Best Discordant Poems
This morning we jogged early
I was back in my flat by six-thirty
From my tenth floor view of the Charles River basin,
The morning was incandescently flushed by the peach-colored sun.
The transparent clouds seemed stylistically stained, artfully workshopped,
which offered a softened, Tiffany glass effect wholly worthy of worship.
I can’t stop to admire it. I’m jamming things into suitcases.
Cramming things into boxes, giving things away.
I had a second interview Monday afternoon, for Johns Hopkins med school. They put the question to me:
“The semester starts in 18 days - can you do that?”
“Yes,” I replied, and just like that, I'm a Blue Jay.
Of course, I had to withdraw from the masters program but Harvard gave me a full (95K) refund - I think they’re more excited about my med school admission than I am.
I’m not afraid of discordant notes.
They change the landscape.
Take us to new emotional places.
Any major work is going to have them.
.
.
A song for this:
Hang on Little Tomato by Pink Martini
It's Amazing by Jem
Dwelling
In the arches
Of dark corners that reach
The entombment of my stale mind,
Frozen
In time;
Freshly scarred by
Unfulfilled musings led
By stoic apathy singing
Tunes of
Friction,
Fluctuating
Amidst piercing thistles,
And crucifying vines flooding
My core.
My guitar strings in the moonlight should be something beautiful,
but the cold liquid white just makes everything harsher.
–not soft like snow, but deceptively fine –
Light is discordant
like my clumsy fingers that keep
mutilating the restless heavens with their attempts at mourning.
Why won’t they move right,
Don’t they realize how much depends on perfection?
I’m right here; I mutter to the stars and pray they spread it out over you
Like the night they hold up while atlas dreams.
But I’m not there. I’m not even anywhere –
I can’t put a finger on me.
I’m not real. I whisper over the translucent shell of my existence
and drench myself in intangible alabaster…
and I’m not real because I need your voice
to tell me I’m not invisible,
to stop me from falling up like a red balloon.
I don’t want to be the scar in the sky anymore.
I’m looking at patterns of patterns of the beyond
and no matter how many constellations I calculate in my head
the lines here, here, and here, easy as you please
I shiver because I know it makes no sense.
Not like we did.
I’m walking on edges of that metallic element of pale
and grasping red-rimmed fistfuls of atmosphere
but they’re never close enough, the stars–
and that’s why they’re there. That’s what I’ll tell my children.
They’re just the paint-brush splattered whim of
some malevolent deity –
Maybe we all are. I write it down, “paint-splatter of flesh”
tracing finger-prints through indignant sprigs of lawn.
But I might as well be writing on the bathroom mirror
because the words still won’t come out right.
And now everything’s backwards –
and you can’t fall up
and you can’t explain god
and you can’t fix light, even if it looks broken
and you can’t reflect sound, even if you angle it just so.
I can’t live like this.
A soul in flames daunting the discordant canvas, eradicating the supreme veil. To be
drenched in apathy coincides inversely with the stench of a bitter legacy. Severed
souls search asunder for a subversive scent, only to be oppressed in an overt art.
Begging death for a drenching darkness to obliterate this dire desolation. Complete
in nocturne this grotesque being of infinite hate commands coercively.
How doth thou appear so alluring,
When thy content is but aworrying?
Though thy beauty and elegance I apprehend,
Thy charm and power I can’t comprehend.
Tall, short, fat, and slim doth thou appear.
Thou appearest dark, fair and other colours I hear.
But do I conclude that thou art the same, all the same?
When thou doth appear in thy nude,
My eyes in utter amazement look.
My mind to the realms of ecstacy wanders off,
And uneasiness and eagerness trigger-off.
Those two things on your chest, the breasts,
Though like explosives they stand abreast,
Yet my hands itch to grab and feel them.
In my juvenile haste to discover thee,
I did lose my sanctity and manhood to thee.
The insatiable appetite for thee still lingers,
Yet the unthinkable satisfaction lies in none.
Do I quit or do I continue the adventure?
Now my whole life seems a wasteful nomenclature,
For all my expedited ventures ended the same.
All thy beauty and elegance now seem so shallow,
And so deceptive art thou that I now call thee shadow.
Indeed like a shadow, thou runneth when I pursueth,
And when I run from thee, I look back and behold, thou pursueth.
But the point of contact lies ahead,
When neither of us can run from ourselves,
Then the inevitable providence will take its stand.
When we thus cleave to each other decidedly,
With thy head on my chest, thou shall sleep and wake excitedly,
My meals thou shalt prepare and garnish,
And I hope my insatiable appetite for thy kind will varnish.
For thou art thus become my Eve, the mother of my children,
Oh Daughter of Zion, uncertainty beclouds me!
Peter Edoziem
The discordant words sat long with her.
The words sat slowly soaking--
soaking in a marinade of thoughts,
thoughts seasoned with reason
In thoughts seasoned with reason,
the words were permeated and saturated--
permeated and saturated
with knowledge and wisdom
With knowledge and wisdom
the woman could finally respond.
She could respond with insight and intuition--
the insight and intuition of a sage woman
A sage woman could now respond,
a woman who knew how to season her words.
The woman who knew how to season her words--
She seasoned her words with grace.
"She is the fire within me
and you're my deviation from the norm"
You were right,
and that's the heartbeat of insanity
pulsing my roots from your sweet poisoned ground.
I'm the butterfly pinned in your display case -
will their reverent eyes be enough
to satisfy when you sleep alone?
My wings are bleeding
and you, with a lemon-soaked band-aid -
you think I'm smiling.
Wherefore, Romeo?
Did you climb down from your balcony
of ice sculpture promises
and meet him in the garden
before a single word escaped his lips?
He must have gotten the invitation:
"Hush, wink, baby - forever a lie
from dark eyes and sugared tongue."
The smell of spring
is still that plantation hillside
and autumn, the canal, blue as
the rose held tightly in travel-weary hands,
but this sunlight streaming in
is the chill on my breath
that hides your reflection in the bedroom mirror.
Played like a drunken game…
next time, I'll choose truth.
God's world is in harmonious motion
following a perfect rhythm ~
save heart that's discontent
07-February-2023
Sounds discordant around abound
We instantly react
Likewise for fearful thoughts that hound
Tranquility detract
Aversion and desire
Send to funeral pyre
Be free, aglow, afire
Crow’s caw mordant
Sounds discordant
28-November-2021
Quietus
a raised voice of arrogance
manipulating the verses of heresy
blunt ironic poems
flowering sugar-coated promises
throughout ages
slander mongering
in every burst of man’s sweat
no blood ever spurt off
So, you want to buy a gift
for that famous geezer.
First, hear about the midnight shift
of our Ebenezer.
Late at night, he is concerned.
It is December time,
when, it's been confirmed,
good people lose their minds.
Some gristle in his soup
upset his condition.
Now, he is unable to regroup
and sees an apparition.
He peers out the windowsill,
as that stew's injury lingers,
standing so very still
with cold and boney fingers.
A guy intent to pin a rap -
hear him moan and bellow
like a bear caught in a trap,
Marley, that poor fellow.
Once a boy on a country lane,
how did Ebenezer meet this fate?
What happened to his brain,
as he neared heaven's gate?
Why could the Lord not spare
the one good thing in life,
yes, his sister who was kind and fair.
Why cut his heart out with a knife?
Why would I condescend to take a seat?
I would not recoil, but rather retreat,
than hear the mutton's painful bleat
'neath his blade as its heart still beats.
Leave me ghost, blow out your lamp.
I'll not see the moron's laughing face.
as my nephew's knife, the devil's stamp,
another life, it would erase.
No, I'll not see the foolish face
of the boy who took my sister away,
who took her life, and with his replaced,
all on that tragic Christmas day.
The ghost made Ebenezer sit and sigh
as he watched his own body die.
There was no one even there to cry
as a worm crawled out his eye.
You want a gift idea with merit?
Perhaps a greasy goose. I won't bicker.
If there's something you stand to inherit,
a heart attack is indeed quicker,
but for the man staring at his casket,
I recommend a fruit basket.