"sphinx" poems
If I were doing my Laundry I'd wash my ***** Iran
I'd throw in my United States, and pour on the Ivory Soap, scrub up Africa, put all the birds and elephants back in the jungle,
I'd wash the Amazon river and clean the oily Carib & Gulf of Mexico,
Rub that smog off the North Pole, wipe up all the pipelines in Alaska,
Rub a dub dub for Rocky Flats and Los Alamos,
Flush that sparkly Cesium out of Love Canal
Rinse down the Acid Rain over the Parthenon & Sphinx, Drain Sludge out of the Mediterranean basin & make it azure again,
Put some blueing back into the sky over the Rhine, bleach the little Clouds so snow return white as snow,
Cleanse the Hudson Thames & Neckar, Drain the Suds out of Lake Erie
Then I'd throw big Asia in one giant Load & wash out the blood & Agent Orange,
Dump the whole mess of Russia and China in the wringer, squeeze out the tattletail Gray of U.S. Central American police state,
& put the planet in the drier & let it sit 20 minutes or an Aeon
till it came out clean.
Allen Ginsberg
Boulder, 26 April, 1980
.
Apr 6, 2014
Apr 6, 2014 at 5:51 AM UTC
Haughty Sphinx, whose amber eyes
Hold the secrets of the skies,
As thou ripplest in thy grace,
Round the chairs and chimney-place,
Scorn on thy patrician face:
Rise not harsh, nor use thy claws
On the hand that gives applause—
Good-will only doth abide
In these lines at Christmastide!
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A slow walk up Centennial
and I still can’t find the place
it's menacing cold, and muted
and the street sweeper and winter breeze
move the Turkish blend and dust pack
A novice mixed duet plays
Brahms on broken strings
the erhu and overcoat
veiling a blue heeler and sphinx
Maggianos is settled in the center block’s
luminance and seasonal drape
it's festive warmth bringing home Bedford Falls;
the flavour and character and social circles
Annie’s playing and the keeper's singing
(his word pool and slander
raising everyone in arms!)
the crowd chants and mayhem breaks
as crawlers and contemporaries
smash their steins
Dark alleys and dripping holes
hold a grim reminder of the pierced underside
paddies flutter and forge their words
with a broad manifesto
Night gardens come alive
(slowly sapping the respite)
hunched figures and ladies in lace
shuffle inside the big orange door
Oct 19, 2017
Oct 19, 2017 at 11:25 PM UTC
there once was this guy named oedipus
of whom it was prophesied
that his mother he'd marry, his father he'd ****
at a place where three roads were tied.
his mother and father discovered their fate
and tried to dispose of their son
but he ended up in corinthian lands
and their efforts were all undone.
then a drunk guy ruined his happy facade
and to an oracle oedipus went
who repeated to him the dank prophesy;
he fled corinth, not taking a cent.
while on his sojourn away from his home
he encountered a party royale
which rudely pushed him off of the road,
and angered he slaughtered them all.
then from that blood soaked three-way path
he nonchalantly flew
not knowing that his father was
the man that he just slew.
he continued his journey until he reached thebes
where a sphinx held the city hostage
so oedipus solved the bird-cat's lame rhyme
and released thebes from its *******
as a reward, the people of thebes
gave oedipus their widowed queen,
unknowingly joining mother and son
in a marriage that was unclean.
after they ruled for twenty good years,
during which four children came,
a plague was induced by the sheltering of
the man by whom was slain
in searching him out, oedipus found
that the murderer was really he,
so long ago. the man he had killed
at the place where were joined roads of three.
but by finding this out, he also discovered
that his wife and his mother were one.
he gouged out his eyes after her suicide;
in her own bedroom she was hung.
as it turned out, oeddy exiled himself
but the seeds of his misery were sewn.
so he went to colonus and wandered around
and this is the end.
Jul 30, 2010
Jul 30, 2010 at 5:14 AM UTC
Homage Kenneth Koch
If I were doing my Laundry I'd wash my ***** Iran
I'd throw in my United States, and pour on the Ivory Soap,
scrub up Africa, put all the birds and elephants back in
the jungle,
I'd wash the Amazon river and clean the oily Carib & Gulf of Mexico,
Rub that smog off the North Pole, wipe up all the pipelines in Alaska,
Rub a dub dub for Rocky Flats and Los Alamos, Flush that sparkly
Cesium out of Love Canal
Rinse down the Acid Rain over the Parthenon & Sphinx, Drain the Sludge
out of the Mediterranean basin & make it azure again,
Put some blueing back into the sky over the Rhine, bleach the little
Clouds so snow return white as snow,
Cleanse the Hudson Thames & Neckar, Drain the Suds out of Lake Erie
Then I'd throw big Asia in one giant Load & wash out the blood &
Agent Orange,
Dump the whole mess of Russia and China in the wringer, squeeze out
the tattletail Gray of U.S. Central American police state,
& put the planet in the drier & let it sit 20 minutes or an
Aeon till it came out clean
4.7k
How is it, that I'm so perplexed?
You utterly confuse me
Your words, your actions, your motives...
They leave me dumbfounded.
It's always a game of guess and check
Except, I'm never right
How is that?
Do your words have a double meaning I fail to catch?
Perhaps there is no double meaning,
I'm pondering apparitions.
I'm slowly going mad,
Trying to figure out your game,
A hamster on a wheel,
Spinning and spinning in circles, dizzied.
You are my greatest challenge,
My 1,000,000 piece puzzle,
My epiphany forever out of reach,
My unsolvable riddle,
My terrible sphinx,
You will never reveal the solution, will you?
Apr 11, 2016
Apr 11, 2016 at 11:13 PM UTC
I am lovely, O mortals! Like a dream carved in stone,
And my breast where poets are bruised to the bone
Formed to inspire each in their quintessence
A love as eternal and silent as essence.
I unite Ledaean pallor with a frozen heart,
I scorn movement for it displaces my art,
A riddling sphinx, on a throne in the sky;
Never do I laugh and never do I cry.
Poets, at the feet of my imperial pose,
Which I seem to adopt from statues grandiose,
Will consume their lives in studious indulgence;
For I have, to enthrall those docile paramours
Pure mirrors to enhance all beauties evermore:
My eyes, my large, wide eyes of eternal effulgence!
May 5, 2015
May 5, 2015 at 1:32 PM UTC
i’m a kitty cat, a minx,
a playful mistress
your enigma, the sphinx
and my fur’s wet
****** into water,
trying to escape the rain
or the plunge,
happiness is a stain
the more ya pet me
the more i bite
the more you pick me up
the more my tail twitches in spite
if today you drop me
i’ll love you
but if today you love me
i’ll hate you
Jun 1, 2018
Jun 1, 2018 at 2:20 PM UTC
Ye who have passed Death’s haggard hills; and ye
Whom trees that knew your sires shall cease to know
And still stand silent:—is it all a show,
A wisp that laughs upon the wall?—decree
Of some inexorable supremacy
Which ever, as man strains his blind surmise
From depth to ominous depth, looks past his eyes,
Sphinx-faced with unabashed augury?
Nay, rather question the Earth’s self. Invoke
The storm-felled forest-trees moss-grown to-day
Whose roots are hillocks where the children play;
Or ask the silver sapling ’neath what yoke
Those stars, his spray-crown’s clustering gems, shall wage
Their journey still when his boughs shrink with age.
3.5k
you have me running in
dangerous circles (round and round and round and)
or is it you that circles me ---
the helpless prey
?
((well, all the helpless can do is pray))
those alien teeth, they
close around my jugular, only slightly
i forget what (wheeze) air is for
she's are no declawed cat!,
scream my back and cheek and neck and arm and mind
[*that's gonna sting like a ***** in the morning*, warn-growls she,
predator woman
(chimaera, monster she, sphinx)]
just ******* let me go and let's
(make this mess)
get this done
i can feel the words shriveling off before reaching my tongue
[i know the chase to you is foreplay but]
mercy! mercy! timeout!
--- has no one told you that it's ugly to play with your food?
May 17, 2012
May 17, 2012 at 11:44 PM UTC
and bright knights
the phoenix spread
her smouldering wings
the Sphinx dethroned
future kings
the Queen of Hearts
a heartless nag
Baba Yaga the stilted
house . the hag
brave Beowulf
dragged down to drown
the monster Grendel
by him was slain
Io was a cow despised
watched by a creature
with one hundred eyes
the lawn is made
a land of gnomes
mushrooms grow
in garden homes
where are
all these things indeed?
they are in books
just look and read!!!
SøułSurvivør aka
Write of Passage aka
Invisible inc
Catherine Jarvis
Feb 12, 2015
Feb 12, 2015 at 3:19 AM UTC
Like burnt-out torches by a sick man’s bed
Gaunt cypress-trees stand round the sun-bleached stone;
Here doth the little night-owl make her throne,
And the slight lizard show his jewelled head.
And, where the chaliced poppies flame to red,
In the still chamber of yon pyramid
Surely some Old-World Sphinx lurks darkly hid,
Grim warder of this pleasaunce of the dead.
Ah! sweet indeed to rest within the womb
Of Earth, great mother of eternal sleep,
But sweeter far for thee a restless tomb
In the blue cavern of an echoing deep,
Or where the tall ships founder in the gloom
Against the rocks of some wave-shattered steep.
2.8k
Love blossomed in the darkest night
Morn's gilding beams to spite
Night Primrose preened by tender blight
As Sphinx Moth, soft tips caress; sugary nectar slight
Perfumed aroma doth prating, intoxicated courtier incite
Glazed petals with dewy fans stream delight
Golden cup a succouring armchair from which passions alight
Delicate, cream veil eclipses pallid, stolid moonlight
With availing breeze your dreamy parasol on Cupid's wing takes flight
Aug 10, 2011
Aug 10, 2011 at 6:23 PM UTC
In the civilization game
The mind is a sphinx riddle
Signpost projectiles suffice to be words
Can you be centered in intimacy
Knowingness consuming vulnerabilty?
Our shadows are our ruins
Illuminating social foliage
Love's incisive lacerations
Conforming to moral memory
I savor the overwhelming
Aug 19, 2013
Aug 19, 2013 at 12:01 AM UTC
The sun sought thy dim bed and brought forth light,
The sciences were sucklings at thy breast;
When all the world was young in pregnant night
Thy slaves toiled at thy monumental best.
Thou ancient treasure-land, thou modern prize,
New peoples marvel at thy pyramids!
The years roll on, thy sphinx of riddle eyes
Watches the mad world with immobile lids.
The Hebrews humbled them at Pharaoh's name.
Cradle of Power! Yet all things were in vain!
Honor and Glory, Arrogance and Fame!
They went. The darkness swallowed thee again.
Thou art the harlot, now thy time is done,
Of all the mighty nations of the sun.
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The world’s great age begins anew,
The golden years return,
The earth doth like a snake renew
Her winter weeds outworn;
Heaven smiles, and faiths and empires gleam
Like wrecks of a dissolving dream.
A brighter Hellas rears its mountains
From waves serener far;
A new Peneus rolls his fountains
Against the morning star;
Where fairer Tempes bloom, there sleep
Young Cyclads on a sunnier deep.
A loftier Argo cleaves the main,
Fraught with a later prize;
Another Orpheus sings again,
And loves, and weeps, and dies;
A new Ulysses leaves once more
Calypso for his native shore.
O write no more the tale of Troy,
If earth Death’s scroll must be—
Nor mix with Laian rage the joy
Which dawns upon the free,
Although a subtler Sphinx renew
Riddles of death Thebes never knew.
Another Athens shall arise,
And to remoter time
Bequeath, like sunset to the skies,
The splendour of its prime;
And leave, if naught so bright may live,
All earth can take or Heaven can give.
Saturn and Love their long repose
Shall burst, more bright and good
Than all who fell, than One who rose,
Than many unsubdued:
Not gold, not blood, their altar dowers,
But votive tears and symbol flowers.
O cease! must hate and death return?
Cease! must men **** and die?
Cease! drain not to its dregs the urn
Of bitter prophecy!
The world is weary of the past—
O might it die or rest at last!
2.6k
Close-mouthed you sat five thousand years and never
let out a whisper.
Processions came by, marchers, asking questions you
answered with grey eyes never blinking, shut lips
never talking.
Not one croak of anything you know has come from your
cat crouch of ages.
I am one of those who know all you know and I keep my
questions: I know the answers you hold.
2.6k
Ardent lovers and scholars austere
Love equally, in their twilight years,
Powerful and gentle cats, their masters’s pride,
Who like them are cautious and indoors abide.
Friends of science and sensual delight
They seek the silence of the night;
The dark god would have them guarding graves,
Were they so humble as to be his slaves.
They have the air of a sphinx on a throne
With thoughts of solitude they lie alone,
Who seem to sleep in a dream eternal;
Their fertile ***** are full of magic sparks,
And gold patches and sable marks
Sparkle dimly their eyes infernal.
Jun 18, 2016
Jun 18, 2016 at 11:12 AM UTC
JESUS emptied the devils of one man into forty hogs and the hogs took the edge of a high rock and dropped off and down into the sea: a mob.
The sheep on the hills of Australia, blundering fourfooted in the sunset mist to the dark, they go one way, they hunt one sleep, they find one pocket of grass for all.
Karnak? Pyramids? Sphinx paws tall as a coolie? Tombs kept for kings and sacred cows? A mob.
Young roast pigs and naked dancing girls of Belshazzar, the room where a thousand sat guzzling when a hand wrote: Mene, mene, tekel, upharsin? A mob.
The honeycomb of green that won the sun as the Hanging Gardens of Nineveh, flew to its shape at the hands of a mob that followed the fingers of Nebuchadnezzar: a mob of one hand and one plan.
Stones of a circle of hills at Athens, staircases of a mountain in Peru, scattered clans of marble dragons in China: each a mob on the rim of a sunrise: hammers and wagons have them now.
Locks and gates of Panama? The Union Pacific crossing deserts and tunneling mountains? The Woolworth on land and the Titanic at sea? Lighthouses blinking a coast line from Labrador to Key West? Pigiron bars piled on a barge whistling in a fog off Sheboygan? A mob: hammers and wagons have them to-morrow.
The mob? A typhoon tearing loose an island from thousand-year moorings and bastions, shooting a volcanic ash with a fire tongue that licks up cities and peoples. Layers of worms eating rocks and forming loam and valley floors for potatoes, wheat, watermelons.
The mob? A jag of lightning, a geyser, a gravel mass loosening...
The mob ... kills or builds ... the mob is Attila or Ghengis Khan, the mob is Napoleon, Lincoln.
I am born in the mob-I die in the mob-the same goes for you-I don't care who you are.
I cross the sheets of fire in No Man's land for you, my brother-I slip a steel tooth into your throat, you my brother-I die for you and I **** you-It is a twisted and gnarled thing, a crimson wool:
One more arch of stars,
In the night of our mist,
In the night of our tears.
2.4k
so if we
stand still
smell the heat
of an enemy's
bullet through our veins
for once
court outcome
of supplanting views
imbibing another's sweat
casuist's bile
scrawled on prison walls
of savaged confines
they salute
their spiel
with the same
toxic hold
as we concoct
world views
venomous elixir
polymorphous maze
shadow of a sphinx
looms clearer
as steps leading
to torn pages
of feted book
uncover dichotomy
of a self split
so that shooting a child
of shunned genes
amounts to nil
for in but a blink
his uniform
arrives home
to stroke the
golden locks
of his only daughter
playing Chopin
Feb 16, 2019
Feb 16, 2019 at 5:31 AM UTC
Southern Icarus
by Michael R. Burch
Windborne, lover of heights,
unspooled from the truck’s wildly lurching embrace
you climb, skittish kite ...
What do you know of the world’s despair,
gliding in vast solitariness there
so that all that remains is to
fall?
Only a little longer the wind invests its sighs;
you stall
spread-eagled as the canvas snaps
and ***** its white rebellious wings,
and all
the houses watch with baffled eyes.
Originally published by Poetry Porch. Keywords/Tags: Icarus, flight, flying, hang-gliding, kite, glider, wind, canvas, South, southern, truck, unspooled
Note: The following poem unites Icarus with Tom O'Bedlam in a final, magical quest ...
Finally to Burn
(the Fall and Resurrection of Icarus)
by Michael R. Burch
I.
Athena takes me
sometimes by the hand
and we go levitating
through strange Dreamlands
where Apollo sleeps
in his dark forgetting
and Passion seems
like a wise bloodletting
and all I remember
—upon awaking—
is: to Love sometimes
is like forsaking
one’s Being—to glide
heroically beyond thought,
forsaking the here
for the There and the Not.
II.
O, finally to Burn,
gravity beyond escaping!
To plummet is Bliss
when the blisters breaking
rain down red scabs
on the earth’s mudpuddle...
Feathers and wax
and the watchers huddle...
Flocculent sheep,
O, and innocent lambs!
I will rock me to sleep
on the waves’ iambs.
III.
To Sleep, that is Bliss
in Love’s recursive Dream,
for the Night has Wings
pallid as moonbeams—
they will flit me to Life,
like a huge-eyed Phoenix
fluttering off
to quarry the Sphinx.
IV.
Riddlemethis,
riddlemethat,
Rynosseross,
throw out the Welcome Mat.
Quixotic, I seek Love
amid the tarnished
rusted-out steel
when to live is varnish.
To Dream—that’s the thing!
Aye, that Genie I’ll rub,
soak by the candle,
aflame in the tub.
V.
Riddlemethis,
riddlemethat,
Rynosseross,
throw out the Welcome Mat.
Somewhither, somewhither
aglitter and strange,
we must moult off all knowledge
or perish caged.
VI.
I am reconciled to Life
somewhere beyond thought—
I’ll Live in the There,
I’ll Dream of the Naught.
Methinks it no journey;
to tarry’s a waste,
so fatten the oxen;
make a nice baste.
I’m coming, Fool Tom,
we have Somewhere to Go,
though we injure noone,
ourselves wildaglow.
Apr 14, 2020
Apr 14, 2020 at 3:57 AM UTC
*two bottles of 70cl whiskey later and a few beers, popping sleeping pills for an actual effect worked with (it's ten past five p.m., i'm already mentioning ~ eleven minutes to midnight, so wait)... you get the shovel and broom ushering the ***** drinkers from a town centre in Leicester or Norwich; or you implant a hope to live in Scandinavia; you're basically laughing with a russian at that point: 'eh eh, where's lithuania?' 'ah **** it's next to yuri reciting poetry on the laika satellite.' 'thought so.' german started from monkeys, sent one into space... slavs started with dogs... like all good people, i would too have kept the cats grounded in atmosphere; well, the oedipal riddle began with a sphinx, so i'm more than ready for the cerberus.*
i'm not going to repent for
my alcoholic metabolism,
i'll wait till you turn into ostriches
ostricizing vegans for anaemia
and bulimia and the london fashion show;
bullseye market that cares for
diaphragms and diabetes; sure the arabs
are alcohol free, but diabetic
looking into the sand dunes like looking
at dunes of sugar.
Feb 28, 2016
Feb 28, 2016 at 12:02 PM UTC
Osiris is the Egyptian god of the afterlife and triangulation is a mystery within the context of interpersonal dynamics.
The world, as we know it, is subject to greater influences, despite the manipulations of those who presume to be sophisticated.
I love my cat. He is my familiar Sphinx of the West, and I have been acquainted with his wizardry for hundreds of years.
Dec 31, 2013
Dec 31, 2013 at 4:08 PM UTC
She is silver-nitrate and coal.
An Egon Schiele painting
stretched on dream
and sullen sparking glances
tipped in gold.
It is starlight, burnt through a velvet field
that chains me here.
It is honey and hot wine
that haunts my sleep,
by the onomatopoeia
of obsession.
With a lunar caustic kiss
she hexed me.
Woven in her six-sided circle
those rubies in the
hollow of her neck
and fingers that shimmer
like ice.
The Sphinx of Eros.
That heathen curl.
Smoke to hide the ivory!
Spoke to lock the memory!
Caught in click clack shutters
by the silver foaming pond.
Froth from the chambers of
ebony rough hewn hearts.
O starlight!
That raptures me hungry
for bloodsoaked lips
red as fury!
And I sang;
O lord & commoner, I sang!
To the weepings of a sombre, sudden,
stinging violin,
in empty vinyl crackle
from music soaked in paint,
with a voice
like burning velvet.
Mar 27, 2012
Mar 27, 2012 at 1:51 AM UTC