Best Abodes Poems
On boulevards of memories, with you I walk
Reminiscing in yesteryear as I turn back the clock
And persuade the silence of amour to talk
As conversations of yore ridicule and mock.
When passage of time changed us, losing its way
Feelings that still evoked had nothing to say
And hearts then discarded rules of the game
For love no longer cared to ignite the flame.
Echoes of desires stopped calling your name
When lyrics of our song could no longer claim
Melodies foregone that altered our frame
As I stepped forward alone to take all the blame.
But, regrets that mount have no place to go
Except being drawn into pathos of woe
As winter emerges in the midst of spring--
In passions of ruby rose, its thorns now sting;
Like summer’s heat burns soft autumn breeze
And gusty gales shatter last leaf of barren trees,
When in serenity of blue-skies dark clouds frown
Raining on crimson arc in twilight of sundown.
We now reside in our separate new meadows,
Having barred future from sullen past shadows,
In nights of blissful reverie, kissing dreams of dawn--
Pointless it is to invoke dreadful spirits long gone.
From the fork in the road we’ve traveled far,
In abodes of our distinct worlds happy we are;
View in front is golden glow of vibrant sunrise--
Rear view spurs spent emotions of dreary skies.
October 9, 2019
Placed 2nd: If only we could turn back the hands of time poetry contest
Sponsor: Silent One
HM: Strand contest #670 by Brian Strand
Raven Speak Not To Me, For A Plague Flees Thy Lips
Sadness came, in clumps of ripping hard, smashing waves
as if morbid thoughts could such sorrows ever save,
none but the blind and deaf could know a darker realm
or more lost ship with, blinder captain at the helm.
Yet even in such pains, one must seek out the Light
for the blind can see, if they embrace truest of sight!
Wayfarer now in hideous ancient abodes
mind burning flames, blasts of misery that explodes,
born of the vile demons that plagued Master Poe
from fiery depths they sprang, as savage and dark foe.
What greater black-curse can one thus be forced to bear
or evil that sends monsters that nightly scare?
Raven speak not to me! For plague flees thy lips
weeping soul, prays not to enter such ghastly trips,
save your epic lashings and thy horrific calls
as well as scalding-hot brands from thy torture halls.
We that saw deepest pains, you once sent Master Poe
enter not chambers or beg more accursed shows!
Your friends attack, forcing each soul to further flee
from hell's first dark levels, with its pitiful pleas,
into caverns wicked, filled with flesh eating beasts
with each new arrival cry, more food for our feasts.
Sirens lure fleeing lost souls into black-sea pits
always seeking, more blood, deeper cuts, harder hits!
Raven, thy terror-nights will soon come to end
for in bright flooding lights, I have found a new friend,
stalwart ally, armed with more than long sharp teeth
one whose true faith, will silence thy calls from beneath.
Dawn's shimmering lights, you shall plague me no more
I bow to he, his powers seals your wicked door!
Robert J. Lindley,
Dark Poetry, ( Poe, Raven and Nightmares)
12-18-2018
We live in a world where sickness abounds,
Sometimes stumping the best of providers.
Symptoms and tests almost always expound,
While the emotional costs grow wider.
The travel and care and expenses we bare,
In dollars and tears for a healing.
Pale when compared, with the voluminous prayers,
Our reverence and humility kneeling.
Seeing through to the end, great strength we must take,
And the position that attitude matters.
A stiff upper lip and a smile sometimes fake,
Anything less, and fragile hope easily shatters.
Yet until we’re called home, to streets paved with gold,
Or abodes filled with love and affection,
Widely known in the hearts, of the young and the old,
Laughter remains, life's greatest healing medication!
Two artists that once danced on high trapeze...
then fell to doom, his death a fate unkind.
All hope bereft, her sanity soon flees.
Life lingers on, enduring crippled mind.
In steel-toed boots and shabby overalls
she takes her toy red wagon for a stroll.
Young children run to hide inside their walls,
unable to divine her kindly soul.
Did you dream of him, poor Pansy dear,
in his spangled suit so bright,
his arms so strong, his breath so near
as you joined him in the light?
She buys some fruit to share while on her quest
with those the rich might think a waste of time.
But charity, like mercy, is twice blessed...
the seller's price is always just a dime.
Some cans, some wood, some soda bottle caps,
the woman gleans the cast-off rubble heap,
to build abodes from simple artful scraps
for those who have no other place to sleep.
Did you dream of him, poor Pansy dear,
did you dream of him last night?
When God called forth, your mind was clear
as you joined him in the light.
He saunters in with a slow steady gait
gathering all of nature in his warm embrace.
The whimsical artist splashes colors to sky;
miniature airplanes and exotic shaped kites.
Vocal chords of moon beams strummed by crickets and toads;
a serenade through open windows of our humble abodes.
So light on his feet; ocean's glass dance floor;
leading sailboats to sea and lovers to shore.
His breath on your neck puts you under his spell;
caught up in his love, as romances swell.
His pulse beats hot through sun ray veins,
then he showers us with gifts of cool, fresh rain.
We lounge with him in fields and meadows,
and miss him as Fall nudges him deep in the shadows.
Across our childhood’s street we trod
on carpet lawn and holy sod.
We walked along where some had prayed.
Where once we played, he now is laid.
The dead’s abodes we visited.
But times we ran and sometimes hid.
Such escapades by fancy made!
Where once we played, he now is laid.
Our bikes we’d ride on many a track
that wound around and further back.
A decade near this place I stayed.
Where once we played, he now is laid.
He left. We followed, each our way.
until the fateful sorry day
we all returned and farewells bade.
Where once we played, he now is laid.
Another decade passed, then two.
Cruel time -its passing how I rue.
My place for his I would not trade.
Where once we played, he now is laid.
*Dedicated to my brother Dale, who died much too young
and was buried across the street from our old family house
in a place called the Greenwood Cemetery, a very large one
where kids rode bikes and played. Well, at least WE did!
Those who are now elderly sit and reminisce
of sweet idyllic days which often they miss.
Sitting as families in beaming abodes
whilst a flickering fire dances and glows
Cosy nights in with cards and knitting
and days in the garden, weather permitting.
Snakes and ladders with family members
bed time when fire burns to smouldering embers
At school they were eager and behaved well
parting from friends with kind farewell
walking home with no worries or cares
helping with tea, then bed after prayers.
Yes, they love to recall memories of times
they learned stories and recited rhymes.
Played games with balls and skipping ropes
grew up with imagination, dreams and hopes
Now the old are found to sit and moan
at the new technology they are shown
the transportation speeding past
how times have progressed much too fast
What happened to appreciating what you got
being thankful despite not receiving a lot
Now seized by temptation, money and greed
today we're consumed by the need to succeed
The loud and so-called 'unique' youth
appear as disorderly, rude and uncouth
the bright, colourful and distinct attire
Is received as offensive, obnoxious and dire
Teenagers walking in packs of elite
music blasting with no rhythm or beat
the old will avoid and cross the road
feeling hostile on return to their abode
The clashes in cultures cause opposition
juveniles grow with too much ambition
thoughts consumed with riches and fame
money, films, music and fashion to blame
little time for families, never mind schools
displaying no respect and breaking rules
What happened to growing with parents as guide?
what happened to strolling in the countryside?
The azure ocean, home to the embedded enormous incomprehensible riches of mysteries and riddles,
More than the Mars, lies unfathomed, underneath the conundrum of oceanic colossal rhythms.
From the The Milky Sea Phenomenon, a sight captured as bioluminescence illusion,
The Purple Orb of the ocean floor of California and the Baltic Sea’s anomalous puzzles,
Like the alien spaceship put foot on the colossal quagmires of oceanic chasm!
When the underwater volcanoes erupt to perplex beyond imagination in huddle,
To probe and discern those gems of oyster shell’s luminous pearls dazzles,
Deep beneath sleeping peacefully in the ocean’s cradle!
The fatal enigma of the unplumbed immensely profound oceanic mysteries will never dwindle.
The more one plunges to pierce in deep muse its vastness engulfs to diddle!
The superficial waves in corrugation, are mere widening its hitherto horizontal hurdles.
The bizarre sounds emanating from beneath are like giant icebergs scraping the oceanic floor in madly rhythm!
The obscure oceanic realms, its myriads mystical appearances remains timeless, fancy of millions!
Eras and eras pass, the mythical mermaid’s riddle are yet to resolve,
As centuries pass, may replete with the witness of numerous human civilizations!
Like the Atlantis of Japan, from time immemorial, the oceans are abodes of colossal confusions.
The voyages disappear in the Mystic Triangle, who knows what lies beneath the mythical abstractions?
The twirling sounds of infinite ocean swirling in the sea shells are quite captivating, attract admirers attractions;
The archipelago one after the other vanished without the trace, as in Marina Trench’s aberrations;
As if the Phantom Islet of Bermeja, in its murky abyssal cradle’s magnetic composition.
The Crop Circles discovered beneath its bosom as if the signage of other world’s manifestations;
The oceanic phenomenon of green flashes meets the red tides, reveals your magnificent disposition.
Wants to plunge, swim like a mermaid in your mystical cerulean temporal lilting motion;
Oh, the oceanic conundrum more we try to fathom, the more we entangle in your cryptic chasm!
© Silpika Kalita
Thick white clouds
Retracing posture
Atop the layers of earth;
Foggy shrouds of white
Overclouded landscape
Clogging the sunlight
In blurry unclearness.
In brown faded bushes
Lies inhalations of dryness,
Catchy like the gasoline
In simple lit strikes
On matchboxes;
Spreading fierce fires
To four cornered angles
On grassy fields.
From silty bits of soil
Hovers clouds of dust,
Distributed casually
By several printed steps
Of slippers and rotating air.
The echoes of the wind
Screams with concurrent whirl,
Stirring up particles
In fiery harsh voices.
Innermost in the terrain
Glares cracking every way,
As the dryness sucks away
Final surviving drops of moist,
From pores of skin surfaces
And wooden doors.
Thence, in customary shrinking
Of shriveling leaves and bushes
Prowls the reptiles, fleeing away
In untiring searches
For cooler comforting abodes,
Resting forevermore
To the swift slashing cutlass
Of the cautious hunter.
Its beauty yet again plunders me,
Into magnificent realms that hide
Deep within my every thought
Where I ,like a new tenant,
Seek comfort to reside
In the warm abodes of Winter.
It has come yet again
With its white painted sky
Like a dripping white towel
Whose waters slowly subside
Like a pain that has been eluded,
Avoided, denied
Its gusts that blow across
The many prolonging miles
Bringing all windows to shudder
Like lost whispers and voices
Found and compiled
Into a vague resonance.
Its unmelted snow
That at every corner lies
Lingering for the tepid
Sun of Spring to rise
To melt away
Like an unwanted memory.
And all that it holds
Is but a fraction that glides
Within,
A sheer reflection of the world
Outside
The snow, wind and rain of
The season inside
The poet and the lonely road, betwixt his netherworld abode,
in canyons deep, and in seldom trodden creeps,
Always secrets, secrets....
too kept ----
he has made his humble abode, in the dark alone,
he sleeps ----
with vipers and white (sepulchre) tombs
(alone)
He does not see the meadow, and daisies,
(rising sun)
nor words of wisdom on his tongue;
fall away, to dark netherworld abodes....
Poet be he not, 'til fellowship and gratitude
be his home, and grace in word be his love;
of good cheer to all concerned and more ----
should even shadow knocketh,
of this he writes
Written in 2012
In the days of yore, our hearts bore;
the burdens of that heavy laden heart.
Now, for His love, our hearts are joyful all the day.
It making merriment with play because of "Jesus."
He, whom had that old "heart of stone" rolled away.
Declaring this forever, the “Lord Jesus,” that His angels did
move that "heavy stone" at the tomb for we to view at the
end of the third day. This being the brightest of all Sundays.
For this we say, “Holy, Hallelujah and Hurray.”
Past and present renewed, future is fully realized
and time now is no more.
The Bible scriptures has extolled and foretold:
of a future with glorious beautiful heavenly abodes.
Past and present renewed, future is fully realized
and time now is no more.
The Bible scriptures has extolled and foretold:
of a future with glorious light and beautiful heavenly abodes.
Jesus, the blessed hope, to all His disciples as scribed and told.
AntiPoem 2
You know only one thing and that is:
Dying is not on the agenda.
Let us march now inside St. Mary’s,
March reverently through these green repentant doors,
These holy portals to grace and absolution,
Into a stain-glassed sanctuary of sinners kneeling in disguise,
These sullied souls coming in through the out door again,
Figuring death is furloughed from the crucifixion business,
Two thousand blurry years later.
Let us still march forward now to the glassed tabernacle,
Resting up there ensconced upon the marble altar,
Beyond human touch;
The host inside now transubstantiating as with earthen time,
From dry crusty oatmeal,
To omnipotent King of the Universe.
The boy holds his new Sunday missal,
As the family drives to ancient St. Joseph’s,
Up the asphalt hill, there on Gold Street,
Amidst the tentative Yuletide presentations,
Of tinsel-lit trees and blinking avenue abodes.
In the distance Lady Lassen wears a white bonnet,
As the Redding Christmas Tree stands exuberant,
Seventy-three feet into the icy air on Market Street,
A rainbow-glowing giant with a thousand staring eyes.
Brenda Lee is singing,
Rocking Around the Christmas Tree,
From blaring radios inside Oldsmobiles and Studebakers,
Cruising Placer Street to the Cascade showing Butterfield 8.
The boy is counting the neon cocktails,
While riding in the backseat on blue polyurethane,
His father is intently driving the blue ’58 impala,
Into a gravelly hilltop parking lot.
Blaring outward from the church there I heard voices,
A bubbling sacramental bouillabaisse of silent
Parishioners all genuflecting in pristine Latin confusion.
The girls choir wearing skirts of curious plaid, is
Singing loudly and softly their angelic vocal renderings:
“Gloria in excelsis Deo"
Father Elliot is extending his arms outward now,
Bestowing the final expectant blessing;
He is giving absolution to the captives driving Cadillacs.
You know only one thing and that is:
Dying is not on the agenda.
Cold winds, the assassins of startled vegetation,
blow in with late autumn. Snow arrives
to cover the terrain with blankets
of white, pristine feathery snow; meanwhile,
some bodies of water turn into ice.
As the sun hangs low in vales of shadows,
December silently creeps in.
Skunks, raccoons, squirrels and other small mammals
also have crept in silence . . .
to hide inside secluded spaces against the cold’s encroachment.
Their breathing, heart rate, and metabolism slow down.
Waking periodically from their torpor,
they feed and then go back to sleep.
As cold-blooded as the enveloping snow,
snakes slither instinctively into crevices of rocks
as turtles and frogs burrow into mud.
Bears, having feasted in the fall,
now hide in their dens in a state of deep slumber.
How silent and tranquil is the realm of nature’s creatures
hidden from the prying eyes of us humans.
Some of us become almost as sluggish as the animals
squirreled away in their nests of twigs and leaves.
We feast like the pre-hibernating bears.
In a festive mood or perhaps feeling sadly forlorn,
we are more likely than in any of the other seasons
to hide away inside our own abodes,
especially when soft pearls twirl from twilight’s sky
and winter lays down a thick quilt of snow
beneath a canopy of sparkling stars.
We waken, at times like this, to our world abloom with snow,
grumbling at times about having to shovel our driveways
or to travel on roads slick with ice or snow.
Like the hibernating bear, I prefer in winter
the tranquility of comfortable slumber.
Nights in winter stay dark longer.
Our heart rate, breathing, and blood pressure drop low
as drifting into the deep of dreamy sleep we go.
Ah, winter, let me sleep in your quietude
as though I were being buried in the wondrous snow
of your slumber land.
Ground for ground why I never,
Needed any feedback other than
The sultry taste, the warm goodness
Saturating my cunning senses:
Within the wee hours of the morn,
Where dawn sleeps in, catering to
My desirable need for a java rush.
Poured o'er smooth creamy delights,
Instant gratification abodes, why I'm
quite smitten with this mouthful of joe.
Hints of hazelnuts caramelize dazzled,
By coconuts, wondering how the hell,
The rest of the world is simply sleeping.
Through my sudden arousal for roasted,
Award winning kaffee, aroma nestled
To perfection, calming ,comforting noir.