Best Congealing Poems
The night is frosted glass.
Daylight’s clouds - restless like my love -
and scattered wildly heretofore -
somehow made a pact
to nimbly rearrange themselves.
Congealing in this chilling autumn eve -
translucent -
the clouds have blended in with dusk,
obliterating stars. . . and even shadows.
Luna, sad like me,
cannot transmit her moonlight
to cheer me.
Oh, to be again - bedeviled!
To see your unique come-hither smile;
to hear the sound of honey in your voice;
to feel that splendid tingle within me
as you shine your gorgeous eyes -
radiant upon me!
Where are you now, my love -
my sweet, alluring boy?
And where are the stars
that blazed for me within your eyes?
Where is the crystal nightfall
of my fondest dream?
Oh, to feel again. . . enraptured!
But not even the smallest gleam
of you remains.
And not even Goddess Moon
can penetrate
this deep abiding gloom.
A heart
Never used now
Shall die
Dying
A congealing
Dead beat
Beaten
Down to silence
Some where
Where pure
passions exist
Then flee
Fleeing
Soulless to hide
Now lone
Lonesome
Turns to fury
At heart
Heartless
Cold and hollow
Always
Rick Lamoureux's contest
"Mussetle Train"
A priest once told me that the lump
on my hand was a ganglion,
a fortress of fat besieged by health.
At last it burst and the hand swelled
like an old man's,
shovel shaped and splayed.
It was her black pan, butcher's meat,
too many eggs; backed up
on a plate like silage.
It was her slight hands shaking,
the constant poking with a bread knife,
the endless journey to the
first biscuit from the pack;
a menace that caught our hearts
and buttered them,
teeth marks, crusty.
Moreover, tomatoes,
pulpy and bloodlet,
burnt my wicked tongue,
purged a shard of shame,
dare I eat a box full
bedraggled in juices
and spitting at the angle of a chop kept?
Caked at the start in the corner
of the pan, beached in lard,
over fried, sole fit, chewed in discontent,
longing for more
between the acceptance of juices;
hope swallowed with brittle rashers,
timbered and gathered.
It was the thought, the deed,
the plan, the wait and duty of it.
Potatoes, eschonced in the pot, sullen, strewn;
a flaky hand sliced them deftly,
washed the starch off and raked them in.
It was sausages, flame ripped,
dashed, blackened and wedged
on the barbs of the fork,
heaved in with fried bread,
salty with froth.
It was puddings,
sinewed and cut crooked,
corpuscles of grizzle
congealing the blood,
jaws working the skin like the cud.
Eggs like ignoble sea creatures,
speckled and stiff,
surviving on the rise and fall of breath,
morphing into another gender
or something to wonder,
to chew on, to mention, once.
Perhaps a bean to lubricate,
to allow a channel of liberty
but still reheated to a lump,
a thankless sweetener to a morsel,
not unlike news.
Tea, besugared and welcome,
a scald to erode stubborn detritus,
a wash to emerge from.
Between mouthfuls of talk we glided,
sometimes low to the ground
near silence, seldom
scuttling to any real height.
I suppose that was left for
pipe and ***, in the latter end,
when all offence was shut up tight
and we had regard again;
the smoke curled up
and carried our souls,
and mingled, indiscernible
and flowed away.
Your cup is filled with
anger. Always a bitter
brew to be swallowed
Revenge will be your
soup de jour. It is a soup
that is best served cold
Disappointment sits
congealing on your dinner
plate. It rots the gut
Condemnation sits
aside the rest. Quick
to jump on the plate
Deceit rounds out the
meal. Bits of meanness too tough
to talk your way through
Bigotry is a
bread that when left to rise will
overrun the pan
Jealousy is your
just desserts. A green sour
grape confection bit
On the edge of metropolitan midnight
he lays in a breathless silence
rasping the evanescing yesterdays to his windows
both open and locked,
while the unknowing below in stale smoke barrooms,
wait to sear his wounds and retell his life
in putrefied requiem.
Abashed metropolis
echoing of muted voices once adorning the streets
in practiced synthetic ritual,
the vile awash and seeping through asphalt cracks,
the scent of rot, old and new, smattered on old brick edifices
silences the ascending smoke plumes
belched from and within dirtied concrete towers,
the final endeavor from within a dying mans spirit
reaching out to no one
City’s voice wails from the antechamber in darkness
anxieties fracturing the panes amongst the downtown fire
of urban panic
lucidity congealing away within him, kept only in the moment
by metronome dripped medicine
exposing him to his damp streets, dirtied culverts, sewer ditches
chemically induced and maintained.
Fighting for his identity within this sterilized chaos,
whispering for the few of open mind somewhere below the window sill,
quicky stepping onward, over his newsprint life,
calling out one last time
There he lays in cold white sterility,
calling silently to his windows, both opened and locked,
watching his stories catch and fade in the dull humid streetlight
wisped away on steam grate stale winds,
the dying soul, eyes closed, his aged lined face
muddied, scraped, and walked over,
through the grime of progression left on sullied pavement.
An herbaceous arbor
flanks the harbor
where he labors
fitting words to spaces --
blanks he fills, erases.
He savors bits of meaning,
sculpting sound to logic's shape,
annealing word and image,
polishing a verbal mound
congealing on his pad.
A bird chirps.
Song distracts.
A moment's lapse.
He compares the bird's
with his own work,
considers form and content,
sees the gaps,
tosses his dead page
into the water's murk.
My brother’s hand regarded not my words for, they go unheard, as the silence grows my brother’s hand clinches cold and my last words fall to the ground pooling, congealing into an unsatisfied thirst. The devils on horseback are led to the water, but never drinking, as the blackened house lies in ruin. I wonder about the tree in the forest and the forest without ears to hear and the tree never seen, but alas and alas every man. How does a machete make more noise and fire be heard on the other side of the world? It may have been bearable, but I am not alone and I know their words will never be heard for they are in my brother’s hand. 11/5/2014
Her bloodstained wedding dress clings to her shaking body
On the floor his corpse lies in a pool of congealing blood
He’d revealed his secret, he was in love with the best man
It was meant to be the happiest day of their lives…
Jan Allison
Contest – four lines
Sponsor - Broken Wings
09~20~15
Each drop that lay congealing.Hardened pools of hearts blood feeling.Stacked higher to a ceiling which is seemingly without end or sight of this sorrow swelling.I can't stop or staunch the sound of silence so keenly suicidal.Tapestries hung from the seething keening.See this warp and weft of weeping.Broken languidly so looming of a thread cut selfishly assuming.She took Her Life.The selfless one S
he gave to Me,when the Daughter that I am to Her,She who bore and gave to Me.The very same,exactly like in every way,each drop by drop . Lifes very blood I hold in keeping a Thrumming of My Mothers Weeping.Oh Mother Wherefore Art Thou?Dost Thou Hear Thy Childs Lament?In One Fell Strroke You Wasted Time.Every Moment That We Would Spend.The Only Thing of Worth To Me I See In Faded Things.Her Pictures are Like Memories That God Will Never Bring.As Answers Heard on Dead Deaf Ears, a Cacophony of Screams ,are all I ever Hear.Sorrowed Horrors That I Bear, Tolling Woe and Days of This Despair.My Mother Bequeathed to Me the Day She Thought To Teach Me the Only Answer That I Contemplate When I Feel That Lifes Unfair.I Think This Day I'll Take This Gift She Gave To Me When I Was Born.Born Up On My Cold Dead Hands and Show The Way She Truly Taught Me Truly How To Care. A Mothers Gift Of Suicide James Patrick Kail Tuesday November 6th 2012
KILLING JAR
you promised to kill…
this morning a
dark head pacing
sidewinding
slimy sublime
narcissi
the blood read:
trespassers will be
persecuted
strangled
pungent veins
entangled
crammed pulp
congealing
filling
killing jar
© Kim van Breda—10 November 2015
Summer
intense, fiery
burning, scorching, blistering
heat, wildfires, ice, snow
freezing, chilling, congealing
frosty, arctic
Winter
Ó November 17, 2011
Dane Ann Smith-Johnsen
Come to me my Knightly Prince
with the sword you galently fence
On your steed you proudly ride
The battle calls you to its side
I await, your lady fair
as I twine my golden hair
I dream of you, my heroic sire
your memory fills me with desire
I long to see you all the more
to kiss the lips I hunger for
All night and day I long
for the arms that held me strong
Men are returning from the fight
Oh, how dark is this night
My heart pounds when I'm told
you lay upon the battlefield, cold
Alas, this just couldn't be
Your love, is your promise to me
Grief stricken, to my knees, I fall
Ranting and raving, your name I call
Holding sword of tempered steel
Can what my eyes see, be real
He comes, my heart skips a beat
I am lifted, swiftly off my feet
Lost I am in his embrace
then I look upon his face
Behold, alabaster skin, I see
The metallic smell of blood, on me
Pooling, congealing, as it flows down
turning scarlet, my silken gown
Clothes crusted with grass and dirt
my lover has come back, hurt
Slowly he came withering with pain
as the life from him, did drain
to see his lady, he had to try
knowing he was soon to die
Sinking slowly to the ground
he reaches, without a sound
Hands as cold as hardened clay
I see him slipping further away
Quickly I unsheathe the fatal knife
without my love, I'll have no life
As he breathes the final breath
I join my love, my life, in death
(At the remote Mayerling hunting lodge,
on January 30, 1889, two young people’s
lives were extinguished. Crown Prince
Rudolf, heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne,
and his young lover, Countess Mary Vetsera,
died in circumstances which have never been
properly explained.)
The Tragedy of Mayerling
In January, eighteen eighty-nine,
disaster struck the Austrian court, and since
that day, we've wondered how the handsome prince
(one Rudolf) and his teenage concubine
came both to die. A mystery which taxes
the best of Europe's brains is long past solving.
A story of illicit love, involving
the need to smash down bedroom doors with axes
will always fascinate. The girl was found
in bed, quite dead. Prince Rudolf at her side
was sitting in a chair. It seems he died
of gunshot wounds. Blood - clotted, matted, browned
- extended its congealing cataract
down to the floor. Perhaps a suicide pact?
Light congealing
Like ice upon water
Razor-honed edge
of dawn cleaving the dark
In hot pursuit
Of shadows fleeing
Dreams drift away…
Like a guttering spark
Liquid gold blades
of sabre-like rays
Cleaving and piercing
Heart of morning mist
Parting a path
for a new-born day
Hapless…Nay, helpless!
Of night to resist
Dawn’s dam of darkness
So sorely breached
Erodes into shards of bones
white…and bleached
Floods of light gouting
As through broken dike
Awash are farms, fields
And sheepfolds alike
Shredding the shrouds
Of nighttime’s dark clouds
What is there of Dawn
…not to like?…
This cross mark of identity, staid lore
the last encounter, recognizing's score
memorable, the lost, the size of war
turnover my resolve, feeling's what for!
My holding on to being, rich or poor
the nights, the restless feeling, the encore
refuse the past, reopen some lost door
or verify concealing love's implore!
Turnover ~ nay, the spite of evermore
that ragged intercession, mentions for,
conventions sought revealing to restore
some archive, that congealing grave's deplore!
Now, life ~ a placid sealing, safety's shore
that as my hope, a timely art's concur
resumption of truth's will, convincing's hoard
does scatter with the wind, creating slur!
It is the youth's assumption, that false spore
that all is for their gumption, other's bore
and from the fallen gentry, not take oar
but gear for their resumption, more the more!
Turnover my fond reason to explore
this governmental treason, worth's revere
and that which represents me underscore,
lift higher, to the ceiling, vantage pour ~
and empty the deceiving . . . to the floor!