Waves circulate,
controlling the air consumed.
A deathly concoction;
sweet yellow roses
sharp silver chained.
Aroma of overwhelming necessity.
Primitive act of the aging anatomy.
The ticks drop to the floor,
numbers join the invisible waves.
No end to the craves eating away
deteriorating.
Comfort will not be found
until the race against the numbers seize.
Yet a single feather consoles
the melting mass.
Soon, a pillow found
with love near
a deep slumber shall be slept.

On
The counters of poetry
I dock and lock myself
Then
I scope on the bottles of liquors seductively
And spellblind by their syllables
I took the shakers and hybrid
The Similes
The Onomatopeia's
The Nemesis'
The Near-Rhymes
And The Triadic-Lines
Then I gulp fourteen shots of Sonnets
From my paper-glass
And glug a paradox
Or a foil-sigh
Trice,
The knots
Bundling my eloquence
Will exonerated itself
And torpidity will cuff my consciousness
And the droplets remains in my paper- glass
Will impel me
To quest for myriad of them

I'm not drunk!
I'm not drunk!
I'm not drunk!
I
Will slur
With half an eye open
As if the other is broken
Stock on a comedy chair

Then
When the
Limbs of time tread
Will I rush to the counter
Like the athletes at Olympia
And hybrid
The Blank-verses
The Alliterations
The Limericks
The Litotes
The Aporia's
And The Dysphemism's
And
Gulp countless
Yet measured shoots
Of Ballad,with my paper-glass
And unravel the oratories
Of sacred secrets,eclectic enchantment and regrettable reflexes
Aside,or injects the world
With my rugged pins of eruditions
Bestowed in me by the liquors of poetry

I'm not drunk!
I'm not drunk!
I'm not drunk!
I
Will slur
With half an eye open
As if the other is broken
Stocked on a comedy-chair

Again
I will rush
To the counter,and hybrid
The Exaggerations
The Personifications
The Imageries
And The Caesura's
And
Gulp uncounted shoots
Of Epic's from my paper-glass
And
Eulogise my steam and wit
Yet,I'm drunk
And deeply drunk wholly
By a might that mortify me so much
That I've become a slave
In the awe of my servitude

Now and then
Will I weep and wail terribly
Each morning,each noon,and each night
For the great demise of myself
And for an emancipation
From the perpetual counter-cells poetry
I'm drunk,and deeply drunk by poetry.

Deeply Drunk
©Historian E.Lexano

Torpidity

gives me permission to let go
of the things I don’t want to hold
onto. Indolence is my friend. He tells me
what to put down. Bury a  dead horse. It will

fertilize the ground. Don’t follow
lethargy. Give him space; he’s untidy. He
doesn’t know what he’s doing. He’s only
going through the motions.

Sweet Refraining Mindnumber,
In the instances when neither speak, there is a feeling somewhat narcotic and lackadaisical.
I tend to forget the solidity of words and some often slip between cracks in my teeth.
Try not to ponder these odd things while I comb my fingers through trifle upbringings,
though you might, and I might as well, raise questions in my head of dreams I've had and ones you've witnessed.

She was a spectacular tree.
People called her the flame of the forest,
for she was obviously striking, vivid and classy.

I need not narrate the superlative majesty
of the flame – tree, for one time or the other
we have all been breath-taken by her peerless glamor.

What matchless artistry!

I am here to quickly share
my ruminative gloom for that lovely assembly
of flower, leaf and wood, which grandly stood
in a grove of possibilities, and possibilities can be
such a torment, such a calamity.

❋

For years galore, caterpillars of choices
had been steadily eating away at her core.
They came from different directions,
at different trajectories,
with varied objectives
and fluctuating proclivities.

Sometimes, they came rushing in as family,
and sometimes they came slowly,
a little formally, a bit watchfully,
somewhat officially.

At times they came in fiery fascination
and yet, ever so often, they were charged
with marauding indignation.

Many times they arrived as blazing ambition,
but more often than not, combusted the flamboyance
leaving behind an ashen illusion.

Oh.....those craving larvae
of oblique, wily opportunities.

❋

The foliage was feverishly guzzled
till photosynthesis was no more possible.
From my distant window from where I had once
watched her variegated flair,
I felt the Poinciana moan in simmering despair.

❋

With biting sensitivity, I still look on, a tad tearfully,
as she continues to tumble into conscious torpidity.

My words may slip and sway, as with each wilting leaf
after each withering floret, she progresses towards
an abject decay;
imploding methodically, and transposing gradually
from being the flame of the forest
to being a sprouting forest of flames.

…the dream sequence
plays like vaudeville
in the peephole
of a kinetoscope

my drunken subconscious thoughts
undulate in murky waters
and slurin the visions of specters past

infrastructures and pylons
formed from childhood homes schools
skate parks friend’s houssand churches

faces familiar unfamiliar
mold and mend in wicked contortions
and diaphanous ambiguity
what obfuscates me from the truths
of my mind

I stumble through the chambers
haunted by childhood nightmares
and tickled by ancient fantasies

my arms
               and legs
                             are like
                                          rubber
           ­                              I
                                 feel
                  torpidity
overcome

and the words
are like alphabet soup
in the director’s commentary
splashing around aimlessly mingling
in the waves of broth

what will be revealed
in this phantasmagoric phenomena
wax figures coming to life
and panoramas dancing on the walls

my body somewhere in time
waits with pen and paper in hand
eager to counter the façade
with the utmost coherence

just you wait til I wake up
and reveal all your secrets
oh wondrous mind…

I sit beneath the willow
As all my thoughts run free
Skipping through the meadow
Of true tranquility

I sit beneath the willow
As winds begin to blow
I feel the stumble of my thoughts
Into the valley's low

I sit beneath the willow
As rains begin to pour
I hear the gurgle of my thoughts
Till thoughts I think no more

A cloudy sky is all I see
A mind of dull torpidity
I sit beneath the willow
I sit beneath the willow

Easing into the day in languid torpidity
he slowly unwinds to face the sun
and like every other sloth before him
he moves so very very slowly
you wouldn't even know he’d begun.

©Joe Wilson – Just lazing about 2014

Let’s hear it for the sloth :-)

sleepless nights
         incur frightful
terrors
            locked in torpidity
as anxiety
           dashes up the sheets
i practice
                this waltz with death
  unsuccessfully

Have you ever seen a ghost?…

When I look out of my apartment’s 2nd story window at the street below, I see them.  I see them when I look into the dim eyes of a hooded youth walking  by, hands in pockets. I see them in a woman, shoulders slumped as she sweeps the front steps of her shop. And as the sun sets on another day, I see them… I see them in the souls that shuffle into the bar just down the street and in the tired, weathered faces of some of my fellow tenants as they return to their homes, another week of their lives wrung out of them.

I once pondered these things one early morning as I sat on my balcony, coffee in hand, and listen to the silence of a sleeping city in the twilight of a young November day. As I observe people going about their routines, certain ones stand out to me… I can see the ghosts in them. When I look into certain people’s eyes the dark reflection of their presence reaches into me, hungrily calculating the imperceptible. You see, souls, like panes of glass, are fragile impressions into a reality. In order to preserve these self serving realities, humans shrivel into pathetic shells of the essence they used to be. They put on a mask.

And that is when they come.

Like a breath of stale wind they fall into you, clawing at one’s heart and wrapping the mind in a numbing layer of torpidity. Their roots creep silently down one’s spine, intertwining with bone and sinew. They feast ceaselessly attempting to satiate their appetites on the droplets of resolve, of hope, of meaning that is left in a person’s life. The eyes… they are the tell-tale. I stare into the hallowed holes behind the eyes, behind the mask, and I know… I see them hovering there.

I write these things now from my bathroom. The orange glint of an empty pill bottle to my left, on the right, the shimmering of many thin, red rivulets streaming off my arm onto the tile below. As I stare into the mirror I reach up and touch the cool, white shape I see there, peering into the the two black abysses staring back at me. I watch as a single tear slips out from under the porcelain and glides effortlessly down my throat as the corners of my vision begin to blacken and my knees give way to weakness.

And I ask you again… have you ever seen a ghost?

Life drown in tears
Eyes feel like it’s pierced
Hands that are cuffed
Words turned to a bluff

Harder to express oneself
Of a life a cry for help
Distance to other people
Heart just started to crumple

Not alone is what thy know
Presence is just for show
Too much sensitivity
Torpidity is what it cost me

Depression, it chokes them
Crying has been my anthem

Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

                        A Fragment of Machinery in the Road

Part of a specialty clamp in asphalt trapped
Like a primeval animal, jaws apart
A mechanical protest locked in place
When steaming pitch was rolled upon the road

The seasons pass and footsteps pass, leaves fall
But nothing changes for those frozen in place
By the decrees of stasis and stagnancy
Progress blocked by torpidity and time

The seasons pass, my daily footsteps pass
A fragment of machinery in the road

Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

                                     The Blues and the Blahs

“Ennui” sounds like a urinary tract infection
“Torpidity” something to do with one’s bowels
“Anomie” might be a boring friend
“Lassitude” a cowboy who has lost his rope

“Insipidity” the noise of slurping one’s soup
“Angst” a degenerative heart disease
“Weltschmerz” Sergeant Schultz’ least favorite beer
“Misanthropy” a cute but cranky girl

I don’t how many of these I have got
But I have got ‘em - and wish that I did not!