Best Twenty Seven Poems
Jimi's groovy guitar leaps
Psychedelic anthem beats
Certainly a broader reach
Than what banal mainstreams seek
Janis sang in passion rough
Too much for the upper crust
Voice of insistence and rush
Love songs with a gritty touch
Jim's strange Doors opened destined
Music of scant time's lessons
Fallen stars burn in legend
Breathless at twenty-seven
5/24/20
Wonder if I ask politely, the great powers that be
To increase the day's hours by just two or three
Not asking for much
My heart would be touched
Right now there's no time to stop for a pee
© Jack Ellison 2015
1. You have the illness you have always been fearful of. The cause is your fear. You will never sleep, and tea and yoga are only placebos. Welcome to hell.
2. You cannot evade exactly anything you ever experience.
3. I. Zombies are only an abstract concept.
II. So is your entire life.
4. You impulsively set your clothing on fire with the post-justification that it is an archaic craving and without fire, we'd all be dead.
5. We don't live on different planets in a communicative solar system because some of us don't handle diversity very well, and a human-sized crater is large enough.
6. The universe does end, and outside of the edges, there is only pure whiteness that goes on forever. I know, I've been there.
7. I. There are villages inside the carpet.
II. There are worlds inside the molecules that make up the villages in the carpet.
III. There are kingdoms inside of electrons and protons. They want each other's land.
8. You have a hard time choosing between the four of spades and the seven of hearts. But no matter what you choose, they're both just cards.
9. Any moment that is filled with emotion will feel like it will be the like that for the rest of your life. It will not be.
10. You deride them but you have no idea you're in the same thrall.
11. I. You remember engraved metal spoons hanging on a kitchen wall. Yes, you do.
II. You remember the song that played during the car ride on the highway when you passed the
aircraft warning light in the distance.
III. You remember the green atmosphere when you were a kid in a swimsuit licking ice cream
outside of your neighbor's house.
IV. You remember there being a small blue swimming pool.
V. You remember looking through the lace curtains of your living room window and seeing snow
and holiday lights on the suburban houses across the street.
VI. None of this ever happened.
12. The main reason you can't fall asleep is because you were told to.
13. You have dark circles under your eyes that only some can see.
Red toenail polish
and your casted leg commands
all my attention
14. You live in a laboratory; you can only create what can't survive in this air.
15. If your blood was pixelated and green, you'd probably be dead already.
16. They know you by your talents of making art and sometimes talking. You know you by your talents of sleepwalking and coughing up blood into the sink.
17. If you do something everyday for a long time and then stop, you will have dreams about it on the nights you don't do it. It is your brain's way of making sure you still feel it happening.
18. No one understands why horror films sadden you. You reiterate that poltergeists are nothing to avoid; they've kept you alive.
19. I. As a compulsive liar and a pyromaniac, you know a lot about hell.
II. Reality is hell, and heaven is being set on fire.
20. You have bloodshot eyes from the way she looked at you.
21. This doesn't feel right.
22. The orange of the burning house is the most comforting color you've seen in years.
23. I. As a ghost, your nose only bleeds once a year on the day you died from the… wait, there was
never an accident, and your nose has bled everyday.
II. As a ghost, everything you hold masquerades with you in the astral plane until you let it go,
leaving it somewhere else.
24. They call you oblivious, and you must agree, telling them that, yes, you do live in oblivion. You utilize it and receive it.
25. You told your family and friends that you've swallowed arsenic, and that it's fine, and that you're going to be okay. Little do they know, you called from the afterlife.
26. When you isolated yourself, the spiders came out from hiding and ate you alive, even though you've only ever been nothing but nice to them.
27. This number is very special to you.
The
percent,
one point three.
Thirteen of each
one thousand famous
musicians will likely
die at age twenty seven.
The, so called, Twenty Seven Club.
A tragic portent for young artists.
The truth is Hendrix, Joplin, Morrison
and Cobain died at twenty seven,
yes,a sad event, but Rick James,
Fogelberg, Roger Miller
and Billy Powell didn't.
They are members of
a unique group,
The Fifty
Six
Club.
In truth,
more artists
leave us at age
fifty six than do
at age twenty seven.
twenty two out of every
thousand, or two point two percent.
The twenty seven club is about
something different, not age but ageism.
09/19/2022
Wonder if I ask politely, the great powers that be
To increase the day's hours by just two or three
Not asking for much
My heart would be touched
Right now there's not even time to stop for a pee
The Ruba’iyat of Créteil Lake – Part Twenty-Seven
The near-full Moon at night lit the lake up majestic proud
More than the fissioning Sun at noon could make out contours loud
Scurrilous exhausts tore down Her lush flanks and flustered chadors
Eyes peeled as Vollschlang curves of the Darling Dears bulged their shroud
A lone garden warbler perched on cutting curve of the Crescent
Over the tinted panes of the muezzin’s turret casement
Trilled kyrielles of cascading notes one upon the other
As if to notify the world of the essence of sacrament
And Lo! The gilded orange rays streaked through the soaking gloom
And caught the assembled crowds in a burning feverish bloom
Rings and shafts of stabbing ricochet lights pierced drooping eyes
To remind the colliding forces of self-benighting doom!
Those who would Our Sun pluck out of the sky to own
Must of needs also sweep up into their arms the Unknown:
Countless suns which burn and die through aeons of blinding light
Cannot yet make the Human Soul feel Man is not alone!
This need to feel secure in the bosom of the ONLY God
Is it the sickness of the Soul? Or the weakness of the Word?
Or the play of Light and Shade to keep the Truth well hidden
Far, far away from the Human Will to subvert the World!
© T. Wignesan – Paris, 2014
Twenty-seven is eighteen plus nine.
The difference of thirty less three is fine.
If you're not a fool,
and you stay in school,
it's the square root of seven hundred twenty-nine!
With a friend of my deceaced love
I sent a prayer way up high and above...
It was for a sad man who didn't believe
in a power greater than himself...
He lost his heart up on a crowded shelf,
for him I felt so sad and began to weep...
he was angry and I was scared
he'd been locked up and left in a cage
left alone for a very long time...
really hurt him and set up a rage
So I looked up to the sky and I asked for a four leaf clover
regretting my life over and over
To my surprise I searched only but a second
there it was...an answer to my prayer...
he said to me... do it again...just beware...
Like the heart of an innocent mistake
my heart began to quake...
I whispered to my God... please... do it again just for him
then I brought him twenty-six more that resembled the first
hoping those twentyseven clovers would deeply quench his thirst...
on the other side of a twenty-seven mile wide mountain range
is a place to go where no cars and cycles buzz behind me
where the dusk heated sun does not touch my back
and polluted air does not burn my eyes
where the Pacific Ocean whooshes in my ears…
i can get there by dawn and sit on the beach
smell the salty air as the sun rises from mighty waves
stroll in water shoes across sharp pebbles
dash into a cool frothy force crashing upon me
there, over this mountainous Taiwan backbone
i could stay drenched in plum wine all day
women amused with my Mandarin mouth
women amusing me with their English tongues
i could do this
with karaoke nights singing to my fancy
but would i forget my wife at home
looking like something is wrong
i look to the peaks of green mountains
follow their curves through lush valleys
twenty-seven miles of tiny winding roads
upward, over, around, and down to the shoreline
with indistinguishable places to rest
and weeks if i wish to stay
with an iPod of twenty-five thousand songs
in a cold car with cool sound system
it could be years
if i do not miss home
up and around bends with streams and waterfalls
adventuresome companions and sweethearts
and my favorite noodles
Twenty-Seven Club--not open to all,
nor is joining top of most people's list.
A club of sadness and shock midst the pall
of last birthdays--twenty-eighth was just missed.
Many well-knowns have passed at that young age,
to a better place, fans and music gone.
Rock stars overdose, leave a darkened stage
fans lay sweet bouquets, and then they move on.
Many don't look forward to twenty-six,
so fearful it might be their farewell year.
Feeling doomed to join Joplin and Hendrix,
yet still infuse the drugs they hold most dear.
This presents a huge conundrum to those
who want to keep their cake and eat it, too.
Can we feel sorrow when it's they who chose
a life expecting they'll pay club dues soon.
September 2, 2022
for Anthony Biaanco's The Twenty-Seven Club contest
Twenty-seven nightmares rolling
through the caverns of my mind,
dark and gruesome creatures crawling,
aged faces deeply lined.
When the waxing moon has settled,
sunk into the southern swamp,
thirteen demons manifesting,
I can hear their black hooves stomp.
Howling hounds of Hell are mating,
devil dogs inflicting pain,
sixteen banshees spinning, swirling,
blood is falling like the rain.
Broken brethren banned from Heaven,
six and six and six are they,
slyly shifting shapes to fool me,
begging me to come and play.
Heed the wizard's words of warning,
look not into the evil eye,
when the bell tolls one times three now,
ask questions not, nor wonder why.
Watch the ill wind toss the treetops,
lashing limbs with lethal rage,
feel the cold rain sharp as needles,
pine cones nature's hand grenades.
Cherry-red eyed Chupacabra,
hissing hot breath on my nape,
phantom footfalls far behind me,
nineteen omens taking shape.
Twenty-seven nightmares rolling,
you wonder why I work at night?
Sleep for some is much more mellow
when the room is filled with light.
D-awn in March twenty-seven
A-ims to leave the moon;
L-ight reaches the zenith,
E-ndorsing the
N-oon.
A-s the dawn in March twenty-seven
S-tops the dusk and twilight;
U-nderneath the bright sky,
N-o dark is in sight.
C-oal clouds turn white
I-n the wide blue heaven;
O-pen your eyes to the breaking
N-ew dawn in March twenty-seven.
Twenty seven religious candles
Around my bed,
Twenty seven years of Ash Sunday
Ashes on my head,
Twenty seven Bibles,
In my motel room,
Twenty seven priests
To dispell twenty seven a' gloom
Twenty seven rosaries,
In twenty seven hands,
Won't stop the juices flowing,
In twenty seven glands
My twenty seven lovers,
In twenty seven days,
Makin' me kind of tired
In twenty seven ways
Twenty seven incantations
In twenty seven a mass
Gives me hope,
Twenty seven more days
I'll last
Twenty seven commandments I did break
That's many, many odd more,
Than you have heard Him make
So I say twenty seven good-byes
To twenty-seven poet friends,
I'll be shoveling coal in hell
To make my twenty seven amends.