Best Congealed Poems
As blood was drawn, the rills of scarlet dripped
to fill the calamus with crimson brine,
and from the wound, I penned each fated line
in livid verse that bled to tortured script.
The blood turned black as letters spilled in rage
and with each word I begged this ire to still,
but anguished tears imbued the feathered quill
as bitter prose congealed upon the page.
Though memories indulged with sweet delight,
your indiscretions tempered not with time.
When selfish want consents to carnal sin,
the heart that breaks will fester in despite.
And as my blood ran dry in sanguine rhyme,
the passion ceased and thus, I died within.
Categories:
congealed, allusion, anger, angst,
Form:
Sonnet
When the rain comes in blunt despair
With swords of Thor's thunderous wield
The clouds drape darkness everywhere
As light surrendered, as hope kneeled
Where desolated gloom revealed
A drab landscape that once was fair
Limbs barren in deserted fields
When the rain comes in blunt despair
Drowning sunsets in silver flares
Tomorrow's rainbows lie concealed
In mazes of charcoal nightmares
With swords of Thor's thunderous wield
This is where all your heroes yield
To stars laden in disrepair
Where souls sink, murky and congealed
The clouds drape darkness everywhere
When suns are lost and moons are rare
The mornings cut apart and peeled
The sky is strangely unaware
As light surrendered, as hope kneeled
When shelter remains unrevealed
And the horizon appears bare
Allow me to become your shield
Against the snare of sharpened air
When the rain comes
3/11/23
Categories:
congealed, depression, loneliness, metaphor,
Form:
Rondeau Redouble
Marred and minced remnants pile high in a storm’s swarm
Yesterdays, hardened-soft, surface where sea’s warm…
Flotsam found, lays tales around, in frayed traces
Another shattered shell whimpers of graces
vying with the sea-swept sands: gloss embossed fades…
Ocean’s dead! These are castaways of Hades,
rid of depth, stranded upon the dry shallow
Interred where the sun bleaches out the shadows
till whitened ivory fills cavern’s echo:
enmeshed lime, crunching upon errors callow
Jazz died - June’s sun sank into august abyss…
Undertow currents ceased their torments of bliss
Nipped life, silenced like frothing foam vacuum-sealed,
kept smothered in an opaque ocean congealed…
Yard junked, Neptune’s home’s now a derelict mess
and yet he clings to the crap amassed, crownless
Right always, up to the end --------- that no return.
Death will erase the un-sunk bones when they burn
(10/3/2019: '90 Sea Ray DA 350; Discovery Park; ‘my favorite junkyard’)
Categories:
congealed, allusion,
Form:
Masnavi
" Amid the jagged shadows of mossy leafless boughs"
- Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Gold tinged paints dripped from the air,
under the clear opalescent autumn sky,
jade foliage turned to full-bloom flower,
I flew my heart like a bird over the canopy.
The canopy of your allure so beguiling
took me to the enticing heights of ecstasy.
The nest we built in the cleft of boughs
glistened in love-laced moonshine night.
Night of strife surged a wrecking storm,
the nest crumbled to debris of despair.
You flew away to the sunny sky obscure,
left me to suffer in the spasm of winter.
Winter frost slithered with the north wind
to desolateness of the defoliated boughs.
I felt my love freeze in the congealed heart
amid the jagged shadow of broken wings.
" Without love, we are birds with broken wings"
- Mitch Albom
November 28, 2019
For Brian Strand's Contest A Brian Strand July 12
Categories:
congealed, analogy, bird, lost love,
Form:
Free verse
I bent over to touch my toes
and the ground tore open like a backbone.
I tried to feed myself the sky;
to splice my tearducts into the universe
so that, when the pavement cried, it would mean something to me.
My fingernails punctured that slimy membrane
congealed with stars,
and I brought a slice of it to my lips,
hot and slippery like a jellyfish.
Peach juice, chalky-sweet, flowed,
fleshy particles snagged in my teeth,
and the colors erupted within my mouth.
Synthesia took over my lungs.
The hollows between my knuckles flooded with synovia
and all the ectoplasm threatened to separate from my cells
with a sound like thunder.
Diphthong tasted rusty like leukoplakia as it tiptoed across my tongue.
Tomorrow rose like the skeletons of trees,
groping for a feeling similar to catharsis
[catharsis tender as the broken wings of doves,
crunching underfoot like shattered glass.]
The clouds opened their thunderous maws
- teeth snicker-snacking, lamplight-eyes flaming the color of E#'s -
and consumed me.
I felt my skin turn to something other than skin:
thick and rough with scales,
my fingerprints melting into something waxen, smooth and opaque,
like pomegranate kisses on coffee mugs.
A feeling ignited deep in my structure;
cedillas blossoming like lilies from my lips,
fragmented sentences stretching taut as guitar strings
between my thumb and forefingers.
A flutter gentle and demonic as Calcifer erupted from my system
- splattering hot and frothing into my hand -
and fluid rushed in.
I dared to taste oblivion,
and the sky swallowed me.
My lungs failed to be lungs.
They flooded with caustic matter,
and I coughed up reflections sharp as fiberglass;
fighting with organs phthisical and sore.
I struggled to find a way to describe it:
the feeling of consuming something greater than yourself,
of opening your eyes and tasting the sound of rain.
It was like swimming,
but inside out.
I bent over to touch my toes,
and my spine tore open;
the loose laces unraveling, veterbrae poking out
like the tines of forks.
I tried to contort myself into the beginning,
but I only found where I end.
Categories:
congealed, allegory, confusion, depression, fantasy,
Form:
Free verse
What's a single mom, overworked witch to do?
School potlucks won't suck up fat vats of witch brew
Green goop soup disinfects science projects
Magic wand deflects coupon blonde's rejects
Soccer field congealed, frogs in fish tanks
Your warlock son mocks the jocks with dark pranks
Your daughter barters love potions, your cat's a Clydesdale
Your cauldron is maudlin; no time for witchy cocktails
There's hearses to disperse, fortunes to curse
Restless pests - even witches need a nurse!
You've cobwebs to thread, graves to rake
Sugar greedy goblins to scare straight
No spells to swell your apothecary
Your broomstick's picked other places to be...
10/28/19
For 'Itch, Witch, Glitch or Twitch' contest
Sponsor: Nina Parmenter
Placed 7th
Categories:
congealed, funny, halloween, mom, school,
Form:
Rhyme
I tiptoe through empty rooms,
lest my footsteps evoke his presence.
I gaze at cracked linoleum,
still bearing marks
worn into it by the old table legs.
Mother's face floats through
the smoky windowpane,
her sorrowful eyes pleading.
Neil stares downward
at the uneaten food
congealed on his plate.
Sarah's face is buried
in a limp rag doll,
clutched to her breast.
I glance down the hall,
past the bedroom.
I will not go in there.
No need to visit old pain.
I turn my back
to the silent, cold house
and walk away from my past.
Categories:
congealed, betrayal, memory,
Form:
Free verse
Has my breath of life expired?
My will congealed
No longer is there a fire ablaze, only a mere pile of smoldering ashes Waiting for a gust of hope from a van of an angels wing to
Reignite me!!
I don’t believe in quittances.
I’ve grown mute to the whispers that surround me
Thoughts in braille; unfelt
Unbeknownst darkness has stolen my sunshine
A cuddling pet name, once adored, now froths at the heart
The patriarch is old and withering; yet still carries the vigor & roar of a young lion
And here I stand on charred timber limbs
Tar seeping from every pore, collecting me into this web of darkness
Too many years I’ve wasted in this labyrinth, drowning in my own womb; wishing for some knight to free me my from the entanglements
No longer am I willing to live in this catacomb, amongst my skeletons and beloveds
Trapped in this dark maze, I must rip through this veil of dust and find my way back to the garden
Categories:
congealed, abuse, bereavement, conflict, deep,
Form:
Verse
Shall I liken you to a corpse bouquet?
You are certainly ripe and more fetid.
The fond zephyrs of May waft your decay
Up the addled noses of us wretched
Hordes famished for flesh, lurching on the moor,
And me amongst them clawing to your scent
Putrix beyond the spitty chum’s allure
Propels me well beyond routine ferment
To you, though Fate’s sickle blade shall flail
My congealed member’s once firm resolve,
And fire inflames us just shy of the pale,
Our passion will continue to devolve.
Ever, shall she be my prime cadaver,
O to undie again, and to have her!
Categories:
congealed, death, first love,
Form:
Sonnet
In the splendorous sapphire space of my pristine heart,
shimmering in the sanctified radiance of the indigo night,
you gleamed like seraphic sequins of argentine moondust,
making me feel fascinated as I sensed your cerulean sheen.
My heart morphed into a mesmeric turquoise lake,
where the rose petals flying from my garden floated
with the reflection of the facsimile of your floral face.
My soaring spirit engraved the beauty of heavenly intuition.
My heart swathed by the silver streaks of stardust sparkle,
pulsated at its crescendo with the concerto of ecstasy,
where the beauty of your enticing ballet I saw imaged.
Suffused with moonshine my mind mirrored your charm.
My mind became resplendent replica of memory montage,
as the platonic pattern of heavenly love’s perception
configured the enticement image in kaleidoscopic collage.
where the unsoiled mirror of my heart reflected your beauty.
My yearning blazed in the inferno of your essence,
with the winged blizzard of winter the flame flew away,
turning the mind to extinguished embers of afflicted past,
piling up in debris of remembrance, swathed by gloomy ash.
On the weary wings of the winter of dire discontent,
wafting in wilderness on the polar winds of despair
the wilted leaves of my languishing longing
blew away rustling into the obscure realm of nowhere.
My yearning turned into glacial embrace of aggravation,
you flew away from the congealed fold of beleaguered love.
Forsaken in the freezing darkness of the arctic nest,
I live with the frozen feather you left in my plagued memories.
Categories:
congealed, analogy, lost love, memory,
Form:
Free verse
I like the accidental,
incidental
way- the mist kisses and lifts from the timberline,
like angelic lung
that breathes it all in,
drifts to the next flowering,
a honey bee in a land of fairy as our heart's
flutter and are arrow stung, eros strung.
The way the sun facets its beam in
shutter glistened wink,
balance hung in the cascadency of echo-system,
beats, chirps, wakings strummed.
How loving that the lens is left open to show
we are live radiantly in a song and not alone,
not a curse of one.
I like how food just happens to be,
a bounty of giving,
a consistent conglomeration congealed upon itself
and presented as social happenstance
of living happened stance,
aroma of heart lance of delicious varietal trance
of sustenance.
In colors decadent,
juices, magnificent enough to be
a cuisine, cuisinart machinery.
I like the sunrise, how it presents itself in
a theatrical opening credit,
the greeting anew, all be it-
the salutationed dew, sparkling,
chirping song-ward, music impending-
foreshadowed-Mother's teet
sending milk in perfect flow,
"in a brilliance of only One who is in the know".
A verse spoken long-words tokened in a windswept mansions of Holy dimensions-vowed.
In patterned tale cameowed mosaic chord
of harmonic scale to tell, the sunset to bow.
the grandeur of a days production,
setting silhouette cast and an amen
and again by the moon to watchover as sentinel
who keeps watch for,
in the promise of dawn,
in wait, stagelight
drawing ready
to perform from- behind the curtain again.
Aint It Funny How It Is.
Categories:
congealed, art,
Form:
Rhyme
Child mind with red apple cheeks,
and brilliant eyes.
Do you wish to taste my mud cake?
Unclean hands,
picking the first dandelion of spring.
Found a stone that flashes silver -
a valuable treasure
Studying an anthill,
a large dome-shaped pile of pine needles.
Look, an earthworm, it's a friend.
Scrapes and bruises on the knees doesn't matter,
the blood has congealed hours ago.
Climbing up a huge tree,
can almost touch the moon.
A child isn’t afraid to explore.
Ouch, a splinter in the finger.
Mom will fix it when I come home.
Life doesn’t have to be complicated.
Many times it is not the wound itself
that needs the most care and attention.
Categories:
congealed, childhood, children, memory,
Form:
Free verse
LAME GOODBYE
‘Twas the night before Christmas,
like all the years that went before
the whole city seemed to throng en masse
in the sparkling Park street drawn by its lure.
In the translucent sky of the congealed night
the stars had all faded away in the glow galore
of the dazzling neons on the walkway bright.
Radiant faces glowed in joy of the night before.
Flowing out of endless stream of jostling crowd
in a bar my friend and I sought out a corner cozy.
Under the spell of flashing lights and music loud
counting the pegs shooting the head wasn’t easy.
Landing on wrong steps while going out elevated
I slipped, tinsel street turned dust, filled my eye.
With the bruised mind and a fractured leg on bed
I painfully bade that Christmas a lame goodbye.
November 27, 2018
Categories:
congealed, christmas, farewell, goodbye, sorrow,
Form:
Rhyme
time stops to slip in ebony night,
emotive clock freezes
eternal pathos in congealed instants,
silhouetted in the shadow of past,
smears the strata of darkness,
designed to disguise perception lattice
Categories:
congealed, emotions, sorrow, time,
Form:
Free verse
I pushed at the open door
no sound
just darkness inside.
Dust filtered my
nostrils,
a mustiness of lost years
inhabited my senses.
A loose floorboard
creaked in the stairwell,
the aroma
of her Chanel provoked memories
of my
living hell.
A tear of self-pity congealed
in the dirt at my feet
I switched on the light
"Hello son
I knew you'd be back;
He's gone..."
Categories:
congealed, poetry, word play,
Form:
Prose Poetry