Best Unaccustomed Poems
The house slumps against overgrown yards
Where gardens wilt against the ground,
Begging for sleep beneath gray skies.
Vines move through weeds
Like brittle fingers,
Reaching toward a sagging door
Where paint peels like weathered skin,
Curling in agony against the grain.
Once vibrant, now fading
Like all doorways to yesterday.
This is where memories flee,
Lying in wait like dormant ghosts
That walk through the walls of my mind
As I walk through the door.
The hinges creak in protest,
Rusted by the rain of forgotten days.
The floors squeak in upset,
Unaccustomed to my timid feet.
The dust is stirred, the silence snaps
Like twigs used for kindling
To spark my tepid heart.
A decade becomes a moment.
A moment becomes a lifetime.
This is where memories live,
Trapped in time like restless ghosts
That walk through walls and haunt the halls
Of doorways to yesterday.
Though broken, they open
To swallow me whole.
Categories:
unaccustomed, memory,
Form:
Free verse
blueberries are not an option
oversize strawberries, maybe.
16 pack
of pop-tarts
the workers look worried
or weary
worn down by the woman who taps on her wrist-watch
with her forefinger
her painted mask forms a frown
her eyebrows are more aggressive
flashing lights
spilled onto the glossy floor tiles
the shelves are soaked in strange
i am invisible
avoiding intentional eye-contact
content to be
a casual observer
unnoticed by an acquaintance
out of context
unaccustomed to our bodies without barriers
beside the cereal boxes i wonder
if i look different behind bullet-proof glass
fat-free or chocolate 2%
there is no middle-ground
but i prefer the color blue to brown
so the choice is made easier
by arbitrary affections
this is where college students
collect the contents of their refrigerators
this is where bananas
are available after midnight
on a thursday
or is it friday?
all i can say is that it doesn’t matter much
in this fluorescent fantasy land
everything is affordable
especially time
because wages are waning
and the hunger will never cease.
Categories:
unaccustomed, america, anxiety, food, society,
Form:
Free verse
Overcome by a wave of curiosity
I decided to try out seriosity
For which I'd no particular precocity
'Twas an ill-fated breeze of impetuosity
With visions absurd of grandiosity
I'd portray Julius Caesar with proper pomposity
Though, to be sure, my toga's fit was an atrocity
Not to mention my Latin dialogue's tortuosity
Yet utterly convinced of my latent geniosity
I spoke my lines with preternatural verbosity
Hark! Were those boos of unaccustomed ferocity?
~ To the nearest Exit, tomato-smeared, at hypervelocity...
Categories:
unaccustomed, character, fantasy, giggle, spoken
Form:
Monorhyme
Long ago, there came to the garden in which I’d been planted
a stranger who admired me in the spring of my life.
Tall was he; dark and gorgeous too.
He kept visiting my garden spot while singling me out
from the other lovely blossoms surrounding me
and who also called this large garden their home.
Sweet words he whispered through the garden fence.
His words became the susurration of the almost daily breezes
which he brought with him to caress my petaled face.
As he became less a stranger,
I longed more and more each day
to see him watching me outside the garden’s fence
which protected me from strangers,
or so I thought . . .
One day this handsome man flung open the gate to the garden.
Taking me by surprise, he strode right up to me
and stroked my blushing cheek.
Unaccustomed to unsolicited attention such as his,
I could do no more than stay posed there as always,
trembling all the way to the bottom of my stem.
Simply catching a glimpse of him
became all that I was living for that spring.
And although my soul was bursting with poetry,
I knew my role as a fenced-in rose.
Unable to voice my thoughts to him,
I could only bask in the warmth
of his amazing gaze, which eventually
I noticed being cast upon other flowers too.
Toward the end of that short spring season,
my spirit began to wilt, for I knew that this man
would be passing by no longer.
Here I stand as usual in my garden space,
for always I grow back, blooming again and again.
Many springs have come and gone
as well as some of my flower friends I used to know.
Others have withered away forever.
I too will wither away when only God can say,
and the handsome man my soul once yearned for
is but a melancholy memory of unrequited love,
which more importantly, I can look back on and realize
was not real love at all.
Categories:
unaccustomed, love hurts,
Form:
Personification
"Unreasonable Reasons for Fighting Dragons: Off Planet, Exiled"
I could write something beautiful for you,
like outside the windows
the raindrops slide off tips of green leaves
there are tears like pearldrops falling
onto moist lips like ripe rosebuds
hints of myrtle lemon that the tongue licks
like sticky marshmallow fingertips sweetly glued
softly placing a bookmark, between pages.
we should stop there for the night, before bedtime,
because bedtime is where love waits impatiently
for all manner of things,
like daughters immersed in all their removed seasons
reflected in unreasonable reasons
for fighting dragons in their imagined labyrinths
I cajole you, I proffer
that the very first love you will ever know
has prickly barbs like a bee that stings
and sticks deep in the skin like supersedure,
n.b. for hives, use Royal Crème,
and the preceding Queen bees
take an unaccustomed back seat,
sipping thoughtfully on honeyed
words and mead
in that tricky place,
where their children once played
and now those daughters
are the superseding
Royal Queens;
they are without doubt
the strongest in this case,
immortal paramours
and whilst their doppleganger stance
is terribly traumatised and competitive,
the archives, I have learned
as chief librarian in this place,
in grounds most territorial,
must be handled
with speak easy kid gloves,
insert the softest lambs’ wool here -
black sheep
all of the above
Candide Diderot. ‘24
Categories:
unaccustomed, muse,
Form:
Free verse
Nature, Friend and Foe
Speak out the words to the soft petaled plants,
that grow wearily in the distant corners
It is there that the scrub jay alights,
squawking and gorging on berries.
This habitat has brought the wildlife to the garden,
in an endless search for food stuffs,
always glancing over their shoulders heads turned 180 degrees, ears taut,
translucent eyes peering, fright, flight,
an evolved history, chiseled in practical instinct.
I am speaking to you dear nature,
from me you will learn exactly nothing,
it is from that which you are that I will learn.
Listen to my plaint though it fall on deaf ears.
Though you hop or walk, fly or scurry, crawl, swim or slither,
movement is your the essence, your vitality, your survival,
which appears to invite you to take the life that animates and live it to any and all ends.
Is there no loss for you, do you not care or bother for condition?
If we as a race of evolved mammalian beings were once like you,
how is it we've fallen so far from the tree and yet continue to survive?
Did you dear nature reject us, are we a sullen body of flesh
unaccustomed to following the laws that govern your being?
Are we but a rejected group?
Fires that burn forests and wastelands,
ignited by the thunderbolts from Jupiter's hand
both cleanse and rejuvenate an overgrown and tired terrain;
lava spewn out from out of the mouth of a volcano
drives itself over the land building and combing the landscape with layers of liquid rock,
cooled by atmospheric difference.
Flooding waters, ferocious winds, the whirling and swirling of earth
and its organisms of flesh and bone
thrown up and into a vortex of howling change
is greeted with impassivity.
You, my nature, friend and foe, your indifference, your beauty
and the brutality of your wrath are both vexing and compelling,
how are we to understand and continue to care?
Suey Creek
October, 2012
Categories:
unaccustomed, nature,
Form:
Verse
There is a river nearby
A black green mystery of water
That standing at one end
One can hardly see the dim
Outline of trees on the other side.
The river is deep
And in the stillness
Of early morning
A mist comes
Off it
So thick and impervious
That you literally can't
See your hand
In front of your face.
We frequented the place
My father and I
On Sunday mornings
After the sun burned the mist away
I, as usual, hurrying up
To keep up with him.
Years later when I left home
My father shook my hand
A formality I was
Unaccustomed to
And one that left me puzzled.
Awkwardly, we said goodbye
Then he walked away
His broad back
Slowly fading
Into the caverns of Grand Central
Until he disappeared
In the noise and smoke of
The station.
When the train whistle blew
My heart jumped
I felt a thrill
Of adventure
My life had a purpose
Finally, I was on my own!
Events tell a story
I made mistakes
Stumbling from impossible dreams
To vague ideas
And found that loneliness
Was all intimidating
Painfully, I realized
All I had to offer life
Was my own confusion.
Not every life has a storybook ending
And mine was no different
I retuned home
After one year.
Restless one night
I stood on the river's edge
Listening to a solitary boat crossing the river
Plying its cargo up and down the coast
In the darkness a buoy gave up its warning
A deep clanging sound in the mist
Turning to see where the sound came from
I stood motionless
And listened
There was nothing but silence
And the soft lapping of waves on the shore
As it was since the beginning of time.
In the quiet
I remembered the early morning walks with my father
A familiar Sunday morning ritual
I now missed.
Overhead a moon shone
Casting a pale light on everyone and everything
And I stood still
Knowing that I had lost my way
Knowing that the river was calling from the night
Knowing that I was a solitary figure
Lost in America.
Categories:
unaccustomed, lifelife, father, sound, father,
Form:
Narrative
Golden dream of my recreate heart,
alike sui juris chow coram craving character .
Lacquey unaccustomed grow dumb art,
endure canoodling for chronic creature.
Reimbursing my biotic lacunae part,
gotta exhibit usance's unblemished picture.
Categories:
unaccustomed, beautiful,
Form:
Alliteration
Stalingrad
During moments I yearned for forests grown for me alone,
Caressing them in a dream,
I could sense the throbbing of the heart
Hidden beneath my ribs to bless my journey.
Summoning me with a pulse that he recognizes in me.
I heard the noise of abandoned smoke from a moment of care
Join with me,
Forcefully traversing desires to the hidden-most one.
My spirit swung toward him,
Creating a tingling
On lips that devour breaths alive.
I felt ashamed,
But the eye,
In moments—I scarcely know what to call them—that took me on another route
Toward the television, saw warplanes . . . spray death on them.
At that moment,
The fire of machine guns raked all the bodies,
And another fire raked my body when I trained my eye on him
Hesitantly inclining his head
Toward a shoulder unaccustomed to the secret of the stars of war
Or to insomnia.
Oh . . . . I leaned on it!
And when he caressed a dumbfounded person
I felt his fingers like coiling embers inside me.
Bashfulness seized the excuse this caress gave . . . and vanished,
Eliminating distance till the two of us were one.
And the eye—he moaned: May love not forgive her the eye—repeated another evasion
Toward a drizzle of men flung about in the air by just the rustling of a pilot penetrating a building
To fall on screens as the debris of breaking news.
But his breaths . . . shattering the still down of the cheek,
And turning their picture into mist as
Eddies of the screen’s corpses . . . varieties of death that they brought them.
The spirit that became a body,
The body that was sold for the sake of a touch,
The eye that was concealed in his image
And that approached the firebrand of conflagrations.
Everyone drawing close to everyone,
Everyone,
Everyone,
Everyone.
But the thunder of their machine guns splintered them:
Corpses piled on corpses,
I mean on me,
The eyes of those in it were extinguished.
They slept in a trench of silence.
My eyes’ lids parted in a wakefulness obsessed with them.
I rose … and embraced the chill
That the screens brought me in commemoration of Stalingrad.
Translated by William Hutchins
Categories:
unaccustomed, love,
Form:
Across the tulip white snow to the Cerulean horizon
That’s seemingly infinite
Like the beginnings of pure black ink on an absent, cloud white page
stands/pricks out a picturesque blood-red rose
Adorned with the sharpest of thrones
Apart and alone
And as unfathomable/incomprehensible as it may seem
As unaccustomed to probability that it is
This rose alone sprang forth and dug through
The cold-blooded splendor and majesty of winter’s crowning achievement of unadulterated snow
Alone/existing apart from the normalcy of reality
Endeavoring to resist/exist beyond the conformalcy
Sprouted fourth a rose as hungry as Summer’s glorious blazing ball of fire
As thirsty as springs abundance and life quenching desire: To bring Forth
The adamant/vigilant need
Screams upon screams upon screams
Numerous and faithful as a prosperous field of overflowing dandelion seeds
Comes forth confident words: I must exist as who I am
A warrior's cry into the blank abyss of Winter’s scape
From a blank canvas stretching forever into the future to reap:
The Blood-Red/Blood Dripping Rose’s Harvest
Awaits the Hand of God...
Categories:
unaccustomed, christian, faith, flower, magic,
Form:
Prose Poetry
They placed me in a wooden box
and then they put the lid on. They left
me to shiver the cold night through and
picked me up next day around eleven a.m.
I heard dogs bark and children play, I heard
sweet songs among the dirges; friends and relatives
said such lovely things about me that afore were quite
unheard of. Inevitably, old Uncle Jim came out with
the one about the actress and the archbishop,
and what the fallen woman said at confessional
to a rabbi who'd taken over from the priest
for the day in a spirit most ecumenical. Then
the pall-bearers at last bore the box to the
spot assigned for burial. "Ashes to ashes,
dust to dust," said the reverend with
solemn finality as they let down the
box with me inside into the yawning
cavity, and that, if you'll allow me
add, with something akin to
alacrity. Then just as he gave
the final sign
to set the spades
showering earth down,
I lifted the lid of the box where I lay,
I said to the assembled all gasping and white:
"Sorry to stop the proceedings so late in the day, but one assumption I
challenge as completely unfounded, though it's been all too readily
taken for granted:
Far be it from me to cause an upset, but I think you should know--
I'M NOT DEAD YET!"
Some of the assembled felt very let down
and made no bones about it.
Categories:
unaccustomed, appreciation, bereavement, funeral,
Form:
Concrete
Unaccustomed to happiness, we sit exiled from the light.
Coiled tight in our shells, never sharing in delight.
But like a beacon of hope showing us the path that is right.
Love has found its way and remains burning like a torch so bright.
Love has arrived like a train pulling its coaches with such might.
Memories of love seem to flicker in the carraiges moving light.
But still doubt lingers, like blinds covering happiness from our sight.
Old memories masking our thoughts, but don't let it be our blight.
Let love envelope us, with a comforting cloak and hold us tight.
There'll be no more scurrying around in the shadows cast by the night.
Time to emerge from the murkiness and past traumas, we must extradite.
Love is all we require and our love will always be non finite.
Written 2019
Inspired by Maya Angelou
Categories:
unaccustomed, feelings, love, wedding,
Form:
Rhyme
“Don't appear so scholarly, pray. Humanize your talk, and speak to be understood.”
Moliere
This is a sad decade.
Nothing is served on a plate.
You order a handling and wait.
You order a book and a pizza.
Despite all the handful ways,
frustration and "what it takes"'
you still want the same:
a story, a bite and a sup, and a visa.
You get what you ask for, again,
but you're never sea legs with yourself,
so you choose to get used to a friend,
yes, you do, unaccustomed schizo.
Don't expect it from me, pray.
All you people are good for is gambling.
May this make you sad for a day:
I want nothing but smart handling.
31.10. 2014
Categories:
unaccustomed, society,
Form:
I have been sifting through a Shadow,
And only found it a shadow indeed--
The black tresses to outline its features,
Like waking at new morning's chime.
I greeted it as though my dark and its
Would be a shade indistinct,
And find in each a same-song toil
That needed no words for which to speak.
It cast upon my unaccustomed eyes,
And in earnest I rubbed to be sure
The light was not playing tricks on me,
But no light I saw but below my door.
The Shadow bemused itself with shadows,
As a bad mother to her youth,
And so much I thought it tender true.
True! The very word is like a mist
That hungrily clings to solid ground,
Though it is dark and none can I see.
The light beneath my door is waning,
So I must love the Shadow all the more,
But the night is born to bewitch the sense;
Love is an hour that has a minute's way
Where awake or dreaming, I cannot know,
If Shadows have form in the light of day.
Categories:
unaccustomed, dark, hope, love, light,
Form:
Quatrain
So here we are.
Together again.
I won’t ask you how the years have treated you.
I know.
I remember that moment all those years ago,
how your breath caught at the sight of what
they had just put into your arms,
and your whole world contracted in an instant
until it was shrink-wrapped
around this tiny bundle
with a hospital identification band around its ankle.
It’s as if you’d never exhaled again,
love having kept you at the edge of your seat
in a simmering, 16-year panic attack.
At the cinema, in restaurants, on airplanes
and the sofa at home,
we have sat apart since,
bookending precious cargo.
But now, the middle seat has been vacated,
as we discover
we’ve become part-timers in a world
where once we were everything.
And so here we are.
The couple-turned-trio-turned-couple.
It will take some getting used to,
this new/old life,
this unaccustomed roomy feeling that seems to have
crept up on us without warning.
But a 16-year habit dies hard.
Even as we’re catching up,
finally reunited after a long separation,
comparing what we remember of each other
with what we now see,
you’re looking out of the corner of your mind’s eye,
permanently distracted.
Breathing a sigh of relief,
and a sigh.
As indeed, I must be too.
Categories:
unaccustomed, change, child, growing up,
Form:
Prose Poetry