"vertebral" poems
This is a party for the old and wise
a rave up with rich tea and biscuits
all talk of many years past lessons
I sit intently wanting to all learn
In their austere faces
I see the child within each
such wise ladies that mother me
give me freedom and never smoother me
I keep to my cup of Earl Grey
taking in everything they say
maternal goddesses
wise as Delphi's Oracle
It's a vertebral feast
to listen to history
knowledge can make a man
guided by women right
By Christos Andreas Kourtis aka NeonSolaris
Dec 17, 2013
Dec 17, 2013 at 6:26 AM UTC
From the throne the broken and dying came to me
twisting and contorted riving in agony
dripping down dark stairwells
to me their vertebral blooded end
In the time of the lizard king
so much ****** ****** has been committed
even some of my own were poised to fight
yet I told them to hold there ground and wait
This never ending war
this fight without retreat
battle hardened with fight we sing
to the defeat of the lizard king
I kiss and tend the wounds of the fallen
with all I have I heal them and give them love
and when evil comes to my domain
I will smite all their armies
Sweet saviors I make in a blink of an eye
words of the last I do sing
by all I own all empires I will bring
to the defeat of the lizard king
By Christos Andreas Kourtis aka NeonSolaris
Jun 1, 2016
Jun 1, 2016 at 4:05 AM UTC
Our nights of assessing God,
With our heads conjoined to the windowpanes,
Our thoughts permeating throughout the glass.
Two lukewarm coffees embellished the windowsill,
The synthesis of our cognition and entwined fingers,
The soft touch of shoulders leaning upon each other,
Brought forth beatific vision, we saw God;
His blemished flesh, the formation of his bones.
It began,
His vertebral column, intangible lights, the Aurora Borealis.
His archaic vertebrae, stained in ethereal fluorescence;
The curvature, swirling, as the Deity writhes in euphoria,
A childish game,
Our God, content in the night.
His hands, formed from the dust of Bethlehem,
Grains of sand corralling to form flesh upon the detritus of Rome.
His Holy land, The Vatican; Structures of marble and stone,
Merely his cupped hands,
As his disciples' feet caress his palms.
His organs; The planets in orbit;
His heart, our sun.
The rays of light that adorn our skin,
Merely the palpitations of a hidden pulsating heart.
his divinity, subject of uncertainty in the petulant eyes of his children
walking in Terra Incognita.
His skin, Lo, to the stars;
Our hands yearned to touch the celestial freckles,
outstretched to feel the fibres of God;
And like our limbs, so did God outstretch,
his flesh, but space; suffusing within the translucent contours of the cosmos.
To be told we were made in the image of God, is to be deceived;
Our childish conjecturing, truly a theorem to be displaced,
Our augmented minds, illuminated;
An aureole behind our heads,
We became biblical as we touched lips by the mantelpiece.
Jul 28, 2014
Jul 28, 2014 at 1:25 PM UTC
there is magic in concrete
if you believe
when you work the surface
flat, in circles,
the float tool buoyant
on a gray puddle
here’s the enchantment:
with fingertips on the handle you can
sense the wet concrete, the mojo
like a sleeping wet bear
solid in mass yet grudgingly liquid
sort of bouncy
as you stroke
pebbles disappear, embedded
the tool is ******* cement
a final thin film, a pretty coat
over guts of gravel and sand
now hose the mixer, shovels, tools,
hose your hands and boots
as the water disappears, so shall you
unless you scratch a name
honor the skilled arms,
the corded legs and vertebral backs
the labor that shaped
this odd stone
sculpted, engineered
implanted with bolts
forgotten
half-buried in dirt
bearing our lives
Oct 4, 2016
Oct 4, 2016 at 8:05 PM UTC
You penned an unsealed note to yourself,
Its Writer, Verse and Address were as one -
A Wholly Poetic Trilogy.
You were brave:
Left your paper-lips wide open and
Let the letters leak;
Watched them run
Into the grooves of the creased spine
On the back of the pushed envelope you posted -
Wounded origami angel wings
Sprouting from the shoulders of your scripted self.
You feel you were delivered to your pretty little house face-down,
Desperate to fly but tied by glue to some side-table surface,
An ornamental cardboard carrier-cherub,
Smiling in the furnace,
But unable to breathe...
I read through the words you tattooed on to your feathers
Again and again,
From their bold beginnings
To their ruffled dead-ends...
...ends which say:
..."Stuck"...
Behind a parchment-brick wall...
That's why I've picked up my pen -
Cracked it open,
Moulded its cascading ink into a ladder,
So we can climb over
And look at what's on the other side
Of that stoney-faced page -
See, its edges came unstuck:
While you nested, and rested your eyes
Your vertebral quill was effortlessly flapping,
Whipping up a written wind with ease,
Like second nature,
A cathartic breeze
Mutating the rock you carved on
Back into a leaf once more,
And turning it over...
Letting it hover and settle anew.
Now it's a hive of technicolour graffiti,
Not a dead-end
But boundlessly alive -
It shines and thrives
With designs
Voluntarily plucked
From the lucky minds you've touched.
They bustle decoratively across its columns,
And among them is this reply:
You are now, always have been,
And always will be:
Not just the Writer, the Verse, and the Address...
...But all the happiness you inspire in others too...
Because of who you are in writing,
Because of who you are in life,
Because of you.
See, that Wholly Poetic Trilogy,
It needs its Fourth Wheel to become Holy,
To roll and rumble towards
And crash through
The gates of that pretty little cage.
So, mould your beautiful ink into a key -
It plays a minimalist melody,
A ringing note of ignition.
Push it,
Turn it...
And let's drive.
Nov 1, 2014
Nov 1, 2014 at 10:58 AM UTC
Pressures of Atlas ruin the vertebral Column geometry
The circles weight stresses the cylinder to a breaking edge. A cut
Math was wrong
Angular and pathetic is this central pump. It leaks from the head gaskets when you add in ethanol
It squeals out noises under the accumulated atmospheres
CortiZol extends the impellers out till they scrape the walls interior
Finally it's released blown out for keeps
Can't take it back
Neither can take back
The pump withers
Proteins shiver
Brownian heat delivers
Bellowing cold from a cosmos of foam
Spine tattering morbid
A decayed thought process that does nothing but jump
Jumping and bounding conclusions that are meaningless regardless
Atlas gave up and the world fell onto gravitys shoulders
Jan 27, 2014
Jan 27, 2014 at 4:30 PM UTC
Estoy solo en la oscura estación de metro de Fulton Street,
Respirando el aire con olor a orina,
Exhalando nubes de vapor,
Un tren subterráneo se precipita a lo largo del anden,
No se detiene,
Muerde mis tímpanos,
Con la percusión dolorosa,
De miles de personas,
Gritando en silencio,
Yo no quiero ver,
Yo no quiero ver,
Yo no quiero ver,
El aire avivado por cada vagón de metro,
Me empuja,
Propulsa el ozono y el olor de frenos quemados,
En mis fosas nasales,
Junto con el aire,
Introducido a través de las rejillas de hierro,
A lo largo de kilómetros de las aceras de Brooklyn,
Llevando el olor de las llagas supurantes de una prostituta,
Y los gritos de un niño hambriento, sin padre en pañales sucios,
Y el gemido ronco de un concejal de la ciudad educando a un paje joven,
Y el perfume barato de una niña de catorce años de edad fugitiva,
Vendiendo su cuerpo por $20 en un callejón,
Oliendo de comida china rancia y perros humedos,
Y . . .
Yo no quiero ver,
Yo no quiero ver,
Yo no quiero ver,
. . . el olor de la sopa de repollo podrida,
Y los restos rancios de un perrito caliente enterrado en chucrut,
Y lirios putrefactos acostados en una alcantarilla,
Todos agrediéndome, obligándome hacia atrás,
Hasta que mi espalda presiona contra,
Las una vez blancas baldosas sucias, que queman fríamente sus grafitis en mi columna vertebral:
Dios está muerto,
Asa a un judío,
Los blancos chupan,
Mata a los negros,
Yo no quiero ver,
Yo no quiero ver,
Yo no quiero ver,
El tren finalmente pasa,
Sus ojos rojos retrocediendo en el túnel,
Húmedo y oscuro más allá de la plataforma,
Los gritos y chillidos lentamente mueren,
Sus ecos aspirando detrás de ellos,
El olor,
De mi,
Vomito,
Caliente.
Nov 28, 2019
Nov 28, 2019 at 1:18 AM UTC
joy is fleeting, an academic one,
like colors in words, or the flavor of summer.
a hushed lull, ever gentle breathing,
propeller of hopes, up, hovering over petals;
a floating kingdom of bones and abstraction.
loneliness is a place for moonlight dwellers:
risk takers, and ambitious,
like waddling feet hanging off a cliff
carry tales and stories and you won't find it.
but baring phantom bruises is a sure pass.
pride, a vertebral thing, essential to my being,
a path i chose.
honor, a glittering sun that i think is vital,
a path not taken, but inherited.
these are the bones that hold me together.
time will eventually catch up to me
only if i don't catch it first.
im always only seconds late,
but misses thousands of frames.
so doubt, after all, is inevitable.
i have to cut my hair shorter,
because i have that choice.
but why can't i paint my face
a nice, warm smile
when im possessive of my choices?
i build these blocks that always tumbles over
every time i get close to making it a reality
it's a winning game, until it isn't, until it is.
sheltered within the waves of procrastinated
Jun 16, 2020
Jun 16, 2020 at 7:14 AM UTC