skinny scruffy scribe
Scathing, scolding, screaming,
scorning, searing, sniggering,
sociopathic sarin soaked skewed
squirt, sputtering, squawking, sleepily
staggering, stabbing, swaggering
sweltering sadistic, sarcastic,
savage, systemically systematically
stigmatized, supersized saber sharp
schick shaving, shunned, sabotaged,
scarred, scorched, smote, sanguine,
stippled, speckled schizophrenic
sensibility, spurring, seething,
somewhat stultified, sophisticated,
spellbound spirited scabrous
schlemiel schlemazel, stenciled,
sundered sniveling sanguine storied
snakebitten sojourning ********
skeptical shoddy sophomoric
screwball, subtly sagacious,
stunted, sclerotic, scrappily
shuffling short, Shylock
styled sideburns Semite,
sainted Shasta sipping
shriveled sad sack,
sullenly syncopated, synthesized,
slobbering sybaritic, scruffy
sheepish sketchy scalawag,
Socratically scrutinizing, seizure
stricken, stoically sneezing,
shamed Skidrow skeezer, shifty,
sweaty, sham shaman,
supremely spidery, schmaltzy,
sylan seeking subsidized succor,
self shuttered, sequestered,
sidelined, shiftless, shabby,
semantically snazzy, soldiering,
shrieking, skulking, somber,
stooping, Segway scootering,
schmart spendthrift, Swahili
speaking, straitlaced, streamlined,
spongebobbing, sandal shod
sealegs, squarepants sporting
spectacles, sedate, sensate,
sentient, ship shaped,
shanghaied, salubrious,
slithering, snakish, stuttering,
sluggish, smashface scarred,
sober, solitary, sangfroid
skidamarink singing, Shamokin
speaking scrivener, scuzzy,
spunky, starved, submissively
suicidal, sunburned,
salaried shuffling senescent
snoutish soundcloud shutterflying
snapchatting schnorrer.
Sep 1, 2019
Sep 1, 2019 at 4:32 PM UTC