Best Unstitched Poems
The atmosphere rings with the bell like calls
of the plover flock, long before they are spotted.
The flight herringbones a grey fedora sky.
Markings of white and coal black weave,
wing-stitched, a blanket maker’s dream.
Sigh makers they close on the beach
at high tide, the horizon shivers the
sand blanches. These ravishing scavengers
light on the tattered edge of wet to dry,
dawdling with the dead.
Plovers are diminutive scroungers, one-legged
dancers, hopping to the pull of tide, dining on
crab-eggs in black-tie and feathered tails, their
gray skull caps lined with a black brow.
Sparrow-small birds dress to the nines.
A feast for the birds, fall crisps, crab moltings,
go on for endless miles. September is beginning
and soon winged ones will fly to sunny shores.
The cold Atlantic will moan for the loss of music,
the unstitched sky will part. The avian choir is off
to the mud flats of Carolina.
First Published Eunoia Review January 2015
The melody of the silent wind spoke
to the lonely road towards the twilight hour.
Cute footsteps of the moonbeam
thrilled the seashore besides the divine power.
Sweet giggle of the heartbeat of the waves
embroidered the fashion coat of all unstitched dreams
some are designers, some are ethnics
Like the road separated by sea and streams .
Its been a long time,nobody passed by this path !
Whenever the road glimpses a falling star,
By closing her grey eyes ,
she yearns for her most awaiting dearest passenger....!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oLCHXfkGOIw
Perhaps if we were to take apart grief as we unravel life
one single moment unstitched pulled out of time
we'd begin to see that death is only a silent passage
and we need not bear the loss alone,
The memories of our coverlet years of love
will drive us home *
Perchance, mayhap, we can take it by the hand like a seer,
"we were born to exist and disappear" said the Mysticeer
and I for one believe that death is the encoding of life;
The silver threads of Mercy are weaved inside God's blanket
big enough to warm each widow, grieving parent, and child
As long as we love well, while we are still here,
death cannot take away our loved ones, nor their time on earth.
In Love And Light, Your Mystic Rose
I am garnet Aphrodite,
vampire rose ~
the huntress of halcyon
wrestling with love and limerence
bleeding for the soul and spirit
of smoke-kissed sepals
stretching towards the sky
drawing you in delicate dreams
lost in luscious light
while these lips tremble
to taste the tight temperance
of true temptation…
and in the ache of aloneness
I still am fluent in
the dialect of devotion
the sacred symphony
to serenade a shield-maiden saga
choosing inner battles
for I belong where
the balm of burning balance
blooms to the sound
of thriving thorns
and murmuring myrtles...
I am not unstitched by silence
but tested by the trials
of wild-woven withdrawal ~
a sun-soaked sapphire
aligning the anguish
swirling through surging spells
connecting scattered
cosmic brushstrokes
to beautifully drape destiny
in pulsing pixels
pigmented with Seijaku...
I place my fingers
along the charismatic chest
of soft fuchsia walls,
tracing the tints of tremors
climbing as addictive vines
amidst cold crevices
to reach my skin
sighing to be within the
palms of patient passion
I will remain warmed
in the kaftan kismet
of a longing laced
in cobalt peacock promises
beaded with golden amulets
carved with cursive cravings
we are the wishful flares ~
the world cannot fathom.
but in the starvation
of collided touch
we do not phase ~
we fearlessly swell
into the deathless space of faith
where the spring breeze
phrases our
initials in sunset mauve...
O fragrant field to my mind,
paint me within the
stirring sentiments of your spine...
I own your signature ~
starry-silver strength
braiding my henna-hued hair
into a universal bun
of beloved blissfulness…
They said they saw it tethered once..
A cloud upon a leash.
A swelling breath of silver threat..
Just straining for release.
It trembled like a caged-out roar..
A pulse beneath the sky.
The kind of force that hums before..
The world forgets it’s dry.
But storms don’t kneel to human hands..
They don’t obey or wait.
You cannot chain a spinning wrath..
Or bargain down its fate.
For deep within that coiling mass..
A hunger twists and grows.
A spiral born of thunderous clash..
Where only chaos knows.
The sky collapsed in charcoal sheets..
The wind began to scream.
A tornado gave a savage howl..
Light pierced the vast unseen.
It tore through fields like sharpened teeth..
Ripped roots from sacred ground.
A beast unbound, it hunts beneath..
No mercy to be found.
Roofs were lifted like they weighed..
No more than a feather flies.
Homes unstitched and flung away..
To dance in broken skies.
The roads were scars, the trees were bones..
The earth itself laid bare.
And every scream was swallowed whole..
By fury in the air.
It spun with wild, unholy grace..
A god that would not yield.
A ruthless hand with no soft place..
No conscience left concealed.
A perfect storm of heat and cold..
Of pressure torn apart.
Where nature’s breath turns fierce and bold..
And rips the human heart.
They called it "weather" nothing more..
A system passing through.
But stood too close, and you’d have sworn..
It stared right back at you..
Alive with rage, with ancient might.
A force we can’t appease..
No leash can hold that violent flight..
No hand can calm the breeze.
So let them speak of skies as tame..
Of forecasts neatly drawn.
But storms don’t answer to a name..
Just pure in fury's form.
For when the clouds begin to twist..
And silence starts to cease.
You’ll learn the truth none can resist..
No cloud was on a leash.
At first, the rope was thick as a trunk~
I could balance on it sleeping.
Then years pared it down to a clothesline,
then a thread, trembling with my breath.
Grocery bags became sandbags.
Stairs grew teeth.
My shadow pooled at my feet
like a dropped coat.
One morning, I unstitched the hem
of my own skin.
Thread by thread,
I learned the grammar of hunger~
not the sharp want of before,
but the slow, voweled enough.
Now the rope’s a filament,
a hair of light.
I tread softly.
One first flight, Columbia’s name.
Seven souls aboard, bound for fame.
Six days, then ten, experiments thrive,
Eighty hearts of science, dreams alive.
Sixteen days, the Earth they skim,
Reentry calls—light fades dim.
Tick-tick, hiss-hiss, crack-crack—a sound,
A breach unseen, the heat unwound.
1.67 pounds, a foam unseen,
Pierced the wing, unstitched the dream.
40 miles high, the flames collide,
Mach eighteen, as heat did stride.
Mach fifteen—a fiery scream,
The air ignites, the fragile seams.
Seven names, carved deep in space,
Their sacrifice, a lasting grace.
At 9:00 a.m., a nation cried,
29 months, the fleet must bide.
Tick-tick, sigh-sigh, hush-hush—we wait.
Columbia’s legacy will navigate.
Eighty dreams and the minds they fed,
We honor the fallen, their voices not dead.
creatures of the shadows of the dawn and the dusk
older than iron and clay ..blood and rust
the secrets of darkness surviving on the thoughts of others
unstitched by imagination when eyelids are uncovered
legends told through history and the ages of time
the lore of folklore in the subconscious mind
the strength of a god like lightening to a tree
the unarmed lumberjack bringing the forest to its knees
the true king of the jungle bipedal in stride
the forest a hay stack with a needle to hide
the magicians of flora and fauna cast spells of disbelief
sillohettes fragmented images behind the shadows of leaf
no shaman nor outcast can ever compete
with the masters of the forest and all of their feats
the legends remain shrouded in mystery
the monster untamed throughout all of history
many a men have tried on their tracks
many a men have never come back
thin moon hangs in the blurring light
when the red tape of work ends
day's end
before darkness darts onto idling pillows
a too slight shine to navigate the strain of living
wounds unstitched
like a heart unhealing from over-crowded transgressions
a feel that's too familiar
nestled in the treads of tired
where we can't always control the skidding
crescent moon
dangling, unsettled in the sky
shrunk in a sparseness of graying
pinched edges from a light threadbare
unable to lift toil from labor's bones
haggling for some salvation
Travelling upon the dusty roads of finite unwinding existence,
Grit seconds embed in the treads of ragged unstitched shoes,
The day turns to night with resigned, mute inevitability
And night turns to day in return with no other way to choose.
The present is either always here or never here at all,
For it arrives and fades out a sub-atomic second split,
The snap of a finger, the blink of an eye, the crack of a whip,
So the present doesn't really exist, in any way you look at it.
The future is the time after the present or only the present in waiting,
This being the case, which it probably is, then, the future may not be,
In a perpetual flow of fluid disintegration and leaving alone,
And then becoming the past, and left for dead, recombinant memory.
None of us have a future, not as the term of substance we use,
As if it were a promise of opportunity and life of living treasures,
When it is nothing more than the present to be, or that which has ceased to be,
A belief process in occurrence, recurrence and insubstantial measures.
Yet, more so, there is love and faith and hope, yes, these gifts
Establish our philosophic future more than the passage of time, land and sea;
For humanity is as humanity does, and the only potential future it has
The only substance possessed of it, is to be the best it can be.
No matter how fleeting the cosmic arc through time’s relativity,
The enduring and transcendent nature of cycles of birth and death
Allow for the chance, the evolutionary drive, to better what has been,
In exacting change, no matter how small, no matter the depth and breadth.
Now the grit seconds embedded in the unstitched treads may be
Diamonds or dirt, depending on the way we walk or the pressure of each foot,
Our trajectory across the landscape and surfaces we step on,
Characterises our being by how we move or how we stay put.
We may stray from the path, and we will, and we may stumble and fall,
It is the getting up and moving on when all is done and said,
The direction we take and the way we conduct ourselves in approach
Defines our lives, those in our wake, those by our side and up ahead.
They called her Alice,
but perhaps her true name was Smoke,
rising slow and silent
from letters never sent,
from altars crumbled beneath
the cold gaze of forgotten saints,
from lips that kissed her only to still her breath.
She did not fall.
She transcended.
There is a sacred difference,
between shattering
and choosing the void.
She stepped beyond the back of her own reflection,
where silver fractures whispered secrets
older than time’s first prayer,
and her eyes held the quiet sorrow
of gods who have forgotten mercy.
The wormhole was no place,
but an unspoken hymn,
a rift in the fabric of becoming,
curved like a question
too holy for a mother’s voice,
too fragile for an angel’s touch.
No rabbits greeted her,
only warnings draped in silence,
clocks weeping timeless tears,
knowing the pain of counting
souls that vanish between moments.
In that other world,
she wore her scars like relics,
held her shadow like a prayer,
whispering softly,
“I forgive the absence
of your surrender.”
She met herself,
not in cold mirrors,
but in the trembling hush of ancient trees,
in the ache beneath forgotten songs,
in the boy she once was,
before the world demanded
she choose
between breath and belonging.
She bowed not to queens,
but unstitched their crowns,
thread by sacred thread,
until all that remained
was dust,
and the infinite silence of grace.
And when she reached the edge,
there was no light,
no voice,
no door.
Only her own heartbeat:
steady, eternal
like the first drop of rain
falling
on a city
that forgot her name,
but still remembers her soul.
Your name comes to my lips
when I kiss and reach bliss
yet you have naught to do with it
This unconscious rememberance is recognition of how
I hold on tight while letting go
like a snake
hanging head dangling down from the bough
bearing it all
bending from the weight of the fruit
I gave too much
like the branch
I break
like a piggy bank smashed
with a hammer made of kisses
the hiss
All that mattered was how much you could get
So tough
it was
to wake up
The light
dawning through seams sewn so carefully together
and so easily unstitched when stretched
It's not a glitch
I come unhinged
More of you falls out each time
I leave
more of you behind
Letting in that light in his eyes
shining into mine
I learned to face my lies
Your name
comes to my lips like a proof of life
We live and died once, or twice
Pay the endless price
to try again with a hand that holds
the needle and pulls
the thread
requires me to remember how I bled
Let’s not go,
let’s not reach anywhere.
The toenails have started digging in the earth,
to make peace with the distress response
of the bruised hunger for transactional surrender.
And the surrogate mother will abandon
the child for the father who had
run away in pursuit of pleasure, like others
sowing his wild oats in rags
unwashable in the milk of mercy.
It has spilled again my full heart.
The pain provokes the stopped clocks,
in the wake of explosions. Unstitched
fissures bleed, I see the ashen face
of a floating wisdom.
SATISH VERMA
This is for those who hide their heads and their hearts in
the hoods of their hoodies, hiding from the peripheral world
and sinking into their carpal tunnel world, who let the lyrics
from their ipod vibrate their eardrums and drown out the days
ambient sounds,
To those who are the sleepless that lie awake in their beds
as the giant crickets serenade them outside the window with
blue love songs as the glowing rock in the sky illuminates all
the dreaming minds
To those who’ve unstitched their hearts from their sleeves
and tucked them away inside a titanium steel chest, so that
no other swords may penetrate the scar graveyard and so the
cracked heart won’t split any further
To those who are guarded and only reveal their true selves
when the ink flows out from the tip of the pen onto a blank
page, where letters form the words that form the true eloquence
of the writer’s soul
To those who are searching the woods trying to find
the tree with the christmas tree door on it,
to find our something more,
to find our “what’s this”...
The Question I Posed ….
If your Poem is still
an open wound
And you stitch it tight
with editing
How…
will it ever bleed free?
(James River Writer’s Conference: October, 2016)
The Actual Poem ….
For All To Share
My Poem still an open wound,
unstitched by edits snare
Running free on a salted page,
—new blood for all to share
(James River Writers Conference: October, 2016)