Best Chimeras Poems
**For Ruben O, My little Bro**
(This poem was written and a recording made for the contest sponsored by Team Poetrysoup which was deleted before it was judged. I wonder if this would have received a placement?)
Alarming, how analog clocks can tock back,
sound-off each morning like those hungover barflies
at the laundromat who dive-bomb
buzzing dryers as bleached belles
in heels attack threadbare tiles
with a stomach-turning, M60 click clack,
click clack. All night cafes fare
no better, terrify with their red-eyed twit-ter-
to-woo owls, their jingle-jangle spoons.
Heartlessly, the freaky knock-knock joke
of a barista smacks-down the expresso machine —
grounds for a massacre behind the counter.
The plink-plunk of rainfall deafens.
Birthdays send you into a panic. Too risky,
the onslaught of jubilation, the grenades that wait
in overblown balloons. New Year’s Eve brings histrionics.
Nightmarish, the yellow chimeras of construction
and every screaming chick-a-dee-dee-dee...
Ear plugs are a given.
Heaven is a soundproof room.
Even that plan holds more than a hiccup or two.
Horror resounds everywhere.
Babies thunder by in hot-rod strollers.
Frightening: the gurgles, giggles, ear-splitting rattles.
In the nursing home, an awful rasp of life
roars behind a tissue-thin curtain,
the horrendous lisp of oxygen, so deathly loud.
Hashish smoke trails her
along a dusky corridor
Aka the hall of fires
where mirage chimeras unleash
Encumbered with hands splayed
her crystal ball lumens
wires ghostly apparitions
mnemonic attachments
What mystery ensues
a phantasmagoria
of horror nudging
the demonic
Sitters drenched
in profuse sweat
fainting one by one
Alas unconscious
their fate met?
Coroners couldn’t ‘ve clarified
Described as an arctic chill
bolting across the sector
through each limp body
claiming mortality
As icy temps rise
Hypothermia responsible!
for the fatality, for their demise
Latter days professing onto
recordings of a gathering that took place
confessing that a séance
performed by a mysterious woman
in a trance—was the case.
The
Moon is waxing
First quarter crescent
The beckoning begins
Nodding, gurgling
Opening realms unseen
to the naked eye
Madame
Mystic, psychic,
a beguiling storyteller
and Medium
Down in a cellar, along with a Ouija
volumes of her writings discovered
delving into société espirita
The Goldilocks of the occults
Esoteric subjects,
a burgeoning interest
Astral travels,
unexplained laws of nature,
powers latent in man
Madame channeled
ascended masters
The Voice of the Silence
The Two Paths
The Seven Portals
"gifts" from the specters
This time Madame stands
to receive between intervals
and only he is seated
Warning him of dark spirits
a dimension outside
of our physical time-space reality
shadowing, making absence
of light a necessity
To invoke them
another nod
Continues unabated
Reveal the truth!
By sacred decree, by order
Behind the phenomenon
details of schemes came to light
Denounced as Black Magic
she was no longer to fright
Marked as a fraud
it all a façade
The moon is waning
Third quarter
My dearest Cordelia: I scribe this letter now to you from domestic port, the embrace of our farewell still entrenched deeply in my mind. The morn is now upon the tranquil bay and the fishing trawlers have left their docks and marinas to seek bounty of Neptune’s great waters. I can see their outlines before the brilliance of the young days sun some distance away. Its light reflects a white sheen off the oceans body with the appearance of alabaster mosaic pieces on liquid sapphire. The bustle of the coastal city is already in full steam and the crowds of people move through the streets and algid morning air like the current of a river, every man and woman a drop with its own destination.
All of these things commonly taken for granted or a brief inconvenience in the banalities of everyday life; all of these things I feel I will grow to appreciate exponentially in the coming months. It has been decided that our nation will go to war, this I am certain is not anew parcel of information to you as the papers, zeitgeist and the common declamation of all mouths has all been of patriotism and glory for our nation. But I remain silent amongst all this noise and distraction because the thoughts I host are not of glory or heroism but of you; and one question. How chilling is time to old men the pilot the helms of this world’s great nations that it could make the disposal of a generation of young men’s lives or the prevention of the efficacy of our love a simple edict on a paper?
But fear not Cordelia not for me or our love for even though I am soon to be cast into the battle between the two chimeras of this world’s mightiest nations. There is nothing that will stop me from reaching our nations shores once again and with you building the bower in which the family we have dreamed of will grow and blossom. When I have won the war with this perilous world and all its unfair edicts Cordelia I will have your hand.
Yours forever John
Admirable Almights all I ask appreciatively allow me to attain,
be beyond bourgeois breeding ballads for the brain.
Create colloquialisms that cast competently into chimeras,
directing dramatists with doubtful determinations to
delightful dactylic discriptions.
Edible expressions that exite eyes and ears,
by freely forming a firm fire you'll flog any frigid forlornness fear.
God glorifies the good, my given gift Godsent thee,
my hardihood's husky, heart hungover with honesty.
I inscribe impenetrable insights, my individuality's
inanimate without improvisation,
other jaws jabber jargon jokingly, my journalistic journey's
like Jesus's justifications.
I know to keep with Christ a close kinship,
lie low then leap to light life is limited.
Maturing moderately I molded motives to mentally
manufacture music,
now naturally notions are necessary, abnormal novelistic natuarlist.
It's obvious this optimist ovulates obscure poetic offsprings,
perception pastel's perfectly personify the pen pusher's
potentcy passionately.
You're quasi qualified like Franz Kafka no question,
respectable written reflection ramble rampant even while resting.
Some scorn and show sentiment towards sonnets I've
scriptured successfully,
the toungue-tied troubadour tallies towering totals of
synchronized terms intentionally.
My untimatum is ultimately unrivaled when using unbreakable
utensils,
my voice vibrates vigorously, visionary with a victorious view.
Why waste what you wrote, wake up, wonder in a writer zone,
poems have vibes like a xylophone.
Heart young, yearn for God 365 times a year,
my zodac is wrong, attitude zealous.
It is from my thoughts you have come
It is from within sensation that you have become
Yet…It is I who feels brought, it is I who is befalling,
Transpiring into what is beyond sentiment
Grasped in your presence, that in form is
A cloverleaf, an intersection of all
Realities and chimeras
Yet…In feeling, it is the winter, summer, autumn
And spring that season my years
Imane… afar the distances I yearn to reach, upon
The horizons of your outlying skies…
Shall we meet one day?
Or is it only the tip of my pen that foresees?
I shall only linger…upon these many pages
-Imane: An Arabic female given name which means Faith; Pronounced (E.man).
-Imane is the main character of a novel I happen to be writing. I have never been in such
marvelous experience before :)
Each year
I met September
with its calico seals of Samhain
slain in a fair death
and bled by symptoms of naked hours
and loneliness.
I shivered with
a strange dread,
not of predator or prey
but the threat
of being siphoned too deeply,
into a predictable, mass identity.
I found myself swathed
in an impatient void
where sepia changelings
twisted against wind
in contempt of order
and the chronological sequences
of life and death
and I listened
to the rebellious gossip
of familiar moon-light Chimeras
edged with infant shadows.
I was enchanted
by the chaplains of the night
and the deacons of depression
that taught me a kinship
with black sheep
and the dead.
Perhaps I should have obeyed
the wisdom of the herd,
and worshiped
the pathogenic scriptures
of text-book institutions...
focused my eyes ahead,
my mind on predetermined points
my thoughts on the packaged values
of dead heros.
The world would have loved me
if I had fed into its perception
of human perfection
instead of showing it
its potential for failure...
there are no heroes
without the herd.
I could have left the insanity
of my adolescence behind
instead of clinging to
ashes and an ember
of left-over youth
tucked into a heavy envelope
and sealed with the promise
of an inferno.
Cycloidal forms transmuting to the involute
obduration under duress a malleable direction
coming to nothing just the gearing of time
Spartan gates left open to a millennium of thought
three legged animals given there a soft palfrey canter
air floating fish seen and their no need water
still the rusting coulter rusts and rusts
the power such lasciviousness constant thought
why would a simple man under go such agglomeration
deracinate weak seeming silly there the confederations
let us all sharpen so freeing all thought
fools are fools concomitant if you will keep with it
monsters lovely chimeras and beauty
entering the world of Hieronymus Bosch
let us not be reduced to the witch of Buchenwald
interweaving ourselves into their existence
October Thirty-first
creature after creature
carefully finding their way to your
chaotic world
cyclops and
chimeras
carelessly chasing humans around like toys
camazotzs and
coinchenns
cramming young human and animal flesh into their
considerably terrifying muzzles
creatures creeping around every
corner
caged in the coldest part of hell
circumvented for one day of every year
circumspect the worse for
creatures are free on
October thirty-first
recklessly chaotic surrender
midway untrained assimilating
thought patterns struck by twilit
idiosyncratic contractions'
irrational heart dotted i's
of contradictory falsities,
pushing past buttoned loops
orchestrating emotional surges
coasting sideways 'twixt
high as kites' paroxysm
saw Jesus before bloom
was off rose's thornily
fumbled holy water's
bloody crucified testaments
mid looking glass passion
of hysterics death's rallies
standing on sidelines
musing boxed refrains'
hallucinated confusion,
wholly plummeting
metaphorical indulgences
nonsensically dissuading
inartistic translations
of rhetorical persuasions
forfeiting divine secrets
halfway bent chimeras,
trashing an otherwise ominous
shrill screeching revenant
expediting manifested
liquidizing bastardizations'
bantered escapism,
like belladonna and nightshade
intoxication wickedly exigent,
trilling motley eclipses of
darkly boggled gray fog nuclei
burlesquing a bohemian scaramouche
furthermost an elusive raptus seizing
rhapsodically serpentine delusions
There was an era long ago,
When dreams could freely age and grow.
But seasons turn,
And times discern
A change in dreaming winds that blow.
The crippled compass now divorced,
With careless chimeras endorsed,
The thoughts surpassed
The shattered glass
Of dreamer's mind now reinforced.
The vague veracity of truth,
Exists in uncorrupted youth.
The frail romance
Of time and chance
Reforms the wilderness with couth.
Instinctively, like nature's brood,
We undergo the shifting moods
Of Moirai's will,
A monstrous hill,
Until we fall and thus conclude:
This destinationless campaign,
Without the dreams is rendered vain.
And soon we see
That dreams are free;
And hence we flee from fortune's chain,
The fetters of our mind's domain.
Vagabond Reveries
I awoke one apple-ripe autumn afternoon,
While shifting my necessity to care, dreaming,
To gaze upon the twisting trail in reveries of untethered reality
A quest for halcyon enigmas that chased me into cloudy castles.
And glancing back over fields of maize and green apple trees
I dreamt of meandering - suntanned faces, gentle eyes,
Campfire stories told in stargazer mists on childhood summer nights
Country roads and country stores with squeaky hinged screen doors.
I saw through mists kaleidoscopes of skyscraping cities, living postcards,
Steaming, groaning, sweating-swaying -
Crowded avenues named aspiration and pipedreams of working faces
Pushed into honeycombs of question’s smoke reflecting my reflection.
Through gossamer fleeting fragments rumbled symphonies
In movements of freight cars and highway hum
Vagabonds of REM sleeping tugged at chugging feasts
Of my winter-spring planned fetes and wakes and festival jubilees.
A wispy scent of reminisce felt the rushing, ever rushing, sun
Dashing headlong ahead of earth in my wishing stars
Pulling earth like a dawdling toddler running into chimeras of
Fleeting dawns and uncatchable dusky time in taunted moonlit glee.
Stormy darkness of gypsy memories throbbed in lightning flashes
Illuminated my godless thundering regrets
On wild midnights stumbling through windswept briar tangled valleys,
Soul soaking rains of prodigal shame, and I remember waking to grace.
9-4-21
Contest: "V" New or Old
Sponsor: Constance La France
1-23-23
Contest: Poetry Marathon Mile 24
Sponsor: Mark Toney
24 Lines
Take a gun, give it to me
And just teach to pull the trigger.
My chimeras will be free
And my life will be a fee
For their happiness and freedom.
Give me arms and get away!
I won`t fail to hit my target.
Am I Hatter or White Rabbit?
It`ll be a banner day.
Bang! The kiss is quick and hot.
Feeling steel lips of the bullet…
And my heart is slowly cooling.
Don`t you think it`s a good shot?
Should I ask for their mercy?
Must I cast my pearls before swine
Just in order to feel cozy?
No, I`m quarrelsome and noisy.
I am greedy. The pearls are mine.
Bang! It`s all the same for me now
Who will read and write my nonsense.
Why can`t I once make a great row?
Let me speak aloud. You know how
Much I wish it… Just read my poems.
Running after chimeras
I realised not that
Life's most precious essence
Was being left behind
Racing against time
I strived to rule over oceans
And to have rose gardens
Blooming in their midst
And each time I would look at my portrait
I would shudder
As the painting was getting old
And little insects had even started
To nimble at it
Time was eating me up
Time was dancing joyfully over my thirst
For that which was not fated to be mine
And like an angry demon
It kept rejoicing at the pain that
Was slowly breaking me into pieces
But then
I just stopped in my race,
Looked all around me
And flipped the hourglass
Before throwing my portrait into a fire
And igniting a flame with its residue
In my very own heart
Life is not meant to be a channel to assuage
Our greedy monster growling inside of us
But life is an opportunity to make
Of our stay in this realm
One worthy of being remembered
For the way we treated others all around us
The flipped hourglass had me running backwards
To where nature was revered
And simplicity was worn as a crown
There where smiles sparkled
And trust shined on
There where I could sit
And watch waves peacefully,
Content and satisfied at the gifts that are my own due!
Written on 1st Feb 2022
For Contest Pick A Title Vol 28
Sponsored by Edward Ibeh
A bejeweled chimera stalks
dreamtime woodlands,
a creature conjured by archetype
who lives in the onyx waters of the unconscious.
Turquoise and white in feathered splendor,
chimera understands the human condition;
breeds within her own offspring
allowing mortals to overcome challenges,
for it is in her realm that
we recognize our true selves.
Jewels of spirit
in a material realm,
birthed from a cosmic mind
into physical reality;
chimeras, we.
4-1-2021
This or That, Vol 1 Poetry Contest
Edward Ibeh
Chimera’s are mythical creatures composed of two or more parts.
Sagittarius, by example, is shown: to be made of both man and horse.
But Myths are not found among the living, except in the mind and art.
For where is the mermaid and her siren song found? Nowhere, of course!
Fiction has brought us fantasies, though life is stranger than fiction, I think.
For, now they’ve found the butterfly is in its life, two very separate beings.
Two separate strands of DNA work at different times within this missing link.
One is for the caterpillar, while the other is for the butterfly’s wings to bring.
One must die, or so they say, to allow the metamorphosis to bring the other to life.
But if they say one is dying… I think not… perchance it dreams, or does it sleep?
Or is this like the Phoenix that dies in flames, to again be reborn amid the strife?
Next time you hold a caterpillar or a butterfly in your hand… think about this leap.
Imagine all the wonder of their secret lives, and all that this can mean.
Not only is it a miracle, but perchance a place where we have found our dreams.