Best Buttresses Poems
Unbelievable- Paris stopped breathing and even the world,
the cathedral spire shuddered, clung, trembling;
then, plunged burning and the crowd and the world itself,
wept, for the beautiful Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris.
Construction of the cathedral began in 1160 to 1260,
a wonderful example of Romanesque French Gothic architecture;
I recall the vaulted ceiling and the awing flying buttresses,
the colorful rose windows and the medieval sculptured decorations.
I watched the news with the world as it burned for fifteen hours,
five hundred firefighters managed to save the facade and towers;
the buttresses, organ, and many precious relics and art works,
before the wooden ceiling gave way, falling in flames.
Oh yes, the whole world stopped spinning on its axis in shock,
every bird on earth fell silent and all the oceans went still;
and the world was left weeping and waiting and praying,
for the destruction of something so glorious is- unbelievable.
____________________________
April 20, 2019
Poetry/Verse/Our Lady of Paris
Copyright Protected, ID 19- 1136-107-02
All Rights Reserved. Written under Pseudonym.
Written for the contest, Notre Dame In The News
sponsor, Kim Rodrigues
First Place
28 Cracks In The Ceiling
I take my red-inked dagger in hand
And succinctly spew its secrets for all to see.
28 cracks in the ceiling, and I lost count.
There’s a storm moving out of the west.
I can smell the thunder and
The titillating turbulence of tintinnabulation.
An old lady sits cross-legged and knitting,
Waiting for the sweating sun to sink.
“I was just a girl in 1925… and now…”
The endless strained faces out there
Tell stories of death, disease and depravity.
They know the eternal worm is the other one
In this passion triangle.
28 cracks in the ceiling, and I lost count.
Snakes frothing in suburbia.
The megabytes of Zanzibar jettison out naked bone chips.
Later months and trivial dimes.
Smokestack realizations in a tent.
Church buttresses holding up my whining soul.
Green Edsels down in San Pedro.
Michelobs and round sassy broads fingering erect nipples.
With a Susie in each arm
He lights a cigarette in honor of grand appeasement.
Sensuous sinews entwine effervescently.
More loose chicks in short skirts,
Pouting and scamming.
Times are hot in the old town tonight.
Music and misery, wine and wickedness.
Stubborn clocks disarm with water-resistant influx.
I was a princox in petticoats.
We met at a Tastee Freez at twilight.
28 cracks in the ceiling, and I lost count.
There was a time
when men built for God
great houses of stone and glass,
with Gothic towers reaching
to scratch Heaven's belly....
In the great hall,
beneath the bold flying buttresses,
people felt tiny--
yet when they cast their eyes upward,
they thought: This is where
He must be... and sometimes,
just sometimes, some of them would feel
a twinge, even a slight shaking, a divine wisp....
Now we build huge malls with myriad shops
offering endless promises:all lies!
We hack humanity down
to the lowest common denominator,
and mock those who seek
to awaken to their immortality....
Today we can kill in the millions--
tomorrow, billions....
All that creation has brought us to,
over such a long time,
seems for naught--
will God one day grow tired and finally say,
'ENOUGH!'
*
From a single word
the Divine bestows kismets
of gifts benign, as we look outside
our tiny molecule of life and feel the roaming
breath of many realms
larger than our jagged existence;
that we are just one, one with beggars,
thieves, prophets grains, stars… and that we
will give back and beget the trebles
of light refreshing all … molded we are from
only one heaven of omnipresent being;
an immutable Source.
**
Winds rustle unto adorned foliage
they know not of; comets greet
milky earth without asking the whys
and wherefores of such glides: each mortal heart
uttering the same rhyme of peace
in different skin colors, as miles navigate
the buttresses of time -zones, yet always…
always imbued by a holy psalm of enlightened
Oneness.
***
rob carmack's Contest: One
9/8/2015
Beside a babbling brook I browse
By a bridge braving bleak winters breeze
Beaver is busily burrowing beneath
Before bitter blizzards batter beaver’s bunker
Beaver beavering as he barricades the breach
Bedtime beckons before darkness befalls, but my
Bright my blue backpack bounces into the babbling brook
Begetting a bung of blue, Beaver buttresses his breach
Bewitched by Beaver’s busyness and bidding him bye bye
Before a blizzard begins bouncing big ice balls from the sky
Back inside my bungalow beside a burning fire
Buoyant my backpack had blocked Beaver’s breach
Bedtime was beckoning as I began to fall asleep
But beaming - for my backpack had really worked a treat
By bunging Beaver's breach beside a babbling brook
Burgeoning with self-belief I’ll write a ‘Beaver Bedtime Book’
Written: 1st April 2019
2nd PLACE
Contest: Pick A Title, Vol 3 Alliteration - By The Water's Edge |
Sponsor: Edward Ibeh
3rd PLACE
Contest: CONTEST no 620 in alliteration style,any theme ,any form
Sponsor: Brian Strand
Contest Name Alliteration 004
Sponsor Poet Destroyer
22nd October 2020
My Home Is No Fortress
Speechless thoughts flow out as words when the drawbridge is upended
From turrets they wind down and spiral into a stream of consciousness
Gently wind to and fro processions of images narratives a dreamy river
Drought happens as I resort to the keep when beleaguered by onslaught
of foes breaking barbicans collapsing foreign walls in the most barbarian way
Crowded rampage seizes ramparts and bulwarks of my own defences
Baileys and mounts scream battle cries of injustice injured in ignorance
Thus I decide there’s no longer a need for arrow loops since my truths
reject the heart ache of anger and would much rather be conquered by love
I conclude therefore to raise spiky stakes portcullises and misconceptions
and suppose that it is not me who built their house on evaporation and sand
When my thoughts slide up and down buttresses and find their words
vulnerable projections dissolve and my home is once more a wide open space
16th November
The grand, half-ruined Parthenon,
once a sublime, Doric grace,
Even now, in broken, stone blocks,
always takes my breath away.
The rich, classical detail,
fluted columns without plinths,
to imagine what it once was,
the mind can’t even begin…
That towering Coliseum,
the great masterpiece of Rome,
even half gone it’s staggering,
to be so tall, but made in stone.
Go down to the domed Pantheon,
still so perfect to this day,
these are not just random buildings,
they stand with something to say.
And those long, Gothic cathedrals,
so ornate and yet so light,
stained glass alone is enough
to make these churches a sight!
But all of that fine tracery,
those magnificent cravings,
the rows of flying buttresses,
inspire the soul to sing.
The Byzantines and their tiles,
Tudor masonry and wood,
Romanesque with its arches,
Art Decco looks oh-so-good,
Baroque with all its fussiness,
Victorians with their quirks,
Renaissance sports Italian flare,
Palladian’s subtle pleasures…
And yet in Albany, New York,
there stands the featureless ‘egg,’
That’s its name and its resemblance,
I am not pulling your leg.
No decoration, no windows,
as it stands there in the sun,
people call it ‘modernist,’
I call it ‘concrete abortion.’
Worse is the post-modern trash,
theaters shaped like hunks of cheese,
painted pink, spattered with portholes,
a mad-man’s monstrosity.
That is the product of our skills?
That is how we would inspire?
By building things that look like they
have been melted in a fire?!
They bulldoze down our heritage
to throw up more of these things?
And the big-wigs who approved this,
what the hell are you thinking?!
If these buildings of the future
are to have no beauty or class,
then you can keep ‘modernity,’
I’ll gladly live in the past.
Cronking ravens’ aerobatics
between rock-pulpits leaning over,
grey disdainful gate-posts.
Our shouts echoed
as we clambered like ants on a wall,
the lake a far glittering pool
in the dark sunken floor of the world.
On the saddle
buttresses of old hostile crags
hung vertiginously over an empty valley
where brown snaking streams reflected the sky.
When the fire died the night wrapped us in cold arms
and stars like dust convened,
aloof to the elegant comet and its silver veil.
Next day, glad to be warm again, on a pass,
the summit of the piled massif
was a distant view in the sun’s torrent,
another world visited, lonely,
while people toiled earnestly up and down the tracks.
When we’ve gone like empires before,
these mountains would still be hunched under the rain and sun.
But we ventured, searched from view to changing view, conquered, grew,
and came back a little wiser
to explore the wider wilderness
6.97
As Hollywood
Casts its rectangular light,
A lighthouse without rotation
That warns no-one
As our ships are bashed
Against the rocks,
Sharp, jagged rocks
Of protruding buttresses
And ledges
In our fall down the shaft
To the center of the earth
To Tartarus
We silently applaud
As we enjoy,
As we are moved,
As the swell of the surf
Under our wooden ship
Washes us
With deep and deathly undercurrents
To ultimate doom
Against the rocks,
The jagged rocks,
Of this world.
Synthetic satisfaction derived in the shade
On the edge of the page that defies the sage stage
Where wear and tear declare war to degrade the head
That buttresses my resistance and persistence to engage
In conveying and purveying messages
Between my avatar and the siren I thought would break a record
Wearing down my reluctance to acknowledge difference in wages
As a major factor in the substance of the discord
That rages on from comments and moments I began keeping a low profile
To build bridges with ridges of my conscience
Which prescribes neurons march in a single file
To rebuild edges and wedges whose science
Holds that romance commenced in an African pot
After a rebound from a duel with the miniature
A herbalist despatches to whisk the cot
In which I take a break from the literature
Casanova and his supernova shoves down my brain
Attempting to initiate me into the cult
Whose vaunted principle lies in imposing strain
On men and women who look down on the catapult
That steals arrows from Cupid
Emasculating and diluting his capacity
To render lovers less rigid and more stupid
Such their plasticity and elasticity croon a ditty
Mourning the dying culture of stoicism
In favour a wearing my heart on shirt sleeves
If romance rays should illuminate the prism
That scatters feelings as soon as sanity leaves
Determine my resistance in need of a boost
Ought to travel to the most faithful filling station
To replenish the stamina I need to rule the roost
Not by coercion or ostentation, but by substantiation and expiation.
Still
beneath flying
buttresses of Notre Dame--
Polaroids shake
in their furious hands.
I wonder quietly,
tepid remorse
of stillness, mine
and its, will it illuminate
or dissolve in the light?
Perhaps I am the privileged one
Perhaps the one who disqualified your vice is one like myself
For after all, if equality is truly to be achieved
We are to see the weaknesses and the strengths
In the potential of all in harmony
Am I wrong?
Perhaps you are criminalized for your own sake
For you inhale to stifle; I swallow to expand
But buttresses are buttresses
Am I wrong?
I am the maximized self; you are yourself without reserve
My standing comes from those who chose your vice before me
But who am I to choose?
My vice is not condemning; my humanity no greater than yours
But any time a man is placed above his brother
That man’s flaws are revered
Not by human nature, but by condition
Perhaps that man was me
Guarding over you, my brother
Perhaps we can agree that he is all of us
Am I wrong?
Inhale; I swallow
Release; I regain
For the one who has known despair will choose a path of consciousness
Your awareness is my degradation
Am I wrong?
Should I apologize for my antecedent insult to your reliance?
In all insults are a hope for harmony
Can we live in harmony with our sins?
I reposted this poem because I just ca't get those young boys out of my mind.
What have we lost? What would the world have become had they lived? Why have we not learned anything? Please read with a gentle heart for all those whose spirits are still fighting and dying even now.
they can’t find home
trees trunked as pillars
a cathedral gallery
edges my road
through french farmland
waking in mists of spring
brown arched buttresses push green
into the face of god
a somber holiness escapes,
the sound echoed
among foliage floating above
I sit to rest
and there silently arise
between rough bark
men, grey as leaf mold
approach to offer
their deaths carried gingerly
in cupped hands
taste this, our tales of mortar shelled
star burst murder
on nights yellow with gas
lungs choking closed
blown into eternity
by mined field’s crop of demise or
whining whistle of rifle spew entering
warm sacred bodies oozing life their beauty,
sweet youth gone to earth
beneath grasses where they should be
lover’s heat now
all, wander still
those blood soaked fields of mud,
noise and death
laid down
to pave a path
for old men counting green
and dreaming glory.
A Propitiation of Blue Tears
On this highway to where the skies bleed blue tears into vases;
on ornate buttresses they sit and saturate us,
they cry and douse us,
they contract, expand, release….up from the bowels,
out into the time continuum, wetting the things
below in layers of satin and matte finishes.
They converge with the sand motions
prone to time signals,
they bend to the forces of beeftime,
finding dazzling hours lost in the haunted bunkers
where dead reptiles find savage grace and a fork.
Foraging through time files,
scratching out a dirt-bath patch,
switching-up the game,
ratcheting a firm grip,
delighting in a geyser-water soda drink,
we looked and saw high peaks
belching snow through ejaculations of ice and methane, you who were with me at Orange Grove
that whistling foggy night,
the high forging time,
like an eating bear in the muck.
The withal that composes an early humanoid,
assembles an adroit package equipped to message
the night skies of its dominion.
Oh this highway, to where the skies
have no answer for the frostbite or the death of the sun;
we are not equipped to handle such a client,
the skin is gone,
and the seedy highway is coughing up yellow blood.
Gather up the detritus of illusions,
rustle up a repast for the “El Rey”,
sweep the streets into asphalt rolls,
spread the skies blue tears over the mantle of this space, where the sacrificial ogress dines on her own offal, offering up a propitiation,
to the Milky Way’s highway of stars.
Beneath the singing glass is a brick tower
where the gargoyles spit raspberries and whistle at passerby
On top cracked stained glass and crumbling masonry
Pigeons roost in its eaves, their feathers snowing on the ground
The clouds pass over the wilting copper vaults
The once-proud buttresses sweeping endlessly to the sky
Ivy creeps pitilessly onward, green upon green and stone
It noses its way into hidden nooks where the beetles sleep
Underneath saint's feet they hide
Safe from the wind that slips through the weathered brown pews
The bats here hang from the supports, twitching their flaring noses at the mice far below
Pitying them for their puny arms
While the mice look up, pitying their cousins for their ungainly legs
As the owl pities them all, for he is the one who perches on the singing glass
He surveys his cathedral with sharp yellow eyes, struck through by blackness
His wings spread over his dominion, unshakable
His talons grip the metal that hold the ceiling high, feathers twitching over tensed muscles
With his call the pigeons freeze, beady eyes wide with terror
With his silent wingbeat the ivy barely rustles
His flashing eye makes the mice flee into their holes beneath the bricks
The bats cling tightly to their tapestries
Who are they to question the undisputed?
The owl knows his place at the top of the tower
And his subjects know theirs underneath the world.