Best Interstitial Poems
Part Two
SEVEN STARK WORDS
Seven alliterative blockbuster words struck so
they rhymed initially in juxta-positioning lineal parallels
pausing but in the fourth
to resume breath in the fifth
Leaving the interstitial morphemes in resonating ellipses
The economy of your parsing has wreaked havoc down the ages
in all trans-explicatory tongues
Tough-minded men come from afar
with other gods to serve
and sacrifices to make in the name of their Lords
bent your versification to limp rhyme
and left meaning a hung pursuit
in the hands of plagiarists professors preachers
who
not knowing nor divining the reason for your craftsman’s
concatenation of weighted phonemes
advanced theories for your elastic pregnant mind
strung myriads of pages in exegeses
each staking a claim to posterity
the villainous hanging on your lips
In a time devoid of papered learning for the poor
When to be born a Sudra or Pariah was a sin
When masters were those top-heavy manically-mantric Brahmin priests
Preying on the duped loyal sycophantic Vaishyas
wishing to earn karmic merit with their agricultural gain at their altar feet
such servant-financers as they by legions now lay their souls down
as even the long-gone royally leisure-dispensing Kshaktriyas
how would he who sought the spread of knowledge
not seek to encapsulate learning in mnemonic couplets
arranged according to rigid design
for those who could not count either
Ten fingers in the hand so
Ten the number of facets of a thought
a subject
a theme
even if theme subject thought were stretched too thin
I
wet cat impaled on telegraph poles
serrated ashbrown fur
tinged with flinting silver
a mirror blue
cut by guitar strings on a shining plate
bathed in molten evening shine
jet streaks through pylon barrage
windshield wipers’ hemicircular swipe
dry cat’s crusty baguette fur
ashen edges of rapidfire cirrus
pylons stalk the sky
and catch the wipers in the eye
II
horses purr in the cat’s geule
carriages trot through veins of pomp
hounds howl in pinewood packs
fountains spurt warrior sperms
over-stuffed regalia golden-tressed coiffures
wrap scalp and skin in scented sweat
coachmen backfire trussed up in perches
perfumed eminences speed to trysts
III
The Sun-King illumines long dead VISTA galaxies
The Hall of Mirrors reveberates secret oaths
Lights dim as Le Notre adjusts tropical palm vats
The parvenu Corsican struts on depraved genes
IV
wipers peer through moving fingers
pylons jetstreak high-wire noon
Marie Antoinette drivels at Fresnes
The gilded streaming sun dances on fitful time
Glints through slithering interstitial space
Am I driving or am I driven in a cariole.
© T. Wignesan, October 29, 1986, Paris (Revised)
From: T. Wignesan
Copyright ©: T. Wignesan 1992 - October 29, 1986 [from the collection : back to background material, 1993]
Inhabitants are living deep down inside the earth
Interstitial creatures following their birth
Waiting, watching deep inside they hide
In the darkness never seeing simply they abide
Freezing cold and blistering heat they flourish like the trees
But who can tell they’re even there in the land that never sees
Without a nation, without a light
Abiding in the land of night
If I hadn’t told you now, you’d probably not know
Most of life upon this earth is living down below
Into the Blue
Pain faded into the blue
purplish clots
pooling beneath welted skin
interstitial fluids coalescing,
coagulating, collecting
swallowed tears.
Day had broken the grasp
opened the ever-locked door
taunted the terrified
incited the torment
of acquiescence -
silenced anger.
No locks barred open doors
chains hobbled only memory,
fear’s straight jacket unbuckled.
The blue faded, hidden beneath
old lies, blanketed in the warmth
of more colorful promises
Destined to fade
into the blue
of pain.
John G. Lawless
1/12/2016
In my life thus far I have lived the following enhances of verbal helping experiences learned in 7th grade from Mrs. Aumond; Is am are was were be being been have has had do does did shall will should could may might must can could and all that sets the retro future stage for organic properous envelopment as to knowledge gained and emotion imbibed so as to fuse all and both inter tentions all around in/out between betwixt and in so far as to mind emo/meld the sociointellectopoliticiosexual panderings of interstitial twinings that enlist a never the tweens shall mix metaphors cause we are in this love line interfore for the long infinity haul never bending/ending as to heretofore our solvent offspring god given in all things humotastic wi9th bparento frost everpresence to guide their minor outcome with individual inner reference so as to procreate a passionate parental precompense capsule that ever allows their exo expanse to re eleviate over expanse of nevre be fore entrances negligent. hey u daddo quite the the opposite as to what u gave us in a prepost parental wife described interpotential nego nilled never dad unimagined scrapple script scrabble module that set the son x stage the the ad lingerts in a post parental non negatory nillance to unoverly offer a positive presence that pushes your ill noid intentions ever forward ripened of I will do, go,present, promote, live, die, for your livelovelife pretensions as I will forever go and live for the gobetweens that define your precarious present intentions as was given to u from us to uuu. Hold the vast love invoked from me in hallowed form as I was unenlisted in that realm from birth. Being single from birth leaves much to be desired in the lifelove scheme of things. I gave u all I could muster from books and my soul ever looking, tempting, prying, delving, and surfacing to promise a safe, sentient future with all of my abilitites. Death be not proud, to thine own self be true, take from me the vastness of my knowledge and enlist it in your simple being to project u in an uncompromising future, as I love u, infinity. EGM
CLOSE CALL IN IRELAND
I once had an affaire de coeur with a foxylady, in fact a randy colleen
In Ireland with a tough older brother looking to punch me out.
But I cold cocked the rambunctious hooligan,
A real old blowhard who knew diddly squat about fighting.
Oh yeah, he had some mickey mouse gizmo like a nunchaku
But he was a shilly shallying, vacillating sort of bloke,
A tightwad nitpicker full of quintessential balderdash
(To put it politely),
And I just lambasted his ass. But, you know, with hindsight
He did almost usurp my dubious position with his sister.
Actually I rather think he was an incest-freak,
A what-you-might-call weirdo trying to insert himself sneakily
Into her good books, (and maybe also my gay books).
In formal language he was an aged interstitial gender-bender .
This stupid old codger tried to seduce me as well as her.
I didn’t acquiesce, didn’t dilly-dally hither and yon,
Like some ethereal dancer doing a glissade.
In the midst of an abso-bloody-lutely horrendous
Wingding of a drunken celebration
The pinch penny tried to titillate me
With his whole second-hand collection of pictures,
A great caboodle of ***********:
And that easy rider fuzzled me later in a jimjam party
And almost brought me out of the closet.
He was some Tallulah, let me tell you. . . . wow!
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
NOTE
Almost the entire poem should be highlighted for
it contains every word on the given list
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Entered in Debbie Guzzi’s Contest For Love of Language
As rains and the torrentialest of snows plummet,
Filling all the skies and the area interstitial to earth and sky
With a frenzy of flying flakes;
As gusty winds doth blow and toss the flakes this way and that;
As torrents true amid the most rending species of gale
Dash themselves bitterly and self-destructively
Against this crude roof,
It is of my hodiernal solitariness,
My aloneness and lonesomeness,
My singleness, and plural,
Romantic stationariness that I must needs
And peradventure speak:
Yet, firstly, permit us all to sit still and our selves
Stationary, silent and still; and silence that intruding music
So ominous yet banal, tinny and slight:
Lighthearted 'tis it, as well:
That which plainly portends our overwhelming destruction,
And that of all our cogitation, cognition, concentration
And composition, with its overmuch resonant yet tinniest
Intrusiveness.
So allow to be it thus and summarily silenced-
Now, that's better.
A man can listen to himself think again;
He can form cognitive thought and appreciation thereof.
Therefor, that music silenced and my concentrative powers
Revived: As a blade at the whetstone, resharpened:
I can keep on with the prosody and poesy of my plight,
But...
Form:
Your list of words is *dubious,
so many came from slang.
I fear my up-tight mama
would forbid the whole shebang.
*Affaire de coeur is French of course
and we may only borrow.
I also know what’s slang today
could be correct tomorrow.
If I write an Irish poem,
I might use the word *Colleen.
Throwing it in just willy-nillly
would seem a bit obscene.
*Ethereal, is my favorite
and lies easy on mind.
*Fuzzled? I think you made that up.
It is not there to find.
*Interstitial? Show me a sentence
where that one could be used.
The *quintessential meaning
of this poem, is that to me,
not every word is equal,
some should be used sparingly.
Don’t think that I *lambaste you,
this is written quite in fun,
just as the list you gave us,
when all is said and done.
*Hither and yon is old English
and out of vogue today.
*Rambunctious, *vacillate, *usurp and *titillate
are in the dictionary
and are good words to be added
to a poet’s vocabulary.
On most of the others
I will simply have to pass.
I would have failed the course for using them
in my English teacher’s class.
I scan the skies as vapor sails,
made wide by distance, destinations
guessed at, criss-cross trails
of global peregrinations;
two of thousands flying high
'til touchdown, from a roaring to a sigh.
Time and separation matter not,
our spirits meld where'er we land,
cities mysterious and grand,
we simmer in a melting pot.
In early years we settled down,
Republic versus Queen and Crown,
three thousand miles, an ocean's span
of redefining can't and can.
An innocent, so far abroad,
an interstitial, like a fraud,
forever seeks the real me
while clinging to your constancy;
expatriate, with memories of
England dear, the land I love.
I scan the skies as vapor sails,
made wide by distance, destinations
guessed at, criss-cross trails
of global peregrinations;
two of thousands flying high
'til touchdown, from a roaring to a sigh.
Time and separation matter not,
our spirits meld where'er we land,
cities mysterious and grand,
we simmer in a melting pot.
In early years we settled down,
Republic versus Queen and Crown,
three thousand miles, an ocean's span
of redefining can't and can.
An innocent, so far abroad,
an interstitial, like a fraud,
forever seeks the real me
while clinging to your constancy;
expatriate, with memories of
England dear, the land I love.
The interstitial space of existence
Drumming up support again-
Finally I catch the glint in your eye!
We scan the skies as vapor sails,
made wide by distance, destinations
guessed at, criss-cross trails
of global peregrinations;
two of thousands flying high
'til touchdown, from a roaring to a sigh.
Time and separation matter not,
our spirits meld where'er we land,
cities mysterious and grand,
we simmer in a melting pot.
In early years we settled down,
Republic versus Queen and Crown,
three thousand miles, an ocean's span
of redefining can't and can.
An innocent, so far abroad,
an interstitial, like a fraud,
forever seeks the real me
while clinging to your constancy;
expatriate, with memories of
England dear, the land I love.
Empty Spaces
November 5, 2010 at 8:41pm
Empty Spaces
And so he developed a love for emptiness,
all the spaces between things, what demarks this from that,
interstitial transitions of season, faraway lands, or seconds on a wristwatch.
It didn’t matter if it were raindrops, an echo off distant canyon walls,
or tracing rock fissures in narrow passages,
joints of brick, or cracks in a concrete walk,
driving asphalt pavement and the intermittent sound of tires over repair patches,
a pause in conversation for a shared breath,
the opening shape of a mouth as a sound exits.
Fascinated by the gaps of words and letters,
large and small quiet places waiting to be filled,
wherever he could insert himself and feel his arms outstretch,
a hand, or fingertip grip, a fingernail edge, or foothold.
He was fixated on the distance between, the silent talk of each and every thing that somehow remained separate,
which seemed to matter so much more than the objects themselves, this tension,
which was infinite.
Upon this fairly scribal yet oversize,
Very squarish or rectangular tablet,
Do I scribble and scrawl these very words,
And those of the completeness of at least a brace,
A twain, a pair of poems, though
These are, after a fashion, hardly meet.
Albeit, they are not so ill-fitting for all of that.
They are good poems, those I've today
And herein written;
Yet to themselves, they ascribe all
Manner of different motives,
Emotions and motifs.
Yet I purpose not hereby and herewith to delineate
All the consequent, attendant minutiae compassing those
Works; no, my purpose herein is to
Fashion a poem much less circumspect,
Summary, and oddly essayistic
Than quondam ones, yet in so doing
I've partly failed-no matter.
Yet this poem and those indited formerly,
They weren't inscribed beneath some large,
Tyrannous, blindingly refulgent
Saharan sun;
Nor were they beneath the caliginous caul of the night
Scrawled hereon, nay;
It was my oddest delight to compose these at a time of day
Quite interstitial to those abovementioned.
Yet some inky darkness even now depends
And lends its crepuscular, darksome weight to the entire tableau:
That of a poet-writer over his tablet,
Head bent low. Yet, a dichotomy, I find, crops up
Herein, as a more modern meaning of tablet coexists
With that upon which I actually, diligently write
This: Which is merely a glorified book of notes.
Form:
...inspired by 'With a Photograph to Zell' by Hart Crane
We scan the skies as vapor sails,
made wide by distance, destinations
guessed at, criss-cross trails
of global peregrinations;
two of thousands flying high
'til touchdown, from a roaring to a sigh.
Time and separation matter not,
our spirits meld where'er we land,
cities mysterious and grand,
we simmer in a melting pot.
In early years we settled down,
Republic versus Queen and Crown,
three thousand miles, an ocean's span
of redefining can't and can.
An innocent, so far abroad,
an interstitial, like a fraud,
forever seeks the real me
while clinging to your constancy;
expatriate, with memories of
England dear, the land I love.