Best Finitude Poems
Some say you are lost
If you are not found
On their ground
Some think you are blind
If you do not find
What they find
I am an atheist who believes
The universe is a tapestry
Not a thread
The science to chart the stars
Is but a celestial church
That medicine and vaccines
Are answered prayers
That communities
Can save each other
That math and music
Language and learning
Rebuilding destruction
And regretting a wrong
Are inherent miracles
That to plant a tree
Water a garden
Kiss a scar
Soothe a bruise
Give a smile
Hug a sorrow
Cook a meal
Play a song
Clasp a hand
Bandage a cut
Wipe a tear
Hear a need -
Is divine
I believe the soul of nature
Is sacred
and a rainbow's refraction
Is all the more radiant
For the formula it contains
I believe the finitude of life
Makes a more precious day
And, to my friends of other faiths
I believe - we can meet halfway.
4/27/20
(this was inspired by a poem I read by Anil Deo called Any Athiests out there - thank you for your kind response to my novella-of-a-comment, Anil!)
The exit ramp looms large just up ahead,
though still an unknown distance ‘round the bend,
a terminus of sorts.
Perhaps a point from which to send
us out of time constraints, into the now,
the means by which remain unknown, just how
exactly, this all ends.
To fret, a waste, ’tis said, so I shall trust instead.
And yet, this ideation blooms within
my mind, a frequent fascination that
with other thoughts, comports.
If only now, is there no then,
and sequencing of time, thus obsolete,
as all arrive en mass, surprised to meet?
The world I know is flat;
my finitude stretched thin, constrained to trust again.
—————
Another fun one, a Mistress Bradstreet stanza: 10a-10b-6c-8b-10d-10d-6b-12a
This one comes from a notion from reading Matthew 25, in the Last Judgment. All would have died at different times, but on that day, all were surprised, hence the idea of different departures, all arriving at now.
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This will be the third time I've added sponsor info. I do not know what is happening here...
for the 2022 Poetry Marathon Mile 22 Poetry Contest
sponsored by Mark Toney
written on 10/13/22
A prayer is like seduction to your soul
Your church is the glamour the world bestowals
Your bible is the flashy neon lights and billboards
Your truth is the multiplicity of greedy
Your salvation is fruition of materialism
Your retribution is its finitude and lost satiety
Heaven becomes invisible through the eye of a needle
Tattered clobbered thoughts streaming to winged dusts,
spiral spasms tremble amid weary sounds.
The festal moods swing dreary interludes,
visions ache release with defloration--
throaty cries heightens the greedy man's lust.
He longs to possess the murmur of blood
from naked images throbbing desires,
it surges -- tinged to his cerebellum.
Dark libertine drained his desirous juice--
madness stings deep-- displayed to his ardor.
Boorish bashfulness etched into each itch
cracking unto his left to right onslaught.
Finitude fair Venus choked with disgust
as she wriggles, wriggles to free herself!
Her wriggles useless from black libertine...
Pristine Venus fallen-- now wanting death.
©O. E. Guillermo
5:15pm December 05, 2014
Sponsor Giorgio A. V.
Contest Name Structured forms - Iambic verse - Sketch a fictitious character - (Top Gun Poetry)
Placed 6th
Beyond all those particular existences
Such illusions of meaningless digressions
from what's humble and noble
Decimated to nothing other than
eternal oblivion
A fallacy to one's own finitude
A pretension to omnipotence
An undue adulation
To such negations
Of knowing evil by infection........
Civilizations used white to mitigate the lack of black.
Black is not just skin color but also a human spirit.
Imagine indigenous people having red skin plaque!!
While things seem disastrous, it is just painted on it.
Civility will be total only If all races are treated fairly.
Thus, do not squander your life if time runs limited.
Not the same as 1960s; CRT has no sign of diversity.
CRT prep does not contain a notion of finitude.
Light exposes everything in some way or another.
The sight of a wacky mind is preferred above others.
Superior words develop at the moment they recover.
There is no compelling reason to blame our ancestors.
Nature will piddle it happen if she so discovers.
Life develops for its own durability.
Shaded Earths mutate regularly.
To preserve impartiality, we should be blind.
For exploring, notice the hues of parental rind.
Our fragility leads to family growth progeny.
It is plausible to identify prominence.
When do we have complete awareness?
People are forced to crack without food. ?
Without the deemed necessary mood.
CRT is a crucial forerunner of our world's drooping.
And we're all equal; all have the endowment to evolving.
The modern age is replete with hate; thus, let's end it.
Let's not fail to renew forgiveness to the world's past.
Written: June 20, 2021
Critical Race Theory Poetry Contest
Sponsored by: Anthony Biaanco
What obstacle can there be between a boy and infinity?
Behind the old brick house, among countless fig and persimmon trees,
next to the concrete cistern and under a beautiful bright summer sky,
the boy was playing climbing trees
and chasing locusts hiding in the grass.
A boy knows that with just a prosaic branch of a tree
he can wield the most invincible of swords,
and that if he gathers a single stone from the ground,
he will have in his hands the power to move the world
and shake it as he pleases.
The boy created a cyclone from a simple blow,
caused an earthquake by jumping from a tree,
landing with his feet firmly on the earth.
In fact, a boy will create mountains and seas,
skies and planets whenever he wants to.
However, tired of playing,
the boy stopped beside the cistern,
turned on the faucet and let the water run down the floor.
On hot afternoons like this one,
there is a scent of transformation in the air.
It is at this moment that the discoveries that lead to growth take place: seeing the water soaking the earth,
turning into clay, drying and turning to dust,
the boy understood the transience of the elements.
We don't like these gross mechanisms of time.
Inside us, we try to attribute to all things,
even if in an illusory way,
a cover of perpetuity,
something that softens the violence of the years and its consequences.
It seems to be a fair form of self-defense,
especially when we realize
that all the blessing brought by understanding,
ends up being taken away
by the realization of our finitude.
You don't expect such thoughts to occur to a boy,
yet he understands the acid logic
that excludes the balm of fantasy from life
and injects a dose of the poison of reality in its place.
Soon he will look with indifference at the old toys,
he will replace each laugh with a disappointment,
each disappointment will form a tear,
and finally he will yell at his own children,
demanding that they stop playing and grow up at once.
Growing up is the only obstacle
that can stand between a boy and infinity.
On The Threshold
Two rooms shared a single door,
One my past, one the now,
But yet to see the future, How?
Eyes strained, brow furled… Nevermore?
In final collapse to my finitude,
I threw open the single door,
Stood on the threshold of then and now,
Screamed at the Future… Nevermore!
And silence let in, as I there stood,
Having fixed my mind on those two rooms,
To reveal a third, open windowed, view,
Of a world awaiting for me to join…
And then I saw my future there,
Yet not as made, but waiting to be,
And through that window, I had not seen,
I set the past and present free…
Slipped through that window, into the world,
To find the future waiting for me.
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What we Read, is Where we Go...
He kisses like dark skies
Bewitches with dark eyes
And rains down upon me
A mad, storm-born love.
In the wake of him
I am lost betwixt and between
Reality and the illusions thereof.
He shines with blood and fire
Impels me beyond desire
To a realm out of bounds of mind.
We swell and surge like liquid night
Like life in flight
Expanding
unfolding through space and time.
By savage grace I am free
With feral lust I see
The unabashed violent beauty of the night.
With his touch I am razed
With his breath I am saved
And borne up to soar empyrean heights.
Slowly now I return
As softly drips
My love from ensanguined lips
Finitude as surely evanescent as a dream.
With a kiss he whispers my name
Again, again and yet again
Forever and forever and forever
Amaranthine.
I am overjoyed over our mortality. Because if we were immortal, I wouldn't feel the need to hold your hand. I wouldn't feel the need to love you every day in fear that tomorrow I won't be able to. If we were immortal, I would laugh in deaths' face instead of laughing with the ones in my heart. If I were immortal, I wouldn't know how to love because love would last forever. And therefore, it wouldn't last a day at all.
Tired sea
Frustrated moon
Fed up wind
Disenchanted sun
The hour of grace is fading
Beyond the eyes can see
Darkness glow in taciturn
Beneath the scars a beauty egress apace
I've search to no avail
The night for your smile
The rain for your happiness
And the day for your memory
I'm stuck hopelessly living in your world
Flipping coins with my life
Head for breakup
Tail for breakup
The choice is yours
With the finitude of time and choice
We'll part ways regardless
At last, I'm free from the claws of hopelessness
Entitled
If You Listen
All Will Be Silent
The Apocryphal Dance
begins at Midnight
and becomes a Night Song
But/If You Go There
take Money
Time Eats Your Words
and you’ll Leave Something Unfinished
Finitude ends by The Mill
at the End of The Road
and the Descent
ends as a Shadow
Between Us
in the Still Moment
Adrift In a Dream
Take This
instead of a Bottle of Wine
to the Tag Sale
at the foot
of the Taconic Hills
overlooking the Promontory
by Long Pond
Where I’d Rather Be
Teasing the Line
while a Red Umbrella
makes an Impression
on the Lambent Sheen
suspended on Breath
Time Makes No Difference
and If You Go There
in Aura of First Light
Take the Long Way Back
where a Bloom Buds
On Edge
Before Time Becomes Light
Revoke me as the prisoner of your heart
I have paced finitude
From wall to wall, and cannot find
The empty space
Through which electrons crawl
To post the graffitti of their freedom.
I want no parole
Exonerate me from the conviction
Of your desire
It is my gender for which I am accused
A stereotypical blame
Beside the innocense of my name.
In silence I bear
The stain against my honor
And love her more
Who spilled it there.
For it is this love
That shall be no spectator's sport
That a man is command to love
His wife, and risk his life
Until she be healed
Shall be yielded
Healing him
And still spontaneous as my dream
When since our youth
We bask in the flame of our hearts
Cupping our hands to shield the wick
Now cold
In the frozen knuckles wet with sleet.
Release me by acquital with the truth
Gender only look like alike
But there is a finer distinction
To be made by faith
And its different sensibility
For culture is absolute
Then choice
Is nothing more than a dance of masquerade
And I am no I
For there is no distinction
No boundary defining the mass
Indifferentialable
Despite the splintering bang.
No, set me apart
As individual before the inquisition of your court
My heart recants nothing
My love is my love as my love will be.
'And I saw the dead, small and great, stand before God; and the books were opened: and another book was opened, which is the book of life: and the dead were judged out of those things which were written in the books, according to their works." ~Revelation 20:12 KJV And then [Jesus said] will I profess unto them, I never knew you: depart from me, ye that work iniquity. ~Matthew 7:23 KJV
The sound of solitude
Means I am now alone,
Yet reminds me of my finitude
And for sins I must atone.
Guilt racks me like a cyclone,
For the lies I have construed
Lay around me like a clingstone
And the shadows of hellbrewed.
A creed of cruelty I tattooed
Upon the armored heart I honed
With every virtue I eschewed,
Now I stand before my God, unknown.
arrival of the penultimate season...
falling toward the end of the year
cool breezes purge the sultry sloth
amber/auburn/crimson leaves dance in the wind
fall foliage signals the end of a cycle
contracting days declare enveloping emptiness
expanding awareness of our infinite finitude
...a symphony of poignant silence