Stratos poems on Hello Poetry

Kyle Kulseth Mar 2013

This town is famous
     for pretty faces,
     broken legs,
     and misplaced names--

A sentence penned,
An Oxford comma
          dangling off the edge of pages,
setting off appositive phrases,
lighting fuses--accidental--
          phasing out of view and staging
     tactical retreats

The winds of February mark off
intersections
                           Dow & Broadway
Midnight laughs echo off stratos
     then fall back--
     snowstorms at midday.

Caught in the rain on Sunday evening
this place don't stay awake so late.
Except, perhaps, for pretty faces,
misplaced names, or broken legs--
But forget the Oxford comma
         retreating, drenched, off of the page.

ej Dec 2015

Stratos

I'm sorry this long winter
Has destroyed you so

I love you.

But if leaving you behind
Means moving on,
Then I'm all for it

TS Garrett Feb 2017

Meditate

Today I place palms

in partnership

let the raised mazes

at my fingertips

interlock the hemispheres

of soul, of my body,

and of my metaphor

let the leash of time

slip to the floor

freeing my grasp

so my hands may be

liberated to face the sky

kiss goodbye

the culling clockwork

swim gradually outward

to thin the clutter

with silence

let sensations dance

percolate if they must

taste of them

with the tip of my tongue

allow the blossoms of thought

to heave

their tension my way

and just as quickly

watch them fall away

to evaporate from solid

to liquid

to vapor in my own lap

settled just beneath

the fuzz on my nose

feathers are

what become of me

my lungs waft

like cotton sings

whispering on breeze

my strictness

is weightless armature

is stillness

and momentum one

my posture is centered

above in-breath

my attitude finds

altitude of out-breath

I watch my own evacuation

lightness

spreading to stratos

gravity hugging

darkness unconditional

eyes closed

I become the distance

reached for and embraced

in the grasp

of my own depth

I witness open flame

I peel the onion

Ian Cairns Feb 2014

Atmospheres

As I watch the sun evaporate today
I'm sure you wished it luck
Awaiting its safe return
This is a strange sensation that I'm facing
Bittersweet memories of when you faded away

You've been gone for quite some time now
Leaving true intentions in open view
You only crossed the ocean upon first snowfall
But this transatlantic separation
Has only brought me closer to you

It reminds me that distance was our specialty
Our love cast out into distant atmospheres
Only vagabonds dared to see
And we examined every inch of stratos between us
Connecting all the constellations we perceived

But you cried out for home far too often
And I tried to climb through space far too soon
It seems my courage was only matched by your convenience
A collection of defenses sent out on hot air balloons
A contradiction floating freely to the moon

So while I hold onto every flickering excuse
As you journey through the unknown
I hope you realize how fitting this trip may seem
For the first time you left your worries at home
A step you always skipped with me

Esz-Pe-Bea Jul 2014

Somewhere in the Pacific Ocean.

Burning in the Midnight Sun.
On the Other side of the World Tonight, It's Bright.
Tossing and Turning To the whims of a Jet-Stream.
Steam Heat from
The Other side of the World Tonight.
Who wants to be
a Cement Sidewalk,
Stuck to the Earth,
And Waiting to Crumble?
Waiting For the Sun to Rise
In the Western Skies
Just one time.
How can you sit in one place for so Long
and not Die,
Knowing it's Bright,
On the Other side of the World tonight.

Somehow...
Someway...
We'll all make like Storm Molecules.
Racing For the Sun,
We'll evaporate up out of this ocean,
And Climb towards the Stars,
Only to find ourselves
Condensing
When the Sun Reaches back around to
The Other side of the World tonight...

Something in me makes me want to leave this Atmosphere,
turn into a satellite.
I'm Sunken Ship.
I'm Staring up through thousands of feet of ocean.
Slowly becoming Deformed
By Crushing Pressures.
It's midnight or so
I'm told.
It's the time where days change places,
And I'm stuck in the cold part of the pool,
where the blue turns to black.
where it gets hard to breath.
And It's the farthest place away from
The Other side of the World tonight.

Rocketship come save me.
Take me out beyond the 7 Spheres,
Atmos and Stratos and whatnot.
Up beyond earthly gravity's reach,
Where Sol reigns beyond need for days,
and it matters not what happens,
On the Other side of the World Tonight...

Originally written on a sidewalk in Cincinnati Ohio.

Ken Pepiton Sep 2019

Leela: Game two

Playing gods, or these unthingable things men
have made as real,

Yes, Asrael, as real as Israel

El, Yah, we say. We dateamtrutotau taos-itic branch

which reminds me, I was
asking Ithiel,
properly, why
we don't just stay in these higher realms, way up
stratos
pheric mare's tales, I think I heard those called… and look

higher still, an other-form of cloud, the butter milk sky kind
drifting to Arizona, in 1967
by sundown, for two pre-hippy no-longer-children
one of the desert joined one from the great
sea of grass where buffalo
once roamed

and never

was heard a dis
couraging word

QR code scanned- Quite Real Verified Bio

id est, it did lead here. A semenal moment,
in current
reality.

Suppose, you make the mandela,
having never been exposed to the making of such a thing,
having never seen the similarity of the forces forming
sand paintings in Tibet
and Taos

Art Ifiers Intuitions see things
flow
words pick up dust by being signifiers of sounds

heavy hearts hear no rock and role-play tragicom psyche, eh?
we
be weary o' bein' wary so

we speak out anarchical as all hell's ever imagined upto now or everafter,

words is free to mean as I mean, nomattawhacha thothewgnew

this is past the sweeping apprentice and the self-willed broom,
eons beyond Arnold being back
AI am this
which triggers the sound track with Gene Autry Back in the Saddle Again

goin' for a spin in a dj mode no way

okeh. Pauselah right quissssssssssense rest and reassure

QR
the same QR esme cu
assumption of the ******* meme into 2019 accepted

the game is not over. que the song

there'll be time to start all over

Leela is called in some realms The Game of the Gods, in other's it's a fools' game.

#senile #amusement

Phil Smith Dec 2014

I Will Not Be Disturbed

I will not be disturbed by this mother of three.
I will ignore her Cheshire makeup,
her matching white tennis club outfit,
and her wild dreams of a life on Mars.
I will do this because she is what I am not--
she is a ghost,
while I am free.

I see her in the stratos,
I see her in the sky.
I see her in the people,
I see her in my mind.

I am made of crooked a l p h a b e t soup and
I have seen the mother of death and rebirth and
understanding.
I have faced her in her milk cart prison,
and I have dreamed of her shining yesteryear.

For there is more than alphabet s o u p in the can.
There is a flood of m e m o r i e s reactivated by the
breaking of a
mental dam.

Now I see that I am aging swiftly and poorly,
for my years have escaped me,
and have long been forgotten.
Farewell, Stanley Elementary School;
So long, Marblehead Charter;
I remember you in J e w i s h tones
and chlorine-crusted c h a i n l i n k fences.

But a f r e s h s u n
s l o w l y r i s e s, my dear,
and I k n o w
that I m u s t
become
a peacock
once a g a i n.

Ellie Belanger Aug 2016

I thought,

It has been ages,
Whole geologic stratos of time arrayed by color and not by year,
Since I have breathed deeply and loved warmly and felt that a fire was burning for me in someone's bedroom window.

But I feel the moment approaching,
And though scared and unsure I may be,
I ache in wait for the inconsolable events about to hit,
Knowing that there is new life during and after it has come.

— The End —