EMOTIONAL CHANGES
becoming
eccentric
voracious
&
taciturn
with
fractious
tendencies
blinkered
failures
in
commonplace
preoccupations
&
veritable
re-interpreted
paradoxes
As if our fights were not fractious enough,
Look, children have picked up the cue from us
And unless we call truce for peace and love,
Things might blow off the roof what with all fuss,
She complained once, nudged by the lost out sense.
Relax, I said, a conflict has its use,
So has this friction if confined to fence,
Only, it’s a double-edged sword to choose.
Life, what an opus if fights forge out friends!
Thank friction, a caveman found out the fire,
Stop all chafing, wheels would go out of hands,
It can lift humdrum life a tad higher,
It’s friction that dull edges get vetted,
Without, bonds of ties get not well-knotted.
If friction does within fixed fulcrum lay,
But not, were it to rub in a wrong way.
__________________________________
Sonnet | 01.01.2026 |conflict/friction, family, marriage
Note: This sonnet should have ended by the fourteenth line, but for the fact that every wife enjoys her birth right to have a last word, and here she insisted on adding her own couplet.
The muse has no fingers
Possesses no internal abacus
Cannot fathom fractious patterns
…take one word from line A
And two from line B
Skip line C
Use it as line D
Drop C into C
With six you get Egg Roll
Within prismed images I was captured
along with twilight as it tinted the sky.
We were ensnared during a power struggle
at the hour when sunlight wrestled the moon.
Neither wanted to vacate the celestial throne.
But I was the one fighting hardest to survive
when beveled tongues along mirrored edges
roared at me in the wilderness of life's jungle.
Voices were raised that sounded vaguely familiar.
The bitterness echoed and surrounded me.
I was blinded by distorted light from all directions.
Hunted like prey in the wilds,
staying alive proved to be a fractious task.
But fracturing seemed to be my only way out.
I broke down the walls of the reflective maze
and walked over dagger blades of broken shards.
Mirrors that are not hung never pose a threat.
A day escaped,
released from the sticky womb of night
held firm in the arms of midwife morning,
listen to its infant cries
the wails of a newborn child unfed
demanding of your bed and sleepy scant attention,
it matters not that you turn your back and try to block your ears
to tears of open-window traffic rage
and screaming gulls that dance on bins with shoes of lead
invade your head and work themselves within
to violate your peace with a surgeons skill,
phone alarm vibrating shrill and shaking
leaking decibels that penetrate each waking fibre of your skin,
you know you must begin, attend that fractious babe
fill its hungry mouth to stop the bawling
lured as ever by the bathroom light
Thursday screams, and you her faithful moth come crawling
my mother had cool paws and long fingers
she could have been an artist
but she reserved her love
for an infant
she would play a merry tune
with my chubby fingers and toes
while singing like an irish harp
perhaps your mother
was as talented as my mother
I bet she played peekaboo’
just as well as my mother did
but my mother
had cool paws and long fingers
and when i was but a fractious toddler
she would play the bagpipes
until i would
in desperation
yell
ENOUGH!
DARKNESS
momnumentary
reflects
the
transmitted
a dark
inaugural
variation
glimped
beyond black
conveyed
galvanished
in
dynamic signs
of
modulated light
fractious
configuration
dense
yet prominent
Eviscerate my being! Distort my face!
Bring me closure to my ego; replace!
Seizure in dark games through which we interlace,
Beckoning the reaper's embrace.
Subvert my empathy!
Break me into colluded ecstasy!
Mold me in your image of apathy!
Put me in a daze of senseful apogee!
If only I could help You experience the same...
If only I could put out what had went aflame...
If only I could rid you of your own self blame...
My ultimate goal- to personify your game..
Knowing I belong on greater stages;
I set out to share a seat among your stations!
As I'm marching alongside your pages,
I'm taunted by the echoes of ages,
mocked by divine wages.
Taxing are the paths to your way.
My will's faltering, hope's grey,
mind's in a state so risqué.
Tell me, is this the price that I must pay?
"Fractious paranoia vying to supplant.
Vying to take over, to ruin your descant.
To kill that which would lay bare, the one which I shan't.
And destroy the altar to which I hum and I chant."
Tangled in a web of fractious emotions
Siblings venture forth to make a new life
Often leaving behind imagined notions
Of childhood, sibling rivalries, and strife.
Siblings venture forth to make a new life
Choosing new totems, fleeing sad memories
Of childhood, sibling rivalries, and strife
While aligning themselves with necessaries,
Choosing new totems, fleeing sad memories
Beginning afresh with their positive dreams
While aligning themselves with necessaries,
As old family ties start fraying at the seams.
Beginning afresh with their positive dreams,
Laying foundations for new family and friends
As old family ties start fraying at the seams,
The interplay between then and now never ends.
Laying foundations for new family and friends
Often leaving behind imagined notions,
The interplay between then and now never ends
Tangled in a web of fractious emotions.
Written November 10, 2022
~~ For I Shall Love Thee~
when the butterfly
kisses the gold sunflower …
yes…even in eternity
blessed and divinely free…
I shall indeed smile
no fractious earth to see
nor prizes to chase
just sweet acceptance…
the best, you and I
our lives complete…
God’s blessed fruit to eat
our smiles, the stars…
* my own form of a poem”
Panagiota
Spare me the agonizing of disaffected trolls
Who find nothing of substance worthy of note,
Desperately seeking a modicum of control
Their unconcealed nastiness a matter of rote.
Have they nothing better to do with their time
Than to criticize the successes of legitimate poets
Who, themselves, have difficulty making a rhyme,
But coming up with a dig, they promptly throw it.
Let’s preserve Poetry Soup from this pitiful type
Who comes here only to stir and create turmoil,
Making sure not to give them impetus or hype
In another place may they find more welcome soil.
Doing all we can to maintain peace and goodwill
Let’s keep Poetry Soup free of fractious voices,
Being careful not to engage in avoidable overkill,
But never failing to silence disconcerting noises.
Written May 17, 2022
Bleeding hazel eyes of infinite azure,
Diamond deluge in sapphire shadow,
Atrocities handled a fractious austere,
Smothered ashes of guilt and sallow.
Diamond deluge in sapphire shadow,
Heartbeats synced to cosmic sound,
Smothered ashes of guilt and sallow,
Six feet beneath the ruby rose, crowd.
Heartbeats synced to cosmic sound,
Rose petals of heaven blowing bliss,
Six feet beneath the ruby rose, crowd,
Hapless bodies plunging into the abyss.
Rose petals of heaven blowing bliss,
Inside a cobalt blue flowering bloom,
Hapless bodies plunging into the abyss,
Spasms steeply mingled with the fume.
Inside a cobalt blue flowering bloom,
Atrocities handled a fractious austere,
Spasms steeply mingled with the fume,
Bleeding hazel eyes of infinite azure.
Written: May 10, 2022
FREEBORN
Now ‘cross the fields and woods bird songs ring out
Unbounded exultation to survive
Their voices each a freeborn joyous shout
‘I am still here, a presence, had you doubt?’
Through dark cold months to cling on then revive
Now ‘cross the fields and woods bird songs ring out
Each chant communicates to those about
Imperative intent: continued strive
Their voices each a freeborn joyous shout
No gentle air to sooth a fractious pout
But gesture to persist and so to thrive
Now ‘cross the fields and woods bird songs ring out
As sun ascends to reassure all doubt
Lives then with procreation will contrive
Their voices each a freeborn joyous shout
The cyclic shape of life yet comes about
With each repeat we greet all creatures live
Now ‘cross the fields and woods bird songs ring out
Their voices each a freeborn joyous shout
The scent of decomposing leaves pervades the air,
a ghost-grey mist hangs, lifeless, on the branches; bare
from vehement leaf-stripping winds, awhile passed through,
denuding all; from Ash to morbid, toxic Yew.
Their once green leaves; now dark brown dead beneath my boots.
I close my eyes and hear almost no sounds, save some:
A Robin's song forewarning cruelty to come.
The fractious calling of a Tawny for his mate.
A clinking rattle of a slowly closing gate.
Faraway children playing indistinct pursuits.
Spring's vibrant fresh green shoots seem now so faraway,
memories; another time, a different day.
A serenading minstrel Blackbird; fresh and sweet,
the smell of grass, unfurling flowers, new lamb's bleat,
a mighty Oak-to-be put down its first fresh roots.
All will too soon be buried in a blanket, white,
as inevitably day turns to darkest night.
The Blackbird returns; with soft singing, tilted head.
I follow him beyond the bridge to where I'm led,
crossing to the delicate sound of lyres and flutes.
AMONG THE TREES
Among the trees the storm’s a distant roar
As treetops thrash in fractious discontent
The dry leaves barely stir on forest floor
Adjacent worlds contrasting lives consent
And so in life we seek a shielding grove
Safe haven with world gales a distant sigh
Though should we a brief journey choose to rove
May find space torn in tempest hue and cry
How distant yet how near the chaos reign
How fragile therefore might our hedges stand
A genial forbearance cedes to bane
Complacent comfort truly a dead hand
The bounds of freedom, should they be neglected
Could we assume to live in realms protected
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