"vertiginous" poems
Control
Like love
Is indifferent
To race, color or age
I see upright monkeys
With honed, lunatic, pestilent
Expressions
Around endless corners
living out-
and hosing down somberly-
Frequency dreams
Battery life sputter drains
that whip with sardonic torment-
Beat with blood-bathed smiles
Laughing to slow vertiginous rhythm
in captivating faces
Take, take, take-
To receive such
an empty promise
And I've lost interest
in this silent war
We've constructed
so dizzily
Feb 18, 2015
Feb 18, 2015 at 4:22 PM UTC
At an angle of ninety degrees,
two trees share the same plot.
This one grazes the eaves,
seeking vain attention in the window glass.
The other, its grey ghost lazes
prostrate on the herb garden, reveling
in secrets of lemon balsm and thyme.
At night, the first becomes demonic,
obliterates the universe,
branches scraping the pane, scratching
like fingernails on slate,
its coppery leaves trying to get in.
Its partner slinks to earth,
seeking solace,
wringing conterminous roots till sunrise.
I've had my fill of these unrested moments
fighting the pillow, not settling.
There is no joy in seeking stolen stars.
My dilemma grows horns.
I half dream of ******
at least amputation.
But even the dimmest light shines in the dark -
I consider its tormented destiny.
At daybreak, like a ****** I scale its gnarled branches
ridiculously one-handed,
the other a keen-toothed weapon.
I am an agile goat shinning upwards
feeding on dreams of peace.
Lost in the sky, I become sap,
melt into its arms,
(a vertiginous release)
I become a curved branch.
(There's someone standing in my elbow!)
Leaves helix down, settling on autumn crocus.
“Look! Gold on gold!"
The grey ghost yawns, grows its shadow,
waves its arms demanding justice.
I wave back.
Suddenly terrified, I secrete an invisible scent.
The branches contract, tense as ligaments.
My heart plummets, rolls out recumbent,
presses heavily on the earth
listening to fleshy roots recede.
A few deft cuts......
Sun gutters through bereft spaces,
striking the window.
Both trees a shade lighter, a lighter shade.
Tonight I will dream under visible stars,
feel the moon's half-light slide over me.
copyright © Caroline Grace 2012
Mar 2, 2012
Mar 2, 2012 at 12:12 PM UTC
what is this love
for I have beheld it
cast in metamorphosis
a love that makes
transformations on the mind
permissible transformations
improvisations of the self
in ****** intensity
which emphasises the drama
of sometimes, dark, violent
and repressive potentials
vicious energies of hate and ambition
that propel the enactment
of intense and exhausting experience
of vigorous vertiginous chaos
indomitable in its desires
what is this love
is it a registered predicament
made memorable by vivid language
that would butcher in ritual
gratuitous memories and testify
to an urgency of unwisely relinquished emotion
what is this love
does it flourish in flawed
and unreasonable understandings
accumulated upon the mind
in vicarious thrill of sympathy
where traits are highly exaggerated
and eagerly anticipates
the oppressive weight of the past
that functions upon a common collapse
of distinctions
or does it manufacture artificial precepts
pretending in attractive collaboration
to associate fiction rather than fact
what is this love
is it that by treaty or inheritance
with loving ferocity would embalm all tears
and hide all those collaborations
in flared conflagrations of the heart
and yes create a turmoil in the mind
hotter than a thousand summers
and vividly stamp upon a twisted body
a moral viciousness of fathomless malice
that wouldst close its ears
to the admonitions of conscious
and thus through an improbable
incantatory verbal rite
touch the hidden order of all things
in disassembling nature
what is this love
if only it was known
Aug 17, 2013
Aug 17, 2013 at 5:26 PM UTC
From Shisha with Love
The room was dark as I entered
Like a tangled pipe, I twisted, turned, and stumbled to my seat
That’s when I saw her, everything was suddenly bright
My eyes struck her creating a spark, she set me alight
Her head had all the flavour, her hair the fiery glow
Her eyes sweet like double apples, and her mouth mulish like mint
She was, so tall, so fine, so slender
The combination of cute and **** any man would surrender
The path to the glow was clear, I couldn’t let this opportunity pass
Every advance I took towards her I inhaled and exhaled a little deeper
Like a shooting star in the night, I had to make my wish come true before the star strays
I found myself immersed in smoke I had lost my way; where was the star, the glow the blaze?
I began coughing and blowing the smoke away, and there she was
In my brief moment of vertiginous, the pipe was in another palm
The once fresh flavours became harsh, and the fiery flame was now smouldering
Like a coal that had lost its grey coat that protected its fragile warmth was now mouldering
Take a deep breath and let it go.
@BengGeorge
Sep 28, 2016
Sep 28, 2016 at 5:34 PM UTC
Unfolding into itself, inviolable
in prosaic self-penetration,
a boundless repertoire
of shape yearns forth surreptitiously
from inscrutable amniotes to claim
time as its own:
Here a thicket
of sycamores, there a baldaquin
of pinnate branches, yonder
a periphery of marigolds, below
a cacophony of hyraxes, above
the corpuscle of a lynx, the mid-flight
jink of a darting swift and moribund
crawl of a mollusk;
Hymenoptera coaxing
their haploid broods into teeming
life as a cell of the swarm
and viviparous apes cajoling
suckling chimerae at the fathomless
fountainhead of a rosy breast;
Higher still,
Cirrus cephalopods traversing
the trench of sky, dandelions
hitch-hiking the drift of a barren plains'
wavering hum on cockchafers'
forewings and a turbine's
bombinating pulse, the chattering
of roots ravenous for depth --
Jittering bangtails the hallowed echoes
of lascivious manes --
inchoate sprout-hood the daedal
nonage of towering evergreens --
the plaintive shrift of elegiac
redbreasts a goad to silent elation --
A likeness unlike
(vocabularies of vertiginous blinds)
(the eyes of ignorance closing)
(the mouth of the mystery)
that spurns the truth of tongues
is nature naturing.
Dec 21, 2015
Dec 21, 2015 at 6:06 PM UTC
A nascent society gluttonously feeds
on the palingenesis of hyaline paragons
forged by stolid and archaic eremites.
A whilom friendship leaks a susurrus
of tristful regret,
while pernicious ***** maunder
puerile attacks on munificent
intellectuals who only wish to
augment risible souls and divagate
from vertiginous roads too often traveled.
Such a chimerical respect for tradition
is too rigid to be broken alone.
Jan 13, 2011
Jan 13, 2011 at 3:09 PM UTC
My window has no seat, why would it? I wish it did.
There is just a glossy magnolia ledge, barely wide enough to
cater a slender bottom. Upon the ledge books and candles
rest, illuminating the murk outside. Directly opposite orchard
trees recede as I welcome autumn with a zealous smirk.
For now faintly visible between their visceral arms are the
all-seeing hillocks that in winter will dominate my view.
An impartial observer once stated they were mere freckles
on the landscapes recumbent spine, but to me their sight alone
is vertiginous. On balmy April days I would surmount them,
a personal expedition, up there where I’m the valleys curator, wearing
pristine white gloves I meticulously unravel the terrain: an ancient
manuscript, the vellum inked with meandering streams, occasional farms,
cursive hamlets and little else - a land of sobriety and dearth.
In November though there is a permanent mist and its source
inexplicable. Does it simply effervesce from the precipitous tors about?
Is it the villager’s enshrined collective sigh? No it is something
more. Sitting atop the villages head it’s the beloved satin bonnet you
wore religiously as a child. Wholly impractical for this season
its gossamer fabric offers little solace or insulation to those below
as its pleated extremities elope with the moss-brown hinterland.
Fervently stoking their hearths the villagers broaden the
ethereal cloth with a smoke not acrid but satisfying and nourishing:
with a terrifically edible, hardwood flavour. From my hillock
vantage, the sanguine stone of the manorial chimneys is all that
penetrates the film; casually they release torrents of smoke like
ivory doves that weft patterns instinctively into the sky’s pallid damask.
©Thomas Gabriel
Dec 9, 2011
Dec 9, 2011 at 6:00 PM UTC
Egalitarianism
I’ve preached this practice
To its last final straw
Respite
I’ve hired the time
The strongest of clocks
Magnanimous
You’ve endeavoured too
It’s never true when you do
Coercive
I’ve attempted them all
The mightiest of guns
Vestibule
You never did let me enter
Probably knew I’d hide out
Vertiginous
Causation; I know it’s you
To Induce; I flail barely flickering
Transcendental
I divide you into parts
But your logic seems boundless
Perennial
I will continue to bloom
Even after your harvest.
Jan 16, 2011
Jan 16, 2011 at 3:13 PM UTC
I built a wall
A vertiginous wall
I stacked the bricks one by one
The mortar binding them was invincible, I thought
I built that wall until it became a fortress,
Surrounding me
Protecting me
And you came, a marvel of a storm
Sundered the mortar and tore my wall
Yet a foot I kept
Upon the ground, upon a brick.
May 10, 2017
May 10, 2017 at 8:46 AM UTC
a speck on a train of evergrowing thought,
i simply exist in your periphery
deploring each opportunity unsought
trying to wash myself clean of your mem’ry
you are certainly a skilled navigator
you make your way into every part of me
the earth was a kaleidoscope of colour
now it’s achromatic–you are all i see
my desires remain to me inchoate
whether aspiration or admiration
to be like you or be with you: the debate
either of which a mode of self-destruction
as to vertiginous heights i watch you soar
i realize it’s neither option at all
for my wings can never quite take flight like yours
lest you crumble under your great wings and fall
Jun 30, 2015
Jun 30, 2015 at 2:38 PM UTC
On the L:
She is simple and frivolous
You are far from chivalrous
She is fueled by fearlessness
You are pumped full of stimulants
She sees the entirety of innocence
You focus on the sombre imminence
She is bright & heavenly but wingless
Your eyes are dark with wickedness
She flicks her hair, always vertiginous
You are both unawarely synchronous
She smiles to her self, radiating magnificence
You feel the bitter grimace of indolence
something is changing, slightly, hardly noticeable
But her light, it shines on you
And you find your self shifting
Glancing at her sun tattoo
She turns to you & smiles
Then everything is changed
Everything floats for a while
As she puts her hand on yours
She scoffs - 'You look gloomy & brooding'
A chuckle escapes, long ago abhorred.
And slowly it'll spread
With the help of this lovely woman
But it'll take awhile for you to get into her head
And you will show her that the glass isn't half empty,
It isn't half full.
It's just a glass of water.
Jan 29, 2013
Jan 29, 2013 at 10:00 AM UTC
A nascent society gluttonously feeds
on the palingenesis of hyaline paragons
forged by stolid and archaic eremites.
A whilom friendship leaks a susurrus
of tristful regret,
while pernicious ***** maunder
puerile attacks on munificent
intellectuals who only wish to
augment risible souls and divagate
from vertiginous roads too often traveled.
Such a chimerical respect for tradition
is too rigid to be broken alone.
Jan 13, 2011
Jan 13, 2011 at 3:06 PM UTC
I am Looking
At the looking glass
Looking at me
As I coast the shore
Of vertiginous reflections
Aug 12, 2012
Aug 12, 2012 at 1:48 PM UTC
Love addicts,
High from a single touch,
Trembling from a single kiss,
Sighing for what might be
Could be, and should be,
Hooked into our own groove,
For I am your drug,
And you, sweet woman,
You are totally mine,
As we lust for a fix,
Lost within a vertiginous miasma,
Reeling from a passion that sates,
So blissfully satisfying, and yet,
Also leaves us wanting more,
So much more that we ache,
Cast adrift upon an ocean,
One previously unknown,
The swells heaving,
The currents swirling,
Tides of wanton desire,
Surf crashing over us poor,
Love addicts.
©Paul M Chafer 2017
Jul 22, 2017
Jul 22, 2017 at 9:13 AM UTC
These nerves know all the ticking of seconds
In your syncopated ecstasies, and this flesh knows
When you've reached the edge,
There's no going backwards again.
This mind knows all the precise pinpricks
Of patience, wherever you've veered to wander.
But somehow, this world cannot disband
Its crystalline self, before disbelieving eyes;
Can never follow the ordered layers peeling away:
Everything will still be as solid, as fragrant
As vertiginous, restless in inhibition,
Expressing the scaled continuum of resolute being,
When your nerves are finally stilled,
And your flesh is growing already colder.
But my unruly mind will no longer grasp then
Its footprints in carefully metered seconds;
But only in the leaping of frayed centuries, in aqueducts;
The rivers racing forward, into blind uncharted distance
Yet undreamed of, hidden under moonless nights;
Forests folded under the weight of eons, suddenly registered,
Calamities sped up to meet the counterpoint
Of time's new frowning dissonance;
And how quickly the wood begins to warp,
The rusted gallows to peek through, all the torn tapestries weaving.
Jul 11, 2010
Jul 11, 2010 at 12:19 PM UTC
silence is the enemy of art
to communicate
the greatest art
suggests dissolution
the music
the eloquence of omission
the sudden vertiginous stop
the space between souls
the final paragraph recalls
the graves
that happened to me
a black hole
dense with rejected possibilities
Dec 7, 2011
Dec 7, 2011 at 7:56 AM UTC
Silence upon other silence grows;
Taller than any skyward cathedral,
Wider than divisions, between two brothers.
The only sincere silence is natural,
Or found by a flickering candle’s flame,
And the latency, of a sleeping child.
After a death, some silence may roar
Down zigzagging corridors, of dazed;
Haunting midnight's vertiginous dreams.
Numbness opens vast reservoirs of quiet
And in the resultant- preternaturally stilled-
Silence sometimes finds its earthly voice.
I now present to you, Silence itself-
Bereft of courtesies, or dignified flourishes;
Bare as a babe at death- or birth.
Jun 28, 2010
Jun 28, 2010 at 2:12 PM UTC
The catiff faces flashes of flame-colored streaks within an effluvium of a Chinese-red aura;
Alabaster feet descend into a lucent, moist,sensuous terra cotta of an ancient Acoma clay;
The inner sanctum is torn asunder,a convulsive maelstrom gyrating in a vertiginous gale;
Formerly coherent chambers designed neatly to fit the one and only size reclines in ruins;
The newly anointed vagabond shivers, bones radiate,an icy hell,skin shredded to the soul;
A flood-tide rolls through the wanderer's field of vision ,as it provokes a foreboding terror;
Total disintegration of the rover's den fails to obscure the scion's bent and battered corpse;
Thoroughly shattered, the frenzied creature discerns a well-tapered icicle dangling above;
A stray bat swoops out of the decay as the deadly and frozen blade raised in anticipation;
Plunged into the sternum as she screams at the sight of the cold, lifeless body of her lover!
May 16, 2014
May 16, 2014 at 8:35 AM UTC
Vertiginous
Loss of brain
Can't quite focus
In this ****** of ecstasy
Climaxing
Her pink body on top of mine
Metallic clangs and
Plastic bangs
We connect
Cupping her hips
we meld our metals
together.
Together we sit
Fitting leg in leg
Arm in arm interlocking
Her body on top of mine
The smell of her plastic
grazing my seat
Her bottom, underneath
stained with gum and disregard
I keep
Upon my lap
the tickle of her back
set a distance from my own
a way to come closer
pink on pink metal on metal
we sit
together.
Together we are proud
Publicly alone
Embracing in Totality
Windows close around us
Fits of Dysfunction
The Wonky Garbled Mess
Fading to Chaos
to nothing...
blackened dizziness
of unreality
as we sit
encircled
embracing
forever
alone
together.
Dec 1, 2011
Dec 1, 2011 at 3:30 AM UTC
I was listless,
but my fist still twisted,
fingertips gripped
with arthritic stiffness,
grasping for
a gift misgiven.
Spirits lifted,
so my heart skipped its—
yet hands still slipped
with a vicious quickness;
ripped a rift across,
swiftly drifted.
Ill-equipped to fix this
vertiginous abyss
from my precipice,
til obsidian black eclipses
even the lips
that kissed it;
beloved blisses
left amidst
empty wishes,
beyond the reach of wrists,
which shifted;
crippled by what exists—
a distance.
Jul 29, 2024
Jul 29, 2024 at 7:57 PM UTC
This all started as a song,
a song that built identities
then laws and empires,
fuelled by material wealth,
upheld by vague data.
Wherein the song was lost
and here we stand
on the crest of sound wave,
a vertiginous slope before us
beyond which are better words
than the unfortunate love.
Given pressure and time we find
the impression of a memory
that has its end in a song.
Sep 3, 2017
Sep 3, 2017 at 8:06 AM UTC
there is a scramble
between the articulated gaps
where naked stanzas shiver
in a state of levitation
irregular, without a center
a reserved latitude of sensation
where perspective of space is reversed
a dangerous irregularity, irrepressible
that sees across dimensions
where boundaries become transparent
which can stimulate the mind
into a white silence
in which one is lost
in a vertiginous hole
Mar 2, 2013
Mar 2, 2013 at 11:28 PM UTC
Perfect stranger with a blinding light
Wicked danger blinding my insight
A hollow enigma in a shell of fright
and a passion magma I cannot hold inside
Architect of a mystery of irresistible blur
A refractory gravity, a vertiginous whirl
Some sort of gifted sorcery, a multidimensional puzzle
Tangled streams of poetry, a rhyme-shattering rebel
My uncharted horizon to dream about
What could be a reason to keep you out?
Will I need wings to carry you on my shoulders?
or will I require them to adapt to your soaring place?
Should i avoid to step out of my comfortable borders?
Or should I give in to a silhouette without a face?
~Epic Monkey
Oct 29, 2017
Oct 29, 2017 at 4:10 AM UTC
Sparked thoughts invoke fear, forming beads of sweat
Spurred on by these scars that we’ll not soon forget
This vertiginous vortex whips us along
Unwilling and restless, we’re compelled to go on
Heed peace in panic states
Lord knows the hour’s late
We choose to hide, don’t trust our fate
It’s flee or fight—it cannot wait
Spinning, swerving, bridges burning
Scenes shift and change but we’re still hurting
A carousel of doors revolving
Eyes shut and open, each blink absolving
Take off and leave it all behind
We’ll ne’er escape our judging minds
Change what you will, can’t be denied
Embrace darkness within the light
Apr 5, 2021
Apr 5, 2021 at 4:24 PM UTC
As I peered down at the murky
Distance beneath, a stalactite
Scratched my shoulder.
She looked to belong there,
Translucent in her birth suit,
A callous icepick in drag.
I gagged on the still water’s
Stench, hoping for a mirror
To spy on the carp below.
Strange sounds came from the
Depths filling me with fright,
A white sheet covered my head.
My memories of life before
The well emphasized
My pledged share of crops.
Looking down at turmoil,
A witches brew, a caucus of
Black children as phantoms.
What does the mob spawn?
Down there in the shadows?
Can they sell me again?
My story is growing faint,
It gnaws like a cancer
In line to pay the poll tax.
The terror of being thinned
Out is one way to judge
The faces of injustice.
A leprosy of the soul plagues
Me, this scurrilous writ of right
To cultivate cotton and tobacco.
Two small visages glare up,
The girl has dry hair,
The boy wears suspenders.
Terrible myths surround
The tales of cherubim
Cursing the walls of mold.
I look down again at
The single bucket, its clamor
Pealing against the bricks.
There is a dizziness about
Staring into an infinite liquid,
Call it vertiginous space.
Consider the opposite,
Gazing up at me, seeing
And feeling raindrops.
Inside this well lurk a
Paradox and an illusion,
Duplicitous evils.
Seeing the faces at the
Bottom is an illusion,
That they exist is paradoxical.
Black isn’t black, but white
Isn’t white, another paradox,
Test them for translucence.
In this day we are challenged
To be just, to hold high
Our heads, never to abort.
The penultimate favor
Is of forgetfulness, of
Ignorance, of mercy.
The only face left is
That of the white sheet
Covered in dust and sweat.
© Lewis Bosworth,,2015
Sep 1, 2016
Sep 1, 2016 at 10:00 PM UTC