Best Mouldering Poems
When I look on my life that's now half-spent,
I sigh the loss of youth that's forever past,
wishing myself better Fortune's consent,
love, friends, and wealth with naught to lose or waste,
but for the mean expense of young love lost;
despising this, I oft' bemoan the loss
of vestal company's first time the most;
for matrons offend like mouldering moss,
which, like Time's sure, inexorable march,
destroys the juvenescence of life's spring
year by year till extinguishing Youth's torch,
a dead flame for which I am most desiring.
If I could live and love anew once more,
I'd not err this time: and lay a rude whore.
Categories:
mouldering, life, loneliness, longing, loss,
Form:
Sonnet
across tree-lined yards
leaves dance in colorful frocks --
distant school bell chimes
through open windows
the scent of pumpkin spice drifts --
an orange moon rises
under charcoal skies
rain dampens mouldering leaves --
a lone snowflake falls
By Rhonda Johnson-Saunders, August 29, 2012
for Autumn Splendor Contest (Russell Sivey)
Categories:
mouldering, happiness, autumn,
Form:
Haiku
In Flanders Fields
In Flanders fields the poppies grow;
Their roots reach down to twine amongst the bones,
The mouldering bones.
Each skull in grinning disbelief voices
Its eternal question, for what? And no answer comes,
No answer comes.
There are no lungs to find;
Long rotted from within, from gasping breaths of gas,
From choking gas.
No flesh remains to clothe the
Bones; torn from limbs by hammer blows of fate,
Cruel, indifferent fate.
No heroes these, but common men
Who selfless thought to serve, to do the right thing,
Unquestioned right thing.
Their souls now wait deep underground;
Deep amongst the rusting, shattered fragments of twisting Death,
Of youthful Death.
Only the Sun kissed faces red;
That wave upon the land above, serve to remind,
Ever remind us.
In Flanders fields the poppies grow.
(With acknowledgement for inspiration to Lt Col John McCrae)
To the memory of my Grandfather, who endured the Somme and spoke not a word of it. Each year, he and my Grandmother made thousands of poppies to sell on Armistice Day for the survivors of that Contemptible Little Army.
Categories:
mouldering, anniversary, bereavement, betrayal, body,
Form:
Blank verse
The old house stands still.
Rot has set in.
A flying termite caught in the webs of a dead spider, sway to the shrill of a ceiling fan.
All things sway.
Dreams rise and suffocate in the mouldering mortars
Falling on the adjacent tiled roof.
They scream, laugh, make love, declare the infiniteness
Of their finite existence through diatribes of reality and unreality.
They are passionate bunch,
Bound by their common desire to be. And blood.
And the house just is. It still is.
Once there were sparrows in the ventilators.
And envious swallows on the palm trees.
The ripples in the pond sing their dark, merry tunes
Licking away its edges,
And they shove and trample for the whiff of north wind.
Life persists in slow, lonely decadence.
The cactus on the roof thrives in monsoon and in summer.
Basil live and die, live and die trenched in the never ending circle
Of micro-civilisation.
The house harvests its own sustenance in the whispers among its bricks
That become a collective
And a roar is heard.
They pray to Earth.
The old house is defiant,
The old house is tired.
Its melting skin sizzles and stinks of industry of old,
A glorious past always in the distant like the horizon,
The promise of bright future exposed to the misery
That is naturalness of time.
The hammer rusted, weed has grown over,
They clinch onto the sickle, like oxygen.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Form: Free Verse
Date: 02 / 11 / 2016
Growing up in a state of the country where all the magnificence is limited to either history books or fictional literature, one hopes for something more. This is definitely a political reflection than anything else, but 'the house' is not just a metaphor, it does exist, and so do the people living in it.
Categories:
mouldering, allegory, corruption, culture, home,
Form:
Free verse
Mental Illness
We are the last
vestiage of the
ostracized.
We are the lepers
of the moon who
walk among the
unforgiving innocent
with luminous sores.
We are hieratic stones
that mark a trail to divinity,
unaware of mediocrity.
We are the nightmare
and cuirass of your
terminal souls.
We are the delicate,
immortelles flowers
of creation's jewellery
and dwell within
the mouldering caverns
of apocalyptic chaos.
We reject gods because
they reject our sacerdotal
dominion over gods.
We are the magical
diseased who feed upon
the blue-burn fire of stars.
We are the watchers
of the withered minds
who try and quantify
our grandiosity.
We are pre-eminent
progeny of parsimonius
preternatural wombs.
We are magmatic, quantum
lepton neutrinos of sub-atomic
galaxies where altruistic Eros
regenerates the living force of life.
We are the you in us and the us in you.
We are infinite truth.
We are!
Categories:
mouldering, education, mental illness,
Form:
Free verse
Our newest entrant, our newest nation, forged in fiery code
Bubbled like red hot lava from a net of connected phones.
This nascent nation, transcending any boundary road,
Passing ports of entry into our domestic pleasure zones.
Is there no folly to consider here, no rampant beast?
Who, we ask, released it from its lair?
How long had this giddy, gyrating force been there?
Is there need, is there greed, is it time to despair?
Did that wingéd patron god of financial gain release
The beast, enabling the mean, to become the mode?
We sit comfy in computer chair, glazed in fluorescent glow,
We reboot, pass the word and wirelessly our blogs upload,
With our mouldering dark suspicions pushed far below.
For our new nation is a force for good, bull not bear,
A force for good, a force for all, a democratic lion to share.
Forces now darkly gather, looking in, rooting round
For sight or sound of hesitation, repetition or deviation.
After just one minute they think they’ve found,
Something wrong, something perplexing, defying gravitation.
Our new nation fights, fights hard for her Liberty.
Advocates and orators, lawyers and barristers rage,
Fanning the crackling flame of their inflated wage.
This Nation with no flag will not go back in her cage.
A migrant, an itinerant, but once met, here for perpetuity.
She has no planes, no ships, no boots on the ground,
No home front, no crying of havoc and barking dog,
The click, click, click, not gun but her keyboard sound.
Her defences invisible, as if lost in coastal fog.
We have this gift from others, a child to raise.
Chains she should not be in, Freedom must turn her page.
©Keith Murphy
Categories:
mouldering, computer, freedom, internet, technology,
Form:
Ode
She loves me she loves me not...
Just my luck that when juiced a lad
din grammar school, aye own every
rhyme and reason tubby mad
every friggin time boyhood fingers
plucked petals off flowered daisy...
just as well, a relief and more than glad
tomb hiss out on doing the wild thang
and be'n totally tube yule lore lee baad
yea, how boring squirreled away
voraciously reading 'bout some cad
oh my dog...I too could write story
"FAKE" steamy extramarital liaison add
chocolate flavored Glynnis (Msgeegee),
whereby celibate chap goes stir crazy - egad
yours truly drives back to her pad
within sketchy part of West Philadelphia
starring as chief protagonist
none other then... yupper this dad
until caught with pants down (figuratively)
thine missus both angry at me and sad
I immediately unapologetic longed to gad
about even jetting setting off to Vlad
divest stock to escape wrath cull bile
daily spewed phlegm at me - wad
off by bajillion miles wife got poor aim
cruel colorful epithets coarse expletives had
filled beyond capacity to resist or tolerate
hence, yours truly sought to skad
had dude dull married life awkward fit
analogous, incongruous, perilous
why dead men don't wear plaid
they make no bones about
nor act self flesh deathly quiet
oblivious toward latest fad
mouldering into dust
whereby gravesites sprout weeds
mother nature's couture clad
eroded tombstone disintegrating
vanishing without trace
unremembered story...
unlike Odyssey and Illiad.
Categories:
mouldering, 10th grade, 11th grade,
Form:
Elegy
We are all good
Are made so
We are all evil
Tho’ we do not know,
‘Tis veiled fantasy
Cloaked between soul and the skin
For a self ignorant
Chasing good and the sin,
Against a triumph that defies us
Denies us a tranquil breath
And lingers upon the morose heads
Like slothful beasts in a mournful wreath,
Thriving for recognition
In a lonesome longevity,
We seek a survival
Till we are laid to rest
In some heath,
Where the sighs go screaming
Screams fade unheard,
Flattened once, one after another;
Every single plea mouldering away
From a lip that shall not enquire,
An exigency knowing no impunity
Except for a soul that sought
Amidst a burgeoning appetite
Piety, in all the false life
Proved mistaken to seek naught,
But Plentitude!
Categories:
mouldering, deep, destiny, feelings, imagination,
Form:
Rhyme
… scattered jazz,
haunted gnarls of
octupi-night staggering
between semen-splinters of stars
pain-fornicating in
my collective gutter, my disheveled
cells oozing your
black and
softer gold
burning silence
in a heathen writhe between my ears
dancing on the cusp: my dead-zone ecstasy
defiling
corrupting and
seduction-raping the
industry of numbness,
toilet-scream from
between legs: slave of avoidance
whore of denial
death in a vacuum
naught ever happening
until it’s time to drain
blood from the radiator
in the cross-hairs of crucifiction,
copulation of seven-inched nails
click of steel, snap of heels,
tails,
tongues flickering to embrace
the gutters of my cells
reaching for unopened chapters
strewn through sanctified pain,
and I waiting
for your drive through
the brothel of my mind,
forsaken
lashed to the altar,
my anguish screeching
our prayers,
your black, softer
gold annihilated to smoke
ravishing the reek spiraling up
from my nostrils,
your unspeaking
crawl through catacombs
whispering mouldering truths
under my fingernails scraping remembrances
from your hair
caressing cathredrals rent into
matchsticks to prop heaven
apart,
shriven thighs
toxic-anointed sighs,
poison of my ache for
the healing venom
of your eyes,
soothing darts of darkness bathing dead-zone paramids
with the musky
perfume of sorrow and
floundering celebration
dug from primordial pits
by scrabbling fingertips
clutching for a remnant of your heart
wrapped in wonder
around my pulse staggering, ragged edge of jazz
scraping across windowpanes
in a shriek freezing the soul of god
and dried ice
begging to plunge into embers of your blood
lost in my veins
running from room to room
in my house, our house,
teddy bear, knothole yawns and
oven with gaping jaws,
medicine cabinet of numbness,
sobbing pills
ceiling lowered to a stoop,
tatters
patterns
snow-crystals following a trail
through our window into traffic jams of children
cascading out of the chapel – my gutter-cell
longing to be unlocked
by the sound of your voice…
… ressurection in the
octupi-night…
Categories:
mouldering, love
Form:
Free verse
Some are sparks
Some are the sparks from a Parliament bonfire,
That fly ever upwards to spin and whirl
amongst the stars and then are extinguished,
falling as a fleck of ash to lie amongst many
in a grey layer, undistinguished one from the other.
And there are a few, so very few, whose spark
Reaches the dark sky and lives amongst the
Heavenly stars that shine over centuries,
Remaining undimmed, lighting our way through
Life and love, and damnation of our souls.
So the Bard of Avon shines above, even four centuries
beyond his bones mouldering in some riverside grave,
Honoured in the exhilaration of performance,
In the strut and fret of hours upon a million stages,
In the warmth that spreads in the breast with his words.
Words. His gift to humankind. Resonances in the
Fabric of minds, harmonies with our daily conversations,
He speaks to our souls, to the innermost being,
Our core, our culture, our language, and to the
World, to all of humanity, in every place.
He speaks to me and I lay myself at his feet,
In awe at his facility and originality, magician
Of words; and I strive to create as he
Might have done, knowing that I am but a
Nervous acolyte to his command.
There is this insistent command from within
To speak as he did, to create the elegant structure
Of rhythm and word; to see the world through
Eyes that comprehend the human condition,
And reflect it to those uncomprehending.
I strive to follow his path, but am not dismayed
When my words do not follow his lead.
I am not so vain as to imagine I am his heir,
Yet I would wish his ghost visit me, and lay
Upon his hands, that I may speak with his voice.
Categories:
mouldering, poetry,
Form:
Verse
There is a beautiful ancient burial ground in the Ozark mountains that is the resting place for countless generations of my lineage. One of those places that completes a part of me that remains incomplete wherever else I might be. It is the place where I can best see forever. The fulcrum of my forever...
I love this place.
To me it is the very garden of grace.
Jesus gladly endured Gethsemene and Golgotha so that each mouldering stone would herald a continuing hope.
I have Old Lebanon Cemetery to turn my sweat to blood as I implore my god.
I make the journey often but never often enough.
As I draw near, my spirit races ahead.
Eager to embrace the rest of me...
The best of me who have been awaiting my return.
This lovely mountain knoll spreads out upon sacred earth.
Ancient oak and cedar stand sturdy watch over rows of shifting stones.
Over piles of chambered bones.
These token efforts to cast permanence upon the temporal.
To me and mine, 'tis folly divine...
The holiest of holes in eternity's veil.
Where those souls precious to ours set sail...
Without a single tear among them.
They know what we can hardly imagine... forever.
Even as granite turns to sand and soil is amended by what is left of man.
I feel the gentle burn within my soul ushering me toward the portal of what awaits... To whom awaits.
They must know how this fever will grow as I settle in to watch the door for a bit.
I rub the stones and chew the bones of those who made me... Me.
I share the salty mist that gathers upon the windows of my soul with the soil of their interment.
It won't be long
before this song
of my people includes my stanza.
The footnote of a life too long.
When measured by right and wrong.
Summed in verse, some epitaph too terse.
As I gather to leave I feel them here.
Gone yet near.
I feel the warmth of soul smiles assuaging my fear.
I imagine them the whole day long, as I write, being the song and sending me a lyric for every tear.
Categories:
mouldering, family,
Form:
Free verse
"To die.To sleep?Perchance to dream?"
There is but one we will know
If immortality is in life's scheme.
If mortality is the only show
Then will our bodies turn to dust
Mouldering in slow decay
Only in memory will we be discussed
And even reminiscence will pass away.
Hope or despair,survival or extinction
Will wait until the veil of life is drawn
Lean towards one means the soul's destruction
No one will then know the truth ,once gone.
One path offers much more comfort
The other being so bleak
Religions offer the crutch of support
Humanism the second prefers to seek
I would pray for the life eternal
With its hope of renewal and complete bliss
The other option to me reeks of the infernal
With its impersonal emptiness
Categories:
mouldering, death, hope, religion,
Form:
Rhyme
(no matter extreme global
warming more dire,
then cursing me smoldering
infernal languishing spitfire.)
Shade did adolescent
facade drifts asunder
asper...a major emotional blunder
shielding sensitive myopic eyes
against quashed
then young life, never
ordinarily gathering rose buds,
now I always wonder.
No, never so much
as a feeble arc
unable to issue even a light bark
unresponsive as a
cold bunsen burner,
nor can Clark
Kent marshal superman,
thus vital willpower
bleak and dark
within thine body electric
as mine life
journey doth embark
completing protracted orbit
whar raging self against time
strikes into metaphorical abysmal pit
continuing charade of
existence or quit
before chronological demise
decrees death to be writ
once flickering enthusiastic
willpower to be alive
snuffed livingsocial esprit de corps
elan forcibly crushed,
sans kamikaze nose dive,
when psychological arc
tangentially crossed figurative bee hive
aswarm with countless
invisible poisonous stingers
pierced late mine boyhood
asper razor sharp cutting knives
brandished by figures
shrouded within dark hood
whar bent gnarled fingers
grabbed and wood
not let go stranglehold
of thine curse canst atone
weak prepubescent unlovely skeletal bone
sinister voices still faintly heard,
within me noggin drone
like angry thundering birds
as anorexic starved
flesh didst groan,
now that fragile adolescent
boy within me revisits
haunting this middle aged
married man, whose moan
more nsync with countless
stifled mailer daemons
entombed akin to rigor mortis,
viz complex Oedipus prone
a wander lost young lad,
who left every mouldering stone
unturned - fearing unleashing
def finning tone
even to this very dusky moment
of my damned charade
fresh with painted fore
sight groping blindly
within outer limits
of the twilight zone.
Categories:
mouldering, 10th grade, 11th grade,
Form:
Free verse
Prison Earth,
where the levels hurt,
Depending on your location,
Deeper do do,
Afghanistan worse,
The prison’s of our creation.
What is this place,
in mouldering time,
where I see it not at all,
on the prison earth,
right from my birth,
a criminal oh so small.
will ya trip n fall,
on the bladder gall,
at the abbatoir,
dunno?!?
Get anudder job,
Be a bloody snob
Shut yer gob
yer hopeless so n so …
Don Johnson 28-sep-11
Categories:
mouldering, adventure,
Form:
Ballade
copper burns across an endless sky
competing caws claim salt, surf and sand
sailing high above slowly sagging carcasses
long forgotten at the edge of the world
buckled rails swim over a shimmering shingle sea
the largest of its kind, hinting at some other time;
engines once chugged to billingsgate from this beach
herring bound for the cinque ports
and they say women dragged each boat -
pulled them down to that shore’s faithless embrace;
the muttered prayers of mothers and daughters
casting their men out on fortune’s dark waters
now nets, set for a tide that came and went, lay
mouldering among those collapsing clinkers
as if the fisherfolk just left one night, fled
granting the gulls sole control of that desolate dominion
their toil and trade, the legacy of our fathers’ fathers
still lays there on that beach; haunts that huge cove
rich history, like in so many places, fading away
rotting, rusting, ruined
Categories:
mouldering, beach, bird, boat, feelings,
Form:
Free verse