Best Far Flung Poems
O,
how I swoon
in the ruby bliss of your sunset kiss -
your vibrant rays of maturity arouses my fire;
touching me with urgent rapture,
saturating me
in sparkles of champagne light - then,
streaming through me in bold shafts of gold.
We embrace
in the broadening bloom of lantana skies -
our burning blend;
your western blaze
my prismatic panes
telling stories of love and pain,
bestowing rainbow-shadows
into depths of dark serenity -
our fervor cast like water-colored sprites
in far-flung illuminations
across dusky medieval arches
enlightening dim granite walls
gracing graceful curves and conscientious columns
in jewel-shades
waltzing with your solar pulse.
Our vivacious union
reflects our Renaissance romance
in mirrored mirages
dyeing the staid floor in painted riches
- that richly rejoice -
in plashes of splashy orgies
of light and silhouette -
the appetite of holy ambiance whet
by warm and cool tones
pregnant with passions of the heart
and imbued with torments and ecstasies
of the soul -
cleaving humanity and divinity
in flaring flair; emerald, sapphire, citrine and garnet,
amid our spellbinding moments
of tantric twilight magic.
Our synergy electrifies
the night-falling quietude of this sacred space
before our enchanted euphoria
begins to wane..
and as your dying flame
gives way to the rise of the shy crescent moon
I lose my orgasmic zest
to the evening’s ebony hue.
With the onset of advancing age, so I find,
A man grows weary of all mundane talk;
Occupies his every spare, idle thought
With that of the slow, reflective kind.
Regretful of many a squandered hour,
Turning his back on the squabbling nations,
Their woeful, self-serving deliberations,
Dreams wistfully of his own starlit tower.
Should he hopefully find that blessed stair,
Wound insides of the ancient, dim lit wall,
Where tread from unseen feet sometimes fall,
He could but elevate himself above his cares;
There, throwing his soul upon the night,
Lift his gaze upon a tumultuous crowding!
His thinning pate adorned with a crowning
From a far-flung, pale, distant light.
And if he was to fix his mind upon that point;
To that moment forcefully bring to bear,
With every ounce of fibre when stood there,
An unremitting will to somehow exploit,
That, which, the mystics so jealously guarded...
Then, perhaps, he might too ascend?
For, in all reality, at the very end,
All is thrown off...the very body discarded.
Therefore I will choose my own finality.
I give my remaining days to old worn steps
Enclosed in rock, a turret that silhouettes
Against an endless sky; and if it should be
That I find such hallowed battlements
Give aging legs the strength to slowly climb,
To praise the celestial and sublime,
When reaching up where my God frequents.
For though those stars seem out of reach,
Unattainable by grand, omnipotent design,
Nevertheless I am thusly to be inclined
To offer up a prayer and unto him beseech:-
"Immortal father who created mortal man,
Ye who sits above all earthly thrones,
Give unto me old tools and rubbled stones,
And I shall endeavour to do what I can...
To rebuild that abandoned, crumbled tower...
For, Lord, be it only by dreams men are
Truly empowered"!
Who was it that first said..
'the eyes are the window to the soul'..
who's eyes did they envision..
and how did they know?
And what of sweet wetted fingers that comb..
to straighten this messed heart cowlick I own.
Few well paired wanderlust seek a divine pardon..
still fancy the folly of youth's far flung travels.
Two trespass meadow lost to petal lined garden,
til intimacy's last mystery unravels.
Darting dawn awakes to write upon love's torn page..
parting drawn in true type font in spite of heart's age.
A whistling wheezing hamlet, whispering and emanating, tunes euphonic,
In a remote isolated valley, far-flung from the abode of the temporal,
Warbling quietly to whistle scads of tranquil cryptic songs;
Lying spasmodic, a sparsely inhabited mellifluous hamlet, Kongthong!
Not to hyperbole, a singing utopia, uncustomary to the core!
Where innate and mellow are the naive dwellers' rustic tinkling timbres!
A rover's riddle, the natives' pride, a unique heritage, their blissful strains!
Ringing with an ancient tradition of tune-giving in honour of the root ancestress,
Customary to the matrilineal surviving unknown folk of the thorp!
The chirping region's dispositions and practices outlandish, vague and obscure,
Primitive and bizarre, mere to merge with nature's absolute accord!
Voices buzzing in whistles, murmuring and chattering, lilting,
Arcane, pervading the virgin thicket of the sacred thorpe!
To entangle, passerby and wanderers in dream like metaphors!
Those magical murmurs in quirky tunes, mingling the breeze of the secluded hamlet, intoning own tinkles!
Blessed are the tuning terrain's offsprings, nameless!
Rared by ditties, hailed sacred by the clan's conviction!
Outlying, by the uninhabited enchanting wilderness of East Khasi Hills,
Sleeping quietly the untrodden, nature's lulling lullaby, the whistling Kongthong!
Yell! Immaculate and serene, the saga of their undeciphered airs, mumbling in exquisite ethos!
Inimitable and gripping to eye, how the denizens of the tribe,
Are crooning to dub and call each other by indigenous intonations!
Pitching and whooshing, to tune their melodic identities unique!
Whew! The picturesque terrain is tweeting, whooping, and whizzing!
Heaven! Bless anomalous nature's absolute pamphlet,
The ringing Kongthong, God's own whistling hamlet!
The youthful memories I have did grate
Upon my innermost self and I’d cry
For my depressed spirit which longed to die
And halt life tainted with anger and hate
Yet now in a manic marvelous state
Akin to alcohol’s euphoric high
My heart’s core renewed can soar to the sky
How this came to be I’ll try to relate
I trapped thorny issues behind a gate
Forgiveness has become a great ally
Love found everyday gives reason to fly
Like a balloon unencumbered with weight
While able to breathe and greet each sunrise
Living and giving seem like the best prize
*****
Youth represents life of song to be sung
Laughing out loud when memories are made
But you wept as your spirit became frayed
Though now you’re wiser than when you were young
Having crossed the threshold of angst that clung
See how clover's nectar can be arrayed
Let your heart rejoice and not be afraid
As delight comes from strands of pearls restrung
The door's ajar—from the cage you've been sprung
Take wing knowing happiness will not fade
A heart’s compassion will never abrade
Where you go now—no place is too far-flung
Revel in moonlight and dawn's painted skies
An attitude change has opened your eyes
Lin, working with you is a pleasure and does bring a grand internal and external smile.
Cityscape
The artist’s hand reshapes yesterday
In straight lines
Of hard edges -
Peaks of
Right angles perfected
Missing oblique or obtuse –
Claiming the horizon
In full frontal
Silhouette
Cut from ebony shades,
When daylight sinks into the shadows
And twilight goes down meeting midnight
One dimension pyramids,
Floors layered by steel reinforced
Triangulated honeycombs,
Octagonal rounds
Gather cotton clouds
Topping off their naked crowns,
Lofty spires
Scrape the midnight
To gather far flung stars
Flat rectangles with jute box tops
Soar with arches -
Lines leaping up and sliding down -
Squares low and squat,
Took up their space,
Yanked from the line,
Openings left
Like toothless
Grinning;
Concealed within the cityscape unblinking
The murmurings of urban sighs,
No rise and fall of breathing,
Foundation’s feet bound in stone
Swaying only when magnum cores
Tremble moving plates east to west, north to south;
Unseen
The doorway cradle songs
Of shivering dreams,
Desperation
Pacing
On the nineteenth floor
Fauna’s night perfume
Floating up behind dark floral gates
Of swirling iron
Grids of neighbors – blocks of neighborhoods -
Graphs of boulevards winding round,
Absent from the cityscape.
Inspirational verse – “When the lights go down in the city and the sun shines on the bay; do I want to be there in my city….I want to be there in my city.” Journey
When you said to me,
"Climb up here, It's pollution free."
Sacred. Safe.
Your rarefied air.
Calculating, you seemed so free.
Safeguard. Sage.
I said I could breathe...
Underrated your density.
Saintly. Sane.
High-minded insight.
When anticipated terror
denuded me,
cool rarefied air
regulated insanity,
far gone fear.
I will breathe
in your rarefied air.
Let it burn brisk
in brittle, brave lungs.
Gasp and grasp
life's flame, full flare.
Lunge for high notions,
those far-flung schemes.
I will breathe in
High mind's smoke,
hung in air-
that ghostly stroke of genius,
rare token in disguise
Well spoken word flurries
whipping away thin guise.
Floating crown
adrift on high.
I will breathe in
Your rarefied air,
because I listened to you.
"Clamber up, high!
Unfazed view will circle you,
miles on end surround you.
No going around the bend.
Nowhere else to go.
No zig zag escape.
No spike in pressure.
No deep depression.
No bad atmosphere.
No stabbing shove.
No push or pull on edge.
Just your pledge to breathe.
To move in one direction.
Forever. Mentally "together."
Stay in good shape."
I will breathe out.
Your rarefied thoughts
congeal life's force,
slows down blood flow.
Till body gloved heart
faintly, faintly glows...
Concealed fire's torch,
caved embers die down.
Stripped artfully apart,
Your rarefied airs
blanket my mind in snow.
13/10/2018. Purely fiction. On the pros and cons of mentorship. "Higher" education is not necessarily a good thing. Learning lessons are.
The view from our cruise ship
Conjures far-flung images of amber hues
A fusion of illusion and reality
Where bending arc of the horizon
Greets the magnificent ocean.
The ocean flows, having done so
Billion years plus so many more
Churning, foaming, bouncing, dancing
From Atlantic to Pacific, Arctic to Antarctic
And every continent in between.
It goes to war flaunting armored ships
Designs exotic scenic beaches
Goes boating, surfing, fishing
Enjoys scuba diving in coral reefs.
As our dining room turns heads to peek
At the petite towns of the Mediterranean
Dressed in olive and orange trees
Moonlight's reflecting from the sea
Dancing to twinkling lights from the hills.
This beast and beauty held together by gravity
Harbinger of love, romance, happiness
Fills my gleeful heart with its own echo
I think I know why the ocean flows.
August 2, 2017
HM: Strand select V contest by Brian Strand
Paced 2nd: A Poem I wrote and Sent Drifting
Sponsor: Broken Wings
Uprooting dreams
of yesterday,
time sows the seeds
of tomorrow.
Grey clouds shed tears
in April rains,
as winter wanes
and warmth abounds.
Fleeing far-flung
sanctuaries,
migrating birds
start heading home.
And on the winds
of open sky,
caterpillars
try newfound wings.
Wild trillium
and daffodil,
usher in the
first days of spring.
And tulips flaunt
their waxen bells
atop stems of
emerald green.
A swallow swoops for flitting flies
While Johnny rubs exhausted eyes
(As morning clasps the rising sun)
Confirming Captain’s day’s begun:
Slow streams emerge from melting snows -
The Merchant Ship’s in stark repose...
As Johnny frets with tingling tongue
A Vulture fleeces fields far-flung
(Beneath a bleeding sun above),
And Captain culls the dead with love:
Yes, while the silent water flows,
The Merchant Ship just gulps and grows...
A serpent weaves amongst the weeds
As Johnny dares audacious deeds
(When evening drains the dying day)
To stop the Captain, come what may:
And while the raging rivers grow
The Merchant Ship rocks to and fro...
An owl, a’ branch, has teacup eyes
That glimmer dark as Johnny dies
(Now sown inside the future’s womb)
When flushing Captain to his doom:
Trapped in titanic undertow
The Merchant Ship’s swept down below...
A fledgling bird sprays morning dew
As Johnny Junior’s born anew
(He’s baptised in the dawn ablaze)
To rectify the former days:
Raw rills arise from melting snow
And virgin rivers start to flow...
The air is shivered; to displacements whim.'
From the Ides of heaven’s sphere
As smote was the skin of a cosmic drum
Throbbing walls of pressure ‘push in’.
Then down as silvered mail, are droplets thrown
Disgorged from Yahweh’s mighty quiver
Descending on, and over all creation
Glistening in sheaves, and slivers;
Igniting the energy of growth, in plant
Grass, rock and tree, a heavy hissing static falls
Across the fells, and far flung seas.
To drop.. and dropping… under and upon'
Darkling pines, also the great lakes waters.
Lozenged globes, reflective, scatter liquid light
In manifold freshening beads, too… carouses
Aloft in choruses; the damp clad whistling breeze.
Laurel leaves pendle and sway in harmony
and glistening mid-hued green, as sun bursts shine to
Kiss the rain, all embellishing; in tenebristic reverie.'
©Joe Maverick 25-2-2013
to know more about this poem click on you know where.."
Oh baneful yellow Moon in fullest rounded sphere,
Bright as Summers Buttercups in abundant yield,
Coldly riveted upon Winters beaten, thin silvered panels;
Thereof: By ye mighty hammer doth great thoth wield!
For what fearful trowel gouged out thine far flung valleys
Whilst piling high upon yon monstrous heights?
Wherest, scattering the bare pebbles, a ghostly sower
Coursing across vast cratered plains under Selenian moonlights.
Here once didst thou swelling tides ever invade long vanished shores
Dragged upon by some dwindling, exploded, far distant star;
An atmosphere girdling, warming and nurturing -
Torn from this barren rock and cast way out afar!
Eternally ostracized and deviled, adorned in black swirling robes;
Drifting angular grains heaped - raked by hot solar winds;
Your desolate kingdoms lit in all seasons under heavenly lanterns;
Worshiped and foully cursed upon: for any amount - and all manner of sins.
And ere did erstwhile lovers that ever come forth on bended knee,
To traverse the pale beams that twist about the crooked stiles,
Pledge well intended oaths beneath high, impossible windows:
Their grandly draped balconies and balustrades bathed in luminosities wiles.
When across the recorded centuries of histories misted-veiled years,
from the quill of the old sage, from the high lilt of the bard,
Your pensive countenance disaffected and of a cheerless tilt -
Hanging upon sharply crested vestiges of reckless disregard!
Burnished bronze, tarnished teal,
flare warnings yield to winds of steel.
Their urge to jump, to flee and hide
cuts off the warmth for suicide.
They leap and land at such a cost,
far flung debris- refulgence lost.
They shrivel brown, dark fibers done,
decay beneath the wayward sun.
Their shredded shells in supine piles,
small hells ignite by human wiles.
Gray smoking wraiths slip out to sigh,
soar off to smear the flannel sky.
Green progeny will take their turn.
One chance to live is what they earn.
Dawn, when silence falters
And the trees of the range-
Are tucked in a bucket of fog
Marching dawn, whose beauty never alters,
I tuck myself in blankets like a log
At the Treetops Hotel upon the range
Dainty dreams upon dawn’s altar
The dappled peacock dazes the dawn
While the African crowned eagle
Will soar, prowling for prey
And tourists peep and picture the fawn
While their eyes prowl the breakfast tray
Jacaranda festooned fashion regal
Its blue flowers blue snowfall upon dawn
Elephants trudge to the watering hole
Buffalo follow, even the bush buck
The warthog always walks silly,
The big five will steal your soul
At the Ark's perch, you will be stuck
The water adorned by the pond lily
The range's serenity, waters your soul
Pristine streams gush from the moorlands
The Hagenia, decked in velvet green
The sword lily, sheathed in fibrous tunic
And as the Karuru falls hit land
True love will pierce to the gene
For pristine nature, is the true cupid.
Breaths bated as lovers hold hand
Further, nestled nigh in the blue skies
The Kinangop peak, peeking through
The closer I get, the further it hides
A sun bird chatters, along my trail's high
My eyes in tune, such wondrous hillsides
I sweat as I head towards the bamboo
I am among the butterflies
Ringlets in a dance, oh! Surreal world
Monkeys swing, tree to tree, a trail of imagination
A reed buck is openly grazing
A canvas of the grassland in its gold
I spot a Serval cat, in hiding
On a safari truck, the breeze is an inspiration
Beauty flows in the altitudes that I behold
At dusk the steeped villages prepare for sleep
The Nyandarua range, yawns its last
Fabled home of the Kikuyu god
Curtain like shadows befall the steep
And this wonderland begins to nod
As the women fluff off days dust fast
Men’s ears wide open as it darkens deep
Wild animals are known to visit
Roving around, excitement for the young
But the animals are known to visit hungry
The locals know too well, memories vivid
An elephant’s wrath is meted out bluntly
Protection for man and beast not far flung
Conservation and nurture is the spirit
As Mount Satima watches her watered floors,
She knows the heart goes deep
Collaboration with njeri hunjeri who is a wonderful poet
Goddess, The Fantasy, The Dream And The Reality
Spent, exhausted with this heartfelt feeling that I must
journey forth, representative of cosmic dust;
I, stranded creature on this planet set to roam
in midst of strangers far, far from my hearth and home;
drift boldly into night's dark with defiant vow,
epic oath to live for her life, the here and now!
Recalling memories of dwarf moons and swirling storms,
goddess that once loved and held me in her tender arms;
eyes that shown with intensity of wanton desires
hot lips, that imbued in me eternal love's fires;
desperate need to live up to her expectations,
Hopeful I flew, into this far flung constellation!
On lonesome trails, haunting dreams invade my sad nights
nightmares, foes hellbent on stealing any delights;
recalled moments of her warm kisses and touch
stretching out of her arms saying, "Ï love you this much";
that smile, beaming bright as any celestial star,
her sincerely saying, "I love you as you are"!
Now lost, wandering through this world of colossal seas,
I, the traveler now issue sincerest of pleas;
with but one aim, to return to her radiant glow
race onward, with Time still and a fate I do not know;
should intensity of desire create a way back,
I'd never leave, my goddess in her deep forested shack!
Robert J. Lindley
October 13th, 2017