"unaccustomed" poems
“Moby **** Herman Melville
<•>
~for the lost at sea~
after a year of saltwater absence and abstinence,
return to the island caught between two land forks
surrounded by river-heading flows
bound for the ocean great joining
the Atlantic welcomes the fresh water fools,
bringing with them hopefully, but hopeless gifts of obeisances,
peace-offerings endeavoring to keep their infinite souls
sea accepts them then drowns the
warm newcomers in the unaccustomed
deep cold salinity, which
sometimes erodes
sometimes preserving
their former freshwater cold originality
I’m called to depart my beach shoreline unarmed,
no kayak, sunfish or glass bottomed boat needed,
walk on water and my toes, ten eyes to see the bottom,
no depth perception limitation,
reading the floor’s topography,
millions of minion’s stories infinite,
many Munch screaming
god’s foot, heavy upon my shoulders,
a daytime travel guide, hired for me,
not a friendly travel companion, nope,
God a pusher showing off a drug called deep water salvation,
designated for the masses, can handle large parties
my in-camera brain eyes,
record everything for playback -
the lost and unburied, bone crossword puzzles
walk shore to ship, on soles to souls,
is this my new-summer nature welcome back greeting?
puzzled at the awesomeness of vastness,
conclude this clarification for me of the occluded-deep,
is a stern reminder of my insignificant existence,
my requirement to walk humbly, spare my sin of vanity, and
forgive my trespasses upon the lives of others
perhaps then the infinite of my soul perchance restored,
older visions clarified and future poems
will write themselves
and sea to it my predecessors
be better remembered
Memorial Day 2018
May 28, 2018
May 28, 2018 at 11:53 AM UTC
We, unaccustomed to courage
exiles from delight
live coiled in shells of loneliness
until love leaves its high holy temple
and comes into our sight
to liberate us into life.
Love arrives
and in its train come ecstasies
old memories of pleasure
ancient histories of pain.
Yet if we are bold,
love strikes away the chains of fear
from our souls.
We are weaned from our timidity
In the flush of love's light
we dare be brave
And suddenly we see
that love costs all we are
and will ever be.
Yet it is only love
which sets us free.
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when you asked me about certainty
and if my mind was a tree
rooted in cement and truth
i was on my unaccustomed knees
blinking into a sunbeam's architecture when
the brilliant wind brought you to me
to cure me with the miracle touch
i was alone by a window dreaming through glass
you bent toward me in a mile wide sky
a butterfly with a skinny voice
or an adorable tomato in a retail uniform
before that i only knew the clouds
as bears wrapped in pastel baby-blankets
before i first kissed you in the street
i knew the sunset as a drop of fire
in a barrel of whiskey and
suddenly your eyes like a deep pool in a forest
seeking out my past with the molecular traces
of your fingers across my abdomen
mandalas blooming out of our palms
only touching at the fingers
as flames from mosquito torches filled
the round coral faces of my gauges
with apricot light
Dec 3, 2014
Dec 3, 2014 at 12:16 PM UTC
When winter's glaze is lifted from the greens,
And cups are freshly cut, and birdies sing,
Triumphantly the stifled golfer preens
In cleats and slacks once more, and checks his swing.
This year, he vows, his head will steady be,
His weight-shift smooth, his grip and stance ideal;
And so they are, until upon the tee
Befall the old contortions of the real.
So, too, the tennis-player, torpid from
Hibernal months of television sports,
Perfects his serve and feels his knees become
Sheer muscle in their unaccustomed shorts.
Right arm relaxed, the left controls the toss,
Which shall be high, so that the racket face
Shall at a certain angle sweep across
The floated sphere with gutty strings--an ace!
The mind's eye sees it all until upon
The courts of life the faulty way we played
In other summers rolls back with the sun.
Hope springs eternally, but spring hopes fade.
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Daydreamer waiting for her surprise
She's always sitting on the bench outside
Watching through the golden glasses
She sees through her eyes a world that unties
Beautiful creatures and where love prevails
She always wonder why her beauty does not impales
As she holds so many wonders
A sweetness in her bright almond eyes, behind the glasses that sat crookedly on her nose
She focused her eyes on a flat prairie
Where the unaccustomed eye sees only ordinary
In hers, the dale was a beautiful swathe of shiny green grasses
Trees are clothed in delicious cream and pink blossom
Jasmines dancing to the winds, choreographing autumn breeze
The sun casting its last golden rays
Changing its yellow into hues of tangerine and fire red
Her perfect world, she whispers
She is a daydreamer
With eyes so full of love that will make you melt
She is beauty and love
Looking at her shadow slowly shrinking down her feet
Only her can see the magic
You will find her outside
Waiting for the man to share the same picturesque landscape
Seeing her reflection on him just like a mirror
Sharing a moment, a smile, a touch, a gaze
Closing their eyes to a slow and soft kiss
Alas; she is still waiting on this
Waiting to meet him flesh and bones
Dreaming about it everyday
This love she's never met,
Yet she seems to glimpse him in every corner
And because of it, her heart craves for blossoming flower
Her heart is bound to a fictional imagery of him
Creating imaginary moments and opportunities
Clinging to a false sign that precipitates desires
The desire to lay her eyes on him and feel his lips on hers
The desire to feel her body shivers with his skin on hers
The desire to feel his heart beating to her caress
the rush in her veins, with just his look
She will be an eternal daydreamer
Until she finds him sitting on the bench outside for her
For an eternity of love
Dec 21, 2017
Dec 21, 2017 at 1:42 PM UTC
I used to be your birdhouse.
I could coax you out from your seat in the treetops
from behind the camouflaging greens
and watch you edge out shyly with the wind ruffling your blush feathers.
You'd cling to me when the spring showers started falling
and I could keep you safe and dry, I could always do that.
I'd be there to hear your youthful songs, and I'd whisper back in a language just we knew
and then I'd hug you goodbye and watch you step precariously from my perch,
flapping in the wind, unsure, unaccustomed.
and I'd be there for you the next day and the next
because I thought you'd still need me.
I never thought I'd see you, the point of a flying V
soaring with your head held high,
not even glancing down at
my tired wooden walls
and faded empty perch.
Jun 6, 2014
Jun 6, 2014 at 1:32 PM UTC
Should lanterns shine, the holy face,
Caught in an octagon of unaccustomed light,
Would wither up, an any boy of love
Look twice before he fell from grace.
The features in their private dark
Are formed of flesh, but let the false day come
And from her lips the faded pigments fall,
The mummy cloths expose an ancient breast.
I have been told to reason by the heart,
But heart, like head, leads helplessly;
I have been told to reason by the pulse,
And, when it quickens, alter the actions' pace
Till field and roof lie level and the same
So fast I move defying time, the quiet gentleman
Whose beard wags in Egyptian wind.
I have heard may years of telling,
And many years should see some change.
The ball I threw while playing in the park
Has not yet reached the ground.
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I bring an unaccustomed wine
To lips long parching
Next to mine,
And summon them to drink;
Crackling with fever, they Essay,
I turn my brimming eyes away,
And come next hour to look.
The hands still hug the tardy glass—
The lips I would have cooled, alas—
Are so superfluous Cold—
I would as soon attempt to warm
The bosoms where the frost has lain
Ages beneath the mould—
Some other thirsty there may be
To whom this would have pointed me
Had it remained to speak—
And so I always bear the cup
If, haply, mine may be the drop
Some pilgrim thirst to slake—
If, haply, any say to me
“Unto the little, unto me,”
When I at last awake.
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The cheerleader,
Hearts goes to the highest bidder,
An encapsulation of beauty,
She has the license of beauty,
She elucidated my vague and indistinct dreams,
Her voice is mellifluous in my dreams.
Cheerleader is unaccustomed to mundane.
Her admiration full of gains,
Bloomleader is unprofane damsel,
She is immaculate even in tunnels.
Cheerleader is like an epiphany,
Enternity with her? Not still many,
The charm in her face us very potent,
My reasons are arrantly cogent,
Her presence chastise dolor,
Laughter with charismatic colour,
And as the emotion creeps on me,
Making me a sycophants to her knee,
The Cheerleader,
Her love is not a treacherous swine,
Her lips is exquisite than any wine,
Though is infatuation sound very lame,
My heart adores her with fame,
A pragmatic way to study her frangipani face,
I want to be the first in this race,
The cheerleader,
She with crystal teeth
And blue eye *****
I see her climbing on walls,
Auspicious love without any wit,
I realize I was only in a dream.
Jul 3, 2016
Jul 3, 2016 at 10:34 AM UTC
In every world you unveil the memories
To remember our deepest longings,
The fortunate accident to grown old
With another soul faultless for you.
The unaccustomed feeling is pure
To disillusion the hate reality,
The empty soul is yet somewhere
Passionate enough to awaken life.
Go get it from the holy basil
Spotless enough to compromise!
Sep 5, 2015
Sep 5, 2015 at 11:54 AM UTC
To sleep, my mind impounded,
My heartbeats, bass, lowly-sounded,
Each beat, a note upon mine ticking meter.
An unfamiliar feminine voice, not hers, poses,
Questioning noises, issued from a blackened figure.
This human-shaped metronome,
A singular inquisitor,
In rhythm, but not in rhyme,
Gravely announces repeatedly,
T'is your time, t'is your time,
Each pronouncement,
Spoken n'spiked distinctly:
*"Your prose now ended,
last-gentled sweetly."*
Wondering still, is it just sleep or truly death,
This forlorn eve, to go, to meet and greet,
Without having said my finale prayer.
Unprepared, thus with unaccustomed flair,
"Unfair" doth me protest, a newly-minted naysayer,
My book incomplete, black-brother frere!
If death indeed you be, my fellow cloaked-rider,
Then make me a one-last-time composer.
Let me whisper once more inside her,
A last poem of the greatest brevity,
But of the greatest import, laden heavy!
Good bye, my love, goodbye....
This closing writ, my finest ever...
Oct 6, 2013
Oct 6, 2013 at 5:21 AM UTC
This oddity so rare, and unaccustomed to me
My 'family' is one of hate.
Of disrespect and fist fights.
Broken and filled to the brim in grudges.
When we all have opinions, no one budges.
Such a normality to hear rinsing of knuckles after a fired conversation.
Is this family?
Can growing up with this be childhood?
Maybe this is why I feel much older than I am.
Feeling much more than my years.
Raised in a fired household,
A home up in blaze.
No one in this family even seems phased,
....
But I, I am.
Oct 1, 2012
Oct 1, 2012 at 2:47 PM UTC
Two eyes appeared from under a broadrimmed hat.
They looked around with astonishment.
In a schoolroom, far off in the distance, a boy was
Busy making a wooden bowl.
The teacher unaccustomed to such slowness
Requested a completion date.
“I am not slow thought the boy, just working
Away until I get it right.”
He met the teacher’s gaze with an expression
Of opacity and a sense of bewilderment.
On another day, at a later date, this same boy
Was found in his metalwork class applying
Cylinders of gases to his small creation, quietly,
Hoping for a connection before he was blown
To smithereans. Two blue eyes concentrated as
The jets of flames hissed into space.
Too long the gases flowed.
The master rose, the boy shook and his eyes
Widened.
In a playground, sometime earlier,
A small boy could be seen playing without a coat.
Gossiping women spoke of this unnatural act,
This exception to the fold. The boy stared back
Hearing their words with his eyes.
Decades later when his hair had turned from
Brown to grey but his eyes were still blue
And wide apart, he painted a little ***
Sitting on a pale surface, gazing into nothingness.
This painting took him a long time.
He had to get it right, the tones , the lines,
The connections.
After he finished ‘Little *** he sat down
And stared into the two blue blobs set wide
Apart on its surface and he thought, “this is
Me, the boy, the man, the painter, of wide
Apart, unnameable moments.”
The Beginning.
Love Mary ***
Jun 9, 2018
Jun 9, 2018 at 10:42 AM UTC
During moments I yearned for forests grown for me alone,
Caressing them in a dream,
I could sense the throbbing of the heart
Hidden beneath my ribs to bless my journey.
Summoning me with a pulse that he recognizes in me.
I heard the noise of abandoned smoke from a moment of care
Join with me,
Forcefully traversing desires to the hidden-most one.
My spirit swung toward him,
Creating a tingling
On lips that devour breaths alive.
I felt ashamed,
But the eye,
In moments—I scarcely know what to call them—that took me on another route
Toward the television, saw warplanes . . . spray death on them.
At that moment,
The fire of machine guns raked all the bodies,
And another fire raked my body when I trained my eye on him
Hesitantly inclining his head
Toward a shoulder unaccustomed to the secret of the stars of war
Or to insomnia.
Oh . . . . I leaned on it!
And when he caressed a dumbfounded person
I felt his fingers like coiling embers inside me.
Bashfulness seized the excuse this caress gave . . . and vanished,
Eliminating distance till the two of us were one.
And the eye—he moaned: May love not forgive her the eye—repeated another evasion
Toward a drizzle of men flung about in the air by just the rustling of a pilot penetrating a building
To fall on screens as the debris of breaking news.
But his breaths . . . shattering the still down of the cheek,
And turning their picture into mist as
Eddies of the screen’s corpses . . . varieties of death that they brought them.
The spirit that became a body,
The body that was sold for the sake of a touch,
The eye that was concealed in his image
And that approached the firebrand of conflagrations.
Everyone drawing close to everyone,
Everyone,
Everyone,
Everyone.
But the thunder of their machine guns splintered them:
Corpses piled on corpses,
I mean on me,
The eyes of those in it were extinguished.
They slept in a trench of silence.
My eyes’ lids parted in a wakefulness obsessed with them.
I rose … and embraced the chill
That the screens brought me in commemoration of Stalingrad.
………………………………
Translated by William Hutchins
Apr 6, 2016
Apr 6, 2016 at 10:38 PM UTC
the music did nothing
except send veins of pallid tears
down ashen cheeks that had forgotten
how to smile.
dust stole into our lungs
with spindly fingers
creeping like the gas,
killing like the furnaces it
escaped from.
i saw broken people standing
dead on their feet,
arms outstretched,
unaccustomed to the deep cavity in their chest
that their children used to fill.
there were no surprises in this life
except spare beds
that were quickly filled and emptied again
as often as bruises replaced by
faceless men patrolling past.
God was watching,
God was looking,
God was not seeing.
and still we were silent.
Apr 21, 2010
Apr 21, 2010 at 6:13 PM UTC
Hobbling over rock and dust,
The Nameless winces with every weary step.
His soles scorched and torn
By the unaccustomed roughness underfoot
The jagged teeth of a prickly piping earth.
Alone he makes his way
With tiny treads towards the dying dusk.
Fatigue dragging at his limbs
Bowing his neck to leave eyes downcast
And unfocussed; seeing naught but blurs and
The swirling and swaying of the trembling past.
A city:
Grand buildings stretching as one toward the sky;
Great lions waking from their feast and basking
In the brilliance of noonday air.
The bustle of flesh coursing about their purpose
The tight press of bodies all around
And the chatter and the natter and the laughter and the anger.
And then the silence.
The fear and the glares.
The hunger
And a guilty aversion of one’s eyes.
The shattering of glass
The raising with fire and boot.
And the stealing of Names.
And now here he trudges.
With tiny treads and into naked night.
Jan 5, 2015
Jan 5, 2015 at 9:31 AM UTC
My days are surely
but slowly
getting warmer
I'm marveling
in this new sun
unaccustomed to such warmth.
But as the days go on
I still live
in perpetual fear
of winter
Because winter is so much colder
So much darker
Once you've felt summer
Aug 13, 2014
Aug 13, 2014 at 10:19 AM UTC
We, unaccustomed to courage
says Maya.
We, who have chosen
with choices we were not aware
of making
as we made them.
we need a revolution.
some courageous warriors
that will lead us into
liberation.
but the frontline soldiers
never come home.
Jun 28, 2018
Jun 28, 2018 at 1:44 PM UTC
Dawn, and just me and a lonely cardinal
Play out our songs for God to hear
In the spare air the bird twitters
I, in my chair stretch my wits
We each sit, the bird on a branch
And I, leaning in the Lazy Boy
The day lies before us like an unwritten score
or a scroll unaccustomed to ink
We will fly across this unknown expanse
and cherish our freedom to fly where we will
The white clouds and clear blue skies
will be the ears for our stories
And nightfall will draw our tales to an end.
Jul 22, 2015
Jul 22, 2015 at 10:36 AM UTC
if i could paint like michelangelo
your beauty is all that i would draw
if i could carve you out of marble
venus de milo would blush in awe
god was definitely on his a game
when he graced the world with you
angels peeked then hid their eyes
unaccustomed to such a lovely view
in you they’d see their imperfection
and fade to a pale and envious green
picture the most spectacular sunrise
or a lush and lovely tropical scene
i’ve searched to find a lovelier vision
but clearly nothing could compare
my love, your enchantment has no rival
a flawless diamond would be less rare
your beauty defies my feeble prose
your lips sparkle like the finest wine
shakespeare’s pen could not describe
the joy i feel in knowing you’re mine
Sep 4, 2013
Sep 4, 2013 at 2:53 AM UTC
I caught sunshine
Holding it loosely in my palm
A crooked smile
Offered to warm you
What a fool of constant racing
A mutterer discovers her fault
Didn’t she know to keep the sun?
One warmth caged by unspoken words
Maybe today it is clear
Maybe today she will learn
Maybe today the sun chooses
Maybe today his mind will change
Nov 4, 2012
Nov 4, 2012 at 10:37 PM UTC
*There's a certain time
that's subjective to everyone
but remains universal in principle.
It is the point where
you've checked all your emails,
replied to all your messages,
and all your notifications are read.
You've scrolled down your timeline
to a point you've already seen before
and there doesn't seem to be
anything new in the once-infinite
bounds of the Internet.
And then, time stops.
The world around you grows still,
your room is dark, unaccustomed
to the lack of light from your phone.
You can almost hear the quiet
enveloping the room.
Sleep still evades you, and
the very sound of your blankets rustling
wakes you further still.
Your thoughts wander about
as the sky begins to grow brighter,
and your eyelids become heavier.
You drift off to sleep,
and time fast-forwards in your slumber
to make up for the little while
it stopped for you.*
Mar 14, 2016
Mar 14, 2016 at 4:48 AM UTC
He came, reluctantly pulled by his head
At the hands of a masked man,
Using large metal,
Salad Tong appearing forceps,
Rudely, crudely yanked from his mother’s
Cervical embrace, into the glaring,
First Light of intended living and breathing.
His head now misshapen,
(To return to normal they assured,)
His little body more blue than pink,
Umbilical cord around his neck,
Absolutely ridged, not moving,
No sound did he make,
appearing more gone than here.
My own breath did cease until to my relief,
His tiny arms and hands did give notice
Of life, followed soon after by a fitting
Shrill scream of rebuttal, a rebuke to
The light, the air, the rude process
That had brought him there.
One moment at peace, safe and warm
Within his womb of tranquility, dreaming
Whatever dreams the pure and innocent's
Do dream, then abruptly ripped from
All that peace, out into all this!
At that moment I too wanted to join in,
Echo his howl, his guttural protestation,
I too swept up by that ethereal wave of disturbance
Feeling his struggle as if he was drowning in new found air.
For me, as if at this moment of his birth,
I too was being reborn.
My knees grew weak, I was for a instant dizzy,
I struggled to regain my own lost breathing.
Restart my own heart, fight back the water in my eyes.
I let go of his mother’s hand, she with eyes closed,
As if sleeping, exhausted from too many hours of labor,
My respect and love for her and her magnificent efforts,
Expanded then to boundless.
The tender masked women in white,
They with shining, smiling eyes,
Quickly cleaned, and wiped him dry,
Swaddled him in a tiny blanket and laid him into
My unaccustomed arms, and for the very first time
In our lives, I looked upon the face of my son.
At that precise moment, some purposeful mental,
Primordial emotional switch, was indeed flipped,
And I, WE would never be the same again.
Oct 11, 2013
Oct 11, 2013 at 3:54 PM UTC
At the East End Cafe
a Canadian folksinger
strums up a storm
on a guitar-
a bargain guitar-
he got $1000 off the price of it
We don’t know any of his songs
Locals tap their feet
to his rhythms
talk to people
they talk to every day
but louder tonight
fuelled by beer and wine
and a determined bonhomie
Ange and her girls
cook up a storm
behind the counter
serve us steaks
and real pizzas
and creme brulee
Late night kids
stroll outside
peer in - curious-
at the unaccustomed goings on
Beyond the plateglass windows
the inside lights
orange globes
reflect in the darkness
like floating pumpkins
I know the river lies out there
just moving on down to the sea
Jun 13, 2013
Jun 13, 2013 at 9:47 AM UTC
I am you.
I am your shadow.
You are mine.
A stone unearthed in this frozen ground
Covered in snow.
Gazing at the flower growing up, surrounded
By life
And sunlight abundantly.
The stone whimpers in the cold.
Dancing figures in the twilight of mere existence.
Twirling in a haze of endless color and ceaseless charisma.
Stillness in the night.
The biting flogging of time and circumstance
Detached
From all inside and without.
Being comatose inside a tomb made of ice and desire.
Waiting,
Watching,
Weeping.
The rock, he twitches in the uncomfortable onslaught.
The flower loses a petal. In the fullness of life
She
Lowers her head in
Invisible agony. Torn by the choices
Made without reason.
Loneliness.
Time stands still.
The eyes of many are unaccustomed
To
The eyes of the few and the broken.
The grins of the ignorant shine like
Stars.
Glistening in the proverbial
Conundrum.
The rock and the flower split open
After, eternity follows.
The figures, mere candlelight,
Embrace and kiss.
Together.
Forever.
Nevermore hesitant to the desires which
Overwhelm and
Breathe purpose.
Two flames become one.
Meaning uncovered.
Intertwined lovers.
Breathing in shudders.
Blind to all others.
I am you.
Dec 8, 2012
Dec 8, 2012 at 9:14 PM UTC