Best Unowned Poems
Petal of limpid life veils the naked eye,
shadow and spoil refrains the question ideal;
asking not within,
without ---
dark night shines,
while day grins ---
The answer unowned,
unowned by us the source of impeccable enquiry;
seasoned for patient resolve ---
tempered and unafraid,
in fortitude stone,
alone,
yet the voices of many
(lead us home)
****Written in 2000, my very first sonnet****
My heart enfolded the hued horizon of dazzling dawn,
the yearning brush soaked the sunburst colors,
painted a Monet garden blooming with my love,
unfurled the facsimile of your floral face,
adroitly adorned.
The luring luster of lilac rose lined your lips,
quivered with the cadence of the dancing dew.
As rhapsody rippled in my heart’s mesmerized meadow,
at the edge of stalled time I soared in euphoria,
endlessly enchanted.
In the velvet vale of my mind fashioned by fervor,
I carved a charming channel of longing to reach you.
The climbing cloud of my craving came down in a torrent,
making my melodic love a meandering river,
earnestly enthralled.
The oasis of my mind one day dried in the desert,
dripping cloud drenching the desiccated passion didn’t stay long,
disappeared with the draft of the summer wind of discontent,
as in the sand storm the dregs of divested desire drifted away,
utterly unowned.
The river of longing in my abandoned valley got lost,
the fervent flowers I gave you withered in your vase,
but your memory preserved some in perception,
the ones you liked the most,
amazingly adoring.
When in the lonely hours they would appear apparently alive,
take you to the valley of flower we had been together once,
it was me they would then let you know,
and allure you with my unwritten absence,
eternally engraved.
All we eat is elk meat, boiled elk, roasted elk, elk jerky
sometimes fried elk if we get bear or whale oil,
oh, and sometimes elk soup,
for four months we've subsisted exclusively on elk
except for occassional dog meat, candlefish or duck,
the elk have become our saviors, and our culinary suffering,
yet it keeps us nourished like some kind of ape predators,
Clark has officially named the massive boulder at the front of the bay
Cape Disappointment on account that its now March 1806
and since November no one has spotted a merchant vessel
nor has any trading post been discovered along the coast in either direction,
frankly its astounding, has the world done gone forgotten that the Columbia exists,
everyone is gettin uppidy as bull frogs
and we've had enough rainy hours here to last ten lifetimes,
to hell with the sailors, we've gotta race to finish
and we ain't gonna get beat by a disappointment or by a sinister suprise,
Load'em up!...
Since coming out of the Rocky Mountains
like a migrating pack of wolves pursuing the scent of a bloodied den
I've been spending more time away from the river's rigors
providing fresh meats for the mission that we leave hanging along designated banks,
for the first time I feel liberated from the fear of failure
winter can no longer hurts us,
the great mysteries of the continental crossing have been revealed
through their savagery and splendor
the tribes have been touched with a new spirit of survival
animals ferocious and exotic have been tasted and classified
we have learned what these landscapes can lend to farming legions,
the mountains no longer menace us, we know how to travel their pain,
as my horse feeds on the grass of unowned soil
I reflect on my moments of intemperance with the natives
when I thrashed a Chinook thief into bleeding shame,
the order I gave to burn their village to silent ash when my dog and saddle were stolen
fortunately that was not necessary because I got them back,
the time I was meanly mocked by a Nez Perce Indian for eating dog meat
and threatened to split his skull with my tomahawk if he ever insulted me again,
J.A.B.
b>Time Management and the Art of Throwing Alarm Clocks
by
Lemuel Griffiths
March, 2,017
Apparently, there's a God damned dog out there - according to my neighbour,
And his wife, Thelma, needs to understand this and know about the mess and understand it's consistency and have this information and keep it and hide it and all five minutes before my alarm goes off.
The trees sway in the distance as I run the water into the kettle - wiping my eyes with a knuckle.
The gulls saw past., thrilled at the the new morn.
In 200 hundred years, they'll all be gone.., and these trees.., and that neighbour and his nemesis and Thelma and the alarm clock and me.
The kettle clicks and the steam rises -
Up and onto the large mirror.., made of sand and heat that the former tenants put on the ceiling.
I look up..., and down.. we're both amused for a second.., The phone rings.
It flips onto record mode
A voice , a man.., an angry man.
There's an authority in his voice.., like a..,
Damn it.., my boss.
It's not the weekend anymore.
His weekend, mine.., Thelmas, the dogs
The weekend is unowned now.., by anyone.
Gone, never to return.
The first one of March, never to return..,
This March, the dead end job.
And all the things come.., right along to pass.
Once in a while..,
I wish back,
With all my beating heart..,
For those glorious and golden five minutes of dream and non existence - I lost..,
Before that Dog damned God. <>
B52s above the Aleutians?
It never was a Red Dread global mission.
Fidel was just Galician patrician,
and Ho and Mao were scholarly Confucians.
They wore those uniforms like horsehair vests,
to carve from abject nothingness an entity,
a national and regional identity,
ingredients which only coalesced
when nascent nations donned that soviet skin,
abhorrent to the blinkered Baywatch mind:
unowned, untethered, boundless, non-aligned –
but with Kalashnikovs airlifted in.
As Mary Jane moved in on moonshine stills,
the five-year-olds rehearsed their fallout drills.
Exit the chaos
from which you are derived
the Prince of Providence
makes his existence
felt with head held miles high
for he has survived
against all the uneven odds
acknowledging the victory
he gives a slight accepting nod
while at loss for words
for he has exceeded
more than ever deserved
sitting upon his throne, unowned
at the highest peak
existence has known
Hear me Great Destroyer, conqueror of lesser men
from heaven or hell, or the wishing well
from what shadow did you ascend?
a shadow who dominates the light
the prince leaves prints
of a powerful foresight
a kiss goodnight, for the waning age
not one sole survive, to witness his rage
a chaos reign, for all the accepted
learn to control it, or join the neglected
I live within the golden gates
survivor of the olden days
staring frozen by his gaze
stuck for eternity
in my own mind maze
Where have you been?
What have you witnessed?
How did you become
master to the submissive?
How did you beat the
horror you faced?
The Prince of Destruction
is of calamity made
Messages from my brain
Fill the pages of my thought stream
And if again I guess myself
A renaissance, I'm over doubt
What's better than loving life
Can't bring me down without a knife
Come to steal my happiness
Take a slice I guess
You obviously need it
More than I do
My flying form
Is rare these days
Too much of it
I'm in the grave
My dying art
Is it appreciated?
Does it matter
It's my creation
You don't think I'm rational
Your just not being practical
Enough to realize the realist I am
For I can be you
Without you ever knowing
What does that mean
Who is he really
Another imperfection?
His minds broken and silly
Lie to yourself its better that way
For I know the truth
I'm in my hay day
Which temptation
Did he choose
He surely sold his soul
To the dark blues
He's surely sinful
Or so they say
Did he go out in a flash
Or fade away?
Will his ghost
Dangle chains
He's just plain rotten
Or so they say
Only I'll know
What god I've chosen
I've had my moment
Maybe I'm unowned
You just owe
Your life to faith
Are you still alive
If they take it away?
Who's to say
What's right and wrong
It was just your perception
All along
You see the world
Upside down
And have worn that frown
Now far too long
Just for your curiousity
Which choice did I make
My fate?
All of them together
Because they make up me
For better or for worse
The iciness of his smile
seeped like osmosis through the crevices
left on my face by the squint rooted
on fires of a loud and angry sun.
A tempest stormed across the dusty, red sky
following the wake of his Packard of no color.
His eyes with their misted askant look
found us like the rain
and the dark clouds took cover.
Unowned feathers fled the frightened fields
like tumbleweeds amid superior dusts of sleep
wielding easily the pale club of the wind
and swirling the soul of a flower strike.
- an utter-able chill -
Where lurched the deeds of green thrilling light
with thinned new fragile yellows?
Spoiled and stale like the scant and stunted ears of corn
not able to sprinkle the acres
that had fallen into battlefields.
Picket's Charge in woods that stuttered and clapper-clawed
songs that stirred the few scrawny birds that stayed on.
Sharecroppers in the Dust Bowl
walked on loose strands of primitive tightropes.
One could hear the blast across the Great Plains
all the way to Boise City.
Blood oozed from the side of my palate,
decadal fertilizer at long last leaching the dry ground.
As I lay dying -
he reached toward the heavens – swanking the deed
and cackling like a hexed slime eel.
Today we honor those who paid our price of violence
to protect us from each Other's mono-colonizing excesses,
we remember deep respect for those who have done their best
when this was too often not sufficient
to return to a resonantly healthy life together
in their own families,
prior spacious loves
now fenced
and ruined.
We recognize and would redeem
returns to less peace
found in Business As Usual
uncivil re-immersion.
We wonder
with our unowned feelings
and stranger-anxiety thoughts,
reverberating through second generations
of militarized domestic stress,
about seductively monopolistic economic
and reductively monotheistic
nationalistic political values
without CommonSense
win/win humane enterprise.
How and when holy patrimonial wars
and systemic RightWing terror
might politically re-erupt
and economically corrupt
this dark premonitional MemorialNight silence
of EarthMothers' green organic health Day
celebrating springtime wealthy forests,
panentheistic eco/neuro-systems
inter-re-ligioning
HolySpirit EarthNatural
indigenously wise preparations
for a robustly peaceful
and prosperous Fall harvest
With no sacred EarthMother need
to invoke GodTalk blessings
to honor those who pay OneFather's price of violence
to protect us from each Other's monopolistic
nationalistic
anthro-supremacist
straight white privileged preoccupations
fear and anger triggering
multi-generational
systemic militarized trauma
win/lose neurosystemic drama
of monotheistic GodTalk ideations.
Three words comprise the frame my son last made:
his soft "Hey, dad" to greet me on the phone,
his single, loving "Papa" with our last embrace--
and in between?...just Mark, the man to fill
a thousand frames invisibly in love
that clings unbound to arms, to blood, to tears...
who threw his hisory away unowned
and paid for it with memory alone.
Eleven years are here to testify
the sweetness in the settlement was not
enough, that though the picture glows
with spirit timelessness, it shuns the touch,
the laughter, the uncertainty that spears
the mind, seizes on the unexplored,
and must rejoice inside the now.
It is for you who read, to intercede
in the rejoicing...I must let it go
a little while, although I know
there is no need to pray
that Mark and I will follow through
within the morning's deathless day.
~
Played into this, was anything ever felt that meant.
Betrayed since beginning, layed in ur tracks is how it went.
Spending these moments, were never spent, its meaningless.
Backwords, background, let's pretend, ill give u what u wish.
Pretending to be played, let's forget, I didn't c her much suspense.
Think I'm in the wrong wasn't. It, not guilty, no defense.
Victory, already spent, unowned, thought u knew, fine priint.
Contract broken, hope u was hopin, hope its quenched.
Gave you all of it, left me twisted but I had sense.
Thought u had it all not my all, not my all, this is it.
After they have taken
everything you still have
a stray, unowned patch of sunlight
finding its way in and spending
a little of its time keeping
you company, playing around
your feet.
The things they discarded
on their way out have already
broken into bloom
and even the empty spaces
have become polished pools
waiting for the moon to bathe
its image in tonight.
But don't get too smug.
Tomorrow they'll be back
with a bill for services
rendered by the sun and moon.
Then, just when you think
that will be the last transaction,
they will issue you a bill
for each thought you have,
calculated on gestation time
and its estimated weight.
There will be no escape
other than to become a ghost
incapable of thought,
twitching inside one of their
computers, lost forever
between one and nought.
Three words comprise the frame my son last made:
his soft "Hey, dad" to greet me on the phone,
his single, loving "Papa" with our last embrace—
and in between?.....just Mark, the man to fill
a thousand frames invisibly in love
that clings unbound to arms, to blood, to tears...
who threw his history away unowned
and paid for it with memory alone.
Sixteen years are here to testify
that sweetness in the settlement was not
enough, that though the picture glows
with spirit timelessness, it shuns the touch,
the laughter, the uncertainty that spears
the mind, seizes on the unexplored,
and must rejoice inside the now.
It is for you who read, to intercede
in the rejoicing...I must let it go
a little while, although I know
there is no need to pray
that Mark and I will follow through
within the morning's deathless day.
~
He runs around
Cleaning up her mess
Secretly wishing her
To let down her dress
...and stand
She follows him to death
Making him pay
Holding her heart
While he prays
...to god
They submit to rules
Acting like fools
Let someone else take the wrap
Comfort lines their beds
On satin cases they lay their head
As colored pegs line the map
...of a world
Unowned
Written by Trudy Schrader on 05-28-2022
My journey is no longer mine
Owned by
Deceptive roads deceitful milestones
And friends who turned enemies
Also enemies who never became friends
After so much of living
Even death is unreachable
But I've sternly decided
To enter the last mile with a breathless poem
With whispering pine-trees clouds and rivers
I'll seep into soil like rain wearing my tuxedo of dark verses
Wet in tears of joy and sadness of a few
Whom I loved with overflowing hurt I caused
Before I do that
I want to sell springs
Wrapped in shivers of winters
Except the volumes of autumn I've packed to carry along
For unlike the rest
There never was a moment where heaps of dry leaves
Had ever unowned me