Irretrievable Poems

Lingering leaves of gold frolic in the autumn wind

"Lingering leaves of gold
frolic in the autumn wind,"
Swept up by bygone breezes,
already collapsing
before they begin,
As disillusionment clouds an overtired soul—

Misplaced and irretrievable
To a society that ravenously
disembowels empathy,
Twists and mangles trust
until it becomes unrecognizably disfigured,
Leaving the carcass to be plucked by bone-thin vultures,

Fed by culture’s apathetic, parasitic narcissism,
Under the boiling, pre-winter sun.

The Seas Took What Couldn't Be Saved

Disconsolate obsidian waves crash over crumbling dunes,
Sweeping afflicted grains of sand back into the depths,
Dragging my paralysed soul with them.
Engulfed in despondent riptides,
I gasp for oxygen amongst rippling currents,
As a fiery moon hangs precariously overhead.
Blood-red reflections illuminate the stark waters,
While calls of the lost sing to me,
Like sirens beckoning sailors to their doom—
Louder and louder, until it becomes unbearable.

Flaring arms fill with cortisol,
Burning, tangled within suffocating seaweed.
Farther I get pulled from the shore;
The horizon is growing fainter now with every somber beat of my heart.
Isolation shrouds the thickening atmosphere.
Saline leaks into my mouth, drying my tongue as I frantically spit it out.
Hysterical laughter escapes through lips without realisation.
Dehydration overcomes.
Sanity slips with each sip of water.
My larynx sharply tightens—
Barely a noise can be uttered.

Yet the siren calls of the irretrievable continue to crescendo,
Pulling me into an empty expanse, everlastingly.

Perfect Illusion

within the oscillation of melting clocks,
our poltergeists of times long expired…still reverberate~
tainted ticking echoing
in an everlasting tug of war,
pushing and pulling,
throwing barbs at bleeding hearts 

oh, how the echoes distort reality,
haunting perfect illusions~
remnants of misunderstood souls
caught in constant conflict…

what was once a beacon of love~
transmuted inhospitable confusion

words, warped by borderline delusions,
each syllable twisted and contorted,
blind rationality,
unraveling the ties that bind,
wrapping them around suffocating throats,
choking on harsh accusations~
until we became irrelevant
irretrievable phantoms~
perpetually confined
within stupefied misapprehension…..

The Bonfire Burns

A single key 
turns the lock
of the door 
you’ve been 
pushing against 
for all
the life in you it takes,
the door like Life breaks 
into a million pieces,
and there at your feet 
like irretrievable moments scattered,
you try to avoid the splinters,
but you gather them up instead,
each splinter a word lit, now
the bonfire burns

inside the inferno 
the life renewed, borne again
wakes, it walks on water,

just, 
as it walks through flames,
there the compass 

draws you home, 
like a magnet 
calls the key 


Candide Diderot. ‘24 




key. 
compass. 

An Easter Prayer

An Easter Prayer
(Esoteric Meaning of Christmas)

Let not the sun rise so high
that I may never again reach
its light -- 

nor set so low
that my spirit now resides
in darkness, irretrievable

but let me dwell peacefully,
balanced, in a new body of humanity,
a purified vessel, that of the risen Christ
– live outright redeemed,
one with God and His good 
angels, 
ever loving.

Thankful For Having Grown Older

May we be blessed to acknowledge all the wonders in our life
that have, for us, thus far accrued…
and to begin each day with a word of thanks…
and thoughts of gratitude.

Today I’m thankful for having grown older
Because:
if we’re fortunate to climb the mountain of age
even though our youth is irretrievable
and we may get a little more out of breath these days
The view from here…is unbelievable.

Interludes Experimental

"Interludes Experimental" 

Written in clouds
what eyes miss
patterns repeat
in minds 
like poets speak 

fast and irretrievable
irrelevance misses
the parenthesis
buried in interludes
experimental 

in minds 
like poets speak

(LadyLabyrinth / 2022)


Ludovico Einaudi
https://youtu.be/KWSmB8JyqEk

Moments

Moments fly off and leave a trail
behind you like dust clouds.
Most settle somewhere
in the forgotten, become irretrievable,
no longer connected to your life.
Some survive and accumulate 
on the sticky frame of what holds
you together, particles which,
by themselves, mean nothing,
but in number become the narrative 
of your past.

Some find their way here,
arguing significance, others
bubble up as if defying gravity,
free of purpose, life's loose coin.
You spend much of your time
sorting through the odd collection,
arranging into orders
of magnitude, of pain, or joy
or how much they've shaped
who you are.

In the quiet still of evenings
when you are alone,
they seem to reanimate 
and gorge like aphids 
on the branches of your life.
Sleep is no refuge. They come back
in dreams dressed in different guises,
playing out the variations on a secret 
fear or grind away trying to resolve
something you left
incomplete last week
or a lifetime ago. Each morning
as you come to, they rush in
to reassemble you, adding more,
and at the same time,
letting a little more of you go.

Comes the Time In Our Lives

Comes the time in our lives
When we must seriously think about the future,
Make the plans necessary for the continuation of our lives
Long after we have traveled into another dimension,
After we have said our final farewells here,
Knowing we have done all we can do
To make the world, or our small part of it, a better place
For those who follow in our footsteps.

Comes the time in our lives,
Whether young or old, who knows? 
For we are guaranteed no tomorrows,
Neither the future nor the past belongs to us,
Only the now, and before we know it, the now, too, fades
Into a nebulous past, unrevivable, irretrievable yesterday, 
Gone … poof! vanished like the mist from a vaporizer.

Comes the time in our lives,
As certain as the setting of the sun in the west,
Our last day slips slowly beyond the horizon
Leaving behind only wisps of what someone will remember:
Our names etched on a cold, granite stone
With, perhaps, a catchy phrase, a word or two,
Like grandmother’s motto we kept hanging on a wall to remind us
That once she lived … that once she was a real person.

written February 28, 2022

Battle

Knife sharp nerves, veiled in silk
Stretch and strain to break through
This barricade of skin
To reach out across the charged chasm,
To touch you where you stand,
Shadow-drenched and whisper-close,
To cradle you in love’s aeolian embrace.

But Fear, the captain of my soul,
Commands the battlements before which
My desires lie in legion,
Gore besmirched and dying.

My nerves, lost and defeated, have retreated,
Snail-like into their familiar shell.

Years pass in an irretrievable moment.

© Barry Freeman – 22nd April 2002

Irretrievable Love

"You will forget me, the love we once shared 
Has vanished in the attempt at disguise                                   
 The dreams we once knew cannot be repaired 
It's gone with the light that once lit your eyes"

Has vanished in the attempt at disguise. 
Ah cruel love, how I still yearn for thee.
It's gone with the light that once lit your eyes,
Now I feel so blind, yet I grieve to see.

Ah cruel love, how I still yearn for thee.
Wretched days are no longer worth living.
Now I feel so blind, yet I grieve to see.
Can I try for once and be forgiving?

Wretched days are no longer worth living.
The dreams we once knew cannot be repaired. 
Can I try for once and be forgiving?
You will forget me, the love we once shared. 

27 April 2021

10 syllables per line checked by HMS.com
Form Pantoum
STANZA 5

Placed 1

Choose Your Form Poetry Contest
Sponsored by: Joseph May

Lovely Ideas

Paper’s blank stare
haunting
frigid winter breeze
mocking
musings warm notions
memories
revelries and illusory
moments
haunting scenes hues
vignettes
an ineffable sacred
history
inundates overcomes my
senses
false fashions these
delusions
evocative and sublime
beguiling
vacated slowly razed
gutted
cast asunder aside
irretrievable
taunting lovely ideas
recede
languish and diminish
weaken
lovely ideas influence
eviscerated
tomb of unmistakable
oblivion.


(click on picture for Angst & Anger)

The Big Guns

"The Big Guns"



A woman goes into war
with the matrimony of 
Life and Death 
a wound left empty
a gash pushing up 
daisies where bleeding
seeds don’t bloom no more

So love puts the big guns
in her hands, bullets loaded 
from the mind hell bent 
on breaking the walls 
caught in the sticky web 
of that black lettered Perdition

Naked I came 
from my mother’s womb
And naked I shall return
what’s given is taken away
the loss irretrievable
opens a new road home
Gangster all the way

On the run 
with the Big Guns
Misery be gone 
Love’s a racketeering assassin
cutting losses, risking what remains 
on a final heist to be won

“Sometimes Losers 
are Winners,” She grinned 

“You are holding 
the Big Gun”
Hands on the wheel
Silver Lady is driving Blue Sky 
his head turned, smiling 
towards the burning Sun

An alternative beginning
long way to the end.
First,
Some adventure,
First, 
Some Fun.

(LadyLabyrinth / 2020)





“Bang Bang Bang”/Dorothy
https://youtu.be/8Hi7Z8MK9t0







artiste: Gabe Leonard
"Keep Moving"

Pernicious Invaders

Luna appears 
pale, pocked,
and blemished by time;
rising majestically above the horizon
to traverse the ebony dome
of the night sky.
And as a Goddess,
She sits high above the planet,
monitoring the comings and goings
of humanity: 
an unenviable enterprise.
For Man is a pernicious invader:
polluting the pristineness of space
with thousands of bits of accumulated junk.
And yet, it seems, nothing can dampen
Man's enthusiasm
for the exploration of space.
No matter the irretrievable, encircling debris,
left orbiting the Earth in His wake
as He attempts to touch the face of God.

Gone With the Tide

between
the then and now
an evergrowing ridge
severing
our past
gone hazy
forever
irretrievable



AP: 3rd place 2021, Honorable Mention 2021

Posted on October 6, 2020

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