Long Bestirred Poems
Long Bestirred Poems. Below are the most popular long Bestirred by PoetrySoup Members. You can search for long Bestirred poems by poem length and keyword.
BANISH ME TO THE BOOKSHOP
Chain me, so I can roam. Lock me away in this bower.
Banish me to the bookshop - i’ll enjoy this affair for hours!
First editions recline behind smudge-proof glass.
Lock-and-key lick of lips, but I can’t afford the brass
ring, the covet of unopened leather, so I’d dance
through each unshielded shelf, illuminated romance,
the touch like a lover’s touch, before the cover’s
turned down. Miniature to oversized, to discover -
here titles do matter - beautiful, powerful, charming.
Turning over the self-help discourse, disarming
of self-loathing, fear, and bitter soul. Then straight
to a perfumery of fairy tales, feel the weight
of each piece of fruit in the balance of my teeny palms.
Even in the claustrophobic stuffiness of this shop, I feel calm.
Like tickling braille, my fingers glide over each word,
riveted by the familiar scent, I close my eyes, bestirred
by mysteries, history, fantasy, and the coquetry,
the delicious pageantry, vivid hues and imagery of poetry.
Chain me, so I can roam. Lock me away in this bower.
Banish me to the bookshop - i’ll enjoy this affair for hours!
3/10/2021
Bookshop
Sponsor: Kai Michael Neumann
Though predictability prevails
pertaining to my life,
nonetheless a pronounceable zeal
bestirred from writing,
and reading (no surprise),
which literary leaning, inspiring,
fueling cognitive pastimes
elicit unending appeasement
within mine private weal
without doubt (I intimate), and
predicated on an
adequately comprehensible, hypothetical
sampling of the population,
would probably accurately concur,
that hallmarks majority of
quotidian, weekly, monthly...activities
would NOT re: veil
dramatic seat of
the pants, nail biting, unreal
high wire, death
defying ironic steel
lee cliff hanging,
bare knuckle adventure squeal,
ling small hairs some deal
of the spine raising goosebumps,
sky diving with
out a parachute,
intercourse without a condom,
et cetera gasping
for breath, before sidereal
red giant stage
obliterates flora and fauna doth seal
verdict - case closed,
and legitimate reason to repeal,
thus this sketchy
pictured exhibition sedentary
cerebral efforts for real
marginally quiet natured unvaried
repertoire applying
thee measure piecemeal
asper wilderness trekking, exotic
excursions globe trotting,
(sans criteria as well spent
purpose driven existence),
mine unmasked,
minimalistic patrilineal
lovely bare bones (hollow winning)
by thee above arbitrary fictitious ordeal
figuratively hypothetical measures,
this generic guy, viz zero
less exciting even eating oatmeal
as resultant measurement,
cuz his feeble minuscule variation,
thinner than lean gruel
would NOT even
constitute living, ideal
as...a fly, thus accept this message
as plea whisking me
cerulean heights ethereal!
I
For long faulted as wicked causing pain,
And condemned as crooks of a cruel kind—
Old prejudice or heartless brain’s refrain,
Repeated ad nauseam a point to grind—
An error all the same of humankind,
Yet, thorns for sure, villains we never are,
Veil not Flowers your harsh front hid behind,
Thorns might have cruel look, but kindly core.
Your spring blossoms, Flowers, bestirred by breeze
Oft a caress steal at an early dawn,
Or take your youthful buds on life’s new lease,
Who love to pinch a spike of a naïve thorn.
Try to be your own judge O to tell us:
Who’s innocent, who has harsh animus?
II
Innocent who’s, who has impish passion,
Your spring blossom no less than red rage is
To us— lifelong mendicants on mission—
You lure, sway us— meditating sages,
Whenever your youthful blossoms embrace
Us, try sway us from our austere a course,
And still, we thorns not once have lost our grace,
Blamed no less still in popular discourse…
That, innocent seems to be tender skin,
Not our kind oh with a rough exterior,
We thorns are scarce evil from core within,
Yet, it’s not so to this world of error.
Aphrodite shoots with arrows of flowers,
Whilst Shiva’s trident fair blessings showers.
III
Yet, weapon of war’s called Shiva’s trident,
Whilst flowers get undue paeans of praise,
These ways or world fail not us to amaze,
If truth assailed is, it’s no accident.
Why, wonder I, He who would trident bear,
Cares for no worship performed with flowers,
Scorches passion of world, poison doth bear,
Why Shiva over all deities towers.
The way thorns are, no flower’s ever known,
We point places to go, point to the time,
Point at duty, why kings wear thorn-studded crown….
Not flowers, thorns point to places so prime.
Rejoice O Flowers still, you win the day,
Whilst doomed are we to live a life of lay.
________________________________________
Crown of Sonnets |07.03.2024| flower, thorn
---------------------------------------------
Just breathe...
Breathe..! Gasping, into light you're thrown!
Like glass, your turning leaf is blown
clear of sweet slumber's song but there's
no need of hers - you'll sing your own.
You, newly born of mother's prayers,
will breathe your first of earthen airs
and thirsty, let your voice be heard
'til she's dispersed the drink she shares.
As leaves are, by the wind, bestirred,
with each new breath, you'll find you're spurred
on by survivals undertow,
as well as by debts love-incurred.
Oh, precious child, I love you so!
What wonders of this world you'll know
but one day too, this life you'll leave...
Take one last breath and let it go.
Yes, breathe...
---------------------------------------------
Contest Judged 1/25/2016
In black and white, I adore framing my inner thoughts, my worries, my wants and hopes… Words! a world of abiding renewal… a space of a bountiful solitude… a state of illusive freedom… a journey to the nowhere!
once nature bestirred
a smiling heart is echoed
great rapture bestowed
words! they have a world of their own! You build them, feed them on your feelings, your viewpoints and creed… As soon as they blossom and stand on their own feet, they escape your grip… They soar high and you just have to trace their wonders, listen to their fanning wings, gape at their outstanding performances while they are outgrowing your black and white frame and outshining your very thoughts.
Pounding of musings
awake is the wonder muse
the heart resonates.
Boundless power to free be
in trance, another soul be.
How dare you, words of mine, infringe the laws of the Haibun world?! Haven’t I told you?! I’m not responsible if a Haiku has expanded into a Tanka!
As I prepared to go out on my horse
One eve, despite pleas to stay from my course,
Just as I reached for my hat from the rack,
A whirlwind crested across dusty tract,
Lifting dead leaves from the Aravalli hills,
Twirling them high over the palace ills,
While a loud peal of mocking laughter rose,
And faded out where the sun slowly goes,
Robbing my dare and my ride in the wood,
It stole away my English hat for good.
The night was old when the sobs softly stirred,
Heart-rending, stifled, right below my bed,
Rising as if from unknown nether world,
Perchance from many a pathetic head,
From darkling depths of a damp grave of old,
A voice piteously cried, catching my hold,
Imploring me, ‘do something, rescue me
From what eternal prisons seem to be,
This deathlike slumber, fruitless dreamy ills—
Place me on horse and race on the double,
Press me close to your heart, riding through hills
And woods, and across a dried-out puddle,
Take me to sunny spots from dark, new thrills.’
Many a doubt flashed in my bestirred mind:
Why be it me? How can I rescue thee?
What passions shall draw thee out to be free?
O Beauty, from this wild whirlpool of dreams,
Do tell me whence didst thou flourish and when?
By which cool spring, in what shady date-groves?
Thou wert born in whose lap? By what homeless
Wanderer, what desert, and which fierce
Bedouin snatched thee from mom’s arms? Pray, tell me,
A mere bud wert thou plucked from a creeper,
And placed upon a horse, lightning swift flash,
Far, far across the scorching desert sands—
O to the slave-mart of what royal city?
Hearing laurels of thy blossoming youth,
To which chieftain had thou been taken then,
Placing thee in a golden palanquin
As royal gift fit for an emperor.
__________________________________________
Narrative |01.04.2024|
Note: A poetic translation of Rabindranath Tagore’s story in Bengali: Kshudhaarto Paashaana, divided in I to XIII parts, largely in blank verse that lapses into rhymes along with its twists and turns. The story is known to have happened during Tagore’s stay at Shaahibaug palace in Ahmadabad, the nearby river Sabarmati becoming river Suista in the story.
Once again
The chirping birds bestirred me
As if from deep-dwelling womb
Of darkness unknown,
The night slipped from my eyelids,
The dawn as opened my eyes
And the pre-dawn Nature embraced me
Once again.
And once again
I felt like an infant in mother’s lap,
Wanting to be there forever more
But for alarm bell breaking my dream.
The mirror in the bath announced
Me as a grown up getting late,
Putting me on to the routine
Once again.
And all day it was me against time,
The day dissolving unto dusk
And evening unto night,
The body and mind keen
To be back in mother-nature’s lap,
And soon I’m back to that hazy dark road
Taking me to one more dreamland
Once again.
If life is a dream,
And dream nothing but a whim,
A day dream so grim.
________________________
Musings | 33.10.2025 | dawn, dream, dusk, mother, nature
I
And Death once told an oft defeated life:
Look, life’s no life if lived on a knife’s edge,
In struggle for survival soaked in strife,
Alive with life, look at me— a red rage.
And just next breath away on edge of knife,
I oft hear poor life pleading from deathbed:
I'm tired of daily dose of death so rife,
Pray, tell me Death, how long ere I'm all-dead?
To this I straighten up to say, stiff head:
Moments do when like long minutes may stretch,
Minutes when look like endless hours instead,
Hours hang for days, days for years, time when etch…
Then be the time O for life’s beatitude,
Then I descend from my high altitude.
II
What altitude? Mean this row seems to me,
A voice is heard: where’s freedom if at all?
Life nor yet death, none on pedestal be,
Death changes only bricks of prison wall.
Life traces a small stretch of graph nigh vague,
Its poem, metered nor a measured bird,
A fledgling ‘tis keen to fly peg by peg,
What’s death but breath not taken nor bestirred?
Eons pass sans measure for endless time,
Nor the clocks tick, nor dare at hours to chime,
Rocks break unto sands, time stills without rhyme,
Stones grind unto grains, earth turns into lime,
The journey of countless births starts with life,
Not defeated but triumphs, time’s when rife.
___________________________________________
Crown of Sonnets | 07.08.2012, revised May 2023 |
Dunk in dyes, tainted, nor tinted,
In world, not by its ways weathered;
Come, put a patch of love ‘pon me
That we get not ever severed;
Death, only your shelter is such,
Op-eyed can one sleep undeterred;
Roads wind not any straight for long,
Beware, feet, of their ways wayward.
Birds ask branches: you know wood well,
Who’ll opt, be spade’s grip un-bestirred?
Old memories tend to get blurred,
Milk of life curdles into curd.
I know critics are keen to judge,
Would they, poems unread, unheard?
_____________________________________
Inspired by a Gujarati Ghazal by Anil Chawda, yet, this does not claim to be a fitting translation of the original. To retain the Ghazal form, style and diction, subject matter sometimes has to be modified.
Ghazal |13.11.2021| world, love, death, ways, birds, memories, poems