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.
A facsimile of the earth stands proudly
On the savannahs of the ancient and modern.
Edifice of rustic finesse, rugged and pointed
With the glory of a pinnacle of a paradise on earth.
In your crawling presence, Termite, stand I,
Barefoot, on elevated earth for the first time —
A platform erected by the hands of gifted time,
All red-brown and royal, and under the tutelage of
Sun and Rain —two keen-eyed foremen descended from heaven.
You have reached the skies before man.
I hail you!
I have removed my open-toe footwear,
Like Moses did his in the burning bush.
Babel forbids the union of this construction,
Aiming Nimrodly upwards and towards arrowed clouds
Dispersed in blubbering tongue-lashes.
But you do not seek God’s wrath upon these grasslands
With these anthills,
Wild castles —testaments to the will of fecund grounds.
Termite, break the jinx of your muteness.
Testify, crawling soul, testify harmoniously,
Borrowing the singing heritage of the Common Cuckoo.
Testify now.
Attest
To the ruggedness and puissance of this imposing structure,
And blame it on the staccato rhythm of peevish languages.
Nature hedges its bets with candles and suns.
Some lives flash briefly in fecund swarms.
Fireflies, mice, lice and mayflies—
scatter their bright fireworks shoals of living sparks
with a fanfare of hope into the wilderness.
Others linger slowly through centuries:
whales, tortoises, redwoods, sloths, and—us—
cherishing and nurturing a precious handful of progeny.
Evolution never chose one way to survive and bargain with time.
Scatter a hundred thousand seeds—or guard a precious handful of few?
It's either careful maintenance, patiently sustained and nurtured—
Or throwaway spam replacements with no warranties.
Yet nothing blooms forever here—not even the daisies.
Even the white stars in the sky above age to orange giants.
Collapse to dull red dwarfs,
then fade further, and implode into dark black holes,
where even time itself forgets what day it is.
So make hay while the sun shines.
Count not the days you're left—
count what makes days glow, and linger long in memory.
To the faint murmurs of your conscience, heed
Let no evil in your heart breed
With good thoughts your mind feed
In fecund soil, plant the seed
And harvest the fruits of your deed
Pulled from rosy rows
rejection breeds persistence—
weeds not welcome here
pop up as lonely, unloved
sly, resilient pioneers.
Boots crush tender shoots,
hands rip out plants by their roots—
mother-of-millions
so fiercely fecund, unbowed,
endless their will to survive.
Weeds misnamed, misjudged,
grow through cracks in wasted ground—
jilted intruders
yearning simply to be seen,
impatience at the margins.
Lonely wily weeds
await unseen for any
opportunity
out on the periphery
to be, to see, and be seen.
The lonely weed—
a wallflower in the scene
a wallflower in the scene.
The smell of humidor
Charmed the old house and
Frightened me as I ascended the
Narrow stairwell that gentle
October morning.
The song of autumn was playing
Low, and with astute grace.
Silent, the royal smell wafted between Cuba
And Denmark,
Across fat rank grass of fecund roots.
I snuffled through fogs of earliness,
Webbed by clamping cold.
Cigars without smoke took over from the
Humidor and hugged my lungs.
It falls with grace.
Metallic bawls hail the strength of zinc roofs.
At the mercy of the thatch,
Drops drip from needle points of skeletal
Palm fronds.
Particles of rain descend on thresholds
Among dewed terrains.
The petrichor befriends the atmosphere,
Caressing limpid warmth with floating cold.
Lightning, a white dancing Anaconda, races with speed,
Filling the tenebrous plains with lights of hope.
Troubled skies ululate through the power of thunder.
I always recline on that liquid voice!
Rainmakers cream their palms
And roast fresh leaves of
Epochal petals
Plucked from somnolent trees.
Bubbles, green and full of life, puke,
Filling up the mouths of burning woods.
Grey darkness suggests the pleasant wars of
May through October,
When distant wayward drops
Trickle before the deafening deluge.
I hail the blandishments of July
For the society of fattened yams and the
Worthy tendrils —festooned confetti of ceremonial
Harvests.
Droughts yawn in vain when the attitude of
Wet seasons befriends the skies,
Yielding fecund grimes that grace the soil.
Her face showed freshness of a fecund lea,
Inviting eyes lured me then to explore,
Her bosom conveyed warmth that was friendly,
Lighthouse-like beckoning to come ashore.
Each tiny cell of her anatomy,
Derided by the wise as mortal flesh,
And deemed Maya, if not an enemy,
Posed, why such rare beauty be scorched to ash.
Let all the wisdom warn of beauty’s blight,
I still in life’s splendid things would believe,
Let all keep philosophy’s vague delight,
I fall for beauty’s charm, let it deceive,
And love to kiss its lowly dust on death
To keep alive in loveliness my faith.
____________________
Sonnet | 01.04.2014, revised March 2025 |
Note: Beauty is only skin deep, and if one were to scrape a shade below (forget the sub atomic levels), the scene could be quite nauseating. Beware of beauty’s blight, old wisdom says. It is all illusive Maya. This sonnet nevertheless says: let me keep my illusion and faith in loveliness.
Sweetness is a Jasmine January
Seeds its scent along the inkberry
Starflowers streaming a fecund path
I bask in a heavenly perfumed bath
Winter bouquets an Elysian Field sanctuary
Jasmine scents ladies of the night
Jazzman ticklin’ ivory ‘neath a sultry light
With a surging merge all kept warm
During the raunchy ruckus and snowstorm
New Orleans brothels wintery delights
The grown Dove searches for mud
to disparage its mother
who granted them this pure white.
Lord endow me with divine purpose,
help dry this dirt on the earth
a brown ocean, swelling, percolating.
A window pane snaps from the pressure
I remember the day I was born.
I weep, I weep, I weep.
A bird scurries ‘round my neck
it is a little pigeon
it will serve no purpose;
it suffers a century of burden,
the weight of its child.
It weeps, it weeps, it weeps.
it has bore too many
Beautiful, fecund, yet meaningless;
its children will be born in mud.
Like any transition Summer springs from a bud and burgeons into bloom, fulfilling the legacy of nature's constant change of state. Gone but remembered.
From frolicking in the sweltry sun to a cooling composure - the questing quill sows its elucidating wisdom to embark on a final journey - crafting the legacy. Gone but remembered.
Autumn! Season of fecund harvest when poets forage for mocking muses amidst the gaudy palette of fading charm. Gone but remembered.
It's no wonder that old dame knew not what to do,
If she thought she could raise kids alone in a shoe.
She proved after the second
She was overly fecund,
Maybe Mother Goose reckoned she'd have child support, too.
Bush: she had a deep
black birds nest.
Fecund Arabic woman
dark peaches for thin lips.
White faced, I redden in the sun,
a blanched fig, a thirst
for dew drops.
One night is enough, maybe two,
there must be a Spanish guitar
pleading the stars for more tears.
I have a comb
for her oval waves,
she is, for a while,
the mother of the world
the secreting seeds
of a fruiting pomegranate.
I am her despoiler of silk sheets,
she, a font of arousal
baptizing a love-song.
Poetry is not dead
Poetry will never die
Poets do not lie
Poetry is naturally well-fed
With vibrant poems every second
Of the day to make the soil more fecund
The brain is alert and strong
Nothing can possibly go wrong
Poetry is ubiquitous
Poetry is sexy and serendipitous
Poetry is eternal
Poetry is sentimental
Poetry is empirical
Poetry is spiritual
Poetry will live forever
And Poets will never fear terror
Poets will chase away lies and put (to sleep) to bed
The truth every night for a better tomorrow
Poetry is not dead
But simply take notes to ease any sorrow
Poetry is not dead
Poetry is inordinately well-fed
Poetry is hot, super hot with Hip-Hop
Poetry is well, hot and alive
Smile, think, write, rap, read, dance and hop
And give high to all Poets: high five.
Copyright © August, 2023, Hébert Logerie, All rights reserved.
Hébert Logerie is the author of several collections of poems.
Shadow of orange
Shadow of red
Shadow of black
Light of blue
Surrounded by Heavens Gates
Speckled with radiant hue
Shroud of white
And dim Stratocast
The ambient shroud of memory
Her well-lit past
But what lies ahead
In her Crystal lights
Glows the life of centuries
Ahead , the neon trance
Of fecund groaning humanity skin
Stretched with phosphorescent orb
And drawn out from within
The arched radiant line that echoes
Silver moon alloy , titanium Night
Into the darkness with reckless abandon
Abandon all hope when hope is abandon
No more the green of earth s forest
Or brown the fallow fields
As grey as the tombstone which covers the age
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