Bodiless Poems

A Fly Taught Me to Fly

It came like a whisper
on wings too dirty for angels,
a fly with no gospel—
just bloodlust and fire.
I don’t remember the bite—
only the stories they told me—
the brain-boil, the silence
of a body already leaving, 
the baby too lethargic 
to be called alive,
and the ice-water baths.

Above the crib, they hovered—
not angels, not flies,
but entities without names,
bodiless heads darkling the air
and gazing at me
through fever, muscle and bone
like they were trying
to decide if I’d stay.
They didn’t speak.
They didn’t need to.

Then light fractured like crystal—
a thousand shards of purple fire
and malachite rain
and respiring walls.
My hands were wings,
or roots, or stars.
Sound became color,
and color became taste—
I drank something blue
and forgot my name.

I didn’t return unchanged.
I still taste color in silence,
but boundaries are smudged
between thought and sky,
betwixt dream and doorframe,
and now I write letters 
from the borderlands
because a fly taught me to fly,
and every shadow since
has hidden wings.

Undoing the Disarmament of Venus de Milo: Aphrodite Gets Her Biceps Back

Tombs begin to bloom like raw, bloodless wounds.
Tomes are written with truths of her dead moon’s
tones. A keening lunacy keeps the dirges alive, while
bones rise out of repose. A degloved hand on the dial
hones into a night rainbow's radio, she runs on solar,
hopes for the rhythm to wrench free from her toller—
copes with the captivity of being bodiless hands. Twilight
comes to chance escape—open palms toward birthright.
Coves burst into flame; a hungry fire wants holier water.
Coven circles, recovers the skinless limbs of their daughter.

Woven like song, sirens' balm to restore coats of missing arms,
women are spells read correctly, using words as our alarms,
woken to language, resurrecting ancient pairs of sacred charms.

Reverse Polarity

Why does my consciousness get swiftly corroded?
Why my conscience finds itself in contradiction?
Why with strange thoughts, words, and actions mind get loaded?
Why betwixt likes and dislikes there's constant friction...?

Soul soft, as a gentle tender breeze gets soon swayed,
The spirit within, by cares and worries, is hauled;
Cracks in the axle of awareness make verve jade,
My senses, like birds and beasts, in slavery, stalled...!

This is, hence, I have decided to cleanse myself,
All that is making me drown in the sea of dread,
Should be shed and the soul should become a fresh shelf,
Wherein humanness should its motherly wings spread...!

In a bodiless, celestial space now I swim,
All that entrapped me, like a hunter's net, are gone;
Desires defeated heart and mind possess no whim,
Cleansed of all pitch dark clouds I see a dazzling dawn...!

Renunciation and detachment have been born,
And have started dwelling in me, making me light;
Indifferences, like dust in the gale, are blown,
My bond with each being has become rightly tight...!!!

The Whole Flowering

Yes, the full bloom is pretty
all that culmination just short of perfection,
            that opening,
a hasp and harbor for light and warmth
a wide-eyed blossoming
raised up in a blind glory
                                of transient dominion.

Yet the withering is more lovely to me,
            less beautiful,
more graceful than appearance.

The grace arrives  just beyond the apogee
as when a high wave reaches its crest
then grace rides ahead of that decline
ahead of any loss or sorrow
                            it looks not to what was
nor does it seek a tomorrow.

That soft hollowing into the brittle arms                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                               
                                of bodiless ghosts
                        is a prayer for the ages

but not cut flowers in a vase, no

they die in a fetid wallow
and it is our love of beauty,
our grasping at that splendor
                        that curses their death.

The Closet Held Secrets

The closet held secrets
    his deepest fears
  It hadn't been opened
    in nigh on ten years

  He'd painted it over
    sealed it so tight
  its eerie green glow
    flickered ghost-white

  A note found years later
    under the bed
  Warned of aliens captured
    their arteries bled

  Alas, what sick heads
    some humans possess
  To tell tales like this ~
    grinning skulls bodiless

Let There Be Limericks: Two For Halloween 2022

Dinner Date or Date for Dinner?
When the harvest moon is full and bright,
And the wolf bane blooms on an autumn night,
If the guy whose kiss used to make you swoon
Starts to lick his lips and howl at the moon,
You'd best decline if he asks you out for a bite.

A Midlands Urban Legend
A village somewhere in the Midlands
Was harassed by a bodiless dead man,
But sans charger or steed,
How could they, indeed,
Be afraid of a lone horseless headman?

Angels and Our First Parents

The Chief creatures of God are men and angels

Angles are bodiless spirits created to adore and enjoy God in heaven

The first man and woman are Adam and Eve

Adam and Eve are innocent and holy when they came from the hand of God

Adam and Eve did not remain faithful to God

Broke God’s command by eating the forbidden fruit

Adam and Eve on account of their sin lost innocence and holiness and are doomed to misery and death

Through the disobedience of our first parents we all inherit their sin and punishment

We should have shared in their happiness if they have remained faithful

The Sin which we inherit from our first parents is called Original sin

The Blessed Virgin Mother Mary, through the merit of her Divine Son was preserved free from original sin and this privilege is called the Immaculate Conception

Ode To a Long Ago Ghost

Right before dark in the middle of June,
Between the setting sun and the rise of the moon
I feel an eerie vapor, damp and dim, 
Exhale from a distance fence and over its rim 
It steals like magic over grass and field,
A motion in sunder, my eyes reveal
Dare, I stand there wide awake,
Dare, I stay for pretty words sake
The strangest presents from a silent tree top,
Through a lattice of limbs a bodiless drops
So, fearful above and close to my wall,
My chest like shadows rise and fall
I say to myself, “have no fear,
Why or what are you dreaming here?”
Shaking from nerves from  unopened eyes,
I stand and feel the ghost go by
Does he sleep just over that fence,
What kind of a danger does a ghost present?
Does his tomb have a sounding door,
Do you hear that echo or more?

Motherless

I wake in sweats
Drenched in the regrets
Of a desert womb
This empty tomb
Where lie the never born
Whom I may never mourn
Never mourn this constant lack
That has me forever in deepest black
Never sit and talk beside their graves
For I can never bury the bodiless babes
Never sit and silently pray
For what dies inside me every day.

© Barry Freeman – 1st May 2021

Mind Flesh

When we are flesh no more
will we still a have a spiritual skin 
to jump out of?

Will we still be able to skinny-dip?
Will Summer rain still feel like
a kiss from a horny angel?
Will there be mind-Harley’s?
Plasma shotguns for shooting
long dead ducks?

Will we have to wait in line
for anything
or will we just shove our minds ahead
imagining a new line with us up front,
but I guess that like now,
most things will not be worth waiting for.

It’s a mind game,
and even if this world is a head-fake,
we will still need some mind-flesh
to create a substantial place
for our many bodiless functions.

The Mermaid Calls

The Mermaid Calls

You draw me close, 
and I can not swim. 
You lure me, 
tempt me, 
and tell me…
things.

Your beauty is beyond, 
all that I have ever known, 
or will know. 
How can I look away?

I want to touch what I see, 
I want to be part of 
what I do not know.
You are illusive. 
You are austere…

The woman, 
bodiless and boundless.  
Her hair soft kelp, 
Her touch…

The hope to drown, 
a witless man, 
and support 
a mariner.

Bones Lay

Back age of brute creation 'n herbage beholders
Hominoids have stayed for bodiless years 
Jumbled brains on battered shoulders 
With rash of lacking space frontiers
On brief planet lay all the bone souvenirs

For countless, covered bodies in shallow earth tomb 
Whilst' sun winks like the star  
Ashes to ashes, dust to dust gloom
In an overcast front of sky afar
Protected in the bosom of Spirit’s immortal reservoir

The Clock

THE CLOCK
Tick, Tick, Tick,Tick
You count my life away.
No room to be sick
So little to time to play.
Bodiless face and hands
Attract my every gaze.
And determine all my plans.

Cold, hard cogs and gears
Grind mercilessly onward
Marking time year after year.
Only forward never backward.

You march on and on
In the end I will be gone.

Bodiless

BODILESS

bold angels
block and shape
their lips eclipse
inane words cloud
tangle entwined

pristine alphabets
peroxide prose
silver currents
of the unheard

gold…
goldfish
goldring
goldthing

parades of perfect peace


© Kim van Breda—7 December 2015

Halloween Moon

Halloween Moon Crabs


A tide rises to leave behind hundreds of tossed colourful halloween moon crabs to stroll

Craving social connections like homeless souls furtively hunting their unsown roots

Celtic calendar hides matronly lunar freeing guised children and bodiless souls

Five more years for the halloween moon, till then crabby purple claws in orange suits 




October10, 2015
Contest: Halloween Moon
Sponsor: Eve Roper
Form: Quatrain

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