Best Levelling Poems
"Eventually"
Taking back the 3 worlds
the cracked and broken
roads they walked
join eventually
there is no separation
constant in the same family
poetic justice paints
its soul purposefully
taking back the 3 worlds
to a time of innocence
gained through the vantage
of levelling desolation
rebirth through dissolution
all is as it should be
the meaning understood
fully;
eventually
(LadyLabyrinth / 2023)
muse.
muses.
Bittersweet
Jose cuts the canes one at a time cursed by poverty's grind
What else does he want since he works on sweetness all
around him and toils in fragrant nature perfumed by his
sweat as he swings the blade of global consumption in which
his desires and passion melt in the scorching mellifluous sun
His focus is on sugar which whips his broken hands and soul
Joseph strokes his flatulent belly robustly breaks wind and swings
the bottle of fermented sugar one more 'Cuba Libre' before
he is free from too much reflection of what goes on in his stupor
his aims and purpose in life swirl in the sediment of the night
Joseph’s focus is on how to move his obese corpse into bed yet again
He cuts the chase from the flask and curses the price of the rum
‘Where the hell is Cuba’ is his one lucid thought before he
succumbs to his slumber and maybe life would be easier
if he licked Jose’s wounds straight from the levelling cane
Until then his impotent life falters and 'surely' a bit of sugar will do him no harm
15th February 2017
I found my reset button
If I only knew I had it at all
One moment, one instant
My identity I am all for
Resetting back to comforts levelling
The so hard to deal with things becomes easy
That once adrenaline for trembling
Becomes ever so desirable to once more see
How did I live never realizing for so long?
Or perhaps I need that finality to find a reset
And to look back did I see how far I have gone
Have I a future furthering a past unmet?
It was years to be young once again
Yet with age doesn't mean I'm old without youth
It's to be old and content that's a shame
It's to be old without content that should seduce
When too much led to the discovery for
Those moments found to this one unique instant
If I only knew I had it at all
I found my one hidden reset button
.................
The working navvy did dig deep
He followed Brindly’s new laid plan
A transport system to complete
A salvation for the labouring man
As the furrow cut with sweat and maul
With breaking backs and torn sinew
Each man in turn to heave and haul
Sustenance for starving kin renew
Tracts of land transform through spade and pick
Veins enriching the countryside
Bringing new life, each shovel, each brick
Levelling earth, raising national pride
A true revelation this arterial plan
Almost lost through modernisation
Abandoned, grown dense, dispirit man
As steam and diesel grew within the nation
Each lock assiduously built
Before first steam engine’s whistle blew
Weeds strangle, progressive man’s new guilt
The canals ebb, debris as seeds strew
More beauteous now than ever been
Our arterial chart of the waterway
Each torn muscle, victuals did glean
Bed and nourishment for one more day
The navvy’s ghosts look down, heads held high
Their gnarled hands rest in heavenly peace
Majestic waterways dug in sweat with sigh
A once industrial, now beautiful masterpiece.
© 16/11/2013 GG Inspired by Harry J Horsmans'
free verse 'The Cut' which is a colloquial name for a canal
Red beams and blue lights
Swinging in plain sight
Lips dripping lime sipping
Tastes of warmth on a cold night
Humidity is a breeze
Freezing with a knot
The air is hot
Thoughts are dark
Heavenly scents
Ripped apart
White noise
Smoothly scratched
Bit by bit
Scars are matched
Smoke so thick
Smoke so close
Tearing down
Black pantyhose
Bright eyes blue lashes
Skin so soft
Peeling ashes
Animal instincts
Vanilla to the core
Sharpen the arrows
Levelling the score
Aim with precision
Aim with effect
Lower the laws
Of cause and effect
Quaking tremors
Muscular shakes
Under the stars
Lying awake
The road to my backyard is long and straight
Evergreen trees abound and provide welcome shade
Home to myriad birds, butterflies and the bees
Last summer their branches were sawn off, without notice
The orgy with power-saws lasted barely a day
The trees shorn of foliage, the limbless torsos remained
To secure the safety of a VIP on a state visit
To a smog-laden metropolis, labouring hard to breathe
A few years back, we moved house to an oasis of green
But now, the storm of development is relentlessly closing in
Razing and levelling with electric saws and bull dozers
And a host of equipment used by modern day builders
Pile drivers mounted on rigs clump through the day
Unrelenting even at night, when the elusive foxes bay
Grieving in the darkness with plaintive howls
For a vanishing habitat where his endangered kin prowls
They have acquired fish farms and farmland
And even encroached on the protected wetlands
Which naturally dispose tons of city waste
In danger of destruction due to greed and haste
Truckloads of rubble are dumped every day
The pace is frenetic, even in sweltering May
Toiling hard for masters, who’ve deadlines to meet
And citizens to house, from whom votes they’ll seek
A haze of dust now covers construction sites
The pace doesn’t slacken here, even at nights
Construction materials arrive here daily by the truckloads
And given shape by workmen, as planned on drawing boards
What was once green cover and blue sky
Will be concrete monoliths, stretching up very high
With parking lots and asphalt streets
And billboards and neon signs, ready to be leased
No longer will fields of mustard flowers sway sinuously in spring
Nor ripe ears of golden corn bob gently in the wind
The sounds of frogs and crickets are a memory of the past
Songbirds have fled, deprived of their natural habitat
Slowly the memory of winter’s migratory birds will fade
Never again, the razed canopy of green, provide cooling shade
As I walk through my ravaged neighbourhood, I wonder why
Impotent rage pervades through me and I silently cry
You gaudy stars do not get giddy when I grieve
Nor wrest through clouds to melt this darkness
That so befits what logics to your destiny weave
For all dreams, and all theories prove finiteness
Where death draws the line,
And purposes find terminus
And we a quick, withered gust
To its vexing carnal fate resign
While amoeba dares the boundary we cannot pass
And earthworms wallow above our graves in grass.
O Tanya, I would talk to God for you, and ask him
Why you had to be murgered in your youth, I may
But cannot tell which way your feelings, it is a dim
Realm without news, and you may there, rather stay
Where security bars do not fail
For murderers and murdered, keep
Alike the common pillow of sleep
And nothing changes where prevail
Death upon soul. But what rightt even then that you
Should one day keep company with murderers too?
It was the Sabbath, and all the angels that around us
Share the worship of our hearts, how did they Lot alone
Beheld in peril, did they not hear and join your chorus?
Since stars are only burning gas, and not jewelled stone
What other myth of man must fall
What other thing have I now to know
That misplaced faith may bring no woe
When sorrows chain the back to wall
Take them all, Lord, except the truth of your soon coming
No other hope is left when earth about us begins crumbling.
ii
Tonight the light left the stars
Ashrouded in dark veils of sorrow
Neglecting callous clouds, and spars
Yearning against damocles tomorrow,
Agrieved my heart for a young life lost
Lady woman, I conjure her majesty
Orchid unseared by sun or frost
Winnowed and wilted by a tragic end
Earthly fragrance flood heaven again
Farewell, sweet teacher, hush to sleep
Anthems from your voice hold memory
Resplendant while yet bereft we weep
Evincing faith in the cold claws of misery
Well you made your example yesterday
Elusive mortality, how you discomfit us
Levelling us in our glory to common dust
Litany now, ye angels, bring Christ and his day.
My Mate’s Car
It’s a limousine Cadillac with all the luxuries you would want. Check it out as he drives past. He has electric windows for hot July days. A digital stereo to blare his metal music out on front and back speakers, buck the old people! With a sunroof to chill with when out with his itch. When the sun dies darkness falls, ok! Got front fog lamps to dazzle other drivers. Baked up by levelling headlamps aimed rite into their eyes! With an adjustable steering wheel that gives enough room for his itch to fit snugly between his eggs to fix his rock. His doors are secure with central looking so no cop can stop the illegal act. What a machine!
Pushed up from stomach's abyssmal pit
Choked off cries, constraint deformed
Packed with panic's punches
Right here where words are formed
Throat cords tightly gripped
Resistance rules my holding back
While mouth stammers mind blown shock
Fear sped thoughts fly blindly
Wild-eyed in disconnected space
Beneath pain's radar, dead-ends faced
Cant find escape through tiny slits
In self expression's cut free places
Stripped sounds,unreasoned, so distraught
I'm cramped, wrapped tight, shut up,
Curled up, gone again without a trace.
Mind flails blind at hidden threats
Going to die, my heart attacks me
Going to die, my only thoughts
Half- crazed, clownish acting out
Breathe in, breathe deep, breathe out.
Breathe in, breathe deep, breathe out...Slowly...
Breathe in, breathe deep, breathe out...Slowly...
I feel myself levelling out...Slowly...
Kindness holds keeled heart upright
Kind words rein me in, damp down fright
Caught unawares by calming help
Relief seeps through, soothing thoughts
Shifts gears back to lucid tracks,
Take it easy, take it easy, pressure's off
Life's plain sailing once again
Breath in, breathe deep, breathe out...Sigh...
03/06/2017.
The golden silence melts away, and joy un-named
From the phantom pipes exults me
For no silence can so rhapsodized and doubts tamed
That man deserves better glory.
And what if sin could, levelling us, permit this to remain
Tell me then what is the eternal antidote of our pain?
Like distant peal of evening bell, a plaintive song
The unknown angels could also sing
And golden glow the light divine where seraphs throng
Chiming solitude's shadowy wing
Where my soul beneath the bough of your academy ignites
By the rapture that your balming melody in me excites
What do you wise man of shadowed boughs tells my heart now
What deep remembrance from me gone
When music was language to which all wisdom bow
And by songs you spoke Eden's tone
And I the Adam now understood the truth you sweetly tell
The prophecy recovered while kept in trance under your spell.
No bird then you are, sweet singer from times afar
Too sage your purpose tells the hope
The griots spoke, ere magis found their vision's star
Song beyond silence giving scope
To the word that instant wandered and did not move, and no eye
Nor I could describe that form, elusive in the brimming sky
Great philosopher, wisdom teacher, nightingale
That from solititude drops pearls
For which I sell all promise other, so prevail
Your fragrance to unbroken worlds
Where there still perhaps the universal language can be heard
In as sweet as tone as this cataract of hymn from a bird.
I love to learn, but in the aura of such light
I retain nothing but pure joy
And while in ecstacy yet claim I a full sight
Absolute and with alloy
For music makes of faith a better candle for the darkness
And faith brings truth where only faith can spark our human hardness
For up and down around me move a district loud
With the sweet notes of prophecy
Yet no one lingers, no footstep halts in the crowd
As men pursue their destiny
By choice, deaf to their own healing, and wealth so beyond compare
The peace so freely given in a song filtering the air.
In the waters of my life I heard
the voices of euphoric fish, but
where am I now?
A shield has broken;
the shell of my dreams is a levelling,
bringing me here to this world,
feared, dreaded so often.
So where are those who remind me
of a brand of sanity?
Why do I wait in this place so long
to see your very normal faces?
Why do we favoured companions
rarely meet, greet, like euphoric fish?
Yes, this trio of old, old friends.
(June 2022)
Whats in the news today
and how much snow is on the ground
they say in the paper there is 2 600 homeless people
in my home city
but word of mouth and the people who work in the centers
estimate its more like 5000
so I ask
is this a protest of a country who has been lied to
who was led to a war that did not concern them?
who demands to have their own backyard of chemical warfares cleaned up?
Is this a protest against war of I'll never pay taxes
but I'll humble my own country
turning innocent men into serial killers
who join the smuftee killing patriots levelling a country flat
firing machine guns at innocent men listening to dance music
not to mention the reports of raped thirteen year olds and arson
and parents being forced to witness the whole thing before being executed
So I ask
wanna know about terrorism
as winter approaches
and you know soon
you're gonna be walking amongst streets
of frozen corpses
because there is nowhere left for them to go
and the soldiers join forces with some other country who feeds you
lies through the television
and then your own backyard says were going in to peace keep and the truth
surfaces that yes it is an all out war and we've been lieing all along
5000 homeless
a protest?
a government abnormality of one city?
terrorism of chemical warfare
and we're told some government across the ocean
can't handle their own nightmare of terror and assassins
so we have to go in to attack them
even though 9-11 under rug swept from years ago through our books of lies
was an event they catapulted unto somebody else!!!
5000 homeless
are we under attack?
Is that why no ones worried about the seial killings
of hookers turning up in fields anymore that farmers keep reporting?
Is taht why every neighborhood is swarmed with druglords and junkies?
and the prison that houses 300 has more than 700 people in it?
and all i see in my head are frozen corpses
and now i'm wondering
do the professionals im amongst
helping me through this rough patch
are they on medication too?
did we point the finger in the wrong way?
Is it US or them
and what does that have to do with the price of tea in china ask the British?
but what does my underground know of saints
divine intervention and methods to madness?
I felt nothing
Meeting his body
Shrunk, motionless
A log, plastinated by white enshrouding cloak
I felt nothing
Trailing this log to its final abode
Six feet under
I felt nothing
As the planks decked over
Cracking out darkness
From the bright sunny day
I felt nothing
As the red earth shoveled over
Levelling all but the mound of grave marker
I felt nothing
Walking away
Leaving him to the truth he found
Is it peace or serenity; torment or nothing?
Is it eternal or transient; selective or uniform?
Truth which still elude us
I felt nothing
Save an eerie self-questioning
A constant asking
If this is how death feels:
Raw nothingness
Minutes rolled into hours, hours rolled into days
Every moment themed by flashes of memory
Breaking out from the past
Memories striking of what remained of resentment
And anger
Now I know
That death isn’t an event or a moment
but a lingering sense of loss
And now I know
That death is a warm spring of nostalgia
Sneaking up on the stream of thought
And now I know
That death is a flood of nothingness
Smothering the rough edges of grief
And now I know
That death is a rite of passage
An ascent into sorrow
No more chaos
A little more easement
Levelling to eternity
A spirit befitting all.
Running from him.
Running to survive.
Running from the elder.
I don’t want the knowledge
The knowledge to hasten all.
I am a historian
A scholar.
A religious scholar.
I don’t need this
My glasses fall.
I can’t see.
I can’t read.
Nothing matters anymore.
Form:
At dawn, the farmers grasp the ploughs, And stroll towards the fields along with bullocks, The bullocks jump up towards the fields after a long rest When the summer is gone away.
The sun peeps it's head through the dark clouds,
And it supplies warmth to the farmers, Who are firmly to work in the fields, When the summer is gone away.
The farmer's wives walk towards the fields,
whose heads carry two small mud pots,
Which fill with fermented rice,raw chilli and onion,
When the summer is gone away.
Big bellied landlord plods like a snail,
Who holds a black umbrella in his hand,
To see the tilling land for the season,
When the summer is gone away.
The farmer's wives keep the pots on the muddy bank ,
And levelling the clay soil by a piece of wood, Their husbands wash hands in the channel to eat grub, When the summer is gone away.