"semblances" poems
You've heard me, scornful, harsh, and discontented,
Mocking and loathing War: you've asked me why
Of my old, silly sweetness I've repented--
My ecstasies changed to an ugly cry.
You are aware that once I sought the Grail,
Riding in armour bright, serene and strong;
And it was told that through my infant wail
There rose immortal semblances of song.
But now I've said good-bye to Galahad,
And am no more the knight of dreams and show:
For lust and senseless hatred make me glad,
And my killed friends are with me where I go.
Wound for red wound I burn to smite their wrongs;
And there is absolution in my song
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Swirling a frosty straw
Stuck up like a victory flag in winter ground
With my lips wrapped around it
I stare into this empty canvas
of a vanilla malt
And project my cartoonish headaches
into it to devour it
Oh those Scooby Doo monsters
Shadows that lurk to cut my Tom & Jerry humor
Only to formulate semblances of evil
A Mojo JoJo caricature
I then project into my milkshake
His smirk haunts the smile of Tweety Bird
In my Hanna-Barbara mindfield
Colorful spirals of animated joys
Let me know slurp Elmer Fudd shotgun
That was mugging my creativity
And robbed me of my motive
Let me taste the refreshing winds
That flow through the deserts of Road Runner
Taking laps around my heart
With its true intentions in a love letter
I will never get
Soon slurped and eaten to take away the thoughts
And now I hope I can drink another
To rip out the rest of the pain that in my heart
Mar 29, 2015
Mar 29, 2015 at 4:49 PM UTC
On winter nights beside the nursery fire
We read the fairy tale, while glowing coals
Builded its pictures. There before our eyes
We saw the vaulted hall of traceried stone
Uprear itself, the distant ceiling hung
With pendent stalactites like frozen vines;
And all along the walls at intervals,
Curled upwards into pillars, roses climbed,
And ramped and were confined, and clustered leaves
Divided where there peered a laughing face.
The foliage seemed to rustle in the wind,
A silent murmur, carved in still, gray stone.
High pointed windows pierced the southern wall
Whence proud escutcheons flung prismatic fires
To stain the tessellated marble floor
With pools of red, and quivering green, and blue;
And in the shade beyond the further door,
Its sober squares of black and white were hid
Beneath a restless, shuffling, wide-eyed mob
Of lackeys and retainers come to view
The Christening.
A sudden blare of trumpets, and the throng
About the entrance parted as the guests
Filed singly in with rare and precious gifts.
Our eager fancies noted all they brought,
The glorious, unattainable delights!
But always there was one unbidden guest
Who cursed the child and left it bitterness.
The fire falls asunder, all is changed,
I am no more a child, and what I see
Is not a fairy tale, but life, my life.
The gifts are there, the many pleasant things:
Health, wealth, long-settled friendships, with a name
Which honors all who bear it, and the power
Of making words obedient. This is much;
But overshadowing all is still the curse,
That never shall I be fulfilled by love!
Along the parching highroad of the world
No other soul shall bear mine company.
Always shall I be teased with semblances,
With cruel impostures, which I trust awhile
Then dash to pieces, as a careless boy
Flings a kaleidoscope, which shattering
Strews all the ground about with coloured shards.
So I behold my visions on the ground
No longer radiant, an ignoble heap
Of broken, dusty glass. And so, unlit,
Even by hope or faith, my dragging steps
Force me forever through the passing days.
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These lines experimental but elemental to your mental,
My creativity,
Will never submit to the minimal,
Isotopes subliminal penetrating the simple,
Similes send criminals to infiltrate your biochemicals,
Infected stanzas with stacked syntaxes sickness,
My subconscious semiautomatic and stimulated,
Formulate semblances of Leviathan illuminated,
It's a tragedy my soul's has become a victim of gravity,
Now my temples been raided,
My nirvana's disseminated,
And I've contemplated annihilation of self,
Picturing my end as a senile senior citizen,
With no one by my side,
My mind can't complete a sentiment,
Remembering has become my source of a smile,
But it's making me even more curious to taste the end of this projectile,
Mar 30, 2015
Mar 30, 2015 at 6:15 PM UTC
There are false idols in my room.
There are false idols in my head.
To idols, I have lent my life.
To idols, I have lent my bed.
Statues of the world I seek,
Semblances of what I know,
Truth has burnt its image here,
But ever floated on, its glow.
Holding tight to broken dreams
That crumble-crackle as I clutch,
I could have built them pinions fair
But I have strangled them too much.
Now fresh lucidity is here
To wake me from my sluggish sleep
Oh, glorious sanctity of light
Your mindful meaning I shall keep.
Sep 23, 2012
Sep 23, 2012 at 5:49 PM UTC
L'heure verte
The mountains. The heaps of their bountiful gravels, and earth, and soil, large oversized masses of half-frozen water teetering on the precipice of subzero masculine ******* Francophilic cleavage jetting out of this deserted white pastoral dressing. The inaugural bawl, wanton fixations of putting the imperialist foot on every spot of tree, each and every shrub, until the limbs' cast reaches each dimple that foliage braves, where that blue eagle of patriotism dredges its claws to form every river, rill, estuary, creek, channel, flume, littoral, and waterway where the iron-rich gullies once brimmed in the interamnian basins, rich crimsony waters riffling through fruitful and extravagant aquifers. Beyond that, where an inexplicably feral wind rips vines from their dendritic housings, where barely an eye can see, this place of exsanguination and abysmal phytocide.
At the end of this lamentable torture, only a desert of human interest remains. There is no reason to laugh, or smile, or cheer, or put a leg up, to call on a friend, or to have ice cream. There will be no more ice cream. There is only the loathsome incredulousness and avarice in the semblances and familiarity of those with whom we thought we once knew. Little can ever be known, for there is much to gain in the absence of knowledge, and even greater that can be acquired in the alms of wisdom through patient examination and thorough silence. Here on the buttes and cornices, the thwacking gavels of evil power deities throw down their lust for more and soon become adjoined to these grand discrepancies greed mistakenly loses to a lack of awareness and to self-aggrandizement.
Power is the weapon of inexperienced wielders. Passion is the immortal frequency that is worn by artisans and artists, poets and painters, it is the business of quietness to learnedly evolve to protect our tomorrows from personal needs, but to instead preserve the integral parts of society. The words of languages, artifacts, and cultures, rather than the skeletons of ****** and the deeds of possession. Each who sleeps knows their bedfellows to equally be at peace. For no wealth can exceed that of comfortable pillows, soft quilts, and sheets. We are all the same while we sleep.
Jan 9, 2017
Jan 9, 2017 at 6:52 AM UTC
and in the pride of total self-destruction
we meet!
we call ourselves...lovers!
and then beat all semblances of humanity
from eachother!
well....we are bored....i guess
so we undress eachother
so we caress eachother
we embrace eachother
with a born hatred
that dont die
it might if we tried
but we never try
it is more fun this way
by the sacred sea side
lying in the purest of sand
in the purity of infinite time
yes we
beat eachother senseless
and go on our way
Aug 25, 2010
Aug 25, 2010 at 10:15 AM UTC
mossy semblances
of childhood softening
growth a reverie
nervure crisps of windfall brown
scent autumnal stillness
in the gather-warmth, beading
sweater gems of sweat--
thorns recur in green
as spiraled lusts evanesce;
bright helix rising
Sep 16, 2012
Sep 16, 2012 at 1:26 PM UTC
A softening of the skin, like putting up the wall.
In the late afternoon, he had her against the wall.
This is not the first time someone has lost their mind here—
Ten men or more have faded into thought, found staring at the wall.
We have loved each other longer than this forest used to grow—
What will happen? You will change when we are forced to cross the wall.
I cannot see, but I can smell the hyacinths on the other side.
Cord-like vines snake through the cracks in the wall.
You wear all the semblances of love in your black bathrobe;
Go ahead, put on your best perfume, like some flowery wall.
At the edge of the woods, chimneys lurk behind tall leaves.
Somewhere ahead, wrapped around the bases of trees, waits a wall.
Feb 5, 2010
Feb 5, 2010 at 8:24 PM UTC
I know nothing about
The semblances of affection,
Or the pretension of passion;
I only know one kind of love:
The one I can't part from,
I really cannot, I really don't not.
I suffer ultra extreme separation anxiety.
No psychotic weird stuff.
We don't want to be apart,
But we do, for years at times.
I'm not a simpering wimp,
Or a wimpering simp.
This love lasts a lifetime,
A sane lifetime.
It makes me want to live.
I'll succumb to prayer and hope,
Whatever to never have it end.
(I do mean never)
One love shouldn't have to subscribe
To the same cruel rules as everything
(I do mean everything)
Else.
Something serious is askew
When one love leaves and love
Lives on in the other.
Our love lived once,
But died twice.
Jun 23, 2015
Jun 23, 2015 at 9:18 AM UTC
Become a spiritual light upon a hill, with faith
that does not flicker or become extinguished.
Let your life shine, thereby allowing the God-colors
within your life to draw others to Christ.
There is no hiding from Jehovah; why even try?
The Lord is not a man, that He should lie!
Learn to naturally avoid all forms of evil
and shun potential occurrences of spiritual upheaval.
Light always pierces and scatters the darkness.
Light some candles; cursing the shadows
accomplishes nothing meaningful or useful.
Cast off any works or semblances of darkness.
There is no hiding from Jehovah; why even try?
The Lord is not a man, that He should lie!
For His holy wisdom provides solutions with clarity;
embrace Him and His principles and finally see…
Darkness is more than obscurity; it shows lack;
it demonstrates the absence of Truth and Light.
Hidden things will ultimately be revealed,
before our righteous Lord and His Kingdom.
Author Notes:
Loosely based on:
Luke 8:17; Matt 5:14-16; Rom 13:11-12; Job 12:22, 34:22
Learn more about me and my poetry at:
http://www.squidoo.com/book-isbn-1419650513/
By Joseph J. Breunig 3rd, © 2012, All rights reserved.
Jul 11, 2013
Jul 11, 2013 at 11:45 AM UTC
Orwellian insight provoking apocalyptic visions of prophetic rodents,
Mammalian entropy divining inconsequential apathy,
Veracity overshadowed by facility,
Empathy vanquished by semblances of narcissistic affliction.
Alacrity a surrogate for hollow accomplishment.
Disturbances are null and frivolous in midweek ennui.
Apr 13, 2016
Apr 13, 2016 at 6:31 AM UTC
My heart has carried a great deal;
chains of causation, a thousand lies and countless sufferings.
Day by day, it continues to clench like a fist;
enclosed to all outside trappings, protected to the cold of winter.
At night and day, I hardly feel the outside;
only mere semblances and traces of feeling, touch and bliss.
I yearn for the days when I used to feel —
used to see how it was to breathe in all entirety —
flow with the grace of my body.
I yearn so much.
Yet in all my yearning, my heart closes itself to all it does not want --
pain, suffering, resistance, anger, agony, sadness.
How do I yearn and yet stay open?
Feel without enclosing?
Experience without succumbing?
Jul 18, 2016
Jul 18, 2016 at 10:48 AM UTC
that everyone is so in Love?.....why not!
(and as the dead Twin Towers call us to hate)
but we Love, we do!......we have just forgot
that we "destroy" unless we dare "create"
soft appearances,come!....let us "to mind"
all of our semblances of Destiny
who would call "living" watching others die?
who can sing of Freedom in midst these chains?
looking all around as Wars "come to life"
asking ourselves if we "have a true place"
and why everything seems it must have a price?
and why can't we look eachother "face-to-face"?
Love is not merely but "the stuff of Dreams"
but, (of reality) is the Pure Seed
Jun 28, 2010
Jun 28, 2010 at 3:13 PM UTC
Good god son.
Looking straight at feet never got no one no where in this world
Son, can you imagine?
What it’s like to be passed over for shoe leather?
To have eyes, arms, legs, knees, all ignored?
Ignored for an inanimate object with a pleasant scent but nothing more
Salt water and leather.
Or son.
Can you begin to imagine what it’s like to melt?
What it’s like to fold in a too large chair
Staring straight ahead
At a screen
Flashing colors/lights
Sliding into and out of semblances and meanings
Hands searching and
not finding.
And son, your knees jutting out like jetties among the foam
Crossing right over left over left over right
Cool air lifting up hairs like shocks, but god son.
You must look at them.
And son could you ever imagine?
How deep a chair can feel
When you know the folding’s real
And the water isn’t still for any lack of menace
Oh god!
How the screams will peal.
But son, I hope you’ve guessed that from under the refracting and refracted water
That cuts the light up so beautifully
From under that water you’ll never see bottom.
And son, my love, this is vital
What they say about screams in space is true.
I know you’re a child, kid, but think, really think on this one,
How’s it got to taste?
Fed nothing
But expecting much
Can you conceive of the empty imperial dry rot
Upon which, believe this if anything, the sun never sets
And child, it tastes like carrion.
When the chair starts its own folding in.
Holy Lord in Heaven, my beloved son, when the sea foam green monoliths roll in with the moon.
They **** against the wood legs of the jetty
The feet, and knees too,
Those that are foundationed in the sand and bound up with the shoe leather
That you,
My ingrate son,
Cannot seem to ignore
Oct 8, 2010
Oct 8, 2010 at 2:19 PM UTC
These empty words
Fall from my lips
Like so many imperfect pearls.
Instead of wisdom,
They offer lies
And semblances of the truth.
I wish I may,
I wish I might,
With all the strength I have,
But no matter how
I wish tonight,
Nothing will fill them up.
Because real words-
Words with a purpose and plan-
Come from inside
With assurance
And hope
And oft-spoken love;
These of which I have few.
Empty words-
Ambiguous and unsure-
Have similar origins
But get lost
Somewhere
Along the way
Among the uncertainty
And sadness
And solitude;
These of which I have much.
Oct 8, 2009
Oct 8, 2009 at 8:35 AM UTC
This room of mine; temporarily,
ephemerally inhabited with my presence,
mingled with the shadows of chai, whiskey, and cinnamon,
in the clutter of my discordance.
A dimly lit chandelier embraces the darkness dancing along the windows absent of moonlight.
Rivers of cold spirits and hot tea flow into images of paths taken and not,
cigarette smoke billows into shifting semblances of possible futures..
and my eyes close to hear the whispers of my mind,
(Telling me to build something)
and my eyes close to listen to the desires of my heart,
(Yelling at me to run away far from here)
And my eyes close, unsure if I want them to open again,
(Knowing that if you were here, I would know where to go).
Sep 3, 2015
Sep 3, 2015 at 4:03 AM UTC
I just wanted to turn you over. To sink my teeth into your back and watch the blood flow out, sticky and sweet. To pierce myself on your spine and stain it red. To mould myself into the cracks of your skin, and dream there. To clutch you, and drag my lips across your body. To be with you, being to being; waxing and waning; tender semblances, engulfing.
Oct 10, 2014
Oct 10, 2014 at 5:18 AM UTC
And
Also,
YOU
•••
(How
"Hidden"
Came to mean
"Safe"
Is the story of our lives)
••
We walk thru WARS
Disquised as city streets
And see
"Madness"
Encased in semblances
Of Human Beings
••
We cry out for
SUBSTANCE
••
We get
DEATH
••
••
Well well well!
••
///
///
///
A flower child grows unto love and I go there
(I have no pretensions )
only a
"Perhaps"
Only a hint of
"Possibility"
•••
I come for
YOU
In the center of town
---The Heart----
•••
"Hidden"
In the virtuosity of love making
Fondling
Kissing
Pawing
At the fringes of morbidity
•••
(In the Modern Manner)
•••
Love
•••
///
///
///
We know of truth but we got no money
The Class Wars are here
••
We are scheduled to die
And
Soon
•••
(I have no prensions)
•••
We are
OF THE PAST
We are
ERASED
•••
Yet, still
I would like to express
MY LOVE
As something
GOOD
•••
The flower child!
Her Eyes!
The stray cat song in the night!
••
The lonely lovely
ETERNAL POET BOY
••
We shall survive
••
I don't know how
Only
WHY
Oct 18, 2013
Oct 18, 2013 at 2:27 PM UTC
After wide-set earthen towers mask
the highway runoff, campers come off lofty
horses, signal boorishness to breeze. Sat alone
where rolling orange will tease
the peace from perfect dark - the hint of dread
forgoing litness to expose a martial bode -
the low-slung limbs of stern bring
trained to-wrist like faithful,
catching glimpses of what common good
afforded us naff hazes like the present
sickle answer, whale-bone grief and prescient
danger. Fix a poultice,
love’s soft landing seldom not
for treasures come.
Revive the brazen lungs
in boasts of rushes, random-lit,
forestalling sodden semblances of wit
from Sunday’s arsenal -
right-matched to cleaner absences
than your limited souls could ever pare.
She’s felt - a fabric after our own hearts,
a loan from common waltzes,
taciturn in downshifts of this archen land -
of course - of hand, a slight
anomaly for watchers to observe.
Each roadblock touches nerve.
Sep 3, 2018
Sep 3, 2018 at 1:21 AM UTC
I look at you when it is safe,
and try to pick out
any old semblances of who I
fell in love with.
I see nothing.
Maybe it was all a figment of my imagination,
something I dreamed you to be
and willed it into reality.
That would make much more sense,
considering the fact that
this poem I write could be addressed
to more than one.
I sense a pattern here.
And yet they tell me it is not my fault,
but fool me once,
twice,
three times,
four...
Maybe it really was my fault
and it was never there to begin with.
Maybe it is my fault.
Apr 26, 2014
Apr 26, 2014 at 11:27 PM UTC
The only division between us is the parting of our lips,
the hovering of lingering fingertips,
the hesitation of tongues unsure of where to go next,
the distance of arching backs peeling away from wrinkled sheets--
the radius of lust and elastic potential.
The only senses of time known to us are intervals of forever, divisions of eternity and multiples of infinity,
the hours between blinks shared from sleepy eyes into sleepy eyes,
mornings spent counting freckles,
measuring the weight of vertebrae wound around each other--
stacking flesh on top of flesh, expanding territory.
The wait between see you next and you're here now,
the seconds streaming together years of my life
that suddenly make sense,
semblances of me strung together with fragments of you--
a collage of existence, a quilt of strewn feelings.
The destiny realized by legs intertwined,
walking towards oblivion under glimmering reflections of our stardust
entities, celestial beings beating carnally to the drumming
of my nails on your back and your grip on my neck.
The only place we've needed is the space big enough
for unapologetic desire and met expectations,
the mountain of affection, each smile straining towards the summit of
yes, more, more,
the bubble around our fantasy, protected from the gritty graveling
of bitter lovers lost, surrounding us with crippling cliches,
the escape of home, mine or yours, ours whenever,
the simple joy of leg room unrestricted, our mess sprawled like Picasso
before us, looking at what we've done to each other--
the masterpiece of two souls lighting their lives on fire, burning the world away with friction,
then blowing it out with suffocating, smothering satisfaction.
Oct 20, 2015
Oct 20, 2015 at 10:49 PM UTC
i am—i fear my continued being;
solitude trapped like my reflection;
half self-made into a slave, enabling:
the other half to be coerced freely
like the pig in its dear muck wallowing,
my semblances calling themselves happy.
in person sober always concealing:
depression has been my master since
the first memory worth remembering.
and we laugh of how life is a cinch
amid vital eyes where every smile
is beautiful—unwelcome: struggle, bile.
we, in politics still non-existent
as the spectacle explodes on our backs,
our atomisation as consistent
as series, as the urgency that lacks,
as our enemy's secret attacks that
give us illusions to keep us content
and indignant and passive and apart:
before apocalypse, and our masters.
every superficial wound or scar:
a signifier of something deeper,
a structure probably still gushing blood;
a symptom of unequal heritage.
i am a slave severed from history,
from forgotten strength of my fore-mothers,
from ignored conquests of my fore-fathers,
from my foreign birth-place and mystery,
grown comfortable in my tailored chains
and ideologies without ideas.
i groan through narcotic smoke for vistas
clear as the love i know is in your heart,
for shared stories of logical revolts,
for redemption of past revolutions,
for real collapse of tyrannical abstractions,
for my masters to fear my continued being—
for passionate thought, to be subject with you,
our loyalty fused, our direction true.
May 31, 2015
May 31, 2015 at 8:40 AM UTC
*coming to consciousness is a must
yet its painful to retain all these words
sordid shards of nothingness
i am learned for i know that i've learned nothing
except what i’ve earned by remembering
plenty of ways to fake a riot
keep quiet or dry it in the sun
sheltered on the run
blasts from guns to gynecologists
solecisms and syllogisms
miasmas of the mind
time unwinds in butterfly defenses
semblances of the freedom we traded
resemblances to our mothers
and our grandfathers in helmets
filled with money left to rot in the sun’s basement
the used ones who wait for their retirement plans
to conclude their lives with guttural fluctuations
effluent and stagnant waters, frenetic daughters
portraits of amazement
the lazy masters sadly agree to replace them
sweaty fixtures grasped our hands and minds
sign language kept silent
stretched out in striated alignments
cut me some slack
for there can be no turning back from this place
she gave everything away save the furniture
which wasn’t hers anyway
once it takes a hold of you
it doesn’t like to let go of you
grab the fire by its nose
and release the hose
if you wish to control the soul
water pouring from our bones
i bow down to your ground
we are going home
arguing no more
our moist hearts becoming clearer, nearer
i am breathing louder in my own theater
and in my own studio i am making music
that makes the flowers bloom*
Nov 3, 2017
Nov 3, 2017 at 8:42 PM UTC