Best Indifferently Poems
Cycling through time;
this wrack of flesh fleets on.
Spinning indifferently on a compressed
ball of mud.
Pulsing and thumping against
the deafening destiny of becoming
a part of what it was spat unto.
Sipping the blood of my father,
seeking understanding.
The wine of revelation is an
acquired taste and so I tend
to use it for marinating my
battered will.
I pray alongside songs of my peers,
and hope I can stand the flames
I am sure to meet;
This world is full of fire,
and I am it’s smoke
accumulating under blankets
held by my ancestors.
I am their story.
-James Kelley 2013, All rights reserved
Jane was lost in the woods
And Ann waited for years
The sun was scorching above
And feet embedded in cruel mud.
She waited for Jane, her friend
Because she told her to wait
And she waited with gray hair
Misted eyes,morphed fingers.
seasons changed indifferently
Cloud obscured her face
Water was dripping from leaky heart
Freckled bones crackled.
She was turned into a tree
And became part of the forest
The best one, my daughter said
To her little friend in red skirt.
NEW POEMS ONLY - 2 - Poetry Contest
Sponsored by: Emile Pinet
02nd May, 2018
"Ready, Set, Me"
Content with the thought of honesty
Never living life like this before
You think it is a travesty
I do this for richer or poorer
Makeup is for self haters.
Unadulterated my face is bare
The audience sees God's version
Sure there are some who care
Not using makeup's immersion
Those truly my friends
Will see me as lovely
A perfect character
Living indifferently outside
of the squawk box
Enjoy!
November and April
when the trees are first bare and last naked
have become my favorite months. All the food eaten
except last rose hips and earliest leeks.
Leaves innocent
as dying men and infants.
Study one plant or animal each morning
before writing anything. All reading -
poetry or prose, truth or fiction -
classified the same, the distinguishing
characteristics being helpful or boring,
beautifully or indifferently written. Then
practice trumpet worried not at all about
my sound or perfection. Afternoon, my sons
return from school, math and (again)
reading, piano. Wednesdays we walk
observe plants and animals and record
our observations to identify and classify
later in the week. Nothing else special
need be done but stay alive.
Gray grow the daffodils in Depression’s field
where thorn bushes thrive
and the sun shines indifferently,
obscured by sadness’ haze.
Sex offers no allure in Depression’s bed
where desire lies as dead as laughter,
and love finds no purchase
where there is only room for pain.
Yet the senses thrive in this wasteland of the soul,
heightened and open to Art’s inspiration.
Is this my compensation
for the darkness that it brings?
July 28, 2015
In the shimm’ring empty distance
Of a vast central Asian steppe,
A faint and formless shape appeared.
A soundless mass of black and brown
Rose like a djinn from out the dust
Of the long traveled Great Silk Road.
As it drew closer on its course,
Under a wide and hot noon sky,
That vague and slowly swaying shape
Cloned a train of two-humped camels,
And dark-faced nomads robed in blue,
Who marched in sync with Borodin.
On they trekked toward Samarkand
With their load of silks and spices,
Mixing sounds of bells and voices;
Indifferently passing by
To vanish in a distant haze
As do so many of our days.
We’ve created life that makes us see each other indifferently
In your world, I am an intruder while in mine, you are the coarseness.
Making conflicts that are war like with little understanding of why we even came to know each other.
Wherever my element throws out to yours there comes narrowness and excess of modishness, which may at last reach such an extreme as to see evil in whole yours.
Why is it so difficult when it would have been so easy if I humble and send you the truer feelings of respect and submission? For which will this make you feel a sensation of ease and comfort wherever you may be?
If my thought and sympathy was turned entirely on another, or entirely on other interests, would you feel restless and uneasy? Though entirely ignorant that my affections had strayed in another direction more than once as evidently you have known for sure as an open book or can I say as of a child’s innocence?
That of the flow of your thought to me in the desire to entertain during our mutual hours of leisure has results to cheer and strength. The pleasure it brings have been increasing and keep on increasing as ever, making it difficult to focus on other things immediately every time we meet for longer time before I gain my focus.
Every time I gain my focus, your trumpet like voice have been a constant reminder of the truer pleasure that constantly make it difficult for me to completely move on. A husband and wife you called this from the first time we met and truly I am stuck with little knowledge of moving for it has been a deep enchantment, difficult to wake up from.
Hope not so long that I will be able to disappear before your own sight and mind, be melted away like the sun does to the stars by morning never to be touched but be of reminiscence; this is but only of dream for now, for I am stuck in the rut.
THIRUK-KURAL on not offending the Great*: Periyaaraip Pilaiyaamai - Canto 90, K899 and K900
[* The "Great" here are indifferently the King or other learned and wise people whom the King ought to respect and fear. In this canto, Thiru-Valluvar repeats himself (though elegantly, cf. K899 & K900) - unless it were for the purpose of reinforcing the idea of the weak who dare pit themselves against the strong and powerful - and contrariwise the strong and cruel meet the same fate of ruin if they incurred the wrath of the noble and virtuous-minded. It is evident nothing anti-authoritarian was permitted or conceivable in his time. Yet, reflect on how Lenin outlived the Tsars; Solzhenytsin and Pasternak - Stalin and his successors, just as George Washington - the British Imperial Crown; Vietnam veterans - Nixon; Li Xiaobo - thanks to the Nobel Committee and other campaigners like Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International who would shut an eye to wanton persecution within Western democracies - Xi of the Peoples Republic; the German Jews - Hitler; but NOT the one-man (Sri Lankan) opposition leader Jeyaretnam in Lee Kuan Yew's Singapore.]
K899: eenthiya kolkaiyaar siirin idaimurinththu
veenthanum veenthu kedum
When blazes forth the wrath of men of lofty fame,
Kings even fall from high estate and perish in the flame. (Transl. G.U. Pope)
If those of exalted vows burst in a rage, even (Indra) the king will suffer a sudden loss and be entirely ruined. (Transl. Drew & Lazarus)
Should the virtuous in lofty positions become angry, even the king (of kings) will fall from high heaven. (Transl. T. Wignesan)
K900: iranthuamaintha saarpudaiyar aayinum uyyaar
siranththuamaintha siiraar cherin
Though all-surpassing wealth of aid the boast,
If men in glorious virtue great are wrath, they're lost. (Transl. G.U. Pope)
Though in possession of numerous auxiliaries, they will perish who are exposed to the wrath of the noble whose penance is boundless. (Transl. Drew & Lazarus)
No way the powerful can avoid downfall should they offend and incur the wrath of the noble-minded greats. (Transl. T. Wignesan)
© T. Wignesan - Paris, 2017
I awoke again
In the same godawful place,
With wine bottles on the floor,
and egg on my face
"Thank Christ" I said...
...I honestly had no idea
Since the last time I'd eaten,
Where my next meal might be coming from
This Holiday Season.
They were fools to outlaw smoking indoors,
Because now that I live uncomfortably
In-between motel corridors:
I have all the working time in the Free World
To stand around outdoors
And have my pick of the litter,
As I literally pick through litter
- To pick myself the best pre-smoked cigarettes,
And then I redistribute the rest at a modest profit...
...So I've turned into a capitalist;
Big deal!
Just line me up against the wall
next fall!!!
What do I really care
either way???
- I'm half dead anyway...
From point A
To point B
And back again,
Throughout the edge of the night:
The cops won't let me sleep
Someplace that's safe from
The terrorizing nightlife
Of an indifferently frigid street life,
Where people like me are bait for the teenage:
"Keep on walking; Get a job" the cops say
- I wish the State would pay me
To bully the police for a change.
Next time I'm waiting at the breadline,
I'm gonna conquest for the affections
of a young butterbean:
If ya know what I mean?
...Not a fan of Kropotkin I can see...
[I work at an office,
with a fixed salary
to feed a family:
without a denial to hardwork
I work tediously
my little ones attend school routinely,
We solely wish necessities
neither comforts nor luxuries].
Dear me! I desire if it was true
but fellow humankind treat us erroneously.
It's arctic outside.
we wander the streets in austerity,
in rags; all cold and hungry
I implore the privileged for aid
but all futile,
The men of wealth treat us indifferently.
Now my words of present describe my past,
no more cold or hungry we are;
hostility of mankind is yet more painful
than slow death to starvation,
My family and I are long gone by
Oh mankind! a little help would have sufficed.
Little birds spill onto the gravel
Chirping with disoriented confusion.
A spindly flock warbling
“Mère! Mère!”
Through cracked lips and bony beaks.
Hawks circle indifferently
Unfamiliar with the call
But acquainted with the cry.
The scarecrows converge,
Singing their songs of
Reunion across the river.
Seductive assurances and
Dry straw lies
Come together when
Hopeful lines form
For a mère poule promise.
Across that green field
The boathouse beckons,
Under late summer boughs
Alive with blossoms.
Across that green field
The boatman waits.
—Oh, it’s a terrible thing to see—
Look; the face,
that ugly face reflected in a broken mirror.
It’s a daffodil, the dream of Narcissus’,
it’s an inevitable arrogance, the karma of Hamlet’s,
yet no way to cast all these phantoms away
he became a sad wanderer who was going round
and round on the same spot every night with great despair.
Its hairs are stiff and lusterless, as the pieces of
stiff wires, or wayside grasses that died in the dust,
its eyes are evil, which appeared full of cold plot,
as if an untrustworthy Iago, or a betrayer Judas Iscariot,
the lips, they are an immoral saint’s
indecent language maker, a piece of greasy fat,
the nose, it’s a hog’s nose, which the hog originally was
born for the only purpose of gluttony, lives in filthiness
and idleness indifferently; though he swallows the pearls
licks the vomits with same mouth to fill his never contented stomach,
the forehead, it’s a forehead of the distrustful little devil,
that not even once, believed in truth or the beauty, and
shriveled from the curse, and has expelled into the wasteland,
the tongue, it’s an Eden’s Serpent’s, Eve’s tongue,
that gulps perjury without blushing, and cold as an ashy corpse.
The face that is in the broken mirror is
the fading daffodil, the broken pride the never healed wound.
The face that is in the broken mirror is the lifeless remaining
reflection, the vision as if a monologue without response.
Not to show the sadness in her eyes
and the sudden tremor caused by pain,
she moves slowly through her elegies
with her feature's tenuous bouquet,
wildly tied, but also loosely held.
Half forlorn and somehow lingering,
for a while, a tiny tired smile
droops and drops like petals from a rose.
Almost carelessly, indifferently
she exudes a weariness, her hands
do still know of beauty, yet a guess,
they would reach forever, never land.
She recites her poetry from heart:
where fate wavers, life becomes suspect.
Then she adds it to her own soul's meaning
sounding strangely grand and fabulous.
And she lets with high-uplifted chin
all those words drift down again, fall off,
as no word does justice to her life,
for she treasures this, her sole belonging,
that she still must hold and carry high
far above her fame and even fall.
Quite like a moon, will you gloom in to my doom?
Soon and ever I shall stay like a soothing plume
Shine in your smile, can reclaim my life in no time
Unto belling then, I’m undone without someone.
O' touching the leaves, you did loom it to flowers
When you chant, I’m possible is how impossible sounds
Everything changes for you, why dn't you begin a change?
Living with your seizing mirage, do I sound so strange?
Letting me hollow, you stroll into me solo.
Beginning a walk, you stood in my heart. Bravo!
Indifferently you may render, still I would stay nearer
Unto globe finds nowhere, merely for you, I’m there.
Quite like a moon, will you gloom in to my doom?
Soon and ever I shall stay like a soothing plume
Shine in your smile, will reclaim my life in no time
Unto belling then, I’m undone without someone.
THE COLORS
OF
LOVE
A hateful love is black as Hell,
It's theme is greed and lust.
As razored thorns in forest dell,
It wounds at faintest touch.
A verdant love is Nature's own,
Her natural pulse of life.
Where stag and doe beget the fawn
And man his strain makes rife.
A jealous love is gossamer gray,
And sewn with threads of doubt.
It's choking veil of taut dismay
Shrouds Aphrodite's house.
A sensual love is passioned pink,
A mutually savoring fire.
It's ardent music rings distinct
And accents one's desire.
A midnight blue is love forlorn,
Bestowed but not returned.
On anguished lips a plea is borne,
Indifferently it's spurned.
A sentient love's as red as wine,
A vintage strong and rare.
With soft bouquet it seasons time
And tastes of sweetened care.
The moods of love distinctly hued
Are painted here in verse.
On poet's canvas love is viewed
As notions quite diverse.
But fantasies in tones contrived
Obscure love's verity.
For love is all, no shade denied,
Tis painful ecstasy.