Best Language Poems
Our Love Language
We have our own love language we both share
A squeeze of the hand, a half smile, a glance,
It’s the unspoken passion within our romance
Like lava beneath that may unpredictably flare.
That magnetic attraction that began from the start
It drew us together, though obstacles abounded,
Devotion grew fast but we kept ourselves grounded,
Then after two years you surrendered your heart.
When mates have lived together as long as we two
There is bound to be thunder and lightning born
With a flood of issues that pour heavy, storm torn,
Yet we wait out mal weather until skies are blue.
This promise I give you until one of us must leave
I will share in your happiness, be there in your sorrow
No matter what life dispenses in days of tomorrow,
Should I pass on first I don’t want you to grieve.
Death is but a station in a more peaceful dimension
I will wait for you there and I will watch over you,
Should you get there first please watch over me too
For our souls have no restraints upon our ascension.
8-21-19
~Second Place~
Writing Challenge 2, August 2019- Enclosed Rhyme
Sponsor, Dear Heart
The Language of Blue
Sinking into the lyrical language of blue
Prime layers of still solitude speak
With muted voices
In sapphire soprano rhapsodies,
Lines of bass blushes, electric flecks of neon fire.
Hear in dusky blue’s modal shafts of light,
The peaceful plaintive sotto voce
Set an indigo scene
In delft lingua for a pas de duex
With trebling hues lapis and arbot.
Blue chants a lexis, a cerulean chroma glow
Sung in tender tenor tones patois
To translate soft sky blue aqua idioms,
As minor phrases meditate on azure,
In prose text that wafts in periwinkle blooms.
Unhurried blue on blue in plain-chant paeans,
Whispers and bedazzles teal twilight librettos
Of cradle songs in soft celeste waves
Of cobalt midnight in the consoling,
And the mystic, language of blue.
11-3-21
Contest: Blue
Sponsor Mystic Rose Rose
Trebling = triple
Arbot is a shade of blue
Chroma means glow
FEELINGS
Feelings,
Masters of my destiny
Lords of my life
Strength of my dreams
Instigators of my actions
Burning fire you are
Consuming my whole
Being:
My heart
My mind
My soul
My spirit,
As you relentlessly
Demand:
To be conceived
To be formulated
To be understood
To be expressed!
A Herculean task it is,
I swear,
Such an enterprise,
For how one could ever
Constrain, you, the unconstrained
And mold you into:
Phonemes
Syllables
Words
Phrases
Sentences
And still, retain
Your explosive
Dynamism?
No language exists,
So vast
So deep
So accurate
So supple
As to pay justice,
To your intensity
To your desire
To your beauty
To your love!
Thus, having no
Alternative,
I turn to the only language
There is,
The one that the
Cosmos speaks,
And
The universe alone
Comprehends:
The language of
Harmony,
That we humans
POETRY name
BUT
Even then
To describe you
I AM UNABLE!
©Demetrios Trifiatis
28 January 2013
Myself I’ve never been
much of a mathematician
Algebra and stuff
didn’t add up to much
when I made the decision
to respond to you
our multi-versed
mathematical magician
Because even I know
all things aren’t equal
I don’t know what it’s like
to grow up black and poor
and to wonder why
other kids have more
and why no one looks sideways
when white kids walk into a store
It seems this world for you
uses a subtraction
and division equation
Giving people who look like me
a multiplication table
We rise to the top like cream
even when you’re more capable
Those who say
“Things have changed”
are living in a fable
or maybe they think it’s fine
because they have lots on their table
You have no reason to apologize
I see the sad in your eyes
That happens
when others try
to bring you down to size
But I sense a power
beyond the treatment they rationalize
There is scripture flowing from your pen
Telling us what your people have dealt with
over and over again
You help me conceptualize that pain
which enables me to see and realize
why some might try to bury their blues
with drugs and booze
When they think
“Nothing is going to change”
They also think
“F it I’ve got nothing to loose!”
But you you’re a word warrior
that’s not the path you choose
Rewrite it
Rethink it
Turn it into good news
Sorrows on a graph,
Death and molestations
All these sadness quotients
are not merely estimations
They defy gravity
and my limited calculations
But I can’t read your sorrow
without me acknowledging
I see your situation
And I hear your brave
heartfelt communication
While still I wonder
how you cope with this frustration
Maybe it’s the angels
That grace your constellation
The way you wrote it
and I read it
If I were your teacher
I’d give you all the credit
Besides in this case
you’re the teacher
I say hallelujah brother
your life is a prayer
keep on speaking preacher
So I ask
what can a math challenged
middle aged white dude do?
People need more than compassion
for what they’ve been through
A thought can grow exponentially
beyond me and you
Until it becomes true
Action Maximization
by the many for the few
Dedicated to Michael Ellis after reading his Poem “A Poem for My Algebra Teacher” Please read it.
There is a new English gang in town
In the town of Punctuation
They call themselves the “Punch U” gang
A solid gang with a strong foundation
The Punch-U gang members consists of:
Hyphen - the gang leader
They call him Dash
He is charismatic, clever, a born leader
Firm but fair…. excepting no gang trash
Exclamation point ! Dash’s right hand man
They call him Lanky
He is confident and likes to make his point
Dramatic and often a little cranky
Asterisk * Dash’s girlfriend
They call her Starr
She is smart, astute, keeps mental notes
A free spirit who sings and plays guitar
Question Mark ?
They call him Curly
He is so very inquisitive
Often indecisive
A deep thinker and quite surly
Comma ‘
They call him Jack
He is quite the lad and joker
Jack often steps out of line
And needs to be kept on track
Brackets ( )
Identical twins called Jill and Joy
Always together or never far apart
Fun and happy
Popular with the boys
Full stop .
They call her Dot
Outspoken and very definite
Always likes to have the last word
Often heard saying “ Now thats it….just Stop”
Quotation Mark “
And yes they call him Mark
He likes being the centre of attention
Being in the know
Does not like being left in the dark
Apostrophe ‘
They call her Sue
With Sue there is always something else to come
Taking short cuts
Is what Sue enjoys to do
Colon:
They call him Number-Two
Funny, entertaining and chatty
Though sometimes he takes it too far
Talking a lot of poo!
Oh, eternal Poetry:
Divine language of the Gods
Soul of my soul
Thought of my thought
Breath of my breath
Heart of my heart.
On your enchanting chest
Let me forever linger
For
Your inspiring heartbeats
I yearn to hear
So as worthy verses for you
Everlastingly, to write!
© Dimitrios Tryfiatis
18 January 2022
-
I dedicate the honor of POTD to all my good friends who, uninterruptedly, comment on my poems. I also thank the officials of PS who bestowed the honor! Blessings.
I want conversations
with writers and poets
The wise the wacky
the dark and the stoic
I need to drink your words
I fear my disease is chronic
The name of my affliction
I think it’s wordaholic
Writers and poets
Dig down to the deep
Some are more honest
Others have secrets to keep
Some can herd cats
or people like sheep
If you tell a good story
I’ll sacrifice my sleep
The complicated mind
Within phrases revealed
Multilayered thinking
Special nuggets concealed
Tongues sharp and precise
master poets do wield
If used like a surgeon
The recipient is healed
So talk to me wordsmiths
all of you clever poets
The wise the wacky
The dark and the stoic
I want to drink your words
Yes my disease is chronic
The name of my affliction
I think it’s wordaholic!
When I think of poetry
I think of a child manipulating
his first steps, the wobbly nature
of his strides~that confused, meandering
toddle, and then trip and fall – the dear
first efforts of us all. When I think of poetry,
I think of my introductory cords attempting
articulation: the naive study of lips, the spitting
aspirations, how the throat struggles, and then the
mouth opens to the notion of sound. When
I think of poetry, I think of the squinting and the
rounding of the eyes first awakening to light –
how the heart adjusts to thought...and how,
somehow, it is all related to love, the cooing,
caressing of a mother, before weaning.
Then when I think of poetry, I finally think of nothing...
empty myself, letting poetry think for me –
become my sight and voice, my very direct
line to God~knowing best the language
of creation.
My heart may break, wreathed in somber silence.
Yet I care, I search for valleys of peace,
where rare black orchids bloom through violence,
for fallen leaves too shall caramelize,
and kindness too will be what the wind sees.
Time is a traitor only truth can stain.
Are we lost, hiding behind masks of pain?
Is my rhythm of speech, now a song of shame?
Whilst I'm weaving hope amidst woes in vain,
deaf to your hate that burns strength of my name.
Polly had a pet parrot
She wanted to teach to talk
The parrot didn't want to
As parrots only squawk
Polly was frustrated
With her stubborn parrot friend
She was very persistent
Sure of winning in the end
Polly faced the parrot
And started to talk
The parrot bit her on the lip
Which made poor Polly SQUAWK!
I couldn’t understand the language she spoke,
at least not all of it,
but the emotion pouring past her lips,
the tears in her eyes, her clenched and shaking fists
enunciated more clearly,
than any piece of English Poetry I had ever read,
and grabbed me, held me still.
…In that moment, her soul was in my arms.
In that finite, tender breath of our lives,
she was my mother, my best friend…
but I could not console her.
I didn’t have the words;
and my heart sank into the
concrete between us,
wet with the pain of God’s rain
and her tears.
…Were my tears
So, I simply opened my palms
toward her crouched form and
spoke the only words I could
fathom, that would be accepted
by a stranger on a dangerous street.
"I am sorry, It will be okay. God will bless you."
I knew she did not understand…
"Lo siento"
“que va a estar bien”
“Dios te bendecira’ “
the words were as messy as the overturned
duffle bag at her feet…and fumbled, slowly
from my lips, as my knees hit the street.
Two strangers, cried in the rain,
knowing nothing of each other’s suffering,
and yet we shared the weight,
together, for those few moments;
the barrier of language was broken.
Love spoke for us.
-James Kelley 2014, All rights reserved.
…Love transcends any language
I love my broken English
Am in love with my broken English
Am honored to have two other languages
The ability to think from language to language is one that many don't experience
The ability to bring vibes from one language to another is one, that many envy
Sometimes it's like a train, English flows easily before it gets to a halt
Sometimes it's a bus with many stops, some harsh, some dash, some flash
And some mistakenly whether car or train, crash
Some like aeroplane, are up there in the air
Building their own castles
Creating unfamiliar words
Whether writing from kikuyu to English
Or kikuyu to Swahili and then to English
Or just writing from the little dash of English that I learnt from my English classes,
With poetry,I can still escape
Whether in the veiled grammatical errors
Or just like a volatile chameleon
In the beginning was the word
Before that, no noun, no thing
Then no sound was ever heard
And no passing bell would ring
So therefore no adjective was needed to describe it or deplore it
No preposition required to be positioned right before it
No verb to do something to it or say what act it was pursuing
No need for an adverb to describe how well or badly it was doing
Since not even one noun existed, conjunctions would have been redundant
There were no things to act on and to move across the face of the fundament
So the first word there had to be - was BE, and that was the very first in existence
And from Genesis and Eden to Elsinore, it has had a remarkable degree of persistence
Now, in the Oxford English Dictionary which is venerable institution
There are 171476 full entries of words (2nd edition) all capable of elocution
Of these, about one seventh are verbs, therefore there must be around 24497 give or take, to enumerate all action
And that should be enough for even the most garrulous to get some satisfaction
This is a limited calculation and I wouldn't want to be tied down to it
We can be more free in our estimates so while we are about it, we might as well do it
It seems that once BE had been exercised, the dam broke and words poured out as from a cornucopia.
And verbs would soon exist in an abundance enough to carry you from here to Ethiopia
Except in the culture of youth where it appears this multitude has been reduced to the deplorable "was like"
To them I am tempted to say: "Learn some real verbs"; OR I would employ a phrasal such as
'On-your-bike!'
The possibilities are now endless particularly if you include the phrasal
Giving us enough elan vital to at least maintain a metabolism basal
So to whoever first said BE, whether God or someone with similar propensities
though another name or description:
I say Well done! I couldn't in my wildest dreams with a wish to create a rich life and culture,
have produced a better prescription
There's a river that twists in the mind
that I plunder and ravish with sieves,
on crusades to the summit of rhyme
where my Phoenix of tropes and schemes live.
In a war to free diction's fair Queen
where the Soldiers of Babel bemuse
and the modern day graceless regimes
are in battles to stifle my muse!
In my quest for her verse of prestige
I have traveled a nexus of words
with this Lexis of language on siege;
where the dissonant hum drum is heard!
Oh, the poise of my bayonet firm
as I pin down my thoughts in a rush!
Oh, the will of the language it squirms
as her essence of glory I brush!
She's the Queen Muse that whispers within
as she watches me battle with style,
she supplies me the yarn that I spin
as she lends me her rhythm awhile.
It's the moment her Highness is freed
that the Armies of Dissonance fall
and the sound of Perfection can bleed
in those lyrical sounds that enthrall!
Writing is dancing with words...
a titillating tango with verbs delicious...
a sultry waltz with rhythm and meter...
a hot rumba with randy adjectives...
a forbidden dance with unnamed nouns...
if this has not left you wanting more
then I shall dance with words no more.
Poetry is a pure passion play
of alliteration and words dancing in line,
a quick-stepping, twin-tapping salsa,
a seductive rhapsody in rhyme,
moving metaphors, measure and time…
my love is wrapped in this poetry
so will you please come dance with me?