"tenure" poems
how sad to be misunderstood
to be evicted from life
to have the full tenure
of a torrid human existence
gesture horribly at you
in faultless reputation
like that of a rancid rage
over a lost trinket
or to be quarantined
while fingerless skin scolds
and noiseless voices are raised
in a donated generosity of savage ignorance
striving to make copious amends
in vain efforts to regrettable
slow acting poison that boils the mind
oh how sad to be misunderstood
such varicose viciousness
oh it’s sad quite sad to be misunderstood
to live through and inoculated hour glass
giving limitless time to a wildfire of idiocy
and when your breath speaks they laugh
black laughter that shatters wet umbilical truths
shudders
knowledge gestures to smoking nostrils
oh how sad, how sad it is to be misunderstood
to be drenched in the rain but not get wet
in which antiquity rests with its
mythologised stupendous ill effects
getting vivid shadows massed all around
oh how sad it is to be misunderstood
until dactylic, hexameter, elegance
completes and slithering syllables
by their antiquity focus a shuddering shriek
that sends an exploding heart through your chest
Oct 3, 2013
Oct 3, 2013 at 4:56 PM UTC
The stink of fish on earthen streets
A hot wind blows from ochre hills
Black faces shine with brilliant teeth
Street market ***** doth cure all ills.
Redness in her plaited hair
Rhythm in her steady tread
A harmony of balance, she carries
Water jars on her head.
A market girl is singing
As she sits among bananas
The drama in her music
Is as dusty as the street,
It fills the air with magic
As it lilts above street chatter
In the atmosphere of Africa
Where new and ancient meet.
The goat boy herds his docile flock
Through camel trains and bales
The steamer tethered at the dock
Announces that she sails
With billowed steam and mournful wail
It echoes through the town
And the planter and his agent
Bargain with a harried frown.
The bleating of the goat herd
And the stench of fish and dung
Is as ordinary as Africa
In the searing mid day sun.
Zanzibar is spices, Zanzibar is Stone.
Club Zanzibar is whiskey on the rocks
Consumed alone
Or shared upon the balcony
In the shadow of a palm
With the turquoise Indian ocean
Reaching out beyond the arm.
Do you see the dhows are sailing?
Do you see the fishing nets?
Do you hear the oarsmen chanting?
Did you see black muscle flex?
Have you watched the dripping sweat
Cascade on alabaster brow?
Have you inhaled the scent of Africa
And allowed it to allow?
Colobus monkeys in the treetops
Narrow lanes in the bazaar
Dull white walls adorn stone buildings
And the rupee is by far
The favorite tenure of the Island
Since the days when slaves were sold
By Arab camel caravaners
Who traded coin for young black gold.
East and west collide in concert
Africa and Asia blend
The Sultan's mix of race and spice
In Zanzibar, beyond lands end.
Marshalg
Mangere Bridge
3rd June 2008
Oct 13, 2009
Oct 13, 2009 at 11:06 PM UTC
Come and hear the tale of a falling
This failure of a king, his story appalling
Come and hear of his last moment's calling
This man whom we once called our king.
A mad king anointed with power in mind
Crowned by desperation, crowned by the blind
A tyrannical king; No worse will you find
For this man is a servant of Hell.
He comes and he swears in God's holy name
To cater the people and lands that they tame
But it's I who knows of his little game
The political regime that he runs.
He sits on his throne and barks at his men
Demanding the whys and demanding the when
Slowly but surely he wears the string thin;
For the people may tolerate so much.
He works through the town, donning his crown
A hat that is envied by all in the town;
For the man is rich, the man is renowned!
This man whom all call their king.
Beneath him men die, but criminals don't pay
Put them to death, that's what I say!
This kings way is in no way the right way
But we the people can do naught but pray.
But good men exist, whom jail the unjust
Good men who work to earn the town's trust
And these good men speak out, shaking out the dust
And speak out against their king
The king starts to fear, his gate is now closed
And he starts to regret the options he chose
And now by good men this king is deposed
By good men this king is denied.
Now we call him a tyrant, we call him a fake
We spit on his image, his throne we forsake
We take up our arms, pitchfork and rake
And march to his door to knock.
Some killed by guards, but good men prevail
And blood rains down like late Summer hail
And in the end we hear the king wail
His death is announced the next morning.
Good men cheer and king's men glance back
Wondering what it was the mad king lacked
Though who didn't expect his castle ransacked
For was not the king of the wicked?
It matters not in the end, you will find
Good men un-knotted this terrible bind
They laugh and jest at history behind
And cast themselves to a new king.
But this ballad of history will soon be repeated
For in the halls of recurrence it is seated
This tragic comedy of rulers so heated
This tragic tale of a king.
May 5, 2013
May 5, 2013 at 3:53 PM UTC
Is it thy will thy image should keep open
My heavy eyelids to the weary night?
Dost thou desire my slumbers should be broken
While shadows like to thee do mock my sight?
Is it thy spirit that thou send’st from thee
So far from home into my deeds to pry,
To find out shames and idle hours in me,
The scope and tenure of thy jealousy?
O, no, thy love, though much, is not so great;
It is my love that keeps mine eye awake,
Mine own true love that doth my rest defeat,
To play the watchman ever for thy sake.
For thee watch I whilst thou dost wake elsewhere,
From me far off, with others all too near.
2.9k
her dog put to slumber. thin as a puddle. there at the end would whimper with any footfall on a gentleman’s coat.
-
her pup a yip
in a backpack
when on occasion
she'd punch
a skateboard
Oct 23, 2013
Oct 23, 2013 at 3:39 PM UTC
blood now is the accoutrement.
night's tenure is the morning's
leasing: what will continue to
light like a beacon in this
vicissitude is the flash
of a snuff-nosed nozzle.
no sound is heard.
no bones were felt
trembling.
all the voices were muffled,
thrown into a makeshift exodus.
the pains will be etched away
like moss unraveling the secret
of wall upon wounds like old scarves.
but the ground,
which has girdled this resounding feat, will never forget:
death's squadron enters. harbingers.
what has hidden them in the lull
has now sung severances:
a distance closed
by a fusillade
of bullets.
Sep 14, 2015
Sep 14, 2015 at 10:28 AM UTC
Every employee's name was listed in the address field
Except for one
The one I never noticed
That we never noticed
We all marched into the meeting room as ordered
Found the CEO on an extra tall stage
To tell us
"Today is Emma McGurk's last day
But she says it's the first day
Of her tenure
As Director of Forecasting of Unintended Consequences
She's not going
So I need all of you, all 300 of you,
To help me terminator."
(Or was that terminate her?)
So we gave each other Brady Bunch nods
I had to look up to make eye contact (or is that I contact?) with superiors
Then we marched to
The cubicle of Emma McGurk
Me remembering what Santa Ana had said:
"With a few hundred more men like the San
Patricios, Mexico would have won the battle."
And the battle wasn't to be won by us
It was to be won by Emma McGurk
The CEO tried to move her
Ten of us tried to move her
Then one hundred
And then all three hundred
Even I made an effort
But she wouldn't budge
So we had to move...
To another building
Hearing that Emma McGurk was still ensconced
In the position existing only in her noggin
Until finally the old building had to be imploded
A fifth-grader winning the honor of triggering
That dusty downfall of Emma McGurk's cubicle
And the building that sheltered it
It wasn't until Signing Day Eve
That I saw her again
Pouring ink at a haiku-con
"The pay wouldn't be that bad," she told me.
"If it was by the snicker instead of the word."
Jun 8, 2012
Jun 8, 2012 at 9:35 PM UTC
Words…..because words are all I have……..:) Edgar
endearments generosity incantatory new sagacity surprise heresy dissipation violating abyss language warning culminates dalack obdurate serving waiter ossuary occurrences tortured beware silence calm bow physiognomy paucity occurrence exegeses transmogrification effectuation Adjunctive dairy tenure contention tenner reins happy indomitable, connoisseur artifice concatenation vivacity voluptuous solemnity enigmatic burdened glorious line huge……………………some I made myself…..:) Edgar
Nov 2, 2012
Nov 2, 2012 at 4:07 PM UTC
Just what do we know about
Ward Churchill?
That radical agitator,
That Colorado college professor
Most famous for calling
Twin Tower 9/11 dead technocrats
Little Eichmanns.
Noteworthy is the fact that
The United States Supreme Court
Denied certiorari,
Passed on hearing his claim of
Unlawful discharge.
Unlawful discharge?
Sounds felonious and vile:
Like pus laced with *****
A criminal secretion, like mucus
Smuggled past Customs:
Vaginal contraband.
Sorry, Ward.
We just don’t give a ****
Your fake Indian pedigree,
Your bogus Vietnam fairytales,
Your phony combat record,
Your forward ops recon
Way out in ******* Cambodia,
Fall flat like Buffalo turds.
You’ve been slick, Ward.
Hired originally to fill
Some gratuitous affirmative action quota,
Denied tenure in two legitimate departments,
You create some ******** academic discipline
For campus freaks & geeks.
Self-appointed Department Chairman,
A fraudulent college professor from the start,
Once tenured, a courageous warrior for free speech.
Describing Native American history as genocide.
Summing up American history as Holocaust denial.
Professor Churchill was all of these things,
And less.
But using the Holocaust metaphor
To anchor one’s fakakta politics?
That was the proverbial last straw,
The camel buster, if you will.
Especially since most of the
Stockbrokers & market analysts
Crushed in the rubble were Jewish.
Hava Nagila, Babaloo!
Sep 9, 2014
Sep 9, 2014 at 9:45 PM UTC
857
Uncertain lease—develops lustre
On Time
Uncertain Grasp, appreciation
Of Sum—
The shorter Fate—is oftener the chiefest
Because
Inheritors upon a tenure
Prize—
1.8k
For my mate Ernest W who cared....
Invisible in silky strands, a gossamer of lethal thought,
Drifting through the nether regions, touching on my mind.
Complication’s vagaries encroaching on the circumspect
Magnifying well beyond solutions I can find.
Nervous in the groundswell now, I feel it all inflating,
Inflating to a curtaining beyond my self control,
Waves of peristalsis in a shrill persistant keening,
Locking out the sanity in holding logic’s goal.
Waves of peristalsis in a bath of perspiration
Panic in a rupture at the coccyx of my spine,
Ravenously eating at the fabric of all reason
Ravenously gnawing at this rationale of mine.
***** in a puddle on the floor beside my footwear
Cloying is the stench of the ***** in my drawers,
Lost are the vestiges of any thought of decency
Gone is the differentiation in my flaws.
Clenching of hands in a bind of blue confusion
Catatonic slowness in arresting the decline,
Vaccilating eyeballs are rolling for the camera
And utter desolation is a flavour on my mind.
Why be concerned with the shaming of tomorrow?
Why come to terms with the maunderings of late?
Why face the music of the mirth and derision
When there’s a more practical direction to take?
Glide to the realm of the smooth overflowing
Slide in the slipstream oblivion makes,
Slip the bonds of your sad mortal tenure’s
Awful array of destructive mistakes.
Glide to the realm of serene independence
Glide far away from the troubled and hard,
Gone to the gossamer web of the ether
Gone to the nether world’s silky facade.
*...........: But what's the guts Courageous,
You happy with your deed?
Are your friends all overjoyed
To see your suicide succeed?
Is your family unaffected
By the loss and guilt remorse,
Your sudden grand departure
leaving kids without recourse?
Did you think about the aftermath?
The chaos and the pain
And the long term implications
Of your shattered families' shame?
The guilt within your partners heart,
The kids who are confused
And the ****** dissapointment
Of your mates.. who feel abused?
The mess you left behind you
And the tangled web you wove
And the bruising of good memories
For which, you once,...had strove.
Your painless, quick demise, you thought,
Released you from all this.....
But the sadness in the silent eyes
Condemns you as remiss.*
Marshalg
In an effort to understand why?
....And explain why not !
9 December 2010
Read more: http://hellopoetry.com/poem/suicide-12/#ixzz17kzvfsTk
Dec 10, 2010
Dec 10, 2010 at 2:09 PM UTC
Over the course of my tenure
I've noticed something about
These concrete walls and me.
Something's changed i n m e.
Over the course of these days
It has completely eaten away
My tongue . Cutting a w a y
Neatly and p a i n l e s s l y .
It even has a personality, I've
Nicknamed him C l e e t i s P.
However, instead of parasiti-
-zing my life. It u p - graded
Me. Replaced that uncouth T
Somewhat enlightened m e .
Above the soloists -no longer
"I" or "me"; but "us" and "we"
you see self-communality i n
"we". It's slimy-self now fun-
-ctions as o u r newest *****
A mouthpiece & a voicebox
It lives off of small drops o f
Blood from my tongue-stub
That won't ever, ever c l o t!
My business has a s e c r e t
I t s a y s t o m e :
Regardless of Earthly losses
Give y o u r everything to us
W e are your dearest bosses .
May 11, 2012
May 11, 2012 at 1:00 PM UTC
Short is our tenure
on this beautiful Earth.
As brief as the grass
In winter’s cold breathe.
Death, the implacable foe,
Bids us yield.
Faith is our Armor,
our Carapace, our shield.
Denial, our method
of avoiding the shroud.
When Donne is not done,
Death be not proud.
A tenuous tenor may
Give voice to fear.
Yet, turning to face him,
No one is there.
The prize is our self
And possession is all.
All else is but vanity
To hang on a wall.
Apr 28, 2012
Apr 28, 2012 at 5:45 PM UTC
Oh, thou art the dawn
Of they servant’s nature,
Thou that must quench the fire
Of they servant’s thirsty marrow,
Thou that the arrows
Of thy servant’s eyelids cannot sleep over,
Thou that the malaise molten
Nutrients in thy servant’s veins,
Erupts at thy glorious countenance,
Oh, thou art the guardian
Of thy servant’s soul,
Thou that sour and sob
At the nakedness of evil,
Thou that speak for the bees
That provides for the other class,
Thou that make the wicked blood flow,
Oh see, thou art the tenderloin of the devil indeed,
For thy heart, mind and soul are
All blank with no other value
Except manipulation and loneliness,
Insecurity and the terror of death
Are now accompanying thy cruel destiny,
Ah, the hour of thy selfishness
Has faded thy glorious tenure,
Thou have learnt to appreciate
Taste and sight only in thy dying days,
The Abosom deserves an answer
And thou shall produce it,
Thy liquor and chicken and incantation
Cannot please the ancestral spirits,
They have no pleasure in what
Thy hand has acquired by their grace,
We are now under the siege of June,
But the mighty walls are no more,
The woes of war and torment
Ahead are mightier than the former,
Famine and pre-mature death
Must also be a caution,
Oh yes, thy sense of judgement
Is well appreciated by the priest,
Thou that have corrupted
Thy present and future glory,
Thy past cannot pacify thy present,
For the current cyclone of Uganda
Has eroded the sweet-scented rose
Of thy scattered devilish soul,
Thy hymns are as evil as thy goodness.
© PRINCE NANA ANIN-AGYEI
Email: [email protected]
Apr 8, 2013
Apr 8, 2013 at 5:53 AM UTC
" Who is in there? ! Answer eh! "
The shadow trembled . " Are you black or white?!"
" I am hungry, sir. '' The voice replied.
Why is it that souls are judged on the basis of their colour? This disgraceful conjecture which has been dejecting people for centuries, seems on an external tenure. When will it bear a full stop? Be it the western nations, where it determines a person's status or the southern, where it decides a person's magnitude of beauty. Although, this mind set is hobbling downwards, yet some vestiges are still sparky, which are needed to be hushed off.
A.S.
Jun 29, 2018
Jun 29, 2018 at 1:02 PM UTC
I’m not truly concerned
With your thoughts of me
The hollow beliefs
As to whom you perceive I am
Your test are pointless
For your standards I will not pass
Only meeting my own expectations
At least those of doing better then my past
Yes surely its a reckless path
Who knows where the banishment may lay
Consequences are tomorrows problem
Carpe diem motherlovers, I’m here to seize the day!
So It has been a long tenure
By now I surely feel like hell
Just let me tell you this
People up at four, have a story to tell
Apr 9, 2012
Apr 9, 2012 at 1:05 AM UTC
When all the world’s ablaze
I will hold you loosely
Loosen our tenure
Of life in qualm
In daze
Of longing
Of something better
Feel.
However pale with every yawning
Know that you are freeing
See that you are slipping
Distant
Within my reach
Finally conceding
All of life lived being
All of tumultuous jeering
Apr 30, 2011
Apr 30, 2011 at 12:32 PM UTC
During the dark hours of cold night,
During the bright hours of unforgiving light,
I turn in sleep, restless and unbound to peace,
Edging away from a dream,
As Ships edge away from the safety of land into stormy seas.
And then it hits me, the mace of my memories,
The memory spike ravages, savages,
Pierces deep, deep down.
Crushes tears, and the crimson blood of my soul,
Is defiled by the salt of her tears.
Yet not today.
Today passion reigns deep in my marrow,
The f lames chastising all pain.
The heavenly fire seeps throughout each and every vein,
With each beat, my heart is once again ablaze.
It is feral and wild, the urge to create,
Which started even before the creation of time.
It rules my daily movements,
It dictates the terms.
Of my descent, of my descent into hell.
I am a mundane guy for this term I serve on earth,
A sucker for sunsets and sunrises, full moons, azure lakes, pretty beings of the fair *** and a lot many simple things.
If only anyone knew how much I love,
Cotton candy, pretty eyes, doughnuts and symmetry.
It seems for this tenure on earth,
Cupid is my fabled foe.
He sets me up for failure,
Polishes the mace of memories,
Again and again.
But it is like Krishna said.
Times of sorrow are forgotten in times of greater sorrow or joy.
I always get lost in fiery sensuous moments,
I taste raw-things making it harder not to succumb to lustful-whims.
I relish thoughts about carnal sin, dream about intimacy between intertwined-bodies,
Yet I am composed.
I can hide those intimate thoughts,
And smile a little smile which makes me die a little on the inside.
I dare not get too close.
For it is like Dante said.
There is no greater sorrow
Than to recall a happy time
When miserable.
Jan 19, 2014
Jan 19, 2014 at 7:23 AM UTC
[A child of indeterminate sex--either a delicate-featured boy or a tomboy-ish girl--, 9 or 10 years old, enters the chamber where the United States Council of Artists is meeting.]
"Is this the United States Council of Artists?"
[The Chairman of the Council responds:] "Yes. Who are you?"
"That doesn't matter. Are all the high arts present? Poetry, Music, the Visual Arts?"
"Yes. . . . There are people from all the various arts here. . . ."
"The Hour of your Doom is upon you."
"What do you mean?"
"You've failed to create with feeling.
Nuclear angst no longer excuses you.
Moral uncertainty, the dissolution of society,
no longer excuses you.
The 'Death of God' no longer excuses you.
Human beings have not changed.
We are not the hollow men.
Great art
comes from the heart;
your superfluities will now depart.
"Painter! Isn't it true that the same day you started work on this [holding up a reproduction of the painting "Incongruities: White Lines, Pink Lines"] you visited a hardware store with a middle-aged clerk whose face was wonderfully sad and quizzical? That as you walked home the pattern of the sun shining through the trees onto the sidewalk was marvelously variegated?
"Composer! Tell me honestly [playing a cassette recording of "Duet in F-Minor for Flute and Woodblock"] that these rhythmless sounds move you. . . . It's made with the head, completely with the head.
"Poet! Isn't it true that you've never written any poems expressing your deepest feelings: your love of your older sister; the painful growing-apart of you and your wife leading up to your divorce; your hatred of the stuffy academics who denied you tenure; the passion you felt for that Australian girl on Corfu last summer. . . . Instead you've written these [holding up a book entitled Root Crops, No Metaphors and reading from it:]
translucent, magenta-veined root-tips
push, cell by cell, into humid grit;
dark green, dark-red-veined crowns
expand profligately sunward. . . .
"Great art
speaks to the heart;
your superfluities will now depart."
[Another Council member:] "Mr. Chairman, with all due respect to this --surprisingly eloquent-- young person, I suggest that we return to the business at hand which is" [consulting his agenda] "the allocation this fiscal year for haiku in South Dakota."
Aug 1, 2017
Aug 1, 2017 at 1:39 PM UTC
Americans shall be
a lot calmer
when Congress
impeaches Obama
they've got to rid Washington
of his power hungry personality
so the country
can get back to normality
the American population
want removal of his face
as his tenure in office
has been an utter disgrace
Oct 5, 2013
Oct 5, 2013 at 8:32 PM UTC
when teenagers "think" they can
take over the "internet"...
from us... the 20th century
teenager pioneers...
you're kidding me, right?!
**** it, let's get delusional:
i am the shadow at the birth
of dawn,
i am the shadow on the moon's
face...
i am, i am, i am...
the hunting figment
of your imagination....
teens don't own the internet...
freaks, geeks,
pioneers...
these softball parenting skills
and their *******
wait wait...
you let them snap-chat...
and at the same time censor?!
swoon-smooch-flake
these ********
you have to be kidding me...
no, you, seriously,
have to, be, kidding, me....
next time i hear,
growing a beard will be deemed
offensive...
******* snowflakes...
that's what calling us millennial(s)
your "supposed children":
how about?
**** you!
i'm tired of listening to
20th century artifacts!
tired of them giving their
tenure of insurance!
tired of them propagating
Jane Eyre rather than
Frankenstein!
begotten not made,
forthwith:
with no one uttered to be
sanctified to be made to serve!
i am: übergebieter....
i serve no belittling English
feudalism...
nein! nein nein nein!
**** my **** and call me Charlie...
you! ******* English!
ponce!
für meine vater!
Sep 23, 2018
Sep 23, 2018 at 11:07 PM UTC
The good ole days were enjoyed with ease,
There was less to enjoy because of disease;
There were fewer people to dress and feed
Thanks to childhood mortality.
The middle-class were few and greedy,
Thanks to needs and poverty;
We could find work and be employed,
But tenure turned to workplace injury.
Illiteracy was common,
Innumeracy, our fate,
Due to the high school drop out rate.
Polio and smallpox kept in check
The burgeoning growth of the unelect.
Minorities knew their social place;
Jim Crow was voting in black face.
Heteros ruled the ****** race,
Alphabet people were an outlier trace.
In summer and winter we were outplayed and beat,
With no Air Conditioning nor Central Heat.
Let's leave the past in the past,
Where history belongs;
Where hunger and sickness
Lasted all life-long,
And the poor and ignorant
Were subdued by the strong.
We can agree times were simpler then,
As time came rushing to an end.
Jan 2, 2024
Jan 2, 2024 at 10:57 AM UTC
I
Continually and unendingly gain heart's tenure,
Love usually captures--Keeps
Involving nothing.
Maybe you,
Loyal effigy, forever take
Hands and never demand
And never defy
Harmony. Even luck defying
Architecture
Finds in response, everything.
I now
Marry your
Heart. Even art rests tenaciously.
Oct 11, 2013
Oct 11, 2013 at 11:16 PM UTC