I stare - a sightless man - into space.
Some time ago, the fire quietly failed in my eyes.
I draw dead breath through weary lungs.
My blood curdles in my veins.
And I am cold.
And alone.
And it is quiet.
Just what I've been desiring so desperately.
Not to sing or dance or laugh or converse
of the fleeting joys of life-
but to be left to my own confused designs.
My tale is not unique.
Like countless artists gone before,
I create without genuine hope of being understood.
Except by you, O God.
My omniscient creator.
Was it really such a fine idea to fashion me?
What have I done with the gift of life?
How can any future worth seeing be built upon
this failed foundation?
This confused, self-tortured, hypocritical,
weak, pathetic shadow?
Even now, hope remains, somehow.
Why it stays I do not know.
By all rights it should abandon me.
Have I not abandoned myself long ago?
O, my God-
I ought to have changed the world for you.
But now I have my quiet.
2024-10-27 finished by 3:20 PM
It seems as though the world is shutting down,
Things happening that simply don’t compute.
The present curdles, turns a sepia brown.
Current affairs – a tree with rotten fruit.
The nineteen thirties seem to rise again
But through a looking glass where left is right,
And cowards gag the obvious refrain:
Do not go gentle into that good night.
William Butler Yeats, obsessed with gyres,
Miscalculated by a few decades,
Nor did his slouching beast conspire with liars.
But prophesy shines bright before it fades
On those whose lives the years will not condemn,
Who fight for more than just Jerusalem.
In your silence I see colours,
speech crumbling like flaking paint, dried; truth dripping from lips, black spittle on a brush.
In the silence I inhale the scent of a feeling,
what you think of me curdles from willows to weeds; from ivy once intoxicated to rotten root.
In this silence I taste our time together,
a history in meat chopped / diced, fried in oil burning; our future an incomplete recipe, lost.
Blood curdles
the entire room just startles;
Floating a banshee howls loud
proud;
Dire message
of an impending passage;
Not a thing could make this curse
worse.
Halogen hesitant glide incubates baskers
Hush worship horizontal, roasting rascals
Trust flail arms gleeful face of jack in box
Toast salt pepper toes opposed to office socks
Lopsided sway scintillates sea rolls repeat
Lumen seduce dons haughty top-hat heat
Haven from seasons, sunbathed succumb
Hourglass conserve curdles cold’s equilibrium
23rd June
Sultry Surfers Paradise
in unfelt Solstice
Shipwrecks crowd the pub taproom
a hot breath of defeat curdles the air.
There's a coal fire;
there are black tables, small and round
just enough for two pint glasses.
One cloth cap asks another:
"What you sinking?"
He means 'drinking'.
Both old men
keep their eyes anchored
to drool-stained beer mats.
Gimpy table legs
limp aside as if kicked.
Empty glasses
drip a jaded wisdom,
each foam-licked drop
falling back
into incomprehension.
Mary's fork is flat and harnessed.
Ageless her husband had witnessed
Amusing. She downs spaghetti
Noodles with a glass of ice-tea.
Kneading though air perfect noodles,
Take care if thickens it curdles.
Water is flavored with pork grease,
Bit of salt, makes a masterpiece.
Her incessant labors all day
Yielding prudently toils away.
Tomatoes, garlic, onion,
Basil, parsley, in abundance.
Steaming scent of oregano.
Weaving sauce up to her elbow.
Her success catches its flavor,
Hungry bellies ought to savor.
Whoever short, narrow verged shape
The human body can't escape
The obvious hold fallacies,
Provides a wealth of calories.
6/27/2022
A Merger With Food' Contest
Sponsor Natasha L Scragg
Dunk in dyes, tainted, nor tinted,
In world, not by its ways weathered;
Come, put a patch of love ‘pon me
That we get not ever severed;
Death, only your shelter is such,
Op-eyed can one sleep undeterred;
Roads wind not any straight for long,
Beware, feet, of their ways wayward.
Birds ask branches: you know wood well,
Who’ll opt, be spade’s grip un-bestirred?
Old memories tend to get blurred,
Milk of life curdles into curd.
I know critics are keen to judge,
Would they, poems unread, unheard?
_____________________________________
Inspired by a Gujarati Ghazal by Anil Chawda, yet, this does not claim to be a fitting translation of the original. To retain the Ghazal form, style and diction, subject matter sometimes has to be modified.
Ghazal |13.11.2021| world, love, death, ways, birds, memories, poems
Whence passed the verse of bitter love
The words of birds and trees that sing
To what age belongs the voice of muses sweet
How long since poet parsed a thing
A man could understand? a line that
Speaks emotions, curdles the blood of men
Or makes the blithe spirit soar upward
Moves a wounded heart to make a tear; then
Gently wipes the tear and make the grief complete?
Not long ago the sigh invoked by careful lines
Was heard, but alas is heard no more.
The passages set down in haste do not belie
That they are something of a dreadful bore,
And I have sought a piece with gentle tone
To find that published poems read like Webster's page
Laid out in patterns, yet are cold as stone.
L. Milton Hankins, 1968
and again it stabs, a flickering flash
like Macbeth’s floating dagger:
invisible, hallucination, a silent pain.
Like a nettle, a rose’s thorn,
it twists and curdles into rotten barbed wire.
It rests in your pockets
sits in your palm,
it vibrates on our tables
and jolts us from an already fitful sleep.
Influencing ones and zeros
flood over bodies and seep into conversations,
ooze across self-worth and cover mirrors -
slow and unnoticed, impaling a society turned statue
by an intangibly weighted media.
You know how cheese
Sometimes gets moldy and blue?
How milk oftimes curdles
And smells bad too?
How babies (tho’ cute)
Love to be cuddled
But every so often
Carry a definite phew?
How dogs (and cats)
Our beloved companions
Sometimes develop a certain aura
And reek to high Heaven?
How certain cheeses
Can stink like bejesus
Like limburger and Havarti
Like any dead thing I must say
Well…We all have our mood swings
Our good days and bad days
And so sad to say….
That these oft used cliches
Describe to a T
The mood that I’m in
…Today…
23 lines-100 words
If swallow you cannot an ill word
That curdles up to turn sour like curd,
And acrid goes from sour
By every passing hour,
Spell it out all aloud if unheard,
Watch it loose potent power,
Cooled as if under shower,
Till you laugh it all off as absurd!
_____________________________________________________
Swallowing ill words has upset no stomach, advises ancient wisdom; but it may upset mental health. Beware then every time you open your mouth. If you find swallowing too hard, this limerick (an extended one) shows a better way.
_____________________________________________________
Tongue-in-cheek | 07.03.15 |
i dip my pen into the ocean of helpless
fluids searching for hopeful cravings
and my blood has rippled in a thousand torrents of expectations...
but do you know that my lungs has torn,shattered and broken on pieced streets and pierced boulevards?
know that i need need not be merged together for i am a victim,curdled on the back of expectations...
you are the lost garment i search for in the holes of a torn garment, do you know how your thoughts reverberates in the hall of my mind ?
ireti,what is the spirit that dwells in you?
tell me your backbone and its custodian..
you break the rocking of my bone and paralyse the swiftness it curdles and wait..you turn my head down on the tongues of hard rocks...
ireti..i am broken
see me emerse my thoughts in the flowing waters of wisdom our fathers hold
and i hold myself with twines of hope weaved by tender tailors with soft hands behind the hopeless garments of expectations...
i am broken...not beyond repair
for i am a victim curdled on the backs of expectations
Galactic cowboys mount mysterious steeds
and chase spacey cows at unfathomable speeds!
Lactating in circles they moo as they spray
an interstellar round-up, a real milky way.
It sparkles and glimmers, that distant lactation
as it drenches the galaxy and all of creation.
At heaven we marvel, in some ungodly hour,
at distant milk curdles, already gone sour.
8/21/16
For Contest: Word Play: Galactic
Hosted by: Ir0nic Zink
As the maddening tempest darkens,
This gusty night threatens my vulnerability,
When a deluge of woe gushes from a stormy heart
To reflect a tinge of foreboding, of a growing boom--
The ebon cloudburst engulfs this certain
Ramble of an eerie jab in my veins.
Yet, my attitude is numb, so unaffected…
Perhaps this callous notion within knows
I feel this hurricane's frenzy , often.
I don’t know why…
The marrow in my bones curdles, as usual,
A time when a soul grows melancholic
Knowing in the core of turmoil, I need to go away.
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Hurricane Contest Re-submitted 9/12/2017
Sponsor: Julie Rodeheaver
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