Best Infests Poems
His narrow eyes, misguided lies
Misguide his narrow plan,
To cleanse the world from demons, he
Was called The Preacher Man.
“I see no proof, I hear no truth!
Your science is a sin!
You’ll burn in hell if you rebel
And let the Devil win!”
The Preacher Man then took a stand
To convert the sinners by the hand
“You’ll see the Lord you’ll praise the Lord!
You’ll follow blindly Christ the Lord!”
The more he chased, the more they ran
From him, The Preacher Man.
Leviticus was hideous
To the innocent righteous folk
“The fags all shalt be stoned to death!” (Lev 20:13)
The terror he provoked.
His crucifix read “Six six six”
The people use to claim
He’d always clutch on to a crutch
To get him through his pain
His acid tongue and Sabbath stung
With nails through his hands he hung
“My sacrifice is worth the price,
For council in the Lord’s advice!”
His rapture soon began
That beast, The Preacher Man.
His leather book of horror shook
The children to their knees
“Dash the babies against the rocks (Psalm 137:9)
And hang them from the trees!” (Joshua 10:26)
From town to town he went around
Proclaiming he could heal
“The pain of grace upon your face!”
(His wallet was concealed.)
So lock your doors and hide what’s yours
Protect your children from the w----
“I’m commin’ for you, I’m gunnin’ for you!
I’ll say that I’ve been pray’n for you!”
His ministry infests the land
He’s called The Preacher Man.
Withered Are Memories Made On False Ground
Majesty of her charms , pale in light now
Love's glow has died, ashes only remain
She was sad , my heart took a fleeing bow
Her cries left only darkened bitter stain
No long goodbye words, we both knew not how
She was mad, I felt no need to explain
What is the past but dead dreams on black ice
Time returns us not to make our amends
Wishful thinking, going back would be nice
Yet new pains could rise, and forward it sends
With no overs, nothing said would suffice
Best journey on, racing around the bends
In hindsight , glory heavily infests
False goodness and sweet touches abound
However, truth lies in dark empty nests
Where heartache and misery were first found
Seek not ye fools gold as wisdom suggests
Withered are memories made on false ground
Robert J. Lindley, 5-02-2016
Noise in her Mind
I know her so well she came long ago to visit my being
we share beauty and bedlam boudoir and kindest of spirits
She walks like a cat woman hears like a bat feeds birds
quietly she soothes thunder’s volcano howls with the wolves
Klimt’s Kiss Vermeer’s Girl With Pearl Earring Botticelli’s Venus Degas’s
Dancer In Repose Fedro’s Much Better With Age she
absorbs pastel and paint strokes symphonies on canvas
so many facets big bangs and roaring giggling convulsions
Sometimes Woman Laughing from Goya’s dark paintings
a Broken Column like Kahlo’s when some Munch’s Scream
invades and infests silence deep inside her beautiful scull
Voices shout from profuse directions focus condense and
refract confront tease torment disagree and interfere with
calm serene serenades when a few notes tender chords
and accord vanish into cacophonies misleading the song
I know her so well admire her resilience and how she copes
with the noise the disruption and the ballet of so many
different views pandemonious clangour onslaught of turmoil
as she appears calm on the surface orchestrates quiet composure
How she holds it all together I cannot really fathom with all that
jumbling distance so close and yet so far from my innocent mind
My Venus Of Milo has taught me so much most of it all and over
above that imperfection is a wonderful gift and very complete
World abandonment
vanity infests
greed escalates
charity nullified
Competitive paradise
prices uncontrollable
hunger staggering
debt maximized
Honest lost
integrity futile
words misconstrued
greed rapid
Equality vanished
pensions minute
labor intensified
jobs down sized
World absorbed
humans consumed
profits soar
mortgages abandoned
World immobilized
composure lost
hope desperate
destruction eminent.
Evil That Always Takes Its Toll
Remember where hot lightning bolts flash down,
Its sun-fire heat burning in a tragic strike!
There perished mother and her little tyke;
Tragedy there, where the angels cry and frown,
And sing their saddest songs upon the waves:
Doom and gloom a sad fruit to be born
Taken long before Gabriel blows his horn.
Judged by Fate no power in Universe ever saves,
Yet no man lives that can ever be so sure,
That misery will forget to take its toll
Upon the peace that stirs the blessed soul!
There was peace: yet no peace can insure,
Paradise will be waiting for its fair guests,
The great promise, its most fantastic lure!
Security of life and limb of angels so pure:
Or protection from Evil that so eternally infests.
Robert J. Lindley, August , 1973
Note: A poem from my private journal, from back when I wrote a bit more in the old style.
Sometimes I dearly miss writing like this..... and that muse that raced so far away!
p.s. My first wife(future ex) thought this my best poem ever.
At that time I had several hundred written.
Erase my existence
I break my own heart
until the black smoke infests
breathless lungs,
tortured by the taste
of soul’s inkless touch.
If I am your refrain ~
burn my name
into the pulse of pain,
I need not the sermon
for loneliness
as love asks me to
simplify my demons.
If only words could warm
the wounds I wear
like a warrior lost
in the toxic wilderness of want,
perhaps the algebraic angst
would no longer multiply
and divide the despair,
subtract the sickness
estimate the end ratio
from the sum of somberness
to leave and resolve
a remorseless remainder
too erratic for the
sapphire sigh.
I am an equation
without an equilibrium
measuring the metaphorical
distance between your
dreams and my darkness,
a shattered diamond
scattered on the tip of
infinite intersection of infatuation,
calculating the chaos
amidst your fickle fractions,
I wander as the unknown,
faithless ~ consumed in fears
like a forgotten kiss from grief.
So let the numbers roll numb,
toss a silver to the twisted
tower of garnet tears,
there I will forever remain
the quiescence that failed
to quantify quaking skies
of conflicted clouds,
carrying tales I wove
as if I asked for
this walking nightmare.
Must your hustling highs
see the muse of madness
losing sanity?
I know myself in this
mathematical mayhem ~
a variable without a value,
collapsing into complex
combinations of
constant nothingness,
a negative numeral
drained behind a decimal point,
a disappointment hidden
beneath matte curves
of lipstick lullabies
posted on the walls
of sinners and sunsets.
I never wanted to be the reason
your rhymes wept,
but I am doomed,
a jinxed Juliet of sorrow...
I could have been
your guardian glow,
glistening in confetti gold ~
yet, I am too broken
to be your pink-laced star-catcher,
it isn’t written in fate;
it’s tattooed in bones.
this is the sound of tainted trammels
releasing you from the
smoldering
skin of eternal inferno ~
pardon the paranoia
it's haunted inside,
this is my
island
of
s t
o r
m
s ...
FOGGY IGNORANCE
infests mountain gardens
when one uses the lenses to view others
and not ones self
I enter an ad on the internet
that I hope will get
me a call: "We found you a girl;
a pretty girl. We'll fix you
up. Hey, she picks you;
so, give her a whirl."
I open my 'In Box,'
and midst spam and my docs,
her email jumps out at me.
My heart starts to sound
like a dog at the pound
who's lonesome and sad and noisy.
But, here's my dilemma:
too many a nemma-
tode* wants to wiggle in
and jiggle in my hard drive.
So, to stop 'em I've
got to block 'em: to tell how, I can't begin.
Do I 'open' or not?
The question is fraught;
it rattles, it addles my brain.
Then her aura drifts for me,
and as it wafts o'er me I hit the key:
"failuretoachieveanerectionmorethan50%ofthetime..."
* A nemmatode is a round worm that infests humans not computers, but I plead poetic license.
Dictatorship is water hyacinth
once it infests water
it shocks aquatic life
limits fishermen
terrorizes fish at home
difficult to eradicate
and benefits a few
Every journey worth its salt has rocky places
Bank to bank filled with frothing white water,
The economics of avoidance, steering a lean course,
Avoiding higher peaks that thrill - vouchsafed to others.
Rest days taken during times of lower water
Even portaging some sections altogether,
Below one dam a three mile jumble of boulders.
Only one stretch really caught us napping.
Truth be told it really had me worried,
But knowing that we were riding higher water
I steered as best I could between foaming protrusions
That prudence whispered likely hid a rock.
Just once, as I recall, we grounded on gravel bar,
But I pushed us off before current turned us broadside. (10)
Minnesota's rollicking Mississippi is a charmer,
And many State Campgrounds court her boundaries,
Some even have hot water showers and manicured sites,
But a pall of mosquitoes infests more timbered parks
That no wind short of a tornado has the power to disperse,
We ate our evening meals under beekeeper's hats and nets,
It is funny when mosquitoes dive bomb cooling plates of food.
Poet's Notes:
(10) This is a real danger for a canoe in a rapid. A canoe that turns broadside to the rushing water can be rapidly filled with water and swamped.
Agonizing darkness descends upon my hopelessness.
Crouching in a fetal position as terrifying pain infests.
Oh the slashing, bashing of the wielding belt.
Crying and scampering, knowing his rage, I felt.
Yearning for and welcoming the comfort of death as a release.
As the cloud of fear cries and begs for it to ease.
My body shaken and violently let go what it had.
It only increases this rage from my dad.
At her peril, mother suddenly steps in.
This nightmare of death and torture ends.
She helps me, as I stumble to bed, and I cried all night.
Still fear ravages and paralyzes me from my father’s sight.
No child should ever go through this reign of terror.
Dad begged and begged for forgiveness of his errors.
After a time for healing, I completely avoided him.
A final and difficult reconciliation between us began.
I and my siblings enjoyed and loved him until he died.
His children no longer feared him but honored him with his last rights.
Panic attack
Neurons are whack
Strive for balance
Infests my whole day
Each way I try to convey
Messages, communicate
My how neural pathways can stray
Left with a bottlenecked airway
I seek but body-chemical harmony
Thoughts, actions with symmetry
Gather grey matter
Take the unrest
Heave it over the railing
Crazy’s gone stale
And then I exhale
Sunshine Williams
On Christmas Eve, children lay in bed,
In titillating agony as they await what lays ahead,
They are in blissful torture pondering on chocolate cookies and hot chocolate,
Their eyes are wide open with anxious hope of gifts to come,
But Christmas Eve can be a hellish place for some,
For some waiting feels like someone is pulling your toes off one by one,
For some waiting feeling like you are wasting in a hot sun,
“But they that wait on the Lord shall renew their strength,
They shall mount up with wings as Eagles, they shall walk and not be weary, they shall run and not faint!!”
But Isaiah!! Dear Isaiah!! This waiting is an agony I cannot describe,
As pain indwells my insides and blood infests my eyes,
I do not wait for Christmas Trees and Stockings,
I wait for something that many view as impossible,
I wait for God to be the deity that I know her to be,
Full of might and power and wonders to behold and see,
Dear Isaiah, I know I must wait,
But every day that passes is another day that I must endure this affliction,
“But they that wait on the Lord shall renew their strength,
They shall mount up with wings as Eagles, they shall run and not faint, they shall walk and not be weary”
But dear Isaiah, my eyes are teary with the torment of a scorching sun!!
Oh God above,
Oh God of love,
Oh God of bliss,
Please don’t dismiss,
These cries I wail,
For this waiting, it is no titillating agony,
It is an endless Christmas Eve,
With no sign of the coming Son,
Oh God, I know you’re faithful,
Set me free from this agony,
Fulfill your promise and bring the Whirlwind!!
Where are the seeds of our ancestors?
Are they dug deep in blood-soaked and bruised battlefields?
Or huddled close to God's Crest?
Or are they lost languishing in desert sand's drift?
History's dilemma but their sins are repeated
As relentless as the ticking of the clock of eras and ages
In the tragedy and pathos of wars---unabated.
In the conflict of human corruption and constant rage,
That burns with murderous intent or with rapist's lust.
Must banish the lure of the evil that infests these seeds,
So men live and gone will be the monstrosity of their dark deeds.
The boy held the clue to the cure for the seeds curse.
"It's simple, so simple," he said with a smile
"Put the seeds in a jar," he continued,
"Soak them in tears of kindness for a while,
Add Sanctified water and their goodness will be renewed.
And above all else, ask for the Lord's forgiveness
For our past sins and the poisoned putrid seeds.”
He skipped along the sandy beach with his little friends,
As the yellow sun of the Lord's Protection led them to a new dawn.
Enter the crowd
spawning shapes upon the dead
A skill honed by understanding the living
a task only desired by the dregs
Mind the sirens as they sing a call
A call that was called while calling for the end of the world
Saturation through destruction
so on and not so far forth passed an intellect drawn on a caveman’s wall
The breathing here will stall
It will become tough to take in
exactly what is seen
Deep under here beneath
Seeped earth unturned for a kernel of thought
Barely tapping the surface
here for a purpose
deemed utterly worthless
Those are that thing’s eyes that judge us
they called him God once before
No one said he’d be so bright
patternless and misinformed
There were good men
who drug their brothers to the sand
there were bad men
who taught us to take a stand
to be strong
to balance the planets on an axis of hatred
tipping towards the grand
No pity from a man free of inhibitions
no apologies from the cutthroat crowd
Take the hat as the captain of awkward situations
a soaring laughter erupts from the crowd
The crowd will always give chase
a duty bestowed
a beauty-less rose
a useless pose
The crowd had a head start
The crowd takes affect
This was written ingest
The crowd now infests
The crowd always infests