Best Compete Poems
Lingering rays of sunlight slowly die
as scarlet burns the sky, where clouds ignite.
And while the birds roost, bats begin to fly,
capturing elusive moths in mid-flight.
Luna hangs high in an ebony sky,
spinning dreams into beams of golden light.
And twinkling stars, like fireflies in the night,
confetti the heavens, dazzling the eye.
Like gold filigree, pinned to the darkness:
galaxies adorn the heavens above,
and shooting stars unzip the black of space.
Yet, Man stands unabashed in His starkness,
for Nature's beauty can't compete with love;
an emotion intrinsic to His race.
How does one compete with a Frost or a Keats,
a Dickinson or Whitman for words,
how can we say in our language today
what we feel within has been stirred.
Like those in our past who intrinsically grasped
the secrets to living and more,
their visions, dreams, and ideas it seems
came through their own secret doors.
I make no pretense I could ever dispense
the levels of beauty they wrought,
Wordsworth, Thoreau, Tennyson, and Poe
A sampling of pure genius thought.
The list could on from Homer to Donne,
Psalms to Shakespeare and Blake,
but this I know well, they cast quite at a spell
on this amateur poet of late.
I beg their forgiveness to think that I may
hold a candle to a stanza or line,
that any one of them penned, each one a Godsend,
still echoing throughout time.
Dare I call them “exalted ones”
though fading voices by and by,
I wonder if in one hundred years
will they still bring smiles and sighs?
Will the books remain with all their names,
and thoughts and deeds be told,
will some still grasp the readers task
is to open wide one’s soul?
I rest my case here in this place
for answers befuddle me,
but I for one am glad they came
and left their lasting, loving legacies.
Words whispered into bullet holes in motel walls
how reliable are they?
They mean less than they did once upon a mattress
or underneath it perhaps.
Words bullying and strutting
Make no difference
when a mean one comes for you.
Words cannot compete with health.
I used to think otherwise but there are
so many interactive systems it is impossible
to cut out pieces or make sense of mere words
due to the fierceness of the illness presentation
which has no names but a variety of horrible
symptoms that keep me from finding me.
ON LONELINESS
Simply gaze around
what do you see?
I see nothing and am deaf to an offensive sound
and that's precisely the eay I want it to be
lonely people alone in a strange place
all of us have nothing of substance to do
its sort of like a ninety mile race
and i'd forget about me were I you
they speak but the subjects are obscure
and this is what i've been ordered to endure
ordered by my Lord to tell you there ain't no cure
not for a man like me who is impure
so forget me miss but I must take my leave
ordered by my Lord incarnate
everything i've written you can believe
because I ain't nothing but a traveler's bait
© 2012....copyright PHREEPOETREE ~free cee
From prehistoric stone there was sharpened a point then a spike:
chiselled and engraved and hoisted and thrust,
raised high above men toward a target lofty, afar in a field.
Competitors rose from primordial waters,
harpooning dreams and dripping ambition,
tired and bruised but practiced and hopeful.
Javelin was once rock was once bone was once wood
is now painted is now plastic - from caveman to athlete
from mammoth beater to medal winner.
From grey pebble there became arrow,
from misstep there became podium
and a golden first-place pedestal.
Nature compares but classes
Are imminent and permanent
In levity of stratified system.
Even when a cat kills and eats
A rat it can't be equal
To a lion in the jungle.
Hunting speedy antelope
They may both be carnivores
But one is king of the jungle.
Follow your heart, to thyself be true
do not fear the coming of the day
when you compete with no one, no one can compete with you
See the gray as gray, the blue as blue
your eyes are your greatest gift, don’t let them slip away
follow your heart, to thyself be true
Men will argue, women will croon
but in your mind the decision will be made
when you compete with no one, no one can compete with you
Ghosts from without and from within will try to spook you
but you need never feel afraid
follow your heart, to thyself be true
Strangers try to hold you down and keep you to the rules
but it does not matter what they have to say!
When you compete with no one, no one compete with you
You are the maestro, call the tune
and your symphony you shall hear the whole world play
follow your heart, to thyself be true
when you compete with no one, no one can compete with you.
..I cannot compete with YOUTH, it will take me years to get back,
I cannot compete with BEAUTY, 'coz I know later it will only sag,
I cannot compete with DISTANCE, even with TIME, it'll just pass,
I can only compete with 'ME' & the LOVE I know that surely lasts! ...xoxo
Could chronic stress,
like sleep deprivation,
noise and light and air pollution
also derive
by avoiding barely still alive
high-risk trauma messes?
Sometimes sadly beginning
prior to economic and political puberty
Including multi-generational suppression
misogynistic sex tensions
and monotheistic depression
and homophobic repression,
hateful Othering paranoid impressions,
chronic monocultural climate despair,
uncivil disinvested oppressions
Endarkened
by a popular FirstWorld
anthro-privileged
secularizing, dividing, dissociating
evolutionary theory
of mutual assured predation
damnation
degenerating ecosystemic deflation,
ecocidal extinction
of once sacred synergetic EarthLove
elation
Or at least
co-empowering messianic missions
for restoring EarthJustice
mental ego-health is physical eco-wealth
co-relations.
So, go on
all RightWing
WrongHeaded;
service yourself!
But
I doubt you will find
your God's RightHand solipsism
resiliently satisfying
much less sacredly edifying.
Uncovering ecofeminists
and recovering peace mediators
are done being your ***** punishing bag!
Your indigenous justice
community resonance hag!
Did I hear that out loud?
Oh, any polypathic way,
Does chronic lifetime-anxiety disorder,
win/lose competitive stress,
contribute to multi-generational high-risk trauma histories?
Sometimes beginning long before adult maturing transition
from Either/Or fundamentalist childlike conditions
not Both/And exploring inside/outside
neuro-sensory double-boundaries
in-between healthy, mature win/win resonance
and lose/lose despairing dissonance,
positively and negatively
therapeutically and traumatically
correlated
In older adults
sometimes producing increased market risks
and opportunities of dementia,
with unfortunate paranoid demise
Rather than fortunate co-invested
peaceful
pleasured
mindbody post-traumatic surprise
of warm unconditional outcomes
in win/win Paradise.
How do I compete against M.S.? How do I win a losing battle?
Just knowing I'm forever getting killed... Over my mistakes...
and to all those I Love... especially to my Boy's...
I deserve it all! I hope this is my reimbursement... My Karma...
Paying for all my Hate... Anger... and my Lies...
So no one feel sorry for me... Unfortunately it is for my Loved ones...
To deal with... and clean up after... I am truly sorry...
That you all have to deal with... Any of it!!!
Form:
Sappho fragment #2
translation by Michael R. Burch
How can I compete with that damned man
who fancies himself one of the gods,
impressing you with his "eloquence" ...
when just the thought of sitting in your radiant presence,
of hearing your lovely voice and lively laughter,
sets my heart hammering at my breast?
Hell, when I catch just a quick glimpse of you,
I'm left speechless, tongue-tied,
and immediately a blush like a delicate flame reddens my skin.
Then my vision dims with tears,
my ears ring,
I sweat profusely,
and every muscle in my body trembles.
When the blood finally settles,
I grow paler than summer grass,
till in my exhausted madness,
I'm as limp as the dead.
And yet I must risk all, being bereft without you ...
Sappho of Lesbos was so highly regarded by her peers that she was called The Tenth Muse. That was high praise indeed, because the other nine Muses were goddesses! Sappho has given us our terms "sapphic" and "lesbian." And she wrote the first "make love, not war" poem more than 2,500 years ago! She was ahead of her time, and probably ours as well. Keywords/Tags: Sappho of Lesbos, Sapphic, Greece, Greek, translation, woman, women, girl, girls, girlfriends, love, lovers, lesbian, homosexual, passion, desire, longing, lust, sex, sexy, sensual, sensuous, relationship
SAPPHO'S POEMS FOR ATTIS AND ANACTORIA
Most of Sappho's poems are fragments but the first poem below, variously titled "The Anactoria Poem, " "Helen's Eidolon" and "Some People Say" is largely intact. Was Sappho the author of the world's first 'make love, not war' poem?
Some People Say
Sappho, fragment 16 (Lobel-Page 16 / Voigt 16)
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch
Warriors on rearing chargers,
columns of infantry,
fleets of warships:
some call these the dark earth's redeeming visions.
But I say—
the one I desire.
Nor am I unique,
since she who so vastly surpassed all mortals in beauty
—Helen—
seduced by Aphrodite, led astray by desire,
departed for distant Troy,
abandoned her celebrated husband,
turned her back on her parents and child!
Her story reminds me of Anactoria,
who has also departed,
and whose lively dancing and lovely face
I would rather see than all the horsemen and war-chariots of the Lydians,
or their columns of infantry parading in flashing armor.
The stars compete for position –
Floating their weight on for connection;
As it’s always hard to live alone - Forming eclipses by relation;
Never caring when to take precaution –
Conscience is not theirs for correction:
The stars do pose for attention –
Looking down on the earth; where she places no restriction.
Never retreat, but ever try
Though you may badly fail
Let efforts reach the Sky,
To give God a pleading mail,
It is better to pray, never cry
As prayer will always prevail,
Attempt like the Sea-wave
Tempt may fear to enslave
With contempt, give it a grave
The problem you must face
And solve it with skill
Find out remedial ways
With an indomitable will
God is with you always
Prayer is a sacred pill!
Then leave it Slowly. goes up and up in the air. Fly in the sky wholly
Compete with the birds If its tail cuts down better 'the head will splash by.
Buy it by money. You must not think a degree. It's a kite, honey.
Capital Growing valuables,
liquid and solid infrastructural,
are also sacred AnthroElder artifacts for
Future cooperative co-investment,
health preferring multicultural control
over thoughtlessly biased
ego left hemisphere privileged
AnthroSupremacist competitions
with other
lesser beings
competitively anxious
about sufficiency of Earth's healthy systemic limits
on perpetual economic
anti-ecologically dissonant
Over-development
of remaining
positively deviant
multiculturally resilient health care systems
giving and polyculturally receiving
back to pre-historic timeless time
regenerating win/win cooperative
EarthMatriarchal
domestically nonhistoric
everyday sensory-neural experiences
of resilient bliss
seldom captured inside historically sanctified
patriotic national identity development
Non left-hemisphere dominant
yet felt Warm Wet Wombing
WorldWide Webbing
interdependently reweaving Stories of
Climate health potential
through Cooperative Rule GoldStandards
for multiculturally AnthroCentric optimization
of resilient health,
as left-hemisphere appreciated
and robustly co-invested
in right-hemisphere eco-political
interdependently inclusive
Democratic wealth
looks and feels quite different
than StraightWhitePrivilegedPatriarchalism
Business as WestBrain EmpireBuilding Usual
YangPower v YintegralEnlightenment,
RightWing discameral imbalance;
Threat to climates of resilient Health
right here and now
in globally interdependent
healthy communication history,
Whose messaging could you discern
interweaving trust
and mistrust
and active distrust
From which sources
and resources
do you listen?
and draw
and most intelligently
Bicamerally design
for cooperative,
Liberal liberating love
for mutual co-investment
in multicultural wealth
political win/win healthy
empowering enlightened resonance,
emergent green democratic resilience,
Non-violently cooperative
socio-economic capital growing valuables,
liquid yintegral and solid yang infrastructural,
are also sacred AnthroElder artifacts for
Future extended family's
cooperative economic health
ecological wealth
in cooperative ecopolitical investments.