"signposts" poems
Nearly home.
The bed
And the slippers grow ever closer.
A memory of things that give comfort seem palatial,
Euphoric in the mind's eye,
Though I do seem to ponder of its romanticized reality
Memories always seem so warm.
In reality,
The things that hold others close are affirming.
Love,
Shared events
Symbiotic empathy,
But given the current state...
The boring,
The mundane,
The trivial and the tedious that makes the most of a lifetime
Are omitted from the mind.
But why not have a memory full of nothing but the nothingness of life?
The train rides?
Waiting for the toaster to splay its insides
So I can feast on its wonderful toasty goodness?
Talking to the tenant who does not understand
That a bouncing leg
And constant time updates are signposts to **** off?
Empty the files of my brain
And fill it with the moments of nothing.
These moments and these alone
Are your true self.
if you are a good person
Is not determined by
How many charities earn your pay
Or how many items stored,
What you are is chosen by the lonely,
The solitary,
The Tigress.
Only when you accept that person,
You are happy
And free.
But don't hold your breath.
Mar 15, 2013
Mar 15, 2013 at 11:29 AM UTC
On A Diet
The country is on a diet,
drinking coke with no sugar,
eating burgers with no bun,
running on the treadmill;
it's powdered protein for lunch.
It's straight tequila in the evening,
a light head and guilty fries at night.
The country is on a diet,
doing yoga over yoghurt pots,
training their minds with sudoku and solitaire,
rubbing salt and condition into their hair.
It's 6 a.m. gym sessions,
it's squats on the living room floor,
the country is on a diet, my friends,
and so we have no time for truth, or war.
The country is on a diet,
avocado in the breadcrumb,
aspirin in the salt-shaker,
food numb on the tongue
and those slim-shakes always failed to deliver.
Thigh gaps and mind-the-gaps,
all these signposts for a cleaner living,
no dust on the shelf,
no bags 'neath your eyes to hide
the lack of sleep
and your ailing mental health.
The country is on a diet,
drinking tea with no milk,
eating carrot sticks with best-value dip,
running on the treadmill,
we never get too far.
It's straight tequila in the evening,
it's "anything goes" in the dark.
Oct 18, 2015
Oct 18, 2015 at 2:45 PM UTC
rain love fell a dream tonight
you were not there, but felt close
seeing nothing in mist of trouble
walking cloud of forgotten shrouds
no one, dank street, cruel houses
no dry place no cats about
wearing red and yellow slickers
long while cats hidden entire
wandering one wet world
slick pavement sky so asphalt
empty windows gaped calling
out deceptively catch the unwary
windows, concrete, no trees
mother's voice laughs soundlessly
no signposts, no streetlights
oddly forlorn, my hometown
unmarked, without direction
darker than hell's moonless night
this is my town, my place
one learns, find a way
feel the way, march in tyme
crawl slowly out the pier
knowing bay so full tonight
use poet radar
you will not
fail
May 13, 2018
May 13, 2018 at 8:25 PM UTC
there are paths
that we know
with our familiarity
we set off surefooted
toward our known destination
then as dusk settles in
we begin to doubt
to wonder
the markers and signposts
appear to have shifted
perhaps tampered with
and our assurance dwindles
replaced by confusion
unsettling in the fog
questions arise to which we believed
we already had the answers
and what was known becomes lost
along with
our selves
Jul 30, 2013
Jul 30, 2013 at 2:43 AM UTC
submerged in a life with no todays
a submarine dive in dank water
a muck and a murk that can’t be shaken
awakening to a déjà vu
unviewed in an era or two or ten or when or
then but not now and never next
electrical fences building themselves
unyielding as we scale
flailingly failingly toward
a date and time and place indeterminable
subliminal signposts spray-painted by
anarchists railing against awareness
obscuring and obfuscating
translating into languages undocumented
concocted from alien metals and foreign shrieks
weaknesses in the armor show like
rusting bruises on the intangible
cruising through an imaginable maze
while memory like a rabid wolf bays
submerged in a life with no todays
May 30, 2012
May 30, 2012 at 4:53 PM UTC
Third day of this trek descending
rapidly from cloud forest into high jungle habitat,
alive with hummingbirds and orchids,
her Q'ero porters guide the tour group
to Intipunko, "Gate of the Sun".
At 4:30 AM and 10,000 feet altitude
biting cold cracks stone, eats exposed flesh,
stealing breath as she gulps pale sunlight.
Coca leaves wadded in her cheek
forge mind against the acts of atmosphere.
A lifelong pilgrimage to this purpose,
observation of the sunrise over Machu Picchu.
The Q'ero pass around a sack of pemmican.
What meat it is, she doesn't ask.
It smells of canvas, but tastes of apricot.
Her fate entrusted to these guides,
she eats what they offer.
This Inca Trail is marked with their scent;
they follow signposts painted on thin air,
read morning mists like road maps.
They have brought her to this citadel,
Lost City of Peace and Power.
Her life for now at equinox,
shaman-guides have opened her vision
to the hitching post of the sun.
Feb 20, 2012
Feb 20, 2012 at 12:05 AM UTC
Our cries for hope and peace and stability were usually the signposts for an innate and cultivated bitterness. From birth we had planted ourselves in the middle of a struggle for both hope and a good hold on realism. We chose pessimism as the avenue to realism. Once we began to hope and hope only, we couldn’t look at ourselves fully in the mirror. We’d start smiling and thinking that goodness was as easy as smiling at the other person, whoever that was, who was on the other side of the mirror, bus, or classroom. But as we got older, we saw this hope as stupid. It contaminated our bodies. Hope is a wound that festers. Hope not only festers, but it grows even in the worst conditions. This is why we grasped for realism and pessimism. Because hope could so easily grow and wrap around us and make us stupid with its poison. We had been hurt too many times by this stupidity. No, our philosophical doctrine was to **** or be killed, to feel hurt constantly so that we could despise the poison of hope more acutely. We still cry for hope and peace and stability, but we hate ourselves for doing it.
Feb 14, 2012
Feb 14, 2012 at 7:10 PM UTC
Look, blow the horn!
Cry, gather together!
Take refuge!
Do not delay!
Lament and wail!
For the fierce anger
Of the gods have not
Turned back from you,
Obama comes back home,
Be astonished, oh heavens,
And be horribly afraid,
Set up signposts!
For the broken calabash
Can hold no water
But a ****** blood,
Obama comes back home,
Can anyone behold
Your great plagues?
Oh Africa, my Africa,
The fruitful womb under
Fierce eternal siege,
Do not look up to the West!
And thou shall be saved,
Obama comes back home.
© PRINCE NANA ANIN-AGYEI
Email: [email protected]
Apr 7, 2013
Apr 7, 2013 at 1:15 PM UTC
The wanderer had travelled for at least a day
Weary and tired looked for somewhere to stay
After walking for miles, just wandering around
She came across a perculiar little town
No signposts of entry to welcome her in
Simply a man who asked "Are you insane"?
The wanderer thought this was strange question
and instead asked the way to the inn
the man said insane we have no houses or businesses
as we are all insane
the wanderer thought this too was strange
and instead asked where she was
the man replied you are insane
I am insane
everybody in this town is insane
the wanderer she wondered if she too was insane as the man had said
the wanderer was determined not to stay insane
and ran of as fast as she could
the man watched her run and thought it strange
"They all do that, don't they, why does no one want to be in our wonderful town of Sane
Nov 17, 2013
Nov 17, 2013 at 10:09 PM UTC
This is a place where you can see everything coming
from far away;
a place where people come
to leave;
a place where people pack in the middle of the night,
and wake the children
while it's still dark out,
hoping for hope in the cholera
of a sunrise
and the 5 a.m. Greyhound;
this is a place where there is no flea
market, just a strand of people
on the side of the road
a table and a parti-colored distress,
while their kids play in grass lots;
this is a place where factories are built,
clandestine factories; factories with no
signposts, and no barbed-wire fences;
this is a place where there is always something green
in the tilled rows crowding up against the road,
not necessarily growing,
but maybe the signs of an arbitrary decay;
this is a place for old trailers and rust tears;
telephone poles more than a stake in humanity,
communication rather than introspection,
redemption more than salvation,
revitalization more than pleasure,
insight more than hope,
promise more than dreams,
this is a place where a father rushes up to the bus,
pushing the kids,
as he ushers his wife on board,
the little children hopping up each step,
as he says
"Get on, and we outta here."
This is a place where families don't have belongings
where you don't belong to anything.
This is a place you can leave easily,
because it is a place with a name
you can't remember.
Feb 6, 2012
Feb 6, 2012 at 10:34 AM UTC
America
**** your McDonald's drive-thrus
**** your ninety-nine cent ******** hamburger, taco, pizza, salad, milkshake, hotdog, cheese, chicken and ice cream.
**** your ever-penetrating, all-enveloping television stare
-looking into every home and obscenely tucking children into bed with your poisonous, dangerous nonsense
**** your deadly highways and metal death machines
**** your educational system which affords no opportunity and disgraces the intelligent by basing self-worth on imaginary symbols
**** your restriction of information and for appointing one man to represent anybody but himself
**** you for breeding such similar beings
**** your twisted hatred of change & for arresting children while cadavers dry-hump the so-called american dream
**** you for losing your own soul & destroying us daily
**** you for putting faces on beauty and giving such loud voices to hypnotic fantasy
**** your favorite sons and daughters
**** you for the wars which can never be won
**** you for advertising Jack Daniels on the freeway
**** you for a pack of cigarettes - seven dollars and fifty cents
**** you for making my **** hard
**** you for not looking at the stars every night
**** you because I am poisoned by paper
**** you for the starvation of spirit & pills handed out to numb the broken minds you've made & the shattered ones you avoid
**** you for the homeless prophets
**** your speech decree & for rubbing freedom in the faces of the dying
**** your holy stars & stripes
**** your hushed genocide and & torture
**** your phantom masses and empty religions
**** you for providing no wholesome evenings in my rotten town
**** your signposts and support beams
You are but a word
Jan 26, 2011
Jan 26, 2011 at 11:36 AM UTC
Depression isn't a black cloud.
That cliche implies that eventually there'll be a torrential downpour,
And then the cloud will fade away and allow
The sun to shine through, ending that terrible storm.
Depression is a starless night.
An expanse of black where even the stars have abandoned you,
Long since dead, and you try to make sense of the loneliness
In a world where people have turned into zombies.
Thoughtless, repetitive phrases become their instincts.
"Think positively," is the mantra of the dead to the dying.
As though statements turn into directions when the sun goes down,
Like signposts leading us to a brightly-lit land.
But the sky doesn't respond to artificial lights,
And nothing but time can force the sun to return.
Their second statement, under the facade of help,
Is to remind us that day will always follow night,
And no matter how starless and eternal the darkness feels,
The sun will eventually break through the horizon, waving pinks and oranges.
Sadly, not all lifespans are created equal,
And for the many colourful transitions people have seen in the sky,
There are plenty who never see more than black.
Some souls are born at dusk and are dead by pre-dawn,
Never having lived through anything but darkness.
And to the zombies, accepting that fact is the hardest.
Apr 24, 2016
Apr 24, 2016 at 7:13 PM UTC
Rebellion has many paths
to tempt unwitting youth
and none of them are new at all
to tell the sorry truth
Though every would-be anarchist
would wish it left unsaid
John Harrow makes the signposts
with a top-hat on his head
When picketing the fellowship
a friend of mine declared
"You have to know your enemy
"To have him running scared!"
dismantling the sacred text
he'd bought the day before
for every penny that he owned
from Harrow's Bible store
The scarlet headed lyricist
sent shockwaves through the nation
shattering taboos
and knocking lumps from the foundation
But Harrow wasn't shaken
by this fiercely blazing star -
he'd trained the stylist, named the songs
and sold him his guitar
A buzz is running through the streets
as people take them back
and occupy the land
in global pacifist attack
But wait - before you celebrate
the fall of governments
With factories in Vietnam
John Harrow makes the tents
Cos protest has its limits
the establishment agrees
we're free to go these tested routes
like window-bumping bees
You make your point, you go back home
another day will pass
and half-full or half-empty
Mr. Harrow is the glass
Jan 21, 2012
Jan 21, 2012 at 11:21 AM UTC
to choose the forest is to be
lost, and lost in the trees
guided by stars, not to a journey
but turning to some place worth exploring
you loved life with your being
and passed the forest for its trees;
the string of red ribbons happens to be
constellations within the captive sea
but lost you were with your own
itself ripped apart of definition
looking back, its love brings you
back to its original destination
though their signposts lead to more obstacles
and landmarks fetter into miserable,
its fractures into a blissful wonder
in place of stars for faded luster
Apr 21, 2024
Apr 21, 2024 at 11:02 AM UTC
Why do you scurry along life's unlit byways
Your head bowed, fists jammed in your pockets?
To avert calamity? To guarantee success?
Did you miss the turn-off?
In your busyness and inattention
Did you forget to read the signposts?
Lift your eyes from the ground
Slow your pace and stretch the kink from your neck
Do you know where you are?
Unfurl your empty grasp and consult your inner compass
You will find a map etched on the inside of your heart
Do you see the way ahead?
Yes, I thought so.
Jan 19, 2019
Jan 19, 2019 at 11:21 PM UTC
Hidden once their calling
Vast forests old growth trees
Ancestors cloaks there wearing
Spirit voices echoing once free
But as time marching silently
Crossroad signposts passing by
Empty bookcases attract the dust
Corridoors traveled doors unlocked
Gazing skyward stars reviled
Clouds they veil horizons far
Full moon gently caresses the land
Mighty rivers flow to the sea
Gathered silent sandbanks wide
Flowers garland meadows long
Seasons changing as they should
Nature smiling in her chosen way
(GE2014) (C) Reserved
Oct 30, 2014
Oct 30, 2014 at 7:50 AM UTC
If one could make dreams into poems,
I would have such a wealth of material-
Although it might be missing continuity,
And whoever appeared in it might suddenly turn,
With no warning, into someone or something else-
A white rabbit, or an elf, or a Grecian column;
Rooms into swimming pools, and such.
Lucid dreams have signposts to watch for:
Letters and numbers will not behave,
And keep playing musical chairs each time
You look at them, and something about clocks-
Wait am I asleep yet?
More like a lucid dream is poetry dreaming;
We can control everything according
To the strength of our minds attention.
The unconscious is a slippery eel;
But it pops up in poems too sometimes.
In a lucid poem, then, you could still
Pinch yourself? Just to check-
Let me dream about that some more..
I’ll get back to you…
Mar 7, 2010
Mar 7, 2010 at 5:33 PM UTC
I’ve never been a member of the blue-place,
for longer than 30 minutes,
before abusing the deactivate button,
I guess i’m channelling my inner-old-person,
By asking numbers to be pressed instead of keys
My ‘hi’s’ and ‘goodbyes’ became signposts screaming - ‘ADD ME, even though you couldnt care less
Jul 30, 2011
Jul 30, 2011 at 6:23 AM UTC
Treasure your holidays
in Llandudno, Alice.
Skip along the promenade,
play tag on the beach
and when it’s time for bed
wave goodnight to the sea
as it drinks the sunset.
Go boating on the Thames.
Paddle your fingers.
Listen to stories, doze.
Chase a talking white rabbit
sporting white
kid gloves.
Take tea with a dormouse,
play croquet with a Queen:
this is not your dream
but makes you smile.
Don’t wish too hard
for womanhood,
it arrives soon enough.
You’ll be feted, photographed,
posed as holy Agnes
and noble Alethea.
With "dreaming eyes of wonder"
Discover Alice
in your own looking-glass.
And when it’s time to dance
in your bridal gown
cherish the moment.
Two sons will die
fighting for their country.
Remember them
as flames that burn
long after each candle’s
blown.
Mar 30, 2016
Mar 30, 2016 at 1:08 PM UTC
Drawing blinds across our eyes
we are blinded to the beauty
trapped inside.
sideways,all ways and
in days of darkness we cannot see
and blinded as we are
we'll be
forever bound by that impotency of being in, yet still without,being a part of,yet still not seeing
this humble being begs to let the light in,get the blinds pulled,cull the nights that **** him,nights no longer thrill him or will him to deliver goddesses to altar tables.
Beds and fables
stories now, but I am still unable to forget,
more than millstones 'round my neck and iron ***** placed on my ankles designed to slow me down,
Oh how it rankles.
Time was,
life was younger and in that hungering I ate my fill and how the darkness of the night did thrill me so
to and fro.
A see saw ride
a fairground slide to my demise and somewhere now,behind the blinds inside and written on the signposts,hosts to my dependence on
the days long gone
where I had shone my light,
there sits a frightened child with wild abandoned thought, untamed adventures I have sought and fought against society
but now I'll be
the child that waits within for me.
Aug 16, 2013
Aug 16, 2013 at 3:06 AM UTC
Eyes tightly closed as you languish in the place
Immersed in a world of pleasure and perfection
The senses start to awaken, sounds at first
Then your eyes open and reality rushes in
Try as you might your ****** out of the warmth of the dream, the cold air hits you
Taste becomes active, the smells of perfume gone
The stomach churns as you have awakened to all
the stresses and pressures of the day ahead
The dream now gone
And memory of it fades as you can't hold it
You spend the day looking for signposts back there
Yet none avail themselves
Sep 21, 2013
Sep 21, 2013 at 4:23 AM UTC
I have outlived my youth
Tumbled past all the signposts on the way
Completed the mandatory steps
Now only death awaits me
That singular journey to it
No growing grey together
Just a statistic
Sadistic at that
Jun 3, 2013
Jun 3, 2013 at 7:38 PM UTC
A God walked on water, saving humanity
from chagrin.
Humans travel the world on soulless
rubber, treading over corpses of nature.
Aug 23, 2019
Aug 23, 2019 at 5:49 PM UTC
Look, blow the horn!
Cry, gather together!
Take refuge!
Do not delay!
Lament and wail!
For the fierce anger
Of the Abosom have not
Turned back from you,
Be astonished, oh heavens,
And be horribly afraid,
Set up signposts!
For the broken calabash
Can hold no water
But a ****** blood,
Can anyone behold
Your great plagues?
Oh Africa, my Africa,
The fruitful womb under
Fierce eternal siege,
Do not look up to the West!
And thou shall be saved.
© PRINCE NANA ANIN-AGYEI
Email: [email protected]
Apr 8, 2013
Apr 8, 2013 at 5:49 AM UTC
What happens when the certainties
are ripped from our hands,
and we stand,
clutching remnants, mere scraps,
winding them around our fingers?
As if to make permanent
that which was fleeting,
in spite of the prayers we uttered,
the sacrifices made, in hopes of
some gods propitiated--
so we thought.
The universe tilts,
all certainties end,
and we find ourselves in space,
clutching our remnants,
unsure of what agonies even
a single step, a toe forward,
can mean
when there was all meaning and now
none?
They say that
nature abhors a vacuum,
stillness not in our nature.
Restless, angry, grieving **** sapiens,
drifting across some landscape or other--
does it matter?--
when all around are signposts
back to what we lost?
Plod, plod, plod.
One foot in front of the other,
until we reach another place,
other scraps blowing against our feet;
we pick them up;
weave something else
weave ourselves
back into the fabric of
a place, a space,
our own selves
Oct 6, 2016
Oct 6, 2016 at 1:42 AM UTC