Best Circumstance Poems
"Cruel birds—ravens—but wise. And creatures should be loved for their wisdom if they cannot be loved for kindness."
- Hannah Kent
My lover's demons are like ravenous ravens.
Her love is a hand grenade triggering exploding emotions,
massacring words into silent suppression
but beyond the threshold of her eyes,
there's a scarlet love silhouette,
hoping upon hope for expression,
to reset her reality - to express her freedom of spirit.
I ask the one who feels the tremors of my heart,
why are you afraid of happiness?
We were not made to be broken,
yet we fracture a little everyday.
Although you are fragile like a paper plane,
the world with you and me can soar
against turbulence in the world's playground.
In darkness I'll be your harbinger of crescent moons,
as my heart is a complex phenomenon,
yearning to be special in your ordinary sighs.
I hunger for you to leave me breathless,
as internal invisible wounds don't heal,
when we are lost in an ocean of souls,
but empathy has an evergreen effervescence,
so I'll radiate light into your wilted moonflower eyes,
watching them glow like dancing streetlights.
In the angst of absence and abandonment,
I've lost all desire to bleed,
searching for harmony in music's salvation,
but it only brings broken strings,
as I'm sleeping to the rhythm of heartache.
My muse serenades in melancholic melodies,
composing a confusing chaos concerto,
searching for pamphlets of medleys
with symphonies of pleasure.
What are we,
but poetic victims of circumstances,
versifying verses which unravel my mysteries.
Maybe in a peaceful tomorrow,
I'll write again,
but today,
I'll bathe in raindrops of hope,
illuminating in a rainbow of reveries.
I believe in magic when I envision your cathartic haze.
I know you are obsessed with forever,
but time silently escapes whilst we are apart.
If not in this temporary existence,
then in the afterlife, meet me in heaven,
where we can rise with eternal ethereal sunrises,
because your celestial eyes betray your mortal guise.
I could never write a poem as perfect as you.
With or without me,
we'll be immortally together in heartbeats,
where there is poetry,
there will always be love.
The ruffle of fleece at her neck
makes her feel manufactured, not born—
brushstrokes of windswept wool,
all soft edges and curves
the color of old milk.
Her lips were no artist's accident,
nor the smirk as she lurks
in the corner more knowing
than any ewe usually dares.
Coy smile, a pearled necklace
of fur and her hind-end musk—
drew the brown ram sniffing
while a dirt-faced ex-love nearby
chews through the cud to find
whatever’s left of her.
Closer to the cliff than either,
she teeters, grazing weeds
like the dutiful daughter of lamb stew,
like she doesn’t know the cost
of this life: skin blistered by sun,
meat slow roasted to melt
on the tongue, bones cracked
for their marrow, dreams curdled
and spun into the itchy arms
of some strayed-from-the-flock husband,
all too eager to forget
the warmth of her body.
But Clover knows better.
Knows that sheep go one of two ways—
a fireside comfort or the fire itself.
Knows the herd will go
where they are led,
always too late to see
the teeth of the cliff.
She stands alone,
the day's last shadows
pooling at her feet
masticating through daisies
and regrets. And then she leaps
toward the yellowing horizon
gathering salt-wind in her wool
along with the cliff-kissed breeze
of freedom that promises nothing
but the opposite direction.
God knows each heart that walks the streets, and then,
each sense of guilt caught up in false pretense.
How not to spend a tear at their expense
How do we not reflect what might have been
if circumstance had never been a friend?
If fate or chance might change the future, hence?
Their shoulders hunched, against cruel wind, intense.
Poor scavengers, who some call useless men
will migrate streets, in hopes for scraps of food.
A crumb, a nickel, dime, a place to find
A shelter dry, when frost of night is nigh.
And now I travel home, perhaps to brood
on cruelty of life that bodes unkind
to some. I cannot eat,...tonight I cry.
~
5/5/14
Miltonic Sonnet: For Contest
Resubmitted for Brian Strand's Contest: Mid August Premiere 8/11/18
An ant was digging in the dirt, he worked and toiled so long.
He looked upon the work he’d done and decided it was wrong.
He’d only made a little dent in a job that was too big,
so he decided to find some friends to help him with the dig.
He gathered up a couple mates and showed them all his plan,
to save their world from predators and that’s how it began.
Pretty soon the group he formed had made a giant stride,
in their quest to mine the earth and make a place to hide.
Other ants began to hear of what he planned to do,
each asked if they could lend a hand and be part of his crew.
More and more the ants joined in and worked with might and glee,
it wasn’t long before the group became a colony.
Ants with more experience helped share the things they learned,
the new guys did as they were taught, and respect is what they earned.
After all was said and done a mighty place they’d built,
they looked around to find that they’d moved lots of sand and silt.
More, in fact, than any single one of them could do,
the job was so big in fact it took more than a few.
And in this tale is wisdom that was drafted by the ants;
many hands make lighter work and help the circumstance.
Your thought-balloons are filled with wild and magical freedom ~
until madness seizes your think tank
trapping your ceaselessly chirping ideas
within the teeth of its snapped steel-jaws
refusing to relinquish you; lest you chew up and spit out your mind-racing brain
ire over this cognitive quagmire is quite understandable ~
like the murmuration of startled starlings
amassing in angst and taking wing
your thoughts, your second thoughts and afterthoughts
gather in pulsating dark masses
swirling into flight and shifting directions
turbulently twisting into tornadic spins
unable or unwilling to unravel and unwind
as they hurl themselves
in a pessimistic panic
through the maze of gray matter minefields
not wanting to explode their legs-to-stand-on should they alight...
...and despite butterfly nets vying to capture them
they are whirling dervishes twirling out of control --
holding your damnation in a state of suspended animation
Susan Ashley
March 24, 2018
In depth of circumstance, the heart shall write,
For senses, save one, deceive me tonight-
Pensive contemplation gives in to you,
While words, as they always are yours, flow through-
What she cannot fathom the heart consumes,
Tracing line after line, the passion blooms-
Oh, has this dream come to open my eyes,
To embellish your infinite surprise?
Life as we know it has changed—I feel it!
The heart loves all—she cannot conceal it!
Listen to her sing with the pulse of love,
To the rhythmic peace of the fervent dove-
She reaches for the heavy soul she finds,
Squeezing its worries, its heartaches, and binds-
It is you, oh soul, with your thirst for more,
That opens a world we can both explore.
My heart is being held prisoner
In her dungeon of coquettishness
She hasn’t fully rejected me
But my advances she coyly deflects
I haven’t given up all hope
She still smiles at my innuendos
But when I approach for a carnal dance
She just steps all over my toes
My heart is being held prisoner
In the shadows of doubt’s darkness
As if she is waiting for someone better
Before donning her wedding dress
I wish that I could just escape
To pursue another’s full acceptance
But it seems my heart is forever staked
To this unfortunate circumstance
For Timothy Lee
We skip and dance our love thru every chance.
My true love freed you, your true love freed me
and as a true we, we grow bright our free.
The greatest gift of our soulmate romance
is living sincere through time’s circumstance.
Immortal love does life authentic be
for sincere joins force with eternity
when love is glance-gold woven in advance.
Perhaps, no surely, we have loved before;
felt our souls merge deep within seeds of time.
Perhaps, no surely, reaped in each one’s core,
immortal love supports twin soulmates’ shine.
Every again, and new, thru my eye’s door,
I recognize that I have always been thine.
Circumstance of France
Circumflex
Global indifference
Uncaring bastards
For words and letters
Grammar and poetic letters
Stealing our roots, our tools
Our hats
Our very being
Taking us for fools
We shall overcome this injustice
As Rafael Padilla rose above his chains
So shall we restore our dignity
I fear if we left the kitchen
You'd steal our onions too
Have you no soul?
Do you know how cold the winter with no hat?
You say you are the Académie française
Yet you protect not the black letters on a page
Oh Chocolat! Oh Shame!
You care not for the revolution long ago
Nor do you care for the heart of Moliere
I of all
I am shocked
To be calling the language police
What comfort can you give a word with no hat to wear?
Have you no compassion, do you not care?
All my life I have dreaded that hat
Now that I have conquered my fear
You wish to behead the very essence of French
Have you no shame?
You wish to circumcise the grammar
Shorten the learning, make bad spelling no ones blame
I stand tall, atop the Eiffel tower
I shall protest you, flexing my circumference
Making you see the errors of your intolerance
To murder such a small hat
Of history
You only create misery
As I open yet another Bordeaux
The Circus died yet there is one clown left
Notes: This poem is about the removal of the ^ from certain letters in the French language, this was decided in 1990 but only has become “news” now. However like all great ideas I did intertwine others, if you care to guess, and the point of the poem is not to make a point but rather to stir a social discussion on the issues of today.
Dark clouds overhead
wind whipping the summer green...
thunderstorm arrives.
I may have, and you have not
But that choice was never mine.
While covet holds for what I’m not
With what I haven’t, I’ll be fine.
I was born, as who I am
Never born to grow as king
To be born as man, or as ma’am
Neither context I can bring
Raised within a circumstance
A condition unlike yours
No want towards another’s chance
No envy for their flaws.
Those cards you face I’ve never dealt
But I’d gladly have some in my fate
The course in which our tea leaves spelt
I couldn’t write upon your slate.
Congratulations for your life
Don’t condemn me on my own
I’d want your luck, but know there’s strife.
Only some are born with thrones.
* Just clearing the head
Longing looks or
furtive glances,
shuffling steps
or pony prances
Sheathing swords
and crossing lances
choices, actions
partners, dances
Living, loving
true romances,
fate and chance
or circumstances
When you belong somewhere, anywhere,
it’s surely because you fostered love there.
Whenever circumstance has you gone,
your individual light shines on.
When away, stillness shades your light’s trace
and I sincerely miss your dear face.
I wonder do you know, hold a clue,
that everywhere is where I miss you?
Though Circumstances in Life May...
Change my plans
Tire my body
Limit my finances
Challenge my fortitude
Increase my heartache
and Overflow my tears
They Will Not...
Define my character
Consume my thoughts
Mislead my direction
Steal my joy
Diminish my hope
or Break my spirit
God Will Use Them To...
Strengthen my faith
Anchor my emotions
Multiply my prayers
Transform my character
Prove His sufficiency
and Reflect His glory
In Their Midst, I Will...
Remember His promises
Obey His commands
Rely on His strength
Seek His will
Continue in service
and Discover His peace.
You are my guru my confidant my long lost friend
come to me now before you’re put to an end - Silence
You are an out law invaded upon by every conceivable means
marked for smuggling in peace and quiet behind the scenes - Silence
You are removing blinders and showing clearly the light of day
a safe stealth vessel keeping the propaganda pigs at bay - Silence
You are an imagined allegoric can opener exposing my soul
slicing through the polluted facade of my Tin Man role – Silence