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Unloving thou is but Sisyphean,
Like scoria craves mixing with sea salt.
Thus akin to night and day we're but twins
Whose burning candle is never to halt.
But ever brighter than snow veiled mountains,
And perpetual as the golden Amaranth,
Yet as pure as heavens silver fountains,
Thrice fairer than the moon of the May month
Or the sea's mighty glow against the moonlight.
Always in full spate if she’d be a stream,
To draw us in a realm of sheer delight
Where daylight to fade shall be but a dream.

So true love is a gem precious than gold
Both young and old in their palm crave to hold.


©Kikodinho Alexandros
Jumeira, Dubai
       22 October 2016
#Second attempt at a Shakespearean sonnet
#Decasyllabic

Dedicated to all Lovebirds in the Hellopoetry realm :-) Been missing home!
Israel Baker Apr 2016
I'm sorry, I'm so sorry.
But I'm serious, so very serious.
I wish you could hear me.
I am happy though, so lavishly gay and bright.
I wish I knew what it was like so I wouldn't....
I want people to trust me. I don't want people to fear me, to see the disgust that I am, I want them to see innocence, and girlishness and and see me as relatable. I WILL NOT JUDGE YOU! I WILL NOT! I love hearing about you and your struggles, about your sorrows, and I can understand it, because I can feel just like you can feel and I love to feel what you are feeling for that is my only feeling.

I try to justify everything. If I do something I can't explain, or say something I might not like, or think that a person might not like it, I try to justify it with some kind of reasoning. Such as, "It's poetic" or "sounds pretty" or "be worth is someday."

I just want to be understood, and I want to understand you. Can you not hear the gentle bass of the Milky Way galaxy, slowly turning, and us, a virus, an atom, a quantum, a tinny tinny thing doing silly boring things like brushing our teeth, walking, reading, writing, doing things we don't understand, doing things we can't understand, being in love, being out of it, eating candy, having ***, giving ***, doing homework, cleaning, worrying, eating more candy, drawing pictures, thinking, holding, creating, destroying, recycling, creating destroying, recycling, creating, destroying, recycling, can we do nothing else?

Turn, world, turn, sun, around in a slow beautiful bbbbbmmmmmm....
you are so beautiful!
Hands that know what to do,
feet that say things and tell you that life is precious and nothing is funny. Beautiful!
Life is so serious. We do things that are VAIN. To be vain means to do things which have no good purpose. We wash things so they are clean only to make them ***** again.

A man will, in winter, put his heavy coat on, zip up the zipper, pick up a hat and smooth it on to his head across his hair, then, take his left glove and put it on his left hand and take his right glove and put it on his right hand, put his left sock on his left foot, then put his right sock on his right foot, next he puts his left boot on his left foot and puts his right boot on his right foot, he reaches over and tightens the laces of the left boot then makes an "X" with the laces and puts the end of the right most facing lace under the left most and sticks it through the hole and pulls them tight to create a knot, next he creates a long ear-shape like that of a bunny using the right lace and wraps the left lace around counter-clockwise, next he sticks the sideways left lace through the passage that was created by looping the lace around, creating another ear, then he tightens both ears, he makes another "X" with the ears and loops the right most ear under and trough the hole, then tightens them by a process called "double knotting." He then takes this process of double knotting and applies it to his right boot. He stands up and goes to the front door, walks down the driveway and goes into his heated van so he can drive to his temperature controlled desk job. We are creatures of habit. We do the same thing over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and ov.......&...^&^&^&^&^&^&^&^&^&^&...

I'm tryin' to teach a chair how to walk,
they have legs, but they just can't use 'em.
MicMag Aug 2019
My heart is a stone
Rolling slowly uphill
At an easy, steady pace
They say life's not a race
They say you're never alone

But it's all just useless, I know
Gravity grips hard with each step
This treacherous ***** grows steep
And helpless, I sow what I've reaped
As I plummet back to the valley below

Pulled two directions by my heart beguiled
I climb, fall, climb, fall, climb and fall again
Still longing for you, for those days long gone
And still trying like hell to get past this, move on
My feeble heart forever stuck in this Sisyphean trial
we fall down again
erstwhile love pulls us back
life leads us in circles
not a straight track
our hearts remain anchored
to endless flashbacks
til death turns us all
to eternal amnesiacs

(Another old found poem reworked and reshaped, probably all for naught)
SG Holter May 2017
I wake up on my sofa after
Work, knowing she needs

Workman's hands to hold
Hammer and nail at

Points she's chosen for her
Pictures.

A stronger back for heavier
Things, but I'm spent. Work is

War, now. Power drill, pistol.
I bark orders at privates,

Not warnings at young, spiteful
Carpenters

Fresh from school
With too

Much product in their
Hair to want to wear their

Mandatory
Hard hats.

My heart skips beats when I
Lift. I count falling stars

At daytime climbing stairs.
Lie to concerned foremen.

A brain-soul-body Bermuda
Triangle of energies lost.

I have love to last her lifetimes,
Shoulders to rest her weary,

Closed eyes against or dig her
Fingernails into, gasping.

But for now, the ceiling I gaze
Up at stares back down judgingly,

Not recognizing this frowning
Ghost of the mud-covered grin I

Carried a few, short years ago.
The futile clawing and sliding of

A minuscule man climbing a
Colossal statue of himself.
Bryce Aug 2018
C'mon out to the rattled caves
the deep-sea malaise
rested in the grey metamorphs
of an ancient coastal chain

Where Sisyphean slips of tectonic rifts
pull the molding clay
like play-dough
and old rock that turns anew
churned into
great catacomb stele
Babylonian towers far away
from the great
Mesopotamic
interstate

Surrounded by the immumerous trees
the military sharpness of their pine
quills writing their mark in the dirt
for a hundred turns or so
only to be rearranged
into the great intercontinental soil
Truly
multisolipsistual

And on the aggregate
held open the mists
of the vast expanse of ocean
beyond L.A
and stole the fruits of the tiny parceled condominium rainwater
from distance far away
angry men shouting--
"Give us back our life blood, ******* YOU!"

Filling the tanks of their fleshomobiles
running around and sweating it out
trading it for cloth and wiping their brow on
brown shirts
perturbed and disobeyed

But that great man with the chin muscatche
brought the rough riders out of their dome
into the frontier, riding trains
Off they go!
Seeking paradise in the sands
and the trees
and the coastal breeze
dreaming
of a world owned and seen
by the world
by man
and by all these things

It would be grand

But that rock has been seen before
in Luarentian islands long ago
or perhaps a great FUJI-SAN of the west coast
worshiped by critters and dinosaurs
You are late to the game, sweet dreamers, you!
These monuments give to honor due
not you,
no sir did you build these things?
did you mold these things
with the patience of a father
with the consequentiality
of the womb
and a motherly affection
for all things true?
the gift is for you,
remember your father's gifts
sweet princes of the earth
because they will outlive you.





And I walk along the stream
stepping upon these little bits of Yosemite
Pulverized mountain rocks
Renal Stones of the diseased
to which the water flushed out deeply
and cured the grey things from all that left them
displeased
hoping for more than just selfies
and sticking it to god's face
laughing at half-dome
climbing it and getting the better of ourselves
Believing we have achieved bliss

When in reality,
there is nothing to this which we can reach.
Lazhar Bouazzi Mar 2018
The good thing about a tortoise
is that he carries time on his
shoulder
and does not have to run
to cry.

He is like a river
flowing backward,
climbing the rocks on which her mother
had bitten
to un-feel the pain of origination
(so as to cast a glimpse on her nest
in the mountain).

He is a figure, a language, a sun
whose force is sustained by his own spirit -
unrelated: unlike a star,
a night, a candlelight.

He is his own version
of the light and the rite
and the fight sisyphean.

© LazharBouazzi
Lazhar Bouazzi Jul 2016
The good thing about a tortoise
Is that he carries time on his
shoulder
and does not have to run
to cry.
He is like a river
flowing backward,
climbing  the rocks on which her mother
had bitten
to un-feel the pain of origination,
so as to cast a glimpse on her nest
in the mountain.
He is a figure, a language, a sun
whose force is sustained by his own spirit -
unrelated, unlike a star,
a candle, a night.
He is his
own version
of the light,
and the rite,
and the fight
Sisyphean.

© Lazhar Bouazzi, Carthage, TUN, July 18, 2016. Revision made on July 25, 2016.
Maple Mathers Feb 2016
~

loving
you
was
a
**Sisyphean
task.
(All poems original Copyright of Eva Denali Will © 2015, 2016)
M Aug 2020
it's catastrophic
when it blooms.
and when it rains,
i'm in a sisyphean loop.

no one seemed to believe,
even the impossibilities.
i refuse and i denied,
creating a new gravel path.
i think i'm falling in a chaotic love
Great cities rise and have their fall; the brass
That held their glories moulders in its turn.
Hard granite rots like an uprooted ****,
And ever on the palimpsest of earth
Impatient Time rubs out the word he writ.
But one thing makes the years its pedestal,
Springs from the ashes of its pyre, and claps
A skyward wing above its epitaph—
The will of man willing immortal things.

The ages are but baubles hung upon
The thread of some strong lives—and one slight wrist
May lift a century above the dust;
For Time,
The Sisyphean load of little lives,
Becomes the globe and sceptre of the great.
But who are these that, linking hand in hand,
Transmit across the twilight waste of years
The flying brightness of a kindled hour?
Not always, nor alone, the lives that search
How they may ****** a glory out of heaven
Or add a height to Babel; oftener they
That in the still fulfilment of each day’s
Pacific order hold great deeds in leash,
That in the sober sheath of tranquil tasks
Hide the attempered blade of high emprise,
And leap like lightning to the clap of fate.

So greatly gave he, nurturing ‘gainst the call
Of one rare moment all the daily store
Of joy distilled from the acquitted task,
And that deliberate rashness which bespeaks
The pondered action passed into the blood;
So swift to harden purpose into deed
That, with the wind of ruin in his hair,
Soul sprang full-statured from the broken flesh,
And at one stroke he lived the whole of life,
Poured all in one libation to the truth,
A brimming flood whose drops shall overflow
On deserts of the soul long beaten down
By the brute hoof of habit, till they spring
In manifold upheaval to the sun.

Call here no high artificer to raise
His wordy monument—such lives as these
Make death a dull misnomer and its pomp
An empty vesture. Let resounding lives
Re-echo splendidly through high-piled vaults
And make the grave their spokesman—such as he
Are as the hidden streams that, underground,
Sweeten the pastures for the grazing kine,
Or as spring airs that bring through prison bars
The scent of freedom; or a light that burns
Immutably across the shaken seas,
Forevermore by nameless hands renewed,
Where else were darkness and a glutted shore.
kayla eggfoot Dec 2013
I awaken to find my mind either a complete blur, a fuzzy, foggy place, or a place of a maelstrom of thoughts, ideas, and emotions, some from the previous day, some from even before that. Electrifying anxiety, paralyzing fear, crippling doubt and depression are the orders of the day, when I fully awaken. I eat, then take my pills, to get my thoughts in some semblence of order. I go through the day, feeling trapped by problems my medications cannot control. I find myself either blaming everything and everyone else for said problems, or ripping out my own entrails as I blame myself - one extreme or another. I have visions, dreams, hopes of success, but then my depression, or whatever it is, kicks in, and wipes out those dreams, reducing me to a mess of shattered hopes and dreams. This is why I spend most of my days on tumblr, where people see me for who I am, but even there, people judge and discriminate against me, for whatever I have. On tumblr, I have friends that I roleplay out various characters with, different personalities, sometimes variations of myself take shape. Tumblr is the only place where I can seemingly have a reality in which I have control. The Internet is my portal to reality, my line of defense against what could be described as agoraphobia. But I still desire the company of people my own age, physically, rather than electronically, but I do not have the same interests of most of them, and am scared to death of doing so. The very thought of meeting a large group, or even an individual, sends me into a panic attack-like state, then I fall quickly into a state of depression because of that. I hate myself for that anxiety, the awkwardness I have. Loathe is the correct word. This is why I hide behind a computer screen. It may not be perfect, but I find it easier to interact online. I do not know how to translate how my characters act to my own actions, as some have suggested for me to do. I have been told that I need to choose to get out of this hole in which I am trapped. It is a struggle every day to even get enough energy to care, much less try to get out of the hole. The only way out is by climbing a steep cliff, covered by snow and ice, cut by the howling, bone-chilling wind, with only two hooks, in my hands, to claw my way out, fighting the falling snow and ice, occasional rock and hail, sleet too. There seems to be no place to make a camp, where I may rest, only the long, arduous, grueling climb, my vertical trek, my seemingly Sisyphean task that awaits me. A choice that may seemingly **** me. People have suggested that I turn to the supernatural, but that is a fool’s bet, a folly of hope, a wish of the people who build their castles in the sky.
A poem that I wrote in the hospital over a year ago
Annie Jan 2010
Truckled to the heavens
Atlas could do little
But brood
On the sisyphean futility
Of his task.
An atom
Hidden in the tail
Of a fractal
Cannot see the form
It helps shape
So in time
It becomes a thing
Turned on itself.
And with each turn
Atlas bent
Until he was as
Crooked as a sixpense
As stooped as a dowager
As prostrate as a slave.
And when he could bend
No more
He was ground
Into rock flour
The stars on his shoulders
Falling into the sea
Five fingered starfish
That scuttled across
The ocean floor
Until they found
Their land legs.

A thing turned on itself
Cannot see
The pixelated shape
It forms
Atom by atom
Cannot see
Its purpose
And even if that purpose
Seems otiose.
It counts.
Todd Paropacic Jan 2021
If you score it like baseball,
It’s nothing,
A perfect game
For both parties,
A marathon
With no ribbon at the end.
I’ll push that rock up the mountain,
But it always rolls away.
Playing tennis with a wall
Often ends in self defeat,
But I get lost in the heat
Of competition.
I have a premonition
That I’ll break it down,
Chip by chip,
Brick by brick,
But rubber’s got nothing
On masonry.
A poem about the grind of trying out life, testing yourself against yourself, and the futility of measuring up to anyone else.
Nat Lipstadt Nov 2014
early risen,
life's au courant
contextual issues
are all bad bus driver dream driven,
visualizations of sonograms
of erred memories,
road forks, unwisely chosen,
incorrect in retrospect,
look back notion thoughts,
and fears of the
good works in process
never finished,
these are all the best ****
too early,
highly reliable,
internal/infernal
alarm clock

waken only to plod the dark,
upon the cool wood floors,
without any slippered coverings,
closet buried unavailable
(no treasure noisy hunting
in the dark permitted,
while the party of the second part,
yet sleeps)

the floored bottom chills
do not succeed
in comforting a mind
instant awakened-enflamed
by a long lived life recalled recapped,
of inaction and interactions,
thrones lost by
choices guided by fear and not
risk,
that in summation,
too many debtors-in-possession
of rose colored
minus signs

so the companions constants,
these well-worry-worn floors,
now refuse me,
no more to repeat,
what all too oft
they have before,
wisely spoken:

too early, man,
too late, fool,
the answers
required/sought
upon our ashen wooden countenance
cannot be elicited nor derived,
go back to bed
there, perhaps,
find what you need,
somewhere,
between the day's rising orb,
the Lady Luck of
a woman's heat,
the grand canyoned
Pachelbel cannon,
the Bach adagios
soulful sweet,
the answers could begin,
the endings,
perhaps can find
you and show
the restart signs positively
new directional


yet obedient to the old nether-wisdom
of these inanimate intimates,
(that are classified now as
sourpusses &  ex-best friends),
off to
back-to-bed,
self-dispatched,
arriving amidst the departing darkness,
being infiltrated by new day
dawning light suffusions,
with coffee armed,
pillows plumped,
all done with
church mouse quietude,
lest I wake the
party of the second part

into bed returns
the prodigal son,

uh-oh,

the poem ***** stiffens

cannot be refused,
it offers me
this challenged relief and a challenged
pleasure:

Subtext

commandeering and commanding:

dispense what you cannot say,
but wish for all to understand,
teach them how to write the literary
subtext
of one man's life


his fantasies *******,
thoughts of world-over trips
upon which his poems trip,
thinking thoughts
of meeting you
first time and fittingly,
reunions of longtime knowing
mutual souls, the lovely perfection
of the guarantee of
better days past
and better yet,
of better days
yet to come,
of first embraces,
longingly overdue,
but happily
familial familiar
even upon initial conception

motioned potions notions
of what he would do
when that lottery ticket
comes true,
seeing hazy
visions of loined, coined children babes naves
as someday adults,
from a future past of
a collection of visions
happily well imagined

now in bed,
dancing (quietly) to a Strauss waltz,
all his sisyphean tasks unmasked,
and peace in his heart,
returning to supreme reign,
re-gifting it all forward,
in a subtext contextually
poem within herein

the coffee now cooled,
the mental dispensary instead,
has issued
a scrip
prescribed and commissioned

write yourself,
one poem,
overly long and rambling,
as always,
(knowingly he smiles at his own critique)
this poem
to be issued
from his ******-brain,
amniotic-bathed,
anointed and by appointment
to her majesties,
The Queen of Hearts
and the
Red Queen,
entitled:


Subtext

the scrip reads:
"take once a day,
life clarity should return
sooner than later,
which is to say
medically and medicinally
eventually,
which is far, far better
than never"

the meds imbibed
the coffee reheated,
and while
waiting for its effects,
the subtext of a man
who drinks drams
of lives of poetry
for all
sees his future dreams
and happily awaits
their completed execution
Seán Mac Falls Jan 2015
Black bird flies wounded,
Crows ceremoniously  .  .  .
  .  .  .  Lone soul, endless sky.
smallhands Jul 2014
Would you prefer me if I tilt my head
at a fallacious angle
Would you rather I abandon my
peculiar nothings
(Would becoming a statue
unblinking and
without impetus
satisfy you)

-cj
Fahredin Shehu Apr 2012
Assembled forces
Around the heaven of the Moon
The heaven of Gabriel the Holy
Influences the beings
Fragile to death
Who can pull out the geese bird?
From the clay ***
Without breaking it
Not the life’s ignorant disciple
Nor the Sisyphean planetary orphan
Neither the life’s exhausted ascetic
A key-maker a treasury holder
Yet I do want to embrace the whole
Visible and invisible entities
You may celebrate your prodigy
And mock my naivety
And immeasurable love
I’ll do this until I dry
As a dew
Until I become a piece
Missing from terracotta
Kept for ages in the sand of Baghdad
Where Shamash made crisps from
The skin of the humans
So they may think they’re
Reptiles
Red eye killers
Felix Char Jul 2014
For years,
God was as reasonable
As any other immaterial thing.
He was in the mornings and evenings.
He was in the washing and in the sleeping.
He was in the walls and the dirt;
He was in the blood.
But as with all things perfect, infallible,
Symmetrical,
Time will only wear
Away your sureness of them.

This unfaith creeps on us
As a dream does.
We are assured against illusion
if we will not investigate.
(You could run through it
For years, not letting it end.)
But when we see the trees' reflection
Glinting off the frozen lakes in winter,
Or else read the words of a Frost
or a Keats,
We find, He is no longer in any of these things.
Whether we are then numb or stricken,
His absence will be hollow, unavailing:
"In the depths all becomes law."

If it is possible,
We should not be terrified;
Though we are always terrified,
And if not,
Then blissfully mistaken.
We must slake our lust,
At least first,
In the physical and close at hand.
We must burn with the mornings and evenings.
And be borne in the unravelling of
Washing and sleeping.
These dutiful rituals,
ephemeral and eternal,
Are in each who've walked before us,
Who've learned and hurt,
Who've breathed our air.
It is here we find
The solace of our ancestry.

And when these, too, become tiresome,
And we are stretched thin
By the weight of the metaphor of all things,
Wholly in those most simple,
Be sure that even this
Deepest gravity
Invents itself from within us.
So trusting are we that
The breaking of our chest
Is reasoned through;
That we are meant for this pain
Or that joy.
Is the parting of the grass made; is it designed?
Even from the tides,
We demand divinity!
We must strive to divorce
From these assumed perceptions:
Become the science, sterility.
Be as simplest machines,
dividing cells:
No use of colours,
No shades,
No God.

Then,
When we are yearning from
The meanest seed,
Quickening and suffering,
For now we can not be reduced
But unto death,
The greatest truths lie herein.
Now, we can suppose longing
Onto handshakes,
And let each small weight upon us be Sisyphean.
We may let, too, jubilation be in
The sun's rising, and in all
Things of measured confidence.
In each fleeting moment,
We can appreciate that we will live
For an infinity of moments,
And also not even one.

Suddenly,
He is in these things.

We can be sure He is no corporeal being,
Willingly given up by our tabula rasa.
And we will know that His visage is made of our fathers
And we are in Him: nowhere.
But He is in our questing
And too, in our need for Him.
And He bends backward,
Head over heels,
twisting like our own anatomy,
To meet us, to free us.
We have felt Him each second we have yearned,
And each second we are bloodied by this yearning,
By these moments.
He is in our most procellous highs,
and in the damp wake of loneliness.
When we hurt most,
We know, with instinct, to let pain in,
To lay bare and be torn,
And torn again.
Why should this be?
Because He is there, too!
He is in tears but
So is he in love!
And love is in the ***,
Love is in the burdens.
Love is in our greatest triumph
And hiding still in our writhing panic.
In our joys and fears,
Our surrenders and our suffering.

We are made of the stuff.

And if one of us should fall in His name,
They will then be immortal.
Not in the sky, nor beneath the Earth,
But in the hearts of humans;
In the mortal, frail, beating hearts
Of those who still bleed for them,
Still ache for them,
Every morning,
Every evening.

He is love.

And, as ever,
So are we.
Mateuš Conrad Mar 2020
belgravia on itv... and the world is filled with...
odes to charlemagne -
or rather: the emperor has risen...
in the form of a bonaparte...

       i lost my virginity to a french girl
from Grenoble - a one ms. psychologist
Isa-bel-l'ah...

              and i had three pictures hanging
in my student accomodation overlooking
the salisbury crags...
           one i put my amp on the windowsill
and did a rendition of...
                            something from the movie
crow / last days...

there was plato... there was the marquis de sade...
and then there was napoleon...

i was immediately reminded...
but napoleon did x y and z...
       i could swear the zeitgeist for us begins
with the end of the 2nd world war?
well: i lost my virginity... didn't i?
          
             and come to think of...
there is the trafalgar sq. in London...
      and there's the monument when it came
to Austerlitz victory...

           napoleon and that old bias...
for all those that encompassed in the duchy of warsaw...
or from under the partition
shared between the prussian the russian
and the austro-hungarian empire...

a short-lived affair... but...
        she minded napoleon but not marquis de sade...
come forward 200 years...
what are the monuments of the 2nd world war?
what are the... ******* monuments of the 1st world
war?
the cemeteries at Ypres for western europe...
the death camp memorials
   and the little ghetto lockets of memory and:
gypsy good fortune in the east?

a picture of the mushroom eating
and clinging onto the flesh of men and animals
in a symbiosis and mind-control dynamics
of the fungus keeping the host alive...
unlike a virus?

   where are the monuments for all that was
achieved in the two wars?
where's the trafalgar sq. where's the arc de triomphe?
between 1803–1815
   or between 1939–1945... well...
              12 years is not 6...
                  i guess you can't achieve much of any
sort of "meaningful" war if...
there's not a decade included in the mix...

oh i'm sure it's going to be hard to imagine
the führer as the kaiser...
     because: dressed in khaki like a whittle
hanzel schoolboy when all the big boys
started to wear schwarzgekleidet of zee SS...

from a perspective of history...
                             i am unsure as to why...
this ms. psychology major would grieve
the affairs of napoleon...
                             perhaps if he was a bit taller...
she might have a fancy for him...
then again... as kaiser... as emperor...
come to think of it...
the notation: Frank would included
the swiss... the belgians the dutch...
luxembourg...
       but not those rascals...
in the rhineland-palatinate...
            or north-rhine-westphalia...

schubert symphony no. 4 in c-minor, D. 417...
i always thought that schubert...
was the pianist competing with violins
to tackle shumann... never mind...

     then again: illuminating life of those
that still have a toe in the remaining posit
of life... yet 3/4 of what life is willing to offer
has both feet in the coffin and a last nail
to beg for the closure and funeral procession
of that chapter of human details
to be: ascribed to the realms of solely learning...
about it... there's no great-grandma with
her wheelbarrow of memories to grant
you "perspectives"...

he was a führer... but not the kaiser...
come to think of it...
the rise and fall... from the confines of being
rejected from an art-college...

today one of my cats (i only have two)
accidently burned the hairs of her tail
when she signatured it (the tail) across
a burning candle... and... you wouldn't believe it...
the smell of burnt cat furr...
i can imagine escaping my episodes of
solipsism when venturing into sniffing
someone else's farts to be more appealing...
than the smell of... the burning of cat furr...

i did remark... i don't think it was all that
pleasant working as butchers in those concentration
camps... if the burning of cat furr smells so bad...
if the burning of skin, nails...
bones... i'm starting to think it was a hell-hole
for both the camp "workers" and....
those about to be forced on the altar
of the belly of Moloch...

                          and when the hebrew god
conquered the gods of the philistines
and the caanites...
      did he "fall asleep"...
    thinking they wouldn't somehow use
people that wouldn't otherwise pay direct
homage to them... for their devilish enterprises?

where are the monumets from world
war I or world II that aren't cemeteries
or memorials or the death camps themselves?
there's not point merely seeing...
imagine going to Handel's messiah
at the royal albert hall...
           and only seeing an orchestra play...
most associated with seeing are:
the quality of either inanimate objects
or moving objects...
but there isn't a mention of the sounds locked
in brimfuls in these things...
but most importantly... i can't smell that
death circus...
well... no matter... i don't need to visit those
death camps and pay some spezial ode to
memory: it will just take a cat accidently burn
its tail furr brushing it over a candle...
that's enough... thank you...

           i don't need to see those camps...
not out of denial outright...
but... without the scent of burning hair
and flesh... the infamous cracow's winter
snow of cremations...

but the smell is missing...
i don't need to visit these places
for a picture of unused hammers and nails...
in their pristine gothica of still slippery when
kept in a mummified state of being
oiled for use... i don't like to rumminate in
echoes of: what this oven was used for...
the scent has subsided like a tide
and all that's exposed is never the living
proof... i have archeological proof...
that it is so sudden... doesn't matter...
i don't have the "perfume" to riddle me
with an immediacy of a recoil!
for that? i just need a cat to accidently burn
a few hairs of its tail over a candle...

it's one of those needle injections straight
into the nostrils...
seeing the oven will do very little to give
an expanse of my: sisyphean weight to tow
along...

faster than the speed of light:
or the digestion imprint of a photograph...
faster than the speed of sound...

    ssssssssssssssssssssscent...
          i don't need to see what other people decided
to want and see...
the burning of flesh and most notably unwashed
hair and furr...
       that's plenty...
i don't want to discourage myself from
cooking anything else in the future...

sometimes my room becomes a hotel for
either moths or flies...
i currently have an early waker...
she must be nearing being a year old...
you can tell... her flight is more methodological...
it isn't that usual flurry and all
that excited presence of itself: unique
in a bounty of life...
i will not bother this fly...
        if she was a mosquito... perhaps i would...

i am longing to see the spawn "maggots"
of moths eat and curl up in cotton...

where are the monuments to call it:
the end of world war I and world war II...
it's as if... it has to be shamed...
this whole genesis story from half-way
between the past century...
and into this... swamp-en-masse...

          last time i checked... that "something"
between the serbians and the croats
and the muslims of yugoslavia...
                    the 13th waffen mountain division...
or head east... the ukranian infamous
insurgent army...
        only recently i heard some major
****-wits decided to drill holes into the tires
of ambulances... near bristol...

as a perfectly just cold blooded heart...
is the crucifixion the epitome of a demigod's death?
what about... being spiked?
being forced onto a pike via
the architecture of where the intestines
meet the coccyx... the *******...
the ****... and the pelvis?
with hands tied?
what about hanging off a meat-hook...
with the meat-hook making the incission under the jaw?
hands and legs tied?

the crucifixion is just an out-dated symbol
of sacrifice... no wonder all that came after
had to become so... more... adventurous...
wouldn't we be foolish when it came to slacking
on the chapter of torture?

but at least one aspect of life can be still felt
to be pure, "aryan"... un-disturbed...
pain... is so un-interrupted by competing
subjectivities... that... well...
it's almost akin to cross paths with god...
pain is pure in that it is true...
forever: there's that other great democratic force
at work than mere death...
by the time we're through death is but
a bureucratic notation of a statistic:
a near miss of anonymity...

                there's that great leveller of pain...
from a simple toothache...
it's as if an ****** that comes on the wings of
being... a sedative of consciousness...
pain as that...
   pain is an inoculate agent against reality...
against consciousness...
all for that ****** of dreams...
lucky for me... i don't dream so well...
i forrest gump the whole affair...

some would think pain as a defining moment
an event horizon for their numb-skulled
crossword puzzle zeniths of "life"...
     i see pain more in favour of...
      i want to be cured from having to curate
so many mediocrities of this life:
as served and as service for others...
so dilligent at being busy-bodies in the shelter
of hierarchies and the shadows of:
the impossible perfection of mountain
replicas of Giza...

pain is illumination...
    beginning with a toothache...
once this temp. filling is ready to be scrubbed out...
and a root canal is to be fitted...
i think i'll begin with an oyster-esque "typo"
readying myself for an ******
when asked 'would you like an anaesthetic'
and the reply will be... 'no'...
                 clearly i don't have as many
avenues as are readily available
when it comes to a holy trinity of mouth,
******... *******...

      self-serving pleasures of the extensions
of pinching... by either crap pincers
or the cold of virus simulation of crowns
when having an ice-cube placed into my palm...

in that i am wholly sympathetic to pain...
well... what good did reading walter benjamin's
illumination(s) essay do to me...
beside what i already know about...
the difference between collecting books...
and collecting books and reading them...

              my personal library would shrink somewhat...
given that i own pretty much an assortment
of what has already been read:
i'm not my grandmother:
unlike watching a film... i can't re-read a book...
give me 2 years reading one...
but i will not re-read it!

this extension of a mollusk's zenith via
a ******... of all that's the sensation that rhymes
heart with brain...

         tow the bones...
       tow the bones...
                   come to the horizon where
the soft tissue blitzkriegs past the bone to the marrow...

arable lure of the prosthetic ghost, limb...
and limp...
       soft zenith pleasure...
while at the same time...
entertaining "things" that only secular
sensibility measures can instill...
do not cross paths with mythology:
goodness! you might forget being
snarky and insensible come tomorrow's year
monday when journalism catches
up from... "somehow" being detached
from her de facto and carpe diem
mantras of modus operandi!

i might call it: the moth's seal of the lips...
enough to lick a postage stamp...
hardly enough to actually kiss...

sold: christianity: metaphorical cannibalism...
i would rather taste the real thing...
if ever such an opportunity should
give sway...

       a führer is not a kaiser... back in the day...
there was respect in post-napoleonic war London...
in belgravia...
how did the h'american white house originate...
the Belveder of Warsaw...
vermin, peoples of the world: nibble...

                   i'm here to claim my future:
my anonymity... i'm here to scatter with the dues
of the frail... waiting for no clarity of
locked: stature worded in baron...
no stature worded in kaiser... führer...
      i am on the sole minding of... the gnostics...
the heretics...

i want to burn blue when all other dogmatic
breaths burn yellow...
           that i drink is of no solace...
bribe the reader! inner vacuum otherwise
a handshake with my shadow... by candlelight...
which is a bribe for an audience of death:
that personification on a theme of romance...
thanatos... chilling the spine...
and the serpentine...

                    i want to see the gallows...
and allure of seeing ***** and rot come oozing
from their baptised fleshy bits...
i want to be curator of the last abolished screech
of existence... i wand to hush them...
by sharpening a knife...
i want to find the idle fork...
i want to find the crown of ferns...
and kick and stab... the house of already dead
roman emperors... sitting... nay...
loitering... the anger of pride on their
laurels...

             napoleon... even with a name like that...
you can stomach the usual: steak becoming
a lump of minced beef...
but when it's ****** or stalin...
czopek or elert...
                    you'd wish for a horsehoof
to be dubbed: smith...
                     -smithy...
or some other... lucky you: frauman...
                      fregel...            made it up as
we went along...

yep... yep... i get it... drinks a whiskey...
****** out a lemonade...
and for whatever "genius": genius...
that third tier of being... not spawned by the gods...
but by man... in between angels and demons...
the geniuses...
that autistic master-class of...
****'s itching kinda eerie!

   i'm drunk: most of the people are sober...
i'm not going to have to
give an apologetics lecture on the sober
sods... am i?
romance period... a bit like being
a modern brit and all that wham!
sputnik dazzle of the: grit brighton!

jokes aside... the winged hussar...
                   also mongol...
******* that clad themselves in dog ****
to imitate... what would later become...
the 365 harem of an alexander...
          
   would it be any good reading
the greeks?
     can you really want to "catch-up" on so
much... when in fact you should be
reading the people who have re(a)d...
the ancient greeks?

here's me taking heidegger's advice...
spend 12 years reading aristotle...
          martin... oi oi... that leaves
me doing more work than the already
work required in pretending to be catholic...
and doing a spin-off sunday...
how about me just reads up on yous...
how's that?
2 years worth of you... is about...
       whatever it took you to "master"
aristoteles: ah-chew: chow-mein sucker...

     life is or at least has become or will
become... too impertinent...
  then again... lassitudes of being kept
in the confines of one's own allowances...
i can't expect... in the same way...
i can't become expectent...
it's a two-way-swoe-order in the guise
of a phoenix... (missing phenotypes)...

             the best held advent of:
if you weren't a part of pappa's genocide of
a clarifying sputnik's *****-out
into frog's dream-alike all mammalian
when you're already on your way out
with the moloch altar sacrifice of
no foetus would be born...

call it a... champagne bottle uncorking
ritual when it comes to...
and all that other drifting ritual
of "entropy" whenever a sobering / ***
note would awake a hannibal lecturer
for and what more...
that was necessary...

           stipends of: gotcha...
eagles - witchy woman...
ol' cliff does a little number:
like no intro for a jazz megahit
quintet when the bass comes along...
devil woman...
or the totally camp...
  dale winton...
because turning totally gay only
arrived in full bloom and daffodils
in the trenches...
when true gay arrived...
well... any other hole to fill...

              this hole's better than
any ****** eye's...
who's that backdoor man of
assorted gifts, to begin with?

          rhyme rhymes rhyme rhymes...
easily to make a happy than no
alcoholic into a: no thank you...
  
                                   discretely...
suburban... those desperado... casa-esposa...
the pride of the son: a mother...
that's usually enforced...

las orgullo de hijo: una madre...
           bad spanish... bad german...
mongrel of the either and some anglican
and some ****** catholic...

                                        if there was still something
of a worthwhile partition of time...
****** was never going to become
the next napoleon...
even though... invading russia was
a plagiarism... and the retrdo-event of all
that waste of time... 200 years
and the waste of time with the air onslought
for the battle of britain...
the u-boats...

     no mention of waiting a while...
     in that "what if" universe of revising...
one two three four... with:
einz zwei drei vier...

or... the eager panzermensch...
and that tunnel under the sea...
         it can be noted that a 100 year war
did exist... between the english and the french...

if the napoleonic wars have the monuments...
for what sort of reasons were
the 20th century "ende von alles kriege ende"...
******* proxies of the yugoslav conflict...
vietnam...
        
the monuments of the greatest wars of man...
monumets? cemeteries... or the death camps...
was this the turning point where...
death by war was to be... lessened by
omittance: "keep calm and carry on" *******?
the celebrated en masse of one single
male *******?

how isn't citing german...
an exfoliation from speaking mere peasant
english?
der zunge ist berufung die gegenwart:
ein vater: ein vaterzunge!

scheisse und höllegrube mit es!
                der "vaterland": fathers of daughters
of would be mothers... mothers of sons
of would be fathers... motherland... fatherland...
mothertongue... a ******* great big itch
of grammatical concerns! blah!

where are these monuments akin to trafalgar sq.?!
what's to be so... gloated... about defeating the nazis?
where is the gloat in mere words...
but sorely missed when it comes to sacrificing
bone and marrow and muscle
to focus on making escapades of marble?!
where... are... these... monuments?!

      my own shadow overshadows the testimonies
of... two... very... minor... wars...
perhaps world war I had covered one or two
hurt prides... hurt egos...
but... after all... a khaki attired boyscout...
when all the bad boys
were later... morphed by hugo boss
into schwarzgekleidet steinherzimmobilien...

ein führer ist nein (ein) kaiser...
not like the title napoleon acquired...
napoleon was cited as: emperor...
        a reicarnation of charlemagne...
   too bad for whoever barbarossa was...
  rutger hauer?! yes... but rutger was, dutch...
for ****'s sake!

napoleon was crowned emperor
in a church...
****** walked into an opera house...
heard some wagner...
some wagner not in that anemic proposal
of the walhall from das rheingold
via michele campanella...

              all that becomes the litany...
prior to the peeling to the basic grammar...
and then an attack on pronouns...
as if all languages had...
gender-neutral nouns of the anglican-sphere
of "talk"...

strip me down the the Diogenes' basics of
sodden cloth and dogs' **** to attire...
perhaps i'll show you Cleopatra smile...
or Mona Lisa frown...
             whatever might be the eventuality...
this is not it; nor could it ever be... "it";
the "it" of what you seek.
Exosphere Jul 2023
it’s a beautiful night here
but the moon doesn’t know it
he can’t see behind the thick curtain
and he won’t come out tonight
we miss you moon
you’re the only thing missing
from this star crossed
Sisyphean night
Thomas W Case Sep 2021
(Graphic erotica 18 or older)
Set me free --
I’ve been waiting for you to,
These nights in the castle                    
You’re too distant.                                
It’s too easy.
I’m afraid to tell you                                          
what I’ll allow -- what I crave.                                    
We read,
We talk -- I sing for you.
I love you, even.
But you’re holding back,
I don’t know why.
My family is gone,
No one is coming for me.
I’m afraid only to tell you --
There’s more to me --
Wildness, wretchedness, and pain without end.
I'm not afraid of the darkness,
From it, together we have everything
To gain.

I’m caged as well, I want to break out,
Eat raw meat, and breathe
In all life has to offer.
Pain has defined me.
The bars are strong on
Your cage and I see your
pain...I want to touch
It, and make it go away.
**** it far away,
Mine as well, does love even exist?
My childhood was a horror show of
Apathy, money, and privilege;
But no smiles or touch.
Debauchery surrounded me,
People were to be used for our
Base desires.
I will punish us both for being born.

Maybe you want a simple girl
Extravagant dinners and clean laundry
Such things bore me, I’m afraid
You might think me monstrous
All I’ve done is toil away,
Giving myself over to Sisyphean labors, and
Endless inhuman favors
Surrendered to unfit Masters
Who paid for their titles, treating
Me like a commodity to use up,
Beat down, and throw away. I
Indict my own male relatives
Who should have protected me,
And beseech God for a remedy
To my loneliness and misery.
My gratitude overwhelms
For this interlude in the castle.
You’ve been good to me so far —
Your care is starting to show, yet I
Am electric at a dream I have of
How much further we could go, still
You seem reluctant, what must I do...

I need a monster in that
Bed, but not in my heart.                      
I want to ******* hard                          
And drive the                                                  
Demons out,                                                             ­                 
Drowned in the pink.
Pound it dripping home
To the core of the tulips,
To the bottom of the
Swollen rose.
Love is a rotten pig
In the dung heap of life.
I want no part of
It ever again.

I see you looking at me
With a different energy      
it scares me in the exact way                      
I want to be.
The day stretches long,
With an endless banal sun.
I’m molten inside --
Tropical, with inhibitions
Melting down.
You can save me
Right now,
As I kneel in front of you,
I open my mouth, and
Feel the cage
Door opening.

Freedom,
As you take my ****
Into your mouth --
Do you feel the heat, and
The power?

I feel it all at once,
Like a conquistador
But benevolent.
I keep my eyes open,
The world blooms
From simple
To magnificent.
I’m not like
The other maids,
I’m not sure if you knew.
I do everything
Oh so happily
Like it’s forever new.  
******* being
My favorite feast, so
Please! Pull my hair!
Don’t be gentle!
Make me drink it.

You ***** ****.
I’m taken to new
Heights with this
Different side of you.
My precious darling,
Take all of me, as I ****
your mouth.
I feel like the Marquis De
Sade seducing the
Chambermaid.
Let me taste
Your juice.
Lie back and
Spread your legs.
Your ***** is divine.
Like ambrosia, your
Swollen **** begs for
My tongue,
Do you feel the edge of
Death as I close my hand
Around your throat?
*** my sweet angel.
*** Venus, ***.

I’m relieved
You’re pleased
With my new attitude.
Yet on the edge of release,
A hint of boredom creeps in --
Will it always be this easy
To ****** my Master?
Is it over already?  
I need something darker - more fantastical              
A slight dreariness creeps in                        
As I feel my ****** coming,                                                          ­  
But just before it breaks
So does the boredom!
I realize my heart is pounding
I’m struggling to breathe --
You’re choking me!
Holding me down with one arm,
I try to struggle and squeal,
Electricity of fear!
But I’m immobilized, dumbfounded
Kind sir, please!
Not like this!
You said you loved me!
I loathe to leave
That hot mouth on me
But you look up and break your grip,
So I sit up, renounce your deliverance
And flee!

Where have you gone
My dark angel,
My Babylonian imp?
Are you afraid?
It’s just a little death,
So you value                                      
Life more.                                            
I will find you, and when                                          
I do, My *** will swim in your
Veins, it will be your
Food and Oxygen, our
*** will be your new melody,
The rhythm by which you walk and
Move through life.
Come out my Nymph,
Come to your new Master.

From my hiding place
I see
A vision of Beauty
Your eyes smiling
Back at me
You see me — Truly.  
You read my mind even!
How rash my fear!
After all I desired
The moment is here!
I’m ready, it’s real,
I want to show you what I’m made of
So I step out and bow my head
Revealing my submission
No more mercy - please
Take me and my
Weak knees
Oh! My darling sir!
Take me all the way, please!

I gaze at your tremendous light
And passion. Your heart beats like a
Deer after the chase.
I can smell your musty ****
From the *** you want
So I signal the chambermaid
And the gardener to
Seize you, ah, and then,
While he forces your legs apart
I tie your wrists over your head
You won't be escaping again!
You naughty *****!
I have you now!
While he leers hungrily
Up your skirts
I take my knife and slit your dress --
So close to your throat
And all the way down the corset
I signal to the gardener and the
Brute tears it off you
Leaving you bleeding
As his rough hands scratch your flesh
We all look at you trembling,
Flushed, drawn out, and naked --
That's when the chambermaid
Pulls a long feather from her apron
And runs it over your eyebrows.
Then around your mouth, open in fear.
While the Gardener looks at me hopefully.
I nod, so he takes his big dumb hands
And squeezes your ******* hard
Moaning like a feral dog.
Failing to look at his Master again
He slips his night shirt off
Leans forward and shoves
A hard **** in your open mouth
Growling "**** on it, you filthy ****!"
With utter, savage delight.
You take the head of it in your mouth
Whimpering, yet ******* it tightly.
He moans louder, thrusting violently,
With sweat from his forehead
Dripping on your face as
You look to me for mercy.
You find none, so he takes license
And ***** your mouth so hard
Writhing his hips, as your poor lips
Begin to bruise and your throat is sore
The maid gets down
Between your legs and
Licks your swollen ****,
Your hips rise to the
Darting of her tongue.
She slips a finger in
Your tight *****, so juicy
And ***** it hard and fast
As she ***** your ****.
You lie back, letting yourself
Be taken and consumed.

What have I done,
I’m helpless now!
You’ve gone very much too far!
The fear is as delicious as
That mouth on me —
Yet I'm pinned and immobile.
The Brute’s **** is strangling me,
Even as I begin to revel in the taste
Of his lust, I can’t breathe!
I wanted you, not these brutes!
You stand far off - aloof and I’m
Crying as I explode
The brute laughs and then
Grunts and moans as he
Lets forth his sickening load.
I’m forced to swallow, he won’t get up
Instead he’s twisting and shoving
His pulsing **** on my tongue,
Barking "drink it, ****!" and laughing
As he drives his ****** home.

The ambivalence is driving me
Mad, I can’t stand to watch this brute
Handle you this way, yet there is a
Strange sense of pleasure.
Love is changing me, I see you
As a poor wretch that craves
Love, I also need love,
And this brute didn’t ask permission!
I make my decision quickly.
I pull my rigging knife from
Its sheath and walk behind
The filthy *******, grab his greasy                      
Hair and slice his jugular, as his                                
Heart pumps its last beats, blood                                    
Spurts all over your *** and back.
I have finally met my match —
I grab your hair and pull you back to
Meet my raging hard ****.
The ***** has made your ***** sloppy wet
And I slap your **** with my shaft.

So I was right to be afraid! But I know
You love me truly
You’d never hurt me - would you?
The chambermaid runs out and it’s just
You and me - ******* wild and free.
Suddenly you slow yourself
And cradle me so tenderly.
Your face in my hair, you pull me close,
Then everything goes slow.
You hold me a long moment
But then your energy
Is ferocious all over again —
You ****** into me harder
It hurts me and I cry out —
"I’m yours forever!
Even if I die!”

If you die my darling, I die as well,
My love for you transcends the ***.
I weep as we come together,
Ecstasy, rapture,
I’ve passed your ******,
I’m in your soul.
And you in mine.
I know we should flee,
But I need a few moments more
Inside of you, looking
Into your safe eyes.
Footsteps approach, like the
Black horse of destiny.
A wretched voice calls out --
“He’s the one!”

With agony in my heart
I realize it's too late
You captured my soul while
Death stood at the gate.
Despondent, I release you,
Desperate, I rise up.
Naked and ******,
My Glory shining through
"Gentlemen!" I cry, with anguish in my voice
"I lit the flame myself!
I carried the brutal torch!
I kneeled before my Beloved
To worship his throbbing ****
You mustn't judge me, sirs!
A simple maid I am not!
I stirred him to untamed lust
Gave into delicious
Humiliation -- splayed out for
The household to see
My unbridled flirtations,
We played with death!
I led him on!
I wanted Love more than Life!
If you must hang him,
Hang me as well
For Death must need a Wife!

She knows not what she says.
We are drunk on love.
I did the crime, a brute kills a brute.
Nothing more. I’m your man, take me,
And leave my poor angel alone.
I would die for her,
But I’d rather live,
So here is your chance to
Holster your weapons and go
Home to your families.
No, you say?
Then I shall send you
To hell.
Join all the rest of the brutes
Gentlemen, and
Join me as well.

The man rushes the authorities,
And a shot rings out.
His new heart is fatally
Shattered this time,
He drops with a thud to the floor.
She wails and runs to him.
She kneels and clutches him to
Her breast, weeping,
You can’t die,
I love you,
She whispers.
I love you too, my angel,
Now go and love some more.
These are his last words, and a
Smile lies dead on his
Pallid face.

She screams at the apathetic soldiers,
You took my soul and my life!
It is you that deserve to die!
And now -- this very night!
The breath is leaving my body,
I long for obliteration
Life is now impossible
An ugly abomination
I cannot bear his last words,
Go and love some more, he said!
Ah, but my passion has turned murderous
Now that Love itself lies dead!
Reaching out one last time
It appears, for her lover’s hand
She quickly took the knife from him
Turned, and charged the men.
Her glorious warrior’s cry, and
Her unashamed nakedness,
Aroused anger in the soldiers
With their predictable expectations
In the final ****** their guns convulsed,
Delivering her with a volley of bullets
Into her waiting lover’s arms,
Their blood flowing together
In rich, loving rivulets  
Of passionate dark red
Flowing together, briefly
Warming the concrete floor.
This is an ****** bedtime story for all you lovers out there.  It is written by Thomas W. Case and biche
OC Sep 2019
We the people
are a Sisyphean collective
our punishment: progressing humanity

With fiery eyes  and frothing mouth
we charge towards  its surfaces
bashing those with scrawny shoulders
ricochet like sparks from flint
watch as we fall back
how it moves a fraction of a hair length
knowing that
if all our efforts were combined
surely, humanity would’ve accelerated

But we the people
are a democratic anarchy
each one to their own

Each thrusts towards their own direction
each blow is counterbalanced by another
as we foam like sea surf on a shoal
crushing from all sides
and our humanity
crawls in place amongst us

For we, the people
are a paradox of will
the driving, and the stalling force

Insignificantly small, with significant resistance
the viscous drag that ebbs and flows
a choreography of chaos and confusion
we are so many
so many more

And humanity is singular
a monument to our failures
its minuscule fluctuations
a testament of battles fought
but from a far, and from way forward
it is but a speck of dust
which, ever silent, floats
throughout the cosmos
15th installment in the series of poems inspired by physics. Like many of the poems in this series, this one also reflects on the richness of the phenomenon called "diffusion" or "brownian motion". For more reading: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Einstein_relation_(kinetic_theory)

Thoughts and comments are welcome
Hank Helman Mar 2016
I was 18 and surrendered to a Van Gogh sunset,
The Aegean Sea a calm mirror,
Plato’s sun, rose-red and dying,
A shift from wind to breeze,
Each night negotiates a calm.

There were eight of us
Inside the cave,
A cathedral inside a mountain,
Our home, high upside a cliff,
The mountain shepherds unhappy
With our stake,
Until we saved the lamb.

We’d found each other,
An octad to a family formed,
Wandering, drinking, annoying the Swiss,
Our freedom dangerous,
Beyond control,
Our odd desire to just be.

Hell, we were reading Hesse,
One of their own,
Our Swiss welcome spent,
They’d had enough,
And so we left for Athens,
To dance and sing,
And tender the sad patience of the Greeks.

Eighteen hours on the ferry to Eos,
People barfed huge arcs over the railing,
Then sat down to reread the headlines for the hundredth time,
Eos was an island of no cars, sparse electricity,
An abundance of religion
And a constant flow and cask of wine.
Retsina, the barrel sealing resin of the Aleppo pine,
An odd and unmistakable taste,
It left a hangover like a warning shot,
The only cure to drink again.

We spent Easter high on acid,
In the back pews of a church,
A thousand years of candles
White walls black with carbon,
A priest, a chalice, the smoking thurible,
A pendulum of incense and pure thought,
The ancients practiced faith with all their senses.

On cloudy moonless nights,
We walked the miles home,
Sandals slap on a sugar sand,
The beach ours, all of it
So dark we could only hear the sea,
The rhythm of the waves like the downbeat of the earth,
We plodded to its dark measure in a line,
On return, from village, church,
Or a lover’s walk through miles of wild daisies,
Until the rediscovered goat path up to our cave,
A Sisyphean task, a find each time,
Drunk, ******, alive, young, nuclear with hope and desire,
We would change the world,
We would mend kind all the broken parts.

And in our cave,
The sounds of others making love,
Rough grunts and soft sighs, whisper kisses,
I would think and dream,
And ride the silver of those waves
Our lives like skipping stones,
Brief, beautiful, and bound.
The concept of our lives like skipping stones is not mine. This beautiful analogy came from a poet named Victoria. I trust she will allow me to use it.   Thank you V.   HH
Plain Jane Glory Jun 2013
To Death and You, the terrible two:

Can you feel your grip loosening around my neck?
Can you feel me getting lighter, smarter, farther all the time?
Can you feel my heartbeat finding its own pace,
Not matching yours, as it did before?

Can you feel me slipping into
Happiness    for a change?

We were once a Sisyphean process
Low ups and lower downs
We once were endless
Or so we thought

Can you feel my lightness overcoming your dark?
No longer in the shadows of the consuming unlit?
Do you think it’s true, what they say?
Do we not know what we have    until it’s gone?
I think so, not so much for you as for me
I didn’t know how much you held me down
Until I sailed the skies of the blissful unknown

This is one last hoorah for the lowest of lows
One last note to those I leave behind in the dark
One last toast to Death and You, my all-consuming terrible two
Hank Helman Aug 2016
Sin
Carla,
Whom I love and regret in equal measure,
Told me to talk less and think only in the morning.
It’s unfair, she said, for someone with your demons,
To obsess past mid day.
You will only exhaust yourself,
Become dizzy from looking over your shoulder.

It’s the sparrow’s lunch you eat, she said
Afterwards you think only of suicide,
It’s your pathetic answer to everything.

You have a propensity, an absolute need to confess, Carla advised me,
You see sin as an obligation,
As a necessity to fuel your ridiculous notion of salvation,
Repentance is a shell game,
No sooner have you apologized for being yourself,
Than you begin sinning all over again.
Your quest for innocence is a self-selected Sisyphean task.

I told her I had no idea what she was talking about,
And that if she wanted to save me she had to speak in simpler terms.

Quit looking for the meaning in things, Carla said,
Life is lived on the surface,
What we really fear is not that we will die,
But how we will die,
I mean good god,
The insane Christians
Have us picturing death
With nails driven through our hands and feet,
Hanging from a crucifix,
Can you imagine the indignity,
While some low level centurion,
Stabs at us with a sword,
I mean really,
Hauling crosses up mountainsides
Being laughed at and scorned in our weakest moment,
The drama is laughable,
When the absolute truth is most of us
Will die peacefully in our sleep,
Gone without even knowing the party is over.  

Replace your metaphysics with a game of chess, Carla told me,
At least do psilocybin once in awhile
And have a genuine spiritual experience,
And she held up her hand for two more glasses of scotch,
Neat,
And lit her cigar.
If you are thinking bad thoughts, write Carla. She knows everything- apparently.
One:
We're all victims of our own vices,
Those things that cause a cosmic crisis,
Rather than attacking the ones that dwell within us,
We lash out at the ones we find outside in others.
It's a case of right enemy, wrong battlefield.
And those of us who do fight the war inside,
Are fated to fight on two fronts,
It may  be a Sisyphean task,
But we will not be judged by our failures,
We will be judged by our efforts,
Our resilience,
Our hope,
Our spirit.

Two:
The greatest evil a human will face is not the devil, not a demon, not an animal but another human and the irony of it all is that it is the evil we can not live without.

Three:
Man is political by nature,
His ego inherited from his father and mother,
And his struggle created by his creator.
These aren't poems. They are exactly as the title implies: Rumination.

And for those of you who would like to know about the word Sisyphean. It derives from a Greek myth in which Sisyphus( a mortal) defied the gods and chained death so no mortal would ever die. The gods eternally punished him  by making him push a boulder up a mountain; upon reaching the top, the boulder would roll down again, leaving Sisyphus to start again.
Into our fun house of mirror neurons,
a favorite Fellini character strides
distorted perhaps,
but reflected clearly enough,
none the lesser for our wear.

Who is it? Which one?
It’s truly hard to decide.

It could be that brute Zampanò,
his chain unpopped,
and as ever demanding our attention...

Or the cypher, Steiner,
teetering on edge
to tell us his secrets...

Or a voluptuous
la Saraghina,
reveling in our riveted eyes...

Or gentle Giulietta,
chasing her voices,
their whispers that echo ours.

It doesn’t matter who, in the end.
Better yet, let’s take them all,
and crowd them close in.

What matters is,
we ask they try
a seeming simple task—
touching tongue to nose,
or elbow to chin—
and we watch
their attempts, together.

Strive and fail.
Strive and fail.
Strive and fail.

These are the Sisyphean rhythms
we’ll need to learn.

We have our limits,
but empathy is endless.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License.
Like as heaven's golden eye
In all her timeless grandeur
Doth emanate to paint the sky
In polychromatic hues all o'er
At the break of dawn, so raced I
 Briskly through woods of failure,
     Yonder the mighty hill of success
      That shimmered in the distance.

The closer I drew, the further the hill,
But despite the task seemed sisyphean,
Winds of hope came driving me still
Right through thorny thickets of men
That unto me said I'll never get uphill,
But though girthed with such ill omen,
     I bore it in mind, at the end of day,
     Even the sun fades into heaven's bay.

They tried to pull me down,
But, "giving up" ain't my name;
When at last I wore a golden crown,
They tumbled into a sea of shame
And there deep they didst drown
Till so soddened every part of them:
     "For now every body knows my story,
     I rest not till I behold clouds of glory."


©Kikodinho Edward Alexandros,
Los Angeles, California, 8/4th/2019.

           #Words Of Wisdom
P.S. Unto he who whose beams of hope are marred with clouds of despair.

The term sisyphean means: "Of a task never to be completed."

It's derived from Greek mythology, Sisyphus or Sisyphos was the king of Ephyra. He was punished for his self-aggrandizing craftiness and deceitfulness by being forced to roll an immense boulder up a hill only for it to roll down when it nears the top, repeating this action for eternity.
Abbie Crawford Feb 2015
When you care so much about someone,
   friend or a partner.
You'd do so much for them.
  Like give them kidney or even take a bullet for them.
But when you know that they don't care about you as much as you do about them,
  It aches inside.
My lungs begin to fill up with shells and flowers,
and suddenly it's hard to breathe.
It's almost like a dizzying Sisyphean curse spinning you around in the Earths orbit,
  and everything becomes blurred.
You then suddenly begin to wonder if anyone cares,
  because after all the world is a lonely place.
So give me one more cup of coffee and i'll be gone.
I’ve been nominated for
Sisyphean Of The Week
I had to work hard to get it
And it will be harder still to win it -
There’s a lot of competition.
It’ll be an uphill battle for sure
But I do believe that faith
Can still move every mountain
And this is just a little stone.
ljm
Sisyphus was a rock star !
betterdays Mar 2014
ROOM. 148
(Benjamin.)

This morning,
as I showered.
I saw the face of
Genghis Khan
appear,
just fleetingly
in the suds,
as the swirled at the drainpipe
he brandished,  a grinning leer
and then was gone.

This morning,
in my coffee,
institution brewed.
There he was Van Gogh,
Vincent,  from when,
he still had an ear.
Today, blue paint,
smudged his nose.

In the carpet, after
the cleaning lady had
come.
Amy Whitehouse
visited n'said,
"Rehab might have been
useful afterall."

They the faces, concerned,
and attached to bodies,
encumbered by white cloth.
Tell me, this is non-classic
pariedolia, a symptom of a larger syndrome.

And  if I wanted, to improve
my state of well being,  
that I should not
have any further....hmm
conversations...huhuh,
with the people.

I see in,
the woodgrain of the  
dining  table,
or the man in the
light's moonlike  cover,
or the chap in the door,
of the communal bathroom's
stall wall.

Yet I won't listen,
I don't trust them.

And besides, my buddy Freud
who pops up with the toast.
Told me today,  
"They don't know,
what they are,
talking about.
Not at all, not at all."
In any case,
my muses pariedoliac,
are far better
conversationalists.

With them, I have a ball!!!


ROOM 212
(Gwendolin.)

Today, I am good!

But some days.

My mind, is a battlefield
and I the maniac,
with the finger.
Hovering over the big red button.
So wanting to:
slam my hand down and end it, all.

On other days,
I barely have the energy within,
to lift my head from the
grey, black sludge,
I am drowning in.
On those days,
breathing is sisyphean task and the world is a *******
ball.
Balanced precariously,
on a weary and depressed Atlean hand,
as he drops defeated to the sand.

Then, there are the days I am so up and bright and bubbly
I am appalled and I exhuast myself with my happiness.


But truly, the worst days are,
when,
I am all this and more.
Those are the days,
that my mind becomes,
a feudal state.
Where I am foresaken
to the rage of mutiple realities, engaged in battles for prime position.
I struggle valiantly,
to hold, the bastion of sanity,  painstakenly created and found, in the smallest corner,
of my brainspace,
But they rage and rant
and roil and take,
my precious sanity,
and soil it,
in their mindless games.

And at the end,
of those days.
I am left to pick up
what is left of me
All the tattered pieces
and start all over again.

But the medication helps
smooth me out a lot, it does.

ROOM 179
(Bob.)

"Hello, do you have
a word for me?"

"Blatherskite, oh
you beautiful thing"

"Wordscore 21"

We can begin now,
I know I am not normal.
That I think differently to most.
My mind, is a mendicant,
beggarly thing.
Sitting in library corners.
It's arms held up in supplication, palms outstretched
begging alms, of dictation.
And slathering like a dog,
at a feasting table
snatching at syllables
and sentences.

I sit for hours engrossed
in thesuari
and would gleefully
stab your back multiple times
if you  carried a rare dictionare.

I am a wordaholic
words they are my
sorrowing addiction.

My scrabble tiles,
runic of my affliction.

When stressed the
smoothness
of a spelling bee
is my only solace.

I want to be very clear
I do not see my
addiction
as a affliction
adversely
affecting,
autonomy
but, the
surgeons
of the
psyche
differ,
in their
extrapolation,
of my
lexigraghical
pre occupation
apropos,
vis a vi,
my life
and functionary
state, therewith.
So my tiles and I,
stationarilary
codepend
in this spatial
reality,
until my
mind can find
a state
of equilibrium.

And to be brutally honest
with you.
I don't think that will be
soon,sooner, soonest.
poem/s created as an exercise from
three words supplied by poet friend.
the words were
mendicant, feudal &pariedolia;
no other instructions were given.
.....this is a work of fiction.
Ken Pepiton Nov 2020
We hold these truths,
there is a Zebra tree on a tiny island
in Lake Wanaka on the relatively large island
called New Zealand.

Nation is not a valid variable to sort on.

So here, we sort worth on agreeing
we are equally
Natives of Earth. First yes.

More yeses follow.

Learn what you have done.
Know what you are doing.
Be good,
let the bruised flesh not rise in hot pride,

see we all are involved in evolving into ever
better,

so we think, perhaps,
others aboard my ark also think.

We are equal in this realm, each mind joined

junction branch root, not from
billions and billions of
Jahre zuvor,
წლების წინ
ts’lebis ts’in { Georgian script looks magic, eh}

Secrets in tongues died with the last word,
spoken toward unhearing ears,

… is it reality interrupting or
knocking needs gumming up the works…

--------


Field-wide signal, crisp and clear, some fell on idle minds,

that's fine  , signal how are you.

You say, responsibly, My side is winning.
No one ever asks what that means.

The field the world,
war is the only story, Walt imagined,
he was infected, Whitman,
with a known' opinion
-- some wise and well-known
-- being arisen from behind the ivied walls
- I heard this in passing,
- anonymous did not say this:
the function for the sublime is to free us from the slavery
of pleasure
- on another vector, I heard this:
the need to heal violence, forces life into idle words
used maliciously, in tests of conscience-useness.

Poverty never hears the highest minded reasons
for the states of mind attempted by the
most curious among us

--- empty of the wy. ha… I don' know I glanced away
stat tic… what's missing?
--- its like any other day, it ends with me entranced
by the play of winds with dust and smoke and water
droplets too light to fall,

I take instant HDR images as the time passes and the art
appears, as if for me alone,
I am the only mental
being seeing this,
I have proof,
I'll show you, someday, maybe…
but today,
I got took t' school, behind the gated mental institution,

geni-used magi-like instinct-gut spirit-vapor
-- rumor has it, I went mad
caused
by you or me, I can't say.

But just the other day, I was thinking, you may remember
my sunsets,
you would have noticed them
when you stole my weedeater.

--------

No school of the prophets foresaw my death,
so far as I may know,
I am by chance, bon chance,
living in lines of consequential events.
And my birth was a quirk of circumstances.

As special as any multi cellular creature,
if the statisticians are aiming at
the proper means of measuring.

There remain professors who teach man is the measure
of all things, wrong, in my opinion.

Ha. I said that. Like to Cambridge, it's image in my immaterial
realm where all things men agreed to use for ever after,

are similar in effect to the Ghostbusters Marshmallow role.

My fingerprint is less than nine points similar
to your fingerprint, no matter who you are.
We are equals in that regard,
our self is commonly unique, as we are.
Our kind.
We, the people of Earth. The native species,
Whumo Sapient Sapiens is us.
Knowers that know.
Thinkers that think we know. There is no
they
behind the curtain
knowing anything that  you may not know
as much
as you can swallow,
a bit per quantasec, after chewing fifty years.

In this medium,
it's me and you, object, subject, reject defect
if then or else
find that more perfect
union,
that knot that binds our minds in agreement,
this is that
which has no religious name, save good and plenty…

not the candy, but that's cool, I thought that, too.

We, me and you, since we think alike,
we could make up a mind and invite others

to take parts in grand epic dramas of ever
learning,
war never has arisen on a reason that reasons
rationally valanced toward life,
and that,
more abundantly…

Now, see those greedy folks,
look real
close,
see. You never see such a one, with a satisfied mind,
ever learning, never knowing everything,
happy as hell from a Sisyphean POV
_ Changed my entire environment, by movin' three rods north.
Duke Thompson Jul 2014
Rux
Things are ok
Not dead and currently that’s a good thing
Optimism abound,
Climbing mountains only to jump off the other side
Hoping to find some understanding or meaning
Or even a median in space, or time
Precariously traversing the rock face
Walking down a fine white line
Seeing the whole world unfolding before you
Only you’re too focused on climbing
To appreciate the view (Tunnel Vision living)

Faltering now, nascent feelings of inadequacy cloud your mind
Who are you kidding?
Latent feelings of inadequacy? (Yes)
Cliché existential crises? (God Yes)
Denial? (Don’t stop!)

Atoms for Peace on repeat (Before your very eyes)
Sinking into it like a warm bath
A glass of absinthe and a head full of dreams
Though you aren't asleep
Sinking into that hole, it feels like dying
The room spins
Senses rapidly disintegrate, one by one
A nothingness deeper and more profound than anything
Timothy Leary knew
As your head dips below the surface
A ******* child, D.M. Turner minced with Kerouac
Or a laudanum laced Thomas De Quincey
You saw god that night,
The layers peeled away
It was pure chaos and caustic fear
Brimming with breathtakingly beautiful apathy and acceptance
Quantum clairvoyance springs forth

You see how the cards will fall
God reminds you, “Everyone dies alone”
And you know the truth, he doesn't have to tell you:
God isn't there when you die
Smiling peacefully as your Sisyphean plight dissolves into the night
zebra Feb 2017
before
we
know
kindness
we are silly moons
a primal scream
ids
gaggle of wants
having not yet understood
our own vulnerability
and its connection to others
the agony of self
uninitiated
by the sacrifices yet to come

in effect a criminal mind

as a child growing up in brooklyn
my friends and i would
make a mad dash
out of ching-a-lings
chopsuey restaurant
after eating sumptuously
with out paying the bill
electrified with terror and excitement
at the thought of being grabbed
by a chinese boogy man
and laughing breathless
when finally
out of harms way
sadistically delighting
by the panic
we caused
as some red faced hyperventilating waiter
caved trying to catch
five little hell boys
fury fast

all adults
were filthy rich
compared to us urchins
idling in the darkness and tenements
sniffing glue
in a number 2 brown paper bag
hole in the pocket poor
slow starters
uninspired
pressing through
the dragging weight
of a barren world
not yet knowing
we too will toil endlessly
worry sick for loved ones
and quake at endless indignities
trying to eek out a living
like the waiter we robbed of his pittance
on this Sisyphean rock

our lives
stretched out before us
a white knuckle ride
between hope
and quiet desperation
struggling not to be swallowed
through pitted black holes
and fake floors
into downward mobility

our pin ball souls
like small metal *****
jarred and knocked
from one ringing bell to the next
in a turbulent game
player or not
without an inkling
of the fated
dark signature
written into our genes
by deaths hand
before
we
know
kindness

— The End —