Best Umbilicus Poems
A simple scene a nestling seeks the comfort of the night
to lay enthralled, engrossed, in memories of past days,
the nectar drawn from rivulets that run past blackened lash.
A lidded eye roves left, then right, as if it’s been betrayed
a corner tick, a slight knee twitch, odd choices now made.
The blanket once a comforter now twists so very tight.
A falling dream, a horrid scream, yet no land's in sight.
Bloodless body, writhe, heave, callout, nobody's home
your casing calls, umbilicus, umbilicus, reel me down.
A flying lift of breeze ‘neath hips, a lofting, oh so, high,
brings soul to ground with sighing sound within the dream,
entranced, aroused, the coming light, the end of night, wake.
First Published in Sweet Dreams and Night Terrors 2013
Life giving womb, silent and sacred
mystical, blood red embryo connected
cords from umbilicus, abstract limbo
unborn life, undiscovered, now growing.
Enclosed in the confines of limited space
haven from the world, as yet unknown
unborn life, feeding moment by moment
living lines and altering shapes, ever reliant.
Cover the little child, unborn, in love
keep it protected, now undisturbed
freedom in birth, to live and to breathe
hope for the future, this new life, to live.
Written on 5/20/2015
a brown and curling maple leave hangs suspended mid-air
in the clearing by the lake, transfixed by the view and kindness
woven within the web it watches the rain fall
within the transparent lace-like web, it curls inward
its only movement seems a solemn gesture of reverence
with its last bit of I it sighs, what better place to die
shielded from the gentle rain within the prayerful curl of sable leaf
the spider waits for the Autumn wind to tear them free, to fly ... on
to see the conifers green among the forest's rise
brisk winds rent the leave from loom and upward rise the pair
a spider spinning on the sable leave of maple anchored by a strand
as we our spirits torn, are reborn, within the clutch
the center holds sound its claim nature's umbilicus, man
like the spider's leaf born flight, we seek on unknown winds to rise
gentle the breeze or harsh the Fall's feverous gale, still … we rise
First Published in Fall Legends - Kind of a Hurricane Press 2013
a poem regarding evil-company
thus do learn to tolerate the blow of wings
of the most inflammable flesh
after the successful sacrifice of the student-hostel
jumping into the peacock-foams
how dangerously is changing the total travel-route of the nail-polish
in the high tide of the coconut-kernel
that conquers the world
today the water-pigeon gets pain
only by the flute made of palm-leaf
can’t be written the pleasure-trip in boat
of the injured-knee night-queen that is deposited heavily
on the collar of the village-moonlight
even-then the gramophone would be playing on
even-then the courageous pheasant would proceed further
to throw towards the squirrel a dinner-sleep
then all the daughters in disguise of birds certainly
may come out from within the salted mosquito-net
burning open-ground in their eyes
even after
the small boats of the fig leaves
would slip from the chorus song
of the roses
then they are to be pulled forward to the river-bed
of the late afternoon
to make them understand again
that such Xerox-centre which can ignore its metallic-birth
does not grow even now on either side of this muddy road
so look at to see how the epenthesis
of the screwpine-leaf withdraws her beak from the old dome
and pours
all new mathematics
into the compact-disc stitched with the back of the sea-tortoise
if that’s not real
how in the left and right
such evil-company of the oxygen would creep
if the next part of this commentary
resumes from the umbilicus cavity of the x-mass
would the blood-sugar of the water-plankton be rising continuously
look there again
the feather of colour that is in her adolescence
touches the cold magnet of her gamut
to disperse the cherry orchards
now if the doors of this brown triangle be got open
you can see on the screen one by one
the projection of the apex-points of the red-palash
and in the night-texture of the kathakali-kathak
they are supplying continuously
small sun-shines in poly-packs
I bleed red,
red like I know how.
I was there in past lives,
but never re-incarnated.
It is this existence
that bleeds me red,
red like I know how.
I’m drowning in blue,
like deceptive sea
dressed in cobalt skies.
Down,
down
I plunge,
turning eyes
with this white lie
(my life).
Days came, unlike me,
dressed in golden sun,
like oranges prepared in California’s heat.
Never am I likened to the dark nights
that parade beautiful fireflies on Lake Victoria.
I am yellow
in regions about my umbilicus,
with green glazed eyes
that scrutinize
their possessions.
I am never black;
I am white swelling in blue seas.
I should be African,
Proud,
with untamed rain bow spirit,
but I am never black.
I am white rising
in blue ocean,
a disappearing act.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
She thought of herself as Dorothy
tornadoed into an unknowable oblivion
winded she rises,
fetal curled about an umbilicus of she
a shattered reality lays before her.
Shards of past self's pirouette, prisms
released from the boxed frame of sash
and nested frame of sill,
she rises.
The crisp whiteness of a slip sheeted reality
anesthetizes the tumult of pillows
and comforters left behind
she is trampolined upward
but blown inward,
no out lay.
Unpierced by cut glass
chin tucked, bookless, fairy groomed,
the she child exists within the blink
a flash frozen riser.
Thrusting against the wall erect from my youthful womb
I alone must go from the tree that shelters the grave
of her umbilicus, and the place of Ma Puddy’s tomb;
the woman whose foretelling is come to pass in me.
I went down, and up the fleeting crags
garnering memoirs, yarns stilled
in passing notions; that’s what was wished-for
but I misplaced details while going downhill
I took her beautiful eyes that laugh when crying my tears,
the ones I no longer spill on satin and fine silk;
they went when bottles brought fists to my face
She was to flee, and by no means continue my days
For her it is to reach and grasp opulence,
and look at nuisance fleeting, the sudden that came
with rapture evoking youthful musing
she is called to make this climb.
She came and spread
like honeysuckle, arresting the sun
and calling birds to feast. She took my shell,
forfeiting me, and lives in novelty and wonder
I found my youth in sparkling eyes
that do thoughtful things (things done boldly).
I cuddle me in the life I filched
and lived her life a thousand times with my little girl.
~The Healer, I lay…Meditating,
The Shaman’s path is inward and up, up, from the bed up, up, my astral body rises.
Silence, surrounds …
Looking down I see myself in a pit of covers
my astral self slips from the window
viewing home and hearth from outside and high above…
No earth born sounds, awaken me from my flight.
NO earthly forest, lush or deep entraps the Shaman she.
NO bird calls fills the Predawn light…
NO dewdrops distract~
Astral I recedes in time… a Dreaming
Back, back, back without knowledge of time, or space
like a fallen leaf~ twirling and swirling,
letting the current take me, where it will
through lifetimes to the womb and beyond . . .
~The Healer, I.. ghosts in space…
my home but a speck lit with Chi.
Silence, surrounds…
Fair astral form of gossamer light, I…thread space on umbilical silk,
the healer...reaches, reaches for the light, the He and She……God and Goddess.
The Healer, I... reaches the World Tree, Yggdrasil,
white crystal roots tendril into the primordial sea
of space time, branching upward cradling Heaven.
There below the tree in the soft grass an ancient one,
a familiar soul, waits.
~Oh I am held by She, ancient Grandmother, and garner the wisdom of ages.~
But, the bodies time is now, and calls
and as the clay rests, it calls
down, down, down… I go
~Past the jumble-tumble between lifetimes, within the cycling universe of all,
The Healer, I, reforms, snaps to the umbilicus of prone body, within the tumbled nest of sheets, in the now plane of existence.
~Arms reach out brushing cheeks, eyes gleam, and sparkle
with the joy of sharing, kindred spirits having touched
the ancient wisdon of the Light!
Silence surrounds.
*revised
There are armies in our countryside
Vast columns, marching in single file
Through our valleys
Over our hills
Across our meadows and crops
Huge soldiers like Martian machines
Striding across our land
Roped together by umbilicus
Humming with energy
To satiate our unquenchable thirst for power
Stretching back to great temples
That burn away the Earth’s geological heritage
Belching steam and smoke to irrevocably alter our futures
There are armies in our countryside
Spoiling my view
Reminding me that we have no real wilderness left
And the legions are multiplying
Because our need to consume
Has become our existence
And existence has become confused with life
And the army marches on
It seems, I much prefer my dreams
though times of consequence pass fleetingly.
It seems, I know while in those very dreams
of all that passes in between.
Matching my realities to messages
left within the ‘seems’ of fear and fantasy and light
of the umbilicus cord which snaps when I’m affright.
Yes, I’d say it often seems,
I’m so a home when wrestling with my dreams.
The I sees “I” , and oft compresses screams
Munch-like in hues of blue and green
on bridges to the nowhere and in-betweens,
ear-covering, muffling, silent screams.
Mesmerized, am I, by what can be,
reality dissolves within the ever-after seams.
Clocks melt, trees morph to faces, Dali emotes
tattle-tailing signs that float on reels
in rooms off kilter, windows bricked without.
Can you hear me?
Can I hear me, shout?
I’m right here, I just asleep
Please let me out!
Author's note: This is an epic length poem that will have to be split into parts and will be serialized in successive posts.
Part 3
Dr. D. confers in panic
with Rex and boys at the Limbo Saloon
by now my eyes are ping pong balls
the final recommendation is for
ritual abandonment
Fra Umbilicus answers his page
in the monastery wing
and servos his motorchair up to my railing
intones the curse of the catacombs
think of it as original my sin er son
how the flat line fooled the experts
was on the 6 o'clock
perhaps it was the fact
that it went vertical
tripping alarm buzz circuits
from Hell to breakfast
like a reeking retching lurching
Nietschean Lazarus
a scarred and demented Universe
gave birth to itself
and the combined riotous
and cheering populations
of BURN WARD 3
and AMPUTATION WARD 2
and NARCOLEPSY WARD 666
cameras pick up deicide in the stairwell
a theomachian commotion
clangity-whaaang go the
oxygen tanks bouncing four flights
plopity-smash go
the out/intravenous bottles
whackety-crack
goes his portable Respiropump
screechety-eech
goes NEURO WARD's $90,000 Lobotoscan
cascading sympathetically
8er from Decatur
straining against the tube works
and their attached impedimenta
beneath the basement corridor steam pipes
awakening autopsy cadavers
with every labored pitch and yaw
bursting through the fire exit
on the firing squad's day off
out onto St. Hilarity's loading dock
he turns and waves howdy-ose amigoes
to the gathered throngs
Musela, Tex, the Santa Guadalupe Mariachis
slams Lucille the ambulance's door
severing all connections
arm tube nose tube mouth tube
chest tube piss tube
hits the throttle light bar and siren
and lets Lucille's squealing wheels
burn rubber clear down
to the land of rubber plantations
until the tank hits empty
and memory returns syllables
and lost parts of speech
the twin t's of utterance two swords
and fate the swindler of souls
has a blowout
at 90 at 5...at 15...
the separated twins
separate the H-O-R-I-Z-O-N
into before and after
rhyming less on the outside
than on the inside out
a vacation follows
From "Engine of Didactic Beauty" available on Amazon
http://tinyurl.com/nhfk6dr
The sizzle, the hum
a sparkle then done
torched and tormented
love starts to run
Cut cords —
umbilicus lies
unintended
never truly mended
Scars grieve
still ~ bloodied
hearts leave
insanity clapping
just look
at
it
flapping ears
elephant wingd
wingding with
out
ing
bam bam bam
bambooing beams
brilliantly bashing blue
berrys burning cruise
connecting cooperation doom
eons elation elevates emotion
fusion focuses firmly finding
grindind greetings global go
holding hopes hands hyme
indigenous impairment
impacting icicles
justified jews
knews know
knees kneel
love longs
lasting
loud
mine
me
mean meanings mostly mumble
numbing nerves nimble necks
neon nights numbering none
nine ovaling opening odes
pheasant players plucked
question quaint qualms
reassured rest resting
testing times tiltings
under umbilicus
uncle umbrella
virtual vices
viral-'ing
victory
x ing
y
z
?
Within the long days of night I ran
seeking always to hide from the seer
for only by my motion, could my spree
like the unbridled wants of a negligent child be seen.
Crying out to the throngs of sinners who sever
the umbilicus of light which veers
from the godhead, my soul sap
suckled from this cape
this husk, this endless span
of time..I pan
pan for the golden sepulcher
peering through the pane
of church windows never
quite alive ..an
orphan on a skewer
I prance knowing only through
healing pain can
I persevere.
Each of us is an infant seized
In the moment of labor spent.
We each are Samson, stained, restrained,
Chained between the pillars that confine us.
The womb of the mother god, Wisdom,
She holding us back from our awakening,
But we press outward, downward,
But we force, our desire to emerge,,
To be free of our old abode,
The hold of another's will,
The hold of another's thoughts,
To be free to become more--or less,
To be free of the cord that binds us,
That cord Umbilicus that makes us a part of Her,
Our breath her breath,
Our blood her blood,
Our life her life.
To be severed from the She that finds us
Being disgorged between her thighs,
The holy pillars through which all life
Must pass.
To leave the holy sanctum
At last.
To see with our own eyes,
To hear with our own ears,
To utter our own sounds,
Knowing this: That there is no going back.