Best World Weary Poems
More than the grand fireworks display,
above chart-topper music blast;
What is the highlight of this night -
The Media Noche, New Year’s toast.
Above chart-topper music blast,
stay still awhile, to breathe our thanks;
A farewell to the year that was
and welcome one - now upon us.
What is the highlight of this night -
Carousing, whole night rejoicing?
Babe year pushing rudely the old,
at street parties ruled by one clan?
The Media Noche, New Year’s toast -
Grounding to roots, a youngster’s boast.
Each morsel chew, each laugh renews,
one's world-weary bones and sinew.
* media noche (Spanish for midnight) - Traditional New Years' Eve feast for Filipino families
18 November 2015
Shall We Retourne Contest -2nd Place
Sponsor: Debbie Guzzi
From the Nostril Vortex
I breathe in your perfumed
Plasma leaves from the nostril vortex.
I thrive in the pleasant scenes and velvet touchings.
I wince like a skybird earthbound.
Dare to escape from me.
Dare to hide in the dark.
Shhhh! Don’t make a sound.
I am dancing without shoes in the moonlight.
I am waltzing with precise pre-planned movements in space.
I am spewing out movements that show you and me,
The two of us, walking the precise path to here and there,
And then finally to the place of all endings,
And like the cool morning mist, death enters unseen.
“It’s the tomb! I’m in the tomb!
Mother, Father come get me here in the dark!”
But first, slowly slowly slowly…
I lift up her leg there in the shadows,
And I caress, and smell and lick.
“I have found the best time!
This is the most excellent moment!”
I was there in the dusty places,
I was hanging nearby with all of you.
I was wet with unimagined enticings,
Weary, oh so world-weary to the nucleus of my bones!
Of tentatively living all the years of a dubious lifetime,
And of finally dying in the dry ditches of twenty thousand days.
“Come here honey, kiss me now, here in the distant cemetery.
We can hold on to each other
As the mad earth spins into oblivion.
“Sir, would you be so kind?
Some mindful enterprise and
The Pretext Syllogism combo.
And I will have a side of nomenclature
And for dessert two heapings of existential mind mysogenation,
Topped with granulated mesomorphic nom de plume!
Dancing, dancing, dancing and holding on.
She and me sweating in the black heat.
No other way to live.
No other way to breathe.
“I am just here.
See? Know what I mean?
I was born into this like all of you!
I had nothing to say about it.
What do ya say, honey? What do ya say?”
Now I watch close the shades of red and white
Falling on windows facing each other
mixing thoughts with a far older brother
one who for far longer danced in light
he rises, and rises, giving the sight
to world-weary eyes, long bereft of peace,
from what dark corner he has found release
that he should revel so in blinding light.
For now he will fade, recede, and return
rest his tired soul, his brothers have now thought
and danced enough at a steady burn,
as for his coming, going, we know naught,
only that his grace we will never earn
that light, and thought, and love is sweetly bought.
Evening Panorama
When the moon is intransigent to a gloomy cloud
Stars filching to stare the horizon
Sparkling luster luring across the sea
Lunged me to stroll along the seashore
Hear the wave’s commotion
Offshore to see slowly vanishing lamp light from a fisherman’s boat
Some nocturnal species tending to be gregarious
Envy of a fishwife for darkness captured her fisherman’s heart
Beside me is an old lighthouse
Pirouetting the pulchritude of the sea
Luminous as a pathfinder for mariners
Showing panorama for such piscatorial area
World-weary, I indulged into stargazing
Starry-eyed that evening to the starlight
The visage of a departed loved ones
I yielded to cease being awake to the whooshing sea waves
Honorable mention to Laura Mckenzie's Beyond Nightfall Contest: 3/20/2010
Outward swing saloon doors,
Hanging heavy in the midday sun
Where but fools or legends walk
Burnt and scarred,
World weary
The gecko sings
Slow, rhythmical, a slow heavy march
Whining in the din of midday silence
The dust stirs
In the saturated air
Storm’s coming
Out of barred doors
The free hurl the damned
Face to the dust
His last respite
Breath is heavy
Eyes dead
Hope gone
He stands
The mob gathers
And the drums call
Resonating the dead wood
To fever pitch
Sir you stand accused…
The accused stares to the heavens
Acceptingly
The lawman’s drone continues
The drums stop as the clouds
Form darkly
Storm’s here
The hammer falls
Guilty
The drums take up the call
As the gecko’s dirge begins
The air breaks
Rippling across the mob
He breathes again in the rain
The fools and legends retire
Onto wet dust
Tramping to the sound of drumming
The rope falls.
I saw God today
In the face of a child.
I saw God today
In the bright blue sky.
I saw God today
In the face of a world-weary old man.
I saw God today.
But I don't think he saw me.
Wrapped up in a suit of mandarins
playing hop-scotch with
a hillbilly from Enniskillen
whose left leg is filled with
soot and yellow dust
all wrapped up in a festering,
three week old banana crust.
A Marilyn Monroe figure
enters the fray
as a dinosaur named Ray
plays Russian Roulette
with a self-righteous pacifist
the day after he marries
his suicidal wife
whose mother was married
to the London gangster, Reggie Kray .
A libertine who fell in love
with a parody of nihilism
comforts a gay priest
whose real name is Marion Morrison
but you can call him ‘Big Leggy’
if it is your soul desire to molest
his world weary inner sanctum.
A carrot without a head for heights
falls headfirst into a bowl of
freshly ground coriander
on a wet afternoon in June,
the chef steps back, trips and
ends up with his fingers in
his Kenwood food blender,
‘oh you fluckin' 'anchor' screams
his dyslexic mum
as she kneels down beside her
now only six fingered son.
If only mummy hadn’t left me
alone in a dark cupboard
full of ghostly faces
with only an unhinged spider
named Mr Woof for company,
who frequently crawled up my nose
and inside my ears
on a far too regular basis!
Notes: Not to be taken seriously. I simply love words and what my imagination
allows me to do with them. Pete
A Perfect Company
By: Noel N. Villarosa
They are the big fish in a small pond
They received kudos and power widely
With their bunch of fives used as their wand
They dominate while sitting idly
Been tasked in carrying coals to Newcastle
Never saw them as cool as a cucumber
The atmosphere of the office is in a chronical hassle
Mobility and formative years, they are there to encumber
World-weary, so he indulged into stargazing
That he was working in a peculiar place
Where people work with eternal bliss
Where no one to make shudder and no egotist displaying
Everyone is happy to comply with buoyant spirits
You feel as no stranger but as a longtime friend
Where giving recognition and importance have no limits
Different origins and cultures do blend
There were no rush works and pressures
No deadline to meet and sanction
All work harmoniously with pleasures
And get involved in another function
They were wearing a white uniform
No shoes, all are barefooted
No pains to bear and no hurting words thrown
A feeling of living in your own homestead
The place is boundless in its beauty
Where children play with other creatures
No darkness, only eternal light and free from enmity
That you can rest in the placidity of its seashore
Then a meeting was called and everyone gathered in the garden
He was introduced by the man sitting on the throne
He saw the man’s face as magnanimous, charmingly simple and serene
A soothing voice and said, my son, there is no contract signing that you can hold your own
Only love will bind us as one
Written and posted also in voicesnet.com poetry site: 4 January 2010
The suburban pressure cooker expelled its multiethnic horde north. Laden with implements of leisure, bicycles, kayaks, canoes and camping gear; world weary travelers of urban and suburban bent surged north ever, north. Bucking, they wrenched in unison at road repairs, shunted into single lanes by flaming orange cones of warning like so many track horses at the gate. Tail bitten, truck locked windows up; the denizens drove forth cocooned in metal steeds seeking the clean air and open expanses, north.
Few, freer souls dare the unfiltered air of the artery, north on motorcycles or in convertibles, hoods down, or windows down, blaring an enlivening mantra of sixties rock as they shimmied forward in the in the endless conga line of commerce, past urban blight. The trip north became a Chaucerian Pilgrimage from Nutmeg State to the Green Mountain State of Vermont.
The border crossed, the sky opens wide-eyed, ridge rimmed dolphin gray clouds swim in a cerulean scene. Roadside picnic tables fill. Monarch butterflies flit in the breezes between majestic rows of pungent pines. The whoosh of traffic dulls and the robin’s call emerges over the roiling hills and gurgling brooks. Silence falls, complete; upon the entrance to the first gravel road. Heaven is immersed in the scent of fresh hay and sweet purple clover.
My vacuum cleaner’s broken,
sits in the garage gathering dust
Beside dad’s old green car,
oxidising an orangey rust
I tried washing it last week,
and the water turned to wine
Well the colour miraculously looks,
venetian turpentine
World weary in a dusty brain,
contemplating null dividends
Doubtful the universe grew from zero,
to mere accidental existence
I’m never sure of anything,
other than opening up my eyes
When intelligence outsmarts evolution,
worlds of meaninglessness arrives
Nothing ventured everything gained,
the cosmos just gave and came
Dust clumped together,
galaxies burst forth into flame
No blueprint just chaos,
serendipity’s our only friend
Instructions out the window,
laws of physics can’t comprehend
Anyway God created us,
a few millennia after we made him
Mankind needed order,
to rid an infernal world of sin
I mean who’d hold faith in dust,
when all is said and done
Well some of us actually do,
on the mantlepiece in an urn
Yeah I’m full of bull, this
agnostic needs little imagination
I’m wasting space on the fence,
making these observations
I watch dust versus crosses,
and a universe going bust
Neurons keep me company,
as my brain churns out mush
Sponsored by: Charles Messina
King-Size Bull Crap Poetry Contest
01/12/22 rhyme form
When did you get to be so old?
Jowls. You have Jowls, and a hair
on your chin.
Not fat, no, but plump,
Grannie padded, cuddly.
Laughter lines Or
World weary tracks of tears?
Aches. Knees, shoulders
All the not so bendy bits.
Is worse to come?
The eyes are dry
Turning to dust already?
No one is fooled by the golden hair
Carefully applied dark lashes or
Soft coral lips.
Yield now. Be graceful in the winter.
Be wise as only the old can be.
Accept limitations without limiting yourself
Live. Contentedly accept the inevitable
And happiness will no longer elude you.
etherial entities, Elsewhere and Elsewhen
less than omnipotent but exceeding their parts
abide in Netherverse, universal children
intertwining potentials conceive child of their arts
a difficult birth through a point of positions
with a breath of inflation our Cosmos survives
face lights up with symmetry breaking transitions
a familiar fine face in the microwave skies
expanding bubble within a where-when ocean
two-way quantum cuddles along the interface
to us, top and bottom, a confusing commotion
to Cosmos, it's all around, warm parents embrace
and Cosmos communicates with siblings and friends
beyond overlapping membranes down massive black holes
at centres of galaxies where light bends and bends
re-meeting and greeting wild oceanic shoals
an ocean of learning, an endless becoming
made in the image of imagined potential
and listen closely, Cosmos is faintly humming
music symphonic with daring differential
keeping a rhythm that fast-forwards down aeons
then surfs the present and through time loops back
fabulous instruments, incredible crayons
sketch the past and future in one amazing track
and our Cosmos is tuned to the beat of life
empathy etched across a holographic mind
sharing grief and joy, the world weary cries of strife
the sheer delight of being, delirious and kind
awareness arises and then consciousness awakes
first galaxy focused on planets around stars
life teems, dreams and dances as intelligences outbreaks
escaping gravity's grip but leaving some scars
for pain and exultation, they fly together
space-timed, time-spaced, while smiling over horizons
Cosmos listens, then learns, needs touch of a feather
to fine tune core settings and cosmic liaisons
the task is great, for the infant bubble may burst
and then duly deflate to a point singular
or forever speed out so flat-lined and cursed
where, when, then... would learning be in story so far?
Journey's end of the final leg of our life.
Our independence, our kids want to take away.
You do your things and just please let us do ours.
The youth think their elders are lapsing into apathy.
No longer caring about life or worldly things.
At our old age we've become world-weary.
Wrinkled and not as strong, but still breathing in life.
We have much insight and wisdom rather than ambition.
But the young are too busy to really listen to the old.
We are too tired and old to fight with our young.
Eccentric is whispered, we never felt so alone.
Apathy is part of growing old, a sadness of old age.
Our youth appears loud and frantic ordering us about.
Too much chaotic confusion is hard on our old brains.
We'd rather avoid conflicts and let harmony stay within.
We still have a full deck, we just shuffle it slower now.
All we ask from our young folks is patience and respect.
It's the sadness that takes us out not necessarily our age.
'A Tribute To Old Age'
For Nathan A's contest, "Any Poem"
After truly listening to all the discussions decided to delete even the world weary darker side,
return to meditation and to listen, to listen. For it seems too often in this world the very best are the darker side's victims. Though I cannot say the greed and lack of empathy I see and hear do not create concern. And there is so much work to do to protect the sick, the weak and the very air we breath. That dark side born of fear and frustration is meant to give us warning. Perhaps what must be done to acknowledge the darker side is to teach and learn, teach and learn.
In sadness
forgotten sound
of a father's voice,
only a fond memory of English Leather,
faces of children
not one's remembered,
melancholia captioned,
while snared in long wars
bereft of true glory,
cordite charred, world weary,
heavy hearted,
heavy handed,
heavy lidded,
minutes whip past
like a lash on raw skin,
gilded ages burst like flack,
eons too much when unwelcome
too little too soon,
moments spent like carnival tokens,
spin cycle of life
a kaleidoscope swoon,
awaken to dotage,
snippets of melodies
riffing toe tapped,
younger days, younger legs,
when life was as simple
as a pair of rubber soled shoes,
leg tapped,
tap away.