Best Exhuming Poems
Words were meant to be shared,
embraced, loathed at times,
feared, and met with trepidation.
Words release that power within us
we need to express in tactile whispers
or in loud climactic reverberations.
They are meant to charm, to soothe,
to pacify, to even stop that internal
clock ticking away elusive moments.
Words...
laid bare, exhuming the bleeding heart
with its rhythmic flow that exhilarates
to an innate beating of native drums.
When words enter the realm of poetry
they seek their own uncharted path
enlightening and illuminating the spirit.
They become their own reward,
caught between light and shadow,
imagination and creative exploration.
© Connie Marcum Wong
Categories:
exhuming, words,
Form:
Free verse
I write of feelings real;
some difficult to express.
And encourage hearts to feel;
with a poetic caress.
My pen interrogates pain;
trying to describe the hurt.
And redefine what is sane;
revealing the hidden dirt.
My poems evoke feelings;
from first breath to Death's embrace.
And shattering glass ceilings;
amplify pride and disgrace.
My words connect with a few;
beyond their expected norms.
For I share their point of view;
through rhyme and established forms.
My muse supersedes all bounds;
exhuming dead dreams and fears.
And my fragmented heart pounds;
visiting anguish and tears.
My soul pools in hurting hearts
as it leaks upon the page.
And anxiety departs;
from the heart of this old sage.
Categories:
exhuming, feelings, how i feel,
Form:
Quatrain
This lapse shed showers of sorrows
Piercing my diamond heart with its arrows
And as it breaks within my grasp furrows
It paints little hells on my minds marrows
Oh! Pretty maiden so dark and comely
Exhuming my youthful passion spontaneously
With infectious smiles and extorted kisses
Your seduction breaks honest promises
There our shadow coupled in the pool of yesterday’s rain
Ill-memories of passionate groans and silent whisper
Accentuating painful pleasure for gain
A deluded victory, a stunting stigma,?
Growing is the ears to this confession
Of rumbling rhymes and straying clauses
Still before you condemn me pause
To this myth of contrition.?
Categories:
exhuming, adventure, best friend, body,
Form:
Rondeau Redouble
Coffin lungs unhinge a chest open bare,
fragile skin ripping thin as bat membrane-
flutter in waves of vapor, from the heart that beats itself,
exhuming an illusive space...
defined by all that never was.
The only promise left unbroken,
held against all petty wills,
is the nothingness that eclipses the tangible-
contoured by chaos, it stands tall and futile,
leaving no shade for the shelter of lost dreams.
And so let the old void fill the new,
where Only Hope's clumsy shadow filters in,
and Fear blows every breath of whim,
Asphyxiating in this open cage,
for too long I chose to stay and wait
for empty promises to take,
and take,
and take.
Categories:
exhuming, addiction, anger, angst, break
Form:
Free verse
Iberia, I long to breathe you in
as long ago I did. . . and then exhale
sangria nights with lace against my skin!
Sweet temptress draped in beauty, you unveil
Flamenco’s soul, exhuming history -
impressions left by ancients on your face -
from Roman glory’s remnants by the sea
to Moorish structures’ arcs of ageless grace.
Oh, how could I retreat with more to learn,
to make no sacrifice, nor question why
I had to keep my plans and not return
to your broad plains beneath Castilian sky?
Time stole my youth; I can’t go back again.
You could have been my home, belovèd Spain.
Feb 6, 2020
for John Hamilton's "Your Best Sonnet 2020" contest
(my best one that was not at least a previous winner in one of your own sonnet contests this year, John.)
Categories:
exhuming, places,
Form:
Sonnet
I taught of it to be a day filled with ink and empty paper
Where ill paint myself rainbow
Blank paper scribbled with ink should rain upon me
In appreciation for the proper use of poetry
Today every word play will queue up in a cemetery
Exhuming words buried in my archive
To march forth to me for their salary
For they slaughtered for me every life alive.
World Poetry Day |2020
©Pensayf
Categories:
exhuming, 4th grade, africa, art,
Form:
Free verse
love calibrates not
value systems
there is no judgment
nor any hesitation
in plunging into embrace
the echo may not return
it matters not
love is an effervescence
exhuming darkness
as God is our witness
Categories:
exhuming, love,
Form:
Free verse
We dragged the slopes to our feet.
On the summit, we burnt our clothes
for wood and there shuffled our feet
in the hush of the falling snow.
We had come out of the scuffed grass.
With one look back in unbelief
exhuming the long trek
the silent keen
puffing through blubbery fingers.
We pulled the hoofed trail through
the trapdoor of our unchained links
foisting for new heights.
Beyond the Appalachian Mountains
the hanging fern on pine dripped snow
on moles burrowing in gashed hollows.
We paused. In that doubtful moment
we rued the climb, succumbing to the assault
upon this stilled millennia’s eerie silence.
All that time the swivelling blizzards raged
shifting soil, eroding avalanches.
Below, burgeoning customs
unmaned the silent dignity of bisons.
All bore testimony to a familiar preparation.
And then, suddenly before our eyes
the solemn ground rose with the breeze
the spangled map changing to the quick:
Chicago Pittsburgh Kansas City
wild barnyards dry-coughing, pop-corning garages
horrent timber ribbed the coasting steamboats
the linoleum walls
the mild Indian piqued he was
by the mahogany cubism of our speech.
We wondered if coming so far
only mattered, we would be content
to build a fire, here and now
and unpack our horses.
We saw little need to go on.
One night the summit might open
up and swallow us all or old age
would come upon us like a lonely neighbour
on a pretext to the door.
© T.Wignesan 1964
London, U.K.
[from the collection: tell them i’m gone, 1983; published in Fire Readings (A Collection of Contemporary Writing from the Shakespeare & Company Fire Benefit Readings). Paris-Boston: Frank Books, 1991, pp. 36-37.]
Categories:
exhuming, inspirational, fire, fire,
Form:
Lay
Sprawled on my soft leather sofa
One Sunday after church service
Reading Okara’s “Spirit of the Wind”
And my infant son is sleeping nearby:
He would never leave me alone.
I couldn’t tell whether I was reading
Because he was asleep or
He was asleep because I was reading.
But from the wind came the laughter of my
Neighbour’s kids
From over at the garden
Where they gather to play
And the wind keeps blowing.
Oh how they laugh such laughable laughter.
Freely they laugh hysterically, sillily
As if their lives depended on it.
Their high pitched chattering
Their piercing shouts
Twittering trough to my juvenile repertoires
Exhuming them from the cemetery of memory
To haunt my childhood chronicles.
This was me again
Laughing crazily in the garden
And on my sofa
He is up from his siesta, my son
He sees my laughing quietly,
He joins me.
Categories:
exhuming, baby, child, childhood, family,
Form:
Blank verse
Mouth dry, face numb.
My eyes feel like exploding.
Back and forth between dark clouds,
halfway between heaven and hell.
I'm tired of fighting. I need a hand.
The feelings are toxic and soul destroying.
Trapped within the labyrinth of this betrayed mind,
I'm under attack from an unrepentant enemy.
Elements that speak of decay and decline.
A supernatural infused horror.
Snapped bones, smashed noses, inhumane experiments.
Human depravity and cruelty on such a vast scale.
Desperation, self destruction, exhuming loathing and fear.
Renouncing faith through vile persecution.
A sickening procedure that hasn't been without its casualties.
This is certainly no place for the faint of heart.
Yet, like a modern day Lazarus,
I continue to count my blessings each and every day.
Yes, this is the measure of my God given lot,
but nobody ever proclaimed that life was to be easy.
Persevering against the odds,
It's time to step out of the shadows.
Digesting truths, no more secrets.
Space to rebuild the Spirit.
Journeying towards acceptance and understanding.
Never allowing the darkness back into the realm.
Maybe that's why I'm a Survivor.
Categories:
exhuming, blessing, deep, faith, feelings,
Form:
Free verse
Each subsequent process of cell division
i.e. mitosis sans biological parlance
erodes chromosomal cap re: telomere if u can envision
some juncture senescence prevails –
apoptosis no chance to prevent natural degradation
and one alternate decision opting to bail out
subsequent etching chronological age –
averse at a glance to mortal male, who decries death breed’s frisson.
Thus disallowing healthy end of life discussion
once tutu shed rescinding plenti more figurative song and dance routines
final curtain call closes existence, where grim reaper jeers with derision
at attempts to thwart cessation of mortality,
whereby scientists seek to en-hance longevity –
even exhuming the dead (or thawing deceased
from suspended animation) and experimenting
with nonanesthetic induced incision.
To rewind expired meter fostering demise after staying alive –
with lance a lot chock full of chemical concoctions (hatched at round table)
to revive corpse as ultimate mission.
Yet, any effort to transcend genetic bulwark engendered
from bulge in pants (that initially unleashes biological reproduction
viz zit head via seminal swimmer in tandem with merging ova)
based on advantageous coupling favored position,
ought not be tampered with
lest havoc t’will rent asunder ranting rabid quest per final course
since egg versus chic hen ala kin collision.
Inscribed within DNA blueprint from extinct cousins of uncles and aunts
prepping monster to burst from Ray Kurzweil laboratory
whereby to halt recalcitrant son or daughter spanning cradle to grave
invariably yields zombie, spells monstrous FRUITION!
Categories:
exhuming, age, birth, character, creation,
Form:
And sadness reigns
Though never ordained
from the simple truth
Billowing joy
Subverting bliss
Standards too ephemeral
To lobby the naked
wishes we hold
Desperately close
To our heart
And sadness reigns
Our heart
once whole
Sputter and mends
And beats eternally
No matter the blood
No blood the matter
It seeks, filters
and dispenses joy
From mechanoly cells
Pleading for regeneration
The familiar beg towards
Indiscriminate joys
Mean nothing but
To be left alone
Crystallized, for exhibition
to the many
Everyone partake
Seek a morsel for
Yourself
Because it's fleeting
And sadness reigns
Through our ears,
Acoustic lies flutter
Sincerely, vacant waves
Of love melodic,
It does its job,
Tainting sweetly our reality
While souls huddle close
For a deeper view
Our here and now
Climbs, repels
From sentimental summits
Vistas of pretty dreams
Fragrant, lauding over
The stench whispering
Towards the barren valley below
Then back to us
Hearing, humming
Exhuming
Chemical reactions
Singed
By recall
Broken or of whole
The music
Causing joy to
Drop by when we need it the most
And sadness reigns
We're startled,
As focus brings
The world into
Rarefied view
Intensive stare,
Colliding our senses
Interpreting their meanings
Elastic snowballs
Thundering into
Psychotic waves of
Lustful avalanches
that burn the retinas
With joy, inquisition,
Indelible glances
Hung up neatly
To wear when
Dreams demand them,
And there are peeks,
Boisterous looks
That tease your mind
And theirs
Visionary tales
Gross of dischord
And malfunction,
Though they serve
As guests,
Glee in a box,
Nibble, taste
Devour, done
And sadness reigns
Because you and I
All before us
And those to follow
And yet to come
Arrive, depart through
Unmarked swiveled doors
Betwixt adjoining suites
Cemented
Endlessly
By the mundane
we require
The horrific which we
Bring and run across
The zeal we grab
For ourselves and others
The aggression we
Wage and deflect
The resignation we extract
And authorize
And somehow
As sadness reigns
We defect
And elect
To be ruled
By something else.
(1/27/05)
Categories:
exhuming, anger, angst, dark, depression,
Form:
Free verse
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.
Categories:
exhuming, political, water, water,
Form:
Free verse
She misses Europe
Since her anointed head’s hope
Lingers goodness of land’s womb
The backyard’s pale fears
Massive mountains of king Leer!
Kristiansand in atmosphere!?
Her head is the globe
Turning from left to right’s orb
Her eyes tests a great fierce hop
The orbit looks fluff
Gyrates her green eyes’ dark puff
Shifting has walloped…No bluff
Could Nibiru kick?!
Our dry moon on its brim?
Spinning loops of sad might grim!?
Could the slim band show
Her aura for seeing source!?
Mona Lisa revealed core
Could she be so blind?!
Looking far ahead of time!?
Yet spell-check papers of lime!?
Is the great sun here?
Nearing our solar’s fear?
Spreading distance mid the sphere!?
Is it here her ground?!
Her bliss forehead speaks aloud?
Balancing orbits’ sleek bound!
Proposing harshly!
Eats our sun hungrily!!
Creates stern hostility!!!
If picture flattens…
As a narrow rectangle
See two planets are closer?
Reincarnated?!
Wishes flamingo’s places?
or loves soft belly dances?
Her soft smile cried why!!
Her kind eyes trickled tears’ fry
Da Vinci dyed his dread eye
Projecting fine art
Da Vinci prized her posh card
Exhuming profound seas’ chart
3 of 6
By: Nadia F. Shahwan – April 2009
Categories:
exhuming, mysterysun,
Form:
Choka
written a long time ago
Aghast
Sans shutting the dresser fast
Lest drawing to cloths to the past.
Akin to dredging up sedimentary muck
That metaphors me whence getting stuck
During adolescence – which lasted decades
each 'n to barreling driverless
heading toward
a garbage disposal dump peed truck
when me entire being felt utter yuck
Holograms of former life inhabit
childhood each dresser drawer
Which furniture about five feet from top to floor
Encapsulates invisible fractals
of me and contrived lore
Iron nick lee, the latter increases
as sands of time increase more
Find mine gaze drawn to hash marks
(from Matthews’) fingers did score
Within the veneer epitomizing strife that tore
And rent psyche asunder
exemplifying unseen civil war
That raged within façade of placidity
Hosting mailer daemons in this yahoo –
nobody could see
Re:
Clawing to cleave copper handles of me
Synonymous with malevolent genie
Hell bent of wreaking havoc
and thus clamored to break free
From shuttered jumbled wardrobe
stale garments some mold e
bereft of taking a tumble
in washer and dryer to air
Perspiration from boyhood pores,
with a skinny body when bare
As would be immediately clear
By many I did fear
Whose gaze akin to a scorching glare
Exhuming a suffer 'n soul silent leer,
especially when viewer near
Gaze glued at tchotchkes
like skeletal frame, with palm sized rear
Analogous to that boudoir – over there
Where housed baggy garments,
yes even under wear
Ill fitting hardly worn hand me downs
a haunting clasp from yesteryear!
Categories:
exhuming, absence, age, boy, childhood,
Form:
Elegy