Best Contortion Poems
We start at the end, with the warmth of his breath on her skin
Baulked by proximity, he never knew how to begin
A golden-tainted obsession, bitterly laced with lead
Transformed rapture to quicksilver the instant Cupid fled
A moment held, made static, tender touch met with distress
For seeded in her veins, lies a stem of the wilderness
Pursuit stalled just in time, yet time itself recalibrates
Supplanted upon breaking, a laurel shoot germinates
Oh, what should have been the faintest touch cannot be undone
Rooted in the throes of escape, bound to bask in full sun
Sinews harden to fibre, each pulse springs a bonsai tree
Bark chokes her voice box; silent screams nest in the canopy
Locked in abjection, as her praying hands first plead then splay
As liberty, though not consciousness, is taken away
Overruled in evergreen, contortion as regal crown
Petrified white marble shall become her eternal gown
In Ovid’s Metamorphoses, the god Apollo mocks Cupid for wielding a bow, claiming it unworthy of a child. In retaliation, Cupid shoots Apollo with a golden arrow to ignite love, and Daphne a chaste nymph with a leaden one to incite revulsion. Though innocent, Daphne becomes the target of Apollo’s relentless pursuit. Just as he is about to seize her, she prays for escape, and her body is transformed into a laurel tree. Bernini’s stunning sculpture captures the precise moment of this metamorphosis
Autumn unreeled
Forests shaken hollow
settling
like shipwrecked beauty
Tree masts of moss
Colourful mobs of decay
unspooling
Last strands of conceit
Rag tag laurels
capsized
casual drift of sacrifice
Diced leaves of October,
change
that drains potency
Resplendent wreckage
An unraveling season
faint
in slim, silvered light
Outcomes unavoidable
with fertility plundered
Gold leaf patches
fallen
treasures washed overboard
a trail of flotsam
in the lost ego of summer
Ragged contortion
in sea-water cold
in a quiet that marks
transition
Poem composed: Spring 2020
(Revised September 29th, 2022)
The Painful Facts
The nervous system originates in the brain.
Nerves send and receive signals to feel pleasure, fear or pain.
A baby’s diaper rash causes crying, pain and suffering,
Her torment needs attention , care and buffering,
She is so sensitive to pain, as were you and I ,
The slightest discomfort caused us to cry.
But because this is pain we can not now recall,
It does not mean we didn’t experience it all,
The nervous system is developed in Mom’s womb long before birth,
Of course, most people know this fact, for what it’s worth,
Why else does the babe instinctively move away,
When the medical probe is maneuvered her way?
She does not know the terms “women’s rights“, “choice” and “abortion”,
As she is killed, screaming in a fear and pain filled contortion,
But that baby’s pain simply doesn’t matter in this world of darkened lights,
She missed the boat when the flag unfurled for choice and women’s rights.
Dear child, you are just not old enough to be without pain and fear,
You see, we have too many excuses times one million a year.
May God buffer your pain my little friends when your shortened time is through,
And forgive your Moms and Dads for we may or may not know what we do.
And ask God to have mercy on us self blinded pretend Christians too,
As we vote for politicians who promote killing your siblings and you.
Dedicated to Chantel
This is a repost of the poem written 5/01/2010 in answer to a charge that babies don't feel pain anyway so it's okay to abort them.
The news today 4/17/2012 (AP news) reports that the fetal pain abortion law which recently came about in three states because of the scientific proof that unborn babies do feel pain is now under attack because people want to kill the little ones anyway in spite of their proven torture.
Perhaps some day our society will become civilized and history will reveal these acts for the barbarianism that it indeed is. Until then let's keep praying for our youngest most vulnerable minority friends.
Apparently now, Jan in the year 2019, States like New York have opted to let go of civilization altogether and drown their laws with paganism and child sacrifice. Lord God have mercy on us !? or not?
-Robert A. Dufresne
PS.
ET TU VERMONT ? FEB 20 2019
The nervous system originates in the brain.
Nerves send and receive signals to feel pleasure, fear or pain.
A baby’s diaper rash causes crying, pain and suffering,
Her torment needs attention , care and buffering,
She is so sensitive to pain, as were you and I ,
The slightest discomfort caused us to cry.
But because this is pain we can not now recall,
It does not mean we didn’t experience it all,
The nervous system is developed in Mom’s womb long before birth,
Of course, most people know this fact, for what it’s worth,
Why else does the babe instinctively move away,
When the medical probe is maneuvered her way?
She does not know the terms “women’s rights“, “choice” and “abortion”,
As she is killed, screaming in a fear and pain filled contortion,
But that baby’s pain simply doesn’t matter in this world of darkened lights,
She missed the boat when the flag unfurled for choice and women’s rights.
Dear child, you are just not old enough to be without pain and fear,
You see, we have too many excuses times one million a year.
May God buffer your pain my little friends when your shortened time is through,
And forgive your Moms and Dads for we may or may not know what we do.
And ask God to have mercy on us self blinded pretend Christians too,
As we vote for politicians who promote killing your siblings and you.
God bless you Chantel.
This is a repost of the poem written 5/01/2010 in answer to a charge that babies don't feel pain anyway so it's okay to abort them.
The news today 4/17/2012 (AP news) reports that the fetal pain abortion law which recently came about in three states because of the scientific proof that unborn babies do feel pain is now under attack because people want to kill the little ones anyway in spite of their proven torture.
Perhaps some day our society will become civilized and history will reveal these acts for the barbarianism that it indeed is. Until then let's keep praying for our youngest most vulnerable minority friends.
-Robert A. Dufresne
Sunday cockcrow nascent
aural essays reveal
laissez-faire raptures.
Enigmatic silken piece compost ushered in by
trenchant trademark tremulous signature.
Doe-eyed instrumentalist’s strident brass ensemble,
wakey wakey for the pier gazing loiterer whose blasé
sashay amble’s out of kilter.
Maverick antennae on a radio safari,
hawking hourglass heritage lodestone.
Closet Peter Pan’s astride transistor, literati goggle eyed and glued.
Silhouettes of wistful mint leaf tract,
navigating hoarse throat shellback allegory.
Earnest weekend welcome mat to madcap jester, laureate, bohemian.
Religiously the listener’s transported
from a humble tepee sanctum
to alluring levee inundation area,
far flung folly edifice,
nomad siren hymn sheet to mount Half Dome.
Long wave bounder in my dreams,
I limb skip oe’r fiction world simulcast entanglement,
snoop beneath rogallo-wing parachute in a Middle East plot,
“twin peaks” would be awestruck by this labyrinthine concourse.
One can flit invisibly round medieval black market cobblestone arcades,
ghost novelist’s ethereal penchant for pinch and pilfer retro-fit infringement.
Melting pot cinnamon dispenser, whiff stick fix antidote to kettledrum ennui
the blight of urban jungle setting and rural folklore.
Otherworld contortion with a shard of drama for magic carpet flight of fancy broadcast
Lineage derived from ancient epochs now assumed but for an inkling, icons I become with card shark sly booth legerdemain.
Maybe I’m that fictile clueless hiker, destitute, indigent
I AM as I AM, free & formless in a domain timeless
In, as & one with & within the sea of Oneness
Dissolved and yet in as ordained, distinct
Pure love awareness in a boundaryless precinct
In, within and in yet as by Oneness ordained
The beingness of love seeking outpouring, now contained
Choicelessly choosing to view Its reflection
In the mirror of duality without any distortion
As so chosen, so began, love benign-ability
Polarity in singularity
Creating sensory movement in duality
Spherical vision confined to timeline linearity
The love absolute
Choicelessly resolute
Now within a living body of perfection
Matter manifest as divine vibration
The pure love outpouring
Within body of lower vibration anchoring
Prismatic refraction of ephemerality bemusing
Anchors of grossness to the vehicle of form alluring
Love then, looking at its reflection
Within in-form consciousness, seeing a contortion
Observes that the transient life of the vehicle of imagination
Within duality, is oblivious of its own divinic origin
Linear time then slowly turns
Hypnotically, inexorably churns
The wheel of illusion
Trapping consciousness in mayic delusion
Love being love, yet outpours its nectar
Dispersing magnetically across all vectors
But duality being the zone so choicelessly chosen
The same free will of consciousness keeps its ascension frozen
Yet love being one and consciousness being porous
In timeless time nodes within form, all being love, sing in chorus
Engage in a rhythmic dance synchronous in timeless being-ness
As of resonation to the vibration of the That Oneness
In, within, in-form & formless stillness
'Liberal,' merely a sentiment
'University,' no longer a word
'Zionist,' perverse contortion
'White privilege,' racist extortion
Hurrah! Hurrah! Three cheers for the clown!
A sing-song incantation of both old and young
His witty arsenal and outrageous antics
Kept them screaming in fits of hysterics
Why do they scream? This contortion isn't funny
I only wanted to catch a glimpse of my beloved Jenny
The joke is on you folks, you think this is just a show
But behind this carefree mask, dark streams of sorrow flow
Ah! There she is, sitting near the theatre's end
And this well- dressed fruitcake must be that new boyfriend
My eyes are burning, knees wobbling, crowd thinks I am just faking
Fools! The tears are genuine, I am really crying
Jealousy is shooting fiery darts inside my head
Three hoots for your stupid cheers, my heart is cold as lead.
Over standing ovation rings Irony's hideous laugh
Mocking the clown that played the Great Pretender part
While inside he was dying of a broken heart.
water weeps wildly
whilst washing away your
jesting foolery.
I saw the sun annihilated
Against backdrops of liturgy
Lethargic activity that earns
It’s title as the Earth’s endearing child
Against backdrops of monogamy,
Pedestrian thinking,
Accelerated usage,
Lapping up mentalities from bowls of pulled poultry,
Doing nothing for the Universe, Yet stealing all unities,
Dissention and green lights and babies birthed and apostrophes in time,
Influencing the way we work on thinking of ourselves as HUMANS, As people, not things.
Growths, from children to adults, the contortion of time, the peeling of fate, the sweet sugar coating like a scab on your life,
Bleeding out of your heart and seeing out of your eyes and feeling through your brain and feeling through your synapses.
Here are the producers of the broad way show of assimilation
Here are the problems, Here are the irregularities with the hole in the boat, But don’t worry everything is now under…
Black as a burn on white , yellow as a can of
Cream, not yellow at all.
Not nothing but irregularities we perceive as
Potential ingredients in life.
But in greed, is what we are, in need
Not so much, Thinking SO outside
Of the box, that the box has grown
Legs and walked away and has grown
A full beard and a full head of ideals.
And we are trapped outside of this fully
Matured matron of mystic answers.
And we are pleading to God to be let
back in...
But you know something, GOD IS IN THAT BOX TOO.
And you know something else, inside all of us
Is a little box opening when
It's ready to breed a plague of
Insatiable urges.
A quest for self.
A journey through self.
Black and blue benches where a man sits,
Breathing, he breathed.
Waiting for his anti-matter mother to annihilate him,
But less than he believes because anti-matter
Kills not what it touches, But what it needs to
Kill itself.
A piano, might be boxy and Brute-Like
But might mean more than piano
To you.
It might mean the 'end is nigh'
For music is the sound we hear to
feel forsworn,
to feel filthy inside of ourselves.
GOOD, GOOD
But remember, the Doctor is here
And he is watching from inside
The box, and he's sitting over a cup of tea,
With GOD,
In that BOX
He can't stop rhyming.
His mind races in cadence and timing.
Writing muses from within,
In both darkness and light, they begin.
Put to paper, in one pen stroke,
No force edits, and none of the hoke.
Modernists may very well blaspheme,
Believing they write, in deeper theme.
Cluttered words, and punctuation on a page,
As if contortion, should serve as the gauge.
A rhyme might accidentally appear,
but only in likeness, feeling quite 'impure'.
A well-known Frosted poet, left readers stunned;
This poem's title may find you, unknowingly punned.
This Flake will write, as his mind dances,
Until proven otherwise, he'll take his chances.
7/26/2017
Relatively new to PS, this first poem tried to poke fun at modernism. I grew up with poems that rhymed. I was surprised by the number of free verse poems and their popularity. Being on PS has allowed me to broaden my idea of poetry. I've learned that Free verse is universal, while rhyming is limited by dialect. The best lesson I've learned is that less is often more. It is surprising how a three, line 20 word poem can say so much. I'm still a rhyming addict...
I have mirrored the whole of my life
On this mercurial surface
I have painted myself on this glossy canvas
My pen has bled words in red
You can look straight into me
As you see my reflection on a mirror
I have sketched me as I am
Honest and truthful,
Sans distortion or contortion
I don’t want to be a sham
Here have I laid bare my life
Fraught with aches, dotted with smiles
My longings and my heart aches
My expectations, my disappointments
My triumphs, my defeats
My search through every nook n’ cranny for success
My plunge into the nadir of despair on defeat
My moments of escalating joy
My dark hours of crippling distress
Everything I wanted to be
Everything I failed to be
Please have a peek into my porous heart
Assess this candid chronicle of my life
And tell me if my soul is black or white
Sometimes I feel I am a life boat without oars
Floating aimless hither and tither
But I see light houses of joy in between
To pilot my way over shoals and breakers!
May. 5.2022
Placed Third
In the Mirror of Life Poetry Contest
Sponsor- Anoucheka Gangabissoon
Four dimensions, yet three in one,
Location, space and time,
X Y location, space around, and in time,
We don’t consider an X as without a Y really.
So quantum mechanics stand to floor,
The claim of the atom’s indivisibility,
Because there’s always the atom’s nucleus to consider,
For qualifying it to be the smallest thing we know on earth.
What’s time’s beginning is made of?
Can be minuscule,
That subtle ignition of structure,
Which formed life’s foundations,
Set joy and inclination,
That lit truth’s mandate to do the right.
I was in hell when I was young,
But time was a friend,
Let me speak even when I couldn’t form;
Credibility is on time’s side by time’s identity,
As time’s the only form that can claim credibility,
Without having acted or done, functioned,
Only having been, only having presumed
Because credibility is the essence of that configuration:
That’s why you need to be a friend of time,
Because time’s credible without you,
And time will give you life,
Time will not demand respect.
I have not changed my view of time,
With ages, triumphs and tragedies,
But time has changed its face to me:
More friendly, more gracious,
More amorous.
But I needed people on my side more,
More trust surrounding my disability,
Sociology was not once nice to me,
When time was on my doorstep.
However, I could say it was my fault,
More determination would’ve sufficed,
More belief in two of us, not individuality,
And more trust in asking emotionally,
About anything, the physical.
Time is truly physical, when it’s analysed,
Because physicists inquire into it resolutely,
And so I will always have that friend,
Which I made as a child of recondite contortion.
The deceivers play with the receivers
The fakers are all the takers
The greedy abuse on the needy
The sheep are prey for the wolves to keep
Abortion a contortion of a fast fix
Killing for the willing just for kicks
Rape an escape for the twisted
The abandoned are underhanded and blacklisted
Love afloat on an Angel’s wing
As the earth does carousingly cry
The birds still joyfully sing
As the lachrymal watch us die
The heavens are full of laughter
When the saddened get never after
Rise you children of the dark
For it is time for you to embark.
A dust bowl for the rust soul
The care free shall stare and see
The huddled hurt within the cuddled dirt
For we must minister to the sinister.
Rhyme scheme...
1 Stanza...aa,bb,cc,dd
2 Stanza...aab,ccb,dde,ffe
3 Stanza...a,b,a,b
4 Stanza...a,a,b,b
5 Stanza...abab,cdcd,efef,gg
Aug.22.2016
Five Rhyming Stanza's - 5 only - Poetry Contest
Sponsored by: Broken Wings
nervous system originates in the brain.
Nerves send and receive signals to feel pleasure, fear or pain.
A baby’s diaper rash causes crying, pain and suffering,
Her torment needs attention , care and buffering,
She is so sensitive to pain, as were you and I ,
The slightest discomfort caused us to cry.
But because this is pain we can not now recall,
It does not mean we didn’t experience it all,
The nervous system is developed in Mom’s womb long before birth,
Of course, most people know this fact, for what it’s worth,
Why else does the babe instinctively move away,
When the medical probe is maneuvered her way?
She does not know the terms “women’s rights“, “choice” and “abortion”,
As she is killed, screaming in a fear and pain filled contortion,
But that baby’s pain simply doesn’t matter in this world of darkened lights,
She missed the boat when the flag unfurled for choice and women’s rights.
Dear child, you are just not old enough to be without pain and fear,
You see, we have too many excuses times one million a year.
May God buffer your pain my little friends when your shortened time is through,
And forgive your Moms and Dads for we may or may not know what we do.
And ask God to have mercy on us self blinded pretend Christians too,
As we vote for politicians who promote killing your siblings and you.
Dedicated to Chantel
This is a repost of the poem written 5/01/2010 in answer to a charge that babies don't feel pain anyway so it's okay to abort them.
The news today 4/17/2012 (AP news) reports that the fetal pain abortion law which recently came about in three states because of the scientific proof that unborn babies do feel pain is now under attack because people want to kill the little ones anyway in spite of their proven torture.
Perhaps some day our society will become civilized and history will reveal these acts for the barbarianism that it indeed is. Until then let's keep praying for our youngest most vulnerable minority friends.
-Robert A. Dufresne
Echo world behind the glass,
I make the same faces I did at twelve.
The grinning Cheshire Cat
with teeth like piano keys,
mendacious and coy
because viewing my portrait with sobriety
forces me to march with familiar frailties.
I’m certain my gravitas is a forgery.
I am sure my laments and torments are
playacted animation.
Their drama is loathsome.
Instead, I turn my left eye toward my nose
while keeping the right straight.
This contortion masks multiple blemishes.
I summon my childhood buffoon, making
self-mockery hide all my impairments.
Concealing them by exposing them,
I become the object of my own joke.
What guise can be greater?
I am Charlie Chaplin getting kicked in the rear.
I am Soupy Sales hit by a sloppy pie.
With this impression, I never need to try.
Flashbacks on the wall.
They all die like Curly Howard.
Laughter is short-lived glee,
after which the spirit secretly craves.
My life is made of printed images
on a carnival tent.
Memory fragments are all I hold,
each enlisting some particle of my journey.
Yet with this, I find another way to fit into
a clown car,
another way to do my pratfalls,
another way to get my pants pulled down.
Accepted for publication: The Opiate, Spring 2024