Best Opaque Poems
I lived ... once
I loved and laughed and ached from my marrow
I spoke my soul, and spun my mind to my innervation and impulse
Swam up spirits to the source of their dreams and passions
I moved and breathed and thrived
Slept and soared and savored the tang of carnality
Counted my chaos, and measured my occupations with desire
I danced with angels, dazzled and dark and unearthly
And I sang to the heavens in their wildest weeping
With a voice of callow intonation ... and melodious temper
ALL with a child's heart, and a saint's assumption
Yes, I lived ... once
Full and bright and joyous as a midday meadow
Yet, in the midst of a moment's suffering
A soft, stinging moment of false hope and agony
I pressed, tender, the lips of a curse ...
One deep, warm, melting kiss of a temptress
That turned to a coursing ... of poison
"You will write with such feeling," she whispered, eyes smiling
As the glass between us fogged with her bitter breath
A painted fingertip, shaped and pressed
Tracing my doom in the opaque mist
Oh, vile brutality - to gift me this insight and creativity
Only to shake it ALL from my grasp ...
And turn me ... to dust.
~ 10th Place ~ in the "Opaque" Poetry Contest, Anthony Slausin, Judge & Sponsor.
When gusty winds blow, riling my troubled dawn in gelid woes
Squall of my throes dissipates in scented whiffs of budding rose.
As brazen fog shrouds mind, heightening my grief, poking fun
Defyingly I step out in glinting rays of the dawning golden sun.
Refusing to surrender when my tears dominate indignation
Joy I find on the vibrant horizon, blazing sunset’s ruby elation.
Verdant paradise appeals to pleas, adorning my shamrock hills
Appeasing cry of stygian echoes storming from mountains of ills.
If night reigns moonless and nightmares soon rage my dreams
Comfort I find within soothing zeal of spring’s giggling streams.
While strife of life endures in raging summers of unending heat
Readily I seek blue oceans, surfing rhythmic tides’ buoyant beat.
As laments of the world drown humanity in hapless deep dive
Strength of nobility rises, helping weakened hands to survive.
When the rancor of disillusionment exudes ambivalent sigh
Autumn’s scarlet imprints eagerly vie, healing souls in russet dye.
As hindrance of the ordinary distresses progress of mankind
Delighted I am to see rationality unite, to defeat the unrefined.
When sullen is my heart aching in the anguish of ashen skies
Solace I derive from serene vibes gleaming your tranquil eyes.
At times in my life, I encounter the black-holes of opaque space
Yet, the light of day gets through in sanctuary of your embrace.
August 19, 2020
Placed 1st: Sanctuary Poetry Contest
Sponsor: Silent One
I’ve never been where they’ve been,
chasing the mirage in the desert storm.
I look into their entranced eyes,
see their vision transfixed on illusion,
the shroud of ruse spreads on the sneaky people.
The gleam of oasis out of their sight,
they lie on wasteland like dry shadow of trees
that have forgotten they were once green,
but I know they’ve lost their roots,
desiccated they've turned into wooden people.
Layer on layer of designed deception
morphs into misleading molds of crafted mask,
changing into chameleon skin on their faces.
Behind the smoke-screen I can’t see through
the veil created by the insecure people,
The light of reality doesn’t penetrate,
so they make their own darkened world,
don’t perceive when they turn into antiques,
but I know because for a long time now
I've walked in the museum of the masked people.
They build castles in the air within deep valleys,
no window of their mind opens on sparkling sky.
The sun rays don’t light up their bleak isolation,
their desolate souls remain obscure in the dark,
for the spent sun starts to set for the dismal people.
For them the harvest moon doesn’t ever rise,
they become gloomy splinters of the starless night,
not knowing why their dreams break in dark abyss,
but I know why no rainbow enters their heart,
for they’ve turned into opaque people.
“LIKE A MADMAN THINKS HE'S GOD, WE THINK WE'RE MORTAL”. Delaland, Speech on Shadows
Transparency is the key to the social harmony. Transparent people pass through each other like light through water. No one blocks out the sunshine, no one bars the way, no one stands in line in front of the other. The content of pockets, stomachs and minds are all in plain view. Mutual permeability, politeness, indifference. The see through popeyed souls, as sleepy as fish in an aquarium, come alive only at the sight of you, poet. You're opaque and therefore dangerous. You're a poet and therefore guilty. Alas, there is nothing more impenetrable than the walls in a transparent prison. But soon, from the height of your scaffold, you will see the world as opaque as you that awaits you on the other side of life.
get him grab his legs
hold him down I'll chop it off…
where'd you go poet
Dedicated to Cincinnatus C., the protagonist of the novel "Invitation to a Beheading" by Vladimir Nabokov
21.11.2019
Opaque Poetry Contest
Sponsored by: Anthony Slausin
Her thoughts and amusements were opaque. Blocked in a defensive wall.
Early hurt feelings had caused this, said her empathetic spiritual advisors
She had learned at a young age the wisdom of keeping her emotions inside.
She had been burned early. Sharing feelings where they were not welcome.
Annoying selfish people who were focused on their own hurts.
Drowning them in buckets of bitter tasting alcohol,
Smoking them in cartons of Winston cigarettes.
Smacking her unwelcome feelings down.
Laughing at them. Making her cry.
Her thoughts were opaque.
Not easy to decipher.
Not easy to guess.
Not easy at all.
Yet they
were
her
own
One
Thing
She
Could
Control.
Written: 11-21-2019
Contest: Opaque
Sponsor: Anthony Slausin
Staring in from the outside
I was always looking through opaque windows
At posers and name droppers
I thought perhaps that they were superficial
A façade of face
With no substance
But I found them everywhere
How could such a conspiracy go unnoticed?
Was I the only one on the outside?
Surely there were other losers like me
Lonely, unsure, yet with common sense
I know that there is not always safety in numbers
Sometime you have to be alone and become one
With yourself
Ego
Perhaps
Self-preservation you bet
Yes I am an island
And yes Hemingway was wrong
I think a man can and must become and island to himself
There is but one truth in this world and it is that we all must die
Do we go to heaven? Do we go hell?
Are we reincarnated? Do we live the same life over and over?
I don’t know any of the answers to these questions: however,
I do know that I would rather be alone
Than with a crowd of people.
obliquely opaque
opaque – soft light sifts through stained drape
filtered through muted sunshine’s dancing shape
trapped within dim confines - dust covered trust
love’s charred remains - victim of unbridled lust
awakening to darkness – blinding brightness
stumbling sightless through outdated rightness
alone with thinking’s disconnected fears
seekers reconstructing new frontiers
layering more dust upon the Grail
adrift amid the thoughts they never sail
searching without - for that within
saddled with past - and future sin
oblique – soft angle breaking stride
questioning the truths - that “must abide”
within the hearts and souls - of all but one
awakened to the truth - that there are none
8/27/2015
Blurred distortions,smeared stirrings
put aside to make an extract in
filaments of primal abstractions.
Restless movements dripping,drop
by drop into pure fields of bliss
Opaque Silver Balls Of Desert Mystery
Opaque ball bearings rolled along the grayish sand in stealth
Consuming all the landscape, leaving huge trenches in their wake
Solid heavy objects larger than small houses raced below the dunes
The moon could not mistake them for anything but strange
Light lifted the dim unassuming movements in a grinding song
Along a path we now call past
Into daylight the orbs continued on, rapidly and clearly out of reach
As glowing silver objects on a yellow grainy landscape
Roll under sun
A sun that knew nothing of such things from its perspective
Casting doubts on the solidity and perfect roundability of the orbs
And questions abounded why they did not orbit elsewhere
Remotely out of reach, keeping distances unique
And secrets of the dune
Sun simply shed detective glows as far as one could know
The silver objects rolled into the ancient stony town
Flattened it as if it were not there
Continued on to an oasis below the palms
Which may or may not have been there in the first place
Rolled up and disappeared as quickly as they came
A mirage some say and so they faded in the desert day
Opaque
Self-determination digs the fight,
Between lovers, crevacies and urns,
Sunken to the black scraping the rust,
The syntax to velocity 27 epic tech bust.
Velodrome phoneticised tightness of gyte,
Forced gynaecology for terse, gut and creation,
Random infinity espouses truth glued thereunder,
Catching it biopsies tumours in place of white blood.
The thicket secludes grass stoned with hydroxyl’s waste,
Ethanol spreads upon the phalanges dance severed/nullified,
Blame the THC for dividing dithered marriages gay and adjusted,
Turn tender to jail to lock astronauts for circumferences of the wheel.
Misjudged twist of lily and microchip to coin and defile unveiled strands,
Genome tightened motionless from above, within, gloving the asphyxiation,
Dynamo’s nuclear reads sex for perceptive muscular drive on cognitive motion,
Love instantly slides effaced towards the hidden silent convict skimming goons lit.
Only mutism can endanger an incognito identity ravished by blood pulsing to move,
Riled by race relations, sexism, LBGT, second kid jibed with vibes stretching at ozone,
Simple religion does not contradict form structures so abstract by set and void god retract,
Hell includes chemistry’s contingents upon matter bleak and lynched of a glance empathetic.
Rhoda Monihan
Bedazzled in a opaque beauty, trapped deep within the colossal caverns of
senseless agony.
Lie await the nefarious to bestow, conjuring assailing flames.
The hindered habituated set free above all inversely to conquer, retake reality
O beautiful night
your black wings
extinguish the light
cloak me in darkness
paint my face in shade
for I am a shadow to life
existing on ash and soot
I am sustained in a void
covered in mother earth
my mask of horror is hidden,
but a full moon unveils my face
and the pall of depression bows
the ebony trail I shred
withdraws from inner light,
I shall subsist in shadows
until silence rules no more
Drowning in our incubus sleep,
phantom enemies are devised.
Easy answers for night terrors.
Social purgatory for the stranger,
Our river Styx for the brown ones.
Our fortress must wall them out.
Brown poverty is culpable.
Starving families must be criminals.
Racialism winking and nodding.
Jingoism sneering and taunting.
Everyone knows the words.
ICE round up the suspects.
Our delirious sorcery making police raids.
For us wall builders, it is always midnight.
For us distracted, there is never safety.
We are detainees of our nightmare,
POWs of our wraiths.
The smeared tirades offer glaucoma.
The duplicitous liars supply our slumber.
The scapegoating harangues support our night blindness.
Yet, we always awaken sweating
in our witless twisted sheets.
Misty mornings across the ridges
Dense rain in the silent darkness
Cloudy days filled with sweet riches
Thick moments alive in starkness
~
Smoky gray tenderness in the dawn
Thick melancholy fills the mystery
Impenetrable feelings to which I’m drawn
Unclear focus of the dreamy history
~
Muddy colors flow through the hours
Solid impressions of glory and power
Obscure details discovered in showers
Opaque joys that we will all devour
November 20, 2019
Opaque Poetry Contest
Sponsored by: Anthony Slausin
chartreuse leaflets sprinkle dew,
with faint droplets...opaque hue-
weave me lattice to renew
TRIAD IN 7 BEATS
Nette Onclaud
February 21, 2017