Written: August 24, 2026, for: Week's Poetry Challenge: The Color Blue
Blue, a zealot turned arrogant,
fervor fading into hauteur,
devotion darkened into disdain.
sapient in its sway,
dulcet as hymns
and still a shade of seashell.
It limns the sky’s scriptorium,
A selfish scroll of sequins
Stippling clouds with crevice cracks.
A symbol for suns that sail away.
desuetude drapes the shore—
The ocean exhorts
a savage screech
a spindle scream
against scree and stone.
Blue epitomizes arrogance.
indulgent in its rejection,
a wicked shade,
funny but sad,
a spirit of saudade.
It speaks in sonic waves, furtive, fecund, effete—
a hallucinative hymn unraveling across the horizon.
flecked with fanfare froth
Blue is the ache of elsewhere,
a pertinacity of longing,
an obvious evil,
yet a harvest of comfort—
an ethereal respite,
a lullaby of light.
And silence, salient, settles—
blue bows its zealot head,
a final hush,
the sky exhales,
a lucid lull remains.
Sesquipedalian, sounds like an alien
Syllables trailing from your tongue like a train
Seems like you'd rather leave words in a lather
Forming like foam from the rain in your brain
Eye's water, this slaughter of discourse dissection
Is deserving of mid-course correction at least
If only your colleagues could change the direction
Of this Grand Panjandrum in pedantical feast
Walk down the old path that many have walked
But I walk down a new path the path that I once balked
Death is the deliverance from sin
Death ends the battle within
I would rather die than submit to Your will
I would rather die than swallow the bitter pill
Don't wallow in your guises and guiles
Don't relent, don't remain in your sin and your trials
Until the day that you die, you will die
Shaking your hand at the storms in the sky
To all the sapient sentients and ye obstinate serpents
Repent, repent, repent, every morning filled with a new sense
We are reluctant to preach even though we are a priesthood
A peculiar one at that, making idols in our minds and of wood
We often walk away from the open door of a Gospel chance
We would rather revert to the old path of least resistance
Instead of the new path, it's not happenstance
That we are guided by the Providential and Chastening Hand
Don't harden your heart, do your part, count it joy
God does not plod, even though we scheme and ploy
Jonah's anger was Jonah's defeat
Get on your feet (feet that are effete)
Lord help us to pull ourselves up by the bootstraps
So we can walk down streets of gold, our new paths
I lost my mind today -
Oh boy -
and all the thoughts I had
just seemed to vanish
in the haze
surrounding my head
It seemed so wise -
so potent -
so infinitely dull -
complete with thought, effete with pomp
emblazoned on its skull.
An ounce of heart
a pound of spleen
a smattering of phlegm
A bit of code
a bunch of will
And a thick soup of memes:
All this was all mixed
and cut to bits
A chewy marble blend
From which I built
A vague relief
Of life that I intend:
Where has it gone, do tell me?
Where is my upscale mind?
I look without,
I look within,
But nothing can I find.
It seems the mind has melted
And I must build anew
Today's mind-melded structure
With but a quart of glue.
PURE AESTHETICISM
shattered
neurasthenia
fashionably
stylised
reluctantly
translated
with
abandoned
familiarity
implicitly
subtle
&
complex
ineffable
artificial
alternatives
of
nonchalant
effete
elaborate
teasing
ornamental
revelatory
consequence
incidental
to
genuine
impression
A wolf when
raised by dogs
forever
is a wolf
A banker once
he’s crossed the line
can never
steal enough
Aristocrats
their titles
banned
in practice stay elite
A dilettante
who’s been exposed
is then declared
effete
An arrow
with its feathers gone
when fired
lethal still
A grizzly bear
that’s been declawed
his teeth
remain to kill
A judge
without a jury
still hands
a sentence down
A clown
without a circus
can yet
erase a frown
A cop
without a badge
will chase you
till you’re caught
A Nun
without her habit
plain clothed
— in virtue walks
(Thank You Gertrude: December, 2025)
a fairy tale of Camden Town
Clancy’s Gym, the same old sounds
a minute’s rest then two more rounds
I’ll jack this in (like Bobby Prewitt)
but where’s the one who made me do it?
He hasn’t come, he’s never here
by now he’s on his second beer
presiding in the Dublin Castle
surrounded by his navvy vassals
they’re calling me “the Tralee Tiger”
I coulda been … where’s my Rod Steiger?
the jolting jab, fast on his feet,
the bantamweight that no-one’s beat…
my bucket? Something-Saint-John’s-Wood
and scum from gumshields, spit and blood
I’ve learnt a word I like – “effete”
You don’t hear that on Albert Street
He knows I never wanted this. He
said he’d cure me called me cissy
he calls me Rocky. What a sham
why can’t I be the thing I am?
I want to dance like Nureyev
which might explain the fury of
the shellacking that this lad’s getting
Look at those losers busy betting
Sad old slobs with Patterson poses
ten-buck suits and flattened noses
come to think, though, who’s the fool
they’re not up here on this stool
back room Clancy’s Masculine Sports
blood on the gloves, shamrock on the shorts
the sergeant's son
His father, a sergeant who loved his army
and took it home at night, thought his son's
fear of the dark was effete
gave him a flashlight to use when going to
the loo in the yard where darkness ruled supreme; the puny light emitted from his
light didn't help much
The boy sensed the horrible rats, haters of
humans read to unleash the plague for
the hell of it and also bite his Willey
It struck him then and now that our light
is a momentarily sudden flash, more
sensed than seen
In a world ruled by dark forces and death
of all that was a beautiful, sink-to-ground
to ground and become dust trampled on by
his father's army
In the dark, he saw his father's black shiny car
he peed on one of its wheels and felt relief
a revenge against the man who like to be
called sergeant when off duty.
Intellectual larceny
the academic elite
Immune from indictment
inured and effete
They swing their false knowledge
like weapons to maim
The truth left in ashes
— their lies to inflame
(Septa R5: February, 2024)
Classes on tranny and ***** diversity
universities reek of perversity
Discrimination abounds all around
save if your skin's black or brown
Tuition hikes obscene, naked robbery
flaunt luxury dorms and diners, effete snobbery
Not a smidgen on learning or teaching in glittering reports
just facilities upgrades, data analytics in sports
Grade inflation boosts illiteracy ever higher
agree or disagree ~ at least I'm no liar
I, too, dislike poems.
I’ve tried runes (and rampikes)
but that’s affected
rather than merely effete.
So I call them
figments.
When people query
What do you write?
at a barbecue or birthday party
I say soliloquies,
fractals,
fragments.
Self-similarities,
singularities,
sculptures (scriptures), geometric shapes and series,
three dimensional triangles, spheres
and differential equations,
fractured fairy tales,
Rocky and Bullwinkle,
rectal impactions.
On the other hand,
bits, bots, bytes
remnants, scrap, earth
gobs of phlegm in grains of sand,
shards of glass in a slice of hell,
hunks and clumps, curds and whey, sleet and pain, slap in the face
sub-atomic particles, cell organelles,
chunks of energy, cookie crumbs,
rusty trucks stuck in mud, dustings for ghosts,
just plain dumb luck, rocks, concrete, but not tweets.
perhaps we are effete snobs
though we fete our snobbery honestly
we lie and cheat our way to A's and B's
leave for fools those 'gentleman's C's'
SEQUEL: Sebastian Jnr Ft Poet Em Em
On the other side, lies
Blind heart: swimming in his sweat
Heading to verge of nowhere in eve
To dredge his sepulchre
For who knows? He said
Of what rain the fountain would pour
On the other side, stuck
Half-closed effete eyes,
Fueling by fountain of "at least",
to sleep not.
But to rubberneck life in reverse
So tell the snake
To not walk his path.
This is a rock with pebbles
For legs with no nails walks not
Sip not with him
From the gloomy tears
He seeks in night..
Oh!..Sit on the other side of terrace,
Is a prisoner of war: whose eyes might not catch 'morrow
(2)
Where chicks are entitlement
to wild eagles - daily meal,
and the latter are carcasses
to sky hunters for fat belly
Where eye-catching dreams
could only come true
at times the nose grunts
and during every moment
all bodies strike poses
for clear and clean shot
Yes, this very side
we value sewerages over beverages
open skies over thatched roofs
and whenever the moon visits
our lips widen their coast
I have to crane my neck
the small coterie presses,
I am too short
for long distance seeing
walls tower over my eyes
like curtains.
“You have to see the hidden in the hidden”
The svelte tailored nose-whisper
expects me to know what he means.
I do, but I am not going to nod
and affirm his effete conceits
besides, I am only here
because of the rain.
I am still trying to step back
to take the image in
from a far view
but there are backs
and back-packs,
slow dripping rain hats.
Spectacles are steaming up
in the muggy ambience,
and he is droning
going to a place
where flowers in a vase
mark a post-revolutionary
something or other.
Now I can’t see it at all
perhaps it is hiding in its
hideaway
almost in front of my face?
I overhear
over damp overcoats
it being coaxed
into something more,
much more
than a few blobs of color
caught indoors
on a rainy day.
My dear Miss Peach how lovely!
Your table boasts so fair
You've chosen the finest bubbly
Best porcelain plates and crystal ware
Your handpicked guests are perfect
They know just what to say
They are prefects without defects
With no real opinions per se
Your parties are full of boasting
With braggarts, blowhards and egos
Pomposity excels in what they are toasting
Meaningless, pointless placebos
So Miss Peach I beg you not be stilted
Or try in your best elegance to change
What manner you provide is boring and gilded
And matters not to bourgeois talk wearisomely deranged
October 20, 2020
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