Best Unidentifiable Poems
Asleep before the head hits the pillow
Head filled with vivid colors swirling, amassing, mixing outside the lines
Transgressions grow skyward like a bean stalk becoming a giant
Worries wander aimlessly like a cat in the night looking for a spoon
Hurts pound again, and again, first a drumstick then a sledge hammer
The kaleidoscope of confusion rotates ever faster, bed spins counter
Places cannot be escaped
Faces stare as if clothes have been robbed
Running, Flying, Drowning, Suffocating, Garbling Words, Can’t Breath,
Slow Motion, Falling, Insatiable Hunger, Unquenchable Thirst, Blood Stained, Shouting
Loaded Down, Frantically Searching Pockets, Hidden Underneath, Forgotten
Fear. All fears. Nothing but fear. Afraid. Regret. Worry. I didn’t. I really did!
Each day we pack our pockets. Cram our purses. Load our backpacks
Hang needless objects and things around our necks, over our shoulders, in the crux of our elbows, on our belts
Grip suitcases. Carry stuffed plastic grocery bags on each knuckle. Waddling to the side of the bed before crashing head on
Unknowingly still pinching the key between our left thumb and pointer finger
Hitting the bed with a massive crash
every part of the day strewn around the room like a devastating mid air explosion of a 747 littering debris, miles and miles of destruction, charred remnants, unidentifiable and randomly placed objects, out of place, disfigured, often never found
Before your head hits the pillow
Drop the things you picked up today
Take a load off
Free yourself of your burdens
Neatly set everything aside
On second thought, just pile it and let it lay where it falls
Drop your yoke
Sit down on the foot of the bed with God
Hand Him the things you still cling within sweating red fists
Briefly Examen your day
Fall asleep on His shoulder
He will gently lay your head on the pillow, loft your feet off the floor, and tuck you in.
Let Him carry your burdens, lighten your load, unpack, empty your pockets, wash your laundry, even sort and match the socks.
Travel to sleep lightly and peacefully dreaming of a new day
carrying nothing but what is truly needed.
How to describe the color of love? Might you frown in surprise if I spoke of brown? Dull, pockmarked, ocherous brown.
A tarmac of grain, stained the color of earth, that never saw rain.
One humble old table, from an oak that would fall. Who could have known the
moments recalled?
Just a scarred weathered plank, with a warp in the middle. Blight she would hide with a bright checkered cloth. Those who would sit, night after night, greeting with eyes, meeting with ears,... filling the gaps with laughter and tears
Decades were spent, over string beans, and potatoes, bridging the gap of a mid-day mishap, a chat after school, or a new family rule.
Resurrecting a family, at the end of the day, while chomping away on unidentifiable casseroles, that filled the belly, as well as the soul.
Consuming wisdom and noodles, in the comfort of home.
Who would have noticed this shabby antique, wearing wax from Crayolas, white coffee cup rings. Ink spots, and dings. And three winking holes made by father's misdeed!
(His picture-frame project, misjudging the nails! Three slender digits pierced in without fail! Hammered tight, to the top. While mother's shot through the roof!
Who could have ever guessed that a well-worn, weathered old piece of grainy brown oak could be the glorious color of love?
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See the people watcher
Still as a mantis
Endless ambient sounds, unidentifiable
Does not prevent his gaze
He studies her eyes; her smile
And undresses her mind
The watcher finds himself
Transfigured
Her thoughts are not easily uncovered
A coffin, sealed; undefiled
The watcher will only find him,
Looking out as he looks in
Looking through my tainted window of gloom
grey skies, rain falling, feeling sorrow
impatiently wanting life to resume,
will things change, get better tomorrow,
sure that grass was greener the other side,
not walking a mile in your well trod shoes
now ashamed looking for somewhere to hide
didn't realise how easily I would bruise,
underestimate this feeling of loss
an unidentifiable man anymore
floundering like a wounded albatross,
indecent intentions, now I deplore
apologises are unheard, your not here
didn't know how so much I loved you dear.
A Seasoning of Scent
Each season wears the scent of its own seasoning
A signature perfume – wafting spice that beckons
Awakening
When my memories come out of hiding shadows
For misty autumn Sunday mornings when a bouquet
Of frying bacon and brewing coffee play tag
To rush up the stairs to look for dreamers missed by the dawn;
Titillating the deep recesses of amnesia
With a sachet of floral elegance
Gathered up in spring days of sweet Daphne’s mood
As apple blossom aromas drift on vernal billowing -
A lilac scented ballet and spring rain on dry earth
Or linen sheets dried on the line –
Alluring incense of roasting turkey or simmering stewpots
Rushing through icy nights of early twilight
When falling leaves give up their essence -
Aromatic balm, fanned by cinnamon and nutmeg,
Flavoring ambrosial apples
In teasing allure of fresh cut pine and fir –
Bayberry candles drifting invitation
To frolic through captivating potpourris
Of holiday cookies from the oven
Teasing from waiting anticipation
The smell of new fallen snow
Or bergamot’s balm on a winter afternoon
When hot cocoa memories sashay through recollections
Embossed in flashbacks of new mown grass
For the boys of summer or watching clouds
Bathed in tones of copper – wet dogs and towels
Sending up a strong whiff of summer
Fanned by salt spray remnants, barbecue grills
And ozone’s thundering incense –
The anamneses of dark chocolate to entice a lover’s heart
Drawing me back into a sacred aura
Elusive, unidentifiable, beckoning me with bouquet of grace
From the eternal perfumery
3-25-21
Contest: Favorite Scents
Sponsor Chantelle Anne Cooke
Darkest night and longest hours:
Hours to labor and
Hours to trip in the primitive ooze of repetition
Hours to catch up or trade for spare minutes,
Hours with eyes only half aware
Of life and its warnings,
Lifeless and blissless hours of emptiness,
Hours that never end,
Hours of yawning and stale coffee,
Hours measured in radio songs and cigarettes.
Darkest light before the day,
With shades of grey and
Unidentifiable lumps of black.
Humped, dark masses of human
Trudge through the hours
With brooms and coffee and sleeplessness
And floor buffing machines
Humming angelic tunes like flagellant dirges.
Shapeless figures with no place to go
For hours, no home to fine
For hours, no peace of mind
For listless hours.
Moonless hours for the streetlamps
And for the peddlers of lawlessness.
They count their hours in dimes
And nickles and quarters,
But never pennies or half dollars,
And never by retracing foot steps,
If they can help it.
Hours for the fools that sleep.
Hours for the watchman on his beat.
Hours for the black blood
Puddled and undiscovered on the blackest streets.
Still to come is the hour of discovery.
Hours spent despairingly counting
The slow progression of passing hours.
A second hand that drips like cold molasses.
A minute hand that tortures
A set of wide and soulless eyes.
An hour hand that doesn't move at all.
Rituals and rites mark the odorous plumes of hours unseen.
An echoing scream amplifies the darkness.
The howl of sirens follow in the distance.
Hours of violence or depravity or sin or pleasure.
These are the hours set aside
For the ageless telling of tales
And the insomnia of music makers.
All the misery of graveyard hours
If for no other reason
Than the gravity of their six foot title.
Species sundry sentential
Line the lost lowered loft
Whose weary wayward-ceiled
Roof raises itself over the lot:
The diverse specimen bottles of pharmaceutic potations,
Mortared and mixed as by the Hawthornean sawbones
And apothecary, yclept, poetically rendered: "The Quack Haunted."
(Aye,) Haunted and hunted he was, by that vile old crone,
Whose life he did not decrease one iota nor span,
With the ingested application of one of his odious elixirs,
By the harridan so quaffed.
Yet, the obstreperous host of the soldierly soldiery of dozens of nations,
Yclept herein by the appellation, "Plagiarism," they fairly encroach upon
The tableau naught but ominously.
And thus ominous be also the tone of this,
Which 'tis my most perfervid and prayerful hope that
'Tis utterly unclassifiable, unidentified and unidentifiable.
I do not care for the onerousness of being pinned down,
For living up to the hoary and draconian standards of the vast
Collect of poetry-of poetries.
This I will not brook.
(But before I end this ebullient and elliptical encomium,
I must turn once again to that species of alliterativeness that
Provided the nutriment for it and me: the "grist for my mill,"
As the archaic idiom has it: )
Therefore, these things
Have henceforth
Come casually
To their
End.
There, in the kitchen of this modest dwelling,
A cheerful room, in spite of its lack of grandness
Home to the little family
Who gathered together each evening
For string beans and mashed potatoes,
Eating with relish at the rectangle of oak
They recounted a day filled with stories
Of the playground mishap,
Of the clearance sale at the hardware store,
Significant things or things without matter
The scene reconstructed, each night of the week
With new accounts of a busy day
A ritual never lacking in importance.
This coming together at the end of the day,
While chomping away on an unidentifiable casserole,
Filling the belly, as well as the soul,
Consuming tidbits of noodles, and wisdom and the love of being together.
Until, one day it was time to retire
The humble piece of oak with the four wobbly legs
For something more presentable. Something more impressive,
That would serve the expanse of a family
Which had grown in numbers throughout the years.
How could anyone have known the significance
Of that aging old table with its warp in the middle?
The sag she had tried to hide with a checkered cloth.
Those who sat there day after day, hardly aware of it's meaning.
This old oak piece, having withstood crayon marks, spilled milk,
Even small holes from the time when father, while repairing a picture frame,
Had accidently hammered nails all the way through and into it's top.
Who knew that a weathered old piece of wood would be witness
To such love and importance
And in itself, was more worthy than
Anything this family could have ever imagined?
“Oh, not in my town,” you doth so loudly protest.
But I tell you, they are even in your governments!
The first sign is~ suppression of your free speech.
We let them, outlaw words, while leaders sun at the beach?
You will find that your country,is really no longer your own,
All your taxes go to others from other countries, unknown.
Your country’s flag is burnt in the streets with livid hate and glee?
By masked protestors, filling the streets with grand superiority.
The USA policemen and women are killed with joy and glee?
And people run for President, supporting this inhumane tragedy?
When, in your country, your rights are out the patriotic window.
Be afraid, be very afraid……of this Communistic horror show.
You will be jailed for words that you wrote a friend online?
In free countiries, you write as you choose, and all is fine…
I watch, news from international servers and stations.
Powerful nations are stealing your rights, its citizens,given a ration.
The Nazis march in your streets, to destroy another nation.
Their hate so obvious and ill, that it is a cause for celebration?
These same people, would have gladly cheered on…the Holocaust?
Today, wear masks and scream for death~indeed their souls are lost!
Their heroes killed babies, youngsters, parents in their own homes.
And butchered the young at a dance..as the daybreak’s sun has shown.
A butcher shop of dead, young people unidentifiable, they were in parts.
These monsters then killed their families, and destroyed homes and farms.
So the friends of this bloody mayhem, do march in your “free”streets.
Supported by the UN and all of them, Satan’s souls, a most delicious treats.
Most nations want this nation,wiped off the face of this now maliciciuos earth.
Satan will welcome them, that Fallen Angel, with his evil smile of dirth.
God bless the thousands of innocents murdered a year ago today..
I have grieved for them all, each day nonstop without allay.
The media has largely ignored this most tragic event of my life.
I hope I awaken some souls to this horror and world strife.
Bless and release the starving, lonely, abused and dead hostages!
The 10/7/2024
In Honor of the fallen during the Nova Massacre.
November 7th, 2023! I will never forget!
It's funny how once your heart starts beating your body starts to decay.
It's crazy how we go through our lives thinking we're actually living, but we're dying.
Going Day by Day saying, "Live It like your Last."
And Indeed it could be your last because your heart can stop beating as fast as a snap.
But some 2000 years ago a man was born.
Who's alive today and helps us get through our storms.
"Peace Be Still" and he calms the stormy seas.
Waves his hand over water and wine is the replacement on this scene.
One word and the dead heart starts to beat, and that isn't even his most Miraculous feat!
Because he was beat until he was bloodied and unidentifiable!
The same stripes on his back are the ones that fly across our flag.
Burdened to carry the bridge that believers can cross, to get to the land that they're promised.
Stakes in his Hands! Stakes in his Feet! Not Philly or Cheese.
Red Blood gushes out that turns our black souls white with a holy gleam.
Spear in his side so that we can be by his side.
"Father they know not what they do!"
He drops his head then he.......... Dies.
Buried in a tomb that's borrowed.
Only to rise tomorrow's tomorrow
Giving us a chance to repent our sins and believe so that after death, we will live.
But only after acceptance that he died for you and that you believe that his love is true.
I guess I can finally understand the cliché line.
"Everybody Dies but not Everybody Lives."
the box i opened
smelled like a haunted house
the scenario that I planed for today
will not occur
this agreement between me and
the awareness of possibilities
these measured scenarios
had created unidentifiable risks
its flaps soft with the opening an closing of time
dust at the bottom created the layers
progressively you were packed away
on the highest shelf
instructing the skin to crystallize was
included with the directions
as were the batteries and some string
voices in the shape of pentagons
raised them selves up on edge and started
down a long corridor of significant violations
so many of them passed me
jangling keys and questions,
measuring their height, width, and depth
in an effort to implement themselves
I peeled the tape away from dry and dusty cracks
the brane colapsed,
its particles released
floating up into my eyes, nose ,and throat
the light catches them dancing
in the pure space between,
suspended form
this paper-mache daydream
an elusive face hangs,
quarantined in mid air
exposed to nothing
at the beginning of nothing at all
a large unidentifiable creature
was washed up bloody on the beach
and a four km long circular structure was spotted
slowly crawling across the ocean floor
elliptical bases held up by pillars
are resting underwater outside the coasts
and there are pyramids lurking
beneath the Bermuda triangle
there's something that has to know
her deep secret will eat us up,
play with our minds, and teach us to find
the paraphernalia and minutia of our own bodies--
of our own world--
before we cross the water
and see ourselves as powerful giants
who can conquer the elements.
and the men with their helmets
are in awe of their own actions
as they set up the trussing
like she never created it first
her deep secret will eat them up
and leave them bloody on the beach
her deep secret will eat us up
out on the hungover gray moor
having morning coffee with the old man of the sea
we say nothing in this silvered wooden shack
lots of coats to put on, it's all very humdrum
the boat cuts through small yapping wavelets
possibly never to return, but of course we will
the mind vaults vast arenas in this place
we pass the westernmost cape on the continent
we lower the killing nets
waiting, trawling, smoking, it's a cold day
at this moment, the universe is so small, enclosed
like one cloudberry, in a much bigger bunch
all exotic fish we find like
two species of endangered turtles
even a few angry sharks
most of it unidentifiable by-catch
at the end of the day, what a haul of slime
all these words stinking in the shrinking twilight
regurgitated without end, coins without face
cliche, our deity, ready for blood sacrifice
Hidden under the honeysuckle
and hibiscus
Lies a stone.
And as I sit, drinking a gin and tonic
Looking over the spent plates
where crusty bread
fried calamari, which is a fancy word for squid,
and two Oysters Rockefeller
sat
until recently consumed by two parents
both in that awkward state of freedom
and longing
when their child is at camp,
out past the ducks on granite rocks
puffing themselves up
flapping their wings
towards afternoon sun on Winnipesaukee
my thoughts and eyes are drawn back
to the wheel of stone
leaning against the rotting wall of railroad ties
covered in a remoulade of Honeysuckle
Rose of Sharon
and other viney things
that are unidentifiable to me.
It has been painted during its time
but the paint is faded and chipped
and the feeling is that the stone
has outlived the painter.
Yet I do wonder.
What was its job 50, 100, 200
years ago?
Was it in a mill?
Did it lie flat, grinding?
Did it roll, upright, crushing things?
What else did they use round stones for?
Is this what retirement for a working stone is?
Cast to the side,
forgotten
hidden under the honeysuckle
and hibiscus
in an alley next to a waterside Wolfboro restaurant
where parents sit
Looking at Winnipesaukee
over spent plates of bread, squid and Oysters Rockefeller
thinking of a child at camp.
In love with a woman
who stares at the mirror daily
and doesn't like what she sees
She goes hard in the paint
redefining her identity.
I enjoy reaffirming
who she is to me
by telling her, her beauty
is unchanging to me
The reflection she sees
is not a confirmation of
who she is to me.
More deeply than
silver coated silica
she has a great deal of
talents, attributes, and
ambition, none of which
add numbers on a scale
but add weight to her character
which is so heavy to me
She's unfiltered, unflawed
and undeniably beautiful
So stop looking in the mirror
for confirmation; let this be
an affirmation.
You have a beauty
unidentifiable, words
indescribable
a perfect way to convey
what reflections cannot say
You give brilliance to beauty
So look in my eyes
and let the windows of my soul
be all the affirmation you seek.