"tomes" poems
593
I think I was enchanted
When first a sombre Girl—
I read that Foreign Lady—
The Dark—felt beautiful—
And whether it was noon at night—
Or only Heaven—at Noon—
For very Lunacy of Light
I had not power to tell—
The Bees—became as Butterflies—
The Butterflies—as Swans—
Approached—and spurned the narrow Grass—
And just the meanest Tunes
That Nature murmured to herself
To keep herself in Cheer—
I took for Giants—practising
Titanic Opera—
The Days—to Mighty Metres stept—
The Homeliest—adorned
As if unto a Jubilee
’Twere suddenly confirmed—
I could not have defined the change—
Conversion of the Mind
Like Sanctifying in the Soul—
Is witnessed—not explained—
’Twas a Divine Insanity—
The Danger to be Sane
Should I again experience—
’Tis Antidote to turn—
To Tomes of solid Witchcraft—
Magicians be asleep—
But Magic—hath an Element
Like Deity—to keep—
40.2k
Knights clad in paper armor
Draw their pen-shaped swords
In preparation for battle
Against the dragon named Algebra
All year they've trained for this day
Poring over musty tomes
Filled with archaic battle plans
Entire armies have been lost
In the dangerous search
For the elusive variable called X
The informants A and B
Have consistently given
Inconsistent information
And the number line
Has completely deserted them
The numbers taunt the knights
Mocking their puny calculators
Confident in their unanswerable status
Yet one by one
The polynomials fall
The dragon bows it's head
The Knights have won the day.
Dec 11, 2011
Dec 11, 2011 at 7:24 PM UTC
His army perched above in trees,
Watching the front become a feast,
Who wins, care not, in the least?
"The cawing clan of Koronos..."
The thousands black they view the fight,
Staying late for supper -feeding at night...
Picking tender morsels in illumed moon-light,
"Swarthy minions of King Koronos!"
Corvid follow Man wherever he may go,
Feathery tomes of knowledge their treasure trove,
The messengers in the House of Jove...
"His static barbizon Aves; Koronos!"
There are many kings who come and go,
Becoming part and parcel in a wicked show,
But none of them will ever match the Crow...
"Engrosser of the dead; Koronos!" *
Jun 30, 2016
Jun 30, 2016 at 2:02 PM UTC
Whatever happened to the moments
we lived for
the moments we lived from
electrifying lives
currents of passion
high voltage that knew no resistance
what do I have to do?
to feel the surge
to feel the spark
to feel alive again?
Is it in the tomes?
Is it in the songs?
Do the muses hold it in the walls?
Is it inside of me?
Searching for the switch
to send me back to passion
To make me feel charged again
to make me feel in charge again
Mar 13, 2015
Mar 13, 2015 at 11:03 PM UTC
May we live in and see interesting times, the old saying goes
another offers that when the mind is blind, the eyes cannot see
for me my days are interesting and the laughter readily and often comes
for the grapes of wrath brings forth mirth filled grapes on grapevine tendrils
As lemmings and sheep enact bellyaching absurdities, as the ridiculous does
Veracity on sojourn and falsehood in residence with doors firmly closed
Hamlet re-enacts hapless role, with Red Robin Hood and vigilantes to a tee
eager audiences, participatory scenes in towns and cities, leaving empty homes
come all and vent your spleen and satiate your prejudices without paying a fee
This land belongs to us, it is our birthright and we will send Hamlet to the catacombs
Nothing is private anymore, rights and freedom nailed, anywhere we roam
Ophelia not only went to Italy, she went to Hull, Turnpike Lane and even Essex
but a joke here, if all these were good, why did she come to me, you simple gnomes
perchance unlike you common goons, she knows distinction has no comparison to thee
Your vacuous hate filled mind cannot see that difference in a Prince, that regally looms
Act two, dim, fooled actors in their Beggars Opera, screaming, 'we oppose' with glee
so called republicans, laughable in their ardent favor, ignorant of their lobotomy botches
we will do Hamlet's head in, totally unaware theirs been done in, for the brains of fleas
in a civilisation, our conscious and stable populace, roots for vigilante and mob rule, yeah
for a man of distinction is a threat reminding you of your insignificance and lack of tomes
Come friends, lets see how the home of Democracy, hounds a citizen for us all and we
lets know that Robin Hood is alive and taxing, and 'Windrush' is still active in dispatches
indigenous people power, meets criminal gang stalking, meets racism and we all drink tea
and in true cowardly fashion, its all done by insidious, indictable, nefarious, malcontents and psychopathic crazies
It is our proud duty that we should all ruin Hamlet, for mediocrity has no distinction for aspiration et excellence
Copyright LaurenceA. JUNE 2018.All rights reserved.
Jul 25, 2018
Jul 25, 2018 at 8:00 PM UTC
Life reduced to a ticking clock,
As shriveled men desperately clasp
To slick tomes filled with diagrams
Of shadowy glass towers, convoluted machines
And factories with a singular purpose:
To manufacture their own existence.
The Plague spreads to druidic forests
Where those who simply existed
Overcome with glutinous ambition
Demolish those majestic columns
Which supported equilibrium
While the world gleefully cheers.
Oct 16, 2014
Oct 16, 2014 at 7:38 PM UTC
Nikola Tesla
respected physicist
Thomas Edison’s
dubious nemesis.
Electricity
was his toil
was famous for
his Tesla Coil.
Radical dreamer
of free power
J.P. Morgan
made things sour.
Lovingly
nature’s servant
proposer of
alternating current.
Humble inventor
that transformed homes
famously stated
he loved all tomes.
Jun 6, 2014
Jun 6, 2014 at 2:48 AM UTC
I wrote a poem on a bus
but to hear it you must
climb to the top
of the bouncing metal stairs.
Slither snake-like
past the rail
and sit
on the rainbow nylon bench.
I'll be there
at the top of the bus,
reciting my rhyme,
written as we ride along,
past shops and houses
with musty nets
and peeling paint
on dingy doors.
There's the old woman who
lives in a house no bigger than a shoe box
who had so many children she didn't know what to do!
But they've all grown and flown now and she's all alone
with no-one to talk to but herself.
Look at that kid: grimy smile and mischievous eyes,
skateboard-scuffed knees,
darting out from the roadside.
Screech!
As we stop and angry words.
The kid glances back and tosses a vee
leaving just his smile behind.
The bus lurches on
at a snail's pace and stops at a stop
for a giggle-girl-gang
to chatter up the stairs
with a clatter of feet and voices:
weekends and boyfriends,
music and laughter.
The bus trundles and sways
past shops all shuttered,
old folks gathered by doorways
talking about people
dead and forgotten ...
except by them.
Into the town now:
a river of road-rage
as our bus ambles onward
toward car-parks and markets
and rat-racing shoppers
And stops by a brown pigeon-stained temple
of public philanthropy,
a gift from a long-dead civic leader
and now proud home
to dogeared tomes of PC persuasion.
Our bus, like some Trojan horse,
disgorges its riders
who spatter and scatter
like rays of dawn light
to shop till they drop.
So, just me and you seated
atop the steel stairway
and you say to me sharply,
“So where's your poem then?”
I look at you strangely:
“It's happened around you,” I tell you quite curtly.
Sep 23, 2012
Sep 23, 2012 at 11:35 AM UTC
for Alyssa Underwood
~~~
my poems do not trend, go viral,
Fast and Furious!
yet, they do not die
they lay in plain sight pebbles scattered,
smoothed by time,
upon the surface of the
green earth waiting patient, virtuous,
purposed for itinerants bards
to trip over one
one some someday
somehow they accrete a readership,
slow stepping and steady from,
|the seekers and the stumblers,
the droplet drinkers,
meanderers of the tomes and tombs of prior years,
miners for nuggets in the poem pools that form
beneath the alluvial streaming
of the waterfall crescendo
of words
I like this
when another traveler sends me a like,
a petite amuse-bouche bite of appreciation,
for a long ago, barely recalled, writ,
allowing them to carve their initials upon the
external, visible roots of my tree trunk,
invading me, by darkening a prior tree internal ring,
forcing me to look down,
look back,
take measure of myself,
accepting myself as not wanting,
nor lacking in other's acceptance
these statements are neither boastful or illusory,
*yet still joyous, like caramel pleasures,
slow to chew, fast to the taste,*
reminding me of old friendships,
well valued,
though no longer fully employed,
their uncovering is my own refreshed exposure,
their discovery is my own re-discovery,
exposing flaws and fallacies,
even fallow,
mostly shallow facts
about me
all of them,
a sundae of truths and lies, sharing a happy laugh
with and at
me,
when I think to myself,
Holy Crap! did I write that?
copyright 2015 by Nat Lipstadt
Oct 8, 2015
Oct 8, 2015 at 3:35 PM UTC
This is not poetry
This simply spoken on earthen tombs
Or was it tomes
Or was that tunes
If it was then it wasn't
Because the past is the future and the present is but a thinned out pancake of a reality
Double bongo tulip termination
Implied with the finger-ly pleasure
Upon my love's blackened buttons
Drunkenness sensibility declining reeling sealing the post-operative convolution of Tarzan's missing breath
Target, TARGET, (target)
Reckless love leapin' side' a train-station tumor
Dec 28, 2013
Dec 28, 2013 at 10:29 PM UTC
.
*She walks the castle walls at night,
with a rose held fast in her fingers,
the mist rolls away across the land,
the memory of her lover still lingers.
Cold flagstones beneath her slippered feet
hold the histories of the aeons tight.
Old battles, wars, and terrifying sieges,
ghosts of ancient warriors wail in the night.
And still she clutches his parting gift,
she wears the bond burden of his ring,
his love weighs upon her broken heart,
tears flow free with a melancholic sting.
They fall upon the stones and disappear,
additions to the heavy tomes of history,
little gems writing sadness in a story,
as she stares into the distance so wistfully.*
© Pagan Paul (10/02/18)
Feb 12, 2018
Feb 12, 2018 at 6:14 PM UTC
The deeps of darkness have been raised
As if their being was kindled.
The warm night of peace is at an end.
The devil is he that rages unchecked this night, and there are none to withstand him.
The shield wall breaks, the cavalry routed, and the meanest defence stands alone.
What shall become of these men?
Death surely, for the miracles of poetry give lie to no truth. The curses of old are set in concrete.
Death has gained his presence here. He smells victory. For the living in their mundanity see only their existence.
This existence that means nothing in the tomes of the greater good.
There is no life, only sorrow.
There is no victory, only decimation.
Only the naive think thus.
Victory is not that of arms and steel.
Nor of land or gold or tales of which bards sing
Victory is in the fight that was fought.
For they that wage the good war, and fight the good fight, all is victory.
Defeat is beyond question. Life is not of consequence.
The act alone reigns supreme.
This isn't joy. This isn't glory.
For victory chooses not the last man to stand, but the last to fall in defiance. Victory belongs to the departed. The victorious dead.
And such as it is. It shall end now.
And it's end alone worthy of song .
For all who bear witness to it.
We die, we do not flee.
Mar 23, 2016
Mar 23, 2016 at 2:32 AM UTC
Done with thinking because that's for god to do
I am just this appendage of a greater consciousness
Ahab is blameless
in his small existence
Don't quote me
quote Herman and Freddy Nietzsche
They and their hermits
coming down from the mountains
to declare they ought to have
loved their fate all along
Amor fati
Why couldn't we have been stuck in the herd all along
guys who get love and happiness effortless
no need to spend their life in anguish
searching through tomes
found in tombs for eons and eons
enhancing their social aloofness
and their unremembered trauma
'till those sad souls give those pansies confidence
to leave an exegesis of their own
Too smart kid
that decried Christ and
the shadows of a god all around
only to find the search for truth was hopeless
Find a way to dumbly enjoy life again
and you only say again cause
that's all we can control
our memories
and we too often forget
our thought habits
the pre-neolithic mind tricks
on ourselves
Too many MLMs profiting off false mindfulness
missing the point beyond exercise
and short stress relief
Change your thought patterns to love your destiny
That's the best we have
to pretend to have control in this ̶h̶e̶l̶l̶ hole
Jul 10, 2020
Jul 10, 2020 at 8:49 AM UTC
He writes words on walls and
toilet doors.
Looping black texta with
measured precision.
Emptying out his importance in
tomes of acrid, sickly-sweet-smelling lapses
into hope.
Cascading the loneliness with litanies
of somewhere else
that pulses with a joy unfound.
Tales of intermittent dreams
and dalliance with beauty.
Strobing in translucent beams,
the light leaks through his
poorly-sewn seams
onto the toilet door.
Jun 15, 2012
Jun 15, 2012 at 11:16 PM UTC
~~~
one can strive for greatness
in the field of dreams
in medicine or business
in law for what it seems
academic achievement
reqires work and time
one can garner laurels
and be in their prime
but to find true excellence
in poetry as art
it won't be found in dusty tomes
it must be in your
HEART
soulsurvivor
(C) 8/15/2015
Aug 15, 2015
Aug 15, 2015 at 9:41 AM UTC
Winter, winter how we feel your icy touch
The earth is now under your freezing clutch
All that falls in our ears is the howl of gales from far
The night sky is covered in grayness without a single star
In the dawn, nowhere can one spot the buzzing bees
Icicles hang from boughs of leafless trees
Birds sit with drooping wings in their woody nests
Within eye shot, no trace of any roaming beasts
Trees stand sleeping in the biting cold
And the sun has lost its bright sheen of gold
From nowhere comes the song of a single bird
On the slopes, one cannot sight the grazing herd
Roof tops are crusted with flakes of snow
Which the sun with sharp beams alone can thaw
Piles of snow lie heaped on the barren ground
And the entire Earth lies in a sea of ice drowned
Busy streets and pavements are now lying bare
People stay indoors and to be out, they hardly dare
The rodents have gone into hibernation in their ditch
And life altogether has gone out of pitch
In the smiting chill of a dreadful wintry night
When through every fiber n’ nerve is the cold bite
How we like to sit cocooned beside the hearth
Sipping a cup of steaming tea in rising mirth
In such quiet hours, one can peruse into the pages of tomes
That will transport one to enchanting magical zones
Or engage in a hearty chat with friends and family
Thus turning even the bleakest hours sweet and lively
Jan 5, 2017
Jan 5, 2017 at 5:59 AM UTC
The library is a quiet, empty cave where voices echo like ghosts in a gymnasium.
Laughter.
You can feel the history here, both in the dusty tomes and the architectural nod to the Roman coliseum.
Strange visitors of which I am numbered as I stand here spouting poor poetry on my phone.
Enough.
Apr 10, 2014
Apr 10, 2014 at 12:12 PM UTC
Stealing away from the noise and glare
I paced the aisles of an ancient library
Being worn and tired, indisposed to read
I sat in a corner, lost in half reverie
Around me were books stacked end on end
In safely locked glass and wooden shelves
And sectioned into different genres
Fiction, non- fiction, verse et al, in thinly layered leaves
I felt lost in this vast continent of erudite friends
Poet, scholar, philosopher and sage, each sat quiet
But those silent souls seemed to crave for human touch
Waiting to serve anytime learning’s lovesome diet
Closely sheltered from the tumult of the world
The place, though serene had an eerie air
And books like so many beauties in a harem
Were kept away in seclusion just to admire
The lifeless air and the long deserted look
Mildly disturbed my inner calm
Couldn’t digest man’s total disregard of books
Which for long, to many a lonely soul, served as balm
Sitting amid those gallant souls
I thought over the relentless efforts of sage like men
Who in the stillness of the night, in their cloistured cells
Plunged into research and meditative reflection
What knowledge is garnered in these tomes!
What all charms, encased in these pages!
To what magic lands they can carry us
Sharing with us the accumulated wisdom of ages
With the profusion of electronic gadgets
And information, readily available by a finger hit
Books no more are given a venerable treat
And fated to be stashed away in corners unlit
Heavy with the time tested wisdom of the wise
They sit huddled together in damp corners
Longing to get a little human warmth
But sadly neglected like rusted burners
After an hour’s enervating reprieve
While I was leaving that dumb world
In my ears, fell a faint sound
Of the agonizing cry of the Printed Word!
Jul 15, 2018
Jul 15, 2018 at 8:58 AM UTC
Too roughly hewn and cleaved around edges frayed
shaped and reshaped by these own calloused hands
I realize the shape of things ,... who I am ... who I've become ―
The sound of my own raw voice knows not convention ;
it was nothing more than words of fragmented tomes exposed
Only the broken wind covering footprints on the road not taken
on a never ending journey into a lonely abyss
These greatest fears I've come to know ;
my greatest weakness bared and borne
broken dreams bought and sold,
for less than they were worth.
In the chill of this winter darkness grown cold
a newly recurring silence echoes poignantly,..
redux
forevermore
self-loathed
déjà vu ―
***The only dream's fruition ever feared:
to walk alone at that predestined parting moment
within a stones throw of six feet underground ,...
dropping to these knees at a threshold
well-nigh left behind,
knocking at the door that leads beyond ―
never needing to know how to say goodbye …***
thinking out loud ... 11. 29. 2016
Nov 29, 2016
Nov 29, 2016 at 12:49 PM UTC
Sweeten, let’s, a coast of dun
Therefrom which, the tides erode,
A castle to blind the mighty sun
Affront to that Poseidon, and others
On the beach.
***** the walls and battlements
Fair crystal arm the turrets
The audience of the hermit *****
Pay silent homage to the throne
Intricate are its libraries, etched
Our history inside the tomes.
Only grains of perfect stock
From which antiquity, in full credit,
Will revere the lot
And poetry of human might
Shaped and forged to kiss the day of light
Only that may suffice.
In this endeavor, no ancients will tenet
Its salty beams but the children of the morn
For we shall build the universe
From when progenitors are born.
Before it began, we were dismayed
Our future, castle, by waves waylaid
Aspirations sink, now, from shape.
But, Gods, I curse you!
Let my destiny rise free!
Look now before you:
A stone in ocean of mediocrity!
All these that build up forts
Lack in that spirit to fight, retort
**** you, **** you, waters of my doubt
Turn false the shades of realism
Which I thought it all about
**** you, **** you sands of time
For now all that founds my dreams
Is erosion of the shoreline sand.
Aug 25, 2014
Aug 25, 2014 at 9:54 PM UTC
* *“Mystic readers of the stars,
In Land of Sleeping’s language versed,
Consult the tales, those stories –old.
And tell us, is the maiden sold?”**
* *“Climb the tower, the fire pieces,
Traverse the heavens, assign the path,
Until the maze of tomes thus ceases…
And mystery lost to art of math.”* *
Jun 7, 2016
Jun 7, 2016 at 12:22 AM UTC
I've always been somewhat Autistic,
ADHD
too
More than a little manic
and
OCD
I've had the fever
Occupying me
I've heard the murderous rage
And it was me
I have had my periods of Schizophrenia
Paranoia
Psychic warfare
in the ether
He's looking at me
I keep looking at him
Wondering why he's looking at me
I've got that DID
Going into trances
The poet he writes these tomes,
Waking up in strange places
That PTSD
Get startled very easily
Anxiety and depression
Are you kidding?
What's a day without 'em?
The vice is nice
Abundance to depletion,
The parking lot walk
Polysubstance abuse
has had it's use
Fetishes phillias
Electric brain all light up
Run amok
Decades of misery
Decades of mastery
Had them all
A walking DSM
That would be me
Everything which is human inside you is inside me
Hanging out with
the human condition
my old friend and me
Trying one more time
to figure it all out,
one more time.
Nov 1, 2018
Nov 1, 2018 at 8:54 PM UTC
*Tra..la...la....la...
Time for sha-sha-shampoo ...in the bath*
1.
When you wash your hair
in the bath
And you lather up suds
froth that foam
BIG bubbles
such big big big.
Ooh, slinky stuff
I'm the shampoo in your hair.
I'll slide across your tresses
And slip between fingers
Caress your scalp
And press in deep.
2.
While I'm there, I'll take a peep inside
And dip into that well-indexed well
Page through tomes of unseen stuff
See how gray pals duel along
Friendly fights.
Can you feel how I run down
The side of your face
Onto your shoulders now...
3.
Later, when you're all warm and dressed
You can relax and read poems in bed
revel in more
But now, there's more in store...
elsewhere to visit....
4.
Ooh!
Just lovin' that shampoo.
Gotta love that shampoo
Just gotta love that sha-sha-shampoo!
S T, 16 May 2013
May 16, 2013
May 16, 2013 at 2:48 PM UTC
*" It ought to be solemnized with Pomp and Parade, with Shews,
Games, Sports, Guns, Bells, Bonfires and
Illuminations from one End of this Continent
to the other from this Time forward forever more.”
John Adams – July 3, 1776.*
Webster Groves - 2016
The Townhall fountain dances
cheerily in the morning sun.
The red-white-blue shirted crowd
rises as one for the colors.
Laughing children scramble for
tootsie rolls and sweet tarts
tossed by a strolling clown.
Philadelphia, July 3, 1776
Carriages sped toward Philadelphia
where resolute patriots
would turn the pages of history
and tell an unsuspecting world
that a new nation had given birth to itself.*
Sousa strains peal from the marching Statesmen,
Girl Scouts guide their well-groomed mounts -
hooves echoing through concrete caverns.
Vintage firetrucks and autos
sound their horns and sirens
as candidates work the crowd, pressing the flesh.
*Each crass insult from the British crown
had tightened the noose on the colonial neck.
The middle ground was soaked with patriot blood
and revolution was the only course left.*
Barbecue clouds drift over Pat and Lee’s farm
Horseshoes spin and clang and frisbees fly.
A pot-luck feast with beans and franks
interrupts the pop and glare of bottle rockets.
*One by one, each patriot quilled the parchment
resolved to endure the costs of liberty -
knowing to the marrow that defeat
would spell certain ******* and death.*
We reach the lakeshore at dusk -
unfolding chairs - spreading out blankets -
strains of Americana drift over the lake.
then a pyro-technic extravaganza
blazes across the summer sky.
*Washingon’s tattered and bloodied men
cornered Cornwallis at Yorktown.
Then surrender - all British claims
to American soil banished to the tomes of history.*
The grand finale pummels the darkened sky
raising cheers and whistles from the crowd
Toddlers collapse in parental arms,
car doors slam, engines ignite
and head-lighted caravans, turn for home,
spiraling off in every compass degree.
“Happy birthday,” America and endless happy returns
"from this time forward forever more!”
Robert Charles Howard
Jul 4, 2016
Jul 4, 2016 at 2:07 PM UTC
I once scurried through a jungle of tomes
From the languid turf of hazy hagglers
To the esoteric sphere of cryptic connoisseurs
The jagged rhythm pulsating with a staccato of pebbles
Not a placid clime but a wonky wilderness
Where your eyes rove for honey of rising cadence
Only to decelerate
From an alien territory to a corny scenery
The voyage of discovery must continue...
As sojourners of change
Onuchi Mark © 2010
Aug 20, 2010
Aug 20, 2010 at 6:51 AM UTC