During a witchcraft ritual
the human brain surreptitiously enters
the surreal states of elevated focus,
lofty emotion, and altered awareness,
as the spell acts as a powerful metaphor
for an internal intention or flustering fear.
People may feel like birds with frozen wings
under the misty sky, swept by the polar winds.
In the congealed hearts lapped by the Arctic sea
petrified emotions congeal, unexpressed.
Warm embrace of empathy they can’t proffer,
for they turn into cold unfeeling people.
People may feel as if their lives have changed
into desolate deserts where the oasis desiccates
in the blaze of their burning minds,
the fallen foliage of ardent passions glows,
doesn’t rustle with the fossil cadence of their hearts,
for they turn into wooden inert people.
Once the ritual concludes,
the cognitive system undergoes a sudden shift
with the intense concentration,
leading to a feeling of poignant emptiness,
excruciating exhaustion, or sudden susceptibility,
epitomizing the impulsive comedown
after a concerted emotional event.
Fireflies flicker like falling stars
that hover in a garden thick
with memories of times we spent
beneath a smiling moon.
Oak leaves gently ride the breeze
that softly blows its tender breath
and quickly dries the tears that fall
from sad and misty eyes.
Ghostly sounds of whistles blast
from ships now far away from shore,
their clearly outlined silhouettes
dark against the moonlit sky.
Thoughts congeal, a cold, hard mass
obstructs sweet memories of the past,
replacing them with vivid visions
of our last goodbye.
Eerie calls from gulls above
now echo cries within my heart,
its shallow beating reminiscent
of the pulse of time.
All too soon our love affair
became a part of fate's discards,
forgotten vows now languishing
beneath a distant moon.
Midnight,
Hoots and despondent howls
From crevasses of puking earth prompt weakness at slumber
Webs!
They encircle the pin-line threads of silence, viciously muted,
Drawing porous patterns of maladroitness
Dawn,
Loose drops of old water, cusp-sized, blend with the rays of the
Rising sun, smelting our principles.
Images,
Lachrymose consternations congeal the blood in our brows,
Stifling the grace of blinking lashes
And we lose patience.
There’s a new-nurtured ruggedness
Which opens the snouts while we yawn.
In the distance,
Moonlight, sapped, means nothing with her downward gaze.
But the sound of maudlin drums hastens closer and nearer.
Lone heart
of chilled passion
turns to winter wasteland,
vestiges of wrecked emotions
congeal.
Ice melts
in dulcet dawn,
tepid spring’s scarlet sun
rises with tender warmth of your
embrace.
I feel
your flashing charm
melt mist of arctic times,
as I plunge in the inferno
of love.
Engulfed,
my craving burns.
In wild wind of fervor
embers scale your sky on wings of
desire.
Coagulation Starter – 3-28-24
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Coagulation
Finally, my blood began to coagulate,
Flowing like insomnia
Between the wounds of dawn and dusk
When wounded memories drip pools of enigmas,
Fleeting gossamers of absolutes,
Drying into sticky puzzles.
Bloodied dreams wander labyrinths,
With no exits,
Leaving spatters of millstones
For ruminating relics to follow,
Thin images of wispy encounters
Fade
In lost chords of words,
Ghosts gel from gashes.
Impostors of reality
Spit rebellious clots into ruminating plateaus,
And phantoms,
To leave a crimson stain
On unwelcomed daylight and martyred Mondays
Stirring penance from clotting confessions.
Tourniquets unbound,
Veins transfused congeal in coalescence
As platelets and corpuscles gather yesterday
Into the flow, a cadence, blood pressure restored,
The pulse of reminiscence throbs
Memoirs course through venous vessels,
Then seek a place
To dream.
A ray of sound
sweet batting of eyelids
there is no end
to worrying
its got to stop
our defence is to gather
round the fireside
where the spirit
fails to congeal
A sigh of sound
sweet batting of eyes
there is no end
to worrisome
our defence is to gather
round the fireside
where the spirit
fails to congeal
From the deepest reservoirs of the heart,
There resides the source of our soul's river.
From the beginning, from the very start,
There is the issuing out of a river flow,
Without this, we would cease to grow.
Sometimes releasing a myriad of issues,
Or just a few, revealing things old and new,
Heavenly mysteries that we never knew.
Without ceasing, occasionally gushing,
Often with force like white water rapids.
It is continually rushing to and fro.
It ceases not its navigation through
Its faithful ever-ready conduits,
Continually cleansing and healing
Along its elongated passage.
So, let the river flow.
Make room for its overflow.
Let every tributary join its force
As their waters congeal to reach the
Awaiting open sea. Let there be no dams,
Delays, or detours. Let the river determine
Its own course. Read carefully what the river is saying
And embrace those 'Special Deliveries' from the heart.
The heartbreak of teenage love,
Is a pain that feels too much to bear.
The tears that fall like rain above,
The weight of sadness hard to share.
The first love lost, a crushing blow,
A heart shattered into pieces small.
The dreams that once did brightly glow,
Now lost behind a mourning wall.
The pain of teenage heartbreak deep,
A wound that feels like it will never heal.
But though the hurt may cause us weep,
We know that with time it will congeal.
For teenage heartbreak is a part,
Of growing up and learning life.
A lesson learned that's dear to heart,
That even love can bring us strife.
And in the end we'll find the way,
To mend our hearts and love again.
And though it hurts like hell today,
We'll find the strength to rise again.
White is for rice and brides - ready to commit.
White’s for ghosts and clouds or even carnations
but it should never, ever, be used for privilege
or worse yet, as poetic inspiration.
I’ve been waiting for the urge to write
while facing an ugly screen of white.
Waiting for the vowels to fall into place,
for words to congeal and finally displace
the awful, foreboding, blank white space.
Learning is our struggle, our crown of thorns.
The more we study and prepare for fall,
the more excited I get to reenter those halls.
34 days until classes start. For fall weather,
and the bee hum of crowded life in the dorms.
My roommates and I are like a single, nameless thing
- an emolument that happens to have 6 heads.
We’ve beaten the freshman “imposter syndrome,”
and we’re ready to bring sophomore year home -
together - no muss, no fuss - I love that for us.
In the company of Poets,
I make my bed
In the company of Poets,
I rest my head
In the company of Poets,
my dreams congeal
In the company of Poets,
my heart revealed
In the company of Poets,
my thoughts are brave
In the company of Poets,
all time a slave
In the company of Poets,
my wishes fly
In the company of Poets,
my hopes ally
In the company of Poets,
the road is cleared
In the company of Poets,
my past endeared
In the company of Poets,
one wish sustains
In the company of Poets
—my words remain
(Bryn Mawr Pennsylvania: February, 2020)
The founding fathers in their graves
Are surely not at rest
For what they had intended
Has been brutally repressed.
The country’s been divided
By a madman at the wheel
And all attempts at justice
Somehow crumble and congeal.
At least a call of witnesses
Would help, if just a little,
To let the nation hear some truths
Before the sure acquittal.
With this administration
All decorum has departed
And we, the people, rage inside
Yet still feel broken-hearted.
The aria of the sunburst slivers of the sky,
entwined with the cadence of your ivory feet,
winding on the pearl-rolled silver sea shore,
carves the rhythm of your footprint sculpture,
only for a beguiling while,
until scraped by the surge of time tide in spate,
stowed in the depth of the stratified memory,
they are all fossilized since.
I’ll make a sapphire sea of desire in my heart,
its golden beach, a shimmering crystalline face
will radiate the dissolved patina of yearning.
From the mystique mist of azure
the rise of an angel I’ll see astounded,
walking drenched in the crimson aura,
the twilight sky drizzling.
I’ll congeal my racing surf of heart beats,
the aching waves will return unbroken,
your footprints will remain engraved unwashed
on the silent sands of the stalled time,
until I reach you, enthralled,
following the mirage of the tantalizing trail,
the lure of your attraction.
Written : January 19, 2020
Contest : Favourite Poem From January 2020
Sponsor : Julia ward
At uncertain times black ice sheers the wind,
The nights snorts a frigid fog
into the fumes of idling cars.
Ohio, once was a light in a hissing bowl.
Land was laid out like a plain bible,
it offered salted potatoes
to the frozen and freezing,
it played a wheezy bellows into rural glimmers.
This night knows how to fang a wrist.
Grit nips our tender tongues.
The lights of bistros cannot withstand
their desolate backyards.
A scree of black curb
can be crossed, but not by the lightly shod.
At such times, Autumn lends
a shivering hand at its own burial.
After the sermon, small ice sculptures
of raw priests, congeal into humps and heaps.
A sweeping wind pushes rotting leaves
into vacant lots.
Is beauty connected,
or to a vacuum condemned
Is truth then required,
for it to enter within
Can beauty be measured,
by the heart or the mind
Can it chase, or displace, or replace
what it finds
If beauty is truth,
let all reason be shown
Why judgment and logic,
to our hearts stay unknown
As semantics untangle,
and the linguists all kneel
The question stays formless
—to astound and congeal
(Villanova Pennsylvania: May, 2019)
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