You were a white church on a white hill against the sky,
a flinty field that gave forth intense olives and pungent grapes,
a statue of an ancient god bathed in starlight,
the blur of a blue moth merging into the night,
a ship bearing concubines and incense to a barbarous khan,
a wild rose rooted in the frigid veins of the mountain.
But now you are emptiness, absence, void,
a forgotten text in a language that never existed,
the arid mockery of an abandoned bakery,
the currency of a ruined nation,
the dry and withered stone of perished fruit,
the silence that grips the killing floor after the final scream.
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A controversial one.' Long John Laws indeed could stun.' Clipped flinty tones He'd chew
No bones, never met him.' Wonder would
We have got on.? I beleive he was for the
Con-vid, but he was steeped in more honest; times.' In those middle ranges, there
Honesty was pretty much full time, i think
I lived its tail end.' Which balanced me quite
Well, enough to admire, yet know he was
Vulnerable as well.' So i regret the imposition, placed upon all Aussie folks'
Every straight grained, lover of better, for
We at are our best, when we share with mates.' So I reckon if we meet in heaven
Everything will be grand.' We'll gas round a
Golden barbie.' Where adventures we'll put
To plan.'
Saints and Sinners
The smile is broad
But the heart is bile
an outstretched hand is birthed
from a saintly pouch
But alas, such as richly coated
but with a shortened desire
A frail passion
A flinty heart
devoid of piety
thus encapsulated
within a virtuous being
Whereby Enrobing both saints and sinners
Brimstone throats burned,
before bursting into combustible myths.
Dragons were effigies,
deeply scorched into hearts.
Forever became extinct, it became,
the lick of a decaying fire.
Smoke behind the ramparts.
Maddened man grubbed for fire,
in the warm soot of flinty roots.
Naked he smoldered to master,
the furnace flare of a dragon's breath.
Long he rubbed his flames raw,
made fire leap, wildly dance,
with a zealot's fervor.
Then it was,
that they made a great war
upon the world.
A sip of the elixir that invigorates the soul.
The euphoria that it gives calms the nerves.
A fuel of one's enthusiasm to face a new day.
Waker of one's slumbering blood.
Like a burning sunrise that sets the mood,
its glowing reflection stirs the spirits
to dip within the depth of its warmth
and burn the roots of sluggishness.
Where bursting figures desire to be lean,
it fits the path towards the flinty goal,
for, it awakens even the drowsing souls,
to flex and stretch their limpy limbs.
*I don't drink coffee, except native "barako".*
My shadowy quondam
radiated a crimson hue
was alive and moving
now it is a ghost
emotionless
colorless and lethargic
a heart rimmed with marigolds
the sharp color of bloody mulberry
weeps like a crowned raven,
on sealed lips, scarlet wine dews
succulent but stifling
smell of chains is addictive
I am enslaved
guilty of a deadly love
star-stained soul
to succumb to luscious vindictiveness.
the heart sleeps in flinty rain
Lime-scented leaves drip
starfish-shaped leaf drops.
Written: January 27, 2023
You Decide Poetry Contest
Sponsored by: Brian Strand
The light in my life has slowly sputtered out
What began as a flinty spark of infatuation,
Flounders in ever-growing feelings of doubt.
First I thought about nothing but the sensations
The warming qualities of your tender embrace,
But now I find myself dreading seeing your face.
Whatever happened from then until now, I fear,
Is the sudden dying of passion born in my lust
Along with the feeling of companionship, dear,
So, with deep regret, I leave you, I simply must.
You see, I have become a hollowed shell inside,
Devoid of those special feelings we once knew
No more longing to make you my life-long bride,
No desire to walk through life with you by my side.
Written July 1, 2022
Those who would aim to prevent one another without incredulity.
A mighty civilization afflicted by filth and plagued by calamity.
A mystical state of unhappiness that typically lasts for infinity.
Even if a person undoubtedly discovers a way to vanish with vitality.
To the highest point in the country and the most remote destiny.
The historical origins of sentimental pity are not eradicated easily.
The external snowstorm will promptly vanish in a few days flinty.
However, the internal storm will continue to rage for quandary.
Written: December 25, 2021
the edge of town arrives quickly
you hang an inscrutable left
only to discover
one beat-up clapperboard hulk
hanging over tall corn
as if time and land-wrecked it
or
you drive to the end of
a suburban tract
and while waiting for the lights
a blue wash of sky
paints out
the last inflatable swimming pool
the land becomes a swampy hollow
prone by a basking river
treads gets sticky
in pent up pockets of tarry sun
needles of flinty light
glitter the blacktops
the road has dropped you
beyond the town limits
now miles fly straight
bending only to the whims
of natural inclinations
the prim madam inside
your G.P.S.
takes a long nap
turning to your wife
or dog
you smile
acknowledging
that the edge of town
has once again been shattered
A valley of hope stares up
at hills of despair
where shuttered cottages groan
despite the fresh air
Flowers bloom down below
in neat garden beds
bright-colored lilies grow
flinty valley overspread
Dragons with their brimstone throats
burned millions
before bursting into combustible myths.
Did we once make fire
or did the fire make us? Burning,
burning, burning
until ‘forever’ became extinct, became
smoke behind the ramparts of heaven.
More burning, torching the sub-human heart
into almost human pieces,
making our blackened ancestors,
(our little thumb-opposing howlers),
shed their burning skin,
revealing a mollusk of intellect,
a shellfish without a shell
exposing its wriggling thought
in that shedding. The burning
filled our eyes,
we saw the fire, its flinty roots,
we grubbed for those roots
made them bloom, made the flame.
Then full of a holy zeal
we made a great war upon the world.
Hs worn hands, they tell a story --
The furrows where his trusty saw rested
The closed wounds from rusty nails
The bent fingers from flinty hammer blows
The swollen redness from carrying metal pails
Once soft and smooth, now creased and hard
His hands may well be old and worn
~ Yet his conscience remains unscarred
sometimes I wish to cut myself open
just to see what is hidden inside
how lucky I am
even Jack the Ripper would bypass me
that's how lucky I am
but I wish to see
what am I made of
what's so heavy inside
that keeps my head just above the water
enough not to drown
sufficient to maintain disabled
when I open my cavities
and arrange my intestines
all over that metal table
when those heavy gasses deflate
I might be finally liberated
unless it is my soul
a heavy 21 gram that reflects odor
no wonder lungs collapsed
maintaining my vocal cords agglutinated
(haven't let out a voice in a long time)
and my neural synapses dried
I'm fuc*ing dried out
there's nothing left inside
only a velums from organic structures
I'm like a pile of used plastic bags
maybe that's the reason I feel nothing
(plastic is a flinty bit*h)
I'm overpolluted
garbage built impediments
(nothing can circulate)
and I have chest pain
as my feelings are strong-willingly and forcefully
ramming at that tortured core membrane
(still didn't cry)
You died on me
I can still feel you
haven't shed a tear
but I can feel you
shadows
walking behind me
yours is the laudest
It's quiet now, too quiet for Spring:
Sere-brown matted grasses huddle close,
Clinging tightly to patches of congealed Earth,
Nature's chill bosom flinty and unyielding.
No wind yet whips up tremble in bush or tree--
Branches too-long barren of bud or twig--
Or ruffles gentle water's surface in the brook or stream
Of wild woods and forests, yet napping darkly...
...'Til warm breezes whisper, stirring souls and spirits:
Then do wondering necks snap to attention, nostrils flare,
Eyes widen, ears like antennae, twitch on high-alert.
Then do voices emerge, as waving grasses secrete their dew,
As tree buds burst forth, tiny gnarled knobs rubbing rheum drops
From their orbs, freeing visions from winter's howl.
Spring newly resurgent, resplendent, glorious, Inviting!
--As lovers loll the sandy beach, mingling with the moonbeams.
When the radio played
And you thought you could win me
with a handwritten note declaring your pain
in my absence and with hubris
of your youth, you told me of the softness of my mouth, you knew it,
to be gained by forceful lips, again, of youth
that lived on beyond its time
Because your daddy slept on the couch and your momma
never asked for anything and you never knew
there were things a woman could want
So you pushed for me, and stood in the yard
as summer’s light dimmed evening after evening
And I believed that summer would never end,
that desire would never end
I knew a woman should want, my daddy
brought home sweet peonies that grew beside the dairy barn
and leaned down to kiss my momma at the kitchen table
and touched the top of my head
But your face, flinty, shadowed, was like a dare
for something in the end that would pierce me
with a dangerous pleasure and so I prepared.
When I was ready for you
you had found her, the one whose daddy
had left home altogether.
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