Best Arbitrary Poems
All I see is beauty in the burning of her words,
The flickering of flames,
Constructs of fires licking at the night
From snow white sheets of dreaming.
The senses of her bleeding, ink and roses,
Sensual vibrancy,
Gliding rails streaming to the stars,
The links between the earth and heaven’s tide.
All I see is beauty in the visions of her art,
The tenderness of angels,
Architects of chapels wrought of lace,
An arbitrary grace of love.
The impressions of her breathing, saffron breath,
Exhaling of her soul,
Bestow of sleeping kisses to the lips,
Priestess of the mind and loin.
If you are so proud
of your sensibilities and tastes,
so convinced that your arbitrary judgements
are infallible as heartbeats of angels,
if you are the sole instrument of God's grace and evaluations
then why don't you allow them to stand next to that which you condemn
for your peers and the world to judge,
why deny those immaculate tenets the glory
of intellectual and moral combat
to prove their legitimacy, their spiritual superiority
and not to become what they claim to understand and abhor,
who and what do you believe you are protecting,
its critics like you that retard the development of the Youth,
attempt to shame love and passion,
encourage the madness of tyrannies,
and succor the demons of oppressive cults,
does a rose hide itself in the shade,
does a beautiful sword dignify itself with wild slashes,
does the truth honor itself with silence,
does justice inspire with opinion,
Banish the bullies,
trip the trolls,
excise the malevolent,
leave passionate love alone...
I declare,
let there be contrast,
let there be Art -
J.A.B.
Tag words: advertising, bebop, bird, bottle, Charlie
Parker, Coca-Cola, Cole Porter, Dizzy Gillespie,
door, flag, heart, jazz, light bulb, Louis Armstrong,
Miles Davis, palette, Pepsi Cola, pluralism – found
object, retablo painting, sculpture
Arbitrary or subconscious, Saunders picked six.
Man created on the sixth day from darkness;
we came into the light, of knowing, of naming.
Satan, sin held within, black of skin. Oh,
Africa chopped up bleeding, the third world’s
doors shown black, nailed shut. With the skin
of drums, the heel of hand, he pounds the nails
on the trail of the carpenter.
Kept in place, biblical wives of Lot turned to salt,
white-line the globe. White powder, white power,
sugars the unpalpable, addicting, coca leafs and
caffeine, doping the public, the poor for dimes.
Reinforcing the lure of the bottle; the cola bottle
that fell unbroken to earth from the sky in The
God’s Must Be Crazy. Some have always used their
addictions to create. Like a found objects, we too
fall calling to Mother Mary.
After: The Gift of Presence Raymond Saunders 1993
First Published by Ekphrastic Art:writing and art on art and writing
*Lot the nephew of Abraham, husband of Edith
who was turned to salt.
The poor lovely lemon,
It’s really so unfair
An arbitrary choice?
Then why not choose a pear?
Why pick on little lemons
A bit sour to the taste?
An unfair connotation
Common sense has been displaced
My car is such a lemon,
Is said to mean, its junk!
And that ‘When life gives you lemons”…
Is just a lot of bunk
Why lemons are delicious
In their bright and cheery hue
There seems to be no end to just what
They can do for you
Now, they can bleach your elbows
And can even lighten hair
Try sitting in the sun
With your hair that’s full of pear
And maybe most important,
At least it is for me!
I need them for my cocktails
Well, I need a lemon tree!
A. Anarchy
Amber autumn aflame
An aroma of ash appeases the adamant arsonist; the artful anarchist
An audacious attempt at attacking back at our arbitrary accommodations
The ascended advocate us to abide as they affirm their advancement through annihilation
An abstract artifice, artificial affirmation of all aspects
Treated like an array of aliens in our allowed acropolis with the armor turned against us
Most amused with their asinine aspirations and amaurotic attractions
A few too apprehensive to argue and ask for an alternative, afraid of any altercation
But the agitated and annoyed assemble, ascertaining truth through awareness at every angle
Amateur acts of anger arise and accelerate, accompanying their adverse assault on our amendments
The alliance ablaze and amassing, anticipating an apocalyptic ambush
Absolution remains absent and anger becomes anxiety among those abandoned
The affluent assure abolishment for the average and all under
Forgotten you
As your mind collects the memories of yesterday
Forgotten You
Epiphanies tie into knotty strings of realization
That very moment. . .
You merely exist
Back then. . .those smiles
Those. . .distant laughs
Some you remember by name
Gone now maybe
Like the exhalation of the wind
Others dispersed in the world of arbitrary happening
Like leaves from falling, man-made trees
There is no doubt that they have
Forgotten you
Activate the bomb
Ignite the fuse
And you’re on next year’s history book
Never forgotten
But drained of all remaining good
That smile you gave
That happiness
The warm embrace so long ago
Salt-coated with piles of rubbish
Over last remaining mental spurts of comfort
Evil, evil, evil, evil, EVIL. . .
Always absorbed and remembered
. . .though never forgiven. . .
All good and gracious sentiments
Packed up in a box set nonchalantly in Downstair’s storage
. . .that chair with the broken leg in the corner of the room
That mangled cobweb holding a dangling, lifeless spider
A drowned sailor’s hat drifting through the current of the ocean
The single tear from a soldier’s vigilant, memory-stricken eye
The frustrating thoughts of a mute
The unchanged. . .HATED deformations
Forgotten you. . .
One soul brings to light weary, unthought-of happenings
Wedged deep into what she can only imagine
With not even a hint of understanding
. . .of the pain. . . .of the bewildering distortions
Of the ugly. . .
One soul merely vomits sickly verse after verse
As humanity embraces its downfall
The poet hangs onto her unjustifiable, forgotten. . .
Words
It’s called a Blitz
It’s more like ****
**** on the feel of it
**** on those gone before
Before when readers were respected
Before some tortured verse unnecessarily
Unnecessarily complicated composition
Unnecessarily nurtures the arbitrary
Arbitrary in its construction
Arbitrary in direction
Direction Now there’s a laugh its
Direction is but aimless wandering
wandering here to sniff at lamppost
wandering there to check out other scents
Scents not sense the random aromas
Scents upon the wayward verse
Verse I scoff it’s more like adverse
Verse or obverse it is an insult
Insult to all who seek out poetry
Insult to the very masters
Masters little in way of imagery
Masters few if any devices
Devices which make a poem a poem
Devices poets helped develop
Develop then sweet assonance
Develop an onomatopoeic smash
Smash this form and all its sill repetitions
Smash and use for ammunition
Ammunition Yes wordy ordinance
Ammunition for the worthy form
Form a theme which is coherent
Form thoughts not lines blindly adherent
Adherent to aberrant mathematics
Adherent to last word second line
Line up line up for revolution
Line up against this monstrous construct
Construct of weary would-be wordsmith
Construct of an idle mind
Mind the child that is the poem
Mind your head on low-set bar
Bar this nonsense from your consciousness
Bar this form from any gathering
Gathering dust it should remain
Gathering no moss as it rolls its distance
Distance yourself from this word pretzel
Distance is its charming feature
Feature nothing which at our art chips
Feature not this confused bull
Bull…
Chips…
“Peace” whispered a child. It was an arbitrary gust that carried the word to a
young man who repeated it out loud in a very positive tone. “Peace” he said and
the message caught the ear of a sprite old man.
Loudly he spoke into a fast moving breeze “Peace’ he declared and the air
carried the communication miles dropping it into thousands of ears.
“Peace” roared the crowd and the word grew wings and flew into a hurricane
that echoed in the ears of the masses.
Millions uttered “Peace” and in an irony of nature the moving wings of a tiny
hummingbird sent the expression on a trip that encompassed the whole planet.
The declaration fell on every ear and every person was sure their God had
spoken to them.
Maybe he had because from that day on every human had the spirit of peace in
the blood that flowed through their hearts. Peace was now the liquid that
sustained them and with it they could explore the beauty that existed both
within and outside of them.
“Love” whispered a child.
blueberries are not an option
oversize strawberries, maybe.
16 pack
of pop-tarts
the workers look worried
or weary
worn down by the woman who taps on her wrist-watch
with her forefinger
her painted mask forms a frown
her eyebrows are more aggressive
flashing lights
spilled onto the glossy floor tiles
the shelves are soaked in strange
i am invisible
avoiding intentional eye-contact
content to be
a casual observer
unnoticed by an acquaintance
out of context
unaccustomed to our bodies without barriers
beside the cereal boxes i wonder
if i look different behind bullet-proof glass
fat-free or chocolate 2%
there is no middle-ground
but i prefer the color blue to brown
so the choice is made easier
by arbitrary affections
this is where college students
collect the contents of their refrigerators
this is where bananas
are available after midnight
on a thursday
or is it friday?
all i can say is that it doesn’t matter much
in this fluorescent fantasy land
everything is affordable
especially time
because wages are waning
and the hunger will never cease.
Beneath the cold glare of the desolate night,
They came, greedy and insatiable white creatures,
Cloaked in prim pretense,
Every curve of their features seemed to express a fine arrogant acrimony and harsh truculence.
Expectation darkened into anxiety,
A thousand unutterable fears bore irresistible despotism over our thoughts,
Men, ladies and children collapsed into a dreary and hysterical depression,
Leaving us drowned in the deep reticence of the colonial sea.
As arbitrary as a cyclone and as killing as a pestilence,
With a sweet voice caroling like a gold-caged nightingale,
They looted our abundant resources,
And abolished many of our African customs and traditions.
They enslaved us!
Underdeveloped us!
And reduced us to nothing.
Gleams of sunlight, bewildered like ourselves, struggled, surprised, through the mist and disappeared,
Half choked by a rising paroxysm of rage,
The hollow ring of their fundamental nothingness were defined,
With the blood in our eyes, matchets, bows and arrows and diplomacy,
Then the fight and chase began!
There are those in our society
who scream about fighting bigotry,
claim that we hate people with dark skin,
when you fired for insulting them,
claim that our women fear for their lives,
when the female sex is lionized,
claim that no one cares about the poor,
but nowhere else do the poor have more.
They keep having to go redefine
what bigotry must be in their minds
to find a new foe for them to ‘fight,’
...Or find excuses to smear the right,
when in truth on us they do project
their own prejudice, which we reject,
and in their gaslighting they won’t see
the types of remaining bigotry.
These days if you hate folks with skin pale
nobody gets up to gnash and wail,
no one declares you’re on the warn track
the way they would do if you were black.
In fact, degenerate leftists hordes
instead cry out that we should see more!
That their skin color makes them a blight,
they should apologize for being white?!
That an arbitrary fact of birth
is what should determine your self-worth?
That if you look one way you should bear
guilt forever, and endless despair
for sins of generations long gone?
That you’re responsible for their wrong?
That you alone pay for slavery,
when it was done by all societies,
be it black, brown, red, or yellow shade,
but it’s only one tint that must pay?
When you can shut down discussion hale
by screaming shrilly,”You’re a white male!”
When your claim pale folks are ‘born racist,’
and should not be allowed to persist?
When folks like I note the hypocrisy
the powers then try to silence me,
anti-white racists, the truth is plain,
allow this bigotry to remain...
CONCLUDES IN PART II.
Kindness is a redeemer that reaches us from heaven whenever needed
through human compassion or through all the helping things around
us created on earth by God. One such act of kindness touched me, filled
the cauldron of my heart when around Lyderhorn, a sleepy village lodged
on the banks of Norwegian Loddefjord I was on a field work, looking at the
Caledonian rocks. There a gracious old lady, named Julia Aasen, rented me a
room with a kitchen for she needed money as her husband, a fisherman, had
died a year before. My work was going on well until one rainy day while crossinga mossy rock ledge I lost balance and slipped a good ten feet, my backpack disappeared in a creek, an arm of the deep blue fjord below. I lost my wallet, money and cards, and with these my poise. I couldn’t pay the weekly rent nor could I buy the provisions. Finding me, a stranger, in dire need of help, Julia said I needn’t pay the room rent for a week and be her non-paying guest, give her company, although I knew how badly she needed the money I gave. Supported by her benevolent hospitality I could finish my work in time and return to Bergen, the bus ticket she purchased for me. Julia no longer lives in the hamlet by the fjord, but wherever she is now I know it can’t be but heaven, for she made me realize random kindness doesn’t come from an arbitrary source, it flows from the angelic heart of the chosen as the precious gift of God.
in dark distress dense
god’s messengers light for us
candle of kindness
August 14, 2021
Contest : Kindness
Sponsor : Regina McIntosh
When The White Horseman rides you will know.
Retribution and Conquest prevail,
only their names and faces
changeable and interchangeable,
and healing is buried in silent craft.
The White Horseman rides, we know.
When The Red Horseman rides you will know.
No peace is split by war
for no real peace could ever be,
and war splits only war
and multiplies its wars.
The Red Horseman rides, we know.
When The Black Horseman rides you will know.
In shadow of war and shadow of drought
and shadow of master’s avarice,
Famine places its arbitrary touch
on man, woman, child, eaten by their own.
The Black Horseman rides, we know.
When The Pale Horseman rides you will know.
Death arrived by its own devices
and persists at its own strange whim,
fallen the vanquished and the victor alike
and fallen the rabble between.
The Pale Horseman rides, we know.
25th February 2019
White
Lacy
Delicate
Ethereal
Worthy queen of blooms
How, then, were you called weed?
Arbitrary rules of man
Set the standards blindly for all
Those unique or diverse become flawed
But all we, like Queen Anne’s Lace, still flourish.
April 30, 2019
Writing Challenge 2- April 2019- Its All About 10 - Poetry Contest
Dear Heart
Every new day, the sun will rise.
As time passes, the moon expands.
Reasons to act without surprise.
Every day, the wind brings new ambition.
The river flows into the shoreline.
Every day holds a new lesson.
Every day, a new baby is born.
After nine months of pregnancy.
God promises and bestows adorned.
Stars will illuminate our nights.
Large ships navigate in deeper water.
Abetted by vast cosmic sights
Plants will surely grow.
It's an unavoidable indication!
Obvious, as we all know.
Without a problem, there is no solution.
We prefer to go right to specifics.
Valuables are found in the deep section.
Outcomes are entirely arbitrary.
How deeply one will be involved.
Outside the scope of the fantasy.
Forecast what people say, I believe.
Vague terms are complex to discern.
Events were hardly what we perceive.
1st Place Contest Win
Written: April 18, 2021
Just Stating The Obvious Poetry Contest Poetry Contest
Sponsored by: Brother Jacob