Long Contrasting Poems
Long Contrasting Poems. Below are the most popular long Contrasting by PoetrySoup Members. You can search for long Contrasting poems by poem length and keyword.
Un-revelling Rivalry
Who am I to speak of historical rivalry I cannot contest
all the clever myriad truths conjectures and refutations
about the two masters the two foes with huge presence
when history acclaim appreciation is subjective personal
up front and back stage up all artistic ins downs and outs
My parachute helicopter mind wants to give first prize to
to Leonardo for free flying inventive rebellious mind and
he helped me with anatomy dissecting corpses and all I can
still smell fragrant formalin preserving miraculous tissues
when I had to learn those medical terms and cut into flesh
But then Michelangelo shares my middle name though I am
no angel but who can proclaim that I may never be biased in
associate vein in quite shallow post-post-modernist anticipation
when the great man also painted in narrative personification
Deluge Drunken Noah Creation of Adam Madonna and Child
Okay family man that I am I resort to holidays with my children
and am so sad to admit that we never so far made it to Rome
sacrilegious or not but how could I pass The Last Judgement
when seeing Sistine Chapel’s altar would alter the verdict
of Ignoramus with leisure time spent on Normandy’s beaches
Well now I recall that trip to Euro Disney when we walked
from Tour Eiffel to the Louvre where I temporarily lost my
little boy Moritz and almost my temper when the devious villain
hid from the artwork was sulking because the Mona Lisa was
so small and he was so tiny could not see amongst masses of
tourists the smile and metaphorical writing on canvas and wall
So in all earnest while giving a toss I could-would have to resort
to tossing a coin in regards to whom why how and whenever the
rivals could measure up to history my history my story and life
Even and because of my whacky literal critical stance and my
stanzas bordering on mockery heresy subtle subjectification
you must remember that I have one tongue and two cheeks
And while seemingly ridiculing an important theme of historical
prominence I still bow in awe admiration yet lodge my own angle
perspective whereas the two grand master’s problem was not
what I would behold in my eyes and my soul in full radiance but
that they chose not to consider each others contrasting beauty
as compliment complement Leonardo Angelo Michel Da Vinci
01st September 2016
Quantities of time feel nothing.
Calculating, accumulating and subtracting,
days and weeks,
months and years and decades
roll past our eyes and ears
our growing and shrinking stomachs
to leave their strong and weak-grooved rings
of satiation and emaciation
I only feel and remember qualities of EarthTime
co-arising passions and co-gravitating pleasures
or dissonant dispassionate and painful reactions
of fear about time's future survivable qualities
anger about oppressive time's past conflicts
burning hot bright volcano hatreds
adrenaline flowing flashes
uncontrollable as suppressed bliss
only completely invested, immersed,
passionately engaged within a resiliently timeless
moment of deeply resonant quality
too seldom aware of Earth's intelligent co-present
co-passionate
co-binary sacred/organic fertility
of divinely humane grace
eternally synergetic dancing
through rationally measured quantities
of merely mortal metric times.
Sacred qualities of time's regenerate evolutions
long to feel everything belonging once again together,
beyond a foggy lapse of co-empathic solidarity
ReLigiously re-membering our golden era
co-relational peaceful qualities
richly feeding on Earth's matriarchal placentas
when all felt now-ly timeless
and originally right
feeling healthy
nurturing trusted truths
of loving kindness
feeling qualitatively good
and warm-full beauty filled.
Perhaps here lies our deeper measure
of time's healthiest meaning-full quality,
economically cooperative
and politically synergetic
and ecologically co-relational
EarthMother organically breeding
and sacredly feeding ecotherapy
Deep dancing
while surface surfing
through this timeless now
of polypathic potential win/win consciousness
Qualitative feelings positive through negative
emerging from and for and through and in and on and over each now
submerging into past speciating
branching co-passion's pleasure impressed re-memories
and dispassion's painful suppressed memories
Trees of old strong-rooted felt re-ligion
qualitatively comparing
contrasting
our original embryonic nurturing qualities
for richer eco-political sacred health
and less EarthMother dis-organic pathology
through this eternally regenerating now
quality of TaoTime's feeling peace-full
pronoia
win/win ego/eco-conscious co-passion.
Deliberately inching its way toward break of day,
The morning sun begins to emblazon the barley field.
Relaxing and watching the orb find its way,
The lady of the house waits for night to yield.
Like every morning, she is seated there,
Enjoying the dew scented breeze on her veranda.
Feeling its coolness on her scalp while combing her hair,
And the warmth of the rising sun becoming grander.
Her mind wanders back to the city of her birth,
Just over the rise, beyond the barley field’s treasure,
Lies the city with the most famous name on earth,
Where, in her youth, she was a lady of pleasure.
To Rachab went all of Jericho’s possession,
By decree of God, for which Achan was stoned.
For this soldier could not control his obsession,
Though aware the city’s riches were God’s own.
With God’s grace, Rachab’s wisdom grew,
And she made the city’s outskirts her spread.
Her land into a field of grain did accrue,
A breadbasket from which hordes were fed.
Her hires were the finest laborers in the land
And were busy harvesting barley all spring.
She paid the very best wage to every man,
Cause her crop was the best early rains could bring.
The fields and glades, that gave her pasture form,
Seemed sensuous in every contour and rise.
At daybreak, contrasting tones were the norm,
Painted artfully by the brightening skies.
Mounds appeared convexly round breasts,
Lovingly sculpted over a span of human girth,
Whose beauty was able to put the heart to a test,
As the machinery of memory rotates the earth.
Babbling brooks flowed from shady nooks,
Giving refreshment to denizens of land and sky,
Producing a scene of green worthy of picture books,
That not one skilled artist would dare deny.
Gingerly she rose the doorway torch to quench,
Watching the shrinking darkness become shadows.
Rachab calmly returns to her veranda bench,
To observe butterflies dance above the meadows.
In her dreams, she envisions a more golden age,
When royalty would be attributed to her seed.
A zephyr flows over her mind turning the page,
But she still aspires the prospect of the throne to accede.
What a lovely story to behold just beginning to dawn,
Rising out yonder, just beyond the horizon of time.
How we yearn to see that age return, now long forgone,
So our hearts may once again be joyous and sublime.
In 2018 there were four who exited life's door never to return. There was an additional one whom I feared might also depart, but he recovered from his sickness and now continues his mission. My acquaintance with each of them was for many years a God-send. Each of them entered this world and walked upon the stage of life.
We enter this world one by one and at once our stories begin to unfold and later to be told. There's much to be told between the dashes, but here I speak of exits only and how they contrast. In years past I paid meager attention to little things that in the grand scheme of life are not small. I see and observe more now, feel more deeply what surrounds me, especially when they take their exits. I apologize if it appears small to you, but to me it is huge.
It's the exits of four men in 2018 of which I speak. Men of my acquaintance and friendship who completed their mission. It is not their demise that arrests me, but I am somewhat captured by their contrasting exits. I was privileged to sit and talk with one and pray with him in his dying days. We spoke of some pleasantries we shared together, and I was pleased with being allowed to say goodbye. With another who did not linger, I rushed to his bedside some three days before his demise. He observed me with a stare, unable to respond as I stroked his hands and head. My third friend was a public figure and received a public celebration before his final exit. At the end of the service, I kissed the top of his head saying, "Goodbye, I love you."
The sun, having received its commission, rises in the east and proceeds with its daily mission of providing light and energy. It then sets in the west often with the most awesome glow, beautifying the horizon. But sometimes, the sun exits or sets contrastingly with a rainbow or even cloud cover, like the exit of my fourth and final friend whose passing was sudden and more arresting than the others. Less than 60, much younger than the others, he departed without a word. However, several days before his departure, I was privileged to spend a few telling moments with him. Contrasting exits. Yours and mine; Only God knows how it will end. But because of Christ, it can be good.
01152019KTFBPoSoup
PART 1-- VINCENT DIED JULY 29
VINCENT VAN GOGH
Oh Vincent, too soon you said goodbye
Each time your love rejected, emotions set awry
Your hand above, the lamps hot flame
To prove in time, your love won’t wane
Each failure then, became your bane
That memory faded, but love, came not again
Your brothers love, the only one
Throughout your life, you counted on
And those few friends, which once were close
Each in their turn, did you dispose
Like those bad seeds “The Sower” threw
Were tossed aside, and never grew
Regressing shades, of grey from white
Lights that flickered, through the night
You became a somber, tortured soul
You tried but could not, find your role
The acceptance, which you hoped to find
With each descent, you lost your mind
On your release, from “Madhouse Garden”
Your senses dulled, your “Sorrow” hardened
You still envisioned, “Flowering Orchards” blooming
Contrasting days, frustrations looming
Shadows formed, in weightless plumes
From the “Old Cemetery Tower” and its tombs
Soon days of joy, your senses rouse
Bringing renovations, to “The Yellow House”
Long travels through, the countryside
Those paintings that, you did with pride
Enormous swings, from “Wheatfield’s In Rain”
To “Wheatfield With Crows”, that caused you pain
Frankly Speaking
There is a couple on the beach, they have a small room, been on the beach for years, suffered through the worst of it. They have been through every phase. The Hippie, the war protesters -the poet-the artist - the "free love fest"- the heavy duty weed scene, "hell no we won't fn go" from there; To the board room with a haircut and a suit. Back to the beach, to retire; She still wore pigtails and flowered skirts. Oh, my God, we’ve moved slower through time she thought, and those times now seemed so far away. Contrasting times were here with cocaine, ecstasy, and mushrooms.!
S.S. check gone too soon, these days were not like the old days but vegetarians never die- So we dance at night after soaking up the sun; Growing wrinkled and red and filled with vitamin D... He displays his art- we played on our boombox: Bob Marley and Elton John which drew a crowd. We became as one with South Beach, as we practiced our Yoga, or played our musical instruments and chanted “Nam-myoho-renge-kyo”.
My black friend was so beautiful in her bikini and golden headwrap...She roller-skated past and waved. She was a poet like me... She said she'd be back for the session. A lot of her poems were about David the owner of the Franklin Hotel where we lived. I and other poets wrote poems about the system that tried to impose hate upon us free thinking peoples. People would give us money for sharing our poems, and purchase his art work. We’d buy few mangos and veggie burgers for our dinner, next, we’d wait for the sun to go down.
At night, my Black friend. Oladeji would collect the last 5 bucks, for the Gourmet Franks that she sold to the hungry drunks left over on the beach, who had been evacuated from the clubs for maxed out credit cards. Sad looks and broke pockets were not welcomed.
Which made her hot, fat kosher gourmet grilled franks, smothered in her special onion sauce, even more of a redeeming quality; As her poetic sign read… {FRANKLY SPEAKING…Home of the gourmet franks} ... Oladeji, would chant out her newly learned Spanish words nightly, to the dregs of dejected party goers, she’d shout “Pero caliente, saboya salsa” Rico delicioso”! then again in English; Hot-dogs with onion sauce very delicious.
Where do I draw my bilateral line
in a polycultural sandbox?
In-between a merely personal traumatic
severing
excommunicating
dispassionate
divesting
divorcing
marginalizing
loss and suffering event
And a larger staged
eco-political
critical systemic
potentially multi-generational
traumatic climate event.
Why does it feel important
to distinguish,
and perhaps discriminate
personal from ecopolitical systemic trauma?
Against an InsideEgo post-traumatic stress disordered
biosystem
And against an Outside EcoClimate post-traumatic stress
Patriarchal/Capitalist disordered
monoculturally fragile
non-universal health
and non-unitarian education
eco-political unhealthy delivery system
Contrasting EgoIn/EcoOut-gravitating polymathic deductions
rationally concluding wealth optimizing bias
for GoldenRule WinWin health communications
Both/And non-linear nuancing
EitherCause/OrEffect LeftBrain dominant
debate boundaries,
dualistic
deductively labeled
and crisply verbalized
words as pointed weapons
when more compassionate tools
feel too abstract
and post-traumatic win/lose
chronically stressed,
unavailable
inaccessible
not articulate,
polarizingly defined
Dipolar co-arising RightMind inductions
invite non-linear Both/And feelings
double-binding cognitive compassion
win/win internal communications
X v Y LeftBrain
RightWing
Either capitalist economic Space
Or patriarchal political Time
constant zero-sum variables
On our best non-traumatic thriving days
also X/Y-exponential NonZero Zones
expotentially expanding
RightBrain unsuppressed
co-arising resilient health/wealth systemic
binomial dipolarities
Taoist YangSpace valued Matters
equal bilateral in/out
Yintegral Earth health/wealth
restorative justice Time
Bilateral dynamic spiraling,
ecofeminist integral,
bicameral infusion
of resonant serotonin
and resilient dopamine
critical well-being waving back
To and through deep
and wide Post Traumatic StraightWhiteMale Disordered
rememories
of indigenously felt nature/spirit
science/religioning
secular/sacred reconnecting
Either/Or = Both/And resilient inter-religioning
polycultural communion
bicameral harmonics.
There are two kinds of cultures
- Defined in different ways
In different countries and lifestyles,
Valley vs Mountain, Settled vs Nomadic
Or in modern America, City vs Country -
With their two opposing attitudes,
“Let us tell you what to do!”, and
“Just leave me alone…”
It’s a simple dichotomy really
Of a group and collective orientation,
And a more individualist and self-reliant one
Based on the reality of survival
Each different lifestyle requires.
Different people have different affinities
And many self-select to live around similar types,
But there are plenty who find themselves living,
Out of family or work or relationship needs,
As a minority, a stranger in a strange land
Like that little contrasting dot within
The swirling drops of yin/yang’s polarity.
But these two cultures, as complimentary
As they are, also divide the nation
Not just geographically;
East and West, North and South
But politically;
Left and Right, Socialist and Conservative
To some extend sexually;
Female and Male
And generationally;
Parents and Child.
It’s a conflict of cultures we all experience
But sometimes never grow out of
Or find the freedom from, and peace with.
The two after all are opposites
And the one wanting to tell you what to do
Is by definition more motivated to find the other
And tell them what to do…
It’s the world we live in,
But at some point it seems
It’s just not sustainable.
Things fall apart
When they aren’t maintained and kept organized,
Oh, and here come those who have volunteered
For that job!
Now order rules the day, and chaos
Is always better kept way over there.
There are no frontiers left to explore
And escape into anymore
Other than the inner realm of mind
Imagination, dreams and fantasies
Or an addiction, dysfunction and disease
- Plenty of chaos available in those -
Or better yet, a good book in the man cave,
A quiet sit on the cushion
Or walk in the woods…
Something, anything to give us the peace
We all need
From that nagging persistent voice,
Outside and within,
Telling us what it thinks we should do
While we just want to be left alone
To discover it on our own.
(3/8/25)
somewhere i have never traveled, gladly beyond
any experience, your eyes have their silence:
in your most frail gesture are things which enclose me,
or which i cannot touch because they are too near
your slightest look easily will unclose me
though i have closed myself as fingers,
you open always petal by petal myself as Spring opens
(touching skilfully, mysteriously) her first rose
or if your wish be to close me, i and
my life will shut very beautifully, suddenly,
as when the heart of this flower imagines
the snow carefully everywhere descending;
nothing which we are to perceive in this world equals
the power of your intense fragility: whose texture
compels me with the colour of its countries,
rendering death and forever with each breathing
(i do not know what it is about you that closes
and opens;only something in me understands
the voice of your eyes is deeper than all roses)
nobody, not even the rain, has such small hands e.e. cummings
~
________________________________________________
" LV means Love"
contrasting winds which carried particles
of who we used to be
circled and settled. to fold into one
...becoming us...
that you are me...and i am you..
two hearts, one sun, one moon, that built a love
where twists and bends, would melt into one,
where eyes can't see where threads connect;
a solid rock, yet soft as feathers
where I can come to lay my head
and cast away the darkest day, the cruelest night
never will we understand
the shifts and strains of wayward winds
that whirl, and pound on fate's own door
the knowing why is not what counts, what matters deeply more...
is when I reach my hand to touch
this vaporous thing...impossible to define
where mortal words can not explain
nothing to see, nothing to touch,
just the faint breath of us
a dream, not myth....that final sleep cannot erase....
so sure this breath of life we share
is reason enough, that we are here
..............................................................................................................
For Joann's Contest "Copy Cat" My poem inspired by e.e. cummings poem LVII
If truth had a color,
when twilight bleeds
burgundy rivers,
you’ll find these garnet
eyes pleading
to be heard through
poetic sunsets.
For I’ve been swirling
and twirling
through nomadic illusions,
like a goddess of
thunder with a tiger spirit,
never letting go of
the history of hurt,
left by the unkind mind
of inhumane humankind-
which throbs deeper
than the sharpest thorns
in peacock feathers,
that I’ve danced to -
in flawless frequencies
amongst abstracts
of an architect.
If truth had a tune,
It would be too ferocious
to be unraveled,
the kind of fire that
dares to burn,
the hellish tombs of terror,
constantly pushing
every contrasting dream
to be feasted upon
satan’s last supper,
painting every salvage sunrise,
with strokes of petrichor scent
dipped in astral rain-dreams.
As I’ve been the
queen of the night,
longing to soar
across the horizon
where unconfined
eagles and golden dragonflies,
shall tranquilize
this publicized heart caged
as a motionless mannequin
in a glass mansion.
If truth was covered in furry skin,
to glaze skeletons veiled
beneath crooning clouds,
it would be the beginning
of an unstoppable ending,
of an immeasurable
brokenness resting as
irreversible numbness.
As I’ve seen storms
brewing bruises
through seas of sorrow,
amidst illusory lakes
of rose quartz,
streaming down
emerald hills,
hiding the grotesque
kingdom of fragmented gates.
But what if truth
never was a matter,
as it’s all but mere myth
floating along golden ripples
in a pool of sentimental stars.
What if truth was
once a maiden in distress?
What if truth was
once a shadow in search of light?
What if truth was a fool
hoping to be dressed
in dancing dandelions?
what if truth is what
has got this onyx heart on fire?
Perhaps, truth lays in
the arms of a clock,
waiting for it’s turn
to make time stop,
when lovers destined to meet,
rebuild chess of life in ruins,
as footsteps on
glistening glaciers
reveal the secrets
left by snow angels
leading us back to
an unbreakable moon affair.