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Sarah Spang Jun 2015
He told her she was pottery; a vase with grooves and cracks.
The patterns of the history she hid behind her back.

Within his words he layered in- like thread upon a loom-
The sweetest undercurrent to illuminate that gloom.

In certain cultures, he decreed, when pottery is cracked
They aggrandize them with gleaming gold to bring their splendor back

For they believe, with certainty, once damage has been wrought
Those tiny cracks, now filled with light, hold truths that can't be taught.
PrttyBrd Jan 2015
the clock chimes
but no one counts
the days move at will
forward, backward
days stand still
the ticking of seconds
lost in the minutia
of the everyday
endless mind chatter
and negative self-talk
heart in a vacuum of speculation
what if -
coulda, shoulda, woulda
WILL NOT
DO NOT
STAY IN THIS PLACE
strain to listen
can you hear it
it's there
in the undercurrent of life
lost beyond yourself
tick tock
a shadow of a sound
tick tock
time never stops
tick tock
feel the minutes turn to days
a sense of time thrown away
on nothing
it's easy
so much easier
to wonder
what if -
why me -
than to take a deep breath
and realize
the world does not revolve
around a solitary soul
and no one is ever
the reason someone makes a choice
choices are made of free will
or they aren't choices at all
good or bad
tick tock
tick tock
tick tock
can you feel it
tick tock
tick tock
tick tock
it's the minutes of life
left behind
in a cloud of never was
tick tock
the clock chimes
but no one counts
the days move at will
forward, backward
days stand still
11915
spoken word
rin Feb 2019
it’s an undercurrent
simmering below the simple gestures
stares that linger a bit too long
touches with no apparent reason
odd questions just to hear my voice
i feel it.
the undercurrent of your attention
slow yet there
small but rising
i’m not stupid.
i know it’s nothing.
the undercurrent is scented with doubt.
as always.
doubt, curiosity, estrangement
just a simple **** on my shoulder.
it may wash away or it may grow.
i don’t know if it will overflow.

i won’t wait for years.
(but i will keep my eyes on you)
[i'm so sure, yet i'm just lying. who am i to say that these mindless fantasies are real]
Can you not sense the undercurrent
an anger mutating over the nation.
That period before costs do excel
a deep dissatisfaction vented.
Massive job cuts told to restain
with warnings of future pain.

That inability to have any input
manipulated and being controlled.
Vote them in with their big promises
as politicians do what they want.
Despair as your finances disappear
truth a word you never hear.



This is a tale not only of one country
ever the widening divide.
The few continue reaping the rewards
the majority paying the cost.
The average guy is always bled dry
the wealthy staying that way being sly.

The undercurrent is beginning to vibrate
the population has had enough.
Those with plenty taking toomuch
from those with little to give.
The burden of debt has to be shared
or frustrations will be aired.
The Foureyed Poet.
I sense the Undercurrent of human dissatifaction.
Julius Dec 2013
For all the people who tell me I can't be a feminist

My feminism ruins my chat up lines
So much so that you couldn't call them that
I feel pathetic, ironic
Less of a man
Because I haven't touched a girl without her permission
Girls spill their drinks on me in clubs (with no apology), boys don't
Boys ask permission before they touch my entertaining hair
I love women, they're better to be around
I'm not gay, bi maybe but don't stick labels on me
Actually girls do that to me all the time
Literally, they rub their wet hands on my clothes
And stick stickers on me like I'm an object
But no a man is not objectified
Male equals misogynist
Equals creep
I can't criticise a woman's actions, thats sexist
They're in the struggle
This makes me wish I was a girl
I want informal privileges
I'm a ****** is that clear by now?
I don't know if I can **** a girl with my *****
With all of HIStory behind me

I suffer under patriarchy, but not like you do
I understand even non feminist girls,
Or bad feminists,
Still products of this gut wrenching, repulsive system
I'm crying now, an emotional wreck
My mates, some female, will tell me not to act like a girl
But that joke isn't funny anymore
It's too close to home and it's too near the bone
(or *****)
Literally the **** in my trousers is a curse I can't control
An animalistic cage that traps me within expectations
As I write outside a club, three people grab my hair
One male, so I'll take back the generalisation that they ask first. He didn't.
Girls look cold out here
They've come out like this for me
And I shouldn't feel guilty but I do
In the club I'm genuinely objectified
Girls get slurs, sexually abusive labels, they're human there
I'm literally shoved aside like a door by girls eager to look hot at the bar
The only feminist in a room full of chicks

I tolerate this because I love women
Is that sexist?
Is that gay?
If so that's very disappointing
But I've masturbated to **** involving girls
Is that sexist?
Female friendly ****
****** **** - Is that sexist?
I'm academic, I 'get' the gender binaries
Transcend sexuality labels - Is that arrogance?
Why don't these ******* love me?
Note the ironic slur
(Males can be ******* too)
So maybe I'm just the *****
But...I'm sorry
This is poetry, or prose dressed up like it
Emotional inadequacy dressed up like it
I've seen like minded men dispense with the term 'feminism' in pursuit of popularity
That tears me apart because women do the same
I'm not gay
I'm not gay
Stop with the labels
**** me with a strap-on if you have to
Get us back
But I'm not submissive, just overly dedicated
It'll hurt because my **** is virginal
Pure
Sure, I'm a feminist
But stop with the labels
This has become obscene
Put me on page 3 and call me a hero

I'm being sexist here
By noticing gender
Real feminists, please improve me
Fake feminists, how dare you use my views against me?
If I wasn't ugly I wouldn't be a feminist
(Product of my environment and all that)
Like you but with a rather different inferiority complex
As I said, please love me?
Or at least, let me be your friend because the average boy repulses me
Maybe we have at least that in common?
These men cause me to
Try to emasculate me
Women too even but it's understandably rarer
Though on the rise in our modern age
As feminism "succeeds"
But this is my pathetic emotional venting
My male sense of self importance
Or am I too harsh on myself?
Ok so I'll self aggrandise
I transcend your petty, completely logical movement
Look at yourself in the mirror
Metaphorically
(I'm fat too, and some girls make me feel the pain of it)
Yeah I'm a feminist ally
But I'll school half of you

"You've" made me leave the club now
I can't look at these amazing women the same way they want me to anymore
But by 'you've' I mean 'I'VE'
The emphasis is on me to remain rational,
Calculating (my chances with who in the club),
Hardy,
The breadwinner
The one with the jeans
Look, I'd wear a dress if it wasn't for the connotations
Ramifications
I'm ahead of my time, let's agree on what we can
I'm on your side can't you see?
I'm big, I could hurt you and I hate myself
For representing what could be
What is
What my brothers do behind my back
(Because my sickly chivalry would have me try my hardest to pummel these ******* into the ground to protect the damsel in distress)
But I'm not a violent person
As I text, I cant go back into the club but to say goodbye
to my female friend who I came out with alone despite the ****** undercurrent
I half notice two men try to charm this girl
I hear echoes of 'This Charming Man'
(Later I will go and stand on my own, leave on my own, go home, cry and want to die)
These ******* 'gentle' men

But here I'm being arrogant
Self indulgent
Assertive
Typically 'male'
I see a fight break out
The women aren't allowed to be involved
Their voices are drowned out though they push themselves between combatants
Men, we are responsible for wars
**** all of you (*some)
I'd trade social and political male privilege for free 'freedom from guilt'
I'd trade my **** away so I'm not called one callously
(You could even use it as a ***** if you wanted, but its not as big as the shop-bought alternative)
And the funniest thing is, I think my words are important
Think I can say all this and be a controversial,
Exciting
Challenging figure
Asserting my intellectual dominance
Now that's ironic
Ironic to the core that eats at me
That makes me feel like your plaything
Because these ironic jokes like me calling you ******* are too close to home, too near the bone
The bone I gave away, possibly to you (but it hardly matters)
I'm too 'above it all' to be loved or to love faithfully (like Morrissey?)
But all I ask is for your love

That's all I ask
For me to **** on the **** of your respect and trust
Like I did my mother, using her for milk
For sustenance
So my kind survives
And now I go back to the wild,
To the looks that barely notice me as they smash or glance off me
That label me a pig
Or a creep
Or a ****, a *******
Or a gay,
Or a man
Or a feminist

---

So next thing I know I'm with a load of girls again
(Rugby playing girls my mate knows)
I'm the only 'lad' (Irony really hurts)
I'm told my presence makes them claustrophobic
I give them five minutes
(Because my male voice counts for nothing when deciding on a club)
I tell them I'm a feminist
The more honest way out than pretending I'm gay
Its OK now
Thanks, labels.
I swallowed and dealt with the rejection because I'd just had this emotional vent
Thanks vent
And thanks girls for trying to make me feel small and unwelcome at your table
Because it makes me better
Makes me stronger (like men desire to be)
Only I was a step, a poem, a vent ahead this time
So I wasn't crushed or pierced under your high heel
High horse
You weren't willing to flip the tradition on its head and buy my entry to the club
When I couldn't pay
But it's OK.
At least you were real with me
And I'll be there in spirit
In my dreams
Checking you out while you buy drinks
Then wake up and hate myself again

Tears were in my eyes when the girl said that to me
But I, like a true misogynist,
Fought them back and remained a gentleman
Polite and robotically rational
Pliable
But really, how painfully ironic are these semantics?
To 'fight' emotion
To 'fight' honesty?

Like men do, because we're all the same
Claire Waters Dec 2013
i
you say i am honestly not the same person
i say one day i woke up honest
and i do not know how to undo experience
my own eyes and ears and nose and mouth
cannot be undone at the moment
how do you do it?
push that pressure to the back of your mind
like that
how do you all manage to laugh with a straight face
at things that you know aren't really funny
i can't fathom it. where you go
when you are stomping and ripping
and ****** and jeering
and laughing and running
it's exhausting to watch you

ii
i apologize if it doesn't make sense
that i can't play along
but playing along
doesn't make sense
i could never win a grammy
with this tight lipped smile
laughing at the expense of others
makes me feel more like a paparazzi
placating insecurities for currency
leeching off the vulnerability
you may not think i'm smart but
i am smart enough to know this is not 'normal'
and there is nothing wrong with staring at you in the rearview
and saying "i wish that was really sarcasm"
i'll tell you the truth
and you don't have to like it
and you don't have to like me
and i don't have to like you
because if there's one thing i know about myself
it's that i don't dislike anybody
until they show off their callousness
hoping it's the right party trick
to gain respect

iii
we watch comedy tv, and you are worried
by the way my spine cracks
when i let out a uncontrollable laugh
dragging on, beginning to spill, and as i try to quell it
my whole body shakes with the pressure
of it bubbling inside of me
you feel all of this beside of me
a small volcano with a bent back
quaking absorbed by pillows and flowers and cushions
not quite right for you
wondering why i couldn't laugh like this earlier
when we were not alone
everyone is looking for something more porous
more willing to let in effortlessly
and absorb tirelessly
that can simply laugh like a stream bubbles
and let go of the undercurrent
yet we are sharp and uneven and course like logs
and the weight of our actions carries much further
being shunted downstream by tides of gravity
every intention runs it's course
every intention speaks volumes
if you feel that in your core
every day you will uncontrollably think of how
every intention defines the quality of the laughter
stuck in someone else's head
and you will save it for things that are funny
Sofia Paderes Jun 2015
We’ve been walking on this journey for years now, and I’ve held your hand long enough to know that when I slip into quicksand or miss a step, it is not you who lets go. Your fingers aren’t the ones coated in doubt or in selfishness, gripping firmly only when it feels right, when it feels necessary. Your hands are not made of brittle bone, shivering and breaking when the cold starts to show. Teach me to never let go.

We’ve known plenty of good weather. Safe landings. Skies full of stars and days of endless wind. Scraped knees were never a problem, we always seemed to be in fields of yellow and green, surrounded by miles and miles of running streams. There were times when I would purposefully stumble, thinking that it would be okay, I’d land elbows first in the faces of dandelions anyway. Other times I’d stray, not because of greener grass, but because I was too caught up smelling that single flower to see that you were calling me to the next meadow, where petals of a sweeter smell and prettier colors stretch out like a seascape. Teach me to give up my little treasures and desires, for yours are far better.

Sometimes I get a little adventurous. I tell you I want mountains. I tell you I want to climb, that I want the strain and the adrenaline rush, the thrill of letting pieces of hardened sand and pebble carry my whole weight, the challenge, the sweat, the blood. I tell you I want to see things from the eyes of God. I tell you I want to struggle and overcome. I tell you I want the soul of a deer, to plant my feet firmly on the narrow heights, I tell you I’m alright but when I’m actually in the process of the climb, in the process of the waiting, wondering which rock do I grasp next, which path do I trust with my steps, I tell you I’m not ready for mountains after all. But you did not bring me here to watch me fall, so teach me. Teach me to keep my ankles strong, and my hold on you stronger.

And when we tire of mountains, you take me to oceans. You know how much I love the saltwater mysteries, how my heart sings when I get to feel clumps of wet sand beneath the soles of my feet. And you know how much I don’t know about the waters, you know that it’s hard for me to tell when an undercurrent comes sweeping like thousands of tiny *****, that I can’t spot the difference between high tide and low tide until the waves are lapping at my door, that I still swim after jellyfish no matter how many times I’ve been stung, and how I forget that not every beautiful thing has beautiful intentions, and especially how oceans also terrify the breath out of me. One of my deepest fears is to die drowning, but still you row us out in a weathered boat into the middle of the sea, no life vests or whistles, nothing. We’ve had calm waters and dolphin mornings, we’ve had rough rowing and storms brewing, and each time you managed to put the thundering and rumbling in my chest to rest, and each and every time you’ve gotten us back to shore. But honestly, there are days I want to jump ship, sail my own boat, find my own sea, and some days I do. Those days I lose my way, those days I’m half drowned, but I turn around and find you there. Teach me to trust the one whose voice the waves and wind know.

Now here we are in a different kind of sea, the kind without water. This pit is abundant in ***** yellow devils, illusions and false promises, but all I have are questions and weary feet. Why are we here? Where are we going? Why did we leave? How am I going to shake off this mirage? When is it going to rain? After all we've been through, this is where you're taking me?

My path is an endless circle, a cycle using my sight, my heart, my feelings, my stocked up wisdom to judge my situation and I come to the conclusion that you have deserted me. But you haven't. And I don't understand how you stuck with me through hills and valleys, and never once thought of leaving, but you haven't. Your shadow is cast on me and peace overflows. Maybe I've been asking the wrong questions. Maybe instead of asking you where the stretch of sand ends, I should be asking you to teach me.

Teach me to love you in every season, whether it be the harshest of winters or the wildest of heats. Teach me to understand that deserts make me thirst for water, that I need to be lost so that I may be found, that without a battle there is no victory, that seeds die before they grow into trees. But before anything else, teach me to let the sound of your voice to be what guides me through winding paths and roaring winds, not which road looks smooth or which sky looks dim.

We've been walking on this journey for years now, and I've held your hand long enough to know that all this time you have been teaching me to fall in love with my eyes closed.
A spoken word poem written for Sali Production's benefit concert for Resources for the Blind, Mata, last month in Ortigas Park.

Also, I can't think of a title. Help.
Christina Jan 2014
3 am and my head's still pounding, I've had this migraine for days…Temples throbbing, nerve endings exploding, like a rabid animal being sentenced to a barb wire cage with no food to eat and room to breathe. Thoughts are deadly. Fighting, bleeding, suffering in deep rooted pits of anxiety. My synapses are in full combat, but I'm a pacifist.

I can feel it now. The change, the shift. I feel it. The voices, drumming, I can hear it, the fire, it's burning, flesh rotting. I can smell it, Like it's all being cooked up in one big  rotten stew, except there is most definitely meat in it, and I'm a vegetarian.

I am a child of darkness sworn to her own demons that were locked up long ago in treasure chest deep inside her old bedroom closet, Although I swear to you I never wanted things to be this way. It just happened. But know this, I am still holy, still pure, my tears still fall as transparent across the curve of my cherub face. I never wished to be so naïve. It's just that my heart is in shambles, and I gravitate towards almost anything that promises healing. This is why I have so many scars. They run left and right in a funny pattern from the carelessness of others trampling their ***** feet all over the delicate terrain of my heart.

But I'm tired now
And my insides are in knots.

I can still feel it. The light, I see it. It's always been there and shining, always been calling, begging, reaching out for one swift touch to the tip of my finger, but I've been too afraid to answer. It's always been so warm and inviting calling my name. I can taste it…bitter spoilers. I'm almost there. I've just a few things left to do here. Just give me a moment.


please
The streets are clear, we're hydrophobic
Hoods propped by hats and socks pulled high;
The rain brings peace to the agoraphobic
Puddles form moats and clouds fill the sky.

Splash, droplets hit the window,
chauffeured by the gale outside.
Squint your eyes and flash back
boats tilt starboard, with the tide.

The captain shouts to the decks, paranoid
'Clear the decks and brace for impact'
Without turbulence we are disenfranchised
Boredom becomes us when we're boring.

Shake it off and stare at the dot to dot
the residual carving of water as it slides
Another droplet falls beside it, parallel
it aligns, growling thunder overhead.

Without stirring we are robotic workforces
Without awaking we are left inside
The constructs created for us, by corporate-
conglomerate elitist-psychopaths.

Two drops of water on the window
simmer red with burning anger.
Crash lightening sears the sky
Rage becomes you, girders melt.

The starry night undercurrent, flings
us backwards, never up, as democracies
which seek to serve sink into a sea of
stocks and shares, the wall street journal

sits atop the captains lobby, economies
were meant to tumble as the working classes
fumble for bread, men in suits gaggle
and toast to the millions they left for dead.

Resistance is futile, when eighty-five
of the richest suit owners sit on currency
that was meant for the three point five
billion who aren’t driven by gluttony.
Anonymous Jul 2016
I see jellyfish in the ocean of your eyes
And I swear those translucent blue jellyfish
Are just the remains of your mesmerizing marble eyes
That shattered into pieces
The second your eyes first met sunlight
When I look at you I wonder
Where all those jellyfish are heading;
Spiraling down into the blackness of your pupil
And I wish I could join them,
I wish I could experience the rhythmic motion of comfort and solace
That your eyes provide just by looking at them,
But how much more would I feel
If I could lose myself in them?
Or maybe I'd be caught in the undercurrent of your thoughts,
Maybe you'd **** me in and I'd never want to leave the black bottom of the ocean in your eyes;
Maybe I'd fall in love with the secret places the jellyfish don't dare to go,
The things I wonder when I look at you,
So many thoughts flood my mind
When I trace my fingers across your lips
And stare at the beautiful jellyfish
That glimmer so brilliantly in the darkness and the light.
I wonder what I'd find down there,
But I think that's my favorite part about looking at you,
This is one thing I'll never really know;
I guess I'll just admire you from my boat,
And continue to be lost in the sea of your eyes
Admiring the translucent jellyfish from afar.
Robin Carretti Dec 2016
He's singing
Bergdorf Blonde
Conde Nast Traveller
Rude or ****
Explode Bombshells.
He's singing I'm getting
married
Such a Pushover puppet?

Slave over the silken magnet
Oh so swift and swell let
the show begins

Those ritual love sin's
Miss Polly String smile say cheese
He's the Maneater enticing grins
His Trump Tower bell?
Oh! Hello Poetry
People like twin packing
Playgirl smooching
her lips pillow talk

The puppet stalk
their suitcases, but surprisingly
she falls down and trips
Play up your string's
Love act of rings
Her killer lace went into his face.
They all had a puppet inside.

A daredevil ride
Nowhere to hide
Las Vegas Nevada,
Like no other place.
She was in her prime
Diva,
Donna so Dollie, he had
a craving bank her they all
had to thank him
The foursome the Follie's
Do him
Torn to be so trendy
Such a spendy

Walmart of walnuts
Two amazing dollies
She's the magazine of
Italian Fendi.
Pulling her hair more flair
The whole shebang cashew's
Pushed by his split so
picky pecans.
How it went to her
Big little liar nephew's.
Like puppet curfews
  Hello, Poetry New.
The white wedding blue's
Magnifying big lip's.
He needed a Holly-doll
The next clue?
Silk strings taped up
That puppet took a mighty
long trip...

Did I say plastic puppet is real porcelain skin faces?

Playgirl's cries needed
a dominating diet
Hefner smoking jacket suit

What a demonstration,
pulling on hemming mini
skirt trims chances
dangerously slim
So condemning
caused a riot.
The other crowd what
Oscar Meyer Wiener.
Going to the Vet doggie collar he
was tied to be fit silk suit
Las Vegas show trainers.
Who got caught with the puppet
Honey tricked peanut butter playgirl
Puppet show went all hobbit
over "Twitter" mixed whirl
        
What a nut sometimes you feel
like a nut
sometimes you won't and she
knows you don't

The rest going to H---.
Must I B dreaming?

He's singing I'm your puppet man,
Elephant nose cleaned out the planter's
Such a big spender and tipper.
Brooklyn his name Lucas @ the circus!

Like a physic knows your inner thoughts,
hanging on a string.
Everything that comes out of his mouth is two!

I have a puppet surfing the internet
wrapped her around
Felt an undercurrent_ it was
like pieces of glass
soundproof,
his crafty fingers.

Is he doing the best he can?

He's pulling her madly
Puppet computer search
Penny the dreadful
He expects us to jump when
he's oversexed active
looking for his puppet chair,
in the back.
A ****-day puppet!
He's the pig face twilight zone
muppet's
Well doing the can-can two
Playgirl's
hit the fan
The puppets became
the Gentleman

  Playgirl's shuffling "Rose" deck
   Hollywood screen bedding
    Puppets skillful  making

        The Poem Day.
         Puppets pray
         String cheese display

Obsessed stories Puppets.

Playgirl's color gypsy Rose Leah  
Miss Natalie from the woods preach
Silken Marionette.  
So wrapped like someone's gift
But used thrifty bed
He's in his red-hot Corvette.
Instead of roses, his thing french brie
Stock market up and away tie
I rather have my pasta bow-ties
Swiss, the air she's the playgirl
  Swiss Alp's skiing
he ripped his pant's Swiss Alps hole.
Marilyn Monroe playgirl presidential
dancing on the Christmas pole
Love tropic Pineapple dole
  The bed red hot Corvette. console

Instead of roses, his thing was cheese.
"So Swiss" with holes of lace my face
I hate to burst your cheese,
He dragged his shirt open

Twice the fun playgirl she eloped
I became his string cheese pet!!
I'm not your string cheese.
Hello Godzilla, puppet collection
Bella bella Genie mozzarella

"Puppet overpriced sales
All your friends are a puppet male.
Make a wish blowfish

In all the year how I tracked men's nuts,
she had to string together nut job's,
eat a string cheese.
Polly didn't want animal crackers,
Groucho became like a ******.

The puppet master showing
his game piece
and pull on someone else's
This is kinda playful and with quite strings of an edge
Mateuš Conrad Sep 2015
in that, beyond good and evil, there's on femininity and masculinity; we already know of st. thomas' account about how the masculine needs to made into feminine and vice verse... no wonder such teachings in the undercurrent of our life, that we went beyond this and started doing likewise in the framework of good and evil; but there's hardly a dualism within the four 90º, while the tetragrammaton opens the gates to geometric phoneticism, which does not work in the hebrew depiction of the tetragrammaton, only in latin, because in latin one will not see a vision but reveal, having heard but not seen, and when inserting a thought into an experience: a satanism that said: i'll be satan and change this choir into moving stars and send a telegram to the aliens! should i see man loose all dignity in warring with himself that ended in napoleonic trust for man and man on the battlefield - because what she offered most men can get, and what i was offered only one among the billions, and in history about three, get.

so while some attempts at a sensual proof were not
granted, only one was, through moses,
and obviously through elijah - as sensual proofs
go, the proof of moses had to be fused with
a cognitive remainder, since, given the fact
that the torah was written by the supreme outsider,
the book depicting elijah was written by a true insider,
yet the cognitive realm which these two operated in
is a pure mystery, given the fact that sensually,
the staged rifts were short lived, yet too long lived
cognitively, having to argue, cite and disagree with
moses, who dragged the most sensual distortion
into the cognitive realm.

so as cognitive proof-arguments go, they are simply that,
more cognitive proofs lead to more argumentation,
but little sensuality, such that the paid need for
theological argumentation that leads to no sensual
precipitation enters the realm of holocausts,
whereby idle and vain cognitive proofs have no sensual
******, only more "thinking;" paid thinking.
and when the sensual proof for the non-existence of god
appears, like the holocaust, all those accumulative
"proofs" from the cognitive realm... end up like midgets...
and everyone's awe taken aback, because so much
cognition was left undisturbed, that the senses are prompted
for a disaster! why would i want cognitive argumentation
if i cannot seek and find a sensual guarantee?
where's the sensual ******, if cognitive argumentation
climaxed to the fine tuned 1 + 1 logic is a sensual anticlimax?!

the odd thing is walking the neighbourhood with beer and hand
waiting for the indian heatwave, but as i sooner realised,
this type of drinking is no good - the shelter of the garden
is where i find laughter - on the street making miles
i find anger - and as i noticed a day prior:
beer in hand, cigarette burning the lung forests,
watching a clear night sky, seeing a boeing boast
engine ***** high up to sound like i drone - that
universe forgets i can claim a nighttime hemisphere of sounds
with that boeing, even though the daytime skyblue is blinded
by a dilated pupil,i can feed that massive vacuum
of emptiness and keyhole glitter a mishap and a chance
to study less celestial geometry to endeavour out of this
haven.

prompts a maxim this verse does:
no one around me in my shape or walk -
tall enough to reach the sky, but
dumb like a thirteen day old butterfly, still flirting with the flutter.
***** you were born as the caterpillar old man,
now you're a fever of beauty in colour,
and only for two weeks, or even less if nabokov is about.

well, crescendo!
when simon magus stood with st. peter at nero's throne
the stage was like the two women with solomon about to cut a baby in half.
it was scened within the following framework of details:
st. peter started to sing bon jovi's 'lay your hands on me,'
with alternative lyrics - let me lay my hands on you
with the power of the holy spirit.
nero replied: lay your own hand on yourself, get away from
me you ***** *******, that holy spirit of yours, the one
you said is a personality but really isn't is just another form of:
celestial chaining; magus simon, what about you?
so simon magus came up and said:
i'll whiff you a smokey vision of caligula learning
of philosophy as read by his talking horse *incitatus
.

i wish for praise here on originality, but i heard of this one,
the talking horse of caligula by the one and only zbyszek herbert,
and in quick translation the poem reads -

*says caligula:

from all the citizens of rome
i loved only one
incitasus - a horse

when he entered the senate
the unblemished toga of his fur
glistened immaculately among hemmed with purple cowardly
                                                        ­                           murderers.

incitatus was full of virtuous bounties
he never spoke over me or spoke in general
a stoic nature
i think that at night in the stables he read philosophers

i loved him to such an extent that one day i decided to
                                                              ­                   crucify him
but his noble anatomy countered such a feat

he bosomed the position of consul with dignified apathy
he held power to the helm with a cupful of water
spilling none in a drunk waiter's swagger,
meaning he used none of it with the entitlement

it was impossible to make him bow to long lasting bonds of love
with mt second wife caesonia
alas no lineage of future caesars arose - centaurs

that's why rome crumbled

i decided to nominate him a god
but on the ninth day before the calendar days of february
cherea cornelius sabinus and other fools obstructed these godly intentions

with calm he received the message of my death

thrown out from the palace and sentenced to exile

he accepted the burden with dignity

he died heirless
butchered by a thick-skinned butcher from the township of anzio

of the posthumous fates of his meat
taticus is silent with regards to.
Mateuš Conrad Sep 2018
.https://tinyurl.com/yd8kxt9s: and this was at a time when i actually cared what girls thought... as any chubby kid prior to the age mid 16... cared so much... like any boy... then the backfire... so i thought: well... i know of a girl that won't back down, Sophia... and she certainly didn't teach me to regurgitate logic like a sophist might... new experience... and? ever since? so date with Jack was ever the same... i really used to care what girls thought... but... eh... these days? i care whether the bottom of the bottle looks like a telescope, or a mirage of a kaleidoscope... guess all the shame went out the window... selfish... selfish... hmm... then i guess all the monks are paying dues for that kind of existential hostage heist of - otherwise unwanted enlarged *****-loads of heart, mind, hope... my kind of poker... but thank god i don't that the sort of egoism of a ***** donor, like i'm some prime material for cloning... phew!

i listen to these commentary videos on politics,
and then... i reach a saturation
point... oi! Joe! Joe! where you goin'?
to the jazz club? me come with...
   i've had enough... i get enough news
when i visit my grandparents with my
grandmother watching more
news than her age-restricted bracket
of Mexican or Turkish telenovelas...
does my nuts in!
   i'd rather watch a ******* telenovela
than the corporate news...
at least i'd be watching someone akin
to tuba büyüküstün
   (**** me, they went wild on
the diacritical marks there... didn't
they? do they match up to
the scalpel of syllables within the word?) -
hey! granny! put that **** back on,
she's showing a healthy cut of
thighs and the upper legs,
cut, right, above the knee!
    i too miss the internet...
like it was... in 2007 through to
2000 &... 17?
      well sure as **** no **** Sherlock
it wasn't 2016...
           i appreciate the work
of the counter-media...
   but after a while...
  i get bloated...
   too much information...
       and nothing of the sort i can
speak to people about within
or outside age bracket within this
restricted space...
   so i fill up the tank, realizing
it all ends with: oh, right...
the same ******* tomorrow?
    and then i desperately try to find new
music... musing over a sudoku puzzle...
taking another painkiller swig of
bourbon saying to myself:
isn't this, just the most bountiful night
filled with the oddest beauties
encapsulated most by the shadow
on the face of the moon?
      as ever, my number one motto:
stay low, steer the undercurrent -
         seek no exposure...
               enjoy the drinking,
but esp. enjoy the music...
                     but **** me...
   i miss 2004... or was it 2005?
whichever year it was...
i remember having a race with this
guy on a Tour de France type of bike...
and i was mulling this thick-tier
mountain bike from
Bałtów to Ostrowiec Św. -
   but i still remember my 50+km leisure
route...
   there are only two ways to lose
weight without having problems
of excess skin hanging like punctured
fat balloons...
  cycling... or swimming...
   nope... you go to the gym to lose
that weight? you'll be in need of
plastic surgery...
              **** the diet...
coffee is not coffee if you don't drink it
with either full-fat milk or cream...
i've seen what a coffee with skimmed
milk looks like...
looked at a receptionist's cuppa in
the local g.p. surgery...
  diluted mud-water...
                 same argument with low
fat yogurt: instant diabetes -
you, need, fat...
                    you can't fake fat with
excess sugars...
  plus... the texture?
        orangutan snot probably tastes
better...
      no... gym is a bad idea
for losing weight...
had a "friend" (fwend) who thought
it was worthwhile...
guess now he can test what
a tattoo looks like in old age...
   skin as elastic as a ******* parachute...
running? bad for the knees...
plus? 50+km on a bike?
think of the scenery!
                 - and you require but only
afternoon session when the heat's off...
roughly 2 hours...
sure... after the weight is gone...
**** that gym membership...
   but?
           not prior...
              you lose weight by concentrating
on a calorie equilibrium
with either your legs...
or your torso...
but let's face it...
i didn't swim much...
   so basically your legs... on a bicycle...
what was that route i loved so much...
ah...
the 754...
       through various names country
roads... heading back on Iłżecka
  (a road's name borrowed from
the town of Iłża - en route to Warsaw -
a medieval road -
now passed on route no. 9) -
more fun than pretending to
be a tourist in central London...
  bicycle... late afternoon...
the road...
                 and the endless
fried pine patches of forest...
there's nothing about home as
the perfumes of the land...
however grotesque -
which does include farm animal
manure...
  but **** me...
   Paris perfumeries can hide,
shy... from their poignant scents...
farm animal manure
and hay...
   but later afternoon pine...
and the wheat fields...
and the grass...
               come to think of it...
i never realized that i cycled into
a completely different county...
           like me going from Essex
through to Kent...
               fun as ****...
plus i sometimes stopped at this
old woman's hut...
           and bought some goat's milk.
Jonathan Lian Nov 2010
We love to chase the wind through streaks of blinding bliss,
Tagging the glorious ideals of love, peace, friendship, even
The meaning of life, to weeping willows and pensive pebbles.

We admire the monochrome sky in all its barren blue or pregnant purple;
Hues of burple and plue are dismissed as being tedious, or just confused.
Fear not, photoshop will rectify this pigmented aberration.

We giggle at clouds that resemble kitchen utensils or mystical creatures;
“Hey look a teddy bear in a spacesuit with a flowerpot on his head wielding the Sword of Gryffindor!”
We declare sagely, with the acumen of a legendary bird watcher.

We resurrect grass angels by launching into horizontal jumping-jacks, and,
Just as a disclaimer, no flower was harmed in the process. Not that it matters,
As long as we did not soil our Lacoste and Burberry.

We spin a mixtape out of the torrential downpour, our tracks pitting
The pitter of regularity against the patter of inconstancy, synchronizing
The symphony of splashes to an undercurrent of nostalgia.

We kiss against the bark of an elm, and if a tree is not available in the vicinity,
We throw ourselves down a nearby hill, tumbling into a ball of moist romance,
Panting, as we bask in the studio lighting of the approving sun.

Every still is captured by a Lomo,
Every scene arrested in sepia motion,
Every moment ravished by the chichi Bohemian in us.
Zulu Samperfas Jul 2012
Lymphoma
There was a  fundraising run for lymphoma and other cancers
A little notice for it on top of the garbage can
at a home grown Jamba Juice right off the BART in Berkeley

It hit home: what I was up against
People don't run through the streets casually
and my cat had lymphoma

I couldn't find him last night for the first time
He had his weekly appointment and I brought in
something that didn't look at all like he was the week before

They paged the vet and she came in
saying thing like he needed an IV and tests and
wasn't there nothing else to do
didn't she say that
he needs hospitalization--his liver
we can't tell you what to do
but it would all go in a circle and come back
to a suffering being who had
come to the end of what science could do for him
what she was trying to tell me in her barrage of words
came through loud and clear

They brought him in
with a blanket and a catheter
and he struggled until he got warm and then rested
I wanted him to see me, as the last thing he saw in this world

She took the three syringes out of her white coat
Don't hurt him, just don't hurt him
my only request
There was no pain
Only relaxation, sleep and then at last no heartbeat
Her ability, her smoothness of execution was perfect
and he went limp in my arms
not suffering

The nurse took his body away
"It's the last gift we can give them" she said
and I imagined a man, a stereotypical
image of a man pacing back and forth in a white coat in front
of a lecture hall full of vet students saying that
exact thing and there was a serious air in the classroom and some wrote this down,
it was so true, sound, capable and final
but this woman said it
this veterinarian from Michigan
and through my tears and grief
there was some kind of undercurrent
of relief, that there is no more pain for him
He no longer suffers
and I did all I could do
In Memory of : Shakour Yom, (Yom means beach in Hebrew), Jan., 2000- July 27, 2012
Matthias Mar 2011
Kids these days make me sick. Too much time spent on IT. What’s IT you say? Well IT is the only thing that is not. IT is in but really IT is out, like a drunk left in his ***** passed out on the couch. The ultimate cool the epitome of breathtaking, and your left taking this out of proportion. What is so important? I mean really I don’t understand the importance. A synonym for the learned: imperative or even essence. That is the idea of something but your left holding nothing. Not even a burnt out flame like the lack of heat from the passion in your heart. Does it need to start…once more? A muscle unused is abused and left to consume itself. You incite cannibalism! Munching on ourselves to feed our soul lost in this dangerous world. You’re too tough to ask for directions, too stupid to read a map, or too naïve to think you are alone in this? What is THIS? THIS is just IT after THAT. THAT is simply free thought. Yet the brain sits and rots in your cranium. That’s a fancy word for skull. The helmet, not to keep thoughts in, but to let them become mature and flow down into a puddle between my feet. You see this and harmful words escape your mouth and say I ****** myself. I think not; if my head is leaking that means my thoughts cannot be contained. In pain I see the young adults of our time reading line after line of the same crap we are feed everyday of our lives. A lie, a lie I scream from an empty room, a classroom. There are entities inhabiting the same plane, yet in the same they are not here. So far away lost in this digital age. I agree you cyborgs need entertainment all the same; however, the smile I receive from seeing the moon in the middle of the day is the found on your face when someone likes your page. A paper trail untraveled by so many and misplaced in cyberspace. I walk at night to see the darkness, and you see only the lit up text message from your lazy boy recliner chair. I am convinced you’re not all there, but that’s not your fault. I blame it on the generations. I do blame you because you succumb to IT. There is that funny word again that carries no weight, but wait it can mean so much. IT is the idea of reality and your losing touch. Thus, there’s a word I don’t think gets used enough. Thus, reality is known only by how well it is defined on Wikipedia or an online dictionary equipped with spellcheck of course because without that how would we know the right way to spell. Well, well in my lap a newborn child fell. Not crying, not smiling, I’m not sure if it was even breathing. This baby, helpless and fragile, is society. We as an assembly need a babysitter for our whole lives. Why? Why live without experiencing life? Why be content with any answer that was given, not found. You have to search to find and in time life’s chorus line will start and so will the tears. The so perfectly phrased line will place fear in all who understand. How can we understand when all left standing is man? Man a fragile thing like a mansion on the beach. Sand ******* up the existence of all the living. I want to introduce a new word: WHEN. WHEN will we not take the so-called facts as face value and attempt to discredit them with logical thinking. WHEN will we move the rudder instead of waiting for the tides to change? WHEN will we place IT on it’s own head and explain something we know to someone else. Learning is gained not by blindly memorizing facts, like my mac, but by forming an attack on the disbeliefs. Hopefully to hone an opinion and be ready to defend IT, and I mean in every sense of the word. IT is the idea of reality and your catching on. Leave the bottle of forward thinking, and begin to chew on the backwards and sideward food your not use to.  Open the mind and heart to be restarted by learning. Thought is the jumper cables to this world’s battery dead from leaving it’s lights on all night, and now late to work for it wouldn’t start. Roughly 6 billion, 775 million, 235 thousand, and 741 people on this earth and we still don’t feel part of IT. Have we lost IT, have we tossed IT overboard? The only savior to the sickness and now it is sinking to the bottom of the sea to be discovered like a lost treasure. A gold doubloon used to measure the currency of our time. The state of our States is left to us to state whether we hate or don’t care about the shape we’re in, a sphere, a bubble, a circle with no beginning or end. Nowhere to start just have to keep moving in the same general direction or be swept away by the undercurrent. Drop your anchor and disturb the flow, stop the overused pattern. Turn the cycle of a circle into the turning of a wheel and use that to drive. Finally to take a destination of you’re own and truly think of the cosmos. To place you’re cognitive mind into motion and here the notion that there is more to THIS then IT.
This is one of my many spoken word poems. I hope you enjoy it.
Eve K Jun 2022
I'm surfing, along the coastline.
The waves pulling me in, my strength pushing me out.
Music in one ear, shouting in the other.
I breathe, a breath of salty air. It settles in my lungs and I choke.
Sometimes the salt can clear the alveoli and make it easier to breathe,
But not today.

Today the air is heavy. Clouds pour down single droplets but when altogether, it is a storm. The wind howls, burning my ears. Whispering that it's all too much.

I crave a fall into the ocean, pulled out to sea. It's become too much and I'm drowning.
But I'm not drowning. I float. I float with tears mixing into the salty water. I can feel the undercurrent begging me to come down to it so it can pin me down to the sea bed where I can hold my last breath and breath again.
But it's not breathing it's drowning and the thought makes me thrash around and I panic.
So instead, I panic on top of the water, thrashing and jerking around desperately trying not to drown.

The skies will become clear again. The stormy skies will reveal the blue which is always there. The stars are still shining underneath the despairing clouds. They are always there, just hidden at times.

All I have to do is breathe with the waves and stay afloat till the storm goes away.
over the past few years, I have experienced so many things as a nursing student working in a rest home and now the hospital. There's days, weeks, months where I struggle. The emotional overload of having to see the worst positions people are in. Sometimes it's hard to find hope again in these times. Especially when surrounded by death and despair and dying. It's not going to get easier but that's why I become more resilient. But it's also important to take moments when things are too tough to just sit with the feelings. Otherwise I will drown.
Steve D'Beard Jul 2014
Healing hands laid to rest
wandering in the near light of sunrise
fumbling for fractals of memory
ambling in the haze of yesterday.

Stolen words and displaced letters
floating in the ambience of space
cosmonauts of distant planets
arms outstretched beckoning
the echoes sent from
a thousand light years away.

Time is an irrelevant motion
tiny air bubbles escorting life
rising to the surface of forgotten dreams
spiraling, pulsating in a heartbeat
chambered by grasping futures.

The underlying fever reaching
inwards and outwards through the soul
seeking the blindness of tomorrow
unfurl their magical delights
wrapped in the glint of a solar cosmos.

Drifting beyond the reach of nature
blackness surrounds with the warmth
of knowing, a million miles away,
as if an undercurrent draws its final breath
behold wonderment far-seeing
leaving strange footprints
that someday others will say:
here stood a sentient being.
Woke up to write this down, words appear when I sleep...
Kyle Kulseth Jan 2015
The sleet is drawing boxes 'round
our mud-and-snow sashed towns.
We'll check 'em off
                      with crunching footsteps,
slash our gallows grins through static
weather. Nervous laughter fights off winter
while somnambulist nights
                    hold the anthill days at bay.

And each repeated conversation
coats a thrumming undercurrent
echoed by the groaning rivers
in their arthritic fatigue.

     where the ice piles up
              like car wrecks.

And, out of those disastrous angles,
     jumps up and trips back down.
          Blinking eyelids, right then left.
               Sunrises. Sunsets.
Dusks and dawns in places familiar
wading through liminal space.

Circles darkened. Footprints filled in.

The heat just circles lazily.
Our flushed and clammy brows
will **** askance
               and sweat while footsteps
melt our swaying way through boiling
sidewalks. Nervous laughter dulls the impact
of seared, rapid fire nights.
             "Ha." "Ha." Shrug off another.

And all repeated reminiscence
does is hamstring overthinking
of the closing jaws of traps
in these rusting western towns.

        where winds breathe dust
                by mouthfuls

So, into our familiar mishaps,
     ***** up and falls back down
          melting into neighborhoods
               dress down, upbraid us.
'Til our feet do not walk circles
'round these wilting Western towns.
Terry O'Leary Feb 2017
While whispers shush on sheltered shores, as soon the cockcrow quakes,
the seas descry a skittish sky, sense summer zephyrs wake  –
roused passions neath the sunrise pulse, the whitecaps throb and ache.

Along the crests crawl shallow shades the soaring sun effaces,
and rain in streams belies the dreams that fantasy embraces –
the ocean sprays of yesterdays conceal forsaken faces.

The midday sun has slowed its run, a shrinking puddle steams,
between the knells for shattered shells drift wounded seagulls’ screams –
affection blends but sometimes ends, or so it sadly seems.

At dusk a ruddy disk descends, the skyline's furnace burns  
and neath the swells where Neptune dwells, an undercurrent churns –
a seahorse hides and seaweed bides until the tempest turns.

While twilight hosts the winds with ghosts of barbed electric spangles,
a mermaid braves the crashing waves adorned with starfish bangles –
the spirit yearns in twists and turns entwined in rockweed tangles.

As seven stranded ****** scan the dimple-dappled moon,
eleven sultry sirens serenade a lonely loon –
the breakers pound and sometimes sound a melancholy tune.

Soon gales ignite the briny night and rip the skies askew
with zigzag teeth flashed deep beneath a blazing bolt tattoo –
storms, spent, subside with ebbing tides, then all begins anew.While whispers shush on sheltered shores, as soon the cockcrow quakes,
the seas descry a skittish sky, sense summer zephyrs wake  –
roused passions neath the sunrise pulse, the whitecaps throb and ache.

Along the crests crawl shallow shades the soaring sun effaces
and rains in streams enhance the dreams that fantasy embraces
while ocean sprays of yesterdays reveal forsaken faces.

The midday sun has slowed its run, a shrinking puddle steams,
between the knells of shattered shells drift soaring seagulls’ screams –
the beauty wends but never ends, or so it surely seems.

At dusk a ruddy disk descends, the skyline's furnace burns
and neath the swells where Neptune dwells, an undercurrent churns –
a seahorse hides and seaweed bides until the tempest turns.

While twilight hosts the winds with ghosts of barbed electric spangles,
a mermaid braves the crashing waves adorned with starfish bangles –
her spirit yearns in twists and turns entwined in rockweed tangles.

As seven stranded ****** scan the dimple-dappled moon,
a brace of surly Sirens serenade a lonely loon –
the breakers pound and sometimes sound a melancholy tune.

Soon gales ignite the briny night and rip the skies askew
with zigzag teeth flashed deep beneath a blazing bolt tattoo –
storms, spent, subside in ebbing tides, then all begins anew.
Matthias Feb 2011
Trying to steal that pearl from your mouth.
But as your name says, you shut me out.
I then get tossed in the undercurrent.
You offer not a hand, but a laugh.
I drift alone thinking of what I can.
I the seahorse, and you the clam.
Judgson blessing Jun 2015
king Cophetua and Beggar Maid is inspired of the painting of Sir Edward Burne-Jones (1884 , England ) the painting run about an old legend of king that found that his love for Beggar Maid was greater than anything his possess : wealth and power . In that painting of Burne-Jones , the king Cophetua was moon stroke of the beauty of a Beggar Maid ,instead of her naked appearance in regard to this earthing consideration  , though he was allured by her state and deemed the Beggar Maid  would trade her natural beauty upon worldly elevation .But anemones was thrown about around the Beggar Maid standing . Anemone is the sign of refused love , to the king most astonishment and great deceit .Here lain the elevation of love above all thing consideration ; wealth , power and others .the painting also ran another significant meaning to Sir Edward Burne-Jones : its an undercurrent self resentments about chaos upon Frances Graham , a lady he was so devoted that got married one year earlier the painting .


What beauty , did behold a lady .
for what a fame completely shadowy.
lo, in dim recess of England a lady did dwell .
from head to toe a feature exquisitely so well .
her face is the panorama of crimson hue .
with dimple and frown so divinely imbue .
she is effigy of the culmination of word beauty .
peeping her through day long ; you will never feel thirsty.
all her face is settled in heavenly attire of smile .
for her possession of beauty is unique worldly simile .
her body had the mark of excellent work of art .
no nymph , no fairy could possess her frame impart .
princess of heaven ,celestial beauty of holy attire .
for your rendition of beauty a painter worship at your retire .
a smile ; radiant and blatant a devotion of all thing heavenly .
a couple of lips very in regular design , most delicate  work of father holy.
the short up turn of the upper golden lip in rosy glow .
with lower lip so justly fitted as lid and bowl .
nay it deemed the most work of legendary painter hand .
but now what a glorious gait of cadence did withstand .
where in remotest antique could we withheld such beauty ?
from head to toe all the feature luridly in unity .
little upwards the average height with magnificent bearing .
her arms and legs proportionally fitted in good caring .
the neck is culmination of adjusted rings darting as snake .
when she depart all her part spring like a dance at music .
slim and fitted with fitting body as a young mutated snake .
but i warrant all thing upon her hip jingling spring like .
her look naked you and everything with impure world .
well begrounded as reflex through giant mirror .
meeting with her personality is a kind of celestial discovery.
like discovery of a gold pit or gas gush in desert of misery .
she betoken of kind of aura that prevails peace .
but Beggar she was at her secluded place .
with a smile she attracts but beg worldly sympathy .
not a corrupted heart or soul she believe in the holy trinity .
what a beauty to wasted but in shameful mendicancy .
the sagacious spirited dimly alluded with grin .
for all the hole tandem dwelt but in rich lustrine .
the quantity is the mother of all pain and sin .
but chastity is holy devotion all in pure spiriting .
oh, what good for us if we just live in nothing but lust .
money, fame and other elevations are vile and endless lost .
pure beauty you behold with pure noble spirit .
rich or poor do only one thing :run away from ignominy .
the Beggar Maid was sitting upon her recess and shadowy .
lo, trodden king Cophetua back of horse of finely white garb .
and riding sat majestically ***** like state pole in richly parade.
perfume and the richness of articulation stole through and filled the momentum .
with guards and valet finely polite and alerted at the extremum .
what a cadence ! what a sight ! as heaven trotting herd .
but lulled in mostly attire and paraded mostly in gold .
with a look the purest radiant and the noblest ever been .
nothing but a grandeur and riches were what to be seen .
settled on horse so holy that was moved as not touching the soil .
king Cophetua trotted and commanded but with moderate majestic control .
beheld with the Beggar Maid that beauty was a heavenly allure .
halt he made and laid his feet on ground with real frantic gesture .
in obsequious and excess real gesture drove to his knees .
and held altogether ***** airy and up tall .
upon the King procession on his knees the Maid took on in respect.
with stature all slanted flat across the ground all beaming in light .
what grandeur or glory fitted before the Maid most alluring ?
nay,fame ,riches ,noble , power ,cunning nor learning .
all but are subjected and tamed ,transformed into nothing.
king Cophetua is a glory ,but pure beauty is holy not a thing stand pure beauty.
for the worship of our splendor is the betoken kind spiritually .
the Beggar Maid is a right down deprived and seemed a cursed sin .
but pure beauty beholds with pure resplendent holy garden .
what life led you through ?behold there is no wealth down here more your soul .
and you are diving in filthy abode and lamenting your spirit in foul .
nay, beauty keep out of lust and covetousness and preserve your spirit .
cause none ,but only you will stand when is the last verdict .

the maid garbed in silken attire float so soft and dainty .
king Cophetua in his mighty clad covered with gold is holy .
i seen you are a beauty , entreated he in lowest musical resonant voice .
and i deemed make you you the praise of my ever unique choice .
yet before God and before mortal i would worship you as holy throne .
the Maid as voice as lute and lyre sang but in sweet musical tune .
my King im as much obliged though unworthy servant of your kingdom .
all the honor is for me ,and upon my foil state is for me a bloom .
my honor is regardless said he ,i fain treat you as an equal .
now deign tell me what can i do to you cause i feel towards you loyal .
glory be to Lord !for you philanthropic reverence my Lord .
for i need nothing more but, 'give me today my daily bread '.
appalled but aghast upon the Maid humble and unequivocal demand .
he stretched ***** in mournful and sad air of command .
and took quite survey of the Maid that is nothing but pretty creature .
for his wildness dreams he never seen such purity upon his pasture .
yet abashed with the Maid demand ,a lesson of life of great enormity .
something somehow weird and unusual stroke him about the Maid personality.
but he restated once more i feel hearty and  kind towards you then .
you might tell me that you need in life now and then .
and sat ***** fancying himself of new pleasant answer .
oh King retorted the latter i had formulated my need .
for faith under and heaven above i have no greed .
nettled he settled his curled hair back thrown .
and so should it be as you but did deem .
and nothing but here receive a dime .
Liam Mar 2014
I'm tired of beauty
incessantly meddling in my affairs

luring me to venture outside myself
revealing hidden radiance within

disguising life's dismal undercurrent
reducing it to a superficial veneer

randomly appearing by surprise
stubbornly eliciting a smile

performing alchemy on the mundane
dousing my awareness in the elixir of life

beauty...
the pulchritude of spirit...that's all it is...
judy smith Nov 2016
Fashion designers love foraging through the antique markets of Clignancourt in Paris and Portobello Road and Alfie’s Antiques markets in London snuffling out vintage pieces for inspiration. The flurry of romantic Victoriana on the catwalks for autumn can clearly be blamed on this obsession.

There has been an undercurrent of reserved, covered-up fashion ever since Pierpaolo Piccioli and his former co-designer Maria Grazia Chiuri introduced a more demure aesthetic to Valentino five years ago. Longer skirts, prim higher necklines and covered arms have become the slow trend of recent seasons creating a hyper-feminine look.

Riccardo Tisci at Givenchy and Sarah Burton at Alexander McQueen have long been beguiled by the Gothic romanticism of Victorian fashion with their use of corsetry and dark dramatic lace and velvet for eveningwear.

In fact, London-based vintage fashion dealer Virginia Bates admits she doesn’t remember there ever being a time when Gothic Victoriana didn’t feature in at least one designer’s collection. “The fascination with the romantics, poets, artists and even horror [classics and films] give designers a great source of inspiration,” she says. “It’s an irresistible era.”

Certainly a lot of it has appeared on the catwalks this season at McQueen, Marc Jacobs, Burberry (shown only a month ago in the see-now, buy-now collection), Simone Rocha, Preen, Bora Aksu and Temperley London, as well as at smaller brands such as Alessandra Rich, Three Floor created by Yvonne Hoang and A.W.A.K.E.

There were dark distressed Linton tweeds, unravelling knits and black tulle in Simone Rocha’s autumn collection. Rocha was pregnant when she started designing it and was inspired by Victorian dress and motherhood, in particular the nightgowns and matrons.

“All the wrapping and swaddling of babies,” she says, before elaborating on how “the Victorian ideals of properness were made perverse with the conservative and covered-up pieces contrasted by the sheer and embroidered fabrics.”These gauzy vaporous fabrics succeeded in making her eerily romantic silhouette look rather contemporary and daring.

Subversion is key to making such a prim and proper period in fashion history modern and relevant for women today. Marc Jacobs, for instance mixed long Victorian coats, ballooning crinolines and crochet doily collars with sweatshirt tops and laser-cut leather for skirts and jackets together with some scary Goth horror make-up. Nothing is, or should be literal.

As Justin Thornton of Preen says “we love the Victorians, the laces and the white shirts, but it is the vintage pieces rather than the era that inspire us”. His partner Thea Bregazzi has collected aristocratic laces and ruffly vintage shirts from Portobello Road market for as long as he has known her and these frequently find their way into their collections, “but linings would be ripped, garments will have holes in them – it is a deconstructed look”.Virginia Bates once owned a famous vintage fashion emporium in Holland Park with a client list including the biggest names in fashion from John Galliano to Donna Karan and Naomi Campbell. Now she only works with private clients and designers and they, especially, she says were looking for genuine Victorian pieces when planning their autumn collections.

“A black fitted jacket with inserts of handmade lace [that is] embellished with crystal and jet beads, ***** and silk lined ... How exciting and inspiring is that? Silk and fine lawn shirts, soft and flowing with ruffles. Don’t we all want to wear one and live the dream?”

Thankfully a few designers do right now, and there were lots of heavenly creatures in fragile asymmetric lace dresses toughened up with leather corsetry at Alexander McQueen, and richly coloured swishy dresses at Bora Aksu. While Christopher Bailey cherry-picked the centuries in his Burberry collection, lighting upon frilled white cotton shirts, nipped in jackets and military capes from the Victorian era. Given that Victoria reigned for more than 60 years there is a lot of history for designers to plunder, so this will not be the last we will see it.Read more at:http://www.marieaustralia.com/short-formal-dresses | www.marieaustralia.com/red-carpet-celebrity-dresses
featherfingers May 2016
I never liked beets; too soft, too red
too round, too bulbous,
too much like a bloodmoon.

I cannot live in these shaman
sleeves. They're heavy as rocks beneath
the waves, soaked to the bone
by a salty, sunless sea.  Too much
blue is bleeding into billowing wool, red as beet.

There's never an anglerfish
when you need a light, no beetbulb of flame
for that last rush of smoke before the black
undercurrent squeezes the air too thin.
vircapio gale Mar 2013
what am i about
giving you no gifts
unable to pin
my finger on a theme
phenomenal you
with whom i play away the year,
yearned love from a decade's dream
you've swayed into the real
to flesh it here and interrupt all Being
with a node of savvy personality
i lessen if i think my words can measure
that, how you emerge there, change
come across the shore of presence, waves of filtered seas
deeply you have gone and risen from within
expanding metaphor in a lambency of ageless gazing at the stars
and giving all a joyful undercurrent swim.

luffa vines abound, for future shiny backskins arching bliss--
shedding all, i snake my way around the roots--
the yellow sheen fades and pupils zero intimate
a finer lived experience... ripe intrusion truly love in tune with
tips of sneezing hearts, curling toes unite, shout
an intertwining pelvic orbit vaster space to yet unmake
unspoken pleasures wide in everpresent fontanels
the spectra plenum here again, next breath, ends of in, ends of out
Mateuš Conrad Jul 2016
you can ******* a man with accusations of insanity and destroy him instantly, or over a few years... but that only shows the collective approach is insane and, including the man in question the prefix added to the collective: self-destructive... it's no good implying a man faked a coherent use of language, when the western model attached paranoiac iconoclasm of certain pronoun and noun usage - one man had more coherence in language than a million reduced to Emoticons - but no one minded that affair - they simply accepted it - it was once making the populace literate then the unmaking of literacy with technological advances - as ever the lax aristocracy - we don't philosophise in western society, we simply imply logistics of psychology - a Chinese model for the eradication of the unit of indestructibility - a soul, but what happens in China is a success story, the number in question are too man, our experiment is a failure in this eradication of the unit of indestructibility is a failure, excess individuation processes with too few example of coherence and grey matter - the family model is primarily the one source we have no coherent grey matter populace - with its failure no person will strive to wear the mask of father, grandfather, uncle... there's no investment in society of a family, western hands said: freedom to clone, freedoms for L.G.B.T. communities to flourish - surrogacy prostitution... care homes and tattoos of ***** bed-wetting on the skin - individuation's aggressiveness and objectivity's passiveness reduced to a criticism of a book rather than a project of collective cohesion... Communism came across the greatest antisemitism known to man - capitalistic zenith of the holocaust - now slang in populist propaganda - V for Vendetta realism i approach - i don't think i want to go to a pub these days, whether with Scot, Irishman or Anglo - i don't think watching rats scuttle is much fun over a pint of beer... schizophrenia of the collective, from theorem and other additives you can see the reverse chirality - some way or another you become involved - globalisation did that, you want to be un-involved and yet you become involved - you want the village life but are forced into an abstract urbanity - you have the urban life but are discouraged from an abstract village-life although in deepest desire, you wish for it... the day when two speakers of the same tongue undermine each other's speech - by way of constructing the perfect Ypres' replicas of entrenching validations to stand opposite each other on the basis of argument per se, and so the argument comes... how then contend between masochism on one side and sadism on the other, when the former traps himself in a panic room and does it to himself, and the latter is kept repeating a knock-knock joke with no answer?*

England has become a place where
i don't want to socialise -
i wouldn't want to be in a pub
full of Irish or English -
i've become marginalised as a user
of the tongue - i'm a user
but hardly the attaché - the "where you from"
question is always asked, i'm here,
but where from seems to matter more -
it's not fun anymore - London is
slightly confused at it all,
they said the European Union experiment
is a failure akin to the Communist Plot -
but of course both were pre-readied failures,
the former was tackled by puppetry of the
American president, the latter by the Pope -
both were ****** - the populist assertion
of the dream of Nebuchadnezzar -
if history is hardly a hindsight, it certainly
is a way of sleepwalking -
the failure from places not formerly conquered -
the anger of north africa and the elsewhere
encompassing the Mediterranean -
invigorating a force of conquerors by the once conquered
by goose-pimple buttocks of the Romans not
heading north on the continent (islands are insulators
of the cold) - hence the once former conquered
trying to scold and try out their post-colonial
authority - white v. white won't work -
Scandinavians and the Baltic States weren't
ready for ***** Gaul or ***** Britannia setting
orders - the Roman didn't go that far -
the failure was imminent from a single dream -
history is nothing about hindsight -
the hindsight default is nothing but the wrong
of the waking hour for many a man,
to take a dream as a vector for forward only sent
as backward - never make history from the interpretation
of a resting body - from a dream -
to make history from a dream is to give more men
unrest in the waking hour - to make history from
dreams is to make history without hindsight
but with sleepwalking, and few men are given
the anti-psyche drugs for a sober approach,
they say: but i didn't drink... but their intoxication
came from dreams... a drunk man will stumble and fall,
but a man intoxicated by dreams will make more
horrors outside the realm of cinema than is already
there with an eager audience - indeed, a cinema with
an un-eager audience - residues of symbolism,
the quote: for king and country and such baffling e.g. plural.
Ukraine was almost ready to join... you could say
Russia and Britain pulled the project apart...
i just don't think you'll like this aggravated German
with the expulsion of Jews from Poland -
the Visegrad Group - partly because this is the undercurrent -
so when will the channel tunnel become a plot-line
for Guy Fawkes? it's already rearranging itself -
a new chapter - a new nothing - it never worked in
the first place because there was no respect for the diversity,
we shared a single phonetic encoding, sure, some of us
used diacritical stresses, one particular didn't -
but it was anti-representing the diversity, this was
supposed to be an European Union -
not the Post-Colonial-Pseudo-African Union -
the great colonial states ruined it, that's why the greatest
of them has left - the European Union should have
excluded Britain, France and the Iberian peninsula -
it was intended as the revival of the Holy Roman Empire,
but including post-colonial states invoked the realisation
of their colonial past, thereby necessitating an integration
of their past colonial subjects into Europe -
Britain left because they heard the news... Turkey is going
to join... well... never mind Rotherham, eh?
Gemma Jan 2019
All of a sudden, I am there again. With out any warning. Stranded, on a little island, inside myself. I can see and hear people, but I can’t make out what they are saying. Or who they are even.  I’m just stuck, on my island feeling numb.

It can happen frequently, hourly even, yet sometimes weeks will go by when I don’t visit that place. Then, again, out of no where, I’m back. Surrounded by a Black Sea of nothingness.  Sometimes I can save myself, swim away. Dry off and go about my day as if I were never there. Other times I stay wet from the water, i feel sodden and heavy, irritated by the salt.

I’d like to say it gets easier being there but I think I have just become accustomed to it. Accepting of it, almost.

I don’t want to accept it, but it’s less draining that way. Or maybe that’s what I hope. I’m not sure any more.

I visited my island today. Not out of choice you see, I just seemed to drift there, taken by the current. I stayed a short while.

I would like to stay away, from that island, if i could. But it all depends on the tide.
Max Southwood Jun 2016
Drowning in a sea of disappointment
Swept away by the undercurrent
Into the depths of my own hatred
The weight of my heart
Set in stone and cast in steel

Kick me down
Complete submission
I reached for the stars as a last desperate
attempt to be part of the light

But you extinguished the sun
And you swallowed the moon
And by the time that I had finally made it
The stars had all died
I can't say I hate people…but I continuously find myself feeling disappointed by them.
AmberLynne Sep 2015
A sentence most innocent,
     yet the undercurrent
     is deep and swift.
                                                          ­  I love you, too.
A snap-reflex response
     to a heartfelt exhibition
     of true emotion.
                                                        ­    I love you, too.
To an outsider,
     nothing would be amiss
     but I read the lack of words.
                                                          ­  I love you, too.
This throwaway text
     hides something much more
     than you care to show.
                                                           ­ I love you, too.
And simple as those
     four little words, I know
     something is wrong.
9.13.2015
Mouth Piece Dec 2013
Death gives no rest to my cluttered mind. Death is my enemy! Even in slumber death claws to infect my dreams with its poison called nothingness! So I locked death in the depths of my heart in a chest marked fear. I put on different worldly masks… called college, travel, success, accolades, fiancé, money, ***….I used them to hide my shame but each one was cold blue and hypothermic. Yet in them I felt comfortable at the expense of lost potential and false identity. In frostbites pinnacle my only unbreakable mask shattered…..I lost my Love…………The wailing echoes of delusion shook me frigid till my raw bones shattered the question. Who am I? The undercurrent of desperation violently hydrated my reflection on the dark waters of my soul! I am faceless! Without a face who am I! Death take me now, for I am already nothing!   From below came a vibration that graced my reflection with an ear, a lash and a deep iris.. then windows to my soul sprang and a smile dripped in unabated rejoice…I’m alive!!!! Who has done this?! Show your face, for you are my dearest friend!  Without words death was shaken loose to the depressing reality of dipped anxiety. From behind my many masks I could see Death. For the first time I face you! Your eyes paint the familiar threat that casts me into the obis of nothingness but without you life was delusional meaninglessness! Because of your death threats my life has a face.  Death is my Enemy and my Friend……………..Jesus conquered death so through it I may learn the meaning of His Love and who I really am......now to take down more of my masks……easier said than done....Praise Jesus.........To be continued……………….
JJ Hutton Aug 2014
What's my name?
Take that universal,
that yeah yeah, that
ohm and play it backwards.
I'm that undercurrent,
the invisible force that pushes the hand, that pushes
the red button, that levels seven stories--for?

What's my name?
Take that post-post-modern literature,
that self-serving academia-meets-nihilism,
and think as far opposite, Herculaneum/Uruk,
and you might just find it, my name,
carved in Aramaic or Latin in a dark wet cave,
forgotten, misspelled in a dead language.

What's my name?
Look just past that buffering screen,
right before the pixelated beheading starts.
I'm between the zeroes and ones in that heaven-place,
the Internet, where people go when the final death takes.

What's my name?
Take that ever so subtle airport terminal muzak,
and listen for the counterpoint, the competing rhythm.
It, my name, swirls and mingles with that ever flowing
crowd, weary and reduced to numbered tickets and departure times,
speaking fifty different languages, a flattened and recurring Babel.
Take that ohm, and play it, play it backwards.
Mateuš Conrad Apr 2016
don't worry, even i think this is all a bit too wacky... but then i eat the placebo of feeling the emotions of https://goo.gl/tzEPhO / dido's no angel album, and i really concentrate on the symbol... and it feels less wacky after a while; i'm always apprehensive about influencing people, even if they number the 1 or 2 or 3, less than a dozen... these are sensitive areas, where there's a seemingly en masse acceptance for either accepting or criticising such potent reminders of human history... always apprehensive, only because i do not really care much about illuminating footnotes... always apprehensive... it's an apprehension born from not wanting to influence new arguments in these debates.*

why is it always either 1:30 or
13:30 when men hold sway the hour hand
and women the minute hand...
or it's either 18:05 or 6:05 when women
hold the hour hand and men the minute
hand? well, never mind, a new
interpretation of the ☿ (mercury), lineage
of all sourced prophecies, the crescent horns of
mobilised islam, by the power that mobilised it,
that of the feminine nature...
and that femininity mobilised islam in
christianity with the emergence of the nag hammadi
library, and no official plan to instigate it
along the lines of canonical orthodoxy...
an undercurrent emerged in christianity with
the parallelism drawn by the historian josephus,
a false prophet, the unearthing of the library in
egypt... the flight of joseph, mary and infant jesus
to egypt... but as the symbol clearly suggests...
the crescent moon became mobilised by a
feminine ontology... St. Thomas' gospel working
its way, into the mainstream, although well hidden
in the undercurrent... replacing all known
canonical orthodoxy - and you know,
if your prophesy about the end of the world,
and to prove your prophecy to be true with the
culmination of the atom bomb, and the only
way you can imagine proving your words true...
then i guess you'd have to get yourself crucified
to make everyone follow your words to ring true
should they actually be rather unconvincing;
a crucifixion would desirably create a *****-like
influx of people who'd believe you
and follow all the preparations through -
Pythagoras' estimates about the future had
about 30 followers... and he's still covered in dust
in school libraries and mathematics lessons;
judaism is still a minority religion:
the last words of convictions from it were written by
Isaiah, who was cut in half for going among the
people, as a former courtesan.
Alyssa Underwood Sep 2021
I
--
The LORD is asking, “Do you trust Me, child?”
And surely He is worthy of all trust,
but visceral reactions oft’ seem just
in keeping soul’s anxieties well riled.
While panic, shame and dread stir doubting winds,
obsessive, tight, compulsive thoughts pour fuel
into this downward spiraling boil of gruel
where toxic interactions breed more sins.
So for relationships I feel unfit,
and now old interests die and pleasures wane,
as each new hope in Earth’s good brings fresh pain,
where dark depression’s presently my bit.
Yet in this wilderness I hear God call,
“Child, look to Me. I am your ALL in all.”

II
--
I meditate upon the word of God
to heal a mind that’s broken from the fall,
and lying in morn’s bed I now recall
the former paths of fullness I have trod.
I clear the course of tangling debris
that fogs perspective’s distance-viewing sight
and clogs the narrow way which lets in light,
so with God’s truth I’m able to agree.
I gaze toward the future that is sure,
to glory that is promised out of trial.
I push through lying voices of denial,
rememb’ring my inheritance secure.
So healing first begins by sizing scope,
for in true measure I can grasp true hope.

III
---
Long sheltered in the recesses of mind
on pedestals that overshadow truth
are lies which I have entertained since youth
like tape recordings stuck on forced rewind.    
There‘s something of appeal in misbelief,
some comforting, perverted, dressed-up face
which keeps foul strongholds rooted into place
and lets such rotten seedlings harvest grief.  
But I must choose to undermine their message,
uncovering deception’s hidden lairs
whose cultivation grounds for growing tares
leave roadblocks to integrity’s safe passage.
God’s probing, piercing words—what precious gifts!—
can excavate, expose and extract myths.

IV
---
I apprehend these truths in David’s psalm:
“I’m fearfully and wonderfully made,”
and all my days of life are firmly laid
within the sovereign care of God’s own palm.
And yet another voice keeps creeping out.
“You’re too unfit for blessed community,
hence from belonging full immunity
is your dim lot,” says paralyzing Doubt.
For ‘gainst the Word that says I‘m rightly hewn
rub all the bristling edges of myself,
but would one set forever on a shelf
a Bösendorfer piano out of tune?
No, value is a function of creation,
and He who made has promised restoration.

V
--
Restoration’s anchored in redemption,
and my redemption‘s grounded in God’s love.
Nowhere in far reaches man has thought of
could mind unfurl the breadth of such conception.
Sloshing, hesitating in the shallows,
I wander close to shore in Love‘s vast sea.
Then from the swell I hear a coaxing plea
to dive into the deeper wake of hallows.
What‘s this weight that pins my frame from racing
toward His unknown billows of delight?
Do I not trust that He will clasp me tight,
help me bear the fiercest waves I’m facing?
What guile of devils am I heeding here
which keeps me bound by paralyzing fear?

VI
---
Disheartened by my want for firm resolve
to swim toward agápē’s unplumbed depths
for int’macy with Him who paid my debts—
the only One from sin who can absolve,
I wander, wond‘ring what I’ve missed to see
within my comprehension of Christ‘s love
when He would vacate majesty above
and suffer cruelest death to set me free.
They stripped Him, flogged Him, spit, pulled out His beard,
then pressed a crown of thorns down on His head.
They nailed Him to rough cross to leave for dead—
Creator of the world now by it jeered.
In love this traitor by her King was served:
Christ Jesus bore God‘s wrath which I deserved!

VII
----
Considering what labors Christ performed
to buy my freedom off sin’s slav’ry block
that of His fullness, with Him, I could walk
in resurrected life (not just reformed),
can I not trust that He will see me through
each trial, tribulation, sorrow, loss
when He would not forsake me at the cross
but carried all my grief and suff‘ring too?
And just as death‘s cold grave could not contain
my Savior but gave way to watch Him rise,
whatever loss my path has to comprise
shall work for me eternal glorious gain.
So while my courage may still be in lack,
the settled thing is there’s no turning back.

VIII
-----
Wading through fresh tidal pools of mercy
along a piece of coast that‘s not too wide—
among the crags and caves where stragglers hide,
hoping to evade crowd controversy—
I know I‘ll have to move on before long.
But in the warm meanwhile of the day,
I kneel to rest; and as I start to pray,
my heart begins to open to a song—
a gentle, soothing lullaby I’ve known
sung to the tune of ‘Eventide‘ as hymn,
reminder that this life is fading, dim
but that in Christ I never walk alone.
And as I raise the words, “Abide with me…,”
here comes my Shepherd, walking by the sea.

IX
---
What now is this waylaying, sin-sick soul?
Diversional winds from cliffside descend.
Where‘s pressing fire my devotions attend?
Brain‘s robbed of sanity, sleep, self-control.
Jesus comes near numb heart in distraction
and bids me again to clean deadwood out.
Jesus, I‘m desperate, drowning in doubt!
Help me expel what‘s needing subtraction!
Discipline, prudence, wisdom, contentment
can work to restore both body and brain,
while worship will lift locked heart from restraint—
its untethering from woe’s resentment.
I won‘t, without wisdom, taste truest Love,
yet Love holds true keys to wisdom above.

X
--
Mottling mind’s hazed subconscious sockets—
bedecked by ego’s restless crave for fill—
infections grow to permeate my will,
ladening, with dross, affection‘s pockets.
Foul seepage soon coagulates to plaque,
forces clefts which weaken my foundation,
foments psyche’s stormed disintegration
till half-light’s flushing falls to midnight‘s black.
Yet amid murk‘s rotting, rank confusion
with ev‘ry faculty succumbed to rift,
My Shepherd plucks me fiercely from the cliff,
tending thorn-torn blight with Love‘s ablution.
Healing, though, requires my surrender—
all cooperation I can lend 'her.'

XI
---
Jesus asked a question at Bethesda,
the pool by which an invalid was lain,
for thirty-eight lost years left in his pain—
twisted, timed, tormenting, teared siesta.
“Do you desire to be made well?” He asked.
“I’ve none to help me!” was the plaintive cry,
then Jesus spoke miraculous reply
that to get up and walk the man was tasked.
That’s not to say all healing will be found
within this present life of ills and woes,
but still I hear Christ probing through the throes
if I am truly willing to be sound.
Or would I rather lie on crippling bed,
an invalid of spirit, heart and head?

XII
----
Shuffling through some past miscalculations
surrounding toxic breakage of the vines
that ought secure the healthy bound’ry lines  
guarding interpersonal relations—
rememb‘ring my susceptibility
to ego-shuttled, codependent err‘rs
which strain to manage others‘ own affairs
and so invert responsibility—
I ponder if I‘ll ever grow to learn
proper seeds for sowing mutual trust
with vital tools for gently sanding rust
to help stave off a bondship‘s breaking-burn.
One thing I know, that trusting in the LORD
steers love‘s impetus to carry forward.

XIII
-------
“I’m not enough and yet too much,” I've read.
Succinctly that describes my current angst,
and I can‘t justify to war against
these arguments which whirl around my head.
I’ve been told, “You’re just a little intense,”
by many people, not just one or two,
and this they voice clangs manifestly true,
as gaping holes defect my bound‘ry fence.
Voluminous in content and in force,
bestowing as prized gifts what isn‘t sought
or wanted by those for whom gifts are brought,
I falter in my need to change set course.
And where it comes to giving what‘s desired,
real competence seems found to have expired.

XIV
-----
Someone wrote, “true soul mate is a mirror“—
like limelight they‘ll reveal your unseen faults.
Where no one else delights to search your vaults,
“soul mate“ renders time to be apt hearer.
It matters not, was said, that they don‘t stay,
so long as they‘re an agent for reform—
the one who makes you desp‘rate to transform
by breaking heart and making ego fray.
Danger lies in nuanced underpinnings.
I thought I‘d found my soul mate in abuse
and used “he needs my fuel“ as excuse
to take a twisted game to extra innings.
Here I’ll grant these crazed imaginations
were at core demonic machinations.

XV
-----
Casting down romantic schoolgirl notions
that sin-drenched bonds might fashion souls complete,
I drag bewitching grails to Jesus’ feet—
spurning now to drink past guile‘s potions.
As I linger longer in His presence,
I‘m freshly bathed from marring guilt and shame,
reminded I‘m made whole in Jesus‘ Name—
partaker in the fullness of His essence.
Identified eternally with Christ,
secured by His unfailing love through grace,
one day I‘ll walk perfected face-to-face
with Him from whom true life is all-sufficed.
And as I muse, I taste true heart‘s desire—
rekindling, renewed with holy fire.

XVI
-----
Attitude is prime, determinant hinge
on which the door of restoration swings—
deciding what response subconscious brings
and on which morsels mind should bestly binge.
Plenty is dependent on perspective.
Mountain, plain or valley alter sight 
and size by which is measured present, plight.
Simply switching lens can be corrective.
In Christ, Ephesians tells me, I‘ve been raised,
seated with Him in the heavenly realm—
positioned by the One who steers the helm
that Father, Son and Spirit would be praised!
Worship, like a rudder, sets the outlook
to keep me highly grounded in God‘s Book.

XVII
------
Why should I to the worship of false gods
surrender my outlook frivolously?
Idols grab first gaze notoriously,
rob joy as will‘s defenses yield heart‘s nods.
What then? Can I suppose I might steal back
a measure of exuberance through more
skewed genuflecting to gilt calf before—
itself beleaguered, plagued by woeful lack?
Now heed, wayfaring soul of mine, what‘s true:
Creation‘s bounty-goods will make you slave
and with sweet Siren‘s flutes your mind deprave
when to them you lend focus Christ is due.
Lay firm your eyes on Him—pure, restful bed,
cover, fuel, completer, Fountainhead.

XVIII
-------
Wandering down some cobbled, crowded street,
I‘m nowhere headed, rapt in mindless thought,  
and as I saunter south I happ‘ly spot
a friend long-lost but fiercely longed to meet.
Just up ahead, he’s mixed well in the throng
but might be caught if I push through and race!
Heartbeat quickens. Oh, to see his face,
this one with whom I’m sure I must belong!
Yet when I actually seize him and he turns,
I’m devastated, sunk. It isn’t him.
Then moping northbound—dazed, dejected whim—
I stumble on the One for whom heart burns!
How strange, as I had grappled, chased and shoved,
that I’d been running from the One I loved!

XIX
-----
He‘s reservoir for which parched spirit begs,
familial feast cast heart longs to attend,  
elixir fractured psyche craves, to mend,
secure foundation ‘neath soul‘s skittish legs.
Jesus is hearth fire, garden blooming,
joy‘s kiss that welcomes prodigals with tears,
arms’ tender brawn consoling weak ones‘ fears,
shelt‘ring lullaby as nightstorm‘s looming.
Who else can scatter stars, strew mountain snow,
to whet beloved‘s taste for pristine grace?
What other love’s like this, that He‘d embrace
excruciating death to grace bestow?
And best, most faithful lovers of this earth?—
dull pennies next to Christ‘s resplendent worth!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

VOLUME II:
(** — XXXII) [Edited in 9/27-29/21]

**
----
Closing the door on chaining obsessions
requires some short-circuiting of thought
previously allowed to flow uncaught
and forge ever-deepening depressions.
Pathways in my brain can be rerouted
by changing interactions with my world,
observing what’s most easily unfurled—
presently what’s to five senses suited.
‘Mindfulness’ can be a Christian practice
and doesn’t have to rest on Buddha’s shelf—
“awak’ning non-existence of the self”—
or from unseen, eternal things distract us.
True mindfulness is found in gratitude—
joyful, eucharisteo attitude.

XXI
-----
A biblical version of ‘mindfulness‘
is found in 1 Thessalonians 5,
revealing as God’s will that saints should strive
for ever-prayerful joy and thankfulness.
Pond‘rous gratitude staves off resentment,
greed and pride. As was taught to Timothy,
what‘s created and giv‘n by God should be
received in sacred thanks with contentment.
Creation reflects God‘s bounteous glory
and demonstrates His loving grace and care,
so in same grace and glory we can share
each time we recognize Him in our story.
Ten thousand tiny gifts write each day‘s page,
and he who welcomes most is most like sage.

XXII
------
In restoration, elasticity
of mind is a factor to celebrate.
So please don‘t ever underestimate
the wonders of neuroplasticity.
New brainpaths form and old channels falter,
depending on what choices I might make.
Fresh experience of which I partake
will physically help my brain to alter.
Here‘s one great hope I must now remember:
What’s hardwired today can still be displaced,
and thoughts might soon flow on paths greenly graced,
as I feast my soul’s eyes on brain’s Mender.
Bent mindfulness toward Giver and His gifts
best brings joy‘s healing for my mental rifts.

XXIII
-------
Realizations that some obsessions
are desires to vicariously ride
the mindfulness of others who don‘t hide
their own keener sensory possessions,
aptly are aiding to turn my focus
from curiosity to understand
their thoughts, which often‘s led my heart-demand—
want to consume their minds‘ crops like locusts.
What I‘ve perceived as love, concern to know,
empathy for others‘ worlds internal,
might be more escape from mine external—
attempts to hide from life‘s real, present show.
Avoidance wears all sorts of vibrant masks
to keep me blinded to here-moments‘ tasks.

XXIV
-------
Viewing secondhand eviscerations,
as others spill their innards on the page,
may seem the safest way to heart engage—
surrogated life participation.
Substituting others‘ honed perceptions
where I ought learn observance of my own
will keep childlike experience ungrown,
smother creativity’s conceptions.
Social media’s pitfalls lie therein,
along with greater dangers lurking large.
Despite its many goods, there’s needed charge
that gorging on a good thing leads to sin.
Shutting website windows is like trailhead,
opening mountain path to higher tread.

XXV
------
I‘m learning to sit with anxiety
raised by self-denial of habit’s fix,
mindful how my heart solicits tricks  
to alternate for true society.
Discomfort speaks in volumes to soul’s ear
like smoke alarm alerting to a fire.
It tells me, “Quick, investigate! Inquire!
Please find the source of inner burning fear!”
Nervousness as friend might offer insight
if I can hear and listen to its warning,
objectively without the shame-filled scorning
that tends to follow panic-stricken plight.
Practice putting tension in glass cage
to monitor its undercurrent’s rage.

XXVI
-------
It’s time to preach a sermon to myself,
for fears are overtaking me in waves;
and spirit must combat what habit craves—
flesh seeking consolation in false pelf.
Scrutinize what’s underneath such worry.
Do I believe the LORD is still in charge
of details of my life and world at large?
Look to Him. Don’t yield to anxious hurry.
Do I believe He’s with me and He’s good,
a faithful Shepherd tending to each need?
Then look to Him. Don’t drown in fretting’s greed.
Christ’s sheep don’t have to look elsewhere for food.
Each wait is opportunity to grow,
for God has holy riches to bestow.

XXVII
--------
God’s character and sovereign wisdom hem
my life, as His responsibility.
No wrong will steal my true identity,
whatever slips or schemes might spill from men.
Christ’s Ruler over all, but do I let
Him fully reign as Master in my heart?
Do I acknowledge I’m His work of art
and purpose for His hammers, chisels get?
Intimacy and glory are the friends
to which His sanctifying lessons point
and meld together as love’s dovetail joint
whenever I surrender to these ends.
Soul, set your hope on grace to be revealed.
Entrust to God strain’s mysteries still sealed.

XXVIII
---------
LORD, HELP! Why is my mind so distracted?
And why then, letting it be drawn away
for half an hour, am I now okay
to let my compulsions be retracted?
Give in to let go feels like solution,
but know it only deepens the desire
for later curiosity‘s inquire—
grants no satisfying resolution.
Those thirty minutes mindfulness was lost,
yet could it be empowered by the fall,
as I look closer inside to recall
that giving way to habit bears great cost?
I won‘t grow discouraged by the setback
but seek to further understand self‘s lack.

XXIX
-------
Low-pitched, humming anxiousness was sitting
all day inside my torso‘s cavity.
Mindful sensing lent no gravity
to coax the stubborn squatter through outwitting.
Head was tired from too little sleeping,
so frankly seemed to coast and just make do.
Soul felt no fresh excitement by woods‘ view
and lacked bright energy for much guard keeping.
One moral of this story is night‘s rest
must become priority for healing.
Otherwise this shaky default feeling
will grow into another panicked crest.
Though it‘s no excuse to say I‘m tired,
it‘s clear reformed sleep habits are required.

***
------
Changing what’s practical opens a door
to transforming what’s spiritual, mental
and emotionally experiential.
Habit alterations might well restore
enough equilibrium of body,
restfulness, clarity, reason and time
to give me needed aid to better climb
above oppressive moods, both low and haughty.
Early to bed, early to rise...”could be
one thing to make a world of difference
and welcome back some simple common sense,
to open up new space for setting free.
But for that discipline to take effect,
I’ll also have to curb the internet!

XXXI
-------
Every opportunity for worry
is greater opportunity to trust
that God behind the scenes is sanding rust
from parts of me where fear has made faith blurry.
Without unknowing-gusts to stir the pit
of nervousness inside my helplessness,
I might ne‘er seek my Shepherd‘s faithfulness
nor learn to wait on Him and with Him sit.
These are times of richest growing lessons
when I‘m reminded He is LORD, not me,
and that He works to draw in int‘macy
feeble souls to Him through stretching sessions.
Joy is knowing sure—head, heart and will—
He‘s ever whisp‘ring, “Child, come closer still.

XXXII
--------
Recapping basic steps to take thus far:
Find sleep (which may mean need for melatonin
to counteract my haywire serotonin),
and overuse of internet I‘ll bar.
Then with restfulness bring mindful thinking—
keen noticing that‘s graced with gratitude
and sets a stronger skyward attitude,
buoys me up against fret‘s downward sinking.
More important still is meditation
upon the word of God‘s indicatives
which lay foundations for imperatives
to follow as prescriptive medication.
Most crucial element preventing fall
is fix my eyes on Jesus through it all!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

VOLUME I
(I — XIX)

8/23/21— 9/8/21

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

VOLUME II
(** — XXXII)

9/22/21 — 9/29/21

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Hal Loyd Denton Apr 2012
A Pavilion


Under the star spangled tented infinity of heaven where gazing is the exercise of tremendous affection
Earthly exhibition can be absorbing under conditions of a park bound roof the mechanics of time

Effectual when relations are viewed in a time line that shows past, present all keyed by voice detection
Classic automobiles wine matured in perfect conditions friend ship needs no diligence or care just heart

The garden left mostly forgotten in daily routine other matters press receives attention life proceeds
Those old land marks standing with names and ties that in the undercurrent of the soul treasure lie

Neglected it seems but a seed softly waits in a dormant state over grown by time left now just weeds
The calling shows a lot of change years produce problems of identity from tender words all our needs

The days long that brought a shroud of mystery and question to remembrance in their eyes all is told
Though the body has changes the soul and heart has changed but only grown and added deep quality

A settling is felt this stirring occurs as time is taken to recall visually and verbally as you polish the gold
Memories are the holding place of youth’s riches now among close companions you spend them wisely


To distant the past not so when it can and is abiding as living history it has become who you are thus far
Yes the outer world changes as to costly to maintain life seeks new invigoration while preserving its core

All this testifies through the excellence of others wait a minute this journey has worth nothing can bar
All is needed is to touch one another let your humanness glow put it on display in a pavilion just once

This piece needs an amendment it is about old friends reuniting after a loss of twenty years at a pavilion
In a park but there was a special knowing that arose prompted by the love of one of the couples this

Letter will touch and show what was seen and felt by me as an observer and participant in this recovery
Of friendship that had been set aside this couple deserves honor if I could give more I would maybe I will
Write them a piece just for them so I dedicate this to Roberta and John Merrifield Herrick Ill

Roberta

Forgive me but I must share this with you I feel the a bit squeamish you remember the piece pavilion
I wrote about our meeting at the park well I didn’t tell you but believe me I appreciated it greatly so

Because you and john were the main feeling that I tried to capture but the beauty of love and peace
That moves you deeply is a different story when you try to grab something that is an intangible I guess

You measure it you fall back to how it can be captured the park is the park we all have been to exotic
Places Hawaiian sunsets are unbelievable but through you guys that was the climate that was my reality

I could have floated you saw why I didn’t but in my spirit I was enthralled I think I said some think like
This but you put me in a great ship held up by love and the wind that filled the sails was romance it was

Fun watching the dolphins run with our dinner boat out from Oahu but I stood in ordinary circumstances
Replace the dolphins with killer whales their more beautiful and they pass by our coat out home on their

Winter migration to Baja that’s what I felt looking at you and your shared love I said all that to say I
Earned a feature from that piece on my writing site the reason I didn’t share I probably had a little over

A thousand reads at that time on my first writing site whop pi but now I have 27000 and every nine
To eleven days a thousand more are added by the end of the year I will have close to seventy thousand
The recent white dove was really about Morgan bland standing over in the semi dark sanctuary with her

Hands held high worshiping God I had to create the right presentation and all so she looked like a
Beautiful Indian maiden well I just got done posting that and within five minutes I got a response

From a guy in Glasgow Scotland saying thank you his call letter or what handle he uses on the web
Is rebuild this refers to his new life of recovering from dope and alcohol by good choices he had adapted

And the fact he is a new father Morgan will meet a Scot in heaven one day and he will tell her your story
Was the next needed stepping stone I needed a spiritual one thank you as his son stands beside him so

You and Johns story a love story will circle the globe far from you idyllic life in the country this is your
Medicine today for whatever hurts you my dear be well. Hal
Amitav Radiance Jul 2014
Waves of emotions overflow my mind
Creating cascading waterfall of tears
Spilling over, breaking the dams of resistance
Taking me along with the strong undercurrent
Without any control over my movement
I go along with the flow, hitting a new shore
Unknown destination, yet inviting to me
I regain my senses, to leave my steps on the land
The land which has no name
I venture out to experience newfound emotions
That fills my mind and body, an experience unexplained
Sydney Ann Jan 2015
I am an undercurrent, free flowing river, whispering these secrets.
M Salinger Apr 2021
I wash your sins
within me

I heal
and nurture
them

not for you,
and one moment
on your long list.

I cleanse
your transgressions for me

and for her,

and our daughters
and their daughters.

In the
undercurrent of my
being,
I bathe my wound
and swim
and search

for a way
forward,

because what is
existence
if not time
pulling
us along?

-

I think
I was born into
this life
a healer.

To feel this shared
pain
and see its shadows

as if light, reflecting
and dancing
against a wall,
creating
constellations
of
heartache.

I see now
my purpose,

to connect with the
heavens unknown
from this

earth

so this wicked
energy may
leave
this

world.

And us.

To nourish each other,
so that we can choose
to transcend
pain

a human existence,
where love
and its triumphs,
and
deepest
darkest
of
pitfalls

coalesce
into this flesh
to
cross both space and time
to make
generations.

This flesh,
that I now wear
proudly,
albeit
timidly
at times.

This paradox,
I want
for her too.
Morgan Jan 2017
We rang in the new year
On a mattress thrown on your
Living room floor
With the ball drop
On a desktop computer screen

The sound was lagging
Behind the images
And we were laughing
At how we always end up
Stuck in the past

You threw your arms around me
And let your kisses land
Carelessly wherever
They fell

And I outlined your jaw bone
With my pointer finger,
Threading it through
Your beard
And looking into your
Lazy eyes

You counted the times I said
"Like okay" at the beginning of a story
And by 5 AM , you announced
We'd reached a healthy twenty

You kept apologizing
For the way your dog
Was relentlessly
Licking my neck
But honestly
Even with her slobber
And yours
Dripping over my collar bones

And even with the night air
Tingling on my thighs,
Just a little too thick,
Just a little too warm,

Even with my straightened hair
Curling at its ends

And your brother's girlfriend's
Faint moaning sounds from behind
A locked door

There was nothing I'd rather be doing
Than watching your eyes expand and contract
To the rhythm of your stories
Before the blue light of television
Overlapping moon lit window sills
And dark spaces

You are the yellow light love,
Symbolism with a pulse,
Saying "it's officially 2017"
With a begging grin
And an undercurrent of
Gentle laughter,
Standing for change
And growth
And warmth
And simplicity

You are transparent
And in the palms of your hands
I see the year panned out
In blue veins
And freckles

And it is kind hearted
And it is forgiving
And it is kissing my forehead
And letting me breathe

I know this is going to
Be a good one

— The End —