Best Mordant Poems
No flame within!
do I hold for you
no delightful delicacy
shall I put to rhyme.
No picturesque words
in italics of your
woeful wildlife, no
acknowledgement of
the ancient mariner, he
that crossed the margin
of our “Atlas of the world.”
(Still in use, [I believe] in the
old stone museum.)
One can easily live in fear
of your many mordant moods,
to see you capture the
embracing horizon, where warring
clouds fondle the sunlight,
and the departing QE 2 is
reduced to microcosm.
How can one live in awe of
you, when at the end of each
day you snatch at the light of
sustenance, therefore
giving license to the veil
of damnation, soon to be cast
out of the east, driving impending
fears to languish upon the
unholy waters of the Styx?
(An extraction of the mind,
an evaporation of the memory
the spray dried brain
tossed into oblivion.)
Yet each morning an
interval to one’s ongoing
nightmare, when with renewed
levitation, the new light reprieved!
Begins avidly it’s universal
journey across Manukau’s
“Pack ‘n’ Save” Car park.
Oh yes! It is so easy to hate you;
you that brought the rest of
the world here, you that constitutes
a world within a world, that,
where the cycle of life creates it’s
own constitution, each player
judged on cue, to become an act of
fodder, mobile supermarkets
in ferocious competition with
nothing at all to give.
“Unless death itself is a gift!”
Upon the surface your
treachery still lingers, there,
tenacious tentacles lurk
within the sedulous surf,
groping blindly at sedated
rocks, those pinnacles of sanctuary
that harbour the weary,
support the rod.
Only when gravitation truly
intervenes, does the perpetual
invasion subside, leaving one in
no doubt about your promiscuity!
© Harry J Horsman 1993
"Aurora Spills"
Aurora spills like a waterfall
light from the eyes
saltwater tears
crocodilian
scaled in the weight of worth
a drop in the ocean of fate
breaks the seaweed fields of stories
they wave her in
rippling time away
fingertips dance mesmerising
the stinging strangers
wrapped around her legs
treading water in deep
infested notions
the coolness of
irreverent nonchalance
romantic or not
pulls her under covers
like warm blankets
heavy comfort
calls the broken
floating towards
the shabby matrix
new gates of life open
mirrors crack like eggs
the vision reflects
both light and dark
demon and saint
their remnants
embers, still
in the coldness
of prickly gloaming
like glow worm glen
fireflies red and glowing
sparks ignite
a rapturous bushfire
from cinders
billy tea leaves overturned
empty cups read
the yolk of a heart
never lies
fried casually
by the over easy
in shallow pans
of poetry
under microscopes
of blithe mordant critique
minute shards of gold
are slowly sifted
from the flotsam dross
some wisdom found
in the muddy fertile mind
shooting up
from 6ft underground
like small green plants
growing under rocks
with centipedes and
the petulant poison of spiders
in pink reflection
insurgence blooms
war never waits
silently the Pandoras smile
understanding all and nothing
of a small life distended,
swelling love
for that which was stolen
where bursting broken blue weeds
undo frozen jewels
diamonds sharp for the cutting
shiny words spells of insanity
delicious moments
melting time swallowed
spoken without voice
listening to ghosts
scratching through walls
where life floods
from glass boxes
coffins of buried treasure
banished
kaleidoscope colours
overgrowing
(LadyLabyrinth / 2022)
“The Lady in the Lake”/ Elysian Fields
https://youtu.be/IjX8xfZ7sg0
“Out of whose womb came the ice
And the hoary frost of heaven
Who hath gendered it
The waters are hid as with a stone
And the face of the deep is frozen”
LYRICS/ “The Lady in the Lake”, Elysian Fields
https://genius.com/Elysian-fields-lady-in-the-lake-lyrics
Glass and fractured imaginings are trite
Upon his blameless feet
Even as he dance and play about them
Toxic and perilous smoke are authority
Outside his naive lungs
While he freely breathes to ensure laughter
Blood sprinkles and routine metal shards
Within his innocent hands
Presently, as he claps to the street’s tune
Mordant activities be forever present
Before his youthful eyes
Just before the gleams therein make hearts sway
Remarkable is…
Miraculous is…
Wondrous is…
The resilience and spirit of youth
Before the faint feathered light of dawn becomes airborne
and the world around me lies hushed in peaceful slumber
I often ruminate on the rose and its weaponry of a thorn
equating them to thoughts that both please and encumber
I delve deeply into my soul where passion has been worn
How resplendent the petals of a bloomed dew-kissed rose
Velvet to my finger's touch, in its long-stemmed splendor
Like tender blessings I receive as I reflect in quiet repose
the echoes pulsing within my heart, in grateful surrender
It's there I remember whispers of love and its tragic woes
Uninvited comes the sting of thorns; my cause for bleeding
Deep scratches that inflict mordant worry and sullen pains
but never have they breached my stoic faith by misleading
my heart to cast asperse shadows of scars and bloodstains
on the life of this servant who for God's mercy is pleading
I hear the love song of a wood thrush, calling to its mate
Through a window glows golden glimmers of morning sun
I'm imbued by a breath of warmth, garnered as I meditate
on the generous gift of a new day, sovereignly being spun
I humble myself through life's rivers that I must navigate
6/24/20
Reflection in Silence Poetry
So many times he’s needed a friend,
his wine only lasts until
the bottle reaches the end,
so many days in ruin
following the trend, those lost in hours
indulging in proof of the Scottish blend,
yet one day
at the crossroads he did linger,
four signs of directions
his mind forced into reflections,
lifts a hand and points a finger
remembers the days, before
those of a singer,
living next door with eyes of green
he sees her now surely not a dream,
when as an army
she penetrates his defences
blows away his mordant mind,
brings him back to his senses
with lashes of love that bind.
© Harry J Horsman 2021
You are my morning dawn
…My evening dusk
Features of essence ever changing
Your eyes the flame of desire
…A calm cool wind
The light of the sun and blushing moon
You’re my crossing into fantasy
…The voice of reality
That breath of life I deeply inhale
Your softly mordant smile
…A presence realized
Flashing sparks igniting my spirit
You possess of abilities magic
…A powerful flow
Feeding the passion of my soul
You only need lay your embering touch
…Ethereal fingers caress
Melting my fear I lay at your feet
You’re silent shadowed departure
…Icing the walls to a shimmer
From the light I bear inside for you
Interminable love…
Tonight, I sit watching ebony skies
feeling the need for silence and seclusion
admiring the glitter and glimmer of stars
before one by one they disappear.
There's no solace found
when one loses luster and then dies.
As its twinkling torchlight flickers,
I drink deeply of its beauty.
In this haunting darkness of night
the taunting of its dimming light
once twilight's tattered tint loses its glint,
a star makes way for the moon to take flight.
I fear the imminence of its daunting death,
the last gasp of celestial breath
as it outshines the galaxy
before its flaming core collapses.
Suddenly, the night grows cold
and dire darkness holds reign
but not from a lofty throne.
Luna's halo has lost its glow.
How stark becomes the emptiness
where a star once heavenly hung.
It's not an illusion of pain...
I feel it as I feel the chill of winter rain.
It's as if into a black hole of stellar mass
it passes through mordant shadows
and I, although I fear the dark
would light a spark as it leaves
and time travel with it as luminance dulls.
If only wings were allowed mere mortals,
the portal they enter, I would breach
to reach its final resting place.
Sometimes, it seems as if in dreams
I follow where faded stars go to die.
Entering the depths of an abyss
from which they are not reborn.
I shiver while watching them flutter
the last pulsing beats
of dying hearts sputter
in demise before my eyes...
never to return to celestial skies.
A somber thought enters my soul,
that soon each dying star will depart
its shimmer veiled then extinguished
as if snuffed because of its beauty.
Stars should not be doomed to dwell
in skies with holes of desolation.
I mourn with miserable melancholy,
the glorious grandeur of its light
each time I see a fading star,
languishing as its journey ends.
A cry escapes my pouting lips
for all that's left of its existence
is stardust clinging to my fingertips.
When wracked with suff'ring even more,
I all alone bemoan my fate,
as one who drowns in sorrows sore
which harm, harass, and maul his state.
Aggrieved for what feels like forever,
I trouble God with bootless cries
as I endure my manic fever
with tearful, red, psychotic eyes.
The minute hand lands on midnight!
I can't find clear words to express
feelings of falling a headlong height
b'neath heaven's reach 'yond grief's excess.
Inside, I feel the Reaper’s scythe
as I think out my mordant plan:
razor, pills, or a kitchen knife,
a way to end it by my hand!?
Like Sylvia Plath, if I can
plant my head in a GE gas oven,
then it’d be painless!? (But why plan
a death so cliche, and unproven?)
I think, too, of Virginia Woolf,
how she drowned her life in a lake;
I, too, feel swallowed in a gulf
of swirling misery that'd take
me to my death! Why do I feel
forsak'n, and heavy as lead now? Am
I so hopeless? Why do I feel
so worthless, and so so dead? How am
I to end my life (to kill myself)—
if all loved ones were then to miss me?
“Help yourself!” I then heard. "Heal thyself!"
I hear aloud. As angels kiss me,
I thus then found comfort in this:
that family and friends all care,
and if I'd died I would be missed;
so, I war 'gainst profound despair.
And then, Hope dawns! And soon comes peace…
And in the morn, I wake arising—
Joy breaks in, and I have new lease.
And then my state I cease despising!
...en l'an soixante-dix de mon age...
All the familiar names from our youth
now belong to aged, unfamiliar faces.
Even my own reflection startles
as I pass the mirror
hanging in the hall.
Suddenly, we are old.
And, although taken by surprise,
we must accommodate reality --
perhaps convince ourselves
how lucky we survivors are --
how much better that we wear
these flaccid faces, these worn-out bodies,
these aids and apparatuses,
than to have ended
while in almost-mint condition.
But these are mere macabre,
septuagenarian musings.
So, let's forget all that!
Turn up the music
and hear us murmur,
in weakly mordant, fatalistic,
untriumphant chorus:
"We're still here!"
Oh like an army
she battled through my defence
like a tornado
blew away a mordant mind,
yet the touch of an angel.
© Harry J Horsman 2013
Two Dogs at the Gateway
By Sy Roth
They slurped their saliva,
huge globs,
big, barking mouthfuls
dripping from their jowls like milky icicles
Teeth-bared lips,
They guarded the gateway.
Pleased by their vacated spittle,
their noses now sniffed the air, and
like a marching band of electric ants
they ogled the nearing invader.
Anew, the soppy, conglomeration of spittle
wells at their muzzles
forming a frothy milkshake
determined to expel the approaching trespasser.
His hands stretched out flat in peaceful kindness,
prophylactic, heavy-breathing
moseying him to the gateway
wraps him in a pulsing eagerness.
A satyr’s blessing upon him as he approaches
Where the two dogs growled ominous presentiments--
Twin Cerberuses,
Headache kin of dashed wishes.
Evening shadows stifle all desires.
Lips part in anticlimax.
He rolls to the other side
away from the yapping hounds,
away from the uncomfortable pauses,
away from the anticipation
onto a sterile, flattened field
where done yet reeks of a flaccid fantasy.
A grotesquery of mordant imagination
content to sleep on the other side of the booming roar
away from the slurping beasts,
he drops hands down to his side.
Tomorrows march on and the gateway,
a finale wrapped in the twins’ slurping,
slams shut.
Occasionally we should expose the wackier lobe of the brain
in order to better appreciate the more sensible side of the mind.
~THIS is one of those times...
I capriole between my arabesques
fugaciously spasmodic in fluxes and leaps
indifferent to their misanthropic mocking
and cheeky syncopated schisms
BUT LET THEM SCOFF!
I derogate their arrogance
in silent smirking repudiation
for they know not of the decoctions
spating rapidly through my veins,
nor of the massive assemblage
of my miscelany grey and white matter.
The mordant humor of this absurdity
is that I am irrationally rational...
psychotically speaking;
I am dripping with percipience
sagaciously intelligent beyond the measure
of those cretins who kvetch, pule, and postulate
that I am strabismic and nonsensical as a loon.
After reading this write of gelastic absurdity,
it's become mereticiously opaque to me
that my discourse is oxymoronic, OR
I am a dimwitted addlepate.
There is more than one kind of crazy!
*********************
A translated version of the above nonsense,
so now Jan doesn't think she's hopelessly lost.
I dance as if I were a ballerina,
a total klutz, but I don't care
if they laugh at me.
LET THEM MAKE FUN!
I don't care if they smirk at me because
they don't know what I feel or think.
The funny part of my silliness is that
I'm really rational, pretending not to be.
I'm really smarter than I look or act
so let those idiots say that I'm
as crazy as a loon.
Now that I've read these words,
it's clear to me that nothing I've
written is clear. Soooo....
I'm either clever at writing an oxymoron
OR I'm crazy.
I am fire, I stalk you and wait to burn your fat,
I am the pyre that delights to ignite your passing hat,
I am fire that brassy whore that sucks you dry with flames
you cannot quench
I am fire, the mongrel of the days and bastard of the night,
who lick's your secrets with the torturer's tongue ignites.
I am fire, who so rips your thirst to quench and leaves your
mossy bank and dew unfit for leaf or mordant hue, so such
a sigh as this, can drench and leave the cracked pot with open
black-soot teeth... a zebra's mouth...black and white
I am fire, my necklace, burning tyre with petrol, dances on the
victim's screams, my delight to be this God, no quarter no release!
and while I taunt you with these fiery lips of death...
remember too I cook your stew and heat the stones of sweet
relief, and with my song, oil your aching back to heal and rest,
but all the while I lay down my pain and smoke to wait, the
falling match the careless brand that spark of quick ignition
I am fire, the grand inquisitor, the knave, the happy mistress
feeding terse sedition, the chance friend who craves your recognition:
I am fire.
Because Trouble Don’t Last Always
Have you
ever had sour thoughts
that pickled
you mind
until you realized
brine times of life
had to be left
behind;
and then
you sought
lush cane fields
in which to rump
and wallow
and scream
in wholesome glee?
Indeed, pity on the fool
denied mordant
menacing moments
of gloom
devoured and transformed
by the sweetness
of happy times dawning!
Yes, to be sad is bad;
to not know happiness is worst.
No rooster crowed the tenebrous morning
I woke to somber skies aflame.
As dawn rose across a crimson horizon,
a firestorm blazed from a golden core
and scarlet lava flowed above the plains.
Charred, were black mordant clouds.
Menancingly, they swept over my barn.
A rubicund threat; a hazard to the earth,
an inferno; a warning of ill-fated death.
Terror filled me as fire encroached,
knowing I would become a torch,
kindled when scorching embers approached
to ignite me, rendering a fight for life futile.
Laughter heard as I became ribbons of smoke.
Soon, my ashes would be airborne,
and all that would remain of me would be
carried on the whim of the wayward wind.