Best Symbiosis Poems
We are blighted wards
Sordid, trepidatious scars
Haven's wall too darkly far
Eden's thornbush guards
Caught behind our safety bars
Still, we count the free range stars
4/02/20
For 'Pick a Title - Vol 15 - Sedoka' contest
Sponsor: Edward Ibeh
theme: symbiosis
Symbiosis
Sitting on that rock
Like a suburban mermaid,
You look like a lost girl
With a long sad story to tell.
So honey, why don’t we
Mosey on over to Wide-track Town,
Where the freeways meet in purgatory;
There are singing hipsters there,
Dressed in the regalia of the deranged,
Sniffing salt through straws,
There are ten thousand latex surfers
Returning from the dead,
Returning from their brief sojourn
In the distant backwaters,
The yellowish green sulfur waters,
That seep into your bare flesh,
And send mad biting impulses
Straight into your seething soul.
Ah, yes! So, how long have you had that…
Pardon me honey, but,
Is that a bruise on your neck?
Or maybe it is the love-bite I recently
Gave you, as we rode in the back seat
Of a lavender blue 72’ Land Yacht,
Spread out fine under a blanket,
As Broten, up front, steered us down the long highway,
Through a lit-up suburbia,
Like a chrome dragon spitting smoke from its butt.
Kissing you, honey, is a meal unto itself.
Like eating electric spit
With a dash of salt!
Now is the time,
Now is the moment to touch you.
If you don’t want me to,
I won’t…
Sitting on that rock,
Just like a seducing mermaid.
So, honey, what exactly is your story?
Why don’t we mosey on over to Wide-track Town?
We can talk incessantly until the stars appear,
We can watch the latex surfers find nirvana,
And I can give your daring thigh,
My thirty-minute love bite.
From wind that cried then softly died, until at last it merely sighed,
A memory wrapped in imaged song, without the need for right or wrong
A cornerstone of long ago, when life still had somewhere to go,
A memory intertwined with dreams, at least that’s how yesterday seems
Soft evening fog that came to call I gathered like a whispering shawl
To wrap round halos of the night, such a complex celestial sight
Of gas lit gauze in moonlit mist, cloud faces that I once had kissed
When nights were long and days kept pace, in lavender and silver lace.
A symbiosis based upon those dreams and nightmares now long gone
Came to me riding shades of grey, no need to crawl back to the day
No need to swim before I fly, just moments where we live and die
Those inter winding subtleties silk liquid shadows, satin seas
That drift me where I’ve yet to go, upon life’s subterranean flow
Then bring me to a different shore, a sort of trembling evermore
Where I can write poetic stuff, when dreams are harsh or life is tough
And when my poem is complete, I’ll rise again upon my feet.
A sudden sense of dreamless truth, such shivers from my long gone youth
Turn me into a child once more, another street, another door
That once was real, and now is gone, no more to pin my hopes upon
For symbiotic hopes and dreams can soon unravel at the seams,
And part just like a quiet psalm, that lost its temper, yet stayed calm
For all I know and all I feel is just how much life likes to deal
Those poker hands that always lose, no other outcome I can choose
Except walk in different dream, and head towards my dawn soft stream..
Somewhere in a rugged sunny terrain
a bushy-maned pony kicks up his heels
amid biting flies in a grueling summer heat.
An elegant cattle egret hitches a ride.
Devouring grassland insects, his daily diet,
the egret helps his buddy in his plight
keeping the flies at bay while loping along
together through brush and grass and sage.
I feed upon nature
and it feeds upon me
I drink from its waterfalls
and swim in its seas
I pluck some of its apples
and find shade under its trees
I rest upon its rocks
and run across its leas
I bathe under its sun
and dance beyond its breeze
For it is I who have found nature
or has it found me?
Written on some rocks
beside Al Aawaj Springs
in Syria
sea anemone
clown fish hides in tentacles ~
not an enemy
In a circle
Of first graders
Who looked out
With suspicious eyes
On the playground
Next to the
jungle gym
No breaching would realize
A little hand
Reached out
to bravely
Pull me inside
His little heart
Knew in protection
Exclusion
Still divides
Perhaps as myself
He's stood in the outs
Or had earned some rank
In the friendship scouts
Whatever the reason
for bravery shown he was
and will be the clown fish
to this prickly anemone
torture pain and death
unselfishly I embraced
for you to have life
We were best friends.
We were lovers.
Inexorably linked.
For such a commitment-phobe, I fell in love quickly. But I didn’t fall, really.
I dove headfirst.
I chose her. No, she chose me.
She was always lurking in the shadows. She always knew I was The One.
She was just waiting until I was ready. She loved me.
She watched as my hair fell out in clumps,
She handed me the mouthwash and she soothed me as I nursed the blisters on my knuckles and
together we reveled in the cracks, little channels of blood escaping from the frigid,
sallow skin.
She watched my lips turn blue and laughed condescendingly when people gasped in horror.
They are just jealous, she told me.
We linked arms and she helped me walk on shaking, spindly legs down the hallway. Jealous.
They’re jealous.
Sometimes I hated her. She turned me into something cold and callous.
I told her of my hatred once, and she grew violent.
She asked me if I was getting soft, vulnerable.
I needed her, she needed me.
A perfect symbiosis, but god, she was a parasite.
My erratic heart pumped her venom through me and it gave me strength.
I ran manically around the track, every morning at three, because I couldn’t sleep, and
she encouraged me, run, you disgusting creature, run.
Run until you matter.
You’re beautiful, you’re hideous, you’re disappearing and you’re running like a mad, mad
animal in circles around that track and you’re going to do it again tomorrow until the
crevasses in your collarbones deepen, until your jeans dangle pathetically from the
daggers protruding from your hips.
You need me, she whispers tantalizingly.
Sick paradox.
I need her
To elevate me above my needs
"Each experience is locked within my heart and only I hold the key..."
“Dad, I’m going to straighten your closet for you,”
my wife said as she set upon the task of pulling out his
clothes and refolding and re-hanging each item.
“I have to go to the John.” was his reply.
“OK, you go. Need help?” she asked him.
“No.” Into the bathroom he went.
Immediately out he came again.
“Can you help me with my pants?”
“Sure dad, there you go.”
Back in again but leaving the door wide open this time.
She closed it and went back to the closet.
“Why don’t they put his things back the way they should go?”
Fold, hang, arrange.
“Dad are you OK in there? Do you need help?”
“No. Can you come in and help me with my pants?”
“Dad, you have them on backwards.
That’s why you can’t find the zipper. Here let me help.”
Out they both come.
A successful mission.
“What do you think of your closet now?”
“Wow! I have the best looking closet in the whole place.”
“Yes you do. I’m going to talk to them about keeping it that way.”
Out the door she goes.
A new purpose.
Making things better for her dad.
“She’ll give them hell,” he said to me.
We watched the news for a while and then he got up.
He went to the closet and pulled out some clothes.
After unfolding them and looking at them he stuffed them back in.
Not in the right place.
He sat down and smiled.
Tony Lane
A Fragment Of Life contest
Written 8/20/11
Like tyrant Trojans
pandemic prophets proclaim…
Habitual horrid hosts
the wolf seeds the lamb,
Fallacious fevers encroach-
masters of mayhem dictate.
( 5,7,7,5,7,7 syllables)
March.17.2020
Pick-A-Title-Sedoka
Sponsored by: Edward Ibeh
Placed 1'st...Thank You
for years, your hungry maw had fed
on salty tears and blood I'd bled
you suckled without thought or rest
on milk of kindness from my breast
you chewed upon my weaknesses
and slurped them up for sustenance
clasped tightly like a foul remora
you sucked me dry and howled for more
and yet, in knowing all of this
I held you tightly as aegis
the better to distract me from
the ugly beast I had become
the cloak of your unceasing needs,
diversion from my own foul deeds
from true compassion to contempt
til finally love's beyond exempt
precious, precious, symbiosis
sadness, sickness, sweet neuroses
stilted, stunted, siamese
dearest, deadliest disease
Within this sanctum
of breath and bone—
ten trillion anchorites
mimic their devotions.
Bacteria threading
blood’s vermilion rivers
braiding holy water
into the cathedral
of now.
Their alchemy transmutes
starlight
into the wine of existence—
decanted
from Orion’s mythical vine.
Viruses—
those threshold wraiths
between being
and unbeing—
inscribe new verses
in the living gospel
of our chromosomes.
Fungi a cappella
in mycelial tongues
through marrow’s moaning chambers
decomposing resurrection
from each small death
we die.
We are not hosts—
but cantatas
still composing themselves
in light.
Each cell—
a verse rehearsing resurrection.
Hark:
your pulse conducts
this unseen choir
where mortal breath
becomes immortal song.
And in this sacrosanct
communion of kingdoms,
we learn
we were never “I”—
but a constellation of prayers:
timeless,
boundless—
Bacteria
Viruses
Fungi
Me—
becoming
one.
Slippery, and soaking wet, we cling to one another,
smelling of each other's sex, and cleft for e'er together;
yearning, craving, bodies fused in blessed consecration,
sequestered, and a world away from din and aggravation.
I enter you again, my love, my manhood thrusting deep,
our urgent longings keep us snared, a million miles from sleep;
in our own world of starlight, dreams, and joyful speculations,
of spirits joined for evermore in sweet anticipations!
we fly again, the heavens blaze, our fluids merge and mingle,
slippery, and soaking wet, we drip and slip and tingle!
Times are hard and they always were
Poverty in blood bleeds the heart
Deprivation in breath sheds the tears
Struggle in steps squeezes the sweat
Life in tatters needs a stitcher.
He became one and always was.
The faithful sewing machine
Morphed into his third hand earning
Turning nights into days he didn’t realize
A machine had become a part of him.
The tsunami brought the floods high
Washed his home and belongings away
Nothing he called his own he could keep
Except for the sewing machine a piece of him
Old and tarnished and flaking
Like what the trying times had made him
But the survival instincts they shared.
In search of a solid ground to start life again
He waded through the throttling water
With the life maker on his shoulder.
Man and machine symbiosis stronger in disaster
Reflects mutual dependence life needs to carry
Even if uncertainty seems to cloud the future
Residual hope forms a smile transcending misery.
September 17, 2017
Image Me A Poem