A STUDY IN VIOLET
This treasure house of objets d’art
Littered with plots and storylines
A room encrusted with jewels of history
Inviolate – and undisturbed.
Over there, a military tunic
Blue – and in such fine condition.
Pale lapels perhaps too remote or innocent
Of its vile ‘let them have it’ past.
Here, an abandoned symphony
Black notes pebbledash the page.
Written for that ancient violin, no…
Viol. Late Belle Epoch I think.
That leather book I recognise
An ancient asset register.
And with such work of reference
Identify - a little more.
A philtre or monk’s cure perhaps.
Or poison, used to sway an empire.
Something forensic science may analyse
This phial – let it keep its secret.
Here, a scroll. Homeric tragedy?
Greek, according to the words.
Those old strange symbols, faded now
A ‘Phi’ or letter ‘P’ – I’m sure.
I cannot touch nor be considered
A robber, loose in a dusty tomb.
Caught in the torchlight, gold in hand
Say ‘Fie!’ – or let him go.
This treasure is too much for anyone
To really own. To hide away.
Bequeathed to me but never really mine.
Something Auntie Violet always knew.
The dermatologist
He was a big expansive man who had a Homeric laughter
when not shouting at nurses who loved him.
He performed surgery on me and warned the problem
would reappear in a few years; it did.
At sixty-five, he was about to retire and travel the world
before he got too old.
He was a man in whose company people felt good
a man with a good appetite for life, a lover of women
and the best of wine.
When I sat in the waiting room at the diabetes
doctor, he came out looking pale
and thunderstruck, he didn’t see anything, only
saw a black wall of despair.
The next thing I knew, he had taken his own life,
which he loved so much; his colleagues were sad
no one had seen this coming.
His dreams of a sunny future were broken like
a street lamp, in the dim autumn light.
We know so little about other people that some
regard as a setback, others see it as a catastrophe
My cardiologist had tears in her eyes,
why, why she murmured, he was so full of life.
When the angelic hosts are swiftly soaring,
and the scrolls of Creation are unfurling;
ten-thousand cataracts are loudly roaring,
whilst asteroids from outer space are hurtling;
and round the Sun the planets are whirling,
circling, with the curvature of space-time;
the Milky Way galaxy goes swirling,
and spiraling, into the great sublime.
The Big Bang, as grand as Homeric rhyme,
expanded beyond orders of magnitude,
into the Universe, which, for all time,
will swell beyond its cosmic longitude.
How all of space and time became designed,
who knows? But let the answer be divined!
Cronus would never be defeated, or so he thought.
Zeus, Hades, and Poseidon a lesson taught.
Zeus took the sky, Hades the underworld, Poseidon the sea.
Poseidon became father of floods, hurricanes, storms, all three.
He somehow also grabbed up horses, which seems a stretch.
But this is Greek mythology, thus a teensy bit of a far-fetch.
The Romans borrowed the legend, renaming him Neptune.
They threw in some extra ideas, waxing and waning of the moon.
Atlantis was the island of Poseidon’s thoughts and his domain.
He annihilated his enemies, to his brother Zeus he was a pain.
Hades hid in the underworld, not a part of the competition.
Homeric hymn of Poseidon’s adventures was a wonderful rendition.
If you hear the horsemen coming from the storms above
Get out of the way quickly, for it is Poseidon’s love.
He takes no prisoners, still furious about the blinding of his son.
Lightning is Odysseus, his most hated foe, enemy number one.
Fourth of July
So I thought first of July was the US,s national day
I guess I was thinking of Trump and America first
histrionics and naively hopes the virus killing his nation,
will fade away like the morning mist.
No such luck Mr President and you have nowhere to go
except for down and into the sand of times
that will remember your cowardliness and buffoonery
echoing as Homeric laughter in the sky.
But as I said I wish America well and hope the virus
leaves some alive to tell how Lovely the country was
before it was caught in a tidal wave by the enemy
within, and suicidal behaviour by those who cry freedom
at the cost of the individual.
“And no bird weeping a lament
no bird crying the song of its honey voice
in the leaves of Spring’s many flowers
could outrun him
Pan, in song”
"Hymn to Pan,” The Homeric Hymns
Tis not a year for fireworks, when multitudes lie dying
While those in power obfuscate, fake news betrays their lying
Rue the day when counterfeit Pence spouts logic false decrying
That at last the tide has turned with more and younger expiring
As Pontius Trump unmasked washes his hands denying
All blame and then returns to golfing.
From Those Fields Afar, Where Imagination Shines
From dreams of great giants slain he woke
a poet with mighty pen spoke
some days ink running wicked black
others days on romantic track,
words slung as Byron, Shelly, Keats
with not a whisper of defeats
bathing lights of Homeric shine
even hints of glory divine
With hope, truth and delicious words
painting scenes of pairing lovebirds
of dawn's soft gasps, its awing moans
or shock of finding, bleach white bones
Poet, dear composer of verse-
addicted to his own sweet curse!
Robert J. Lindley, 2-28-2020
Sonnet, ( A treatise on gifting heart's truth unto others )
Note:
Shall you ink gifted words today
presenting to those that may need
as savior showing hope's true way
to avoid lives of wicked greeds
As a guide, walking marking course
through darken world, its gifted pains
from evil, set soul to divorce
and in life seek what good remains.
Simplicity seduces stunning symmetrically salivating stimuli
Complexity confounds controlled curiosities calculating clarify
Ambiguous ambitions amplify arousing academics admirable
Mellifluous melodies making magical memories memorable
Poetic pendulums pondering pensive promiscuous pleasures
Esthetic echoes encouraging efficacious emulative endeavors
Deceiving diametrical dilemmas distancing dichotic delusions
Receiving rhythmically ratiocinative raging roaring revolutions
Beautiful breaths breathing benevolent boisterous behaving
Irreducible imaginary immortalizing idling iconic interfacing
Harmonic hemispheres hovering Homeric humble hypnotic
Tectonic transitions technical tantalizing theatrics thermotic.
This poem is dedicated to my friend Andrea Dietrich...whose poetry inspires all
In reference to her latest potd "When Poetry is Art"
Just messing with you my friend...love ya...and Happy! Holidays!
...this poem can also be read backward~from right to left...
Dec.17.2019
Your Best New Poem
Sponsored by: Emile Pinet
N/A for contest
choleric clouds, suspended
over the leaking lake
the rebellion of a teenage face
cross-eyed, ferocious
bereaved by a split pancake
baffled by life’s inconsistencies
a vortex peeks out of darkness
ready to ripple and run her mascara
suddenly swans, as the sun vanquishes the storm
a rare epiphany twirls in her mind
graceful snow wings dapple the outskirts
of time
playful and daring to proliferate
a smile across the freckled face
she embraces the curvature of a poet’s neck
and spreads her august wings
the wild and homeric transformation
of an ugly duckling
she amazes her friends
4/6/2019
Suddenly Swans Poetry Contest
Sponsor - Maureen McGreavy
Villanelle : Should one reorder genuine vers libre entire
Should one reorder genuine vers libre entire
Pull Pound down tear veil off event horizon holes
All to make for one's own sacre the pur sang lyre
Invent a machine feed it Homeric fire
No enjambement perfect rhyme rhythm metre folds
Should one reorder genuine vers libre entire
Whoever tops the charts which poem's ire
Shines through Apollo's defiant mien Zeus scolds
All to make for one's own sacre the pur sang lyre
Ne'er short the naive champion of the ephemère
Paid up club member the mutual backscratcher roles
Should one reorder genuine vers libre entire
Machine that thinks can it rasa taste inspire
Mete out criteria merit sound sense enfolds
All to make for one's own sacre the pur sang lyre
Art of artifice best profits business liar
Poets at the stakes burn to free the poems' souls
Should one reorder genuine vers libre entire
All to make for one's own sacre the pur sang lyre
© T. Wignesan - Paris, December 15, 2018
Homeric laughter
They had been angels sitting on clouds for
ten thousand years playing the harp, but
since they were in a timeless environment
They didn`t want knot, only filled with a sense of
ennui that came from sitting on a cloud void
of touch, and they also miss not being hungry
and thirsty, and feeling sad for throwing one out
off the cloud, he had no ear for music.
They objected to god who took off his mas showing
A face a hole so endlessly deep that if it was white,
told they were his illusion now they had to make a choice
either continue playing the golden harp or vanish into the big
white hole; they choose the instrument. God put his mask on,
and bitter silence wafted like an ill omen through the galaxy.
Apocalyptic sight
Six pairs of Homeric children’s eyes
Over the tomb of ice gray world
Multiply my infinite sorrow into sins with no eyes or ears
In tangents of nostalgia
I kiss the death there that life suffers lung cancer
Biblical accusation pierces the silence of solitary harp in the Century of Hamlet’s
Four soaked tears eyes
Cannot set in a web of art neither in the depth of tired aquarelle eyes
The old childhood love into triangle breaths depth
Shed tears in salt of survival
In the geometry of continents
Time impasse like me in the Scandinavian saga
Logical mathematics does not capture lines neither feast of hieroglyph tears
The root of injustice divides only parents' pain
Above the European dried moral
Six pairs of eyes and four pairs of eaves accuse
They live autumn of loneliness
Any number does not define emblem of loneliness
Not even a prayer of compassion
Cosine of loneliness interferes in verses and the poetry of human love
And the death doesn’t suffer the reception
because I draw lines while remaining just a number