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‘When the doors of perception are cleansed
Things will appear as they are:
Infinite.’

∞ William Blake



‘There are things known
and there are things unknown,
and in between are the doors.’

∞ Jim Morrison



Moment of inner freedom
when the mind is opened & the
infinite universe revealed
& the soul is left to wander
dazed & confus’d searching
here & there for teachers & friends.



People need Connectors
Writers, heroes, stars, leaders
To give life form.
A child’s sand boat facing
the sun.
Plastic soldiers in the miniature
dirt war. Forts.
Garage Rocket Ships

Ceremonies, theatre, dances
To reassert
Tribal needs and memories
a call to worship, uniting
above all, a reversion,
a longing for family and the
safety magic of childhood



A man rakes leaves into
a heap in his yard, a pile,
and leans on his rake and
burns them utterly.

The fragrance fills the forest
children pause and heed the
smell, which will become
nostalgia in several years.



An angel runs
Thru the sudden light
Thru the room
A ghost precedes us
A shadow follows us
And each time we stop
We fall



The Endless quest a vigil
of watchtowers and fortresses
against the sea and time.
Have they won? Perhaps.
They still stand and in
their silent rooms still wander
the souls of the dead,
who keep their watch on the living.
Soon enough we shall join them.
Soon enough we shall walk
the walls of time. We shall
miss nothing
except each other.



No one thought up being;
he who thinks he has
Step forward



The Crossroads
a place where ghosts
reside to whisper into
the ears of travelers &
interest them in their fate

Hitchhiker drinks:
“I call again on the dark
hidden gods of blood”

-Why do you call us?
You know our price. It
never changes. Death of
you will give you life
& free you from a vile
fate. But it is getting late.

-If I could see you again
& talk w/ you, & walk a
short while in your company,
& drink the heady brew
of your conversations,
I thought

-to rescue a soul already
ruined. To achieve respite.
To plunder green gold
on a pirate raid & bring
to camp the glory of old.

-As the capesman faces
poisoned horns & drinks
red victory; the soldier,
too, w/ his trophy, a
pierced helmet; & the
ledge-walker shuddering
his way into inward grace

-(laughter) Well, then. Would
you mock yourself?

-No.

-Soon our voices must become
one, or one must leave.



There was preserved

in her

The fresh miracle

of

surprise.



open

The Night is young
& full of rest
I can’t describe
the way she’s dress’d
She’ll pander to some strange
requests
Anything that you suggest
Anything to please her guest
Havran May 2015
The dusk came;
I watched the moon glowing,
and there I have it,
a word to describe the feeling when you’re bluer than blue;
Yellow, darling,
that’s what it felt like, right?
Glowing, but empty.
It’s time to let go of those
who lift you up just to leave you emptier
than when they found you.
Remember how the sun sets to make way for the moon?
Well, this I tell you:
The moon leaves for a brighter day.
The dawn came;
I watched as the sun turned slowly
from red
to bright orange.
It’s the morning,
and
it’s
beautiful.
It’s time to rise and shine darling.
Rise above the horizon
and shine brighter.

To become your own sun,
to realize that you are the world,
and that
the people,
and the places,
and the phrases
and words
and thoughts
and ideas
that revolve
and pass around you
are
to each
their own solar systems.
It was wrong of them to tell us
that no man is an island.
Each one of us is an island,
and it is when you
peek into
The
Looking
Glass
that you realize
that some islands
have beacons
and some have
watchtowers,
yet all of them
are searching
for another light.
To shine in their way;
to lead,
or be lead
home.”

*Y.O. & D.C.
A collaboration between my dearest bestfriend and I :)
B Kenneth Avery Nov 2012
Dedication:

Nectare bred of an artist's haught testament—
        brings only stunted buds of tastelessness.
Be it naught for the height in numerous tidal of Muse—
        to cause the strike of warmth in bruise.

Upon the cheeks shadow'd in might—
        strength of amour upon near-sight.
You!—Blossom, are of a frightful power—
        to journey nestled mind of dark tower.

As though a hawk perched higher than the peak—
        of mountainous and controlling streaks,
Colourblind by potent affair lost—
        by centuries of sicken'd fever crossed.

By and by another name, honeyed pursuit—
        yearning that cause a poet becoming mute.
Meagerly, he instead scribes his burning allegory—
        that shall cause a life—eternal fragmentary.



Dangers of Kimberleigh

“Love Jo all your days, if you choose, but don't let it spoil you, for it's wicked to throw away so many good gifts because you can't have the one you want.”
― Louisa May Alcott, "Little Women"

I.

When the morning demands you and I—
        our ghosts shall pass empty resides,
Against fields where lines opposing light, force and bind—
        of Angel's breath and Dæmon's spine.

Of shrieks louder than their first meeting's kiss—
        residing now—perfection upon midnight's bliss,
Abiding near the tender gardens upon the blinding dark—
        creating haste of love-song made by grave Skylark.

Who in joyous play—should cause collapse—
        towards serene, augmented lapse.
Lapse of falling, of where gentle screams—
        of every child that's ever been,

Who stroke themselves against empty glass—
        and where visions pray upon the grasp,
Of wind—Of blinding—Of melody—
        to hold faint—Immortality.


II.

This shall be where morning seeks—
        no longer calming of beauty's cheek.
Instead to lash with vain and hostile mount—
        crimson over dashed and harsh doubt.

Until image engraved by forgiving rite—
        speaking neglect of fiend or fiendish blight.
In-versed—coole angelic heart to passéd—
        passage beside Lilac's memory in mortal castéd.

In the unwashed Earth, where the unwashed play—
        'till they unfairly capture it from younglings— Away.
Lonesomeness of watchtowers in gossamer's breast—
        when airy words strangled from bless.
  
Reachéd by the hand—abide in fable—
        quiet tho—in fruitation, a single silver Maple.
Shyly envisioned inside salvation's solitude—
        where tenderness drowns tenderéd concludes.


III.

The sister was lovely—inside my sight—
        in our union—created Nature's first night.
Through our throats rendered fragile lullaby—
        which slaughtered silence and made soldiers cry.

Her bristles—exploit in darkness—I could not see—
        or merely recollect in memory.
A mouth moving inside of mine—
        creatures in mawkery of untouched divine.

Eyes whom beatéd harder than the breeze—
        to remind me—gently of the ease.
Of being caught in cognitive stance.
        which leaves surrender to in traditional, disciplined dance.

Upon the backs of universal forestry—
        and inside their stomachs to where we would meet.
Offended to death by requiem—
        made inside our faint dream's drum.


IV.

Where dreamer's would lash upon in endless screams—
        innumerable Rubies ruin'd before their first gleam.
Upon reflection in lover's loss—
        diminished to demise before their first gloss.

It is upon the fool's finest end—
        where lies his fantasy—condemned.
The jester who remains as undefeat—
        before death shall cause lackluster's retreat.

Unaware tho, in current mode—
        as body by body closely will hold.
And messages of Gold conspire in streaks—
        immersed—affection in mind eternally correlates oblique.

Ringing and humming throughout what laid—
        against blonde grass from Sin was made.
Refraction's cast that betrayed—to promise me—
        endless nights of haunting harmonies.


V.

Held tightly in grieving bourne—
        broken—in new blood is sworn.
Across the snow-cover'd Evergreens—
        where the temptress grave is left unseen.

Not upon her kiss—did darkness fall—
        alone—in shining pieces did crawl,
Against creator—and thus creator hence—
        bitter loving shrouded by bare defense.

As her finite skin had laid eternal flesh—
        of what laid inside Pine's parting mesh.
Holding and crying out for uncertainty—
       feelings moaned into sudden Mercenaries.

Morose and fledgling in their stand—
        spiritéd to Death's light misunderstand,
Of peerless eyes and broken brooks by the sea—
        casting ruined cloth over our Evergreens.


VI.

Unfurnished dawn may scour for length of furnished night—
        quick—until mirroréd ebbed ocean does wrong.
To consume the idles of Man's afraid mind—
        fairest—lest His idles struck into divine.

Exclaiméd none tho, in archaic lust—
        deceased—firmest in high robust.
Where pleasure finds comforted pause—
        inside arched-back in neglected cause.

Betray the shallow grimace flee—
        and ethereal composed by the breeze.
Lies delicate delusion before sorrow—
        that shall thieve away the Artist's morrow.

And in thievery is where the Angels lie—
        angelic beasts with unlawful guise,
In courts—castrated by the throat—
        hardened in assumption by blackened elope.
Argument: A paramour in his youth reminisces upon the topic of attachment and devotion in his unrequited infatuation after having the harsh reality of yearning and his memories come across his frail mind due to waking up from a dream he thought of as being a nightmarish realm that resided in a deep sleep after an exhaustive and forlorn'd day. The poem appears in three phases: The false appearance of the admirer finally inside a catacomb of mutual love in bliss after a long-while of misery; the confusion and untouched heart slowly being composed inside a mixture of both love and loss; and finally, the innamorato becoming awake completely and being torn by the realization of the falsehood of his fantasies and wishing to be able to go back to his previous slumber and having the image return untouched and yet also having the horrific realization of having the aspiration of mutual love, seeing it, intellectually, as futile.
can you hear the monotone rumble
ringing in my head?
it creeps its way through my bones
an echo of all the things that i could have said.

my shattered jaw line outlines all I’ve suffered
and what’s left to come.
the bruises layered onto my skin
are only the reflection of a long night of regret.

imprints of recurring dreams
and stones left unturned
impressions are digging at me again
they don’t know what i truly am.
build yourself a little empire
to protect your stuttering ego
i will be the flame to start the forest fire
it won't be such a shame to see you go

do you recognize the stench that fills the air?
that’s the smell of a thousand burning forests.
you can hide behind your walls in shambles,
losing everything you thought you ever had.
but me? sweetheart, i’ll be doing just fine.
roaming the earth, spreading the seeds of regrowth.

positivity and its fine little hairs
prickling at the sight of someones skin
you just so happened to fall in love with
but they’re not really there,
darling, you made it all up inside your head,
among the burning flora of a million sins
you would think you would have learned
the fifth time around
but perhaps you never really cared,
blisters where the shackles of lust had you bound.

you’re seeking definition
thinking it’s buried deep in the neck of others.
you bury your lust in the sheets,
transforming casual conversation into white noise.
you’re foaming at the mouth and your pupils dilate
waiting to strike and tear your next victim apart.
like a succubus, you linger in the shadows
twisting and turning your way through
the wide open doors of the unknown
you sink your teeth into your prey,
**** away their sympathy
and leave them breathless,
hollow and taciturn.

i watched you slip away
deep into the arms of others
slowly declining as your breathing grows heavy
your body becomes a warzone
those who have traveled it before know,
you’re not the same as you once were,
and you never will be again.

what will you do now, with your claws at the ready?
will you tear them apart, or yourself first?
be sure you get the order correct

you are not the seamless dress you slipped off
before you made your way under the sheets
you are the breath that expels from your lungs
when you finally see your reflection
and you are not what you once saw

your lips curled back into a snarl,
your fingers bloodied and cracked
your eyes void and black
not once will your prayers be heard.

i caught myself wishing you back
finding myself buried in delusions and heartbreak.
you should’ve just said “i never loved you in the first place”
but that would’ve just made things simple.

simplicity was never an option for you.
everything had to be a challenge,
because that’s how your entire life was.
abused by your father, channeling the hate of your mother
there’s nothing you would do just to form stability on this
tattered and beaten ship you call your life.

where will you go now,
that your ship has sunk?
what paradise can you seek
without the stars to guide your way?
they will not shine for you any longer,
the darkness is now your only friend.

and to you, directly to you,
where do you hide your heartbreak?
can we build a fortress strong enough
to hold our heads high
through the pasts empty threats?

our towers were built alongside the shoreline
shining light to those who passed by
in hopes that they wouldn’t just avoid us
our intentions were pure, but our actions were contradictory
we can’t accomplish anything if we don’t know how to.

did the ocean wash it away?
or is it still standing, pure and tall.
everyone can see you sparkling there,
your light runs through your veins
where your blood is supposed to be.

all along the watchtowers
we hide our emotions, like treasure
to be found by a lucky passerby.
whoever ventured into what we’ve built would find
everlasting love and emotions too strong to perceive.
we just pray that whoever finds them doesn’t sell them off to another.

crystalline passages to our hearts
shattered by a beating drum
they collapse and collide
our minds lost to the debris
Mohammed Arafat Dec 2018
The separation wall surrounds me,
It’s everywhere, I even can’t see,
It’s unwanted and very high,
Sometimes I wish I can just fly,
Out of my big jail,
Which made my face so pale,
They separated our land,
Where I really cannot stand,
My family is in the other side,
In the land, which is already occupied,
I want to hug them,
I want to kiss my mother’s hands,
And her feet,
I want to….
I want to see my father,
My nieces and nephews.
It’s a dream, a big dream.

My first love is behind the wall,
Despite it, in love we did fall,
I delayed my wedding for five years,
We longed a lot, and shed tears,
Sometimes I escape the watchtowers,
To hear her voice, and throw some flowers,
Sometimes I try climbing the wall’s stones,
But I fall, breaking my young bones.

We have a very big farm of citrus and fruits,
I missed its trees, the branches and its roots,
My grandfather waits for me since a decade,
To help him watering the plants, which are fade.
I am on one side of the wall, and he is on another,
I have none, and he has my father, mother and brother.

My old friends are stuck as well,
With letters, they tell me their life is hell,
Unsmiling soldiers with helmets are everywhere,
Without permits, I cannot go anywhere,
neither to the old city nor to the capital,
Neither to my family, nor to my beloved.

Mohammed Arafat
31-12-2018
This poem talks about the reality of the Palestinians' lives divided by the separation wall in the West Bank and around Jerusalem in Palestine.
Kagey Sage Dec 2013
And someday the truth will seep
Schizos, and friends who took too much, will be right
Truth seeping from the sewers and dampening
the carpet (basement first, upper floors later)
Then it will seep through our eyes
and our ears, some veins may burst
with all we found out
Our dark eye lidded friends holding the cigarettes
their stories will be true
There’s a New World Order being crafted
We didn’t land on the Moon. No sky
just a big planetarium around
The relatives of politicians, their children, etc.
picked out for some reason (which hasn’t seeped to us yet) from
random families at the hospital, or homeless on the street
Plastic surgery happens, so they all look believable as a family
and then everyone gets hypnotized not to tell, with pills and chanting
Cause secrets are never safe
just look how they seep
They live in satellites (watchtowers within the planetarium sky)
and wear nothing but white and clip their fingernails perfect, everyday
They think they know all
But he’s not as close
as yogi bear guru atop a peak point
that seeps up his ****** hole
He collects his bark and snow
at what the men in the tower label, 4 AM
then he sits and convinces himself
that everything’s fake, even himself
Convinces, for the least amount of reason possible
Robyn Oct 2012
I am from the battered symbol and
Dolce and Gabbana perfume and
Adam's peanut butter
I am from the honeysuckle vines
Creeping up the pillars and twirl around my ankles
It tasted like exotic spices and smelled like pond water
I am from the blueberry bush
The lavander rushes
Curling softly around my rusted heart shaped wind chime
I am from Christman Eve birthday cakes and
Writing my name in charcoal on cliff faces
From Tom, and Phillip and Gerard Butler
I am from the judges and
The singers
From marshmallow farms and
Watermelon seeds
I am from the Kool Aid Communion and
Stolen animal crackers
I am from Providence and ancient watchtowers
Bangers and Mash and ginger beer
From the crickets, wickens and picket fences
The bright red porcupine
I am from heron beaks and the green shuttered house
With the bow and arrow creek
The plum cherry trees
Young ****** noses
And the note I keep in my pocket to remind me who I am
Mohammed Arafat Feb 2019
I looked around me,
by my sleepless eyes.
I saw beauty, history and love.
I saw peace.
I did see peace,
but only inside the worshipping places,
and between the worshipper and God,
and only inside the hearts of righteous.
I then looked around,
and smelled hate and detestation,
all around my home,
in the occupied city of Jerusalem.

A checkpoint,
an unidentified ID,
threats,
demolition orders,
a wall, a high one,
which should have to go,
watchtowers,
hating settlers,
and soldiers with helmets and M16s,
made it so hard for me to live,
along with my family,
in my city.
Yet, I lived because I love,
the old city of Jerusalem.

Palestinians in my area are gone.
It was only me, and lots of settlers,
around me.
I accepted that,
because I wanted peace,
I wanted love,
I wanted Jerusalem,
But they didn’t accept it.

Secured with shields, heavy weapons,
and chants of settlers,
they evicted my kids and wife,
from my home,
on which they planted their flag,
while media covered the incident all round us.

They then arrested me not knowing why.
I though knew this house was mine.
It was my father’s.
my grandfather’s,
and my great grandfather’s.
It was built before their court was built!

They lived instead of me.
They ate from our food,
sat in our sofas,
watched our T.V,
and slept in our beds.

I wept…
for the first time in my life,
I wept…
like little kids,
I wept…
Like a mother weeping over her lost son.
None made me weep,
but them,
and their hate.

Mohammed Arafat
17-02-2019
Israel evicts Palestinians from their home in Jerusalem based on a court order, and here is a poem about what they feel right now.
Nat Lipstadt Sep 2018
my winter beach,
is no beach at all,
but a man-tended lawn,
mostly always, a man-made
miracle green,
except when snow smothered

it sites sheltered tween
two Manhattan Isle streets,
the surrounding roofs, the balconies,
watchtowers overlooking
are its guardians


this, a private refuge,
more akin to
London's garden squares

indeed,
it hides invisible from the public's probing glares,
for it is high-wall guarded,
very few ken its existence

at the far north end are
two red benches,
the simplest kind that adorn most parks,
comfortable for an hour of two,
before the body's slowing heart demands
movement now!

it is my
imagined winter beach,
guarded by pine branches and white birch trees
plus the tumultuous sounds of
silent evergreen plantings
and subdued city cacophony

I pluck from this atmosphere
only city poems,
more hustle and bustle scripts,
than the calming summer surf writs,
that are peculiar to
sandy beach breezes

the city winter beach season
too short,
just like its true
summery country companion

soon the latecomers of
lingering warmth and the high coloration of fall
will given in to the
irrefutable and chilling demands of an
insistent I-have-arrived
winter

its super-cooled demands will banish me inward
seeking new poem information
from beaches envisioned from within ,
for now is
|all-absent
the outside inspiration

but not just yet...

October leaches into Thanksgiving,
colder and more forlorn with each ticking day,
falling leaf

for now tho,
rise early to catch the
straggler sun's still-heated rising currents
from the nearby
East River

scribble and peck,
breathing a different season's flavor
and inspirations,
more crisp,
more reddish and deeper hued
than a summer's pale blushed vin rosé,
and fall's yellows, au contraire,
brilliantly softer
than the harsh beach's yellowing sun glare

scribble and peck
drawing new drafts from the serious drafts surrounding,
these, no gentle breezes pretenders,
these, chilled winds of substance,
demand greater and different tastebuds,
cold concentration

from the red benches of my pseudo-summer beach,
my words,
surrounded by cool,
burst forth like the wintry season's breath of
exhalations,
smoking but not summarized as hot,
and far faster to cool,
quicker  to hide,
than the slow, spectacular setting allowance of a
genuine summer sunset

my scribbles and pecking performance
in and of the fall season,
smoke, but do not sizzle,
short blasts from an always,
under dressed
summer man,
foolishly attempting to transform
a green lawn with a dreams re-visualized,
calling it what he wants,
beach

the poet,
felled by the now permanent chill's vital signs,
burns smokey slowly
like fallen leaves piled and burning,
wondering out loud

have the seasonal signals
changed his long term trend,
truly modified the poet's moody perspective,
or this but a transversal changeling,
can he still believe
his summer
will yet return
one more time?
Oct. 7, 2015
8:36am
Manhattan Island
Bardo Jul 2018
Once above my face the Sun did
  weave a joyous spell
And rested calmly upon the backs of
  the great stone Giants
Whose stance used bring early night
  to bear on these tired eyes of mine.
And the dutiful Moon too, did smile
  down
Reassuring me with her presence
Patrolling the dark heavens till the
  Dawn would order her away.
Down the wild slopes rode my
  children, brimming with life
Their blood ensuring my Youth
  forever, or so I thought.
Watching over their shadowy green
lanes, noble cedars and majestic pines
Vigilant watchtowers upholding our
  green faith:
Caressed the Bloom's feet I did and
  raced the drinker's pace
Precious memories slowly eroded as
  now in lonely exile I dwell.

First warning I got, carnage floating
  downstream
Severed trunks of trees and their
  stricken branches
Finally laid to rest upon the worm
  eaten lock gate -
Saw a mass exodus taking place,
  whole tribes on the move
Telling of trouble coming and of a
  world soon to disappear;
Pagan storms they brewed ominously
  overhead, their seed
Did burn my skin and burnt through
  the silver scales
Crippling the little fishes who'd bury themselves prematurely in that cold
  graveyard depth;
Those blissful birds too, that used eat
  out of my hand,
As my countenance grew steadily
  more gaunt and pale
They too, did decide to leave, seek
  food elsewhere.

And the ailing flower wishing the old
  days would return
As my ears they began to pick up a  new sound growing louder all the time
Gnawing away like a worm in my
  brain, the razor-toothed saw
Singing in the woods his eerie Death
  song
Leaving in his wake a grisly trail of
  ****** and mayhem.
My own days numbered then; I saw
  the savage leaders come
With their strange ideals and talk, of
  quotas profits and costs:
Who beside me built a Fortress, a
  sinister smoking structure -
O! those Dark forces it sent forth to
  finish me off
Looting and burning, laying waste my
  beautiful Kingdom
My exiled Spirit indeed, all there is now to tell of that terrible cost.
Environmental poem. The stone giants are the mountains around the lake, the children are the streams flowing into the lake, the tribes would refer to animal tribes. Although about a lake it reminds me also of a human soul.
Robyn Apr 2014
I am from the battered cymbal and
Dolce and Gabbana perfume and
Adam's peanut butter
I am from the honeysuckle vines
Creeping up the pillars and twirl around my ankles
It tasted like exotic spices and smelled like pond water
I am from the blueberry bush
The lavender rushes
Curling softly around my rusted heart shaped wind chime
I am from Christmas Eve birthday cakes and
Writing my name in charcoal on cliff faces
From Tom, and Phillip and Gerard Butler
I am from the judges and
The singers
From marshmallow farms and
Watermelon seeds
I am from the Kool Aid Communion and
Stolen animal crackers
I am from Providence and ancient watchtowers
Bangers and Mash and ginger beer
From the crickets, wickens and picket fences
The bright red porcupine
I am from heron beaks and the green shuttered house
With the bow and arrow creek
The plum cherry trees
Young ****** noses
And the note I keep in my pocket to remind me who I am
Sam Kirby Aug 2015
Come together gentle soul,
And unite against the dark shackles,
You no longer bear.

Melt them with a smile,
And craft a shield,
To fend off the fleeing sorrow.

Can one laugh and shudder,
At the same time,
Putting flowers on old graves?

Happily,
I used to count the headstones.
As if they'd build a fortress,
That kept feelings away.

And now I place daisies on watchtowers,
Tulips in gun barrels,
Daffodils on my past graves.

Seeking words to explain,
Why sunshine came from rain,
And joy came from pain,
Holding my own hand for the first time.

The darkness surrendered,
Iron chorus bells ring.
A miracle for millennia,
I have warmth to bring.

**Fortress walls come down,
Smile with your eyes.
Part of your soul comes awake,
When another part dies.
Life is changing for the better. The sun peaks through the clouds every so often.
Henry Mulligan Mar 2013
Look at us
all of us
standing here
with our heads slightly raised
alive like watchtowers
mistaking ****** desire
for history
time passed
and the time to come
all of it
we do not know.
Look at us
standing all about.
I feel like a totem pole.
Light a fire around me.
We are a day,
And all around us
such a spiritual dance!
I know not the true color
of things
but perhaps I could marry you.

I know that I am asleep
but I don’t know
what I will wake to.
Hold me please
I will not ask you to.
All we are
are children
I shall whisper it
to the elder ones.
They have forgotten it so.
They were drinking white wine or spritzers
I was at the pictures
watching a rerun of a rerun of an old one,
which I hadn't seen before
but for half a crown I expected more,

they had the right idea
the right place but the wrong year
and somewhere near a cat was wailing,
not a cool cat
just some alley cat.

It was the eighties, Berlin,.
the falling of the wall
when the East came to call
on the West,

they drank Schnapps
I was looking for the traps
which I was sure they had laid.
Jonny Angel Dec 2013
Climbing mountains of hope,
riding treacherous stormy seas,
they cross sun-drenched deserts.
With riotous rifles, they fly with dark angelic wings
slicing through clouds crying memories.

They are the young bloods, the pawns of the brokers,
some laden with modern death-technologies,
others carry improvised implements,
dazzling flowers swirl in their eyes,
holding torches held high,
onward soldiers they cry
to the victorious victory!

In all seasons,
they breathe strongly,
moving to better futures,
creating new worlds,
flowing into silent landscapes,
penetrating the watchtowers
of their enemies.
David Barr Jun 2016
Your beautiful iris reminds me of a captivating and ancient ice-age.
So, haste ye back to the final origins of the beginning and blink tears from those heavy ducts where chords are a warm and rhythmic expression of your audible silence.
This democratic estate has been compartmentalised and displayed for all to purchase.
Therefore, let us now ***** watchtowers in cross-cultural locations of diminished Gaelic solidarity and submit our souls to the spectres of haunted forests.
How mystical is your awareness, my friend of questionable statements. I lavish your growth in fertile soils, where explanations lay bare their very soul to the wrath of the gods.
Cast it outward and share the spoils of the spell, because sound can be kicked in a forward direction.
Oh, brazen star, I worship your stealth amidst this universal parade of elocutionist conquistadors.
Draw your sword in the rising mist of the dawn and let us nakedly parade around fires of fertility.
Phillip ONeil Mar 2014
FROM THE FLAGSTONES 
 
This concrete town with no guts,
no grit where we can only smirk
as galoshered feet slip ‘n’
slide in and out our café where
exhalations of icy conversations
mix with the fog and cigarette smoke.
 
It’s a damp riverbank town
border with riptides
sneak currents
no watchtowers no walls
an escape for the committed
or reckless – the next country
a lucky swim away.
 
You draw down
panelaks, teetering like headstones
(that lost their plots
a regime ago)
pen in flagstones and millstones
flower tubs filled
with butts and dead dogs
tarted up with cans and stencils
subjects of your studies in pencil.
 
Nature’s only concession
(so far as I can see)
is this wedge like a warm slice of pizza -
four fall trees jutting out of the bar
where dogs curl up in corners
and mist pushes in fishermen
selling trout -
 the toxic confetti
swirling around the passing
procession of Saturday weddings
dragging monochrome trains
drawn into this twilight
fugue whisked by an accordian player,
guests laughing back at us
while you’re smirking back at them
cocooned in wine and tuica
almost  lost in your sketch
smudging *** ash for sky
dreamy with relaxed fatigue
of travel and infatuation.
 
Your pad’s our field dressing
that could work for a while
before the gangrene sets back in
so I’d like to amputate this souvenir wedge
for my scraps book.
 
I watch you listening out for the shanty
from the flagstones – about weeds
delicate, green, undamaged,
muscling through the cracks
in the concrete
drawn up to the cut where
we also look effortless and a little green.
 
Tomorrow we head for the border
and only one of us can swim.
Ayesha Sep 2023
I begin to end where the song begins
Little rain plays the earth, birds learn
Little facets light to mimic the sea
The crumpled sheet of the sky
Seems to sink slowly upon my land
The fortress offers a generous view
But my people are busy in their work
And I am busy in the watching

Sweet. Sweet. It is a stumbling
Sweetheart, walked up through the night
I break down, I break down altogether,
I stutter as lightening within the clouds
And the thunder of my disquiet
Pounds against the sun. Everything
Everything, everything incites me
To climb up the watchtowers, invites me
To join a hand onto hand, and
Scream myself open to the world
19/09/2023
neko-nae Apr 2016
to blink
after such travesty
to watchtowers,
is like a single
slow moving crack
moving across an
iceberg, becoming
jagged in the tide–

she should
know better how to
control her flames,
not just feed
out of control, their
heights engulfing
her ceiling and walls,
stiffling–

to break free
humid restrictions
and agony, replaced
forest breath with
quartz of roses for eyes
(4.6.2016)
Zywa Feb 2022
The Beast is free, we kiss
outside the wall around
the Beauty of your fidelity

Of course we want to be
good, not stun ourselves
or stay in bed

to dream of big deeds -
figuring them out step by step
within far too many rules

We kiss, we are free
Nothing can hurt us today
We are each other's Hero

Our Love is a big deed
out of sight of the watchtowers
on the wall against our desires
Album "Heroes" (1977, David Bowie)

Berlin

Collection "Between where"
We had no idea the kind of plan they'd constructed
It seemed like any other night until the gunshots erupted
We had no idea that they would come by the sea
It's like they knew exactly where our weakness would be

We awoke in the quarters that they let us share
In less than a minute, we were dressed and prepared
We passed Captain Troy, Composed Mike and Voltaires
We chased down our checkpoint as they headed for theirs

We got past the doors and down the east gate
We passed a few bodies, now resting in fate
Out in the horizon were blazing, sinking ships
Reminiscent of the feeling that this could be it

It was the final battle of this three year feud
A ****** war zone - confined in youth
Endless explosions rained over me and you
The last thing illuminated would be the truth

We finally met our squad at the watchtowers base
When I noticed the calming assurance on your face
We all loaded our guns to await your command
When a shooting star fell just as you raised your hand

The bomb went off and left me shaking my head
But that's better than those injured, unconscious, and dead
You yelled and reminded me to do what it took to survive
To not pity the others, not while we were still alive

Just as you told all the women and men to fall back
Our group was ambushed, caught in the sneak attack
They grabbed you first and you said, 'I love you, now run!
This war isn't over, they haven't yet won!'

So I rushes inside, barred the doors behind me
Where the crippling pain brought me to one knee
They came and they pillaged, they took you in the night
But I wiped the tears from my eyes, and got ready to fight

There were a few other soldiers, one friend I knew well
I sight for sore eyes, he could compose himself
We held the main hall, it was our prison cell
with the enemy at our door, we prepared for hell

Mike was at the window, "oh god, we've been betrayed"
When the doors swung open and life was dismayed
A few shots were fired, there was no time to reload
But we don't turn tail and run, we took the warriors road

The infantry men trapped Mike who began to weep
As the bayonet blade sunk its edges in deep
He screamed out to me "Things are not as they seem"
The rest of us kick,
we bite,
we scratch,
and we screamed

Oh dear lord, how loudly we screamed





The final bastion broken, our defenses crumbled
With a sword to our throats we kneel to be humbled
I look up to meet my executioner, and her cold view
A mans last words killed the surprise, I knew it was you


The blade cuts clean
Just as your lies do
Julian Mar 2020
In the most precise terms accessible to the vast repository of considered lexicon, this passage describes the finifugal destiny of infectious myopia that, when dredged through the rabble and bugaboo of sensationalism that outmodes the modular gravity of vogue chicaneries belonging to the catchpole of the watchtowers that sink into a hibernal abyss by the crafty subversive elegance of the magnetic pull predicated on the prolific disposition of the serenity of nature to overpower the lust for civilization and thereby provide the calm equipoise of the confident desert,even when famished, to overtake those inclined to urbane bustle with the eventual drought of a ****** kitsch world inured to pollution reverting because of an exaggerated hubris embalmed by a composite nurture into the freedom of a leveled compass of moral dignity found in nature, ultimately astounds itself because of peremptory pulchritude. This prophesies a tip-toed dance with extravagance that ultimately humbles even upright civilizations with the magnetism of the elementally pristine to bequeath a licentious freedom of extravagation that philanders on maidan territory--beyond the ******* of the reprisal of peevish cavils of recalcitrant cognomens and the despotic inclinations of civilized but brutish incursion upon the warped reversion of priorities that enthrones serenity above bustle of latitude over the prerogative to jostle the crowded quagmire of inventive but abortive spectacles of tributary happenstances of the newfangled ochlocracy--because the immediate convenience of civilization is destined to crumple by clockwork flaws inherent in machination what nature can carve effortlessly through inseminated rejuvenation.
    It is not because of the rantipole revelry of the noisy cacophony that we are starkly indifferent to the hum of the melliferous agency that leads to ecocentric governance, it is rather because the conflagrations of the crowded humdingers of our times have lapsed into the crevasse of unbounded lewdness of wretched ambsace that purports alienation more fundamental than civilization and thereby provokes a cutthroat collapse predicated on the creamy pettifoggery of saccharine sentiment that creates the rot of urbanity and goads participation in the renewal of the bionomic imperative to cherish the serenity and peace and freedom granted by nature that always conquers nurture by axiomatic consequence because to prepone filigrees of cosmopolitan bravery is contrary to the crass nature of the demur of deferred gravitas accorded not just by ceremony but by rehearsed gallantry that outlasts the sardonic reprisals of flayed anticipation.
      To the reader less lettered than enamored, I intend to remark as a pivotal linchpin of my rudimentary model of the universe that the epigenetic configuration of disorder inherent to the entelechy of physically mandated entropy is an overriding force that, through permutations of our sanitized history ,we discover as the direct autarky of the innate to trounce the willful volition of the artificial because the precedence of nature undermines the imperatives of a filipendulous swing of nurture to destroy itself because the clockwork upbraided thorns of society are more evident and incumbent than the circular irony of the circuitous wiredrawn windlass of feral proclivity to overwhelm the devices of one tragically supererogatory species that undercuts its own virility by sterilizing the future with the noisy cacophony of the epiphenomenal excess of profligate carnality accorded by Original Sin and later expounded and exploited into a titanic hubris that might eventually sink the prerogatives of the metropolis and favor the malingering peace of the remote frontier. I wonder often why aliens congregate in insular proximity to Native American tribes and propinquity to their shibboleths rather than abide by an enigmatic skullduggery to infiltrate lucrative metropolitan tracts and, with delicate entryism, seek to propitiate the inane aspects of population with the delicate poise of interposition and, when I ponder this deeply lugubrious question, I realize it is probably because the aliens themselves are byproducts of an overpolluted society famished eventually by its own adolescent excesses that eventually redound in the fulminations of subsequent dearth and therefore it cherishes the arid propinquity between the natural balance of nature with the composite symmetry of the evolved soluble valence of recycled treasuries of provincial benedictions rather than a global ploy of takeover and turnover because they fear the ultimate destiny of the thronging clangor and obviously prefer the surreptitious entrenchment in tribal allegiance rather than pushful attempts to proselytize an imperious solidarity geared for heroic redhibitions of human defect for ulterior conquest that vouchsafes a degree of ineradicable dominion. Ironically, in the fitful throes of sickness I have convalesced into a singular desultory equipoise with the serenity of pause rather than the drygulch of overmilked tactless celerity that taxes the limitations of even the petty simplicity of the most rudimentary concepts and, through deliberative subroutines, I conquer the articles of subaudition that lurk in remote corridors waiting for the marauding curiosity of unique proclivity to traverse a bypass of directional contingency and summit the immeasurable lengths of the incalculable by measured and sly blettonisms of profound wealth but dramatic appraisal of the rudimentary vineyard for both a pronounced variegation of hypostasized supersolid vagrancies and a selectively culled culinary harvest of slow piggybacks upon even the simplest countenance of endeavor rather than the unkempt rigid sustenance of the formal inculcation and the liberated bailiwick of how an unsung sorrow can elevate the fanfare of the loudest enchantments above the pother of kitsch debauchery.
  On a more relevant note, instinct is often the realm of finicky depredation and libidinous tabanids to oleaginous gimcracks exerted primarily by the geotaxis of regnant pedigree but fathomed more by imperative glorified brawn rather than a self-aware truculence of unalloyed volition exerted by the primitive kinship to violent boorish self-advancement that debases us because of the lurid savagery inherent to many evolved chicaneries ,that remains hidden to even the most glorified ommateum distorted by the glare of distant tantalization, distorts the invictive goals of the ergasia of intrepid lollops of the enantiodromia of entropy. And, because ambition convolutes and flanges the instinctual into importunate articulations that bypass necessity by gouging consequence into redoubled countenance--upon which we all abide to some degree in the maintenance of labile stature that often gets dredged by external impediments to pushful accomplishment to grace--is the stagecraft by histrionic leverage that is a direct byproduct of the ulterior composite of circumstance and precarious fluctuations of character. Essentially, genius manifests when the gluttony of metaphorical siderism that is sejungible from the seismic jostle of the ordinary outweighs the restraint of the ******* to immediacy to traipse above bamboozled tripwires and surmount the restive jealousy of common noemas of subtle verbigerations to heave from a recessive slumber of foothot dreams into the alchemy of inconspicuous levity beyond the admittedly aggrandized and glazed angular momentum of rhetoric to simmer with radiant efflorescence to pay homage to sedimentary notions rather than truckle to the imperial ambitions of predictable leaps to the great fanfare of the proper sabbatical from celerity for the conventicle of the extraordinary plane of the supersensible entelechy of all creation.
        In profound contemplation, what manifests relatively clearly is that the ruinous hesitation provoked by the incumbent din of uproar leads to the whiplash of warbled subliminal tilts in the axis of the chryselephantine machinations--even of the inquisitive--into the free-for-all of the acerbic displacement of the acquisitive to a scalding shipwreck that defies the cordial gravity of demarches of extenuation and further incites a dislodged frenzy of exacerbated priorities becoming jumbled to such a quizzical extent that the dash for jewels becomes the hegira from either afflicted incarcerations of panic or the conflagration of malignant opportunism. In these uncertain financial times, we henpeck—sometimes with extraordinary dalliance and otherwise with bodged exercises in profane self-sabotage—the surface endeavor by the agitprop that congeals, even in the most strident resourcefulness waged against it, to the folly of fulgurant pride in the fruitful bets against prosperity or the ennobled forbearance of the slumbered toil and toll of the taxation of capitalism upon itself that overhangs every specter or prospect for mammon without the overweening clarity of the disclaimer of labile liability because of lapsed conscientiousness. The spread of wizened ripples of the Jehus that dart with provident alacrity towards the myth of catalyzed proliferation without incidental pollution, endanger themselves by the fumes of their own arrogation of mercantile swoopstakes rather than by the contrary coexistence of debased timidity of the rigid priggishness of reluctance which is by far a greater enemy to the financial ecosystem than the outrecuidance of financial temerity because toxicity through accident leads to windfall by precedent because it is a primary mover rather than a flagitious inertia and therefore we should dwell on the immanent accessible treasury of the composite good for invictive truth. Returning to Isaiah, it is proclaimed that justice will dwell in the desert while the fruits of prosperity lurk both in vineyards of conquest and foreign forests of the unknown fertility of grace..because in a sense the vapid lifeless drawl of the beazed comportment of the husbandry of complacent but arid contentment is fashioned in a manner that relies on provident self-containment rather than the industrious bulldozer of calamity that besets dominions of heralded opportunity even when ripe times are precluded by the zeal of the epicurean demands of harvest that eventually famish rather than appease the diet of profane luxuriousness rather than a balance that leans on the notion of balance itself to predicate sustainability that laments its own dearth but never foments the outrage of volatile fortunes won or lost in the casino of opportunism.
    On a highly irrelevant note, the checkered figments of otosis are the ironic endearment of the expected to their expectancy and yet because of wrinkles of iterative doubts roaming the widely spelunked cavern of redoubled demerits subsuming self-contempt, the dregs of the self-important eventually sour into a cynicism that barks loudly at the locked corridor of pride but eventually trespass into the coherence of the incidental that spark the volitions of a self-gaslighted endeavor that creeps incumbent upon most scrutiny but less salient to the otiose obtuseness of the rankled hamshackle of perseverance in sublunary clarity.
   In the etiology of reiterative and normative catastrophe, the morale that severs the parturition of spunky audacity in favor of complacent staples of buoyant regimented alacrity vitiate the trim slaver of the luxuriant grovel into the alcoves of restive libido into the hegiras that hurdle over the conflations between necessity and want and transmute the furor of fitful windlass into a transcendent indelible ethos of ineradicable and endangered regalia of the swamp that, with bricolages of vigor, resorts to lopsided scrutiny of outcroppings of the profane rather than the self-aware poise of scacchic prevenance of ulterior action to the proper congruence of action to the composite reaction of the synectically impaired. In this vein, we must concede that a foundering vessel is often scuttled by self-infliction but ultimately salvaged by the modesty of resistance to plenipotentiary fictions of noisome crotaline tabanids and the recognition of the ramshackle facts of tentative triage in a wilderness vitiated by the alarming abundance of careworn exercises in hubris and overstated alacrity to the dimples of regress ultimately scars the geopolitics of specter and prospect to the extent that pernicious anomalies dart into prominence without castigation or that tremendous serendipities sink beneath the RADAR of the otherwise sturdy panopticon
   Thus, the polity of interwoven statesmanship by prospectus leads eventually to a culminated crux that is retrofugal more than finifugal and, in the absenteeism to the precedent that eventually provokes the unprecedented, we witness the folly of irrevocable design that, when sufficiently abridged by compendium, leads to a swift clarity that ponders vague traces of the superficially coherent into a suboptimal engrenage with contingent stipulations that often backfire because of the crude boorishness of statesmanship ratcheting into a vertiginous dance with instinctual donnism rather than appointing dignified salience the proctor of uncertain but sizable dubiety acknowledged and commanded into clairvoyant action rather than resigned acatalepsy.
  In the resulting vacuum of moral conundrum, it is not enough to predicate our bedrock on flourishing jackals in the wild nor the often lambasted sematic entrenchment of fixated designs of the impending perfidy inherent to every quagmire of bugaboo or foofaraw livid by smoldering embers of combustible and often deliberate begrudgement because the thriving industry of constative vacillations of pandered controversy are in itself ribald albatrosses of coarse conformity that derelicts the penumbra of consensus because of the firebrands of invictive bulldozing vigor to solve rather than to acknowledge the unsolvable to the extent that gridlock becomes an ayurnamat. This is why we witness a floundered perspective of slugabed deliberation contending with peremptory decisiveness verging on a saturnalia of syntax of cotqueans borrowing odium from plucky viragos because the snailed uncial crackjaw dynamics of the unfettered cyanotype for the dashpots of brittle absolution of the slowpoke substance of elevated debate provoke the ornery miscegenation of a hyped fluidity that stagnates rather than prolongs the integral linchpins of the maieutic capacity rather than the redress of incontinence only valorous by the ommateum of the owners of folly. So if outpaced by the cyprian flourish of cursory rhetoric carping on melodies of transparent rapture personified in an intellectual composite, I retain the art of flayed delamination clavigerous--only because of the heist of smoldered efflorescence—because the centered pivot of demegorics is a travesty of monument men relaying variable scaldabancos against modish artifice itself (often without even realizing the circular irony of such endeavors) because the fervor of snappy sizzle disembrangles the intorted ego from reckoning the drollery of the obtuse only to the mutiny of superlative acuity by surgical strokes to convalesce on dittology to reprove even the deftest articulations because of the prerogatives of the uncharted game that is never the behest of lifeless taxidermies of regelation.
    Ultimately the summit of the calculus of all human endeavor is outfoxed by the rapacity of erratic successive spurts of upheaval which can be forestalled by degrees of institutional prescience formed by cryptodynamic enigmas lurking in the troves of myth but the financial calamities we are witnessing are but the byproduct  of rabid scavengers feasting on restive panic rather than the inevitable degringolade of swollen tribunes steamy with an upbeat verve becoming vitiated by programmed incontinence. So what should we do with this crafty rejoinder to a variety of modern checkered quandaries and the skeumorphs of speculation? We should inquire to the utmost capacity to outlast the overhang of aleatory vicissitude and await optimal conditions stipulated by the constellation of veridical information rather than lean on inclement windlass of instinctive gambles predicated on specious fatalism or the contingent backfire of the ruinous roulette of exotic fanfare that shepherds the purblind into mundane degrees of perdition while the chary parlay their Ten Minas into a bonanza by decisive grit.
clxrion Jun 2016
Are we to be knights, valiant and courageous?
Who leap into the fray with eyes ablaze to drown in blood of foes
Or grudging conscripts, having held just enough ground, with
Sullen faces due the touch of the next dawn
Whose names never make it into tales

They detest bald carrion-cleaners so, they do
Even as winged beaks rend the flesh of fathers, sons, brothers
Stripping carcasses from putrid decay to liberation, clean-picked white bone
To spare their loved ones the odious descent into pestilence
Misguided hate hovers in place of black clouds of flies

Weep! Bemoan! Execrate! For all the use it may be
Brick by brick watchtowers fall and signal flames choke into trails of smoke
A portent; walls recede, the castle shudders and recoils
Screaming crow murders knell the looming storm

Are we to be knights?
A piece on morality and the struggle to grapple with loss.
meanwhile Nov 2017
We stray far from a land turned to ash
We sail away from the perils of warfare
Passing through guarded political borders
And hiding in the blind spots of armed watchtowers
We're gonna get there.

There are five of us split between two boats
One boat suffered damages during our escape
While the men are free from their slavery, they are still forced to work
Throwing buckets of water overboard, in rhythm with the waves
We're gonna get there.

As the sun begins to sink into the sea behind us
We spot dark clouds forming ahead
As thick as the smoke from the burning city we fled
We will be hit by the storm, just like our hometowns
We're gonna get there.

In the wind we swayed back and fourth
The damaged boat crumbles away. Three men drown.
They died with dignity. They died as free men.
We must push onward. We cannot let their sacrifice be for naught.
We're gonna get there.

We spend the rest of our days reassuring ourselves
Ensuring we know what we did was right
We spend the rest of our days searching
Travelling the crossroad between life and death
We're gonna get there.
To the promised land.
Mohammed Arafat Nov 2019
--I am Let Go--




“Goodbye, my mom…”
I kiss her hands and leave,
the house of my parents,
in my village, chained…
chained with high walls,
electric siege,
armed soldiers,
and hate.

While walking, with a bag full of food in my right hand,
and my green Palestinian ID in my left,
I am remembering my goodbye to my mom.
I didn’t say, “See you soon, mom!”
but goodbye.
I don’t know why!

The street is dark,
with the moon lurking behind the clouds.
It’s cold in November.
My cold hands shaking.
Neither the bag nor the ID helps warming them up.

I approach the high wall and the border we always talk about,
in our winter meetings around campfires.
It’s full of military watchtowers,
with welded wire fence,
and snipers pointing their guns at me.

My ID is ready in my hand to show,
and my bag is open for them to be searched.
The inspection is over, and I am let go.
They laugh at me while I walk.

No safety yet.
About to cross the border,
I again remember my goodbye to my mom.

Remembering stops.
My back feels cold.
It’s frozen.
It’s warm.
It hurts.
I am screaming.
I am shot by the soldiers checked my bag and my ID,
by the soldiers who let me go.

Mohammed Arafat
November 2nd, 2019
Palestine
Qualyxian Quest Nov 2019
They may say apophenia
But I think they are wrong

I strive, I seek, I find
I love Redemption Songs

Other worlds exist
We’ve known this all along

Watchmen in watchtowers
Riders riding strong

Behold, the gathering throng!

— The End —