"stratified" poems
Why do we feel so compelled
to stratify ourselves above the natural World?
What it is that justifies
our Cult of Humanity?
Do we seriously believe
that our gradient of experience
is so much wider and more rich
than are those of dogs, or cats,
or fish, or bats, or lice, or ants,
or spiders, or birds, or trees, or flowers?
Wherefrom do we think
the notions of faeries, nymphs, sprites, and our Gods arose,
if not for the Natural world
as well as the traits of our psychology
made anthropomorphic?
Who are we
to suppose such things
just because we are us:
be this not the same sort of exclusionary cultism
whence are born sexism and racism
and ethnocentrism?
Anthropocentrism?
Who are we to belittle
any one thing on this God-given plane of Reality?
Are we really that caught up in ourselves
that we forget whence we've come?
All is but Energy
All merely is.
We are a part of that,
as it is a part of us.
All
is a holistic system
not a stratified hierarchy of experience:
that concept is artificial.
Is it so hard for us to see?
Is it so difficult for us to be humble about this?
Is it such a blow to our such delicate psyches
that we cannot concede such universal harmony?
Or is it that it is beneficial for some
for the many to remain deaf and blind
to this wonderful, liberating truth?
I think we all know the answer,
we just forget to look for it
and if we find it,
we become too distracted to embody it.
I know we're better than that.
I know we know better.
Do you?
Jun 8, 2014
Jun 8, 2014 at 8:46 PM UTC
Red chinstraps
Wet blood, slowly drying in the evening breeze
Folded into wells of clouded waves with vague concentric origin
Closer, a flattened helmet, orange ochre blazing
Sun sinking, stars chasing
Warrior's stratified locks wisp out to vanishing points
Freckles of sputtered bronze
Slowly becoming red
Slowly becoming an omen
Foreshadowing tears to be wept
Horses that lay silent
On the eastern Ural Steepe
Nov 21, 2021
Nov 21, 2021 at 9:21 PM UTC
*So many ways I think thee
my thousand stir of dreams have broken
as the drifted clouds
as the ripples of ocean
petals of the roses have grown wither
my moon's eyes have covered with shadow
sometimes her pale black mystic
face has made an illusion,
as the chaos has risen within the bean
I have alienated through time,
isolated from you,
my love,
It has grown again as stratified
rock beneath the ocean
layer by layer in course of time
where the footprint
of ripples marked as the sign of life
It has metamorphosed
and seemed compact
with a few traces of tears,
on the dark stone
where till it's a little bit alive -
@ Musfiq us shaleheen*
Aug 26, 2014
Aug 26, 2014 at 1:51 PM UTC
The life a man does boast is but a tryst
Between the egos of his Cosmic gods,
Who jest at gnarly oaks and monoliths;
At twigs we humans foolishly are awed.
Yet such does not render us simplified;
Too great is Cosmo's pride in their amour,
But secrets we'll uncover, stratified;
Acceptance, such a silent petrichor.
So let the veil be lifted, let us see,
Existence as gossamer as the veil,
Fragile as the primrose, less the beauty,
On us, we hope, these Lover's dreams won't fail.
At night we dream of worlds beyond the stars;
Sits on their smallest finger, all of ours.
Apr 8, 2015
Apr 8, 2015 at 9:51 AM UTC
Take the **** just stepping inside
Rejected and invited
A stratified disguise
Then a tentative trial
A round for a smile
At the bar where we iron old lies
Appraise the net cost
Are both of us Lost
Or will we be pirates tonight?
Break my nails just prying you out
Here for a jest and a joust
Drunk off of comfort and wine
Lean on what's real
Like a shaky third wheel
Struggling to stay in the lines
Do we settle our debts
Or dare raise our bets?
Does our broken poetry rhyme?
Dec 7, 2018
Dec 7, 2018 at 9:56 PM UTC
from the eye wall
thoughts of imminent rain
banked clouds assemble
black and ominous
with saturated breath
will not be denied
their time to rage
against the numbness
of each little death
barometers fall
coastal fortification
futile sandbagging
forlorn gestures
against the flood
a tropical depression
jet-streaming blue
wild moon tide
to desolate shore
precipitation
gray accomplice
faithful torrent
stratified walls erode
sodden wood, bone
unbalanced homes
collapse gracelessly
no match for gravity
or the merciless sea
Oct 27, 2016
Oct 27, 2016 at 12:43 PM UTC
Pencil, chalk, charcoal and erasers
Walking hand in hand on a canvas
Stretched and condensed observations
Obstructions as concentration pins
A walk and talk in a dark museum
Stored birds, killed preys, stuffed game
Tall giraffe, the lion, lionized Victorian art
Quirky strokes of eccentric dashes mashes
Staring in glasses to capture emotions
Art resident mumble whilst erupting muscles
The ***** strikes to meet my ****** gaze
Slandered, pasted and matted with prejudice
Mouth flowing with filth like a sewage drain
Don’t we all come from holes, sticks and bones?
Don’t we all come in holes, sticks and bones?
A lost sight of an insight, a skin stratified
Misted and tainted with toned stinky ****
A pigmentation structured in perceptions
A plea to ****** stereotypical resolution
A streamline of vagaries, unsettle the gallery
Jan 14, 2016
Jan 14, 2016 at 5:38 PM UTC
My ignorance
Is no longer blissful
I said "I love you"
And I meant to
I commend you
For not returning the favor
Clearly
You would not
Have meant it
Demented thoughts
Would be brought
To the mind
Of a false lover
But I
Am not bitter
I’d wither
With her
Miscommunication
Communing
With a Miss
Whose kisses
Tell stories
Weak lips
Trying to force
Passion
Though mine
Blazes like a fire
You coldness
Froze me
I recognize
Dislike
Distaste
Dissatisfied
With this stratified
Hate
Hiding beneath
The layers
And presented
As a gift
A curse
Is wrapped beautifully
It used to please
But love’s police
Seized
All the properties
Although
My ill-gotten gains
Will be forgotten
My repression
Of your memory
Will return
As déjà vu
If I see you
In
Another life
Sep 30, 2010
Sep 30, 2010 at 12:42 AM UTC
silence swings over waters as if...
it rehearses its unseen so...
to fill in the depth of blanks
a stratified time inhabits the landscape
orphic dreams morph into your flesh
the wind collates its courage and rage
like someone who falls into a self
my words bite the shape of a scream
the hunger of love descends language into crumble
the beauty of lungs full of air is misleasing
when I am waiting for silence to miscarry its void
Jul 19, 2025
Jul 19, 2025 at 5:19 AM UTC
Clean
your
sooty
grime
stratified like a chopped tree.
Knitted into clothes for me.
Follow the wicked edge of
the yellow road,
Inclined to doze in the junction of my
doorway, carry with you dragonfly-brooch
wings to flutter.
Naked newborn to an age of
social settings
on max— to touch
me, to you.
Take the chomps,
lend me your spine,
joints,
match me.
Eat what I have to bear,
like a child of my purple-blushed
foulness.
A bucking ***** like a war-torn, skeletal femme,
used.
Here,
open up.
I'll lose a tiny hand.
Apr 24, 2013
Apr 24, 2013 at 2:43 PM UTC
Your fragrance remains
In high corners & cupboards
Your hairs painted into
The fabric of the walls
Filigree veins
Your very skin as dust
Sealed
Stratified
Into the place
Our home
Your finger print
Clear on the gloss painted frame
Eye lashes in the mirror corners
Your broken wine glass fragment
Beneath the fridge
With my contact lens
Staring blindly at
Each other
For recognition
Your rounded buttock curve
Sits in the leather
Of your favourite place
And your fragrance
In high corners & cupboards
Mar 24, 2010
Mar 24, 2010 at 3:19 AM UTC
these mountains
surround
bare bones rising
sharp subtle silent
stratified waves of color
crumble into gifts I can hold
your legs
strong, furred, angled against mine
your mountainness
impossibly I am held
Jan 9, 2017
Jan 9, 2017 at 11:48 PM UTC
One cannot
simultaneously
'follow' One
who taught the sacred virtue
of kindness
and the discipline
of empathy
and the wisdom
of compassion
allthewhile condoning
a hateful
and stratified
system.
The penultimate,
infinite,
impalpable,
ineffable,
immortal,
transcendent,
conceptual,
conscious Divinity
needn't a Temple;
for t'is existence, itself,
that is the Temple.
Further, I venture,
that t'is we:
the Mortal Divine,
the blinded,
muted,
deafened,
ignorant,
schismatic,
fractured,
lost,
material,
incredulous ephimerality
who seems to so need the Temple.
Who are we
to be so arrogant?
Why can't we just respect diversity?
What the ****
Life is sacred.
Mar 15, 2016
Mar 15, 2016 at 12:37 PM UTC
Before social stratification (differences in wealth and power versus lack thereof) hunter/gatherers rarely fought. They were all equal and sensed it.
But when groups became big enough, they formed cities like Sumer in Mesopotamia, and concomitantly some people got wealthy and powerful while most did not.
Society, therefore, became, in time, stratified and in more time created superficial distinctions among the people of that city.
Obviously, my commentary is grossly oversimplified, but the point I'm going to make here is spot-on; namely, what has never changed among human beings is the locus of everyone's innate, inviolable worth, which is within each one of us, not without.
But the people of Sumer and other cities that followed were duped by the illusions of wealth and power as being worth, and that led to stratification of different groups based on false premises. And that led to making some groups slaves while the wealthy and powerful remained, they thought, superior.
This was the wrong turn in the fork in the road humanity took.
Humanity thus forgot we all have the same worth, and this inimical illusion only ballooned over millennia.
The right fork we need to find is the one the hunter/gatherers had taken and the whole world needs quickly to take that fork again before we all destroy Earth.
TOD HOWARD HAWKS
Mar 7, 2021
Mar 7, 2021 at 3:10 AM UTC
Nurses bursaries scrapped
Wages capped
Students unpaid, betrayed
By a stratified social system
That ***** on the helpless and the selfless
"Gratitude" is expressed
Not by redressing the balance
But with a clap
Followed by a stab in the back:
Oh, snap.
We're sick of your hollow applause: pause
Rewind your mind three years
To when you jeered
And blocked their cause with a cheer:
Tell me, is your conscience clear?
And when we think
You can't sink any lower
You throw a fresh blow:
Increase front line pay
But decline the same for our warriors in blue
Who saved your **** neck on that ICU
And the saddest part
Of this sorry story, Tory
Is we're outraged and dismayed
At the disdain you've displayed
But amazed? No.
Your track record is traceable
Applause a mere mask
Tasked with shielding years of austerity
That's crippled our NHS
With alarming prosperity
This proverbial middle finger
Will linger
In the memories of those who chose
A career of care
Over privilege and flair
Jul 22, 2020
Jul 22, 2020 at 4:04 PM UTC
my loose leaf like sway
situates in light, right in
wind, life
leaves me loose
along the precipice of this
coagulated noose
oh hoots and *****
my boots cannot take me anywhere
today, they
lack distance to stretch
as string stretches all along
our stratified souls
they say, oh
give me a rest
so,
death;
must you
be such an ending
to this terrible mess?
I guess not, i guess
it is not the correct thing to discuss
Let's discuss the
superfluous stuff,
the dramatic tease of interest,
the emaciated conversations of puff,
please, please, situation
and
nothing
else, nothing
will tough the brave disguise
of this stuff
the life of this everything stuff
May 26, 2013
May 26, 2013 at 3:07 AM UTC
I’m nothing but a **** tied to my vices
I’ve always been cataclysmic and narcissistic
Trying to silence my mind shut up and listen
To your melody calling and dragging away
The skitter skatter mind of man in me
I NEED WANT WON’T CAN’T STOP!
Hark! The Fallen Angel in me resides
Recalling the child that once was is not never will be again
Taken by the illusive beauty of realms unseen
Covering the trap I’m now ensnared by
The LOVE CRAVE LUST MUST STOP
You’re the strength in my veins to get through each day
Yet also the itch of a tick on the small of my back.
You show me the serenity of stratified sunset skies
Then clip my wings to keep me from flying away.
I LOVE CRAVE LUST MUST STOP
Like an undertaker digging the ditch,
For the former resident of this toil torn body.
I’ve hit the bottom yet keep sinking deeper,
Into a tomb so low I can no longer see the top.
I NEED WANT WON’T CAN’T STOP
Because I’m nothing but a **** tied to my vices.
Oct 21, 2015
Oct 21, 2015 at 3:22 AM UTC
you’re not used to this is how you testify?
woe to thee who asked for ease to be denied!
since you’re better than others and cannot believe otherwise
i have no sympathy if that’s your reply
i don’t care if you’re levitating insufferably high
everyone deserves respect regardless of how stratified
kindness isn’t stupid, it’s beautifully dignified
if you can’t see that then you’re unqualified
to be of those I declare compassionately legitimized
if you were truly great you wouldn’t resort to abuses
you’d be who you are no matter how many uses
and while i believe in doing what one so reasonably chooses
my sympathies are immune to your pompous excuses
May 19, 2020
May 19, 2020 at 9:27 PM UTC
Long live labour, for she is just
Her truest servants for public triumph lust,
In common solidarity,
International confraternity,
Marx saw arrow of eternity,
Vindicate workers history,
In pure and sublime destiny,
When ruse no longer mystery,
We rise up, vanquish calumny.
Verse of 1917 a rapture,
Harbor we a love of life and all its creatures,
Considering the workers to be teachers,
Marx, the most exquisite of their preachers,
Saw all workers hearts as twins,
Not stratified by cash for sins,
Alas for freedom all not sunny,
World captive runs with blood to march of money.
Arise ye children from your mistake,
Like wealth through which the devil spake,
But off our ******* like feathers shake,
Revolution as ears strive awake,
Our laugh to have and eat our cake,
Cake for all, not just Versailles,
A voluptuous but tortured mile.
Reds rancorous, with passion riled,
Solidarity can't be defiled,
By radical community beguiled,
Communism waking to go wild,
The devil lost at cosmic blackjack,
Thought Trotsky, peasant, didn't have the knack,
But we have dealt red lucky flush,
And vindication through us rush,
Victory tasted sweetest lush,
Devil's wits do lack.
Feb 28, 2018
Feb 28, 2018 at 12:22 PM UTC
The Port Lincoln with a headed green
reminds of all the vanished love songs
tires of doom and cages of hope
some days the rawness cascaded
burning my sole with remnant matters
in a lovely world where we aspired
with fixed attires that truly perspired
At the heart of this desert bloom
where nothingness claims attention
at the hand of the sunken gloomy sun
which prevails the dry land it scorches
unveiling all the buried emotional cases
of utter regret and unknown possibilities
At the heart of the desert bloom
where the rain fades inside the sandy dunes
casting the breeze to the barren land
with unconcern perils and derailment
unveiling all the buried emotional cases
of utter regret and unknown possibilities
At the heart of a desert bloom
on the silvery aligned amber bridge
overlooking the stratified red rocks
where guanos and snakes rest and arrest
appeasing and hissing the untold secrets
At the heart of the desert bloom
on a mounted grill of unmovable waters
lying meters deep, overlaid by the patch
patterned with blackness and debris
as a heavenly breeze whispers of beginnings
At the heart of the desert bloom
where the past was long laid and cast
painted at the end of a two year past
of prolific and demonic disengagement
on passageways where all there is moves on
Jun 21, 2017
Jun 21, 2017 at 1:48 PM UTC