Best Subterranean Poems
The southern slope kept a secret—
a slight tear where a shadow learns to grow.
I felt the pulse that pulled me in,
past where the daylight breaks,
down to where the cold, clear water flows.
The entrance wore a veil of living lace,
stretched tight across the limestone seams.
My hand caught the web—snap.
A sound like a severed nerve,
a frantic flight of silk in the dark.
A thousand eyes of jet* looked back at me,
skittish guardians shifting in the bend.
They sensed the weight I carried,
the heavy, hollow ache of winter’s end,
and pulled away into the rock’s silence.
I moved the stone, one by one,
shimmying into the throat of the hill.
Leaving the world of coffee and schedules,
of letters never sent and cold, still rooms,
to trade the sun for the smell of wet flint.
The air grew thick—a history held in breath.
The mountain drank the noise of my life,
the schedules, the fears, the static of days,
until the gravity beneath my feet shifted,
as if the earth were re-calibrating its mantle.
Deep inside, it was not empty.
It breathed in a bioluminescent hum—
walls bleeding a spectral, bruised blue.
A path snaked away, a vein of light
offered by a world that had forgotten me.
The cavern opened—a limestone cathedral.
There, glyphs bled from the stone,
a language of weight, of tectonic patience,
etched by hands that knew the cooling of the crust.
The "Litany of Compression"—the agony of eons.
The "Silent Watchers" warned of the breathers,
the map of veins reaching toward the mantle.
I knelt in the dirt, finding the charcoal
the ancients left for the next ghost to arrive.
I did not write a name, or a date, or a prayer.
I traced the suture of my own breath
into the wall, a frantic, uneven line.
My body began to chime with the cave.
Limbs turning to cold, heavy mineral;
skin thickening, pores sealed with dust.
I was lifted to the ceiling, a slow drift,
tethered to a sister-spire of quartz,
the two of us holding up the dark,
holding up the sky of the hill.
Outside, the spiders return to their work.
They knit the entrance shut with elastic silk,
weaving the wound of my entry back into stone,
hiding the secret from the reach of the sun.
The hill holds its peace.
And I, finally, have found my own.
* Jet black eyes of 125 spiders
Down under
Asunder
There's worlds of wonder
Where etiquette
Meets surrogate
And the dress code's
Downright Confederate
Slithering among creepy crawlers
That descend from the
Heavenly puke-encrusted abyss above
Known as Hollywood Blvd
I lower myself
Literally
Metaphorically
Into puddles of
Absentee-orchestrated nausea
I wear the badge
Singed onto calluses
Coated with despair
Flavored with bacteria's black-dead cousins
There's more honor to own
When you don in early light
Here ye, shall this journey commence
This rue-faced, Taliban-tingling tale of whoa
Give birth to the frenzy of the many
Here the ride shall be
Realized
Commoditized
Ostracized
By mere plaintiffs
Who sue themselves
Because the stakes are higher
And the risks cease to be true
Together we forge ahead
Teamwork knows no bounds or prescriptions
When it's one-on-one-on-everyone
Then the voice of gawd scats
His incoherent mix of
Lazy blues and blatant misinformation
Notifying the hungry denizens
It's time to get out
It's time to get on
Its time to get off
And off again
If necessary
It's always necessary
And so we flee
For better lives
For better days
For nothing happens until
You decide to rise above
And get jiggy with the sun.
(3/5/15)
Dan's on the mezzanine
asking where the mayor lives
I'm on the dole line,
wondrin bout conservatives
The man with the leg cramps
boot camps wheel clamps
says they cut his food stamps.
Look out son,
he’s packin a gun:
God knows why
Pat Boone, full moon
someone's gonna die soon.
Del's on welfare,
Donald Trump is real pissed:
give 'em all health care?
What are we? Socialists?
Thinks I'm Harry Lime:
street crime, sub-prime,
now you're working part-time.
Look out boy,
you're only a goy:
don't revere teachers,
don't obey no preachers.
Jen's on Fox News
talkin bout the bank crash
wanna get some real views?
What about the trailer trash?
Read about Goldilocks
Botox bobbysocks
modelled by Amanda Knox.
Look out, Joe,
you're spoiling the show.
Don't watch features,
don't dance in the bleachers.
Get hired, get fired,
get rich, get stitched,
get tired, get wired,
get hitched, get ditched.
They got the cops at backstop,
Al Gore keeping score
'tween the Poors
and Dirt-Poors,
'tween the Haves
and Have-Mores.
John Wayne's vanished.
He's off to learn Spanish.
lost subterranean city of the Grand Canyon
Fact, legend, Hopi story or cover-up?
In 1909 Arizona Gazette printed the story
A secret underground citadel a mile down
discovered by G E Kinkaid, a renown explorer
also the first white baby born in Idaho
the mysterious cavern was etched out in rock
shaped like the spokes of a wagon wheel
could have held up to fifty-thousand people
a highly evolved civilization, sharp-edged weapons
ornately decorated gold and copper cups
the multitude of mummies turned out to be male only
this could be the oldest archeological find in the USA
tablets were engraved with hieroglyphics
appeared to be a link between Egypt and Arizona
Hopi Indians claim their ancestors lived in such a city
Under the Grand Canyon
Hoax or truth? Smithsonian scientists believed it was true.
Light subterranean
Reflecting love unusual
Run in veins terrain.
Phantom's Subterranean Vault
By Dane Smith-Johnsen
Basement
Placement
Poetic Form: Footle