"tracking" poems
What is a "soul"?
Seriously, what is it?
Ambiguity obviates all simple and complex definitions.
If "souls" do exist,
I suppose my "soul" is transmogrifying,
Transfusing the screen.
The key is Transition
Of a remote position.
Maybe someday a scientific physician
Will invent a tracking device to track its travelling distance?
Sounds sort of like a Stephen Spielberg novel
The genre of science fiction
Or is it?
7/18/11
(c) 2011 Brandon Antonio Smith
Oct 14, 2014
Oct 14, 2014 at 4:38 PM UTC
.
*Curious minds,
splashing under
moonlight
With
outstretched kisses
pulsating yellow,
Over the awestruck
magical
rainbow,
Feverishly tracking each
supernova
on sight.*
***Resting the moment
on a
cresting knoll,
With
an audience of several
time-worn
rocks.
Whilst the
whistling sirens
in the winds do call...
Wasting away
the ticks of
worldly
clocks.***
*Evading with class,
all
heart's turbulence,
Craters of sadness
congeal
in thin air,
Glamorous amnesia
falls
with cadence,
Eyes wide shut,
susurrating
a
lost prayer.*
***Lifeless gazes
yield
only
abrasive tears.
As erratum
catches up
with its
gaping maw.
Hurling
its anguish
in
rips and shears,
Bleeding out
of
singing wounds
so raw.
But...
time carries confident,
its stock of
soothing balm.
Latent doses
hidden
within
invisible vials.
Welcoming vision
with its
sunlit palms,
Staving the longing
for the
fear of trials.***
*Now hushed
remain the remorseful
battle trenches,
Deprived of their own
victims
save gaping wounds,
Only
faint faith
commanding
corroded limp
forces,
Stirring
light away
from
all
agony
and
doom.*
Moonskittles
ryn
Jan 23, 2015
Jan 23, 2015 at 6:40 AM UTC
Hues of violet
As the azure meets the reddened sun
Sparse deflated clouds
Floated quiet as into each other, the colours run
Lavender streaks
Trail far into the horizon
Tracking the sunset
As the hour struck seven
Purple gladioluses
Bowed to the evening sea breeze
As if mourning the departure
Of the day's warmth with silent pleas
The orb finally sank
Beyond my sight could reach
Disappeared from here
But rising over someone else's beach
Last dregs of light
Slowly swallowed, giving birth to indigo
This night would last long
Before the first rays of tomorrow...
Mar 26, 2015
Mar 26, 2015 at 8:24 AM UTC
Watching a seagull floating lazily
Through an invisible blue ocean
Effortlessly soaring on invisible waves
Course dictated by winds currents
Piercing eyes watching, senses alert
Casting a moving shadow, cross the deep
Tracking a path none knows
Swooping, surfing ocean’s rollers
Wingtips gently kissing wave peaks.
Feb 2, 2015
Feb 2, 2015 at 2:03 PM UTC
if I got a poem out of every message I receive...ha!...I do...
quite a bit upon to chew,
but a request from her,
to please ignore her weirdness,
too juicy to pass unnoticed,
because it goes to the heart of the mad matter
'tis that weirdness that I do so cherish,
fully reflected in my own poem-children,
my multiple identities, that the FBI is yet tracking
give me your weirdness, yearning to be free,
so my poems can be inscribed upon a crown
and daughter adopted dear,
that one crown,
thy name,
thy madness upon it etched,
modified to rest
easy
upon thy temples
<•>
for Ali
Sep 25, 2018
Sep 25, 2018 at 11:26 AM UTC
Telling the story of passion, death, and virtue.
Tracking deception with freedom's lies.
The Traveler passed through that timeless veil
between here and there,
the spaces
between the fantastic delusional minds.
That a hunter has when tracking
down an accomplished plan.
Caught in a Blue Galactic Storm.
The Unicorn said.
*"Mind your own business the rest of us don't give a ****
Yet just as the wheels of the stars keep on turning--
on the heels of a planet surfing the Universes tides.
There will always be cycles-
and sometimes it happens
that they collide-such is the power of the Muse.
My story is one of tragedy and despair,
with malice and Discord, Regret and Guilty Shame.
Swallowed by the darkness empty and Dead.
Yet out of nothing sprang Life--
fear to Hope Hate to Love, Recklessness to Responsibility,
now I'm changing the tide.
With arrows sharp words that fill the Night sky.
Once again finding the Magic in these threads-weaving a world I've known and dread. Always mocked by the Queen of Hearts, hunting, desiring;
"Metamorphosis"
But Truth and Memory found the way.
A ghost shell that’s crossed the Styx of the Grave,
The Muse inside no longer be spelled drifting now to unsure shores,
Just as Dante mapped out Hell, so will I my tale:
Psyche (Human Soul) captive
to the Ice of Pluto-shed no tears.
This prison made flesh by mortal
woe-lost, forgotten,
But Morpheus came to me then.
"You still have your Dreams."
Then the madness came looming.
The facts blurred and suddenly Phoebe appeared:
with a playful far off expression.
"Oh Persephone, mourn the falling leaves, for it is the last of them you will see.”
Oct 29, 2012
Oct 29, 2012 at 2:23 PM UTC
They set off from white rocks,
red geraniums, blue tile,
and let the green sea
lift and drop their ships far above the white foam waves.
The stony islands that were home
were swallowed in minutes by the hungry Atlantic
but they hunted the big fish,
the giant whales with human eyes
who rolled and sang and swam
in oceans a continent away.
They came from Sao Jorge, Sao Miguel
Faial, Pico, Terceira, Horta -
Nine island emeralds set in a black volcanic chain,
neither of the old country nor the new:
Halfway there and halfway gone -
secret jewels of the Portuguese sailors.
They sailed into unknown waters,
south around tropical shores
where dragons smoked and writhed on the rocks
and birds with brilliant red and yellow plumage
rose in clouds around their heads.
Then north, and north, north again
to colder waters
where sea lions barked and lunged
at the strange massive wooden beast
that coursed the waters,
strung with brown bodies swaying
on the lines and cursing the sails.
North still they swept
casting contemptuous eyes on
the cheap turquoise waters and monstrous slow turtles
of the Sea of Cortez.
Coming up from the desert, past the palms and the yucca,
the Joshua tree and Spanish daggers,
they chased their smooth grey prey,
riding the vast Pacific on their wooden island,
herding the leviathans onto their spears,
adventurers with an audience of only
gulls and sky and seal.
Until they sailed too close one day
to a rock-strewn shoreline
and saw the golden hills.
Gnarled oaks like grandmothers from home
with orange poppy jewels at their feet,
missions strung like beads in a ruby marked rosary.
The boats slowed, ****** in by a Scylla of soil
rich and brown and loamy
waiting to be seeded with grapes and apricots
peaches, avocados, lettuce, alfalfa,
fertile and heavy with sweet promise.
And the whales sang and the lions barked and the gulls cried
but the sailors were entranced, encharmed, ensorcelled.
The treacherous sea, the mysterious deep, the stony jewels of home,
called and wept
and waited in vain for the sailors
- beached and grounded -
cutting not waves but earth,
tracking seasons not whales,
seduced by dirt.
Nov 29, 2014
Nov 29, 2014 at 9:51 PM UTC
Rules:
1.You have to write a poem on the given prompt for each day [in the given order] and then share it with fellow challenge takers (optional but recommended) by posting what you wrote in your blog or on Facebook or wherever. To make sharing and tracking easier, you can use this hashtag: #eleven11poetrychallenge
2. The poem can be of any length and the prompt can be interpreted anyway you want. Poems can be written in English or Nepali.
3. The whole idea is to write, share, grow and have fun! So if you are cool with it, check this space for daily prompt.
Prompts:
Day one: A poem from the perspective of an inanimate object
Day two: A poem in the format of a conversation
Day three: Write a poem that tells a story (with a beginning, middle, end..but not necessarily in that order), which is completely imaginary or is not based on a reality that YOU know of.
Day four: A wishlist, with 11 of your wishes.
Day five: Write a Haiku. Or two.
Day six: Let's talk about *** baby! [Write a poem about *** (not *** and gender, 'sex' if we are unclear.]
Day seven: Only sixteen--a poem about the person you were when you were sixteen [or about the person you want to be, if you are not yet 16]
Day eight: A poem describing a photograph or painting.
Day nine: Write a letter to your murderer.
Day ten: A poem about your worst nightmare.
Day Eleven: Write a poem about yourself, in Nepali. IF you already write in Nepali, that is great. If you don't, then this prompt s your chance
May 4, 2014
May 4, 2014 at 6:40 AM UTC
Will I find you
in the shadows
looking over me
Will there be you
or it is just the continuation
of recurring hallucination.
It is getting trickier
to place you between
the imaginary and real you
both out to mess around me
your madness is catching me
the shady creature
filling my head space.
Manipulative ways
simply tracking my businesses
connecting into the web
stalking at all time
triggering an all kind
paranoia.
Invading in was easy
but the red light is on
between the scenes
the mask flew away
true colours will come out.
Holes in your plans
aren't as visible to you
the green figures
through the night vision
has come to play too
this exposure to the truth
keeps me sane
you got a new player
in this game.
I am counting the days
waiting for you in the shadows
to watch you
fall into your traps.
Apr 16, 2018
Apr 16, 2018 at 11:58 AM UTC
In comes one every week,
tracking into my home the filth of the streets:
some are patterned like cows,
some wear tuxedos,
some have turtle shells on their backs.
One looks like a whole spice rack spilled out on him.
Barn cats, alley cats, stray cats, exotic cats—
she says no to none of them.
This home is wild and foolish like her mind.
That compassion pours out like acid on my bones.
Then I’m forced to shoot her down
with words that fly out like bullets,
and more mouthfuls
and more mouthfuls of bullets
that all but ricochet off her iron clad will.
You turn so perfectly
down your roads of passion.
Creep on through the stop signs I put up
and mount on my head the horns,
the ones we pretend we can’t see,
the ones that let the bullets soar,
bullets to **** you again,
horns to undress your sister.
Feb 5, 2011
Feb 5, 2011 at 4:37 PM UTC
The comfiest human bed warmer I ever had,
My fundamental tutor of the good and the bad,
The original storyteller in my bedtime tantrums,
The resident photographer of my birthday albums.
The accidental magician who tricked me out of my worries,
A sympathetic dictator who scolds but allows my fancies,
My biased talent manager who always tells me I'm the best,
The loudest cheerleader who puts to shame all the rest.
The world's underrated chef cooking heavenly meals,
Our unpaid laundry lady worrying over water bills,
The overqualified nurse never leaving her patient,
Our top-notch budget analyst negotiating every payment.
The random gardener, she can grow anything with ease,
Our talkative historian, she stops recalling only if we say please,
The uncanny philosopher, we've learned a lot from her,
The lost and found administrator, tracking things hidden anywhere.
The most efficient multitasker I've ever known,
My trustworthy adviser who knows me down to my bones,
A tough fighter who keeps winning her every battle,
My life's co-creator and this world's greatest mother.
May 13, 2017
May 13, 2017 at 7:44 PM UTC
Yesterday's tears.
Tracking down neglected cheeks,
Through grime and dirt
On frowning face.
Who will wipe them dry
And make her smile?
Unwanted child.
Yesterday's fears.
Haunting her another day.
She makes her bed
In alley ways.
Who will take her home
And make her warm?
Unwanted child.
Yesterday's hunger.
Eating at her; wants and needs;
Food can't be found
At any cost.
Who will nourish her
And give her life?
Unwanted child.
Yesterday's life.
Passing now to be no more.
Forlorn and cold
On hated streets.
Who will bury her
And give her rest?
Unwanted child.
Nov 27, 2014
Nov 27, 2014 at 9:35 AM UTC
Asylum
In the madhouse
on beds of daggers
we slept like crickets
chirping to ourselves
while they tried their best
to make us cannibals.
The nuns were worse than
lawyers, praying like accordions,
tracking their sins into our soft
wax skulls, wheezing like roosters
when one of us cried, laying the greasy ribs
of Jesus on our plates.
They kept you behind
door number six. I'd go to you
with a stolen key, when the noon
smelled bright as carnations,
when the nights were
more purple than the jacarandas.
You spoke of your father
dead of snakebite,
a clockwork marvel with
his million-dollar suit of skin,
of your mother
with the viper between her lips.
I remember your kiss
astringent with reason
as bitter lemons, and the way
your hair blew back from
your dog-brown eyes like poisonous
smoke from the oleanders.
I thought these things
as beautiful as angels
whispering in the dahlias
when I was lost in the asylum,
when the doctors did all they could
to see that we ate each other
down to the bone.
April 2022
Sep 13, 2025
Sep 13, 2025 at 8:54 AM UTC
coloring inside the lines is impossibly bleak,
with a hissing noise
atomic locomotive
rounds the bend,
extrasensory perception is not
a mindless gift,
it's a train station in the clouds,
tracking all my starting points to you,
nothing in the middle,
nothing at the end.
you leave in opera
with secrets and grievances
under the radar,
and your ready-made
wings catch in the power lines,
you're coiling like smoke
in the arches of my cathedral,
a sense of elegant decay
while sweeping up the debris,
committing arson
with the paraffin of my temporal lobe.
yesterday's fairground waltzes,
ghosted lullabies,
and woodland hymnals,
set in a context not of
resolution and closure,
but of contradiction and assimilation,
break the bond,
away they float on purveyor belts,
one too many molecules,
one too many departures,
always on the surface of everything,
nothing in the middle,
nothing at the end.
Feb 16, 2023
Feb 16, 2023 at 7:27 AM UTC
I
Half of the fellow father as he doubles
His sea-sucked Adam in the hollow hulk,
Half of the fellow mother as she dabbles
To-morrow's diver in her ***** milk,
Bisected shadows on the thunder's bone
Bolt for the salt unborn.
The fellow half was frozen as it bubbled
Corrosive spring out of the iceberg's crop,
The fellow seed and shadow as it babbled
The swing of milk was tufted in the pap,
For half of love was planted in the lost,
And the unplanted ghost.
The broken halves are fellowed in a *******
The crutch that marrow taps upon their sleep,
Limp in the street of sea, among the rabble
Of tide-tongued heads and bladders in the deep,
And stake the sleepers in the savage grave
That the vampire laugh.
The patchwork halves were cloven as they scudded
The wild pigs' wood, and slime upon the trees,
******* the dark, kissed on the cyanide,
And loosed the braiding adders from their hairs,
Rotating halves are horning as they drill
The arterial angel.
What colour is glory? death's feather? tremble
The halves that pierce the pin's point in the air,
And ***** the thumb-stained heaven through the thimble.
The ghost is dumb that stammered in the straw,
The ghost that hatched his havoc as he flew
Blinds their cloud-tracking eye.
II
My world is pyramid. The padded mummer
Weeps on the desert ochre and the salt
Incising summer.
My Egypt's armour buckling in its sheet,
I scrape through resin to a starry bone
And a blood parhelion.
My world is cypress, and an English valley.
I piece my flesh that rattled on the yards
Red in an Austrian volley.
I hear, through dead men's drums, the riddled lads,
******** their bowels from a hill of bones,
Cry Eloi to the guns.
My grave is watered by the crossing Jordan.
The Arctic scut, and basin of the South,
Drip on my dead house garden.
Who seek me landward, marking in my mouth
The straws of Asia, lose me as I turn
Through the Atlantic corn.
The fellow halves that, cloven as they swivel
On casting tides, are tangled in the shells,
Bearding the unborn devil,
Bleed from my burning fork and smell my heels.
The tongue's of heaven gossip as I glide
Binding my angel's hood.
Who blows death's feather? What glory is colour?
I blow the stammel feather in the vein.
The **** is glory in a working pallor.
My clay unsuckled and my salt unborn,
The secret child, I sift about the sea
Dry in the half-tracked thigh.
3.9k
Saul. Babbittz.
Slight variation of the name Paul - sometimes pronounced
with the
"ah-oolll"
of Raul - to intrigue cashiers and toll booth attendents.
These words seem meaningless and even less interesting than the blank white background each letter invades.
And still I thank the God in my stomach that wakes up every once in a while to capture butterflies before I leave the house so I can turn down the sounds in my head that stir the butterflies to a frenzied mess of tangled neurons and synaptic maladjustment.
My interaction goes something like this:
cashier-"do you have a bonus card?"
me-(holding out the pad of my thumb - serious like lava)
cashier-(looking at me with a confused look)
me- "I thought thumb scans were enacted throughout the states. Sorry about that, I just got used to the thumb scan back home in North Dakota".
cashier- (dumbfounded, slightly annoyed)
me- (chuckling-embarrassed smirk) "you know, like a dystopian tracking system?"
cashier- "uh, not really" (avoiding eye contact, rushed transaction) "freak" (under her breath).
butterflies again
I've never even lived in North Dakota!
Just uncomfortable enough to prove that body heat activated "degree" does not provide 24 hour protection...
Next transaction a day later:
me- (silence)
Dec 18, 2012
Dec 18, 2012 at 9:10 PM UTC
All these years behind windows
With blind crosses sweeping the tables
And myself tracking over empty ground
Animals I never saw
I with no voice
Remembering names to invent for them
Will any come back will one
Saying yes
Saying look carefully yes
We will meet again
3.5k
you say i trust to equal those in the past
whom have brought only pain and hatred
upon those in their wake?
well it's time to take a look in the mirror
my friend, no, wait, don't do that,
i wouldn't want to inflate your ego
it would come as no surprise to me if in that
mirror you would only see the eighth wonder
of the world, ever wondered if you could see
the world? i take that back, there is no sense
in snapping and losing my temper,
but all i'm doing is back tracking and
finding my self exempt of the respect that i
deserve, only you can serve to notice
the pain that you have harboured
upon the empty hearts of which now yearn
for that ever self-loving and i can only leave
you with this advice
turn around and back off
that ain't love it's idolatry.
Jan 24, 2013
Jan 24, 2013 at 9:39 AM UTC
tattoo ourselves in electric ink memorializing calendars,
diaries of observantional digits, black on white, no gray,
birthdays, anniversaries, dates of passing, starting lines,
occasional achievements, departure dates, even glaring failures,
sundial mundane records of diurnal habitude…even
defining self by, bye, byte marks upon flesh, upon our calendar
*not my first trip-tracking, he ruefully rues, wry smiling,
many voyages of indeterminate measuring length,
leaving litter of arrays of hopeful estimations & destinations,
each unequal, any or all possibilities, each day notated,
without critique or commentary, the numbers are the
gaols (jails) of goals, target, indeterminate determination,
terrific, horrific, introspections, inverse images resolve, resolute*
a year ago, +/- a few days,, new travelogue commenced,
notated but not annotated, just numerical truths,
(sans comments for the divine nature of numbers don’t lie)
and today my calculator app informs, that I am now
19.4 % lesser, but that clarifies less than expected
naturally this provokes a natty,
spirited, self-inquiry, lessened,
lessor, for better or for worse?
have the physical alterations
accompanying this reduction
mean exactly what,
if, it should be, a greater lesser?
here is the hard part.
your have always been a mirror~poet,
laughing, bemoaning the unvarnished, unshaven
AM sightings of a human perpetual dissatisfied,
the external never denying the interior “less~than,”
a J Peterman catalogue of weathered ****** expressions,
counter-parted by multiple Venn diagram intersections,
of experiential labeled bits & pieces of emotional empirical
less than good, not even close to perfect, so now that I am
*gaunt, spare, lean, grayed, narrower, again ruefully rue,
the even more visible truth reflection eye~hidden:*
I,
am the sum of the weight of my history, my deeds,
my disbeliefs, murderous deeds, weak choices
and that hasn’t changed nary an ounce, no matter
many times examined, indeed I am forever a lesser man,
there, internal infernal
too…
Apr 9, 2023
Apr 9, 2023 at 2:12 PM UTC
The details of your DNA are settling into
my brain like dust mites chasing
each other around and around in
search of a field of gravity;
sometimes I'm stuck and sometimes I like to run away
but occasionally I force myself to stay in the same place for more than a few minutes
occasionally I am the right place and the right time, and occasionally
that is enough.
It takes me a while but wouldn't you know, I have stopped
being a doormat for everyone whose baggage weighs
more than mine;
wouldn't you know, I don't think they carry
it right anyway, and their feet wouldn't feel
so heavy without the steel and armor;
I'm trying to play follow-the leader here,
taking tips from an invisible authority
I don't know any such role model to exist, but
sometimes I pretend I do just to
have a place to put my hands or my feet when it's
cold and they're tracking snow in;
my pulse is slower before midnight
once the dark falls I can't sleep
I can't sleep but I do know how to place blame
fitted heavily and perfectly to sculpted shoulders;
I can't sleep but I know exactly how much
plaster it takes to patch up a wall at roughly this height,
I know exactly the number of messages left on my machine
unanswered, ignored
molded word for word into
little stick-its in my brain.
I don't know sleep but I am very good friends with
her companions,
drowsy achy steady pull
of exhaustion dragging behind my eyelids
matched hand to hand with its
lovely counterpart,
red eye restless itchy frustration
burning hot under my skin.
But don't you know, I am only
this person once every
12 hours or so,
just wait it out, I'll
come around.
Aug 12, 2018
Aug 12, 2018 at 1:40 PM UTC
She goes on sniffing him like a hunter's dog, persistent,
He eats her hurriedly as if she is a honey filled cake,
Chance ****** encounter, unbridled wild desires run amok.
They are fully taken over by the agile demons of ***** amour.
Completely forget shame, even the thought of sin, altogether.
Make the bed a ground where they play with such vehemence!
She is a rare tree, yielding to caressing touch, flowering all over.
The goose bumps refusing to disappear,tell the whole untold story.
She makes noises of approval, while tracking the scent downwards
When she finds the bone at last, she doesn't know what she does!
Jul 3, 2017
Jul 3, 2017 at 11:40 AM UTC
Drinking a Guinness Extra, an empty gesture,
Beset truly by the words of Joyce,
I am sick of the turning from text
To annotation. I wish only to read
A text as it was meant,
With the knowledge not aside
But present already in my blasted skull
It's like the modern appreciation of Shakespeare
—At best an approximation. The words that were
Common, fallen out of usage.
The words then invented, now commonplace.
Thither and hither again I will look
Tracking the details
Researching the clever allusion
Trying not to miss & missing anon
what's right in front of me
D.B. Guy
Nov 3, 2012
Nov 3, 2012 at 3:07 AM UTC