Best Convolutions Poems
convolutions
of cerebral gymnastics
entangled musings
AP: 2nd place 2025
Submitted on March 7, 2021 for contest ALL YOURS (MAR 9) sponsored by BRIAN STRAND - RANKED 1ST
I’ve seen them: humungous stumps of once gigantic trees
that made a forest sacred-
knowing it was men that lopped off such magnificence
Stealers of beauty and promise:
these amputations leave their scars
on the convolutions of mankind’s
collective brain
Where, if I could
I would venture back in dreams to stay the axe
Let nature take her time with this living, biggest, hugest.
Into forever let these branches spread their prettiness
Let generations stand in awe at their continuance.
Suzanne Delaney
How fleet is a flicker of the mind
Perhaps with a noble thought assigned
To explore some lofty domain?
Electrical impulses move about
Seeking logical connections, no doubt,
And thought processes attain.
Convolutions so deeply etched
Cradled in the cranium to fetch
Details of facts in a complex chain.
Currents travel down neuron highways
With synapses probing the mind's byways
Swifter than salmon out of terrain.
So let the impulses swim in streams
Transmitting data, fulfilling dreams.
Treat it respectfully, it’s your brain.
But it’s no wonder we often go blank
When searching this immense storage tank
With an aging psyche seine.
Keeping flippant thoughts in check
Convolutions make a schizophrenic toss
blind paranoia into the catatonic tomb
yelling whispers caught in mind cacophony
Rest the head in a drugged-out succor!
Deafen the sententious words – dead -
Nuke the firing adversary neuron!
No aesthetic can anesthetize the thinking demon
expounding beyond the bliss of ignorance
Stewards imagined become abominable ghouls!
Tangles exorbitant unravel contemplation’s nest…
(3/9/2021)
morning brought an arcane song to my ears
i was observing the spilling of light
between the curtain and the wall
the way the light seemed to carry the dust
when my quite moment
was dispatched
by the sensation of the earth and
its 30 km/ps rate of motion
by comparison
i wasn't even a mite
on an elephants eyelash
i was a microbe
riding on a rock
on a massive migration through space
my body became filled with avidity-
something was about to happen
the dam was made of mud
and it was monsoon season
looking into the hallway mirror
i was astonished to see the image inside
was not me
this was some type of apparition
a ghost
that belonged to someone else
the electrons in my brain swirled
forming the loose pattern of wafting smoke
an electrified current
all of this energy
shot past the sleeping dogs
though the house
pierced the atmosphere
then outward into the deep vastness of the heavens
a remarkable paroxysm and
i was back with myself
yet
i felt subtly metamorphosed
looking around,
all of the stuff
i had worked so diligently
to acquire
took on a look of being frivolous
unnecessary
it was all the programming of someone else
the whims of a schizophrenic
with vainglorious proclivities
a booming voice announces:
if you do not abide to the constructs
of this lovely societal aggregation
you are an outcast
a luddite
a nihilist
a lost soul
a demagogue
a loser
a shoe shiner
a sewage swiller
weak,
pathetic,
unable to assimilate
due to anachronistic tendencies
...
we have viewed into the aperture
that gives a glimpse
of both dissonnant living and
ways to slough off the insanity
but
we are controlled by dna's unblinking eyes
we make love and war simultaneously
we are the amalgamation of genes we conspire against
dna spirals up my spine
then feathers across my neurons
entrenching its fingers into my convolutions
i am the product of a mad scientist
who has designed me with used atoms
from distant, dead stars
i breathe oxygen
that have been around since the birth
of the universe
yet,
despite it all,
these animated atomic miracles
have fought to keep us all held together
so that we may witness the splendor
of being alive
the morning song wasn't so veiled after all
One crystal goblet cloaked in vintage dust
Stands silent sentinal to nothing
In the middle of a great stone alter
Laid to waste by time, and the memory of Man,
Who ever was a firm believer...
One crystal goblet remains a fruitless legacy.
Ancient tongues and politics hear nothing
But the echo of the emptiness;
Gather rhetoric slowly
To the corners of each nameless mouth
As testimony to the truth
In all its convolutions...
(So easy to save face when you have two)...
In secret chambers sullen and discordant
Hushed reminders turn forgetful
In the silence of neglect and need --
Sightless in the face of greed.
Retire the ages bound in blood red leather,
Dry as ancient children's bones;
Passing immortality promises worth of no value -
Wealth beyond a life of fading passion
And accumulated years......Power:
One percent of Power;
Power to those who once danced here
For unrepentant Gods of War...
Starving for their golden Kings;
Starving for each and every thing.
Death is their lament; no blessings ever fell
To split the night asunder.
In ecstacy's deepest trance reviled
They danced around a dark and bloody alter --
That crumbling pedestal where upon resides
One crystal goblet of wild perfection
Made obscene;
Shining claret to its fluted rim
And guarding nothing but its own beauty...
Rejoice in nothing but its own fullness,
Beyond the bitterness of truth abandoned.
And in that fullness, only dust...
Simply dust and full of nothing for our children's children.
Crystal goblet politic still lingers on
Into today
Or for a few eons more of lies
Trapped in that darkness...
And history always makes us pay
In dearest cost - in every way
For crystal goblets...
One percent lead
Ninety nine percent ahead
Of living memory...
Occupy Democracy
Independent style..
Occupy...
This winding road of glass,
handblown and filligreed,
with convolutions all concentric,
turning ,ever turning
in upon itself.
The Great worm Oribouris
Glass serpent,,,,,,,,,,
swallowing your tail,
shattering yourself
to dusty shards
beneath the cold fire of the
watchful stars.
It is not by choice that I obtain
elation from
your memory, nor is it by will that I
crave the
you of our past. If truth be my
means of
expression, then at best, the excuse
for my
affection is equated with complexities
of
conscious and convolutions of a soul,
Or is lost within the depth of the
meaning of life.
To confess such devotion, over the
years,
became an act of attempting to
breathe,
yet to offer reason for why a heart
loves
is to elucidate ineffable emotion.
Though the question deftly wields
validity,
The answer...is the meaning of a
dream.
Yet, I render this humble
explanation:
"The reason my heart longs for
yours
is the same my mind yearns for
diction.
In it, I discovered something deeper
than
breaths. Within diction, I found
meaning,
And within your existence...I found
faith."
Therein, laying dormant,
veils of darkly reposed
secrecy 'neath
foamy seascapes'
frenetic passages,
languishing below
sunken treasures'
false facades of
reticently rolling
shrouded bluffs,
shaded blood obscurely hued
of impetuous intensity in
unceremoniously bound
covert convolutions,
a million ancient
undisclosed shadows hidden,
notwithstanding combative
rumblings of death's
unwelcome sycophancy,
depths of centuries'
old unparalleled stories,
whence hush-hush
undulatory influx
of defiant upsurges
and turbulence reside,
that which only the
winds of indiscretion,
clandestine spirits
& gods could surmise
...whilst privileged moons watch over amaranthine skeletons
(For MTG, LB and their ilk)
Give a koala
A fistful of eucalyptus leaves; their only food,
They won't know what to do with it.
Gotta pick it themselves, or starve.
That's because their brains are smooth,
Like chicken breasts.
No convolutions, small surface area, few connections.
What you see is what you get;
Pretty damned dumb for a mammal.
It seems to me, my dears,
You bear a striking resemblance
To these creatures.
Hand you a concept outside of your bubble -
You know, the food of higher thoughts - You just stare at it,
Reject it as undigestible.
This renders your very thoughts smooth,
No convolutions, small surface area, few connections.
What you see is what you get;
Pretty damned dumb for mammals.
Poet: Ken Jordan
Poem: Life
Edited by: Sparkle Jordan
written: January/2016
Life has
its
Convolutions
( ( ) ( ( ( ( ) (
) ) ( ) ) ) ) ( )
( ( ) ( ( ( ( ) (
) ) ) ) ( )
( ( ( ( ) (
) ) ( ) ( )
( ( ) ( ) ( ) ( )
) ) ( ) ( ) ( ) (
( ( ) ) ) ( ) ( )
Coils and Twist -
Herein, laying dormant,
veils of reposed
secrecy 'neath
foamy seascapes'
frenetic passages,
languishing below
sunken treasures'
false facades of
reticently rolling
shrouded bluffs,
shaded of darkly impetuous
hued blood in
unceremoniously
bound convolutions,
a million ancient
undisclosed shadows hidden,
notwithstanding combative
rumblings of death's
unwelcome sycophancy,
depths of centuries'
old unparalleled stories,
whence hush-hush
undulatory influx
of defiant upsurges
and turbulence reside,
that of which only the
winds of indiscretion,
clandestine spirits
& gods could surmise
...whilst privileged moons watch over amaranthine skeletons
Life's so abundant with misery,
nature's practicing metamorphosis,
generously tense and uptight, lifts
no lightness, steady with its frost.
Gray is the Sun, trenchant clouds,
rustles of trees reveal the night,
entering but dispossessed. I hear
strange voices cry, shadows cross the path
close press us unaware, a silhouette
salutes the eye, its curtain drawn.
Let there be darkness, darkness illuminating
darkness, we cannot aid or mitigate, ask
no beauty to intercede. This cramped moment
is not mine to give, though far apart from
worshiper's time, Spring's spirit. Still
is the time, its folded garment by no motion
stirred, fabricated remnants fled to sky,
no thunder peels through the absence,
life was once so abundant, sustained
in open fortitude, spirit flowing, hopes flying,
the raindrops loitering like domes of pink and purple,
their buffet gone, fraught with pain, quicker than
breath indrawn. Spirit alone can regenerate a
safe haven, lessen the convolutions vast,
lift up again hope's incapacitated body, reeling
under the torrent.
Homer Brunett
1879-1912
You didn’t think it would be easy? Did you?
Life squirms incessantly,
As with the molting snake,
Turning and squeezing into mortal convolutions,
With myriad forgotten episodes
Of human triumph and tragedy,
Of endless drama in the slatted houses;
Life is constantly lurching and lunging, ever forward,
Under those silent indifferent clouds, up there!
But time is the ultimate mind master,
He knows where the switches to the stop gates are.
He knows when to open the field sluices awash!
We foolish human beings inevitably
Get taken by the rushing flood waters,
Get completely swept away by the undertow,
Helpless against the madding confluence,
Ending up as tears on the faces of the bereaved.
This is my final testament and statement!
That of an intelligent dead man!
The Accidental Poet
I have come to terms with language,
dyslexia jailed then freed me
a framed sky for instance,
or the open nature of oceans for instance,
one denies the other.
He had a brain injury
a perfectly constructed man
until the fatal blow of his Muse.
Now he speaks only in poetry,
a language unbounded.
Some thought him touched
by a language that had no beginning nor end.
The man spoke direct from the Fountain,
the Wellspring.
Out God poured,
out poured the bedeviled and the saintly,
the lost and found,
seers so blinded by love
they must vocalize each sound.
An idiom that passed all understanding
yet could be grasped on the wing
an ephemeral thing, a single Mayfly
in an endless array of May blossoming.
It was a beautiful seamless moving hem
of apperception, a cloth made whole.
It was beautiful even when it was ugly.
It was the poetry of words set free.
I wondered if my own trivial dyslexic mind
could ever hope to match his artistry
and knew it never would.
You would have to take out the brain
find that breach in its convolutions
through which God speaks.
I knew this, the way a child knows
the uncharted face of its birth mother,
yet I still try to drive a wildness
through a picket fence.
Old words won’t do anymore,
the scaffolding is too overworked, it won’t hold,
the used-up must go the way of all dead things,
to the soil
where roots know the birth-pains of green.
The man talks on, the therapists shrug,
try to force his tongue into neat, prepackaged boxes
but it will not fit,
he smiles as they wipe spit from his lips,
keeps explaining God to them
but they have no understanding of poetry;
they keep begging him too slow down
but he is way ahead of them
and always will be.