"starkly" poems
Speaking of broken hearts
and mended fenced in mem'ries
I am painting skies
of tangerine, saffron
& an illuminated lilac hue
against the starkly contrasted crisp cornflower blue, stretching canvas that is
along with all the
other blindingly beautiful colors of a twilight sky
And those dripping cotton candy stratospheric clouds
Ice crystals freezing into supercooled
water droplets
Streaking the sky in cirrus whispers
..I hear them whisper, "hello"...
Blinding beauty
through unadulterated sunlight
I am fleeced like a lamb
watching in awe,
..in wonder
then stomping sounds
of coming thunder,
Finding depth and height
out in the stratosphere
Blinded by the
After Light
or afterglow
affected by the amount of haze
I'm in a daze
...as I am reaching
High above the fading light
of a brilliant early fall sunset
I take a big breath
of that sumptuous air
and twirl my skirted legs
my painted toes
where I know
I am back
to solid ground
Appreciating the last time
I say sleep well
to you my dear
summertimes sweet mem'ries
and the fun we had this year.
Cherie Nolan © 2016
Sep 1, 2016
Sep 1, 2016 at 2:39 PM UTC
*in the midst of an emerald slumbering forest
laced with pungent scents of jaded wood
a burgundy blushed tail
of a chestnut hued fox
scurries as copper sunbeams part the day
a hospital lumes starkly nearby
its aura exudes hints of melancholy
commingled with faint impressions
of halcyon futures
not yet lived
at neighboring dartmouth
a student sprinting to class
drops his crimson colored backpack
the prospect of cancer
far from his budding consciousness
my beloved sits patiently
pondering pensively
his last chemo treatment
elusion of death
not far from his mind
i feign to fend off future catastrophes
watching letters scramble across my screen
earnestly writing
in a desperate attempt
to be with him forevermore
an aquamarine hummingbird drenched in tranquility
senses the inverse
its amber tipped wings stand seemingly stationary
while it steals a quick glance through the window
curious at chemical infusions meant to heal
my beloved walks out
of the austere building
with rose colored glasses i feel
that we’ll whirl on the tips of gilded stardust
dancing with another chance to fly
©2016janetaylor
Apr 30, 2016
Apr 30, 2016 at 1:19 AM UTC
As I move on the streets of Mangalore city on the west seafront,
It is an afternoon and the sun is starkly overhead,
Burning, roasting in the hot-dry sky of May.
While en route the beach I passed from a really silent street,
Then I pass from the side of the Rosario Cathedral,
The only person I notice was a young vendor.
The vendor is a little girl who looked determined to empty her stock,
I peered into her basket and was pleased to see in it,
Even today I believe she sits there by the street.
Sitting in the rain or in the harsh, merciless sun she prays to the God,
Just back to her the church apparently has some priority line to Him,
She bribes Him a beautiful sea shell or two if He sends some buyers...
Though I do not need any sea shells, but I still go and spare a look,
I choose a pair of green sea shells and pay her for it,
Because she sells the sea shells by the street side.
Aug 27, 2014
Aug 27, 2014 at 9:55 AM UTC
I have something to say
but my thoughts scatter
like crisp dead leaves
abandoned by their trees
obscure as ominous clouds
concealing the sun
my wounds bleeding all over time
but these pages remain starkly White
as I’m choking on a mouthful
my mind ruminates
on every last tormenting word
that continues to remain
Unexpressed
May 22, 2018
May 22, 2018 at 12:43 AM UTC
The stately oak stands solemn and quiet
Alongside the bucolic covered bridge
Its branches hanging downward as if tired
Leaves falling slowly into the current
Of the rain swollen Watauga River
The shadow of the tree clinging starkly
Onto the weathered century-old planks
Speaking of a time not so far removed
When bridge and tree was the gathering place
For a day's respite from a hard week's toil
Farmers, merchants, wives and children gathered
With picnic baskets filled with fried chicken
The women chatting in their new bonnets
The children wearing last year's Sunday best
While the men make bets like Roman soldiers
The low mound where the tree's roots are anchored
Bare earth beneath the lowest hanging limb
A crude stool of newly cut pine upright
While waiting for the next unwilling guest
Courthouse clock chimes the hour of Golgotha
r 14Jan14
Jan 14, 2014
Jan 14, 2014 at 12:40 PM UTC
I didn't see her for three days
then she was back
but her color was not
where her hair parted
was starkly arid
on her forehead
wasn't the dot of red
and her saree was bleached white
yet nothing was amiss
she intently scaled the fishes
cut them neatly into pieces
though a piece of her went missing
She knows well
for no price
can she stop the sale.
Aug 23, 2016
Aug 23, 2016 at 6:02 AM UTC
greece, even, in the nostalgia decades sometimes wore american clothes
but she spoke no english, was starkly unilingual
save for the french "sillage". she was the reason they teach you safe ***
and abstinence: the reason they couldn't trust you
she dressed more american than everybody else; she was a beautiful cockeyed anachronism
your jimmy stewart baby blues on her, brandy-sanctioned
better than the everyman. and a hallucination of your stand-in therapist
asking you "why should there be guilt if there is pleasure?"
and you replying horselike/illogical "it is the unconscious fantasy that i can be torn apart"
Feb 10, 2013
Feb 10, 2013 at 7:52 PM UTC
staying up late just thinking of all the could-beens and should-beens that could and should have been us.
what if we'd tried a little harder? persisted a little longer? held on to each other as tightly as we should have?
would you be by my side then, instead of the empty void staring tauntingly back at me?
would our hands be clasped together, interwoven,
your eyes that once bored right back into the back of mind haunting me wherever i would go,
your touch tattooed into the skin of my palms as they once were?
what if i hadn't let go?
what if i'd learnt fate's cruel lesson that
possessing the trait of fickleness never awarded anything but everything slipping past, earlier?
would you be willing to stay with me then, and forgive me for all the wrongdoings that i would inevitably cause?
would we have ever evolved into more than just an idealized dream drawn from a fragmented memory,
the idea of an irrevocable love that despite having been mulled over for what would've seemed like an eternity,
has never seen the light of reality before?
then again, everything does appear only better when it's all in your head.
when i can still pretend that you are who i expect you to be,
and i may be accepted for who i am truly,
excess baggage of unneeded insecurities and imperfections weighing me down and all.
is it better to be cleanly rejected or to be
torn down bit by bit,
night by night,
spent just staring at a blank screen and waiting,
hovering over imperishably,
pure naive hope fuelling the drive to continue delaying the inexorable?
foolishly believing that crossed fingers and
any lingering feelings that hadn't yet been sieved away by the
jaded culture we exist and drown in today
would perhaps, even if accidentally,
as if out of a fairytale that i starkly don't belong to,
send me a text back?
Jul 25, 2018
Jul 25, 2018 at 7:06 PM UTC
It is a pleasant place to lie,
amidst a copse of Olive trees.
The tears of muses, never dried,
have effaced the writing from your stone.
These hills about once knew your step,
your strong and confident poet’s stride.
Robert, the Royal Fusilier,
Once thought dead, but you’d survived.
Your home is a museum now,
Your Black Cordoban hangs on the wall.
I step into the little den
where you finally said farewell to all.
Looking out your window I
Espy a naked maiden flee.
Skin starkly white with Golden hair-
The White goddess? Could it be?
At any rate, a comely lass,
Beauty to whet a poet’s pen
I’ve heard you were inspired thus
by lovely muses, now and then.
Your domestic arrangements
Were quite strange;
celibate infidelity.
I’ll admit that’s one I haven’t tried.
Nor would I like to, honestly.
But your genius can’t be ignored.
by honest literary men.
I’ve spend hours in Ancient Rome
transported by your fertile pen.
Farewell Robert, Beryl too
You knew he’d be yours at the end.
Muses fuel a poet’s pen
But cannot love as wives may do.
Apr 22, 2012
Apr 22, 2012 at 4:49 PM UTC
Before the time of Legions strong
When Romans wore their tresses long,
Before the ape man rose *****
To view the world as circumspect,
Before the storms of red dust came
To render this parched land arcane,
There grew a tree of ugly norm
Of massive girth and height and form,
Ungainly so and so immense
As to astound thee to commence,
To fear the very sight beheld
On Africa’s savannah veldt.
The baobab rose from the plain
Unearthly, in demonic name,
An apparition to dismay
All those who dare to come this way.
Vaulting from savannah grass
To clasp the heavens in it's grasp
Then spread its’ limbs, as if to be,
All silhouettes’ eternity.
Giant Aloft in giant-less land,
Far more than thee would understand,
Mystic in its’ silent way
Eternal as the light of day,
Starkly silhouetted sight
Affronting delving sunset’s might.
M.
18 January 2016
Jan 17, 2016
Jan 17, 2016 at 11:01 PM UTC
he is sharp angles
bony elbows
knobby knees
and ribs protruding fiercely from
worn-thin
shirts.
honey blonde locks
plastered against his skull
and sweat
beads on a
translucent
brow.
he braces for the
pain
nails growing
teeth sharpening
body contorting
flesh ripping away from bones.
thick ropey scars criss-cross
over his back
and you could swear
those were
bite marks
along his spine.
he will shake and shudder
teeth clenched
eyes shut tight
against the horrors
but no matter what you ask
he will not answer.
a worn sweater hangs loose
around narrow shoulders
and dark
circles stand out
starkly
against porcelain cheeks.
when the full moon comes
in all it’s horrific glory
he will touch
your cheek
and send you away
with a sigh.
wine-red blood seeps
from claw marks
on a slender limb
and he kisses your worries
away
even as he weeps.
May 7, 2014
May 7, 2014 at 9:47 PM UTC
"Once upon a midnight"*, ghostly,
Partied many, dead ones mostly.
Feasting in the graveyard, sprightly,
Black fanged werewolves gorged, engrossedly.
In the bone yard, drab and squalid,
Apparitions (staring stolid
Neath the veiled moon, clouded lightly),
Sought fresh bodies, lean but solid.
Fiendish eyes shone, light and sparkly,
Ghouls and demons danced, so darkly.
Maggots munching mush unsightly,
Black blood streamed like ink, quite starkly.
Fetid flesh oozed, flowing freely,
Through the crypt doors, cold and steely.
Shadows, ashen, pranced contritely,
Ebon serpents slithered eely.
As it happens, all too often,
Zombies dimly closed the coffin –
Ra, the sun god, rising slightly
Hunger pangs were soon to soften.
If you ask, I’ll tell you blankly,
When you’re feeling dark and dankly
Come to where this happens nightly.
They’ll enjoy the feast, quite frankly...
;-)
* Apologies to EAP
Oct 8, 2013
Oct 8, 2013 at 9:17 AM UTC
I feel your absence in my sleep,
the two by six abyss where your body should be.
Crime scene lines in my mind stand out starkly on the sheets;
those lines of snow and desperate hoes stealing you away from me.
It's been weeks now where
rolled-up bills, razorblades, railroad tracks have become your new significant other.
The minutes tic-tocking by in my dreams,
without you they slink by so slow from my fitful doze.
I wander and wade in nightmares after smoking sheep and counting green,
the Sandman is stalking me, mocking me and I'm praying you were near.
I put the ghost of your body in this pillow
but a stuffed bag is no soldier, so with nothing to protect me, I lie awake with no lover.
5 AM: caked-up ***** cutting lines for you.
Do you feel like a rock star now?
Rocks of blow, star of skanks, putting the King in ******* pathetic.
Dictator of my days but just a distant memory at night;
did I imagine you in the sun? Did you actually sleep next to me once?
I never sleep on your vacant side.
Even while tossing and turning in the tiny hours of the night,
I can still feel the divide
from that thin white line.
Sep 5, 2012
Sep 5, 2012 at 9:42 AM UTC
A swingset sits in the yard, starkly vacant, silent.
A chair is stationed only feet away—the watchpost of an anxious pepere.
Only days ago I sat there, watching the child of my old age
Swinging, hanging upside down, proving to me and herself that nothing could scare her.
“Watch me,” she commands, daring the gods to do their worst.
All she needs from me is the occasional tribute to her skill.
All I need from her is to bless me with her being.
She is gone now, and there is no help for it.
An empty swing, a useless chair, and the ache of loss.
The swing haunts me with her voice and I listen to it in my mind.
Dante got it wrong.
It isn’t the dead who abandon hope—
Hell is for the living.
Jan 22, 2012
Jan 22, 2012 at 12:55 AM UTC
And suddenly, as if waking from a child's dream,
I am thrown into reality,
not awoken softly by my mother's warmth
but startled and bewildered to find her not there.
I exit the hazy surrealness of midnight rendezvous,
and the disillusionment snakes its way around my heart.
As if struggling to find my breath or finding myself alone,
I am starkly confronted yet again with my naiveté.
I am transformed into that little girl who trusted so easily,
and now, it is not just disappointment but also shame
that, like a vapor, evades every corner of my being.
To have believed in a dream and my own competence,
I am still that foolish little girl who never learned.
Perhaps, the worst part of gullibility is the knowledge
that the fool and the fooled will always be you.
Jul 18, 2023
Jul 18, 2023 at 5:05 PM UTC
This home is becoming
Like a weathermast of the soul
Beaten into responding silence.
To awaken here again
And to only wear this armour
As a riposte sufficient to self-assurance
And to rise, out of lazy eyelids and
Consider the opposing wind turrets
Laid as the proposition
All slack and starkly
Poised on the trapeze
The wallpaper durability of family headaches ;
The spurned lover's recurring luminosity
The marked and re-imagined lists
Detailing personal no-shows and defeats
Bookended by
The passing on of friendly eyes.
Assuming the universal, and in doing so, blindly holding out for the miracle :
For falling out of love is completely plausible
Whereas letting go of shame is mostly incomprehensible
Jul 7, 2014
Jul 7, 2014 at 1:44 PM UTC
"I don't want you to think I'm racist. I love black people! I just hate *******
Now, you will not believe how many people have said this to my face.
That they smile, thinking themselves so eloquent and clever,
Illustrates a problem to me much larger than the hatred of a race.
My tongue stays. I wouldn't want my "angry ****** to show her teeth.
She would ask if the color or the speech or the level of poverty made the black,
Or the ****** or the ***** or the **** or monkey or beast.
She may be eloquent and clever herself, but those white ears would never hear that.
We are conditioned to be blind and deaf and loudly ignorant to reality.
The rich and powerful have made us starkly numb to our own folly and pride,
So that we may believe ourselves to be indignant most righteously,
While we unconsciously hate all that is different, opposed, other, outside.
But I will be the same human with all my eloquence and cleverness, pride and folly,
Whether I am seen as "black" or ****** or maybe simply just "Cydney"
Jun 13, 2019
Jun 13, 2019 at 6:24 PM UTC
High atop the spire beneath a cloudless sky
the Cross stands forlorn Christmas is nigh
since long in the past time beyond recall
no bells chime here sung no carol!
But still its heart flutters as it hears the Lord's voice
*I carried your burden and set for you the choice
to do this world much good and love your fellow men
be happy in others' happiness take share of their pain*!
Kind Lord mutters the Cross *men still live for gain
act the way it seems your blood was shed in vain
they war and breed hatred between them raise wall
hanker for pelf and power in their loss they squall*!
The church lies abandoned starkly white and bare
only the Cross bows to the Lord in silent prayer
still hoping it's not far away when the bells would ring
the Lord would carry the Cross on his second coming!
Dec 23, 2015
Dec 23, 2015 at 8:56 AM UTC
Khabele is an enemy from the spiritual world
Debacularly rocking peace of people in my village
My Hamlet, or my country, my continent or in my piety,
He starkly hates anything human, especially the family,
His tool box against human family is a composition
Or dark Patchworks of opportunism, ethnicity, poverty,
Fluidly disordered gender, abortion, **** diseases, war,
Crude religion, divorce, self-pride, shallow thought,
Infertility, love for money, laziness, corruption,
Politicization, public indiscipline, self-idolatry,
Shameless thievery, looting and gambling,
Dec 12, 2016
Dec 12, 2016 at 5:15 AM UTC
It's been a few years,
since I picked up that blade
determined to slice the sadness
out of my viens.
Ridges and indentions
of scar tissue
litter my body.
Yet, even now,
when I get really down,
I still want to add to my collection.
I am starkly aware
that it's not right,
not at all; but,
nothing else works quite as well.
Besides...
perhaps it's a punishment, too.
One that I deserve.
(d.d.b)
Jun 10, 2015
Jun 10, 2015 at 10:15 PM UTC
It's always your words that undress me.
Sobriquets, honeyed and multiple--
neck slowed over by narrator's
pale parlance. It's always my hands
that undress you. Motion diverse,
more adept than I expected. My
fingers feel separate and strange.
Our skin feels so starkly the same.
Dialectic crack in monologue,
made soft by the hot tongue of discourse.
Your open vowels morning-like, balmy.
I want you phonetically, fondly.
Our languages, various as Babel's.
We touch like snakes in love.
Dec 14, 2012
Dec 14, 2012 at 1:02 AM UTC
When there is no hope
When everything seems hopeless
When there is no reason 2 laugh
When everybody around u desert u
When the dark is starkly dime
When the moon refuses 2 comeout at nite
When d bulb refuses to bring light
When d cloud is pregnant
Then came a ray of lite
Then the moon comes out shining bright
Then the stars follows winking
Then the cloud burst in laughter
Which brings HOPE
Mar 1, 2013
Mar 1, 2013 at 7:14 PM UTC