Chose a Title; Naïve Faith, Sponsor – Edward Ibeh – 8-27-25
Naïve synonyms: callow, guileless, innocent, pure, genuine, honest, simple, sincere
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Naïve Faith
Callow faith walks with wide eyes
In playgrounds littered with stark cunning
When adorned innocence
Seeks to soar where angels fly
Not blinded by fool’s gold
Nor looted by evil’s glittery tinsel
Or minds darkened by drugs of ebony
That plagiarizes honesty
With rationalized temptations
In ravished glamour.
Artless faith, clothed by incorruptible purity,
Shivers when simplicity senses
A wrinkle in infinity -
Guileless belief skirts gullible’s traps
Clothed in a gift of sight.
When beastly motives
Try to sideswipe honesty
With glitz and jewels of paste
Dangling shiny promises with dark underbellies
Naive faith, clothed in discernment,
Sees with candid clarity.
The rose still blooms despite attacks
By mold or mildewed rust
The sun still wakes the dawn
Even when eclipsed
Crowned by a faultless corona
As stars refuse to enter black holes
Faith embraces the innocent.
A mackerel sky fillets a fish scaled village,
an ear clapping, full sailed, fog
moors itself to the rooftops,
then hides all in a breezeless blear.
Rheumy eyes peep out from nets,
damp noses sniff abaft trawling drapes.
Cloth in hand, potbellied proprietors
battle the splatter and spray,
dabbing at mildewed shelves,
warding away slopping waders
and salty puddles.
On the sightless sea
far beyond the shore and shingle,
fog horns are lowing like lost cattle.
Later, misty reeks will be scoured
from groggy docks,
hauling hands will rope together
the tide-tossed salvage
by and by, squeaky boots
may trudge to taprooms
where codgers and callow alike
can be well oiled
and duly quenched.
Faith is the thing with callow feet—
That tiptoes on thin air—
It keeps no calendar or creed—
Yet finds me unaware.
It does not knock—it does not plead—
But settles in the soul—
A hush, more firm than any church—
A bell without a toll.
It drinks the dew from shadowed grass—
It sings beneath the snow—
And when the sky forgets to speak—
It’s all the voice I know.
It walks where reason fears to go—
A guest without a name—
And when I fall, it does not scold—
But lifts me just the same—
As if it wore a wounded wing—
Yet soared despite the flames .
Most cherished of thoughts, ideas abloom,
spreading, expanding
Overcoming harsh crushing repression,
breaking loose into a fluffy
sacred cloud bound emancipation
Liberation! My spirit takes flight, light,
mellow, blithe and callow
No longer crushed prostrate
'neath the crushing tyranny of the basis gossip
I inhale an atmosphere crisp and fresh,
bounding upward, deep into the wide blue yonder
Grace most astounding ecstatic!
Voices mocking, condemning now stilled-upward
I soar toward a far more welcoming place than
I have ever known
Rejoice!
Alas! You dark, grotesque, vile servant of Lucifer, the antithesis of the morning star.
Once again, you have sought me out and endeavored to siphon my light at the end of my tunnel.
In the past, you may have thwarted my desires, cast me into purgatory,
and whispered sophistry in the crevices of my mind.
But NOW your machinations are no threat to me. What once was a callow mind has turned into growth over time.
I have learned to see where there is no light, how to climb where there is no ladder.
So do your best, you nocturnal fiend. Your reign is over; you no longer have influence over me.
Now I know, good times and bad times are like tides that ebb and flow.
So traverse the realms to shroud my days in night.
I will say to thee, “Hello, my old friend. Do your worst, because God has bestowed upon me my own personal light, and I walk by it habitually every day and night.”
Cacoethes as infatuation
visited me mostly in my youth.
Those deep yearnings fed my soul
with the lyrics of melancholy love songs
that revolved on my record player’s
turntable as I, in my callow days,
lay in bed drowning in my fantasies
of unobtainable desires.
Cacoethes as cravings
found me also as the obsessions
that were literally fed me as food.
Too easily was I led
by edible longings -
but I was not feeding real hunger.
Rather – I was hungering
to feed an empty heart.
Eventually I learned to control
my cravings for the sweet and the salty,
and old longings of infatuation
long ago fled from me.
Any void I feel today
I fill with cacoethe substitutes
mostly harmless and rarely unhealthful
as I move my pen again and again
over paper.
O what a time we had,
we had a time of it didn't we,
you in your stripy flouncy dress
and pink kneed splendor,
and I dragging a foot behind you,
as callow and unrisen as
a half-baked pudding.
We between us
had the blindly brilliant knowledge,
of everything not worth knowing.
We had textbooks and crayons,
to color bluer an already blue sky.
Our heads held high,
in the fancy hats of headlong youth.
God, I loved the smell of you,
not your dabs of perfume,
but the buttercup musk of you.
That afternoon I played rugby,
while you watched your bruised hero,
galumph and totter all over a muddy field.
God was kind to us wasn’t he,
he made every chicken dinner sunny-side-up,
he tinted our eyes with a simple wonder
for a while,
didn’t he?
Can I love you again, just for a moment,
love us both in this dumb poem,
that I hope speaks for everyone
at least once.
New Year Old Canvas
New brushes are clean
New Pallettes arrive
New paints are prepared
A new year is here
Old brushes are tossed
Old paint flakes away
But the canvas stays
Are we so callow
So blindly naive?
The canvas remains
Its fabric rotted
Fresh paints and brushes
Resolutions bright
So woeful
So futile
With fabric soiled
So sip champagne
Be of good cheer
Lest new canvas found
No happy new year
Can you grasp the thunder?
Can you hide its flashes from an overflowing river?
Can you pay your river Life a hideous win?
Can you call yourself a mercenary who is stained?
I want to tag you under the umbrella of twisted fame,
I want to hide you between the mischievous game,
I want you to quit the possession you adore the most,
Your appearance on every stage is just like a blissful ghost.
You want to attain prospectus fame,
Thunder is always a strikingly fanciful name.
You wish to call it by your name,
You want to dedicate yourself to a superficial aim.
Can your audience watch out for your audacity?
To you, the river is always an auction house of unbridled necessities.
To run from the light is to embrace the nightlife,
To live in the darkness is quite a harsh dive.
I want to present you a few drops of nectar from my sorcery,
Do you wish to call it your dazzling supremacy?
Do you want it to be the cockiness of a fleeting river?
You are nothing but a callow diver.
He appeared to be a mere, callow boy,
Beautiful, strange, exotic, enchanting,
But he was, he said, a king, and he'd traveled very far
Over time, and land, and sea in search of me.
His glance was diffident and shy,
But with a trace of ancient sadness
That belied the ageless wisdom in his melancholy eyes.
That magic day he found me
My soul was adrift, feeling lost and alone,
And closed to love I'd never known.
Arm in arm we walked and talked
Of pundits, and poets, and beggars, and kings,
And lots of other worldly things.
Then he turned to me and gently said, this king,
"Here's the gift I came to bring:
The truest thing you'll ever learn,
Allow yourself to love, and you'll be loved in return."
I listened to what he had to say,
Then I unlocked my heart that day
And felt his prophecy come true
As love rushed in and brought me you.
Written: November 17, 2023 For Charles Messina Contest
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In peace of mind and unwavering pride
Draw out your inner disgruntled callow
Expunge ailing masks and set them aside
Shackled and phony leaches start shallow
Untamed freedom leaves a rage of delight
Lightning strikes when volition avails reign
As the noise of fists and yells echoes fight
It implies launching rough assaults again
This momentary gladness won't last long
Dark distress derides its way to the fight
And celebrates its mocking with zest strong
Frenzied fractured fragments into full-sight
Constraintis like an itch that chafes the mind
Shields the vile impulse that we must all bind
gladness won't last long
expunge ailing masks aside~
untamed freedom roars.
Shackled leeches start shallow, rage of lightning strikes~constraint chafes the mind
Through Garreg-Wen’s nomadic hearth, we grew
and waned like lichen’s stole on Moel-y-Gest.
Her lustrous tablet’s cleaved expanse possessed
our sacred streams. Where plasma sands, in lieu
of blood’s endured aspects – our angled view –
was figured, flawless: all we knew. North-West
Nirvana’s alien tongues recite the pest
of castle’s: tourist’s transient blight; so too,
ewe’s balk like doubtful dunes. Idyllic slants
in callow youth, discern, so seldom, tints
beyond the rosy realm of spectrum’s scant
surmise: stars, not blinkered by levant,
lost streetlights. Night’s insight may not imprint
the shape of time that teary-eyed stars grant.
Ubiquitous sun
consuming through icy shadows
amidst winter chorus
Delphic paean on elysian winds
lustral chorales in
amber chronicles
Slowly sung, it's a lullaby of dreams
with moonlight charms
lulling you to sleep
I need to remember this night
the light we ignite within
shedding our sin
We soar boldly into silky shards
my ankles wobble, and I sway
Meekness left me speechless.
maintain moss's fear of tinkering
eroded by wear and tear
like a battered victory.
reaching out to the darkness
can the night swallow me?
hiding tinges of mellifluous tones.
In the rustle of leaves
hides a melody,
soulful as a barren call.
radiates an indomitable spirit
fears and quandaries cloud firm-level
in a shroud of myopia.
because rivers can't be crossed twice
switch to callow intrigue
tea is a lone integer in a ripening world.
Written: January 30, 2023
Brian Strand Contest No 1178 Poetry Contest
Sponsored by: Brian Strand
like heavy snow 'pon cedar boughs
those shadows, long through winter
my conscience weighs the thens and nows
yet morrows - naught a splinter ...
where hangs the hope in autumn?
as masts tick off the sea's green swells
like clocks tick straight the hours
my thoughts refuse to count the bells
once tolled for Neptune's powers ...
where falls the hope in autumn?
young lovers hide deep in their dreams
should melting flesh close-bind them
and I masked mine in callow schemes
so no sweet lass would find them ...
where rests the hope in autumn?
so deep and dark, life's oldest quest
from whence, no soul's returning
and next is what we've deemed as best
love's flames - those bridges burning ...
where hides the hope in autumn?
where hides your hope, dear Autumn?
Copyright © 2022 Gregory Richard Barden
your melting mouth, quite coyly callow
softer and sweet, as pink marshmallow
oh love, a rapture tends your scheming
upon those lips, so drips my dreaming.
Copyright © Gregory Richard Barden, October 17, 2022
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