Sudden was the descent of poetry on me
I tottered under its weight
My body heated up like the sun
A frying egg yolk on the pan
My blood started burning…. burning
A strange madness crept across my senses
Intoxicated as by an excess dose of ale
Or drunk with the vintage wine
Or by some mystical disengagement
I started levitating
Wings sprouted up suddenly on my sides
I reeled round and round
Flew up and up
Meteors flashed past
Stars blinked
Larger celestial bodies stood still
Strange sounds fleeted past my ears
My heart palpitated,
Like the rumblings of thunder
My eyes glowed like fire balls
A shout I heard afar
Over the heavens’ mysterious rim
Muffled though, I could decipher it;
“Welcome to the clan of poets”!
Around me, I saw multitudes of poets
Young and old, their faces blazing
Like a thousand lanterns lit
In that blinding brilliance
My filmy wings burnt outright!
Like Icarus, from the heights
I flopped down to the chasm below
In the scattered heap of flesh and bones
A faint stir …..
…………………..
The feeble flutter of a poetic heart
Before it was finally stilled!!
Categories:
disengagement, extended metaphor, fantasy, poetry,
Form: Free verse
Don't slip through my fingers daughter of mine
I've quilted the stars of heaven for you
and padded the moon with the gauze of the sun
Don't look back at the web that you have weaved
only look forward to the disengagement of my freedom
my Love, I will provide for you, daughter
Don't be so quick with your steps and never forget
who made those pretty toes, those lovely hands
above you I can hear your every sigh, daughter
Come rip the veil open with your longings
come to my table as you are able
come drink from my Merciful cup,
Oh daughter, never forget that I Love You,
Signed, Sealed, Delivered,
Your Heavenly, Father
Categories:
disengagement, appreciation,
Form: Narrative
Since retirement
I have gradually become more disappointed
with watching
and listening
to performers,
to on-screen entertainments,
to emotional yet disembodied hypnosis,
to vicarious fascinations
now suspiciously corrupt
Performance watching
becomes a cheaply vacuous substitute
for real life engagement
in compassion with embodied hope;
Or even social disengagement
in disdain
with chilling cynicism.
I feel drawn out of retiring
and into some healthy perspiring
in a fluid multicultural river
watering compassion,
Steering clear of a tangle of wires
and technology
feeding isolated despair.
Mindless entertainments
are probable on screen
and possible reading choices too
Feeling guilty as I age
leaving way too much
for future generations
to undo.
Too needy
and wounded
and busy protecting privacy
Projecting charismatic fame
to blame
and shame
for all my ambivalence,
doubts
dark nights leaning into fear
to risk more
than breathing through another episode
of Mary Tyler Moore
and more
USA middleclass white folks
entertaining
without engaging
Show
On screen time
is too much less
than Just Show Up.
Categories:
disengagement, addiction, adventure, age, angst,
Form: Political Verse
You are a sustained landscape
one that changes only when you smile or frown,
a fermata, an endless note
something akin to love strung-out,
pulled thin
until it vibrates at the same tone
as does love, but
not deep,
just the tension of a chord made to sing
as a vibration
upon an unvarying reiterative.
The landscape is in you,
the one holds the other in place.
it forms your stance and mien. From a distance
of years
I see you smile or frown, wave or turn your back
from my outreaching arms.
The sounding wire is continuous,
only those minor wincing fractals
upon lips,
the corners of your eyes,
the bandwidth of a memory never changing.
The landscape does not build a thing,
not a brick or a leaf just
this constriction in my throat while I echo
the atonality of a mood,
and given the small modulations, your perpetual
disengagement,
and my need for this vision to change
even so, am I kept listening
to this
ever e x t e n d i n g
minimalistic curtain-call,
a thralldom
to a reenactment that draws near to love
while rebounding away.
Categories:
disengagement, poetry,
Form: Free verse
For gift of life indeed precious
Packed with love and care, so gracious
My heart exclaims blest gratitude…
Thanking God* for supplies’ magnitude.
Overwhelmed with guilt’s misery
Drowning in bitterness fury
My heart seeks pardon’s certitude…
Expecting peaceful solitude.
Midst pain in toilsome hardship
Distracting my earnest worship
My heart reveals meek attitude…
Gripped with courageous fortitude.
Against lurking discontentment
Of delirious disengagement
My heart needs divine rectitude…
To share kindness-filled beatitude.
When triumphant stewardship zeal
Bears fruits along prayerful seal
My heart shows "reach-out" altitude
Prompted by love’s grand latitude.
*Colossians 3:15 And let the peace of God rule in your hearts, to the which also ye are called in one body; and be ye thankful.
November 3, 2020
6th place, "No 1296" Poetry Writing Premiere Contest
Sponsored by Brian Strand; judged on 3/27/2024
Categories:
disengagement, blessing, christian, faith, god,
Form: Dramatic Monologue
She is popular no doubt
In the fray of every conversation
Interested in everyone’s story
Flitting around the room injecting optimism
Instilling hope
A sanguine personality with pizazz
I follow her as she work the room
Charisma on fire
Charming them like a faerie riding a monarch
Her tittering laugh grates me
She is the original Pollyanna
Giving them all a piece
She is the leader of the room
We all know.
It is as obvious
Her engaging wit
And talent for loving everyone
Keeps her energy twirling in every direction.
Exhausted watching her,
I look for a corner and sit.
Quietly unobserved,
Invisible
Which is where she finds me
To lift me up and engage me in conversation.
Her keen eye
And caring ways
Are drawn to disengagement
As a hawk is drawn
To a skirmish
Running full out toward it.
Sanguine. Nothing like it!
Categories:
disengagement, 10th grade, 11th grade,
Form: Free verse
She says she's fine with it
With social distancing
It's her normal defiant
absence of resonant integrity.
In fact,
thanks to the magic of World Wide Webs
she now has all day
to bask in messages she can choose
as resonant
and "bad" humored dissonant
social engagement
and political disengagement,
empowering
and disempowering
now her whole day/night choice
of sounds good-humored sung
and bad-rumored hung
out for risky social distance voice.
Polyphonic prosody
is like polypathic integrity
except older,
often wiser,
healthier
and wealthier.
Harmonic humored sounds
predict virally rumored rounds
of global ego/eco-therapy,
bicamerally wiser resonance,
bilaterally health systemic resilient
and wealth politically economic
Power tensions,
as my oppositionally defiant daughter
might more mindfully intend,
resound "Fine!!!!!!!!!!!"
roared like a weapon
might not(not) question double-rewinding Fine?
if you could ask me nicely for a hug
so we return to smiling, Fine
As pastel hugs
and shrugs
dawning viral light.
Categories:
disengagement, anger, engagement, health, humor,
Form: Political Verse
Do you sense a difference
between ecstasy
and enchantment?
Ecstasy draws me out of my ego,
my body
my mind
my autonomous autumnal consciousness,
winter isolated awareness.
And enchantment?
Enchantment draws me in.
More of a seduction,
maybe even curious
invitation.
Ecstasy sounds louder,
bolder,
short-term climatic
and requires loss of ego-centered monopoly games
While enchantment may include promise
of all that bluster
and outsidedness
yet adds the longer sunlight summer
before and after relationship
of seduced out
fascinated
hypnotically co-empathic internal root induction,
promising integrity's path of quieter seduction,
restoring internal becomings with external belongings
Yet to magically
climatically
mythically appear
on life's Yang ecstatic
Yin enchanting
horizon of newborn
politically green
spring.
There's political disengagement
Then personal wedding
Then ego/ecopolitical re-engagement
of every spring through winter nutritional rites of passage.
Categories:
disengagement, earth, engagement, environment, health,
Form: Political Verse
Sweet Mother..
You have brought me into
This world..
Sweet Mother
I took my first breath of life
You were there
As my teacher
You taught me well
Sweet Mother
Your love for me
Always..
I cried
You wiped my tears
My days filled with sadness
Your embrace of comfort
warmed my heart
My protector you were
Led me out of harms way
Fond loving memories of Sweet Mother
Memories all captured
Remains in memory
Until last breath of my physical life
Disengagement from this world
I shall continue fond loving memories
Of Sweet Mother
Now I glance into your lovely eyes
Blankness exists
Gaze is lost
Sweet Mother
I ask
Do you know who I am?
Confusion shapes form
Responding occurs
Answer is no..
My heart breaks into
Millions of pieces
No comprehension exits
No recognition exists
Sweet memories gone
On your part
An evil has taken over you
Sweet Mother
Name of evil
Dementia
Taking solace
I do
Peace of mind
Yes..
Sweet Mother
Your higher mind
Hears me
Sweet Mother
Your higher mind
Knows me
Our bond
Our connection is eternal
Evil Dementia shall never
Interupt our sacred connection..
Sweet Mother
I Love You...
Categories:
disengagement, dedication, feelings, love, mother,
Form: ABC
In search of peace
he burnt down his books,
living precariously,
as colors were shifting.
After the disengagement
there was anger and chaos.
In the swirl of mudslides
the mountains stood erect & high.
Caste, color and creed
on coffee table,
for a birthday party of democracy.
A drone fell on the crowd.
The maniac depression divides
the butterflies into pathless lies.
The grass was blue
and sky was red.
Satish Verma
Categories:
disengagement, art,
Form: ABC
I want to ask of my family
I want to plead to those who are near
Please don’t look straight through me
For I know that I’m still here
Acknowledge my being
Let me know I exist
Please hear my pleading
Please let my presence persist
Tis as if I have no essence
Tis Your disengagement that I fear
Please see and feel my presence
I may be passed…but I’m still here
I try to touch…
Reach to caress…
But you can’t sense my lips
to yours softly pressed
Tis as if I have no essence
Tis your disengagement that I fear
Please, see and feel my presence!
I’m so cold… but I’m still here.
I’m so lonely…but not for long
can you not yet feel the chill?
For very soon you’ll join me
I’m cold …but I’m here still
Categories:
disengagement, life, loss,
Form: Rhyme
Here is the world for you and me
woven in a cord romantic feelings
It wraps us up in its cobweb
And rolls up in a ball to be dipped in love soup
Its fingers spread like fine spun of cupid
Gently molding us to be the shape intimacy
Like silken thread it tune us fast
Bonds like this are meant to last.
There is no room for disengagement
It gulps and engulfs sure
To bind us closer and keep us strong
In a special intent, where we belong.
Categories:
disengagement, love,
Form: Romanticism