Best Dares Poems
O' Shadow, This Soul Dares To Ask Of Thee
O'
shadow,
pray tell more
before midnight clock scores
and in its echoes lays to waste
souls yearning for life's sweeter taste
hearts pining to youth and romance's deep appeal
not those never ending sorrows from which this dark world steals.
O'
shadow,
do not delay
truth I thee pray
of dark clouds spinning now
about life, love and black ship's prow
shorelines weeping loud and in hot red-spit flames
pleadings from ravenous and ghastly pits, savage accursed games.
O'
shadow,
do not deny
terror and the why
your master in secret demands
death and pains grow upon bloody hands
as it tempts we of earth and sad mortal breath
through our desires even until our woeful and weeping sad deaths.
O'
shadow,
do these pains explain
waves of loss, life's stains
storms born from Hade's deep dark abyss
ravaging through our world as truth we dismiss
I beg do not laugh at crying heart and turn to flee
nor attempt to utterly destroy, small light flickering within me.
O'
shadow,
fear not its wrath
nor losing way in its dark paths
speak to me, let truth thy lost heart save
as wisdom dictates, hope rewards heroes truly brave
listen as grieving heart asks for this needed reprieve
and sets about sweetest of divine mercies, saving both you and me.
Robert J. Lindley, 7-14-2019
Rhyme, ( What The Shadow May Know But Never Dare To Tell )
The Lizard lays in the Sun
It has no fear
Its Island is deserted
How will the Lizard survive?
It tastes horrible.
Predators know that from it’s bright colors
Tasty treats are camouflaged
Lizard dares the predators
Bite Me!
Not even a juvenile predator does
The lizard flicks it’s tongue
Scurries under a rock
The teasing is done
There once was a man named Stan
That made a daredevil plan
His skydiving date
The chute opened late
Hungry gators called their clan
Who Cares?!
They see horrible things happen!
They observe and take no action.
Their sick defense is who cares!?
Let me rephrase it: who dares!?
You stop caring, you stop feeling!
You stop feeling, you lose meaning!
What is life like without meaning?
Worthless, sterile, and demeaning!
What is life like without caring?
What is life like without sharing?
Fake ideals and false pretensions!
Hell incarnate with good intentions!
13/4/2014
III
This is the land of the convectional rains
Which vie on the monsoon back scrubbing streets
This is the land at half-past four
The rainbow rubs the chilli face of the afternoon
And an evening-morning pervades the dripping, weeping
Rain tree, and gushing, tumbling, sewerless rain drains
Sub-cutaneously eddy sampan fed, muddy, fingerless rivers
Down with crocodile logs to the Malacca Sea.
This is the land of stately dipterocarp, casuarina
And coco-palms reeding north easterly over ancient rites
Of turtle bound breeding sands.
This is the land of the chignoned swaying bottoms
Of sarong-kebaya, sari and cheongsam.
The residual perch of promises
That threw the meek in within
The legs of the over-eager fledgelings.
The land since the Carnatic conquerors
Shovelling at the bottom of the offering mountains
The bounceable verdure brought to its bowers
The three adventurers.
A land frozen in a thousand
Climatic, communal ages
Wags its primordial bushy tail to the Himalayas
Within a three cornered monsoon sea -
In reincarnate churches
And cracker carousels.
The stranglehold of boasting strutting pedigrees
And infidel hordes of marauding thieves,
Where pullulant ideals
Long rocketed in other climes
Ride flat-foot on flat tyres.
IV
Let us go then, hurrying by
Second show nights and jogget parks
Listening to the distant whinings of wayangs
Down the sidewalk frying stalls on Campbell Road
Cheong-Kee mee and queh teow plates
Sateh, rojak and kachang puteh
(rediffusion vigil plates)
Let us then dash to the Madras stalls
To the five cent lye chee slakes.
la la la step stepping
Each in his own inordinate step
Shuffling the terang bulan.
Blindly buzzes the bee
Criss-crossing
Weep, rain tree, weep
The grass untrampled with laughter
In the noonday sobering shade.
Go Cheena-becha Kling-qui Sakai
(continued from Parts One & Two)
Who Dares…..
Who dares to open this old and weathered tome
seeking knowledge, seeking to determine which
road to take, what thoughts to think, what must be
done to build upon the yellowed pages of another’s
dog eared life. Are you so prematurely defeated
that you seek another’s armor, shield, and buckler
not your own, weapons discarded by long past
warriors? Have the wizards of wisdom tainted
all creativity with fear, have the speakers of the truth
lied, has all been taken but faint memory of a
once held dream? A dream of naked pages and
empty books awaiting the touch of new pens,
new ideas, new rebellions. A dream of words
bathed in the breath of youth crying to be fed,
not old and withered fodder but fresh buds
in early stage of ideological bloom, words whose
meanings have never changed yet will be the
words that change ideas, thoughts, dreams,
and destiny. Words imbued by a new passion,
a new zest, possessed of simplicity and
teased by genius, written on the acts of daily
life.
Who dares to open this old and weathered tome!!
Learn, and dare to write your own.
8/8/2013
submitted to – Theme #4 – Poetry contest
sponsor – SKAT A
Villanelle : Who dares to doubt must he questions address Fate
Who dares to doubt must he questions address Fate
Let tears on High Holy Mass spill down the Seine
Would one propose to the Lord what's not innate
Is the Lord's mise en scène an act desperate
A dire call to fill Church benches lone vain
Who dares to doubt must he questions address Fate
Who'd wish the Crown of Thorns be crushed under weight
Aging oak high rafter timbers tumble rain
Would one propose to the Lord what's not innate
Witness the Lord's will red-hot Spire irate
Whose felo de se the Flèche pierced heart in pain
Who dares to doubt must he questions address Fate
Montmartre's severed head Saint Denis lugged Frankish hate
Who'll don Louis IX Tunic to rule Louvre brain
Would one propose to the Lord what's not innate
Could Man his collapsing structure rebuild to date
Lord's Agent be or manage the mise en scène
Who dares to doubt must he questions address Fate
Would one propose to the Lord what's not innate
© T. Wignesan - Paris, April 17, 2019
(continued)
V
Has it not occurred to you how I sat with you
dear sister, counting the chicking back of the
evening train by the window sill and then
got up to wind my way down the snake infested rail
to shoo shoo the cows home to brood
while you gee gee-d the chicks to coop
and did we not then plan of a farm
a green milking farm to warm the palm
then turned to scratch the itch over in our minds
lay down on the floors, mat aside
our thoughts to cushion heads
whilst dug tapioca roots heaped the dream
and we lay scraping the kernel-less
fiber shelled coconuts
O Bhama, my goatless daughter kid
how I nursed you with the callow calves
those mutual moments forced in these common lives
and then, that day when they sold you
the blistering shirtless sun never flinching
an eye, defiant I stood caressing your creamy coat
and all you could say was a hopeless baaa..a..aa
and then, then, that day as we came over the mountains
two kids you led to the thorny brush, business bent
the eye-balling bharata natyam
VI
O masters of my fading August dream
For should you take this life from me
Know you any better
Than when children we have joyously romped
Down and deep in the August river
Washing on the mountain tin.
Now on the growing granite's precipitous face
In our vigilant wassail
Remember the children downstream playing
Where your own little voices are speechless lingering
Let it not be simply said that a river flows
to flourish a land
More than that he who is high at the source
take heed:
For a river putrid in the cradle is worse
than the plunging flooding rain.
And the eclectic monsoons may have come
Have gathered and may have gone
While the senses still within torrid membranes
thap-pooo-ng
thap-pong-ng-ng
thap-pong
(for "Glossary of Vernacular Terms" see next page)
for Eric Mottram
"Nur wenn das Herz erschlossen,
Dann ist die Erde schön."
Goethe.
I
An important thing in living
Is to know when to go;
He who does not know this
Has not far to go,
Though death may come and go
When you do not know.
Come, give me your hand,
Together shoulder and cheek to shoulder
We'll go, sour kana in cheeks
And in the mornings cherry sticks
To gum: the infectious chilli smiles
Over touch-me-not thorns, crushing snails
From banana leaves, past
Clawing outstretched arms of the bougainvilias
To stone the salt-bite mangoes.
Tread carefully through this durian kampong
For the ripe season has pricked many a sole.
II
la la la tham'-pong
Let's go running intermittent
To the spitting, clucking rubber fruit
And bamboo lashes through the silent graves,
Fresh sod, red mounds, knee stuck, incensing joss sticks
All night long burning, exhuming, expelling the spirit.
Let's scour, hiding behind the lowing boughs of the hibiscus
Skirting the school-green parapet thorny fields.
Let us now squawk, piercing the sultry, humid blanket
In the shrill wakeful tarzan tones,
Paddle high on.the swings
Naked thighs, testicles dry.
Let us now vanish panting on the climbing slopes
Bare breasted, steaming rolling with perspiration,
Biting with lalang burn.
Let us now go and stand under the school
Water tap, thrashing water to and fro.
Then steal through the towkay's
Barbed compound to pluck the hairy
Eyeing rambutans, blood red, parang in hand,
And caoutchouc pungent with peeling.
Now scurrying through the estate glades
Crunching, kicking autumnal rubber leavings,
Kneading, rolling milky latex balls,
Now standing to water by the corner garden post.
dragonflies touch off
from amongst pond's floating spheres
beauty dares emerge.
(January 21, 2011 Wausau, Wisconsin)
(c) Copyright 2011 by Christine A Kysely, All Rights Reserved
Wednesday, believe it or not
twenty-nine people shot ~
Chicago's gone to pot
______________________________
Yesterday, Wednesday, July 14, 2021
I hide behind a smile day by day
No way can I leave it away it has to stay
A fear of fear itself means I will descend
The smile helps my being mend from torturous times
Crimes against the most human kindness
To fear to let ones wall down
It protects like an invisible blanket
Its security I hold on like a baby in arms
Noone can see my wondering in me
A wildness that is shown shades the innocences
Sometimes I scream inside my mind
As it never stands down
Like a film that has no ending
I defend the right with all my fight to hide inside
A lie I tell myself I am alright when really thats not right
So many sides to one being some need freeing
To escape my thoughts would be desire itself
Instead I climb the wall my own walls
Words can not be taken back even though the bricks may fall
The hurt can only be forgiven when its jury has delivered
A story I will one day tell
Its pages will set the scene
Of how I feared the anger in me
Of a smile that dare not dissappear
As then I will be truely be in all despair
There was a writer so fair.
Who never put on any airs.
But, she couldn't foresee.
Till she ran into me.
She couldn't keep up with my dares...
Nascent thought provoking
threads flit to and fro
unseen solitary pinball wizard
cavalierly fiddles indiscriminately
leveraging outcome
silently holistic thought fragments
strewn staccoto scattershot
attenuated blitzkrieg
brain storm saturates,
par for course sandtrap engulfs,
chaos reverberates within
besieged cerebral corridor,
quotidian mental onslaught
spurns refugee exodus,
psychological ploy asper viable coping
function forgoes figurative
foothold toe tully forfeited
tenuous grasp slips forcing migration,
Sans psychotic shrapnel
clefts emotional well being,
without rhyme or reason
sense and sensibility rent asunder
rational, overall logical
modus operandi quashed
dealt fatal savage thrust
soundless insanity relentlessly pounds
fifty plus shades gray matter
noiselessly bombarding
lofty craft cognitive faculty atelier
strafed emotional rescue
relegated to twilight zone
outer limits house barbed bereft ken
dolled, hallowed, and lobotomized
mined kempf desecrated sacred reliquary
orbits like a neurological asteroid belt
Self healing fragments repelled
despite fervent application grounded
evincing proof of positive thinking
courtesy Norman Vincent Peale
fore gone conclusion crowning
accursed albatross gussied as SPD
(schizoid personality disorder)
undefeated champ decamping forever
within noggin of this mortal male
til death do me part!
Silent lake secrets of a summer’s evening
Beyond meadow’s grasses, rustled in bits of expectation
Light sparkle of reflected diamonds dance on shimmery pond
Cool clear waters delighting the heart of Sister Raccoon and Brother Opossum
Devoted forest trees stand guard at her edges
Shrouded in astral Godliness, meadow mystique
Surrounded by flames of sky diamonds and their mystical promises.
There is a breathless expectation remnant on this bank.
Illumed by Luna’s prophetic power
Whispers of astral shaman and wise woman
Surround Woman Who Dares in wondrous moonlight.
She closes her eyes, appreciating their sacred melodies
Nostalgic moon dance of Lakota ancestors fills her memory
Ambivalent feelings and glints of tenderness surround her
As she meditates on the hill of her sacred kin
Father Owl is waiting to give his signal if there is danger
Silhouette shadow of ancient ghostwalker
Carefully listens to his goddaughter’s chanting, feeling nostalgic.
“Wah Yah Whee Hah, Wah, Yah, Hah,” her chant echoes.
Her mother and father join him. “It’s time,” they all agree.
Receiving her spirit message, a young brave awakens
Knowing he must head toward the pond and her silken grasses.
Urgencies of his ancestors and ebbing moon tides command it.
Ambivalent feelings and glints of tenderness surround him.
He is not from Woman Who Dares tribe,
But from a close proximity. He has lightness of foot.
Brother wolf, her power animal, waits for the signal,
But Brother Owl does not give it, watching with interest.
Man Who Would has been sent by moonbeam heart song.
Illumined by Ancient Ghostwalker’s ancestors.
Stars feldspar bright greet him on his sky travel.
Woman Who Dares senses him and chanting stops.
He is the most handsome brave she has ever seen.
He smiles, and she sees strength of bear, making her breathless.
Feels tenderness from his eyes as he gets nearer.
Recognizing him instantly from her night visions.
Their eyes meet again for the thousandth time, recognizing memories.
Bedazzled, they know each other instantly, devoted through many lifetimes.
Man Who Would and Woman Who Dares, together again.
Brother Owl hoots his approval. Wolves howl. Grasses cheer.