The opposite of life
is death
The polar opposite of eternal health
is terminal disease,
with unease perhaps lying/truthing
in-between timelessness
and untimely demise
So too,
my opposite of steady compassion
may be your unsettling dispassion
Elation v deflation
of all these oppositional answers above
as clear
as unclear appositional questings
below.
What is my opposite of suicide?
Self promotion?
Ego inflation?
Having all my consuming needs
fully answered?
Or
maybe some uneasy questing
timeless mind
and spacious body
in-between healthy Now
And death-defying
death-denying
death-defining
death-despairing
death-despoiling
AnthroLove Here
Remains part of EarthLife There
whenever tomorrow comes
Now?
As Me curiously questioning
feels like our lonelier half
of We not yet
finally answering?
What could appositionally rebalance
death's final answering Earth-climate
and life's open questioning Anthro-culture?
What is the opposite of lively ruminations
and deadly ideations?
What lies contentious truths contenting,
In-between EarthBody's discommunication
desecrating death
and AnthroMind's sacred communion life?
Categories:
despoiling, death, grief, health, integrity,
Form: Parallelismus Membrorum
We’ve abused our great freedoms
to reap the results
with school and church shootings
hate speech a new cult
No respect for the flag
or sacrifice made
ignoring our veterans
despoiling their graves
Our streets wait in ambush
where the enemy hides
to prowl in a wasteland
where evil decides
The constitution a weapon
to pervert and inflict
traitorous courts
with laws nondescript
And blindly we run
(toward the cliff)
greed our marching song
narcissism the battle cry
—America is gone
(Ardmore Pennsylvania: April, 2023)
Categories:
despoiling, america,
Form: Rhyme
Steamy daylight seeps into
flesh, bone brick and drywall.
It’s late July
and a large fly is trapped
between the curtain and the hot window.
I can’t tell if it’s angry, desperate, or confused;
the buzz is intermittent, the pauses
lulls of restoration, or instincts in abeyance.
Maybe it just forgets to be anything.
I wonder if its purpose was decreed
before its short life?
The plan pronounced,
breathed into the embryonic grub
by a divine resolve?
It’s mission:
to eat the dead things of the earth,
bury its body in the rot,
the waste and heat of corruption?
Then to fly on
despoiling the despoiled,
maggoting the future.
Will the fly, on judgement day,
be called to confess the sin
of being caught
between sultry glass and fabric,
where the sun sears and strafes;
its purpose uncompleted?
And shall I, on that day of judgement,
be mystically sprayed
into a similar chemical silence?
Categories:
despoiling, poetry,
Form: Free verse
Constrain the clatter within the soul's quiescent call
Rip the sun out of the day into night time's placid fall
To bear the bliss of calmness and peace to all
Oust the din of baneful chaos born
It strikes too deep in our marrow's reconciliation
Unprotected as a petaled rose without her thorn
Ravage such turmoil that snarls serenity
That stirs and quakes despoiling amity and harmony
For the tree that falls uprooted is at rest with amenity
This life's river flows seeking to rest in quiet solitude
Ebbing to its everlasting surge into its cleansing trough
A contented cistern of ease of heart and sweet gratitude
So soft and unadorned the tireless repose liberates
To golden plains of gentle calm
Renewing our spirit's compass - our essence of faith
So sit, be still to meditate on the banks of humility
Transpose the eminent heart of a newborn's unburdened possibility
Breathe sighs of joy for those who know no enemy
February 27, 2020
Pick - A - Title, Vol 14 - Tristich -Poetry Contest
Sponsored by Edward Ibeh
Categories:
despoiling, devotion, freedom, meaningful,
Form: Tristich
Dying the slow death of political infection,
it hides within our words
As we try to run, and try to hide,
its plague a constant scourge
Poisoning the water, despoiling our thoughts,
all freedom it commands
Directing the folly, conscripting all joy
—our blindfold it demands
(Dreamsleep: August, 2019)
Categories:
despoiling, political,
Form: Rhyme
A bandit who thieves with the moon
Finds daylight arrives far too soon
His looting is brash
Despoiling the trash
A boon, what a raccoon leaves strewn ...
Another hides in cynoglossum
Awaiting the scraps 'coonies toss him
Not there to impress
But to clean up the mess
That's why the 'possum's so awesome ...
Should previous-mentioned so lapse
Forsaking debris when night wraps
As morning sun grows
Those early-day crows
Are happy to clean up the scraps!
~ 1st Place ~ in the "Any Animal Or Creature Limerick" Poetry Contest, Charles Messina, Judge & Sponsor.
Categories:
despoiling, animal, bird, humorous, light,
Form: Limerick
Gold Rush
Today I have been watching burly men
with heavy machinery despoiling Alaska
in a hunt for gold, and when they have gone they will leave
the heavy foot prints of man behind; a mutilated landscape!
The mining companies are doing the same in Africa
for their relentless hunt for riches, but all we see is boardrooms
and nice suits legally plundering the land.
Where I live no one is interested in the olive and carob trees
the soil is meagre suitable for beans.
So, for now, we can dwell in peace.
Categories:
despoiling, abuse, break up, business,
Form: Blank verse
I am the scribe who spends my day fixing angles to a pin
yet in night dreams I spill my seed despoiling Seraphim.
I am the pilot holding fast to a course that cannot win
I am the finger on the trigger to loose the dread Sarin
but through it all I only feel this icy cold within
and pride in duty honoured, is this my greatest sin?
Categories:
despoiling, i am,
Form: Rhyme
Mosaic tablets are not monoliths.
It all depends (despair, or last best hope?)
whatever end of Tocqueville’s telescope
you happen to be viewing. One man’s myths
are gospels to another. Freedom fighters,
or filthy terrorists? A vexing ton
of evidence encumbers Lexington.
Our certain self-assertion might indict us.
A foreign army’s trampling our soil,
despoiling farms and cottages at will?
We’re justified (according, then, to Hoyle)
in using violence? It’s never quite as
simple as they say, those righteous writers.
Is Dien Bien Phu so far from Bunker Hill?
Categories:
despoiling, satire,
Form: Sonnet
False Warrior
Cold spear of winter’s harbinger
pierces the heart of summer
leaving her wounded beauty
bleeding out upon the landscape.
Autumn – cruel mercenary force
despoiling the scent of bounty
laying rot the un-ripened hope
denuding the cloaked forest,
Driving color from the stalks
into the shriveling roots
unable to withstand
frost’s crippling grip.
Marching under grey skied guidons
trampling the browning fields
mocking the heraldic false pride
of rainbow colored foliage.
Pawn – sacrificed by Winter’s greed
drawn into the icy depth of loss
duped by the beauty of the battle
to expire on the winds of change.
John G. Lawless
10/16/2015
Categories:
despoiling, autumn, change, metaphor, military,
Form: Free verse
It was inheritance of pain. I should
have known. Incontinent, she was scared
to hug me: the child, after the rape. Shepherding
the lacerations: petrified, a body of lad
floating in a sewage tank; a short circuit in
an incubator, row of infants, life snuffed out in flames;
of being. I want to know ontology, need a
spinal surgery;somebody wants to abort a fetus,
because of mistaken identity, an alien egg
was implanted; racing time,bitter and corrosive,
it happned for the first time; karma, you say.
I don’t agree, you need camel’s milk to clear
your thoughts, like clenched fist against the
darkness; the little child,lad,infants,mortality after
a wrong calculation; the test tubes and petri-dishes,
need despoiling while the soul screams in a
cage;I am ready to jump out of the window,
stories down on the legends, unburdened !
SATISH VERMA
Categories:
despoiling, adventure, allegory, angst, animals,
Form: I do not know?
A piece of my mettle falls
Despoiling the papered faces
Control lost as another descends
Past moments dripping away
Thereafter…constant
Individual bits of my essence falling
Exposed of crystalline fragility
Unnoticed and tacit traces
Breaking off to wholly decrease
Myself…fading
Tenure of uncounted moments
Deep within my possession
Unseen behind dark sunglasses
Afraid to reveal the millions of you
Jewels…uncut
Holding a core of caprice desires
The whimsy of you in thoughts
Prayers offered within dreams
Everyone falling in aging descent
Wanting…solace
Alas, all my possessions offered
To breathe of your sounds again
And fill these vacant corridors
Instead immersing in old photos
Yellowing…stained
Categories:
despoiling, devotion, introspection, life, loss,
Form: Free verse