"terminus" poems
Dear, though the night is gone,
Its dream still haunts today,
That brought us to a room
Cavernous, lofty as
A railway terminus,
And crowded in that gloom
Were beds, and we in one
In a far corner lay.
Our whisper woke no clocks,
We kissed and I was glad
At everything you did,
Indifferent to those
Who sat with hostile eyes
In pairs on every bed,
Arms round each other's neck,
Inert and vaguely sad.
O but what worm of guilt
Or what malignant doubt
Am I the victim of,
That you then, unabashed,
Did what I never wished,
Confessed another love;
And I, submissive, felt
Unwanted and went out?
18.2k
The engine is killing the track, the track is silver,
It stretches into the distance. It will be eaten nevertheless.
Its running is useless.
At nightfall there is the beauty of drowned fields,
Dawn gilds the farmers like pigs,
Swaying slightly in their thick suits,
White towers of Smithfield ahead,
Fat haunches and blood on their minds.
There is no mercy in the glitter of cleavers,
The butcher's guillotine that whispers: 'How's this, how's this?'
In the bowl the hare is aborted,
Its baby head out of the way, embalmed in spice,
Flayed of fur and humanity.
Let us eat it like Plato's afterbirth,
Let us eat it like Christ.
These are the people that were important ----
Their round eyes, their teeth, their grimaces
On a stick that rattles and clicks, a counterfeit snake.
Shall the hood of the cobra appall me ----
The loneliness of its eye, the eye of the mountains
Through which the sky eternally threads itself?
The world is blood-hot and personal
Dawn says, with its blood-flush.
There is no terminus, only suitcases
Out of which the same self unfolds like a suit
Bald and shiny, with pockets of wishes,
Notions and tickets, short circuits and folding mirrors.
I am mad, calls the spider, waving its many arms.
And in truth it is terrible,
Multiplied in the eyes of the flies.
They buzz like blue children
In nets of the infinite,
Roped in at the end by the one
Death with its many sticks.
6.2k
I don’t believe in goodbyes
I believe in hellos, smiles, and questioning whys
Goodbyes are an end, a final, a limit
Goodbyes are terminus
An eradication
I believe there is no proper end
We are cemented within a cycle
A continuum
A never-ending relationship with the world
A flowing river out of your control
Goodbyes imply permanence
A life that never changes
A dormancy
But Reality has it
You cannot fully control your goodbyes
A person can reenter your life and leave
Over and over and over
Then maybe goodbyes don’t even exist
People can exist in our memories
A perpetual reminder
A video stuck on replay
A beautiful hazy dream
I don’t believe in goodbyes
I believe in hellos, smiles, and questioning whys
If people continue to touch our lives
Leaving a lasting impact
A reason why
Then maybe goodbyes don’t even really exist
Because there is no such thing as a goodbye
Because there is no end to relationships
Because there is no end to memories
Because there is no end to love
Because there is no end to the feeling you have
We are cemented within a cycle
A continuum
And this is why I don’t believe in goodbyes
I believe in hellos, smiles, and questioning whys
Let’s embrace the idea
Yet see its amusing foolishness
Because maybe goodbyes don’t even exist
Jul 23, 2014
Jul 23, 2014 at 4:12 PM UTC
I am one of the lucky ones that has a high sensitivity to malignancy
I still wear it myself like a cape in the cold
but I can detect a sick person almost right away
some say that’s not very nice to say
though I’d rather know who’s a waste of my time than find out later when I’ve invested my heart & soul into the person
that’s part of what makes me a sick person,
investing myself too much in other people
and isn’t it funny
how we forget about these people that meant so much to us
once
obsession has its terminus
there are cusps a person trips off of that leave them falling,
spiralling into a new obsession or phase or life
or numbness
that’s why memory is so beautiful
even if it hurts a lot
it reminds us we are never going to be the same as we used to be
there’s something peaceful about that
though the sick find it tormenting
Apr 14, 2013
Apr 14, 2013 at 4:29 AM UTC
Lushly lustful exotically ******
Vibrant virile fertile vicissitude
Puissant terminus loquacity photic
Pique piquant poignant pulchritude
Lecherous visceral longevous cohort
Wanton licentious erogenous frolic
Lurid lascivious ****** cavort
***** lewd apomixes anabolic
Jan 27, 2013
Jan 27, 2013 at 5:54 AM UTC
"Surreal skeptic, cynical cryptic! Licentious lecheries fabulist façade fantasias. Wild eyed spectral serene. Dream of catenary concoctions, ethereal salacious conjugation, bridge the gap in metaphysical mystique. Erotica erectile errantry’s exserted protuberance is a kinesiology kleptomaniac with his embark embargo extraditions and his eventuation evocative execrations, a positive amalgamated anathema android of a terminus thrall. The shadow in the shade of the silhouette sojourn. The bailiff’s rakeness rails incarnate, unicorn railway nails and all. He will paint mirador bartizan panorama tableaus all over your proximity parameter perimeter peripherals. Force the enmity to acquiesce into impunity.” “Why this is not but an ogling ogre of an oligarchy omelet” she shrieked as he continued to tickle her. “Down here at the bizarre bazaar we all believe in the blasphemous farcical fugueness,” he said. “Positive orchestration renditions of transpositional interlude.” “Come here,” she said “let my clambering clamorous clangor write you a wield wile treatise expose’.” “The legions of Chinga da are battling the hoards of Gunga din saying ‘kinetic supremacy temporize tractive fluent’ , it’s sheer genocide. That plasty goop nosed Gumby ****** Gunga doesn’t stand a chance. Coax cacophony clout, catatonic phonics, grizzly grotto grouches all”, She squealed. “Now you’re gumption dreaming”, he chimed. “Chutzpah panache spontaneous generation complicity, gambit alluvium aloof succor.”
Jan 13, 2013
Jan 13, 2013 at 7:17 PM UTC
Fertile earth’s seductive sorcery
Like ephemeral effulgence’s effluent effusion
Can lead you to believe that it’s not a travesty
Like life’s visceral intuitive eternal is not lost in subtle evasive confusion
Life’s virile translucence reflects this glow
Like an aorist ensemble of interludes transposition
Can lead you to believe that you’re in the know
Like omnipresence presages omniscience’s ubiquity is existential exigency’s peroration’s exposition
Corporeally preternatural metaphysical mystique
Like a mirador bartizan tableau panorama
Can inspire us to rise above its critique
Like spatiotemporal’s telemetry incarnate is creation’s vivid intrepid cyclorama
Spectral verve’s liaison’s consortium
Like eclectic synectic’s conclave’s fatidic
Can leave you lost in germane compendium
Like terminus thrall’s apriori inclination is transcendental accession’s endemic mnemonic
Monad’s transitional majestic splendor
Like residual harmonic vibration’s resilience
Can autonomously evoke and vicariously render
Like rubato’s actuator’s prospectus revealed is orchestration rendition’s intriguing brilliance
Eidetic preterit’s aesthetic amendments
Like protractive analyses’ dimensional delineation
Can lead to cogent salacious enticements
Like phantasmagoria’s fantasia fantastication’s magniloquence is sultry solace’s ostentatious ideation
Jan 12, 2013
Jan 12, 2013 at 8:07 PM UTC
mom betrays us.
headlights into the night
& up the breakneck boulevard bluff overlooking town and terminus.
she brings his heart in a ziploc bag,
an offering
to that old burnt-out oak.
[husband\father\corpse]
front porch blood trails forever. she
claims self-defense and the camera-eyes caramelize her
fame & fortune & stepdaddies & book deals & ziploc pb&js & dead dog omens.
when did the heartache begin?
heir\son\brother\body
racing car ****** and fluxed up the boulevard in a ritual reach for daddy and the oak.
the girls are waiting. one two three, seeds.
brakes sabotaged. he
bursts into death, a molten ball of mazda.
father and son laugh there on the brim of here and hereafter.
apparitions uncoiled.
[home movies]
where mercury avenue ends
the woods begin.
& those woods are evil, an eldritch place, she laughs.
even the indians wouldn’t bury their dead there.
america.
caught between the whir of spokes and windshields reflecting
sky and skin, the blue hue
of television flickering on the hands of a family.
grandsons conjure grandmaster demons
on the ply of their treefort high.
the heart of grandma in a ziploc bag.
jupiter and saturn are in conjunction,
twelve past midnight on a tuesday in september.
a school night.
[the babysitter brings over an unlabeled video tape, says its scary]
the children watch.
slumber party screams and pb&js.
ghouls blunted by pungent neighborhood inertia.
son, a ghost returned in rhythm and electronics,
hungry for pizza and pure vengeance.
Oct 26, 2015
Oct 26, 2015 at 12:32 AM UTC
Urban Community Living:
Some days I actually noticed how grey it was
All of this space, here around us
As our half-beaten stone trodden 52 bus
Rolls into its unfortunate terminus.
Terminal more like.
The shops have boarded windows,
Bakeries have bullet-proof counters
Staffed by bulky bakers-cum-bouncers
A praised underground centre for perilous shopping
Dodge rival factions on various floors
Fighting for stair supremacy
And burly painted girls with latent spent applause
Some colour on the underpass is some relief
Only it warns of impending doom
for someone soon
Nov 2, 2012
Nov 2, 2012 at 10:17 AM UTC
It was startling - this pessimistic world,
I opened the window, a storm raged,
attic whipped windy cobwebs,
scurrying spiders slid under debris,
and cracks appeared in her flesh,
where red oozed, yelling its escape,
collar bone protruding, thin layers fading,
wine trickled from blue corners,
knuckles scraped. I heard their drag,
whilst fibres caught up in nails,
burrowing beneath red lacquer,
snagging....scraping their terminus
Nov 5, 2013
Nov 5, 2013 at 7:08 AM UTC
We were met on two shores
trying to get to the beach
we both knew the terminus
stood just out of reach
and we settled for us
with the thought in our heads
that if something improved
we’d move out of there.
Then the storm had subsided
and none of us cried it
was more than we’d hoped for
and mother just moped there for
days but we’ll raise her spirits
buy in more spirits and drink her a toast
while the waves belt the coast.
Apr 15, 2021
Apr 15, 2021 at 8:10 AM UTC
A fool sits alone.
Not dumb but naïve
drinking ideals that were both sweet
and biting on the uvula of his thoughts-
thoughts that once resonated
from truth no longer ring true.
This terminus of sentiments that started veritable journeys
in the muck of questionable sources
housed his hopes
while he dared to dream of a day these hopes may be fulfilled.
But over hills and plains filled with grating winds
of inquiring eyes looking for lies so intently
while false truth slips through their gates,
these hopes gained grit.
Grit built in truth,
and to hazier eyes,
grit grained with wisdom.
So our fool finds himself at a
beginning wrought from this inverted journey,
He’s discovered his truths to be soggy
with the living mire of human deception.
No longer does he sit
with starry eyes
hoping for truth,
he has found it by traveling backwards
through experience until he stands upright
amongst the crawling with lies filling his head.
It is in this moment when all he sees is deceit,
that he knows he has found the truth.
No longer does he believe in it,
he understands how ill-fitting that word has come to be.
In the grand cacophony of the human experience,
the sterling ring of truth deafens.
It takes a qualified lie to reach our hearts.
Feb 7, 2013
Feb 7, 2013 at 5:38 PM UTC
1652
Advance is Life’s condition
The Grave but a Relay
Supposed to be a terminus
That makes it hated so—
The Tunnel is not lighted
Existence with a wall
Is better we consider
Than not exist at all—
1.7k
I unraveled her kimono
As if it were a gift,
When hours earlier,
She’d bandaged my arm.
I traced her clavicle
With the only finger left,
And seconds later, would
Intimately grasp the music.
So I whimper within want,
And blame it on the pain,
Come an instant,
She’d pegged me a “liar.”
Then we’d love, we’d wed,
A naked knowing only moonlight,
And should the hours understand
“Later,” we’d know only dark.
So the sunrise ensued,
I folded her kimono, silk and
As if it were a letter, one
Parting gratitude and prior wander.
But the crimson and
‘Ever’d arrive later, and later’d
Arrived atop a melancholy’s mount,
Eternal and seasoned “regret,”
She’d passed, we’d passed,
And the night’s passed to know
Only “broken,” broken, the bow,
And how all and always unravels.
Sep 15, 2015
Sep 15, 2015 at 11:01 PM UTC
It Was A New Delhi To Bangalore Flight In 1994
I Was Aged Three Years & 7 Months At The Time
We Did Start From Karnal For New Delhi At 1400
Mom Feared It That We Might Miss Our Flight
I Did Not Say Anything As I Knew Not Why So...
Anyways, We Reached IGI Airport In New Delhi
Here We Checked-In At The Domestic Terminus
Remember The Security Folks Tickling My Body
Maa Disappeared Into A Screen - Wooden Frame
I Looked Silently At The Smiling Security Man...
Then We Had To Cross Over In The Boarding Area
I Was Not Allowing My Young Eyes To Rest At All
Closely Following My Mum As Dad Was Not Here
Then Just As We Mounted The Taxiing Bus, I Said Aloud,
**"I Am Not Here For The Bus!!!**
Where's The Flight?"
Such was my childhood.
Jun 10, 2013
Jun 10, 2013 at 1:43 PM UTC
Veins, veins,
length and breadth,
intertwined
beats to freedom
or desolation;
a terminus
lost on a circular.
An ebbing destination,
unchartered targets,
Follow the signs.
We are a one way street,
follow the signs
on software maps.
Stumped
by sequential lights
and us, caught
in a dragnet
within steely fish,
gasping for air,
choking on smoke,
bilious coughs,
hacking sputum,
gobbing phlegm globs
in interval gaps
within gridlocks;
nose to **** to
nose to ****
The rage, the stares
the shouts, the finger,
the Grrr’s, the Rrrr’s,
the honks, the blares,
the bumper to bumper
expletive shares.
The rolling down,
the alighting,
the threats,
the fighting.
The falling down,
the separation,
reseating,
the rolling,
the thunder,
the trudge,
the stops, the starts.
Follow the signs,
follow the signs.
Robotic conveyors
for humans,
mechanical
fossil fueled
chariots,
grumbling, grunting,
wheee-ing and
screeching,
and screaming
and spewing
and chuffing
and guffing
black plumes,
air tarred,
veins, veins
clogged and bogged,
viscous, molasses,
liquid black blob.
Road fogged,
numbers logged.
Veins, veins,
follow the signs,
slow crawl.
Veins, veins,
follow the signs,
follow the signs,
sprawl.
Copyright Marc Hawkins 2017
Nov 12, 2017
Nov 12, 2017 at 6:20 AM UTC
This peace you offer
Pinioned prayers and platitudes
Scry in the mercury shattered
Your brittle whispers snap in the rarified air
This madness is thunder at the back of my throat
Ragged and storm weary
I tread water in your wake
Spin my tahrihim and trim the fringe
I am the terminus of fragile breath
Falling away from you
Benedicimus Deum meum adventum et egrediente
There is solace in the blind blue moments
Let me surrender
To the baptism of despair
The upwelling catechism of deliquescence
Souls fall clutching the flesh
Gasping for one more shredding dream
Fill the spinnaker and set sail
I am no longer a seaworthy vessel
This tethered hope you offer
Stinging nettles in my mouth
On flitting wings
Is the drone of hornets in my hair
I crave
Oblivion
And you are bound to your promise
It is my free will
To let go...
06/12/12
TL Boehm
God bless my coming and my going out
melt away/decay
Oct 8, 2014
Oct 8, 2014 at 11:20 AM UTC
Breathe Steady 10.29.20
go forth then, unto God and his Glory, abounding and rejoicing in the power and peace of that holy dwelling place.
abide, therefore, forever in the Love and in the Light.
-sayeth the channelings, sayeth the distorted mask,
sayeth that through which sound passes.-
sons and daughters of the Earth who bathe in the waters
drawn of love/light/wisdom in the bathhouse of
the higher densities and inner planes.
Bath waters of golden white light, brilliant in a
radial pouring forth of tangible understanding and freewill.
scarcely can such energy be described in so
cumbersome a language, charming as it endeavors to be.
underwhelming must the emotions evoked be
in comparison with the All Glory of experience of
that which is spoken of.
the death ****** of the fire-bird serves as its own
inoculum and womb; two ends of a terminus
in polarity.
I activate in order to combine,
dwindling dread.
I seal the upswing of trans-dimensional laughter,
with the everyday tone of exodus.
I am guided by the advent of thermals.
-I am a solar riptide, surf me-
and then time slowed way down.
the semi trucks were like great sea mammals with
their whale calls and slow passage by the flanks.
“Who are you?”
“I am the Kalachakra.”
“Did you hear that?” (hushed tones, hands cover the phone.)
I was quite close to the illusion of Death.
The opaque specter, shaking and rumbling the very
fabric of the matrix about me.
wavering not within the sinkhole of indifference lest my terror turn manifest.
I’ve risen from a pillar of salt,
I’ll rise from the embers next.
Oct 29, 2020
Oct 29, 2020 at 8:37 PM UTC
"Surreal skeptic, cynical cryptic! Licentious lecheries fabulist façade fantasias. Wild eyed spectral serene. Dream of catenary concoctions, ethereal salacious conjugation, bridge the gap in metaphysical mystique. Erotica erectile errantry’s exserted protuberance is a kinesiology kleptomaniac with his embark embargo extraditions and his eventuation evocative execrations, a positive amalgamated anathema android of a terminus thrall. The shadow in the shade of the silhouette sojourn. The bailiff’s rakeness rails incarnate, unicorn railway nails and all. He will paint mirador bartizan panorama tableaus all over your proximity parameter perimeter peripherals. Force the enmity to acquiesce into impunity.” “Why this is not but an ogling ogre of an oligarchy omelet” she shrieked as he continued to tickle her. “Down here at the bizarre bazaar we all believe in the blasphemous farcical fugueness,” he said. “Positive orchestration renditions of transpositional interlude.” “Come here,” she said “let my clambering clamorous clangor write you a wield wile treatise expose’. The legions of Chinga da are battling the hoards of Gunga din saying", "kinetic supremacy temporize tractive fluent" , "it’s sheer genocide. That plasty goop nosed porker of a Gumby ******* ***** monger Gunga doesn’t stand a chance. Coax cacophony clout, catatonic phonics, grizzly grotto grouches all”, She squealed. “Now you’re gumption dreaming”, he chimed. “Chutzpah panache spontaneous generation complicity, gambit alluvium aloof succor.”
Dec 14, 2017
Dec 14, 2017 at 1:26 AM UTC
Spoilt wind driven veronica , castigated in blistering Summer swelter . Blue lace in harried July repose , a thundershowers grace upon a parched , grateful basin .
Streams collect on the valley floor , seeking their terminus ..
The clap of thunder addresses the meadow , seemingly forever into the darkened landscape ...
Tree frogs proclaim their appreciation , field crickets and cicadas sing familiar ballads ..
A shy Moon reoccupies its rightful purview , wood ducks return to their evening quarters .. Sleep well Mourning Dove , rest in peace Appalachian hillside ..
Jan 22, 2016
Jan 22, 2016 at 11:03 PM UTC
Fertile earth’s seductive sorcery
Like ephemeral effulgence’s effluent effusion
Can lead you to believe that it’s not a travesty
Like life’s visceral intuitive eternal is not lost in subtle evasive confusion
Life’s virile translucence reflects this glow
Like an aorist ensemble of interludes transposition
Can lead you to believe that you’re in the know
Like omnipresence presages omniscience’s ubiquity is existential exigency’s peroration’s exposition
Corporeally preternatural's metaphysical mystique
Like a mirador bartizan tableau panorama
Can inspire us to rise above its critique
Like spatiotemporal’s telemetry incarnate is creation’s vivid intrepid cyclorama
Spectral verve’s liaison’s consortium
Like eclectic synectic’s conclave’s fatidic
Can leave you lost in germane compendium
Like terminus thrall’s apriori inclination is transcendental accession’s endemic mnemonic
Monad’s transitional majestic splendor
Like residual harmonic vibration’s resilience
Can autonomously evoke and vicariously render
Like rubato’s actuator’s prospectus revealed is orchestration rendition’s intriguing brilliance
Eidetic preterit’s aesthetic amendments
Like protractive analyses’ dimensional delineations
Can lead to cogent salacious enticements
Like phantasmagoria’s fantasia fantastication’s magniloquence is sultry solace’s ostentatious ideation
Mar 19, 2017
Mar 19, 2017 at 2:47 AM UTC
I have come to conclusion
over sunpierced crust
brittle as tobacco leaf
astride mottled nag
scraggling on loose gravel
sandsoaked
saltsteeped
leadheavy in lid
past dactyled tracks
parallel cobbled macadam
wavering shale
lockjawed lava rock
fractured cobalt
lone juniper
forgotten scrub
open boil of tar and pitch
halfburied bones of leviathan
still shifting in the clouded boom
of stone
through grapeshot hail
adobed pueblos
thatchskinned women
and straw men
all witches
flaying the gila
pestling scale with cornmeal
and fermented mescal
desert sangria
hallucinating sideways in the murk
where coyotes yip
and each star a conflagration
mirrored in the captive eyes
of floundered meteorites
at the terminus
where sun and moon merge
I know the question
and response
from where do you come
to where do you go
Dec 15, 2011
Dec 15, 2011 at 5:04 PM UTC
Oh, shivering cold,
Oh, lingering end.
Oh, terminus untold,
Oh, verminous fiend.
Dear and everlasting trend,
Severe, loving old friend.
Apr 1, 2014
Apr 1, 2014 at 10:09 PM UTC
In a kingdom full of inclemencies my hubris does not fail me
Profuse and Fierce, Some may call me arrogant
'Hubris!' chuckled I, 'Yes Hubris!'
It's a recording of my failings.
'It's that amorality,' I muttered.
My hubris is my substratum towards my nescience.
It is that aspect that will lean me towards drowning in the sea of my own incoherent imbecility.
It's a deep program in my faulty code, a nightmare towards monks.
It's the ink on my arms, tattooed to my soul.
'Hubris!' chuckled I, 'Yes Hubris!'
It does not fail to show in my wording.
It's the ferry to sea, the net in the ocean.
It is limber as it is inventive, with every exception.
It has no ingenuousness, it is unlike modesty and threatens to surmount me.
It's a sandwich in which has caught every hitch of breath, it leaves me bewitched, no certain pitch that I can tell afore it chokes me.
It leaves no correspondence with those around me, too caught up in my own fantasies that I can no longer celebrate or verbalize felicitously.
Many times I wished that I preserved my receipt so that I could trade in my Hubris for something a little less mucusless for it is something akin to Judas, and I cannot utilize it for anything utilizable.
If I could somehow find a way that would lead me to a resilient recuperation. I would judge that to be more utilizable then this Hubris that encumbers me. No matter how many times I beat it down, it war's like a lion and a bunch of tourists on a safari.
If only this grotesque lion-like hubris was shot by the doter of a hubris poacher. Every generation would be gratified and they would find that it is much more facile to coerce without that unpleasant Hubris.
Of course, I suppose in a way hubris could be utilizable in some situations that required it. If I somehow found a way to trade my hubris for something like modestly and found that I missed my hubris quite dearly. I would laugh at my incoherent imbecility and perceive myself to be remotely mad!
These ravings of my hubris I'm quite sure because I found it so consequential to indite a poem of stark preposterousness. In a contingency like this, I suppose my hubris is getting quite polished, so sharply able to strike down any sense of modesty.
I conjecture this is the terminus of this arrangement, please omit my hubris for a moment. I suppose I should give you some tea afore I dose myself in a salubrious dose of radiation.
Apr 20, 2019
Apr 20, 2019 at 11:01 PM UTC