Best Incremental Poems
Wanting to shrug off this shell, break loose from me
Silence that damn hermit, hiccuping under his tree
Trapped inside too long, dormancy dreams to wake
Disgorging bubbly lava, fills in soporific landscapes
Longing to escape soft tissue, cast off mortal bones
Break shackles of mundanity, rid life’s infernal drone
Out there lies all answers, beyond the hermits void
His space mostly perfect, til our Big Bang destroyed
Go forth and multiply, primal stars hypernova like hell
Filling a cosmos with elements, configuring him as well
Hold your tongue hermit, stop humming about in bliss
Stay quiet down that hole, cease fumbling at the abyss
Deeper and deeper, below where basements depress
Sits an altar of incremental tables, poets go to confess
Forget truths algorithm, they’ll fool any polygraph test
And the hermit lies all day long, he meditates for a rest
Breathe in, breathe out, forget about terminal breaths
Don’t underestimate the ether, chants a monk in Tibet
Fill your mind with mindfulness, peace will set you free
Watch them hiccups abate now, our hermit’s all at sea
February 6th 2023 / 2022 Poetry Marathon Qualifiers'
FINAL Placement Poetry Contest / Sponsor: Mark Toney
It begins with a thought
A simple spark igniting
the universe of mind
An unconscious gift
Intangible but substantive
The physical mechanics begin
Interpretation of invisible blueprint
Manifestation in dimension
Lines crossed, realms united
The form emerges
Each movement defining shape
Incremental fulfillment
Energy to essence
Then at last, ideas realized
Born of perpetual passion
Borrowed from collective intelligence
Invention
12/24/17
When the poem jumps on you, wholly formed,
Needing only you to let it out.
When you lose track of what the other person's saying,
Because your inner monologue is coming together.
When you forget all else you're doing,
Because now you realize how to say it.
When traffic's so slow that you feel like screaming,
Because you want to get home and write it down.
When you take those incremental steps of becoming a writer,
-- One of them is like that first time you ride a horse,
It's big and it's powerful,
And you are ON THIS THING.
Or when your consciousness really starts smiling back at you,
Because it's gotten bigger and deeper,
Or at least now you're better at shaking hands with it,
Seeing more of what's in there,
And sometimes what's in there is laughter,
Because now you can make yourself laugh.
When that sad line pops into your head,
And you give that initial gasp or gulp or sniff,
Because you're going to start crying,
But you're in a restaurant so you try and resist it,
Make it into a cough or clear your throat,
Trying to disguise it,
And your jaws and ears hurt under the tension
Of not letting the sobs out.
If we could look into the seeds of time,
and say which grain will grow and which will not,
we would arrange our affairs defiantly
in the face of current opposition.
If a thought should geminate and flourish
in the barren soil of the status quo,
it would likely be by sheer providence
that ideas would come to fruition.
Our dreams, our very imagination,
are what keep our momentum in this world.
Sans the prospect of incremental feats,
we would not strive to attain excellence.
If the portent of riches entices us,
would we forsake every value system
to attain the pinnacle of success?
No one could portend the foreordained path.
Incremental layers, experience, pile up
Like quilts upon a bed in cold winters;
They weigh upon me. I occupy
Myself inspecting, describing them --
Like a child does squares of patchwork.
These multilayered patterns amuse:
I imbue them with richness, with depth,
Depending on my mood, my whimsey --
While their reality no more resembles
My perceptions than printed scraps
Of fabric are like fields
full of fantastic figures.
It is mid-week again,
and the incremental fines
imposed upon the clock
toll as a bell ringing down.
There is slippage in these transactions
that cannot be undone,
while yesterdays glories
are traded for tomorrow's guilt.
The markets tick along
accumulating matter and wealth.
The traders eat it up
then spew it from their faces.
Traffic is turning corners down the way
avoiding vicissitudes and man-hole covers.
They flirt with fate
Like a time machine gone awry.
Some sad story on the news
is blinking back a gush of tears.
Some will live; some will die,
But all go hungry for a lie.
The clocks upon the wall are stopped,
they haven’t worked for years.
It could be any time in Tokyo,
in London, Paris or New York.
It’s late, and deadlines, met or missed,
are past. The news is done, it’s fixed in print,
though muted televisions flicker out
the incremental day-long cycle.
The running strips across the screens
record trivia and disaster.
Aleppo’s in the news tonight,
A fabled city lies in bloody ruin.
It has been wrecked by earthquake, sacked
by cruel thugs, like Tamerlane the great:
this is not new, and here it’s hardly news,
just death in a far country.
But to Aleppo’s markets once the Silk Road came,
to reeking, fragrant, raucous sukhs and khans.
Imagine the exquisite cloth,
embroidered travellers’ tales
of fabulous ordeals from caravanserai
to citadel, to watchtower, wall and gate,
thin air of mountain passes under snow,
fantastic tales from the Middle Kingdom
whose emperor under heaven knew he was
the centre of the world. Aleppo’s traders knew
their precious wares went out as far as
Rome, Cordoba, Timbuktu and Zanzibar.
Imagine narrow lanes, braised savoury meat,
clothing, fruit and spices on display,
jostling animals and men, the public haggling
and secret treasures: silk, jade and porcelain.
Here the silent markets never stop.
A dumb Bloomberg terminal rolls out
the stocks and currencies all night,
though no-one’s watching.
Aleppo’s markets are in ruin tonight.
Starved people live in blood and rubble,
homes and hospitals destroyed.
I can’t conceive how they survive.
I must drive home now, through quiet streets.
There will be beggars wrapped in blankets
at the traffic lights. Money will change hands.
Bloomberg has no metric and no code for this.
At home there will be food and warmth.
Aleppo’s dying, and people in the street,
begging, on a night so cold, alone, so late,
I can’t conceive how they survive,
and Bloomberg has no metric and no code for this.
[Johannesburg, August 2016]
Brotherhood of Hope
Brown shirts soil the streets in incremental aspirations
Exclaim ‘we are the truth’ and nothing but the certitude
No doubts remain where torches shine and voices roar
Eclipsed humanity suffocated embrace disintegration
Accelerate the tempo to tunes and steps of marching
Terror deception propaganda manipulated fulcrum of
History forgotten misrepresented with a bunch of lies
Totalitarian power of supremacy religious dogma
Heritage of ‘Othering’ discrimination greed in
Ever changing guise of ministries of ‘truth’ depicts
Lest we forget the lessons of the past the shady
Incineration of freedom unadulterated thoughts
'Egalite fraternite liberte' diversity and human beauty
Suffocated evolves from underneath the rabble
Heteronormativity exposed domination condemned
Obliteration revealed and when resistance yields the
Power to strip brown fascist fancy dress of evil and
Entertain defiance there is hope beneath the lies
15th February 2017
Expiration Date
Written: by Tom Wright
4/4/2016
Jimmy’s expiration date was 4-4-2016 at 2:15 PM
At inception God assigns each, an expiration date,
Some dates seem premature, some linger until late.
Man does all he can to prolong this time on earth,
But we all start expiring at our moment of birth.
Our lives are incremental slightly like a yearly season,
And things found strange to us, God has His reason.
Many float through life thinking of earth bound days,
Enjoying the good times, soaking up the warm rays.
While never seeming conscious of a date stamped by name,
Some are content with simple living, others, fortune or fame;
But the speed bumps of life are placed before us to capture,
Our thoughts from the present, to a soon, coming rapture.
Many give God little thought until dumbstruck from fear,
Sensing that clock is ticking and expiration date draws near.
So live life in the moment with whatever cross you bear,
Praying for God’s easy path ascending from here, to there;
I believe many close calls in life may have been times
When God was resetting our expiration date?
Tom
grinding of the wheel...
it’s incremental welding
...sparks of silver stress
5/9/2018
Predetermination of Lovers
Proactive on the lips of such sensual passions
Scavenges through follicles design
To written archangels of expression
Such are the hungry beats and pulses that evolve
In contemplation
Of Amours encounter with her skin
Countenance and coveted demonstrative
Spills a wet lust fervent
Fever pitched by the wisp succulence
Clamorous and pounds its ranting quintessence of want
Desirous burns, inflamed in whispers
And craves never ending
To lay upon the flower pillowed head
And crush the blooms of reticence
Till breathing cries in a desperate pant
Such are the embers longings for her
That there ignition turns to a mockery of fire
And a mans soul can capture the essence of the sun
Predetermination of the telling caress
Holds the nudity of speechless inquiries of sighs
Rampant
Rampant palmistry of luxuria, grabs !
A mouth-to-mouth pleading of sustenance
On surging floods in beckoned waves, has !
As this keel of heat rides in sweat
Savoured on the incremental words of flesh
Swims the boundless oceans of love
Exhausted to the tasted need
Divulged and disintegrated to unity
Laboured to the inch, of the light, in her opening eyes
Sees distant gasp, focused releases
Breaks upon the spinal tidal arches
A salutation vulnerable to the ravages of aphrodisia
She devastates the tenderness in me
To build a more touched hyper-intensity
On the quivering ends of our fingertips
Leaves the escaping whimpering to linger on sound
Sleeping on the quiet unknown bed
Of lovers
A hint of blush
‘pon the tips
Of leaves still lush
As lover’s lips
A breeze that sighs
As if t’was tired
Of mid-Summer highs
In doldrums mired
A crisped dry smell
Perfumes the air
Clings tight as well
To clothes and hair
A dusk that darkles
With unseemly haste
Midst Fireflies sparkle
Midst daylight chased
A trace of wood smoke
Scents the breeze
And woolen cloaks
Appear ‘pon knobby knees
Ol’ Apple trees…
Scarlet blushed in fruit
Seem piously to proffer pleas
For their scions to take root
Degree by degree…
Doth the Earth slowly tilt
Unperceived by you and me
But blossoms notice…begin to wilt
A change incremental
So slow as to be imperceptible
So cosmically elemental
So basically inevitable
A Summer that begins to show…
Its age in ways
With longer nights
And shortened days
Prepares perhaps
To soon take leave
It’s time’s elapsed
No time to grieve
Fall awaits it’s turn to shine
Upon Mother Nature’s stage
Summer sips water melon wine
And savors scent of sage
11 stanzas
171 words
The Mechanics of Time
Time is a given; a constant except when every clock you have displays a different time.
Daylight Savings Time, spring forward; an hour lost,
gone, disappeared,
vaporized into nothing but molecules of super-charged air.
Time to reset every clock by a lost hour; but what happens when each one shows a different time?
Two clocks on coffee machines, off by one minute each; two more kitchen clocks, one on the oven, the other on the microwave
both showing different times.
According to every device in my house time seems to be vanishing by incremental seconds, then minutes.
The Apple I-Pad device that syncs to some remote world-wide system, displays still another variation of time gone awry.
If time is a given, a constant, then how is it possible that these five devices can all be off by a nanosecond, a second, a minute or more?
Time seems to have warped into another dimension in my kitchen;
does this mean this is the end of the time-space continuum?
Even worse, this apparent irreversible time shift seems to envelop my whole house. In one bedroom there are two more different time zones appearing.
Another two in the family room, both unequal in their precise measurement of time; these are followed by three other different time zones in another part of the house.
By my count I am trapped in eleven different time zones with all of them not even off by the same margin of error.
If the mechanics of time are a given and can be calculated down to the millionth of a second, how is it possible that time has become broken in my house when the clocks are reset for Daylight Savings Time?
I expected my life of days would be fairly calm.
Only the enlightened ancestors would follow me.
I’d mimic them and love and sing their favorite psalm.
Instead this mystic mind does not escape blood’s history.
Where can we go where it won’t be in our sight?
Why do we swallow enticing liquid until blind and then insane?
Terror incinerates every cell and sweats thick human fright--
As ninety proof storms of liquor reign.
Repeat, repeat, repeat the ritual of hell, while lips pray but know,
That the incremental burning flavored sips will win.
Stop! Wait! And shake and wake and gasp and sob, “Death let me go!”
Release, please, relief please, release, take out the liquid knife.
Save this non believer even if it means, feeling.
one
slowly
adds, hard fought
with persistence
until much
feels like
naught
----------
A Sept, a seven line poem with syllable counts of 1/2/3/4/3/2/1