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Best Poems Written by Shawn Gridley

Below are the all-time best Shawn Gridley poems as chosen by PoetrySoup members

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How Does the Soul Enter Heaven

How does the soul enter Heaven?
Through ways, I believe, that are dark and effervescent,

For the soul, a thing of light and solemnity, 
must cross through its opposites in anonymity 

Controversial though my ideas are, according to the apocryphal biblical texts which some take too far, I believe this must be true

Life is a sojourn of symmetry,
A cyclical process of repetitious histories

We rise and begin as do we fall and end.
These are my beliefs on how the soul enters heaven.

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The Contradictions of Duality

Swirls of shadowed light rest in minds filled with wakeful anxiety, while the burning ice warms their souls with its chills

Falling in tandem with the rising waves cresting against sandless beaches, reaching for pieces broken by gentle hands banded in the company of destruction

Seduction of the celibate through linear sways of hip and lip, trying as one might to grip and rip the shattered remnants whole

Candescent pitch shining a brilliant purple/black against the flashing abyss, with lost tack that stacked bricks on back become feathers for wings that caress the winds to take it flight

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Verisimilitude

The view from this cracked motel window pairs perfectly with this dower depression flattening my mood and numbing my awareness,
The sweet reward of a drink well drunk.

The misshapen humps of old asphalt going gray and the fading whispers of yellow paint meant to mark the resting place of one’s transport leave a vague presence in my mind,
A ghostly one.

A notion I can’t quite pla-

Bodies.

Oh yes, bodies.

I reiterate to myself it’s just that intoxicating veil on my eyes but in the depths of what makes me my own I know that to be false.

I’m thinking of death.

I’m…sinking in it, the thought is taking hold.

That ghostly thought, that at first fluttered and now bats.

Bats and bats and bats at the bone bars that surround my mind in its urgency.

The lids of my sight flutter in time with that wretched awareness and yet does it quicken.

“Oh!” I moan.

“No…” I whisper.

And that glimpse of silver at the edge-or was it steel?- is oddly comforting. 
Oddly soothing.

It’s speaking to me in sweet tones, reassuring me that it’s all ok. 
That everything is a-okay...

The glittering silver comfort is moving closer, but becomes no clearer. 

It must be an angel that my simple eyes are not fit to look upon.

It has weight now, a pressure on my soul.

“It’s all okay.”

Oh how I wish that to be honest and true.
But it’s just another sweet verisimilitude.

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Lappel Du Vide

distant stars on a distant horizon - it beckons me

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The Tumultuous Tracks of Nature

As my legs grow into trunks and my arms into branches, the leaves of my leavings fall and sprout seeds among the grasses. 
Spreading my roots through the mud, bringing myself a sort of immortality, though fickle it may be, comes about like destiny in its thunderous Ill-natured glee. Helpless be i to stop or divert the urge in which the need grips hopeless in my earth. Acquainted with tunnels and scar well enough to know how marred and barbed are the vines which strangle and tangle about me. 
Pleading cries lie flat upon descent to the unhearing ear. And now true motives are clear and what I fear has come stomping.
And stomping.
And stomping.
Oh yes, they come stomping.

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The Theft of Moral Defense

Dawn crests the peaks of barren refuse, enthralling masses and demanding rations of passion from muck

Stuck into walls, hanging out halfway, suspended by calls of anguish and hate

-

Little does it matter for our pain and thoughts 
Little does it falter in it’s saintly rot
And little does it rain down pleasure atop rocks

-

Towering pulses in cavernous chests booming altering noises of gloomy doom and distress
decompression
decompress

-

Such success in sessions of secessions thought best bring messy manipulations of emotions and stress

Blessedly pressing the rest into vests of blasting intent and the buying of souls not spent

The buying of souls not spent

The theft of moral defense 

The theft of moral defense

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Unknown Terrain

Brined voids surround my already bounded vision, throwing me headlong into confusion and disarray. 

Hesitation in what may be the next correct course is what has landed me, and with much despair, in this current crisis of identity. 

It is also what keeps me still. 

This sea of doubt, once touched by the poet Alighieri, drowns my senses, casts my sails of logic askew and all at once sends my fluttering mind into a turmoil so grand as to take the attentive and oblivious alike. 

Oft in mesmeric trance, the soaked foundation upon which I stumble offers none but fleeting moments of blessed relief. The rotten cored planks creak and shudder with the shifts and contemplations of my psyche, and I feel as though one misstep or overreach will drop me into a depth not easily realized. 

And, I fear. 

Oh do I fear. 

I fear that will be the end. The end of a great many precious jewels which have hitherto been forgotten, discarded, and altogether scorned.
I fear that I will not be mourned, or that I will but be it with half of heart.

I am surrounded by unknown terrain.

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Will It Thunder

Sitting on the edge of my bed, I shovel back through my memories, asking questions and knowing I will never get answers.
Though, it is answers that I seek.
Answers that haunt, and will continue to like long decayed feelings and actions and bodies.
People and personalities.
Like sites of murder and of love.

I gaze at the window, curtain spread.
Or rather, through the window. 
Gaging the degree. 
Of the weather and of how deep I dare delve.
It’s cold outside. As cold as I am in.
I sit and I wonder,
“Will it thunder?”

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Fanciful Fantasies For Fatalists

Dancing on the edge of a razor and stool as my ropen neck tie stands taught in two dimensions. This precarious balancing act in which life consists stands directly in the way of cold embracing bliss offered by abyss. 

And, I’m drowning. 

Choking on what’s good and what isn’t anchors me in a state endured but not desired. 

And, I’m tired.

The sunset on the horizon brightens and clears me as it does with the land but not with the same intensity. Though, it does with my shadows. 

It does with my shadows.

Why, in some ways the land and I reflect as I with pond and mirror but in others as with I and stone. It’s a conundrum that I ponder quite often but never seem to tread. 

And sometimes…I wish I were dead.

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Lost Amongst the Flowers

Distant breathing freezes winter in my bones and dredges my soul for the sowing of rotten seeds,

Foul flowers on trees infested by festering fruit emerge tangled from the ichor churning mud that bare their infected roots,

Wounded and flayed, my morals splash about in their pus and dismay

Pray, I do, for my sense of self and my distant…

I cannot complete that line of thought…

I am lost among the flowers.