"superlatives" poems
I swam in your ocean, Anna.
I drank the salt of your skin
until it gave me hallowed sickness.
I told you,
I was never good at staying anyone's friend.
I spent three weeks convincing you I'd try.
When I didn't succeed, why did you act surprised?
You keep shifting shape.
And that isn't fair.
I got tangled in your weeds, Anna.
I struggled and howled,
you talked with warmth, ran fingers in my hair.
I told you,
I wouldn't live past thirty-five,
you said,
I wouldn't make it to twenty-five,
I told you,
I was evil,
you told me,
you were eviler.
I told you,
I was evilest,
you said,
**** superlatives.
I saw you drown yourself in yourself, Anna.
Wallowing in the cold wind
of one demented abecedarian.
You keep shifting shape.
And that isn't fair.
I told you,
to keep your feet moving,
you said,
I needed to stop talking,
I told you,
I was ready to marry you,
you said,
I would never escape my
ex-girl collection,
I told you,
Anna, if I can't have you
you're going to destroy you,
you said,
you'd like to see you try.
Let your waves crash against me,
let your wind carve,
I will say I love you,
until one of us dies.
Sep 25, 2010
Sep 25, 2010 at 7:04 PM UTC
She is the sweetest
The loveliest
The warmest
The kindest
Person I'll ever know
Who never wavered
In the weirdest
In the craziest
In the wildest
Moods and rotten days
Who holds my hand
In the the darkest
In the scariest
In the toughest
Times I've ever faced.
She dives the deepest
She goes the furthest
She fights the fiercest
Holds out the longest
For her prince and princesses.
That's why she is
The angriest
And the maddest
And the saddest
When I keep settling
For less than best.
She cheers me on
With a smile that is the brightest
With a love so selfless
With support so endless
That never changes
In every rise and every fall
When everything is hopeless
Her faith is the biggest
Still so fearless
Points to the Greatest
Who is the Reason for it all
She cries the hardest
She hurts the deepest
She's the most imperfect
The most human person I know
Still I'm using all the superlatives
Because she deserves the best
She's my mom
And I love her so.
After all the years of service
Your mom deserves a rest
It's her turn to be the princess
And remind her that she's
The sweetest
The kindest
The loveliest
The warmest
The noblest
And that in all these years so tireless
Countless lives were touched and blessed.
Aug 17, 2015
Aug 17, 2015 at 3:54 PM UTC
She is as lines to Bauhaus, oblique
In category yet commanding in form;
Her mind a pool of wealth and Grace,
Allusions to illusions, omega to
Alpha’s strongest gaze. I stand
Failed, distraught, lacking the
Dexterity of voice to call her name,
The temerity of will to regain her fair
Charms and affirmed charisma.
Lost I am within a cascade of
Superlatives and tribulation.
Were only she to have conquered
My mind, I would be of sound spirit to
Elicit some tempered comprehension;
Yet alas, I have been taken in soul
And I can do naught but wait
To see if she will one day return.
Jul 6, 2011
Jul 6, 2011 at 3:39 AM UTC
Most likely to joke
Most likely to balk
Most likely to start
a bar-fight.
Most likely to laugh
Most likely to pass
Most likely to
hold you high.
Most likely to croon
Most likely to croak
Most likely to hear
your heart.
Most likely to hinder
Most likely to leave
Most likely to
run too far.
Jan 25, 2013
Jan 25, 2013 at 8:58 PM UTC
~for Steve R. & Stephen Y.~
*"two regrets are mine -
not finding you earlier in life when...words would have carved for me a better road, and...not hand-ing you a touch, the perfect tightness-shake of one's hand reserved for fondest friends and the light press on one's back deserved for dearest brothers!"
~~~*
the light press surety of five fingers on one,
oh, what messages it composes, oh, what duty weighty it transmits
dear brothers:
tho this hands-on handoff, this fly-over, is still a
mission unaccomplished,
yet no regrets, please!
men don't overuse superlatives,
what you lovingly uncover in my rocket-verbal Mars probes,
is more telling, more revealing of who you are,
than any hand-tightness shake,
any touching grasp, could e'er convey
yet I promise, forsworn upon the cross
of the north west Pacifico latitude and longitude
a latitude that just happens to intersect
my olden, new english state,
knowing that Interstate 90
a straight transcontinental shot,
and the car keys just an impulse grab away
to tell your arms, your face, your back, our hands,
that when you love my poetry,
you love me,
you friends,
are an affirmation of Pablo Neruda's words:
***"whoever discovers who I am
discovers who you are"***
fondness is not distance constrained,
touching grasps pay no obeisance to time,
the honor of your affection permanent
affirmed and enflamed,
all mine, sublime, to lead my heart,
where to lay hands upon your back,
to realize even more
our single united rhyme
Nov 7, 2015
Nov 7, 2015 at 4:58 PM UTC
When I say I love you
I mean like a friend
When you say I love you
It means without end
You mean it like a father
Loves His child
I mean it like a feather
Loves the sky
When you say I would do all
I mean in the figurative
But you're more literal
Your life you would give
Turn heaven upside down to get to earth
Turn earth right side up to get me to heaven
Turn your life to death to give me worth
Turn death to life to make us one
And you called me son
Not servant
Not one of the hundreds to come
Not pilgrim vagrant
You called me son
You say I'm free
You say eternity
Literally
And you're not being figurative
You're not playing with hyperbole
You're not using superlatives
You're just being wholly
True
When you say I died for you
Sep 17, 2014
Sep 17, 2014 at 11:03 AM UTC
Most likely to Break hearts:
She lives in a world of ***
Hands around her neck, hickies on her hips, and blood on her boyfriends tattooed fists
Dating boys who are twice her age
She got straight A's but never will live up to her potential
because her *** is shaped like a heart, and her heart is shaped like a dollar sign
Most likely to Live in her dreams:
She wears twigs in her hair and presses flowers in notebooks
Scattered around her eclectic cottage
Living off her woodland knowledge
Literally a ghost, no job, no life, no love
no ******* reality
EDITED: MARK AS VOID (she dumped him and he fell apart)
Most likely to Elope after high school:
I can picture her running away with him
Living in ***** motels on concrete streets
Surviving on paper plates of buttered toast and styrofoam cups filled with bitter black coffee
kissing under stars in empty parking lots
She loves him so much not even I can see them falling apart
Most likely to Fry his brain on drugs:
Alone in his room
Bowl packed, lungs filled with skunked up smoke
Laughing at nothing listening to loud *** rap music
I can see his future its as empty as his head
Tripping up the stairs to his heavenly room to **** down more stale air
and taste clouds
Most Likely to Become a Stripper:
He looks like a stud with hair of gold
Picturing him with dollar bills being stuffed in his G string is an easy image.
His solid heart makes him strong
but his craving for a boy to love him makes him weak
I love him
EDITED:I AM NO LONGER A ****** BUT IM STILL UNLOVED
I am just most likely to die a young ****** drunk on ***** high on illegal drugs, melancholy about nothing, and empty inside.
Nov 25, 2015
Nov 25, 2015 at 11:41 PM UTC
i wish to reveal a most precious thing
as Spring has begun
my dearest Daddy’s Birthday is done
he is not a man of celebrations
i want to disclose this personal’s manifest
as his blueprint, i am really beatific
i am very fortunate to be able to recollect
all and everything
to be your beloved daughter
is one most precious and delightful evidence
such a coziest feel to have you in my presence
you embody all that is calm and peaceful
no other impervious Daddy then you, my handsome sensitive
your BirthDay, dearest Daddy is never nebulous
the reputations you left us are all fabulous
you told me tales, they are in fact realities
you are one of a kind, your mind so sublime
you constantly cared and loved me, i am your prime
i love to tell superlatives about you
you deserve the most, dearest Daddy,
i am very proud of you, of your humor and your visions
your cartoons, drawings, and your fascinating paintings
you conjured magic in all your writings
C.C. was your weekly talkings
Charlie was your weekly walkings
in the world of Charlie Chan
i am very fond of you, my very talented Daddy
i know your world too, owned by you as a stage performer….
i remember everything, every detail hidden in my mind
i wish to reveal the most precious thing
last night i went to your place, i was wondering
you were not there, i started sobbing….
© Sylvia Frances Chan
21st March 2017
Mar 24, 2017
Mar 24, 2017 at 11:35 AM UTC
We hobble along with outrage fatigue
And watch as nothing ever exhausts
Our Machiavellian leaders' use
Of the media to win at all costs.
False story lines prevail.
To hell with accuracy and precision.
Sowing distrust of higher learning
Solidifies their paranoid vision.
Watch how their destructive disdain
For expertise gains vitality
As people's opinions and feelings stomp
On any form of objective reality.
Watch as they rewrite history;
Notice how data can be erased
As they become suspicious of much
Information that's science-based.
Language becomes weaponized:
Hyperbole, salacious lies,
And slippery superlatives
Celebrate truth's demise.
Party loyalty: that is key.
All that matters is the sale.
Hijacking democracy
Becomes the goal: the holy grail.
Mobilized by grievance, they
Inflame fear and anger. They hope
That we will find scapegoats to blame
When we are at the end of our rope.
A general illiteracy
On issues that affect our lives
Keeps us all in doubt while they
Create fake news and sharpen their knives.
Ah, how they want you to fear
Government, which is ironic,
For they themselves are government.
Look at their smiles, cold and sardonic.
Give equal weight to both
Sides of arguments, they say.
That's how they can justify
Bigotry and lead us astray.
While extremist views go mainstream,
Blurred lines make life hazy.
Keep watering narcissism,
And you will see it grow like crazy.
Their careful manipulation of language
Proves how much their rhetoric's swollen.
The people find it hard to accept
That basic freedoms are being stolen.
As we lament the death of truth
And wonder how it came to pass,
Before we cast blame we must
Peer into the looking glass.
-by Bob B (9-28-18)
°Inspired by "The Death of Truth" by Michiko Kakutani
Sep 28, 2018
Sep 28, 2018 at 11:37 AM UTC
i do not write love letters often. i am not good at them.
my words are clumsy and ill-fitting. i live in superlatives,
exhaling exclamations, loving at high altitude, among the
cloud vapor and wind, where the sun burns so hard it
bathes everything in holy white. but it is not enough for you.
i drop the pen and pick it up and begin again. i stop and start
and stop and start and try to tell you. what you do.
how you live in my lungs and brain tissue and belly.
how you are flammable. how you Glow.
the things i don’t know how to say: they run wild in me.
they squirm. they tell me to tell you that i was alone
on the face of the moon until you dropped from the sky
and showed me something more. until you ran with me
down craters and up dunes. until i fell in love with you
while moon dust settled on our skin like glitter.
i asked you to bring me back with you, and you did.
your lunar flares quivered to life and we ascended,
watching that frozen american flag until it was beyond us.
we kissed on a backdrop of dark matter and i touched
your face in wonder. we kissed and the universe
bent before us. and to watch that happen.
to watch it happen brought a strange, warm pain
that split me in two.
two, as in our hands holding. holding, as in what you do
to my heart. heart, as in this brave drum-beating muscle.
muscle, as what it has taken for us to survive.
survive, as in what you teach me to do each time you breathe.
breathe, as in what i cannot do when i see you coming.
coming, as in breathless. breathless, as in my body.
body, as in rising. rising, as in love. love, as in everything.
everything, as in you.
Jun 9, 2017
Jun 9, 2017 at 12:32 AM UTC
Bravery is to stand alone
Pride is to stand tall
Power in this world
Is to stand and not to fall.
Truth now are superlatives
Leadership is lies
Survival is betreyal
Prays are only cries.
Honesty is razors
Steel against the flesh
See trough shattered eyes
What the lies have trashed.
Memory is endless pain
No where to escape
To give up's to ******
To compromise's to ****
Value what you have
Others ain't got ****
To live is to believe
Don't let them make you slip.
May 29, 2010
May 29, 2010 at 3:45 PM UTC
Romance with the death,
Survive after major injuries,
Love a complete paradox,
Find veiled happiness in solace,
And a self-satisfying episode,
Who doesn't want happiness,
Perhaps a disappointed fellow.
Top it all with the following loneliness.
Jan 2, 2016
Jan 2, 2016 at 2:07 AM UTC
I have tried here to create an Essay on Mother
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~with love, Sylvia FC
a Mother,
a GodMother,
a GrandMother,
the central figure in every family's life,
who has the quality of a professor,
the patience of an angel,
the power of Tarzan
the unique habit of keeping her family together as a united one,
with that special kind of love which we cannot see,
we as her kids can only feel it, smell the atmosphere of the cosy surrounds at home as we never could ever feel elsewhere...
East-West
at home with Mom is always the best!!
her cookies are the most delicious ones
we love to talk about her in superlatives
Mother a place to hide when we have fear or anxiety,
under Mother's wings is always a peaceful home-coming...
daughters love to write a great tribute to Her
as well as to Mothership
Some quotations from different sources I put down here:
First from the Bible:
"Honour thy mother and thy father" Bible: Exodus
"As is the mother, so is her daughter" Bible: Ezekiel
And now from other sources:
"So for the mother's sake the child was dear"
"And dearer was the mother for the child" (Samuel Taylor Coleridge 'Sonnet to a Friend Who Asked How I Felt When the Nurse First Presented My Infant Child to Me')
"All women become like their mothers. That is their tragedy. No man does. That is his" (Oscar Wilde The Importance of Being Earnest)
And the last quotation is mine:
"A Mother is the most complete human-being on earth,
the caring and loving person,
the only one to whom daughters write a greatest tribute,
the safest place to come home...
a Mother is like Home...." (Sylvia Frances Chan)
© SYLVIA FRANCES CHAN
Nov 7, 2014
Nov 7, 2014 at 11:07 AM UTC
lightning doesn’t strike twice
two feet and two knees that nobble occasionally,
and chatter like teeth in an arctic freeze.
Together in harmony.
Now since the rain clouds
washed those other clouds away,
and you were drained.
When you breathed a rainbow,
golden soul,
and drew the route of you in the window,
pain.
Primary coloured moments;
exposed in chrome,
caught in time,
no remains.
But then the stars and superlatives came to play.
And the memories fade.
When the night first spoke and the sun laid to rest.
He spoke of Moondust and mistrust of the Government.
They told him once,
and they told him twice,
that science could only be defined by what we know.
So he searched the stardust on the seabed,
and seeked what he sowed.
Oceans away from home,
only to piece together tiny shards of shattered stars,
with those telescopic time machines that he used to own.
May 6, 2016
May 6, 2016 at 5:49 PM UTC
The drifter and the comely young women who gleamed with charisma walk passed the rabble-rousers on their way to tie the knot
The rabble-rousers cheer, tossing out superlatives, praising their oncoming matrimony
The young woman is chomping at the bit to finally settle down
The drifter is on the same boat, he can't keep living the life of a rolling stone
He's gonna give the married life a whirl
She has her dress in a brown paper bag and he has on the shiniest cuff links this side of the Pacific
Some say they just portrayed a happy couple
But behind closed doors they had hidden intentions
But I'd wager that they truly loved each other
But my my opinion is superfluous, they know in their hearts what they're doing is right
So they got that going for them
They make their way to the ****** who is set to marry the two
Until they are ambushed by pinheads with the gift of gab and know it all's who know nothing but still try to talk out of their ***** even though their heads are already wedged tightly up them already
Egregious questions and tauntings of habitual bullshitters
What was God thinking during their creation?
Good thing the worst of them all has been tarred and feather and ran out of town on a rail, or so I've been told
They finally reach their destination and say their vows right off their cuffs
Say I do, kiss with just me in attendance
And leave all these sheep all these irritants behind
And embark on their new life together
Aug 12, 2014
Aug 12, 2014 at 4:21 PM UTC
You toss superlatives at me
like a short order cook
flings eggs at a griddle
I love you more than any man has loved a woman.
A ring, a daughter's name, a retirement plan.
I love you the max.
You are
the water bottle I take to work
the jars of canned fish hiding in the cupboard
the baking supplies unused on the kitchen table
the night that falls
the patch of green that joins the sidewalk to the street
the bedspread I crawl under
alone and waiting when I can't sleep.
You are for me.
You are. You can't not be.
May 16, 2014
May 16, 2014 at 5:58 AM UTC
As for me, I chose the alternatives
To do what is right without the superlatives,
To love people without any threat
A choice too many have not made yet.
A loving but jealous and wrathful god?
Even those words put together sound odd.
If this omnipotence were on the level
Why not smite the heck out of the devil?
I never understood that stuff about Eden.
Why have just one tree off limits even?
To people who were basically children
Why was part of paradise ever forbidden?
Any parent will tell you about their kids
They would do exactly as those two did.
You couldn’t keep them away with a truncheon.
Those kids would have a ****** luncheon.
Oh, and what a self-righteous creep was He
To do what what he did to Job endlessly.
It has always sounded evil torture to me;
The work of a cloud-bound twisted bully.
Then for no reason anybody could ever tell
He created a son and then cast him into hell.
He let the Devil make a punching bag of Jesus.
This God creature seems to do what he pleases.
So what about this legend is so wonderful
That we heap money on priests by the basketful?
We create huge bejeweled palaces everywhere
And insist they are houses of God and swear
To visit them will make us all godly creatures.
Yet we demand no solid proof of those teachers.
If a car salesman delivered like that on a promise,
We’d take him out to and pound him into pumice.
Nov 17, 2016
Nov 17, 2016 at 3:54 AM UTC
I only caught glimpses of his eyes while he spoke
words, lacerating this pneuma
and stuffing superlatives in this innermost being.
the wisdom I believed I possessed tumbled like Jericho
and I could hear the audacious screams of the Israelites
like blood torrents in arteries.
it’s a shame, I thought. He had a good heart.
pomegranate pnumbras flicker like fire behind my eyelids
and it burns there, too.
can I leave?
a smooth muscle ***** pumps blood and serotonin through platelets back into arteries
and I hungrily drink this newfound oxygen.
and all around the splintered cage
I saw orange slice smiles and white yacht clouds drifting through a blue ocean.
but a quick slip up pulled me away
and the faceless effigy stood pristine with metaphorical eyes,
of which I only caught a glimpse.
Mar 27, 2019
Mar 27, 2019 at 5:35 PM UTC
*If you can't handle someone's worst.
Then you don't deserve that someone's best.*
Jun 25, 2015
Jun 25, 2015 at 11:56 PM UTC
Umbridging the gap
and the platitudes of word-whores
as well as the Encyclopedic pimps of posh
spiced with lingual ice...
Because I am a simpleton
with a thirst for the Beloved
and its discriptive meanings, I am
scholarly lacking
Juxtaposing my script to refer
to references Grecian or urn,
enflagrante artisan
spurts with superlatives and
personified iambics of rhetorical lines
limned with deep shagrin
because my verbs are linear
even when my chicken scratch
struck midnight a match stick
flame to illuminate
my poetic fluffer's formulae
schisms from my own mind's magician hat...
Not to be-little or slight those hands walking
that yellow the pages
with slothly seeking rote
for meandering bibliographies
a librarian's histology fingers for Captain
Cook / exploration's verbose
exploitation if at most
connecting dots treasured maps
of purposeful / placement for imagery
in the textiles
of poetry's destined and enlightening
cloak & dagger or a Throw
or a goose-down warmth
of Love / to blanket the night away
just as would a mother's / tucking in
from the day's overwhelming
lack of reverances, referenced
oh how to closely listen / or live
beyond the history
to be in the moment
comparing and sharing
our joys and the power of now . . . keep it simple
because I am a simpleton with a thirst
with a thirst for the Beloved,
the Truth of a promise / endowed Tao of Us. . .
Dec 25, 2015
Dec 25, 2015 at 1:22 PM UTC
Bravery's to stand alone
Pride is to stand tall
Power in this world
Is to stand and not to fall.
Truth now are superlatives
Leadership is lies
Survival is betreyal
Prays are only cries.
Honesty is razors
Steel against the flesh
See trough shattered eyes
What the lies have trashed.
Memory's an endless pain
No where to escape
To give up's a ******
To compromise's to ****
Value what you have
Others ain't got ****
To live is to believe
Dont let them make you slip.
Jan 28, 2015
Jan 28, 2015 at 9:33 AM UTC
Every time I sit
On the peak
The sky laughs at me
.
Every time I win the race
The future laughs at me
.
Every time I look at her
Her soul laughs at me
.
For I am not capable of
Reaching those superlatives.
Oct 26, 2019
Oct 26, 2019 at 11:27 AM UTC
He will take his coffee black
And alone, though you will observe one day
That he will sometimes, surreptitiously sweeten it
When he thinks that you aren’t looking
The bad weather of his cigarettes he always putting out
Will insinuate their way through his curls
And flavour your kitchen
In strange tastes and lingering long gone stains
He will dread his hair when he’s anxious
Fearful or caught in a bedsit lie
Fingertips finding cures for traps in
The knots and tangles of escapism
And he will smile. Absently and presently
Nodding in all the sign here dotted lines
Murmuring the correct kicked-out-of-home
Superlatives to all your wonderful, desperate ideas
Do not trust his put upon grin
Do not lose yourself in back alley, bottle-cove
Teeth flash and spark, fight or flight smiles
He will have put up this defence before
I know he refrains from cruel words and pauses
Considers his actions and dismisses his first thoughts as cruel
He will look like he’s been caught with one foot
Caught in the cookie jar open door
Just because he doesn’t say ***** doesn’t mean
He doesn’t want to.
His tongue has sculpted this word well before
And the aftermath left him as he called her and apology
This will show control, not concern
And this is measured in proven glances
Designed to test theories
And the limits of his patience
He will wait till he is tucked right into you
To let the lodger act fall
And he will say this house is his
Even if you built it
He will wear an excuse a hundred miles
Or until he is next alone, whichever get’s there last
He will not last
He will not shut the door behind him as he goes
But instead leave a cruel breeze
In the shape of abandonment
His tenancy touch will not
Ask for a deposit back
Nor will he leave you a forwarding address
For all your last warning words
Undelivered on your tongue
Jul 3, 2017
Jul 3, 2017 at 5:10 PM UTC