Greyness Poems

The Ides of March

This week is bleak, the birds don’t sing
No sun, no rains, but greyness
Even the churchbells didn’t ring
Have they become atheists
The bellman and the bearded dean
And all the congregation?
In times like this to breathe is sin
No promise of salvation 
Can take away the truth it fakes
And like a stubborn stem
Grows through the slab, the truth condemns  
The order of the damned
So atheism’s a way to go
Believe in politicians 
They must continue this old show
Which you can call fictitious 
But wasn’t it meant to be as such?
Just ask the God, if you
Don’t think he is disturbed too much
With millions in the queue
That stretches out through centuries
Dead people want to know
What were their lives about, if this
Was meant to be a show
Beware the Ides of March, in case
The warning comes in time
If there is still a time to waste
You doubt it? So do I.

Augury

The earth got suddenly bereft of all life,
With a morose dullness so palpable and rife.
A tint of greyness crept over heaven’s vault. 
All movements came to a freezing halt.

The wall clock didn’t toll the midday hour.
The babies no more blabbered but did glower.
The hen didn’t cackle after laying the egg.
The earth for some benevolent mercy seemed to beg.

The birds on trees at noon didn’t twitter,
And the foliage of leaves didn’t flutter.
No music came out from the well strung fiddle.
The telephone sat silent on its cradle.
       
Nature seemed to have lost half its mirth. 
A mournful silence overpowered the earth.
Suddenly shattering the ominous silence,
Gun shots were heard from a distance.

The siren screamed many times, long and loud,
Announcing curfew on unsuspecting ears wild.
Behind the façade of a deceptive calm,
No one suspected the threat of a fierce storm.

The dumb presages of Nature, who can read?
A language mysterious, that only augurs heard.
What horrors in cosmic layers are concealed!
Through augur’s lens, future incidents are revealed.

Bone Beach

Bone Beach 10-19-24 
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Bone Beach

Over barren beachheads,
Where ephemeral waves roil,
Shattered tides
Wonder of life left behind
In empty wombs that once bore pearls.

A cemetery of fleshless carrions remains
In bleached bone
To build conundrums of calcium,
Birthed in youthful rings,
In relics of festive gluttony
Without tombstones.

Abandoned
Sanctuaries, exposed,
Burn like bare flesh
From raw rays of solar outrage.

Expectant chrysalis of spiral greyness,
Chilled in the journey of cochlear moons,
Builds upon a barren shell a welcoming host
For renewal rising from churning waves - 
A symbol of resurrection from stone sands.

New life grows bones 
In grey dreams
On cast-aways.

Judgement

From all the sorrow veiling this pith of Fire,
From all the greyness obscuring our martyr,
To all the shame Creations’ breathing satire,
Man, what do you hope, you liar?

What do you dream? What do you mean?
What do you deem? What do you seem?
What be your judgement from Supreme?
Why should you be let to breathe?

From all the Beauty you have seen,
From all the Earthliness in your sight, albeit dim,
Mercy from the Lord should hallowed be extreme,
For otherwise, you shan’t be living!

One To Cry With

I have seen the breaking point…still waiting
I have reached the end of patience…with nothing
I have seen the world go ‘round…in absence

I want to be sad with you 
So you’ll know when I’m happy
I want to cry on your shoulder 
Melt into your body 
Feel your steady heartbeat 
Pumping life back into my eyes

I would let the intense greyness take over
Only for a moment so that you may glimpse 
Into this strange mind of mine
And I can tell you how tragic our feelings are
How I have doomed myself and us 
To such a painfully loving place

I would hate to see you with someone else
But I would still destroy myself to see you happy
As much as I hope and believe it won’t come to it
A part of me has already accepted the possibility 
That I could lose you…all of you
But I would have to tell you to know

If you had the choice between
Everything you wanted and everything I had to give
Could you settle?

Melancholy's Garden

Lost in a wistful arbor, where malaise blooms,
Mists flower in hypnotic bleak violet dusks
Shades of brooding melancholy  
Bruise my treasured bouquets of dreams
And plod through ponderous mists 
In metamorphic doldrums

Cold inertia spirals into lamentations,
Midnights drugged with stupor
Lean heavy on my homeless hermit heart
In withering labyrinths of tangled voices,
Atonal buds of plaintive paeans,
When pensive lethargy pierces dawn.

My rose, in apathy, sees no reason to bloom
As shades of gloom birth shadow seasons
And pale fretting’s unbroken gaze dulls dawn’s hues
Clouds of sighs ravish new shoots
Born in sweet trances of possibility -
Each breath a tedious indecision wrapped in enigma.

Dullness shrouds each new growth in greyness
A slow march into inertia’s bower of cathexis.

Startle Dark

Sudden sharp intake of breath.
I wake, in darkness engulfing my senses.
The deafening silence screams
Making me deaf to the smallest sound.
Blinking back the caliginosity,
Seeming darker still with open eyes.
All comprehension of dimension
Lost in the decline of evening's torch.
As the twilight diminished to nought,
All that is left is vastness.
Yet lo, in the shadow it manifests, 
Greyness emerging from the pitch.
As evolution of my perception heightens,
The tendrils of near-invisible light
Start to show the form of the room.
The noise in my head calms
As my eyes adjust to the night.
The room once again has form, 
Dimension, security, familiarity.
I hear my breath, slowed and sure
And I know I am safe to close my eyes once more.

Cemeterey

this place of living
where foliage and grass grow...
i talk to headstones
as the breeze whispers to trees
and the greyness of clouds part

written 2/2/2023
For writing challenge
'C' word poetry contest
sponsor Constance La France
HMS used to check.

Winter Wellspring

winter wellspring

greyness dyes white clouds
 brittle gales howl ice and pant ~
  still meadows shiver

sequoia trees thirst
 fog mists bathe redwood giants ~
  rose petals gild snow
  
cold delirium
 in frenzies of snowflake squalls ~
  silver forests gleam

ice castles glitter
 with gems of furious fire ~
  fields of frost bouquets

twilight alpenglow
 coral shadows dance on hills ~
  nordic neon show

wellspring of winter
 on white wings of solstice dreams ~
  winter streams gurgle

1-26-23
Syllables checked with www.howmany syllables

Cardinal and the Rose

Cardinal and the Rose

As greyness dyes white clouds 
When icy fingers rattle wind chimes of icicles
A shiver rustles still meadows of frost bouquets;
Through brittle gales that howl 
Like exiled banshees
A tiny golden cardinal seeks 
The last yellow rose of summer 
That still blooms in shades of sunlight,
In hues of joyful perfume,
To catch her falling petals etched in sunbeams
As the solstice savage delirium casts them
Into the consuming crystal fire of frost;
Before they whither into forgetfulness
This tiny symbol of devotion
Gathers memories of warm afternoons
To line her winter nest with petals of hope
And the fragrance of joy for golden fledglings
As gilded buds return on new stems
To repeat the cardinal’s warbling song.

1-5-22
Contest: Cardinal and the Rose
Sponsor: Craig Cornish

Colours In the Sky

QUOTE BY CHARLES MESSINA 
"Two doves in white flying, feathers glow beneath the morning's rainbow colours" 

Counting colours in you
Not so clear sky of blue
Until the greyness spoils the view,
And the prism of forming rainbows just grew,
Then from under the archway two doves of white flew.

 © Harry J Horsman 2022

The Secrets of the Fall

Each year we would drive up the canyons,
and take in the tapestry of autumn colors.
The aspens with leaves of yellow and gold,
would wave to us as we passed them by.
There seemed to be an ambiance of royalty,
and the silent attention of the great oaks.
The creatures of the forest with wide eyes,
carefully observe the painting of the sky.
One year we saw a majestic white stag deer,
surrounded by autumn's pale comparison.
A Sioux tipis' cover over lodge pole pines,
has on it painted panoramas of falling leaves.
Then turning back to the place of our reluctance,
we began to fade as its greyness consumed us.
The spirit of the season is sacred to earthlings,
and its potent vision can bring us understanding.
To find in its dying beauty...the secrets of the Fall.

date: 9/14/22
contest: Fall Flavors Poetry Contest
theme: Taking a Fall Drive
sponsor: Regina McIntosh

By the Seaside

Staying by the sea, now at sunset
With the light slowly fading into greyness
And the waters lying quiet
A peace fills me as never before

Dismal fears barred entry into the soul
Mind freed of all disquietude.
Through the soft whisper of waves,
A low sweet melody finds its way.

Listening to the gentle sibilance of the sea,
A new insight suddenly dawns on me~
None but we are to blame
For all our angry bickering
With all swirls and whirls underneath,
Is an abstruse calm in the deep.
In this continuum of flux 
Is a permanence – abiding and perpetual. 

Staying by the sea at sunset    
With its still waters glimmering in twilight
And the stray clouds straggling in the sky,
My soul undulates with the slow rhythm of waves
And in me fills a calm submerging all vexations
 And breaks a light, luminous and clear
A glimpse of a scintillating radiance – ethereal!


July.22.2022 


Submitted for 2022 Poetry Marathon Mile.9.Poetry Contest
 Sponsor- Mark Toney

Salty Rain

With the greyness of the sky above
The sky is crying
Resembling the soul of someone in pain
Hopelessness falling from the sky 
Like tears from the eyes
As it beats the ground
The pain of loss is tattooed on the soul 
For a lifetime

The Candle

I am the Angel of Death
I am Nosferatu
I am a whisper of breath

Coldness grabs me and holds
I am coldness itself
The icy waters swirl around me

I am death and I am cold
The cloak of darkness
Enfolds with black soil

All toil comes to an end
But not to rest
As darkness descends 
As light leaches out

Grey faded landscape
Grey faded soul
Wispy cold and thin
Without grasp

And as the darkness 
Blossoms with impossible black
A small flicker ignites
And drives the darkness back

A small candle is lit
A small flame so soft
Almost of no substance

But darkness flees from it
Greyness hides
In cold corners

Small yet immense
Warmly fluttering
It dances defiantly

And close to it a face
A face so calm
As a bible rest
On the open palm

And darkness flees
But stops to listen
As light and life
And hope has risen

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