Best Eddied Poems
Metaphors and similes exude when scripting poetic verse.
Across pale parchment, the poet's pen continues to traverse.
Ink courses like life blood, rushing through his eddied veins
as he ignores cramped fingers while writing echoing refrains.
Each stanza arranged by sequence in the creation of a story.
Sometimes his mysterious muse dances wildly with allegory.
He reins her in when he is focused but totally oblivious of time.
With vivid imagination, he sits penning in consummate rhyme.
Thoughts drift like flurries of snowflakes; his passion ignites
as each completed verse lifts his wizardry to greater heights.
In epic form he wanders within a level of verbose amplitude,
composing lyrical sonnets when creating a romantic interlude.
He indites with skill and talent of an accomplished musician,
striving to compose a magnum opus, a worthy composition.
If by chance his poetry is interpreted with eyes of admiration
he'll credit his gypsy muse for offering amorous inspiration.
The Curse of the Dead Sea
Dark ghosts traveling through the chilled air mist
where rare rough rivers, eddied and revolved, in
twists around into a violent, furious funnel offshore,
as this turbulent salt sea of iniquity opens up its storied,
salted bowels with its turgid moving fluids drowning
into a space of predestined bedded death—for all who
unknowingly venture into the embrace of the Dead Sea.
For knoweth that Poseidon, the ancient god of the sea,
may not be there in time to spare thy life that be in the
fatal grip of this salted deadly destiny, and its jeopardy,
as it’s written in the “riddle of sands” that remain blowing
as this earthly desert speaks to thee, spiced by the coldest
of raindrops carried on winds held deep within, as dark
clouds escape with their droplets running down into the
mountain “waters of life” that feed and form an evil river
that pulsates through the deep veins of existence, as drums
inside heartbeats play to a harmonious harp filled with a
mystic music dancing to visions of a salted angel who lives
deep within the Dead Sea.
Falling throughout the depths of time in the history of this
ancient sea of sure death, are grains of sand and pure white
salt which hold misted gems that speak to each and every
human footprint, leaving an imprinted, indelible image true,
behind the frame left crowned in the deep well of a forlorn,
shimmering pond that presciently knoweth that this ancient
Dead Sea, with its “salt of the sand” shall explain to you,
in kind, of the dangers that lurketh within the waters of its
salted, deadly grip, if thou chooseth unwisely to venture in
knowingly or unknowingly.
For Poseidon shall not be there in this “modern age” to
saveth thee and thy immortal soul!
Amen.
Gary Bateman and Liam McDaid – A Collaborated Poem
Copyright © All Rights Reserved – December 16, 2018
(Narrative)
reflective pool
calm, still, dark, enchanting...
Eve's youth eddied
Liquified Dream
As a splattering of genius juices streamed and eddied within my
cranium, opening covert courses of enlightenment, splurging
thoughts and gushing ideas, wherein, creativity was some
resonating flood of information gurgling afterthought
culminating in an outburst of energetic sensation
drenched with a peace of mind and soaked in
a sense of fulfillment surging channels of
knowledge to utter overflowing, deluge
implementing conscious awareness
immersed in reconsideration and
saturated in highlights that are
steeped into erudition with a
dynamic focus like spilled
acquiring that projects
the sensory cells in
a whirlpool simply
slipping into my
imagination.
2020 June 04
*3rd Place*
Splash Poetry
~~Kai Michael Neumann: Judged 2020 June 07
*3rd Place*
BRIAN'S SELECT 4,any form,any theme
~~Brian Strand: Judged 2020 June 05
Grand dreams that weep from vaults amidst the rain
Rouge billowed cheeks bleed soft from twilight's hem
Each star bounds heaven's breast, one glistened gem
All birthed from realms thus spawned to dwindle pain
To reach those depths where fancies bloom and grow
Ebbed tides sweep back from shores of eddied cares
Should whimsy breed bold thoughts found unawares
Cleft 'tween the real and those things we can't know
Are what 'midst trance and nightmares we thus wind
Perhaps, through strife and heartaches we might find
Each great escape waits deep ... with heart and mind.
~ Honorable Mention ~ in the "STRAND Any Form Any Theme" Poetry Contest, Brian Strand, Judge & Sponsor.
* For John Hamilton, who was the motive and inspiration for this poem - our greatest escape always awaits us ... INSIDE. (Sorry for the mess-up). *
Metaphors and similes flow freely from my pen
when I am scripting and scribing in poetic verse.
Across the width of pale parchment pages
the nib of my feathered pen continues to traverse.
Ink courses fathoms deep within me like life blood,
rushing through the eddied channels of my veins.
I struggle to ignore the cramping in my fingers.
There's no hesitation when writing echoing refrains
when I imprison myself in poetry.
Each stanza I carefully arrange in proper sequence
as if it's a bairn born for the creation of my story.
Sometimes my gypsy muse joins me in the dance
when I write with abandonment in wild allegory.
I never try to rein her in when we're both focused
and driven to complete a poem, oblivious of time.
With vivid imagination, romantic sonnets are birthed
as I sit penning line after line in consummate rhyme,
incarcerated at my desk until I've written the last line.
My thoughts tumble like flurries of pristine snowflakes.
With a single spark of romance my passion ignites
as each completed verse falls perfectly into place, it lifts
my need to write compositions of love to greater heights.
Day and night, I find myself a wanderer, lost in reveries
where I journey in a private kingdom of verbose amplitude.
Around each curve in the road is a new challenge to be met,
and yet, none thwart me when trysting in romantic interlude.
Rude would be the one who would disturb me
when I'm handcuffed to a work in progress.
I try to indite with some semblance, dare I call it skill or talent?
By no means am I an accomplished laureate by my admission.
As a mere poet, I do not strive to compose a magnum opus,
but a meaningful collection of verses as a worthy composition.
If by chance, my poetry is interpreted and appreciated by some
who view my emotional imagery with soulful eyes of admiration,
I will credit my gypsy muse with her conspiratorial whispers
and amorous experiences as the impetus for my inspiration.
I hold the key to unlock my self-inflicted prison door,
and used when at last my pen has been laid to rest.
Glimpses I caught between the swishing traffic
on that sidewalk in cold rain and colder wind
and a cast-off Cleveland Browns windbreaker: a man
tottering a mime of an off-center grandfather clock,
and, oh yes, in a dirty orange unrav'ling
woolen cap with flopping pom-pom.
Then he caught himself, a sudden vision
in that plate glass, and froze as one struck,
arms spread, splayed fingers for balance,
gaping at himself and his wobbling pom-pom.
And I too caught him, uncanny in the black
glass beyond a CLOSED sign, among
the white tablecloths.
And then, my god, he started to dance.
Well... Okay, more of a gaucherie than dancing.
Shuffling, spread-legged tottering (he'd a clubfoot, I noticed)
interspersed (and this is the point) with little
leaps; but now without progressing as
before (if progress is the right word
for going nowhere) along the wet sidewalk.
Minutes — or was it seconds? — he gaped and leapt
and danced while busy folk eddied round him.
Then a rain-beaded bus of limp-faced,
stippled tourists stopped right there,
and I lost him, the pom-pom man, who danced among
the tables of the Café Boulevard.
Well, it was for him, you see, a vision
(for me a far feebler thing, a philosophy)
grand as Milton, Dante, St. John the Divine,
oh, even St. Simeon in the Temple. The ecstasy
of an achieved leap ignores how high you rise
(pace Nijinsky, Nureyev, Barishnykov).
It's how low you started.
This poem was inspired by the interviews by Earl K. Pollon and S. S. Matheson conducted with native Sekanni peoples who were negatively effected by the flooding of their communal homelands by the building of the W.A.C. Bennett Dam. “This Was Our Valley” tells that story of injustice. 640 square miles of riverfront and hunting territory would be flooded to form Williston Lake. The Sekanni peoples were driven from their ancestral homeland in northeastern British Columbia, Canada and dispersed.
The Shopping Cart Injustice
People, place and spirit
All were our relations
Biopeds, quadrupeds, winged or finned -
River language told us so.
Fishing rocks spoke the run
Where the riffles and the rapids talked.
Ancestors, dead and alive, told living stories where
Running the river banks, the children played.
The land was a book written in forms.
We made our mark with love, community
Fishing weirs, aspen dugout canoes,
Hunting trails, camps and sacred sites.
Always traders, we traded furs with
White settlers when they arrived
On the rivers Parsnip, Finlay and Peace at
Finlay Forks, Fort Grahame, Fort McLeod.
We added pack trains, teams of pack horses
River freighters, flat bottom ‘longboats’
For supplies and for mail delivery.
It seemed that we could live together.
Then one day a government agent said
That shopping carts were coming
They would flood our world
Water rising everywhere
Shopping carts with electric can openers
Full, fast to check out,
Shopping carts with electric hair blowers,
Full, faster to check out,
Shopping carts with electric air conditioners,
Full, fastest to check out
Shopping carts with electric stoves.
Check out, check out, check out.
They would make our rivers into a lake
We would move or drown.
Our elders did not believe it.
That was the only consultations!
Soon Saskatoon berries all under water
Next, the banks sloughed back to graveyards
Next, cliffs crumbled, and banks fell into rising lake
Houses of the villages slipped and floated
Coffins, bones and bodies strewed the shore
Where tangled trees, debris and more
Eddied with flotsam in the wind.
We wept for our ancestors!
We weep for our children.
We had to flee the destruction
Caused by tree grinders, D-9 bull dozers
The dam construction.
Now they want to take more
Another dam for more shopping carts.
Please stop Site ‘C’.
WITH RAIN CAME LOVE
Cool breeze
Cumulus clouds
Breeze solidifies,
Drizzling
Monsoon rain
White threads move to
Heavy shower.
Rain smiles
And with rain came love.
Long journeys
Longing leaning on his back
In the valley
Where meteors shower
Unexpected momentary moments
Eddied life,
Glimpses like water bubbles
Shadows overpowered specks of lights
Specks of laurels
Sudden borders to dreams
Yonder in the sky departing clouds
Swollen rain clouds
Lustre obscure
Renunciation with disinterest
Rain and love spreading over
Love brought silence
Mermaids, water nymphs
Stood guard.
We went close at heels
Along turbulent back waters
We sat, in grief
In rain and mystifying silence
Passion delivered
And kept in store
Spread over us.
Rain peeping through
Birch trees
Rain lashing through
Gulmohar
Geography of silence
Without a speck of dirt
Pious communion
Of love and rain.
Wailing hornbills, compassionate
Invoked rain
She saw us in deep grief
Grief of life-
Love in deep sleep blushed into
Wakefulness.
Longing, sights and rude realities
Cosmic force showers
Moments of eternal bliss.
In steep valley of sterility
Ascetic sun winked
At welcome clouds
Dryness transplanted
Into alluvial softness.
Rude faces, sights and longings
Lost way,
Emerged throbbing passion.
Showers of love,
Showers of mystic bliss.
UNSUPPORTED CODE
I have stood atop the Ardeche cliffs,
and surveyed the river far below,
as she carves a pockmarked limestone rift;
a distant view, an orderly flow.
I have drifted through the Ardeche Gorge,
and dared her chaos in a flimsy craft,
midst roiling water's ebb and surge,
by rocks that roar, through waves that laugh.
Dispassionately seen from unreachable heights,
her features are where they ought to be.
Her bluegreen waters are patterned with white,
her course, a God-dreamed symmetry.
But upon the current, boiling, seething,
all sense of purpose disappears.
Survival calls for mindless weaving,
through waves and rocks, and vital fears.
Crash!
through heartlifting foam flecked waves,
Rush!
down soultingling watery troughs,
Dash!
over ledges, anxiously brave,
Stop!
securely eddied, a breathtaking pause,
My thoughts are echoed in a rock ringed cove,
"Which is real, I've got to know,
the patterned peace that's seen from above,
or the passioned Hell that's sensed below?"
Shooting sixty four rapids in the time stream
Powder milk biscuits helped yours truly,
a Norwegian farmer wannabe feel bold
enough to weather inclement
steady rain which swirled, pooled,
and eddied around rolled
up pant legs skinny ankles, which
immediately felt cold,
though frigid sensation I extolled
before undertow willingly
steadily, and nimbly pulled this former
ace swimmer into watery fold
quelling, relinquishing, and taking
my hard won mettle of gold
earned early in primetime, now
at last...preemptive quiescent salvation
sluiced into unbarred
Davy Jones's locker hold
meeting his maker
yours truly made in fleshy mold
buffer dis future papa gets tubby old
all me eager life possessions
long since donated and/or sold,
thus the final countdown
found yours truly submerged
for no rhyme, nor reason told
as I blissfully headed into the webbed
wide woebegone watery wold.
Whiling away the hours
quintessentially lollygagging
within pristine environs of Bangalore
bushwhacking an arduous chore
preservation, no longer will eyes explore
of course said dreamy forevermore
glorious hoary idyll merely
knowingly, and imaginatively
buzzfeeds capital one desire i.e. alone
in the wilderness penchant – furthermore,
escape madding crowd
thick with village people galore
offload mein kampf bon jure
yaws true well lee washed away
in briny deep pull lore
“FAKE," & figuratively, hypothetically,
ably tipped, gypped,
and drowned ma poor
wet tin his every pore,
this March 21st, 2023
(ewe could Hermes faintly
bleating after mighty roar)
of ocean riptide off back
body electric far from shore,
soaking wet tha top n bot hum
'o me soggy mossy noggin,
wharf fanta seas
waterlogged optima gills, this papa
caught in reverie as stevedore
Immune to the deafening thunder of Thor.
Steady rain swirled, pooled,
and eddied around rolled
up pant legs skinny ankles, which
immediately felt cold
before undertow willingly
steadily, and nimbly pulled this former
ace swimmer into watery fold
quelling, relinquishing, and taking
my hard won mettle of gold
earned early in primetime, now
at last...preemptive quiescent salvation
sluiced into unbarred
Davy Jones's locker hold
all me eager life possessions
long since donated and/or sold,
thus the final countdown
found yours truly submerged
for no rhyme, nor reason told
as I blissfully headed into the webbed
wide woebegone watery wold,
of course said dreamy forevermore
hoary idyll mere
reverie of this stevedore
"FAKE," & figuratively, hypothetically,
and imaginatively furthermore,
yaws true well lee washed away
in briny deep pull lore
ably tipped, gypped,
and drowned ma poor
body electric far from shore,
soaking wet tha top n bot hum
'o me soggy mossy noggin,
wharf fanta seas no longer
will eyes explore
waterlogged optima gills, this papa
wet tin his every pore,
this March 21st, 2019
(ewe could Hermes faintly
bleating after mighty roar)
of ocean riptide off back
offload mein kampf bon jure,
buffer dis future
papa gets tubby old,
and senile, who would
bean imposing chore,
asper deux marriageable
daughters tubby saddled,
reined in upon, and
bridled to endure
caretaking role asper,
this former stevedore
whose existence also spent
teaching many a bore from Bangalore!
Deep restless thoughts that eddied in midnight disclosure,
My old mind shivered in traumatic tribulations.
No treats for dissolute persons to seal composure.
My mind filled with moths and other abominations.
I dreaded the spooky strength of my demon nightmare,
Defying all useless urges of vigilant trance,
Perpetual murmur of unceasing burbled fare,
Moonlit wintry rays indulge in a macabre dance.
Relinquish all dreams that cloud my old illicit thoughts,
Grab sturdy roots, get out of that pit, aim at my goal,
Can't let my senses get dulled but avoid useless rots,
Saunter steadily in love which is life for my soul
The Nap Master
HAIL the astral world of utterance,
one befalls to eavesdrop whisperings of their sweet nothings,
breathlessly whisking up a spell of portioned scents that, nay,
spilled china of eddied creamed joys and demitasse gooey treats,
BEHOLD the phoenix rises to a full exalting measure,
neath a lunar ecliptic mystic hypnotic apathy,
upon a peacock's crown whose spread out azure-chartreuse wings,
adorns unsnared midst manes of an unbridled vehement trot,
ONWARD it leaped a skipped array of a vivid rainbow's path,
of free glides during its phases of warm air in a chilled sky,
as it spread o'er vast terrains of dale and vale of culled greens,
tethered to tawny treasures of teemed lives infinite mirth wants,
BEHEST of Cherubs advent of endless stars braving her crown,
on their sailed galleons of whimsical twinkling vigilance,
seducing a flock of blithe bleating lambs a respectful ride,
on fluffed souls, nursing meek minions to ripple a fair surge,
CHANNELS a righteous domain free of a distant storm,
pushed by the lashes of sunbeams citrus lemony whips,
that ade stirred mouth fulls of dryness seeking quenching,
gouging the top echelon of expecting lips full measure,
ADHERED to heart pulsates that steady the gauge of innocence,
unique mild credulity cushioned amongst penitent palms,
and tinseled charm of enamored superheroes noble acts,
save the divine a full accounting listing each wonder,
CLUSTERS of mirrors enlightened volumes of a sojourned quest
of luminous unconsciousness prominent in such a phase,
the inner realm expanse that dwells in hallowed gifted slumber,
all grouped banking muses within the treasury of their mind,
ALL delicately locked by the key master . . .
. . . their fortuitous magnitude of eyelids.
2020 February 05