Best Subtext Poems
While gelid breezes of winter, quiver emotions of decaying rays,
And arc of horizon cedes to dusk, evoking grimace of malaise,
Casting shadows tenebrous, shrouding glimmer of a slowing day,
Desperate hope lingers still, in resplendence of autumn’s decay;
Gawking in yonder, where gamboge-orange woodlands fade,
Reminiscing in seasons harkening, realms of love now evade,
Mindful of the broken vows, when grievous calls destiny made,
When forever promises receded, and pledges eternal strayed.
Love now mulls~ if kiss of passion was a subtext of final goodbye?
Was it the last tear of hapless eyes; a bawl of love gone awry?
A silent protest, concealing mindfully, anguish of a forlorn sigh?
Was it the clamor of jilted desires, love enamored chose to decry?
Springs of past summon hope, having risen from wintry throe,
Nights of nightmare cede to dreams in halo of daybreaks aglow,
As candle of love revives hearts, fueled by inspirations of soul,
When whispers of sensuous hints, aspirations of romance cajole.
Desperate hope expounds repentance, vying healing through time,
Unsure if, pleadings in atonement, will redeem future sublime;
Whether love saplings will ever sprout, from ashes of passions bygone,
If dreams forsaken will blossom, in womb of tomorrow’s dawn.
Categories:
subtext, hope, inspiration, love,
Form:
Rhyme
Rhythms of pulses echo in souls, augmenting tenor of love song,
Reminiscing in sanctuary of life, together they shared for long;
Yet, memories sadly clamor aloud, since the day she’s been gone,
Of nightmares that cruelly shattered, dreams of their avid dawn.
Her unwritten absence now perturbs in void of the undone, unsaid,
As their unfinished tapestry longs, for stitch of the missing thread;
Vying affluence she delivered, to wealth of their beloved yore,
Steadfastly defying angst that destiny grievously brought to fore.
Unseen, she still occupies, fond yearnings of his moaning heart,
Struggling in her absence, since stealthily she decided to part,
Missing her hypnotizing smile enriching the fervor of her glance,
Nostalgic in embrace of desires, proffering a pledge of romance.
Emptiness haunts him now for misinterpreting clues of silent sighs,
As regrets torment: how long did her smile, hide her desolate cries;
Neither could he sense in her eyes, tacit bawl of love gone awry,
Nor could he decipher from her kiss, subtext of her covert goodbye.
Curtain may fall, music may end; yet allure of real love never dies,
Words of their solemn oath, unwritten absence no longer denies,
For bond of love reinvigorates hearts, tolling eternally as time,
Strumming passion’s sound of music, enamored in love sublime.
Categories:
subtext, absence, love, love hurts,
Form:
Rhyme
Refrain:
You shimmering waves on the ocean blue
Dance not again, he cannot dance with you
You weeping forests where the winds wail too
Let your bright tears fall in the pool of dew
The world of pop will never be the same again
The king is dead, and life is a dream so vain.
Did you know the king? Did you listen him sing?
Did you hear his heart breaking like daylight
In each song? Did you see him dance, or bring
Your sense to space invisible wounding his flight?
I was thirteen, just walking away from twelve in
Time when dreams lie broken at the white wall
I heard with his brothers five, and saw him spin
The great magician dancing for each curtain call.
Time spanned dust: a five year old sensation rose
In white clouds with black glory beaming rainbow
"Stop the love you save may your own" had expose
The urgency of his soul: the anathema of scarecrow.
O, but who will listen to the artist's pain? Did you
Stop and think that rage could become so beautiful
On stage? Michael sang and still you had no clue
About the hell he was going through. Twas wonderful
How he became the initiator of our reconciliation. O
"You and I must make a pact, we must bring salvation back
Where there is love, I’ll be there" they sang, and so
All the while building a bridge between White and Black
"I’ll reach out my hand to you, I’ll have faith in all you do
Just call my name and I’ll be there" but we doomed forgot
What cities were burning, and what he was yearning to do
The subtext to greatness has an eternal sorrow for plot.
Categories:
subtext, death, dedication, historytime,
Form:
Elegy
How it must feel to be homeless, all alone on the streets of this world
I ponder this quite often, wondering where I would go if I had no where else to go
Dropping through the cracks of our society into the dark subtext of this world's heart
How would I ever crawl out of such a grimy, jagged crevice back into what I would call life
Protecting myself from the blackened hearts of our populous
Where would I get hope from when the truth is so horrible and lies seems so beautiful
Would I steal for food when I'm starving for strength
Would I kill for security, just to be safe and not for another night weep
I wish not to think about how dark the darkness would grow that's already inside of me
And through my thoughts I find that this world doesn't resemble me
Doesn't value the same moral fiber as I do, doesn't share the same deduction as I do
And I search for why I am here, why I can't seem to survive in this alien world
“God why am I even alive in a world that I'm so different from that I can't survive”
Categories:
subtext, depressionworld, dark, dark,
Form:
Free verse
Traveling through the jaded discourse
With bartered pen and little remorse
Brandishing sharpened scalpel; tour de force
Unabashedly seeking all texts from lexicon to divorce
Developing underlying themes to alter the broader context
Freely abridging each verse to establish the pretext
Isolating each stanza to create a subtext
Inferring connotations to establish a hypertext
Disassociating words to broker more inflection
Delinking phrases building new bridges for reflection
Deconstructing patterns to sculpt out a new direction
Decoding mores and values to foster introspection
Voiding punctuation; compressing verses to scuttle metric time
Extrapolating dominant motifs to devalue the inculcating paradigm
Decoupling dissonant accents to deflower the sublime
Erasing phonetic schemes; disbanding symetrical order; decelerating rhyme
Categories:
subtext, on writing and words
Form:
Rhyme
…the seeds of neo-Nazism are germinating
Markus Nierth, former mayor of Tröglitz, Germany 2015
Germany’s rock candy windows and cookie like shingles make seeing the oven inside impossible. At first, the obsessive compulsive cleanliness of Nuremberg’s post-WWII streets is a joy. For a child of the melting pot, born after The Big One, it’s painful to recall the grimmer aspects of the Third Reich with their proposed eugenics. Nuremberg [rebuilt] roots in an elitist past hiding behind half-timbered houses of wattle and daub. Once the seat of the Holy Roman Empire seeped in power, then, a base for Hitler’s wunderkind rallies—now a soul-blighted bloom, a minor stop on the tourist trail.
Street walking pedestrians—the silent middle, staid, detached—stroll or bike along paths, immersed in white dreams. The pogroms of terror, stolen homes, and bridges made from Jewish Cemetery stones lie beneath layers of pristine paint and plaster. The Jews victimized for centuries, and the war trials, a mere subtext to tour guide chatter.
xenophobia
tamped down like an ash banked fire
waits to rise again
on a bellows breath of rage
spray painted on railroad cars
The site of my pilgrimage, The Palace of Justice—walled in panels of ashen mahogany—retains a dour mien. Judges, jurors and those to be tried, still use this hall. After-images of skeletal camp dweller and vain glorious generals rise wraith-like from the polished surfaces, paneling, pews, and copings. Greek God’s glower. A bronze crucifix castes judgment on all who pass: God fearing, or atheist. Justice is not present; horrors are not passed and conscience is now presented to the world as a fanatic in a suicide vest.
First Published in Artificium UK 2016
Categories:
subtext, anxiety, racism, , atheist,
Form:
Haibun
the light that shines from poetic lines
allows me to labor incessantly through this sojourn
please know that I shall not vanquish
the voices in my head
though the virtuoso might feel
they could one day silence me
I see, I smell, I taste dreams of childhood
the voices they fill my script with needed subtext
I store these elements
in a house with no walls and paper floors
the distance between myself and sanity quintuples
I see, I smell, I taste dreams of childhood
I strike the page, the page strikes back
with neither side claiming victory
Categories:
subtext, beauty, self,
Form:
Free verse
Age nibbles at life
Getting older makes you think twice
Strolling down memory lane
You noticed some things never change
Memory, is more complex; of mute agenda and subtext
Sometimes I can’t think what is next?
In my own imagining, I begin to live.
In my own remembering, all my sins please forgive
A primitive mix, of future thoughts and subtle tricks.
I have a headache too much thinking makes me sick
I have many days of happiness that were much too brief.
There is longer nights of pain and grief.
In the deep pits of my mind
My past is not hard to find
Today will be a memory yesterday is a memory drifting away
When I reminisce of my past I have nothing to say
What would we be without the power to recall?
Without our gift of memory we'd be little at all
Memory of our past and of our future,
Leaves us with endless wounds to nurture
"Memory is a way of holding on to the things you love, the things you are, the things you
never want to lose.”
Kevin Arnold
Categories:
subtext, hope, inspirational, life, people,
Form:
Rhyme
Wake up now it’s time to go,
Don’t rush when we’re about to go,
Demolish all obstacles before you go,
Keep up the good job until we go,
Say bye to the world when we go,
Prepare for the next before you go.
You never know when will be the next,
You may just keep on writing a text,
Determining what could happen next,
You’ll be studying an essay with a subtext,
And searching a theme in a video-text.
Remember that you’re still to live,
Never ignore things you believe,
For your sins GOD will forgive,
For what you do always be active,
You will be traveling alive,
In a long journey until you arrive.
Lineekela Kandjungu
Categories:
subtext, motivation,
Form:
ABC
always runs from the truth
can’t leave well enough alone
has no desire to build or create
does more harm with a lie than a knife or gun
never admits to having horns and a tail
filled to the brim with subtext
wants others to do the explaining
will stab you in gest
spends a lifetime trying to prove otherwise
finds it feeble to give an apology
will sleep with just about anything
will bury you for free
Categories:
subtext, evil, self,
Form:
Free verse
He sees life through shades
An enhanced Gothic subtext
Beyond Illusion
Categories:
subtext, life
Form:
Haiku
Soundscape Strata
Did Bach know to what end
his harvest of melodies-in-parallel would become?
Scholars agonize
Was creation of counterpoint
musical destiny
a hybrid fruit of beauty
knowing no boundary
bewildering those of first look
given musical staffs
voicings and manuscripts
always conformed to traditional confinement?
What spurred his palette of sound
to become one with the elusive rainbow
providing independence through marriage of numbers
allowing prolonged courtship
sanctioning destinies to verge
converge
separate
return to coalesce?
And so
From guitar
to clavichord
string quartets
to symphonies
counterpart airs were discovered
became melodious architecture
challenging new musical frontiers
voiding tundra's boundary rules
reducing history's brass survey monuments
to mere reflections of past memory
Popularization of Bach's invention
soared beyond the artistic elite
for in '55 "Picnic" graced movie screens
initiating the unsuspecting
elevating emotion with layered melodies
Moonglow playing under the love theme
Bach's kaleidascope of synchronous colors
reached the century's romantics
keyed into a music major
minored ala Brubeck
scat-a-tized via Ella and Mel
and
made unity of opposites a given
Thus
From Bach's synthesis of two dimensions
musical ironies evolved
influencing writers' language
line upon line
stanza to stanza
chapter to chapter
making magical
the double entendre
metaphor
subtext
contrapuntal imaginings
all translated into
infinite language-in-progress
With applause knowing nowhere to go
except to acknowledge the roots of prodigy
a high five to the man
who pioneered so much of our soundscape
taught us all the numbers of romance
ironically created attraction to opposites
arpeggios with many colors
intimacy amidst chaos
Encore Mr. Bach
Encore
Categories:
subtext, music,
Form:
Free verse
You are a new world to me
One that I have never seen
Your face fills me with intrigue
Your mind tantalises to tease
I have written you words,
Sentences, notes and letters
In my mind each and every day
My mind and my thoughts
Deep in thought - talking
Your eyes have seen beyond
Minds that could never ever be
Prepared to comprehend
What you have seen
Holding yourself back, control
You feel intensely - Wildly
Too much too often
Ever present - you wait
Until it's your time
That you know will come
It's simple
There is no tip toeing
Around the words unsaid
They speak volumes
We understand the language
That exists in the silences
We share in the subtext
That sits amongst the space
Between all the lines
You - A whole new world
That you invited me to live in
I want to be trapped by you
In to something wonderful
You could never asphyxiate me
I'm in a place I want to be
Categories:
subtext, deep,
Form:
Free verse
If I were to write a suicide note,
I would kiss every inch of the page, to drench it
With my last breathings of doomed love
If I were to write a suicide note,
I would spray each corner with Arabian perfume,
So you will always associate death not with the chilling scents of
Decomposing flesh, or freshly turned soil, but with a heady
Intoxicating fragrance
If I were to write a suicide note,
I would use many inks in rainbow colours, to soothe
The ache of my parting words – to paint a kaleidoscopic picture of
My beautiful misery
If I were to write a suicide note,
I would not waste time listing my miseries,
For they were countless, and too heavy for a sheet of paper
To bear
If I were to write a suicide note,
I would compose it sitting on my bed, my legs a creamy white
Against the starched white sheet, my face lifting now and then
To the window, to distract myself from the solemnity by
Observing my final sunset
If I were to write a suicide note,
I would use the word ‘love’ as often as my heart
Nervously beats, in preparation for the coming stillness
If I were to write a suicide note,
I would remind you that were it not for you I would
Never have lived at all
I would tell you how you lifted my soul,
How you dragged me up from the depths,
The proverbial lotus flower pushing its blooms through
The sucking black mud
I would tell you how you were always with me,
Even when you weren’t – how your memory
Haunted, gently, bitter-sweetly
I would tell you how every time I closed my eyes
I saw your face,
Etched by angel fingers on the thin red easels of my lids
I would tell you how, to me, this feeble dying girl,
You were the most beautiful thing in the world
More beautiful than fresh-blooming roses,
Or a tropical sunset
More sacred than temples or churches
More radiant than the sun,
That blazing god
More poignant than the moon,
In all her melancholy splendor
More overwhelming than my frail heart could bear
If I were to write a suicide note,
It would quickly become a love sonnet,
Devoted wholly to you
And my death would be lost in the subtext...
Categories:
subtext, death, dedication, lovedeath, beautiful,
Form:
Free verse
The million-to-one longshot -
I know this unlikely victory
isn’t so sweet when the race is fixed
and everyone got paid on the side
for being in on the trick
while I just ran and ran and ran.
Ran until every muscle ached
and could barely breathe,
and you threw me a cup of water
that turned out to be poisoned.
“I didn’t know,” you said,
but you didn’t sip it, either.
Gathering my roses at the finish line,
I searched the crowd of strangers
for someone to share my victory –
little did I know you were at the payout booth
collecting your winnings
from the cruel but well-executed scam.
I’m the hyphen in your used-to-be,
and she’s the substance in your dialogue -
reading between the lines,
I still find her there, laughing,
as I struggle to comprehend
the subtext of your smile.
Your half-truths and vague love songs
dominate my existence -
I’ll sing along with a painted look
of adoration in my eyes,
because I finally figured out
how to play your game, too.
“I’ll go with it,” she said
winking away the time I spent
trying to forget that I knew it all
and closed my eyes, preferring the dream.
I’m awake now, thief,
and I want it all back.
“Million-to-one shot, babe -
million-to-one.”
I’ll take those odds…
but the next time,
believe me, I’ll know better
than to run so fast.
Categories:
subtext, confusion, loss, love, ,
Form:
Free verse