Best Antechamber Poems
Covered bridge sheltering frothy lagoon
Woven tapestry gilding each silted dune
Garnished threads over polished diadem doth croon
Fabricated ensemble breaching pristine medley, emitting swaggering tune
A treasured grove; each branch artfully hewn
A regal polish smoothly layered on a well-crafted spoon
Scented laces nestling in furrowed moon
Binding corset ballasting each milky balloon
Red velvet gown swaddling paps so roon
Silver, monogrammed broach cresting over satin plume
Golden necklace the antechamber doth groom
Lilac perfume from each tendered Liily doth fume
Plowing through the quilted morass so carefully strewn
O'er snowy plain with sculpting touches tenderly prune
Nurturing each crevice; in your fecund valley swoon
Watching in rapturous chorus each mound bloom
With fertile lips I pollinate each riveted loom
From each rendered nipple a sweet nectar I exhume
On the edge of metropolitan midnight
he lays in a breathless silence
rasping the evanescing yesterdays to his windows
both open and locked,
while the unknowing below in stale smoke barrooms,
wait to sear his wounds and retell his life
in putrefied requiem.
Abashed metropolis
echoing of muted voices once adorning the streets
in practiced synthetic ritual,
the vile awash and seeping through asphalt cracks,
the scent of rot, old and new, smattered on old brick edifices
silences the ascending smoke plumes
belched from and within dirtied concrete towers,
the final endeavor from within a dying mans spirit
reaching out to no one
City’s voice wails from the antechamber in darkness
anxieties fracturing the panes amongst the downtown fire
of urban panic
lucidity congealing away within him, kept only in the moment
by metronome dripped medicine
exposing him to his damp streets, dirtied culverts, sewer ditches
chemically induced and maintained.
Fighting for his identity within this sterilized chaos,
whispering for the few of open mind somewhere below the window sill,
quicky stepping onward, over his newsprint life,
calling out one last time
There he lays in cold white sterility,
calling silently to his windows, both opened and locked,
watching his stories catch and fade in the dull humid streetlight
wisped away on steam grate stale winds,
the dying soul, eyes closed, his aged lined face
muddied, scraped, and walked over,
through the grime of progression left on sullied pavement.
"when the Gods want to punish you, they answer your prayers"
--line from the film "Out of Africa"
She stopped, transfixed, a breathless
butterfly pinned to a board, and she said,
"That is So beautiful!" Then, turning
to her husband as they stood in my kitchen
before an aerial photograph of L'Ile de la Cite'
shaped like a ship in the beating heart of Paris,
(young Yuppie wife of entrepreneurial architect
who owned half the houses on the street
where I lived), she asked with pleading eyes,
"Could we go someday?" Knowing the appetite
for that which lies beyond Beyond: Paris,
La Cite' Emeraude, or wherever is the personal
Shangri La, I wished I could have shared
what I've known: a second floor apartment
in an historic building in the 12th--its
circular staircase royally carpeted in red,
enclosing a tiny lift, depositing us
to a storied paradise, its rooms extending
beyond glass doors of an antechamber into
a formal salon, two stately bedrooms
with balconies, and a "bureau," birthplace
of poems, diaries of dreams, and in the interior
courtyard beneath our common windows,
open to the Paris bleu, a caged canary sang,
lusting for open sky in mornings filled
with the perfume of freshly baked pastries
and baguettes from the patisserie below.
Once, I was besotted with a man who told me
after lovemaking, "I never knew how
much yearning you needed." He divined this,
and for a time he fed that soul hunger in me, so
that it was hard when he left, and they always leave.
Ships seeking harbor, leave in their wake
a yearning in the corners of your life, which will
surely bring back Paris and everyone you have ever
loved, which will somehow, somehow, against
all odds, satiate the supplicant heart.
In mind's castle many furnished rooms
In upper chamber, chaste virtue grooms
In lower chamber, strands of civility bloom
In antechamber, auxiliary dreams, visions illume
In the inner chamber, fears, insecurities subsume
In dim, adjoining corridors, venal guile do entomb
From bed chamber, hypothalamus, carnal libations spoon
In library, Prefrontal cortex, sentient patterns resume
In nursery, hippocampus, Id suckles the womb
In hearth's cozy fireplace, nurtured Ego swoons
From dusky, dank cellar, hidden desires fume
In dungeon's dark recesses resides a foreboding gloom
In courtyard, amygdala, aesthetic designs mushroom
come on, open that door to face
what did you leave in the antechamber of your happiness
(I'm talking about the sad, chained lions roaring their nightmares
of the bloodthirsty watering that produced the fruits of illusion
of the black nights that drowned out the desperate cries
of those who didn't care to be exuberantly happy
while his brothers were swallowed by the murderous maw
of those who gorge themselves on the flesh of the innocent)
all these spilled cups for your disguised smile
that inflates and explodes in the egocentrism of an infinite space
(I'm talking about these empty tributes we pay
to the sadists who torture us with their inhumane successes
while we crawl on the slime ground of the defeated).
The flowers of winter wither wildly
Petals drooping, dropping, falling down
down
down.
I pluck these rotting flowers from her ear
Her hair is stems, as are her veins
I smell the scents. Perfume.
Her boots are strewn over the antechamber
Slowly growing mold.
Despite my pleas, she
Would cut the flowers down, always
But they just keep coming, blooming
And wilting
The moon casts us in a strange glow
The white petals shine, shimmer
My room will be covered in her soon
If I am not careful
Speculation
What is the best time to die?
A beautiful summer’s day
or in the winter when it rains.
There is an untimely satisfaction
that mourners - if there is any-
will be wet and die of the flu.
Sitting in the antechamber
discussing where we are going.
My plan is clear its Saragossa
where the dream of life continues,
because our conciseness was
a flash of light in the darkness.
Enter, this way,
don't mind the dank shadow-crawling tunnel,
nothing has lived here for years.
Antechamber ahead, no need to crouch now.
In this chill hall you can admire a black moon
pinned to an even darker sky.
So far, you have just been reading my thoughts,
now you may discern my mouth and one bloodshot eye,
fear not, I am just a patchwork poet,
other parts of me are buried here and there.
In the next room you can talk to your own ears.
There is a musical box in the corner
where the sullen arias of snails and puppy dog tails
are endlessly edited.
Enter now this shambling duplex apartment, here
there are two of me, both leading a double life.
All available light can be controlled by a
dimmer switch. You will know where to find it,
it is implanted between ecstasy and loathing.
Relax, I have provided a bed of bones for you.
Unfortunately, moles have ravaged my writing tablet,
I can only scratch poetry on mole hills now,
however, the upturned earth is still rich and loamy,
and the little creatures tirelessly check my spelling,
even though I can hardly see my words anymore.
Please note, that these musings have been sent
by those supersonic bats that translate for us
a whole world of silence.
Beneath the azure sky, I yearn for a divine wine of love,
To taste it and ascend, intoxicated by the infinity of moments too brief,
A sweet-bitter inebriation, spinning through veins like a thread of pure water,
And to feel the vibration of life, in every fragment, ceaselessly.
I wish to burn with longing for her, a slow burn, this love – a malady,
Without cure, without solace, to be in my blood, in my breath, in days and nights,
Even if moments twist in rebellion, the desire to love would strengthen,
And I would construct an eternal brilliance, on the most hidden pedestal of my soul.
From thousands of shards of emotions, from seconds, minutes, and hours, I will make her whole,
Her face the fine line that bonds each sentiment in my internal mosaic,
Without her, the universe is void to me, an empty space, the antechamber of stillness,
You are the divine litany, holier than any altar, on which I heal my bended knees.
Standing on the edge of time, in summer rains, bare-shouldered, face to face with darkness,
Lightning dances in my eyes, heralding the difficulties hiding within the chaste longing,
My love becomes a glittering burden, heavy, yet so desired,
Not for the fiercest storm, nor sweetest caress, would I exchange it.
You, the most precious sculpture in my heart of clay,
Are light in every verse I have spoken or will speak,
A living memory, an echo of eternity, engraved in the stones of my life,
Your face is the song that accompanies me, the silence that speaks to me most truthfully.
Does love reprimand me as a reproach,
For losing myself in this desert called existence?
You are the essence of each place, an unspoiled corner of paradise by despair,
What I long to know and desire, the promised land of the soul that hopes.
forty years late for death
uprisings toppled civilizations without hurting my eyes
at the apex of the vortex and inside this antechamber and shelter
the euclidean dome engine where i move the galaxy
I sweep the creation with the neural scanner
around here I became brutish and for each failure
I adapted the respective lie
I've been layering things for a long time
solid blocks of ghostly mist
but complacent with the physiology of what is organic
I know it's time to disappear into the pale palace of time
the vacuum unfolds like a three-dimensional ball of wool
each house of heat rises and blasts the stars
the dark and infinite field of the universe spews flames
quasar beams build the checkered web
where I'll be stuck while I die.
Oh, the poet sees you not just as a fleeting shadow that fades into horizons,
He falls in love as the sun in gold transfigures the curve of your cheeks,
In the line of the smile that steals your guarded secrets, fragments of hopes gathered,
In the tones that around your fingers display codes of lights and dreams.
He is captivated by the vibration of the air when his name is a hymn on your sculpted lips,
He sees ocean depths and stellar explosions in the pigment of your iris full of delicate reflections,
He notices how shadows, in their reverence, outline your form, canvases on which histories are written.
In silent chambers, places not filled or solidified by words,
A poet with a generous heart will find you, beating in unison with the melody that resonates within you.
With eyes that see beyond veils, he extends your being into the most subtle and precious whispers,
He will weave you into immortal verses, every beauty captured is a star in your personal constellation.
Keeper of souls, the poet does not sit as the executioner of your heart,
For he himself, having passed through the fire of mistakes, has learned the art of redemption,
He, bearer of lights in the heavy night, traverses the sunken sentences
Where the word finds its cradle, and his touch is a balm for wounded souls.
In his crafting with the grammatic brush, he resurrects forgotten meanings, and in poetry
He rewrites manuals of love, where every wound finds the ointment of a sublime peace.
He steps, a charmer of silent wisdom, through the antechamber of hearts,
Leaving behind emblems of his passage, inscribing in history cantos
That celebrate the candor of moments and the vastness of human love.
Each scar becomes, in his odes, an illuminated altar that ceaselessly watches over the wellspring of life.
And thus, the master of this arcane lexicon becomes the architect of the kingdoms of imagination,
Immortalizing in his profound rhymes the thirst for affection, for connection, for remembrance.
A Rousseau of words, painting the unexplored jungles of emotions,
Where every mark left, whether it is a gentle step or a sign of suffering, transforms into an ode to existence.
The absence of hope nests upon my shoulders like epaulettes of desolation,
with its poisonous warmth that has burned my skin to the bone, leaving purple scars,
crimson cuts from endless waiting in the antechamber of miracles that never come,
and yet it's strange how hope extends its hands with free bandages, like a merciful lady.
Despair no longer frightens me as it once did when I was a child hiding under blankets,
it has become the new currency of my creativity, with which I pay for poems and dreams,
transforming ruins into metaphors that shine like the jewels of fallen kings,
molding wounds into colored crayons with which to paint strength on the walls of my soul.
Neither despair nor hope feel like they belong to me in this life anymore,
as if I had inherited someone else's emotions, like clothes worn by strangers,
so now I sit in the laboratory of my heart and repair sadness into fine humor,
transforming pain into jokes that make the world laugh instead of cry.
I am an alchemist of feelings, a craftsman who pours the lead of suffering into gold,
who learns to make from each blow of fate a line of verse that heals,
from each disappointment a story that makes others feel less alone,
from each sleepless night a melody that soothes those who cannot sleep.
In the workshop of my silence, where only my shadow and I work like two artisans,
I take the broken pieces of hope and glue them with laughter until they become mosaics,
I take the threads of despair and weave them into stories that warm frozen hearts,
because I have learned that the greatest art is to make beautiful what hurts.
Perhaps I no longer know which emotions are mine and which belong to the world around me,
perhaps I have become a mirror that reflects others' pain and transforms it into light,
perhaps my mission on this earth is to be the translator of suffering into joy,
to be the bridge between tears and laughter, between despair and hope reborn from its own ashes.
And so I sit, with the epaulettes of hope's absence gleaming on my battle-weary shoulders,
with hands full of bandages that I offer to those who need to heal their wounds,
transforming each day into an alchemy laboratory where the miracle is not hope,
but the ability to make light from darkness and from silence a symphony of understanding.