We are all human beings
We all have our own lives
And different ways we live them
But each one of us is a writer
And this poem is for all of you

All of you who have virtues and use them in your writing
Those who use flashbacks and revisit mental photo albums

Beginning the story from the middle for that’s usually where you mind is at
Looking back then looking forward
Studying the past so you can be ready for what is to come

Recording catastrophes with a number two pencil

Tales and blurbs of tragedy
Caused by love or the lack there of

Rewards and punishment
Self-reliance and self-fulfillment

We are mere narrators
Humble, maybe unreliable
Equipped with numerous devices
Ironic Paradoxes
Red herrings
Fortuitous plot twists
Metaphors
Allegoric hyperboles
Analogies
Oxymorons and onomatopoeias

We sling Chekhov’s gun like bandits of literacy

We’re visionary revolutionaries
Revolution of the mind, body and soul

Changing ourselves and examining who and what we are
To become what we are destined to be
The best

Rejecting convention
Building our own paths
That lead to cliffhangers

Romantic lust
Comedic affairs
Dark massacres
Spiritual healing

Religious speculation
And the questioning of the way we, the people are being governed

We use the tools we are giving to sculpt new art that the world can stand in awe of

Personification
Symbolic imagery

Practicing pastiche with respect
Dionysian imitatio

Surreal reality
Defying mortality

Reiteration and retort

Using nature to express emotion and thought

Doubts and fear

Opposites
Morals and ethics

Satisfying curiosity

Parodying what we see
Embellishing just a little

We us word play to dive deep into the topic of conscious, subconscious and unconscious thought

Using satire to poke fun at the human condition,  its senses and perception of the universe to get readers thinking

Expressing our anger, our boundless joys
Desiring unknown pleasures

Seeing past the fallacies put before us

We write with great candor about war, personal conflicts, and self-abuse

With hinting undertones to give these ideas a second thought

We write of the supernatural, metaphysical mysteries
Outlandish, obscure mind boggling theories

As the clock ticks too fast for us and the characters we’ve created

Demolishing the fourth wall with a sledge hammer of defamiliarization

Epiphanies in a parking lot
Speaking in the 1st, 2nd or 3rd person

Using fun things like anagrams and palindromes
Candy for the lovers of such things

Spontaneity is an understatement
Nonsense is an insulting overstatement
Absurdity seems to fit just right

We are chameleons
We can write in various forms
Streams of gratifying consciousness
Brilliant prose
Beautiful poetry

And chose to use or merely acknowledge the ways to achieve these forms
Rhetoric, rhythm  and rhyme
Meter and mora
Conceit and consonance
Assonance
Intonation
Working with phonaesthetics  

And accenting aesthetics

A poem can or could not be organized as such
If we want to get technical about it

We have a poem
With a number of verses
And in those verses
Are lines
And those lines might rhyme
And have a meter or rhythm
Stressed or unstressed syllables

In contrast to that we may write
Without all of that and use emotion
Feeling and structure our work with what we feel is the best way
Line breaks
Pauses and puns
Silly similes
Ambiguous antonyms  
Intonation, linguistics
Fight against the fascists of grammar and conservative correctness

So, in the end we are writers of a rainbow kaleidoscope forms, devices, ways and ideas

But we alone are the ones who make the world think
Make it move
Revolt
Renew
Learn
Look back
Remember
Cry
Smile
Forget
Ease

Write my friends write until your mind explodes and your fingers bleed

Read, read and become inspired
Even if what you’re reading is bad cheese

Forget getting published it’s the writing that matters
Disregard the off-putting, critical chatter

And if you think no one reads
Than be the seed and sprout a tree of astounding artistry
And let’s begin a new movement composed of ideals that will hold true forever
I might be preaching to the choir but it must be said that poetry; literature isn’t dead

(explicit)

**** my soul
        with poetry
           scream out my gracious name
             slay me with words
               that peel my layers
                and simultaneously
                                   drive me
                                           insane

finger me slowly, hotly
with just the right rhythm and rhyme
    push me past my
                 tender limits
                       into tongues of syntax,
                                                      sublime

a­lliterate my senses
   (in swift stac
                    c-at
                           o)
until my mind is but blank verse
    mess up my stressed
              and unstressed syllables
in unsung language, versed

I will speak to you in vowels
(the only sound
       I will be able to make)
as you stroke
   my iambic pentameter
             in the heat of frothed-up
                                                     ache

we are this heroic couplet, you see
        even if the meaning seems veiled
           no need for simile or metaphor
               as I feel your chest rise
                              in deep inhale

we are a natural paradox
       so many ironies abound
         discordant harmony
is our synaesthesia
     in visible darkness found

and I love this delicious enjambment
as your aura invisibly slips
                               into mine
our lines have no beginning,
                                 no end
    as we undo
          the boundaries
                      of time

Cats are Iambic Pentameter

Light-footed cats are nature’s iambics
Each subtle feline step unstressed to stressed
Across a lawn, a counterpane, a heart
As a tail-twitching cat ballet, all grace

But dogs are four-beat Anglo-Saxon1 lines
Galumphing heavily and clumsily
Across a moor, a sleeping-bag, a heart
As a tail-wagging country reel (gone bad)

Soft-footed cats are nature’s iambics
And dogs are four-beat Anglo-Saxon lines


1Old English Anglo-Saxon (approx. fifth-twelfth century). Applies to four-stress hemistichal alliterative verse, e.g. Beowulf.

- Stephen Fry, *The Ode Less Travelled: Unlocking the Poet Within

Each morning I lie in bed and anticipate your arrival, my awakening, our escape
To the fair ground lights outside the city, and I dream that as we peak on the Ferris wheel,
And, with stars as our witness at this paramount moment, all of Texas comes into view.
Autumnal air ruffles your hair, and I'm reaching for you  like always with little gestures:
My smiles, your smirks, my laughs, and our quirks. Mingling at the summit,
A hand brushes slowly along a knee with the smooth reintroduction to an old friend.
Long fingers fumble with need, and it's just you and me distancing ourselves
From our every day studies in distraction, comforted in our mutual procrastination.
With you I catch  up on my anatomy and you excitedly review me in structures and railways.
On a train homeward bound, the heat of blood rising in your cheeks and lips
Sends an electric surge to my head and heart, and nerves tingle from anticipating home.
Under your tutelage, I soon appreciate the bridge of a nose finally unstressed by glasses,
The dynamic arches of a worn out back, and the strength of pillars erected in urgency
'Til daylight exposes last night's mysteries, and we rest in our ecstasy perspired,
Both of us finally relinquished from the weight of anticipation for this weekend to arrive.

A poor old man chants through his crumb-y beard:

(In iambic dimeter)

“The WORLD has CHANGED”
“The WORLD has CHANGED”

(sometimes unstressed-unstressed-unstressed-to-stressed,
Even though his biscuit is not impressed)

“The world has CHANGED”
“The world has CHANGED”

(and back to iambic dimeter)

“The WORLD has CHANGED”
“The WORLD has CHANGED”

While at another table a man shouts
Importantly into his busy-ness ‘phone:

“SO DO YOU WANT TO PAY YOUR MONTHLY BILLS
OFF EACH MONTH LIKE I DO? THIS IS A GREAT…”
(He pauses for a bite of his Big Linda
Braekfast [sic] Special)…“OPPORTUNITY
FOR YOU I NEED GOOD SALES REPS THAT’LL WORK
HARD TO REPLACE SALES REPS THAT WOULDN’T!”

A part of this healthy, nutritious breakfast

I heard there was a secret metric foot
that David knew was favoured by the Lord,
and when he penned the psalms he'd often put
this pattern the Almighty best adored
amongst the endless praise and imprecations;
unstressed, plus stressed, suffuses through his pages,
though hidden by the English of translations;
pentameters still echo down the ages.
The spondee's spurned, and has been from the start;
an anapaest's anathema, and grim.
Though trochees may be near the Maker's heart,
you'll never hear a dactyl in a hymn.
There's only one the Lord thinks worth a ****:
the sacred, the unchangeable iamb.

23 June 2022

Travel Unstressed
23 June 2022

Waiting, the airport is crowded and full,
Announcements taking their noisiest toll.
Security playing it's cluster f*cked roll.
One passenger, weeping bag overflow.
Mamma 4 kids, all squawking in tow.
Baggage lost, no place to stay.
Travel past, was never this way,
Horse only needed, one bale of hay.
Price is inflated, oil price today.
Never the less.  we're ready to pay,
Adventure pending, awaiting life weighed.
Cabins out on that  rocky lake  shore.
Fish jumping, hooks already gore.
Canoe drifting, fir green on trees,
Oak logs in fireplace,  burning my knees.
Going to open that lost deck of cards,
Two weeks not mowing  backyard.
Look forward, each summer season,
Straying hot summer, no stress or reason.
Chores left at airport. the master plan.
Mountain country, awesome, so grand.
Passport quaking in shivering hand.
Cameras hanging, old dust and sand.
Can't leave my bag, here at my seat.
Take it with you, if needing a leak.
Safety warnings,  hang every aisle.
Terrorists coming with all their wiles.
No one really daring to smile.
Hearing now that loud roaring sound,
Meaning my flight has been final found.
Finally time to get out of town.
Next year. again, will travel bound.
Friends all gather, end of my journey.
I tell them I never hurried.
Vacation was best ever scurried.
Bank account empty, now my big worry.

Sunday’s an auspicious day to suggest
that you, as a student, take a recess
in order to try and decompress
from our studying and stress

Now, of course, if you’re so possessed,
or some might even say obsessed,
you could study for a test,
we all want to do our best
but some work habits can oppress
and leave one all depressed

Just  take a needed rest
and if your needs are unaddressed
get caressed when you’re undressed
some would have that thought suppressed
or simply left it unexpressed
but under oath I would attest
and to a priest I have confessed
all my roommates acquiesced
that for relaxation it’s the best
and quickest way to get unstressed

there are a hundred things I could suggest
you type “A”s tend to make everything a contest
in this, there are no professors for you to impress
this isn’t a competitive, academic trap, trick or jest
I just know that, on Monday, this girl will be refreshed

When I'm loved by some,
I think of you and feel blessed.
In your company alone,
I find myself totally unstressed.

I have no one but you,
Only you as my Confidant.
I believe in you deeply,
You won't betray, it's evident.

I thank you, Divine Being.
You took my burdens away,
You kept evoking me that
Tomorrow's another day.

Your Love and Care and Grace,
Knew no bounds.
I fall short of words to praise,
And even If I do, it'd be never enough.

You know me better than I,
I replay and hold on to pain.
Help me, O lord! to get through.
I'll never forget to thank you, again.

What keeps me happy makes me happy,
can get me blue than slaps me, lastly aske me,
What happened at sea?
Connecting closer and closer to you and you,
it's easy to lost sight of the light that's brought you to,
walking through the valley of doom,
with a capital V for vicious, vastly,
and the various moon;
I was swept to my back by the scariest broom,
left breathless, meat of my body unstressed
and stretch less for the world to consume.
Woken up my throats choken up
from all this rough spoken stuff, though
none was really spoken to me but
rath spoken through me, while thinking
I'm being consumed when I was only consuming.
Earth - yes I get a bit gloomy and ******* sue me!
But all you'll get is what I've given to ya,
the beauty of the moon, sun, land and the blue sea.

My sister has curly hair
From day one
She has cut and burned it at every chance

Her hair is dark and thick
Like our fathers
I wish I had his hair instead

I wish the follicles on my head
Wernt thin and brittle
And quick to fall

Would that make me a man?

My sister has a flat chest,
My ******* have been called the best
My family and friends alike

She calls her own chest, childlike
If we traded, and my breath was unstressed
If they fell from my body

Would that make me a man?

What an unjust God
Who would give us bodies
That did not fit our souls

What cruel diety
Would leave us feeling
So cramped

Pressed hard against warm flesh in the barely illuminated darkness guesstimating the blessings of your fresh mess, I ingest the best and leave the rest unstressed. Soft caresses underneath the dress bring visions of ancestral ****** in jest. My accentuated ******* bereft of the simplest zesty scents leave jesters lamenting about the repressed nexus of flexing wreckers. Flickering trestles rustle as the mesh lays lifeless after undress and the pressures of the rescuers sheds ravenous blushers rushing and undulating such as plush calves do. Fissures, wet, impress impresarios investing in resting besties and ******* lechers; a pitcher, ditched by the rich, flashes in the marsh stressing the finches and leaching petroleum onto the beaches.   I reach for another peach and beseech the mashed potatoes makers, “just take a rest” –

Kamau Brathwaite wrote
That "the hurricane doesn't roar in pentameters"
And I really believed it could be true
That Caribbean hurricanes had their own cadences, their own dances :
Ida was reggae, Allen was merengue Brigitte was gwoka
David was cha cha cha and Edith was kadans rampa and Dorian calypso
All dactyls hatched instead of iambic pentameters
Out of each island Zeus 's head
Until i met the still eye of Hurricane Muse.

Muse was her nickname
Her real name was Shar
Named after shark and share and shear
and sharon,
Named after a calypso rose
Fearless except for lizards, a rose of  tiny thorns
With a taste of a stormy black coffee
Born to a dragon of Jade and a   white *** tigress
In the midst of the 1961
hurricane season.
Shar has the S of Sébastien Sally Sam Shary Sean and Sara
The H of Humberto Hanna Henri Hermine Harold and Hélène
The A of Andrea Arthur Ana Alex Arlene and Alberto
And the R of  Rebecca René Rose Richard Rina and Rafael
And she dances not only calypso
And quadrille and zouk
But a mix as well of Salsa Hustle Affranchi and Reggae
In iambic pentameters
While she gently paints fearless green lizards
Having her five iambs of coffee
First thing in the unstressed and stressed morning
Before she even opens the syllables of her still Muse eye.

My lord and savior,
Stuck in a world
Fifty years too late
And thousands of miles away.

Salmon flesh stuck to his legs
And his camouflage blent into his surroundings;
It was only visible by the sewed-on patch that read,
"Stop War."

Hair held back tightly,
Sitting across from me
With a look of pure fascination,
We were introduced.

My gaze consistently found him,
Eyes closed, picturing the words and only the words.
Shoulders, chest, abdomen moving to the rhythm of
Stressed and unstressed syllables,
Snapping his fingers when his body contorted the most;
He could have walked on water.

With him standing on a chair screaming Ginsberg
Like a pastor would The Bible,
My heart skipped a beat
And I found religion.

"Caliban must have dinner."
Let him have first a bit of scansion
Of the vowels marooned to his feet
Along with the consonants washed ashore
By a called up mock storm
Inhabited by catalectic trochaic Trimeter, hexameter or pentameter
Name it !
This muse is his.
For his is the muse
This muse is his island
And every storm of hers is a beatitude
Passed on him by his  Sycorax.
So blessed is Caliban
For his is the musedom of light
This muse is a perfect antilabe
He has pampered her with caesurae
He has spoiled her with feminine
Stressed and unstressed syllables
Kissed her with iambic pentameter
Caressed her with hemistichs
A trochee here
A spondee there
Caliban is beatitude in scansion.
Blessed is Caliban
For his is the musedom of  light.

The melancholy eyes of departing,
The lingering taste of love’s last kiss.
To the skies I've been sentenced and
In the soil you've been left, softly sprouting.

Oh, what I would do, to spread my roots
There next to you.
Our petals caress with love unstressed
And our leaves would collect the morning dew.

But I’ve been plucked,
Snatched in the claws of the bird!
Cast to flight, cursed to explore
A life without you that must be endured.

Upwards dragged but eyes cast down,
Drinking in the sights of her last frown.
The wind pulls me clean, and I see
The last of that morning's dew
Falling with a shimmering gleam.

If I ever had five minutes to myself,
I’d get a book down from the shelf,
Curl up in the comfy chair
To enjoy the peace and quiet there.

I’d do my best to just ignore
Toys and games scattered across the floor,
Or the cobwebs dangling from the light
And the ***** dishes from last night.

I’d fight the urge to load the washing machine,
Then give the stove a perfunctory clean,
To fold and iron the clean laundry pile
Which has been mounting up for quite a while.

I’d remind myself I’ll go insane
Fixating on the grubby windowpane
And I’d warn myself that I simply must –
Not trail my fingertips through the dust.

I’ll keep a calm, composed demeanour,
Resisting the tug of the vacuum cleaner -
Because maybe if I ran it around the place
The house wouldn’t look quite such a disgrace?

To the sticky surfaces I’d turn a blind eye,
And that dodgy smell, which would seem to imply
That something, somewhere in the back of a cupboard
Highly likely in mould is now covered…

I’d disregard with gargantuan intent,
Cards and gifts which should have already been sent.
And school supplies which I ought to restock
Because they need glue and scissors around the clock…

I’d caution myself that I’m still a beginner,
At preparing a healthy, balanced dinner
And that sometimes meals go unplanned
Plucked from the remaining vestiges at hand.

I’d forget to berate myself that I don’t succeed
At tidying up at lightning speed,
Nor keeping my calm, nor staying unstressed,
When faced with an eight-year-old who just won’t get dressed.

I’d admonish myself that for my peace of mind
I must make more effort to relax and unwind,
To not grab some down time would be a mistake…
But – oh shucks – I must make that Birthday cake!

So I quietly replace the unopened tome,
Glancing around my disorderly home
And remember I am now a mother, a wife,
And reading books was in my past life.

But on the plus side I have giggles and smiles galore,
And tickles and snuggles and cuddles and more.
So I’ll try not to let the clutter and mess
Become a reason for concern and distress.

And instead of becoming a source of displeasure,
I’ll allow myself these short years to treasure
For soon the chaos and hubbub will abate
And I will have fewer things on my plate.

And who knows, in the future; maybe one day,
I’ll miss the turmoil and disarray?
As I’m reading my book, quiet in my chair
I’ll wish that my brood were once again there…

Silence once happened hither
To this place of point
Yet , the needle and it's thread
Sleeps forever sewing and weaving me
I once spoke as whispers
A sound of one sea shell
The soft flicking of a
Single sheet of paper
And softly eating jelly beans
A crumbling sound of an empty plastic  
A dance goes it's twist
Crush , buckle , mangle ,and daydream

No-one could perceive with an ear
A sound so softly made of a relaxing guitar tuning
A loosen sound of kitten purrs
A book of Spanish poetry
Translated into modern English

There was a thick fog outside my window
I saw strange flashes of lightning in the shy
There was no sounds of thunder...
A rainbow in a celestial sphere
Of a red beautiful dawn
A relaxation of a whisper
Always to his own
Forever to never I understand

Hello to you dear fall
I've been waiting patiently for you unstressed
For I will greet you
With a whisper near midnight
With a nimbly slow movement
From a pleasantly subdued manner
A near fall whisper

Tho' I do write with truth, my self's conceived -
That where your love abodes, resides just me.
My love in rhyme, is rhyme in part deceived
Do, I linger still or let this sonnet free?
The former is a rhythmic dance of words
Where A can't wait the love connect of C.
The latter brings the sorrow near the thirds
As each unstressed, would stress the pain to be.
I pass this ninth with syllable delay
The tenth, I love but yearns a love as true.
I burden here, where eyes of yours can't sway
Yes now, at last, do I withdraw from you.

I hope the other grows to love as I
But doubt that heart the will of heart to die.

There was a richness
                              in her voice
A calm, deliberate, unstressed
                              expression of thoughts
Even if in disagreement
                              I never offered a voice
Only listened
Content, in the melodiousness
                              of the breathing of her mind

shocking discovery of character detected
noticeable difference of interests from rest
simple lack of human within truly affected
views of life with neglect gently unstressed

explanations suddenly founded in time
answers to failure in success present
minor details with bare minimal is prime
inability of awareness unintentionally meant

attention beheld shortly with socializing
entertainment seeking happiness is essential
appearances conveying perfection appetizing
flavors of bland extreme with no potential

views sweet enticing icing designed on top
simply nothing more captivating is less to drop

Sleep, smooth as a glassy tide,
Eternal problems resolved,
Simplified and glorified,
Politics, pure fantasy, unresolved;

But the tide, that swell of the unknown,
Waiting for that fateful daily pause,
As the myriad of airy sprays are blown
Over earth's face, with all her ancient flaws;

As air swirl like muslin, in sea's spray's,
Give me your hand, and let us rest,
In moon's caress and soft rays,
With the night's nocturn's unstressed;

Life’s cruel, with no vintage from other shores,
To fire my tired and jaundiced heart,
Limp hands and flickering eyes without shine,
A body strain’ng to grasps those floating air's parts;

Alas let’s not forget to hope, discreetly,
Our heart, of each of us stays intent and learns,
Dur'ng those calm nights, as moon's rays shine sweetly,
While air and nature fight, fierce and taciturn;

While she's prudent and wise, but's an enemy,
Never show'ng victory, only steel and distant toils,
Fickle in the winter's time, chilly, yet full of serenity,
That air, contrived, unseen, holding my destiny and joy?

Nightly air, brooding, as it floats in moons fading glare, without care.