"somersaulting" poems
#*Nightbird perches high
beneath the shooting stars
that dapple the bouquet
of sleepless peace
... his soft downy breast
has lent breath
to the sweet April afterglow
heaving with song
The mystical feathered troubadour's
swooning echo
A melodic twilight serenade
conjures a moonstruck metamorphosis,
sprouting magical wings of flight;*
rousing *a lonely heart's esprit
to fly away unfettered
in constellations of song
How dare imaginings spilled from the big dipper
enchant such an enrapturing magic spell?
It's so far to fall from swinging on a star!
It's so far beyond nearing crescent moon
when you wish upon a star
Thereupon struck by a bewitching bolt of starlight;
Dropping asudden as a shooting-star!
Rolling like trailing thunder;
tucked and tumbling ―
somersaulting,
celestial rumbling
blossoming with an unearthly joy
A nascent winged heart splayed bare,
soars upon cresting wind waves;
dreaming of that shapeless
w h o o o o s h ―
gathering beneath
~ uplifting wings ~
Suddenly ― gliding freely,
winging gracefully
upon wafting star drift glitter;
lilting lightly upon the arising cadence
of nightingale's melodious fluted song
Nightingale sings sweet April perfume
beneath the star shed lamplight twinkle
... and it makes no difference if it's only a dream
if my heart had wings*
imagined by: Jesse Stillwater
Apr 27, 2018
Apr 27, 2018 at 11:26 AM UTC
At four, you took my hand and pulled me to your bed,
your small form cuddling, curling, you urgently said,
"Tell me… tell me a story! Story, make it long",
I began to tell the story, the story of when you were born:
Drums and bugles, bubbles and balloons,
somersaulting clowns and calliope tunes,
you came out to meet them, on the day that you were born,
and they were there to greet you, through a January storm.
Lions and gorillas marched to military airs,
snowmen and snowwomen danced without a spring time care,
somewhere in the harbor, a tugboat played a note,
and all the while you smiled a smile, upon a birthday float.
Just like a circus troupe, we formed a great parade,
and sauntered to the birthing bed where your mother lay,
she picked you up, she held you, as close as close can be,
her hand in mine, she softly said, “Now... we are three.”
Copyright © 2003 Gary Brocks
Aug 27, 2018
Aug 27, 2018 at 9:31 PM UTC
See the Rabbi. See him tormented by choice. See his people. See them wracked by hate. See the others. See their anger radiate outward in glowing spokes, exploding firebrand in a tinder city.
On a night like any other, the moon at sixth house, fulcrum of pinwheel zodiac, the Rabbi, awash in lidless starlight, rises somber and makes his choice. And when the sun is furthermost, he and three of his others gather at the murmuring riverbank where the brown clay is most pliable and begin to dig, sifting rock and root from trundled earth. Hours spent exhuming the clay, molding it, kneading its muscles, tracing its veins, baking its skin in the starlight. More hours spent in whispering prayer, the words bent and somersaulting over themselves like tumbling books.
See Truth drawn on its forehead, life etched from clay and word. As the sun rises, so it does, wavering at first, but steadier, lapping at the river, and their faces move slowly across the water. See the Rabbi speak to it, his words winding its mechanism. See it stride past the ghetto, wade through the market, and into the borough, siege unto its own.
See the others scream for mercy from the kiln of its stare, from their flaming tenements, their crumpling rooftops.
See it wade back through the market, past the ghetto, back to the riverbank to kneel in the underbrush. See it tilt its head to the lilt of a stranded daisy caught in a vagrant gust. See it caught, too, and see it see. It sees the colors of Eden in the ferns. It hears the river churning sediment, fossils, gravel, whirling over driftwood. It touches moss on a rock; gently rotates its hand to let a grub complete an oblivious circumference. See it sit in silence.
See the Rabbi meet with the others, then his others. And on a day like any other, when the sun is at its apogee, they slip down the riverbank where it still sits, still. It ignores their autonomous logic, their homunculus rationale. They are perversions of variety cloaked in righteous intention. So it remains.
See the Rabbi and his others gather at the murmuring riverbank, shadow conclave in shifting sunlight, then rise somber and decided. They pin it to the earth as the Rabbi chants, invoking the void in which forbidden knowledge spirals. It squirms under the power of the Word, mind-forged manacle as incantation. See the Rabbi draw to a close. His hand is arbiter, swooping down to smudge Truth from its forehead. What is left but Death.
See its hand crumble in its passage as it reaches for the stranded daisy. See the colors of Eden darken in its eyes, its own body the dust that denies it light. See it collapse into itself, the clay that was once animate spilling onto the riverbank. See the Rabbi and his others shimmer then fade into city grey.
The daisy stands still.
Dec 15, 2011
Dec 15, 2011 at 4:22 PM UTC
My voice is nestled within a river
of transitions, positioned
in endless sets of pre- and post-
parentheses. Pre-revolutionary,
post-Missing Link. Post-postmodern,
pre-postmodern revival.
I sit in a somersaulting purgatory
sandwiched between evocation
and paralysis.
My hatred is exhausted, shoulders
hunched over a guillotine,
cursing with its tongue sprawled
dead and dry at an imaginary hunter,
a mass of bones clumped
under the rug I keep pulling
from my own two feet.
Will you hack through this cocoon?
Have you got the muscle
and the patience?
Nevermind that bedtime story.
There must be some wounds
of yours, those placed beyond
the verbal tanline, that need
immediate bandaging.
Can I get you anything?
Feb 4, 2012
Feb 4, 2012 at 3:19 PM UTC
Chop down the city lights of Paranoia.
Cathartic beads of sweat roll
off the horrors of your back
under the saggy breast lamps
in the pitched dreams where the nightmare kids
come to watch you sleep.
Somersaulting walls made of human tissue,
the love of your life overseas, and everything you say
comes out as water torture on hollow centers of hope.
poetry is dead.
Liars smoke ten packs a day,
social criminals stroll in marathons of perdition
across the rot of post-modern vices,
their feet stomp closer to watching faces under the bed.
'This is a story. A dream!'
Everyone sees the fire under the bed.
Watch-fires earthbound by every word
before it is said,
gagged in envy--brought to glow by spineless atoms.
Every sexless sun has a beard, a saved flirtation that singes
the vacuum of today's soul,
a dead dream because you didn't pull it from the brink.
No one has a name in poetry. A task. A point. An exit.
One bed-room apartments locked with pearls
visible only to soloist dogs.
No sorry for vagueness or shut-mouth or bleeding upwards. The meter is running....
to the pharmacy
because it could be pregnant with all the possibilities.
And the whole amphitheater wants to hear one line, the life changer you brought
--here it is: Forget your name.
Sep 7, 2013
Sep 7, 2013 at 1:47 AM UTC
The old man gazed at the sun about to set
And its molten core soon to dissolve in the sea
Scratching his head with tremulous hands
And running his fingers on the stubble of his unshaven face
He held once more tight to his wheel chair
Casually he had a glance at his hands
Those dry, weak and shriveled hands
Gone wrinkled with passing years!
His hands once so busy are now limp
His days once so brisk are now long and dull
He noticed the discolored patches on his skin
Under them the lattice of tortuous veins on the dorsum
They run down to join with the bigger ones
Like small rivulets flowing towards larger rivers
He remembered how the streams from summits
So vigorously come down with a gush
Also the noisy cataracts somersaulting down,
Leaving reverberating echoes all around
But they produce only a soft musical sound
As they join with the rivers and pass through plains
And finally end in a kind of hushed stillness
Just before merging with the sea!
The old man philosophized;
Life too, is like a river
Fierce and ferocious when one is young
Gentler and sedate after middle age
And slow and sloppy in old age
With this calm acceptance of the need to de accelerate
Wrapping himself in the shawl against the growing cold
He turned away from the window.
Pushing his wheel chair,
He moved forward,
Knowing no haste…..
Towards his bed for another night’s tired sleep!
Feb 1, 2017
Feb 1, 2017 at 7:27 AM UTC
Atoms skitter to the center
In the square dance of all matter;
Quarks should rotate once around,
Keeping us on earth firm-bound.
Swing your partner far and wide,
Perihelion's kept astride,
And the strings of matter
String along the boson's heart.
Now come together; smatter, scatter;
Atom-smashers do not matter,
For this dance of matter
Truly is a dance of higher art,
Matter curtsys; and there's gravity
Fills in each slight curving cavity-
From above, you'll notice first
It all starts from just one burst-
So the particles keep on dancing,
Midnight comes, and still they're prancing;
Whirling, somersaulting like they never
Dared to dance before;
Keep on watching, as the clocks hands
Travel once more past the grandstand;
We're transfixed since matter never
Let us ever see this door.
We're the eyes and ears that dare
To watch this tantric ballet, bared;
Entanglement seduces; there's no other place to be-
Bow to your partner in this deadly quantum duel of rivalry.
Jul 18, 2010
Jul 18, 2010 at 3:03 PM UTC
i have no words for emptiness
i'm a bulwark of clots and knots
death is a *****
in a party mask
her seduction a cruel bite
we have always lived for
nakedness on a pyre
makes the man
the bodyless are toasting at a college breakfast party
in the netherworld
of new birthed astral lights
the dead living
somersaulting like fantasmal flux
while we the living dead
gimp through labyrinths time-space
marking spired hands of a clock
that *****
like a black glove
towards endless white-knuckle struggles
no matter our destiny
in a dream of forms
like run on *****
a truth only the dead know
Jul 2, 2018
Jul 2, 2018 at 4:40 PM UTC
The mirth crease on my face,
Are the traces of scoff,
Laced in my heart,
The oath I swore,
I hold with pride,
And the throne;I shall surely ascend,
For in their minds are nefarious surmise,
Bequeathed by their fathers,
As an epitome of my exactitude,
And in the reverence of their supposed lore,
"He is powerless"their honored lingo,
"He is powerless"their honored lingo,
The webs I cast,
And crown the ravens on the orbs,
Somersaulting the flamboyance and alluring sciences,
In the follies of their fantasies and lust,
Their souls are clipped with taint claws,
And shooed into my den,
"He is powerless"their honored lingo,
In their temples and synagogues,
Are my dote ravens,
Quoting the collars of their scriptures,
And stalking their honored lingo,
In their desperations for excellence and deliverance,
Their minds and sight,
Are bewitched with elixirs,
To their satiety,
And drove in slavery,
'He is powerless"their honored lingo,
In their moments of quandery,
I hover on the corridors of their thoughts,
And whisper the "B" plans,
Brewing the animosities and cruelties among theirselves,
Carving justification for the aftermath,
But still;"He is powerless"their honored lingo,
Apostrophe'
©Historian E.Lexano
Apr 8, 2015
Apr 8, 2015 at 1:43 AM UTC
It was supposedly a birthday gift,
this long-legged razor's edge.
My brother must've seen me
watching it's live demonstrations.
Little did he know,
how skilled I thought myself to be.
The wrapping came off easily.
It was crudely shredded by a lesser blade
soon to be replaced.
Then the weapon itself glared at me
through the clear plastic window of its box.
Unsheathing it then, I felt its power come to me,
two steel legs spreading for a ****** murderer.
I probed it meticulously, the blade
caught the light and somehow swallowed it
before its appendage whirled across to conceal it.
This was a knife with thoughts.
Then I tried my first trick.
The blade danced elegantly,
and though I held on (for dear life)
it wanted to escape from my clutches.
I was caging it gracelessly between my fingers
and its first prerogative was to be free.
Still holding tight, it changed tactics,
a blood thirst radiating from within.
The next move would be my last.
For one split-second it escaped the probation of my palms,
somersaulting through the air above me.
It pointed downwards for a final coup de grâce.
I divorced myself from the weapon that day,
stitches adorned my bloodied hands
and the blade was taken as evidence,
though for what trial I never discovered.
My brother tossed it into the sea, I found,
legs still spiralling, blade still sharp.
Oct 16, 2016
Oct 16, 2016 at 5:41 AM UTC
The screen door slammed, and out I ran
into the hot July.
I don't care where I'm going;
whether I flail or fly.
I've gotta be doing something-
or burst for want of a word,
And I'm listening hard for a meaning
but Babel is all I've heard.
I'm slipping past some people
who walk on the hard sidewalk.
I'm squeaking by so slippery,
I don't have the time for talk.
I'm sweet and somersaulting
but no one knows my name.
Would you like to know for certain
that life is not a game?
You're cruising along beside me-
I'm just a part of your dream,
but I'm crying out to reach you
with a primal scream.
Jun 23, 2011
Jun 23, 2011 at 9:15 AM UTC
if you fall in love, remember that you are falling
and that the fall will not last forever.
you can just as easily fall out of love,
or wake up to someone who is no longer falling.
some people trip into love
accidentally stumbling into something bigger
than they expected and while the jolt was momentarily
unpleasant, they don't mind the fall.
there are a few who will count with you
but will not jump with you, no matter what they say
because they are too afraid and leave you
to fall on your own, to hit the ground already broken.
a select few hit the ground running
flipping mid-air, somersaulting
preparing themselves for the land and launching
themselves into the air once again, unafraid. daredevils.
there are those who look before they leap
to measure, calculate, check and double check
and leap once they feel safe and ready.
they are the ones who so rarely fall, but do so with all faith.
and then there are the ones who already fell
and went and hurt themselves
and will still leap into the abyss, free and bound
knowing that they will land paralyzed and will re-learn how to love.
if you fall in love, remember that you are falling
and that the fall will not last forever.
but also remember to enjoy the fall,
because like free falling, love is dangerous
but beautiful.
Jul 14, 2015
Jul 14, 2015 at 5:07 PM UTC
I could and would want,
if what is behind me is truly nothing,
if these words stop lying and untangle me,
to fall backward, away from
this circle of attempt.
But then (God) how deep I would fall!
without meaning, inside coiling time.
So again I find myself having to try,
writing helplessly
another repetition.
Just the act is enough (for a while, uncoiled).
But it’s not enough. What can I do?
My written bursts are always
muted in some kind of murk
or otherwise obscuring clarity,
and they press their beautifully soiled hands
against concrete windows,
knowing they will (and must) stay
for another while, at least,
tearfully inside.
The beginning of it is a slow
burdensome churn to widen cracks.
The rest is a ritual for the politely deranged:
******* what little air seeps out of the real,
chafing what little skin I have
(all of which is a little fearful)
with what few rays of medicine light
are handed to me across the cracks
from the real.
It is a ritual (in essence)
to unstifle the strayed confusion I impart
to the in-between two childs,
who blurry, alone, and accepting, fly together
in the midst of this ever-widening green field.
“We should go back to our home
on top of an overturned dust bin,
where I can toss sand in the air and laugh
because I don’t care to know beyond,”
I hear her say to the other.
I imagine my love as this child,
make the hidden screen in front of her past
young eyes coalesce gently
into this hidden now-and-everything.
I see you collect rocks safely
into your pink-striped shirt
as dirt stains your purple pants.
The color of your young hair is the same
it was when I saw it reflected in the
Tyrrhenian, before we reached our ripped end
and you made me fall backward,
somersaulting with eyes closed in sickness
toward the sun we saw that day,
in the garden we agreed was perfect.
Mar 27, 2012
Mar 27, 2012 at 7:07 PM UTC
Why do I smell cinnamon in the corner of the room?
We must begin this taxing slow-dance before my mother hears us.
My Cradle. Your Cradle.
I felt your pulse spike before my back hit the wall.
And we’re both young enough to say this can’t really mean anything.
The sea whisper’d me.
The staunch, scarlet statues.
The ringing phone in the glove compartment.
No, I’ll take paper, instead. The renegade robots are all dead.
This flight. This grip.
Talk to the scumbag rocker in the Primus hoodie.
Did you spy the shoes on the power lines?
Don’t worry – we’ll keep our arms at the level of our eyes.
We bumped into the roses in the closet.
A wasp could sting you then sting me.
Such is the burden of my position --
An interpreter and a translator of the venom
passed through a sting.
The mail-sorter in the dead letter office.
Oh, hey --
Could you stake your paw print on it?
I would take the slivers from this past year’s thigh.
Down a trickle, faceted deep within a pulled star’s root.
I’ll follow that root back to where it came – dig and pitch the grime from a catalyst’s pores.
Times slopes
and our teeth rattle with each somersaulting channel of memories.
May 31, 2012
May 31, 2012 at 7:09 PM UTC
In 2020 we are the motors of the mechanics we drive
in the bed
of other work days
as the bees fly less
and
the drive of somersaulting mad men, calmer
than a pool of iced days off
after the pool boy
cleans up
start screaming,
although it’s universal when you rise, and my limbs burst
through these elsewhere tossed things, and elsewhere bones
that have no succor in the middle of the sun’s dance, as if:
naïve butchers in the street are sleeping on the bus and
there is no answer from the ricochet dream apart from
keep your **** together
keep your **** together…
and the world is well travelled when you’re smoking beside a dog
and the obliterated silence of a room has a voice,
but the turnstiles open when the poem begins, ah!
the weekend again-this, envelope of random orchids that rustle
and
open,
in the haven of a ***** flat where we find the best corona jokes
new cities
these shaking palms
the way the world works better at 10 am
and the humour of a crazy snake, checking KPIs
again,
and when i wake
i will love this zero
hour
contract
more,
i will worship you and say
yes
yes
YES!
Mar 6, 2020
Mar 6, 2020 at 11:47 PM UTC
I am the gushing river's intent,
Somersaulting waterfall's
still moment, just before
it's touch down on the ground.
Blowing wind's sweet desire,
in it's core to carry pollen on and fertilize.
The upward ****** of the wave,
to touch the crust before the fall.
The lovers' cliff hanger moment
before the lips touch and
meld together in the first kiss.
The seed's yearning am I,
to break the crust and come out
to find a place in the sun
Jul 6, 2017
Jul 6, 2017 at 2:19 PM UTC
Marshes and meadows
Sunshine and shadows
Gentle ripples on the calm river
Foaming rapids in white water
The jungle echoes in the semi-darkness
while daylight creepy-crawlies clear the mess.
Peasants toiling and pheasants scratching
as I spy a cricket somersaulting
The cactus the desert's prickly femme-fatale
elsewhere a lone leaf floats in the canal
Prairie dogs go popping
while hares go hopping
and ladies go shopping
Swans have formed a V-line
The flora too is divine
as bees nosedive in bee-line.
Seista seizes birdlovers too
Thus they miss out on the hoopoe's song
For the hoopoe, it does not sing on cue
since a bird may sing anytime to woo.
What a medley eh of scenery
Murky eve and dawning greenery
Ah, wherever you go nature's so panoramic
While we make and take pictures
God actually makes what's so picturesque!
Dec 29, 2017
Dec 29, 2017 at 4:10 PM UTC
Autumn leaves
somersaulting
across the road
like tiny
olympic gymnasts
Jun 26, 2016
Jun 26, 2016 at 6:50 PM UTC
Driving through life,
The steering wheel shifting so lightly
Between my fingertips,
Indicating at every junction,
Deciding which direction I'll take
To reach my final destination.
But recently I have been verging,
Down narrow lanes,
Picking up speed
As I push down on the accelerator,
80mph,
90mph,
100mph,
Straight down the lane,
Adrenaline pulsing through me
As I keep going,
Faster I scream to myself,
Faster,
Faster,
Never stop.
I never saw the cliff coming
Rock bottom exists. I've been there.
The seatbelt clings to me as I go over,
The air rushing from my lungs,
The roaring of the wind scraping against metal,
The crash of the ocean waves below.
Every ***** inside me squishing against one another,
My stomach somersaulting as I continue to plunge.
Yet during the fall,
I felt weightless,
Like everything that had forced me to get into the car,
Had evaporated.
I continued to fall,
And even now I still find myself waiting
For the jagged impact of
Rock bottom.
Sep 17, 2013
Sep 17, 2013 at 2:31 PM UTC
Touching the edge of the ocean,
Avon-by-the-sea nestles
it cloak of secrets
pressed on the faces of its residents
that reside in their humble abodes.
After somersaulting through life,
a man by the name of William watches
his grandchildren tumble
through galaxies of vivacious imagination.
They roll around in the painted
grass, flying through the
tainted sky.
If only he could join them.
Words of glossolalia spurt
and spill out of his mouth as he try's
to spit out the endearing words,
"I love you," to his wife
standing beside him.
He turns to her, and her eyes began to
bloat with pellets of liquid despair.
Shamelessly he turns his head
down. She quickly entangles their fingers
together. Like a puzzle piece, they interconnect
perfectly. The silence continues on..
but the love remains.
Dec 10, 2013
Dec 10, 2013 at 6:12 PM UTC
wild whisper of August wind
ruffles my hair and scatters my thoughts like
castaway leaves riding a downstream breeze
snagging on branches as they tumble, float away
and I stumble after the flashes of color,
the fragmented memories, wishes, to-do lists
somersaulting alike in the freedom wind
and I let them, let them go
let myself give in to the roaring crash of summer’s eve
a sun not yet ready to set
soon, it will be time to chase
time to gather up the scattered musings
but for now
I carry it within me
this wild, wild whisper of August wind
Dec 20, 2015
Dec 20, 2015 at 1:25 AM UTC
there's a part you will never be able to touch
whether you shrink yourself down to the size
of a quarter and jump into her back pocket
whether you beg and plead and stomp
and cry and demand to understand what I
have that you don't, you never will
it isn't love or effort or commitment
it's responsibility and dependence and
the cruelty of saying you'll never leave.
and then there was me
trying to make the blood stop gushing
slapping her face with a force I'm not proud of
trying to get her to stay awake long
enough to regain consciousness
memories of somersaulting down stairways
and the look in her eye before I saw fists
Aug 4, 2017
Aug 4, 2017 at 1:56 AM UTC
When I was fifteen,
I first felt the butterfly
somersaulting inside,
under a summer sun of July
a fleeting moment
took chance on an empty school hallway
staring at his dark brown eyes
there was a flicker that created power
in a millisecond
That light became a balance
to a thing we called 'relationship'
In that age, the light turned into a glint
until there is nothing else to see
we were blind
When I was twenty,
my mind was abuzz
from the humming of
lectures and piles of paper in my desk
I am dosed by the entice of caffeine
and would sometimes love to
go further until I get to the end of the world
but I'm tired of going in circles
it is round
When I looked back from what I have
started they said I've changed
My reflection exhibits a portrait of bleak
I listened to the whisper,
never trusted the reverie in my head
how could something fragile become robust?
how does a person survive from a fall?
how do you keep pushing when gravity's winning?
I just see how humans could be so much more.
Feb 1, 2017
Feb 1, 2017 at 1:45 PM UTC
on any hill without a cross, they pause, and the father points.
when they are tired, father and son, they plunk into
then off
the sides of valley homes.
one home in particular remembers thinking
kids these days
roll anything
looks like a tire.
your own father smacks whichever finger lifts without the rest.
says you sleeping don’t mean your epilepsy knows.
in your dreams the father does not point, and there isn’t a son.
just a man on one hill after the other, sunlight purling
into the seeable
dark yarn sea. his eyes leaving his head,
somersaulting,
somersaulting,
godbraving.
Jul 2, 2012
Jul 2, 2012 at 1:45 PM UTC