Intractable Poems | Examples

Even Slums Have Parks

I walked as a grey kid
lost in his own hometown streets.

When my slow mind
began to see more clearly
it saw brick dusted air
and a sunlight blotched with yesterday's scabs.

There were small parks in that part of the city,
where the shabby slept and fornicated,
a wilted grass
was dotted with used condoms
and patchworked with dog urine.

We thought it fine
to explore those sleazy acres
parents behind us, we running ahead.
as if we were discovering paradise.
The clouds would give way,
and a light fell upon this new world of ours
as if newly painted.
For a while, we kids saw each other as
playmates and not intractable rivals.

Later, back in the crowded reek
of the crumbling tenements,
we grew soul-blind once more.

We hoped that the God
we had been instructed to love
occasionally watched over us,
that perhaps once a week
He checked us all out,
from the far side of a city park.

The Power of Love

There is no denying the power of love.
It is a splendid teacher
Quite adept at instructing us
In ways that completely alter our character,
And telling us how to be what we never were,
Or never even imagined we could ever be.
In certain individuals
Its transformations are frequently nothing short of miraculous.
It breaks down all our natural barriers,
And in the blink of an eye
Can turn a niggardly pinchpenny into a philanthropist,
An obsequious milquetoast into a courageous and gallant knight,
And make a paragon of "politesse" out of an absolute boor.
The inveterate sluggard becomes a captain of industry,
And the most innocent of dullards
Becomes a wellspring of sagacity and worldliness.
What a marvelous whetstone for sharpening wits
And honing the senses is love.
Even its most hardened critics…
Those victims and casualties who proved to be intractable and unteachable…
Find it difficult, if not impossible,
To deny the power of love's ability to inspire
The most truly amazing things in a human heart.

Neighborly Disputes

Death and heaven
are not good neighbors.
They live too close together,
there are disputes,
mostly territorial,
heated confrontations arise.
If they lived further apart,
if they had mediators
to intervene, restrain,
adjudicate...
alas both,
could be somewhat intractable.
As for the day-to-day affairs
of the earthbound
both death and heaven
had largely lost interest
leaving all administrative duties,
to the angels and demons
(who knowing each other well)
got along most amicably,
working closely together
for the good, the bad
and the just plain ornery.

Poverty

You hurt, poverty, but i don't hate you
You have mental illness, and misery and pain are your diagnosis 
You're an issue in life! unbearable in a world of abundance
You're the biggest prison in the world, which is uncomfortable,
but you also give me methods to console myself.

You're a transient state, a situation to others, but you often pose challenge.
you keep finding enjoyment in crime scenes, and the only thing that makes you beautiful is you give us the will to work hard to overcome poverty
You're not intractable ache

though the effects of the are felt,
you are a masterfully designed creation  of God  
Though the economic pain is felt
Poverty you not just a word.

OPEN VERSE 3-4

STRATEGY
a spatial
  boundary
dismantled
from
  memory
tranquil
  cropped
in
an
  encoded
facade
encroached
by
  eloquent
   realms
of unspoilt
semi- abstract
crests
  glistening
phenomena
patterned
  representation
consonances
plays of light
in recurring
ambivalent
  composition
indifferent
intractable
 invisible
dynamic
 contrasts
    summed up
in the
   unfamiliar

ELOQUENCE
a
 reticent
  celebration
of ambiguity
latent
licit
  straightforward
yet
oblique
  interpretation
beyond
 the
  inner image

nurtured
  in
  connected
tendencies
to evolve

closely
  obsessive
an ambivalent
narrative
  observed
in
  dreamy
abandon
of
unmistakable
pleasure
initiated
in
the
 unconscious
made
manifest
by
desire
  once
repressed
derived
  by
a sense
of
  intimacy

Night Tour

Then there is the night
with its backstreets of characters,
masked, intractable, unwilling 
to leave the comfort of their
lifelong haunts. They call out
then turn away in fear
of being known.

And below, the corridors
of the underground winding through 
sleepless hours, 
the constant echo of footsteps 
and voices punctured
by announcements of departures
to nameless places. Images cast
on grimey walls passing in haste,
doors slamed shut.

Nothing sutures together, 
consciousness becomes fragments 
glimpsed on screens, 
splintered sounds,
words finding no meaning.
And having brought you here
what can I offer you
but the pricked chill 
of an anesthetic
being eased into a vein, 
the oblivion of dreamless sleep,
then daybreak bleeding through
the stuck lid of an eye,
the first thin incision of hope.

Fighting Flowers

The changing of summer flora guards
Crying April  showers, tears usher in
The  softening of wintered earth, once hard
Now loosened up as  the Earth sheds its skin

The floral fists of flowers do begin
to jab and cross through intractable mud
collective conviction of  vernal kin
inundates the Southern meadows, a flood

A triumph to see, the seasonal bud
First  flowering in  May, the bees delight
Filling their honeycombs with golden blood
Their  busy bodies’ mysterious flight

From the palette of God, landscape painted
by fighting  flowers, jabbed, crossed and feinted

Swing Set

the sun was fixed in the sky
like a fugitive in an orange jumpsuit
radiating anger.
the evergreen forest was shedding
to carpet the steeled winter
earth. pinecones and needles in
a mosaic of brown and green. 
the swing set sat neglected
chains rusted, slack like 
abandoned moorings. 
it creaked under the stress
of your weight, unsure of itself.
its chains, yawning after years
of hibernation, start to sway,
back and forth, picking up
speed and confidence.
In a flash you’re off the
swing,  gliding through thick,
wet air to land on your
hands and knees in the
mulch. The intractable wood
opens the soft flesh of your
palms. The strawberry red
blood glistens in the late
Sunday light.
A dog barks indifferently
at the sun as it sheds its
cumbersome bonds and
falls back into the earth.

Humans Destroying Human Settlements

Humans destroying human settlements.
This is an integral part of war.
The war of two neighboring governments!
You'll be forgiven for asking what for!

Beautiful buildings are hollow shells.
Tangled rubble lies all around;
There are no parks, streets or malls.
Everything's been razed to the ground!

Delicate women crying in the streets,
Children weaned from education!
Men want to see who the other defeats.
There's a destroying of all construction!

You'll be told this is politics.
Quarrels and issues between peoples.
Some would say semantics.
Pride based intractable squabbles!

An alien scanning planet Earth
Would see an interesting phenomenon:
A species that, when feeling wrath,
Destroys its dwellings with wild abandon!

A Mother Lives For Her Only Child

A mother lives for her only child,
Even The Decidedly Tiger-Wild
Her son’s unspeakable action mild,
Though a whole town has been beguiled. 

A mother exalts her only child:
Never ‘The Ragamuffin’ styled, 
Believing no  of case filed;
The Crime Crackers numbers dialed:
Her son who‘d’ portrayed no candle
Nor his headache could handle,
Her daughter liable to wrangle
Because of an unreachable bangle.

A mother could tears check for her son,
Whose savagery had shone;
For her intractable male child 
Whose rape cases have high piled!

Parking Lot Epiphany

Dreary, muted Sunday,

wind-blown spaces 

snowy and empty:

Boxing day, 8:40 a.m.,

at the local big box store:

unexpectedly, outside the car window:

dull white, grey gulls fly,

disappear  --- chameleon-like  ---

against intractable, dull white, grey clouds:

hushed, natural intimations of the infinitely bigger picture;

a sudden, bourgeoning sense of the thoroughgoing mystery,

the "way out of the wilderness":

intrigued the human heart beats again roused.

Capricorn

Cardinal zodiac sign of intractable psychic quality 
An archetype of self-mastery and perseverance
Prepared always to take discerned control of destiny
Ruled by the planet Saturn, the strength of trait lies
In the innate sense of duty and responsibility, making
Capable achiever being ambitious and determined
Oriented toward contemplation with inner awareness
Regarded as down to earth, practical and pragmatic
Not faltering to face with fortitude the days of winter.

April 1, 2021
Contest : Star Sign Acrostics
Sponsor : Charlotte Puddifoot

The Folly of the Fight

The folly of the fight


These four walls; such contemptible and wretched creatures-
mock me, taunt me, deride me as weak and worthless.

I am shackled to the two evil twins-Misery and Myalgia.

As I wrestle with my afflictions, I throw tantrums-like a feral beast 
charging towards the drawn sword.

However...I succumb to the inevitable.

I sense the folly of the fight and submit,
although-unwillingly to this intransigent,
auto-immune disease.

How do you fight an enemy entrenched in your marrow?

This enemy is urging me  onward on this death march,
and it is unrelenting in it's insistence.

Death, at times, feels like a release of sorts, 
but I could never indulge myself in such disgraceful folly.

The pain is intractable,  inscrutable,  but...
I soldier onward... until the end.




August 07, 2020

John Derek Hamilton

Brother

Intrusive,
Forbidden,
Off limits,
Repel.
Grievance,
Intractable, 
Vengeance,
Explain.
Young,
Off limits,
Underage.

Intractable

In as much as it’s defensible,
Like a boot stamp on the innocent,
The uncompromising all,
Pernicious awareness of mortality.

©Feb 19th 2018

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