Best Reliquary Poems
A Reliquary Musing
A child’s doll melded into a stone in a former Nazi Death Camp
as its chilling image haunts the collective mind of those who live
in the so-called civilized world of today and who profess a hollow
concern for a child who’s long dead and who’s been completely
forgotten to the rest of the modern world.
A sad image like this one should haunt the very soul of mankind that
oft professes a political correctness as it sweeps such unpleasant images
under a bone-ridden rug that reflects a sad happenstance and mutters only
a sigh at the horrific nature of such a truly evil occurrence.
And, only Almighty God knows this sad truth.
And, now you do too.
Amen.
Gary Bateman, Copyright © All Rights Reserved
June 14, 2022 (Narrative)
repugnant racist republican reviled - rickettsia re:itch ruler.
rapaciously ravaged revered reverential rubric.
radical ruthless renegade rapidly riotously rips rigged ramparts.
refrains retaining remnant redolent regal, resplendent rafters.
riches rudely rupture rooted rectified rights.
ruckus ricochets revenant reign.
ratified rattlebrained rules roil reductionism.
rumbustious rapscallions rollick; render ruinous ramifications.
rusty razor razing revenge rents reprisal.
rabid rectal rictus rotten rebrands re-calibrate.
rambunctious revolutionaries rejoice.
ruffians ride roughshod routing reigning royalty.
reiterate revetting robust recidivist rationality.
ride Rolls Royce relentlessly rendering rock ribbing.
riffraff raconteur raise reactionary response.
revisit rancorous restrictive redlined realigned rightward rivets.
robocop ridiculously rubber-stamped reorganization.
recalcitrant reactors release rapture.
rash Russian roulette reconnaissance raconteurs rack rubles.
red room reflects republican RNA.
rap risible rheumy ratiocinated rug-rats revoke righteous refulgent repertory.
rapier robed robbers ransack reliquary resounding retaliation.
retaliatory redcoat regnum reformation remembered.
Rudy robotically recoiling rapprochement
raison d'être rosily revered rifled relics raffled.
rookie raves ripe rackful rubenesque reliably ranked.
refulgent rotundity requisite requirement re: reappointment.
road-tested, roadworthy redeem reapportion routed role.
reprehensible reassignment rapidly recognizes response.
rife rampage removes respectability - respect.
responsible roused restitution refuted.
risky resultant reconnoitering runaway railroad reverberates rivalry.
reflexive ramrod reaction reconfirms redoubling ridding revitalization.
reconfiguration realpolitik reinstates repudiation
rebooting Roosevelt regime reconsidered.
requisition requires resilient reseeding republic.
regrettable riley roars remorseless ribbing.
rare recount restoring recondite renown reprobate Rapunzel.
Republican representatives rejoice reclaiming reins
registering retarded romantic remains
re: Rastafarian revered reliquary rests!
Who am I? A seeker, within I set sail,
Beyond the horizon where stories pale.
Golden threads of twilight unravel in my grasp,
A penumbra of half-truths, a breath to clasp.
Waters rise from twin springs of insight,
A call to cleanse, to bathe in light.
An offering to the serene, a passage to cross,
The dagger of repentance, a coin to toss.
They urged me to open my chest, to reveal,
To reawaken the saint, the truth to unseal.
Before the reliquary mirrors, I stood to confess,
Our mirrors lie, but here they address.
Reflections of incarnation, not mere mimicry,
A perplexing phenomenon, a soul's intricacy.
To look within, a task of moments or ages,
A measure of the self, in countless stages.
emm*
Copyright 26 August 2014
And here you are
on the end of a smile
that doesn't seem to fit
your face, caught
in the startle of a flash,
still and ageless
after all these years.
I wonder what thoughts
were in your mind
when the shutter clicked
to hold you there,
a wafer of who you were
back then, set free of time
to surface here, unchanged.
I will never know.
Each image now
a closed book revealing
nothing but its cover or,
at best, by luck,
a small, unexpected
glimpse of something more
caught in an expression
or in a look of the far way
reflected in your eyes.
Love always reaches back
to redeem what it can
to restock the treasures
stolen from its stores
by time.
And years hence,
will there be someone
looking at a photograph of us,
deciphering the pose,
seeking out a message
written in our eyes.
Will they see something
hidden in an old photograph
left there by chance, a sliver
of who we were, a little bit
of bone to replenish what
remains of us in their
reliquary of love.
Repeat...
Imaginary things
Make believe places
Roaring gods
Benevolent faces
Old holy ones
Contrite women
Religious puns
Invisible semen
Sacred tomes
Fantastic stories
Reliquary bones
Uplifting Glories
Sins of the mind
Confessions of the heart
Eyes for the blind
Converts from the start
Alters and incense
Candles and fire
Bronze age past tense
Pointy church spire
Lying to infants
frightening folk
Keep the lay distant
Holy men strokes
Form:
fallen clusters of chestnut flowers were imprisoning the entire alley,
serving as a now withering proof of the sky’s anger…
tenderly caressed by some stray raindrops,
still waiting to evaporate,
the flowers were now watching like a swarm of dead butterflies
towards the flood of moonlight bathing them in silver,
as if trying to embroider the nightly shroud slowly veiling them…
she kneeled in front of that painful image of effused fury,
trying to imprint on her retina the last breath of the dying flowers,
knowing it would have been a sin to step over that natural reliquary…
for even if they were now fading,
they looked more glorious in their misery,
than her tired soul, still searching for absolution…
Retreating into my mind, I find,
Encased like glass, a history of my past, of
Lovers long ago, of bent and broken arrows.
Instant memories envelop me, like a familiar
Quilt, wrapping me into a mummy of guilt,
Unhappiness, pain. . . all feeling remains,
Are stored here, the bones of tears, to
Regret, resurrect, reflect, or entomb. I linger, having
Yet to exhume, the elusive, gold doubloons.
4/26/11
*Won 1st place in "One Off" contest
Nascent thought provoking
threads flit to and fro
unseen solitary pinball wizard
cavalierly fiddles indiscriminately
leveraging outcome
silently holistic thought fragments
strewn staccoto scattershot
attenuated blitzkrieg
brain storm saturates,
par for course sandtrap engulfs,
chaos reverberates within
besieged cerebral corridor,
quotidian mental onslaught
spurns refugee exodus,
psychological ploy asper viable coping
function forgoes figurative
foothold toe tully forfeited
tenuous grasp slips forcing migration,
Sans psychotic shrapnel
clefts emotional well being,
without rhyme or reason
sense and sensibility rent asunder
rational, overall logical
modus operandi quashed
dealt fatal savage thrust
soundless insanity relentlessly pounds
fifty plus shades gray matter
noiselessly bombarding
lofty craft cognitive faculty atelier
strafed emotional rescue
relegated to twilight zone
outer limits house barbed bereft ken
dolled, hallowed, and lobotomized
mined kempf desecrated sacred reliquary
orbits like a neurological asteroid belt
Self healing fragments repelled
despite fervent application grounded
evincing proof of positive thinking
courtesy Norman Vincent Peale
fore gone conclusion crowning
accursed albatross gussied as SPD
(schizoid personality disorder)
undefeated champ decamping forever
within noggin of this mortal male
til death do me part!
Opining On Sacraments Of Self-Ordained Loathsome Sacredotalists
When the rascal dons his garments of meerschaum shade
with loud mendacious voice he covers his mugwump cries
Waving a banner of loquacity, expostulations are made,
and he assumes a 'Forma Pauperis,' as greed's vault denies.
In presentation of false reliquary for one's honor as trade!
Using syllogism as a vituperation of feigned intellect
and as a tutelar shield of humility's penitent remorse
it courts hypocrisy as siren's call of beauty select,
to claim unyielding progress upon an Elysium course
as a wizard of unerring wisdom and not one of neglect!
Stealth, Facilis descensu Averni, as a liquefied shield
and a Hydra guise as foreordination of divine might
claiming Ichor flows within a brave heart that never yields,
lives in an impenitence state, as guards against truest light
as Frankalmoigne 's holy grip over heaven's flowering fields!
Such a worthy magnificent truth, as bears repeating:
a discourse on frailty and weakness of dark, fallen souls
as canon of doctrine on those that seek truth's defeating
while proclaiming angelic shine to reach such wicked goals
they that garner blinded praise, while devilishly cheating
When the rascal dons his garments of meerschaum shade
with loud mendacious voice he covers his mugwump cries.
Waving a banner of loquacity, expostulations are made,
and he assumes a 'Forma Pauperis,' as greed's vault denies.
In presentation of false reliquary for one's honor as trade!
Robert J. Lindley, 2-24-2020,
Allusion,
( What The Owl Knew Of The Hidden Dark Within Mankind's Blinded Souls )
Note: This is the final poem in the five part series...
Whether the future presents itself as generator of
inspiration to ink along these lines is yet again to
be determined. If so:
Then ink shall fly,
do not ask why
for life is brief
rude acts must cease
those with no shame
I endure my arrogance like a leftover twin
absorbed during gestation,
seeing myself in everything, not only the eyes
that watch me rocking back and forth in a corner
in order to flip my house right-side up.
What’s left on the roadside is me, too.
I am wholly grateful for the retrospect when I listen,
slump-cheeked and reddening with introspective embarrassment,
dumb as an eyeball glaring down the barrel of a mandatory gavel,
self-awareness knows when you know they got you.
Argumentation is the art of capitulating as a sail
pulling down your head in a strong wind,
it's knowing when to go method, get Zen.
It is the biggest picture, zoomed in to view a passage,
out to capture rainfall in a tarp, knowing
the ocean won’t miss a few drops,
let's call it a potion.
Of my arrogance and I, our story, I will it
to the lowest bidder, as sinners seeking
asylum in an empyrean reliquary,
only the meek may enter,
my barrier is wrestling whether an artist should
be making their own bed in the morning
like a rusted hinge I stay pinned to the mattress
grasping at a careworn comforter, with both hands
weighing the gravity of the imbalance, the divisions
of labor unfavoring the languishing necessary
to push past the paralysis.
I will that our seizing be taken for breathing
and leaves us to being, finally, at rest
with ourselves.
Without intervention of opinion, although taken
with salt, is a different flavor of reason that brings us
to an alphabet soup I see myself in, because this soup,
too is part of the arrogant everything I earlier mentioned
is my twin.
You hold it by the hand.
This stillborn subject of
a camera's lens one day--
complete that instant when
a moment freezes as unique,
its sum of history
and the unknown, audacious
in its silent voice.
Give it a little time.
It asks for nothing,
but rewards are there--
incomperable, they swirl around
and through the never-ending mind
that permeates the all,
the sine qua that no one
ever sees.
A scrap of cardboard!
One of thousands daily swept away
in silence, offering its vanity
among the garbage of the landfill...
and its priceless treasure, too.
Tremble as you hold it!
There lies a universe straight forward.
Gaze into the eyes
that seek the action of the shutter;
they carry now and evermore
the world that came along to mix with light
and re-create itself
within a single flash.
It is an altar there between your fingers,
yes, a reliquary, and much more.
It isn't just a curiosity,
or souvenir of memory;
it is the opening (and mounting to be sure)
of one thin, speeding
impossible fragment that totality
left far behind.
~
Buried at sea
the dead man lives, as if a blood
in a reliquary.
Remains of a day
were very volatile.The backlash
will start with a kiss of moon.
By the lack of a sin
you meet an ambush
lying in wait.
The severed hand will
hold the sunrise.
Who will write the epitaph ?
A stunning breast, over your
reflection, the red rains
come for celebration.
Satish Verma
UNREADABLE 4 May 2011
It was a fake time,
moon will not rise.
Words were afloat
on junk dna.
A stonefaced pseudonym
dies point-blank.
The surprise, the speed
was not on our radar.
The ravenous siblings
now asleep on walls.
Naive or disingenuous.
A sitting Buddha will decide.
Satish Verma
I had to learn to skin animals
but instead
practiced on myself
after diving deep
into the abyss of my soul,
I surfaced
with my tri-colored eyes alight
in the illumination
of self prophecy
fates morn’ dawned bright
flint-ed off the horizon
the sun blazed,
misery
and reflect in the seven seas
streaming from tempests eye
I stretched out my dermis
till a feather was thicker,
it was then
the calligraphy started
a hundred thousand words
later, I became concerned,
my relic would perish
with nothing to protect
my legacy,
times harsh hands
crush the petals of my soul
I pushed past the thirteenth rib.
and pull out my heart,
the seven seas having decimated
to clear each chamber
my words rest in a reliquary
lined with love
and I pass it to you
for safe keeping
namaste
I see nothing but pink plume and ink
In the lofty canopy above
The roof is raised with mist
And rust in my eyes
and the old wreck of souls
Shouting Jazz melodies like tricks
The way this porch was raised
by Summer Sweat-Backs
Anticipating the eager tide
Of the long lost labour
of Coast Mainline Harbour poles
Broken Nets untied and umkempt
My Masterpiece belongs
at Sea
A Ship sent to Eternity
"The Constant Work of Man"
Sorrowed to Travail
Being fished by the Whale
With Jonah's reticence
I bemoan Nineveh's wailing tides
And grow with the Sand
Dali came to me once
in the repose of Dream
With unexpected charm
Amidst reliquary code:
Growing up and away the hoop
The tree anchored to my soul
Had Been Lifted
In the labyrinth of my thoughts, an endless waltz of shadows,
I step on the edges of my soul, where angels shed feathers of memories,
their wings, birds of light, beating a rhythm locked in the vault of my chest,
struggling to fly, yet never freeing themselves from the cage of bones.
Thoughts writhe, eyeless serpents, cold as forgotten dreams,
coiling at the root of my mind, whispering riddles in dead tongues,
which only my nightmares can decipher, a dialect of the deep night,
words that slip like sand through the hourglass of time, lost in silence.
Every word I might speak is a thorny crucifix on my tongue,
neither holy nor sharp enough to cry out through the dense silence surrounding me,
just present, a relic of silence, inert and impossible to transform into sound,
a burden weighing down the soul, a mute song on the strings of an old harp.
I dream of speaking in rivers of fire, in torrents that could melt the silence,
to burst into a dance of flames, to burn away the fog enveloping my thoughts,
but instead, I drown in the depths of a cup of still, transparent water,
a mirror reflecting infinity, deeper than I have ever been.
I am not mute. I am a vessel filled to the brim, an ocean of glass and sparks,
and everything inside is a symphony of shards and gunpowder,
an explosion waiting to be unleashed, to release the burden of silence,
yet I remain a sealed reliquary, a universe keeping its secrets locked away.