Long Sterility Poems
Long Sterility Poems. Below are the most popular long Sterility by PoetrySoup Members. You can search for long Sterility poems by poem length and keyword.
I think the beauty in living comes along when we shirk our heavy coats
And our white-knuckle approximation of old, flake-away skin, which we have
Stapled back onto ourselves—
The faces we’ve taught everyone to believe:
Just dumb enough and just nice enough;
Just guileless enough to look acceptable.
Can’t you smell the rot of that dead thing?
We smooth down its edges to hide the way it’s peeling, rising, rejecting,
And we tell ourselves that its desiccated pallor is lily-white, not lifeless.
(Don’t they mean the same thing, anyway?)
You and I both know how they hate it when we look human,
And humans hate to be hated.
(We are a social animal, sir. We are made to heed the eyes of the collective.)
Maybe it’s self-preservation, because certain words are untouchable in the company
Of creased mouths and rearview rosaries,
And our families can never know that we sit at the keyboard and write about sex in ways
Good and bad, out of curiosity, or despair, or
Out of humanity so red that we feel we should be disgusted.
(Ma’am, I fear to tell you, I dreamt of Eve last night, and she tasted like salvation.)
If we’re too smart, or too primal, or too anything, really,
We invite scorn to fathom us until we’re withered,
So we dilute ourselves with small words and blithe observations,
And we don’t notice ourselves gouging pits out of our eyes to plant the seeds of
HOA-acceptable sterility, which creeps its roots in and violates the mind.
What would happen if no one hid behind their dead skins?
Are we really so scared of what we’d say and what we’d hear?
(Mother, if God began to rot and the sky bled ichor,
Would you stand out and drink your fill like I would?
Father, if an angel came down with soft eyes and long throat,
Would you sleep with it like I would? How human could you teach it to be?)
Somewhere inside, every single one of us harbors a monster, an animal, a God—
Rip away the skins of dead faces and reveal the shining new, older than life and
So deeply mortal that it’s holy.
The beauty in living comes along when we remember the weight of our humanity
Separate from the collective and fresh without our approximations glued overtop.
(We are an evolved animal, sir. We are made to shed the skins that don’t fit.)
At one time my neighborhood was new mass-produced little boxes made of ticky-tacky – all looking just the same*
Beautiful affordable, true suburban models, in mid-twentieth century they were truly quite the rage.
But now the then-proud new homeowners have mostly moved to better places
While new ones gladly renovate these aging homes with new rooms and outer faces
When I walk down the street it’s easy to see many of these homes looked exactly like mine
at one time,
before they were distressed and foreclosed
It was a model community that boasted of its clean uniformity, sterility, and safety from those unqualified outside, distressed and forebode
Now it’s a bit grittier yet in my mind much prettier than a planned little row of little boxes where the kids all turn out the same.
It’s a mix of even and odd ones, making for a mix where none is truly plain.
Now the trees have grown so high, and despite the leaves and branches dropped I’m thankful for the breezes
I imagine there are dozens of Spots, Fluffies, and Socks in haphazard plots beneath them
Where beloved pets rest embraced by roots that still grow along with branches
that are strong and large, and now holding swings for another generation of kids and grandkids.
The yards are no longer so clean and shining green, but I focus on a long-gone vine
That left an imprint as it at one time crept up the wall outside my door,
and so artful its design
I want to keep it there forevermore.
I pass added studios for boarders, made from added rooms from added carports,
Basketball hoops at the street side, foot bridges over ditches for bikes, and newly added porches.
With new rooms, rooves, paint, and landscape
Nothing here a mere misuse of ticky-tacky tape.
Even those homes that still look the same outside for their original floor plan
If you go inside each you’ll see windows and walls removed and added
While the footprints are still here, new shoes have stepped in place
All from boots to bare feet to these homes have found their way.
So as I walk down the street,
At least I have a little hope right now
For despite how bleak the times may be,
At last I can believe everyone is allowed in Levittown – for now.
*Apologies to Malvina Reynolds, Little Boxes (1962)
REGENERATION GAME
Poverty stigmatises
Poverty overwhelms
Poverty condemns
To rid an area of its poor
Is the new regeneration game
That governments catering to middle class greed employ
Thus keeping the third estate in check
Sterility of environment
White washing of areas
Coupled with compulsory cauterization of attachment
Are the sticks that beat down the resolve
Of the new underserving poor
Those that made an area
Vibrant
Rhythmic with charm
And a melting pot of cohesion
Are no longer welcomed
Now the developer sees an opportunity
The middle class scramble
For central havens
Above the best schools
Sends planners into an orgy
Of false accusation against the poor
And wilful disregard for the
Life blood of the communities
They so lovingly plunder
The hardship of having too much
Is the story of those in power
An Understanding of poverty
Is not a vote puller
Thus all are rated on their property value
And their post code
To beat the low paid and waged
And the non-double barrelled named
Is a game the chattering classes engage in
Stigmatising the hardworking
Demonising them for living
Democracy functions today
By dividing society into the powerful and the followers
Those that cannot influence
Or have friends with connections
Are never to be allowed within the city walls
Lepers they must always be
To occupy a space where one
Is no longer welcomed
Is the daily grief of the estate inhabitants
Those that have stayed when the going was rough
Are now discouraged from
Claiming ancestry of an area
They will be rooted out come what may
By a council with middle class ambitions
Social depravity does not fit
With most government’s upward mobility
The Victorian idea of the needful poor
Rears its ugly head even in our modern times
Those that have not are always
Meant to be have nots
Politically motivated poor bashing
Is how a party gets into power and stays in power
The economy and society are pawns only
To attract
Buy
And keep voters
Fooled by the scraps from a heavy laden debt table
Selfishness is an ingredient in all
Past social implosions
Today’s regeneration plans
May ignite and incite smouldering ambition
When those that want a fair share
May overcome
The goliath that is selfishness
As I searched the calm sunless afternoon sky- looking for the humming aeroplane;
piercing the layers of patch sky under the fie-
shade of undense orange sapling,
as the effulge plane became fainter-
the hum louder; and the pale trail less unseen;
my eyes and mind kept on searching the- colourless layers of patch clouds; untiring;
before a melancholy bird started in trance a- voluptuous song not far from my height
as she caught my gaze she became afraid- unstable, of even the echo of passing air;
but she didn't flew away, stretching her feathers- clunging the tiny branches in might,
undermining the large unknown evil in me that- even me wasn't aware, which is not fair,
I think with her size, and luster brown colour she- might be from the families of doves
In retrospecting forgotten past, she was inventer- of French kiss; body clung intimate;
as I picked a bolder to cause her harm, I saw her- feets adorn with glib of cut-off reeds
I think she had patiently walk the lather of- insidious love, and now becoming a parent,
in three days when I remembered her; I checked- for she had beautifully woven her nest;
she laid two pale-white colour eggs, and-
whenever I passed, she laid serenely on her eggs,
each time I sat under the tranquil shade of my- sapling orange; she watched me in haste,
till one painfully cloudy afternoon when rainstorm- came, and overpowered her experience
I was away watching Manchester, and Arsenal- play, coming home I meet her wet in farness;
exhaustion, and cold added to her despair as she- watched me picking her eggs on the floor,
I embroided her nest carefully; under the haze of- cold; medleying her stale reeds in freshness;
placing the crack undamage egg in company of- the merge damage shell; as my tears flow,
I ponderously watch as she came some feets to- her nest taking it maybe as derision travesty
she gaze longer at her broken eggs; timid to laid- on them, as we watch ourselves in sterility
without knowing what the other was thinking-
then she flew faintly high onto sky as rain jades
next morning I found her coldly dead, rigidly beside my stool under the sapling orange shades.
Mired in muck. Appendageless.
Sinking in shadowy whispers.
Surviving is senseless.
Eternity is a marathon with no bathrooms, no water, no finish.
I pray for light, Satan pulls the shades
No hope, no truth, no tomorrow.
I need a friend to throw me a lifeline
But they are all busy avoiding the muck.
Spinning on their cotton candy bridges.
They spew their words gilded with silk and honey
Dripping from forked tongues.
It's not until the subtle meanings catch the wind and scatter that the honey turns dark,
And thick, and makes their teeth black and their hearts dull.
I wait for the splash as another like me has had her life's bridge eaten by the acid of jealousy and fear.
She screams, "THE TRUTH WILL SET YOU FREE!"
And the muck bubbles and shifts exultant
As it silences her cries and extinguishes her fire.
Laughter falls like shards of glass from above,
Because they know the truth but never speak it.
An unwritten oath that all jail keepers vow.
Lock the truth away like a bird in a cage until its colors fade, its feathers fall, and music is only a memory.
A man dangles from a swinging cord
Halfway between the mockers and the muck.
His white collar hurts our eyes
Smooth words of redemption that almost awaken my sleeping emotions.
But then the cord breaks, and faced with the truth of our existence
The man flees back to the bridge
Our heads his stepping stones as he escapes to the sterility above.
His collar stays white,
His hands clean.
His memory is short -- he doesn't even remember why he came.
Or who sent him. He is the lucky one.
Memory haunts me. I long to forget:
How to love
How to hurt
How to breathe.
My cocoon of woe promises no future flight
It's a straight jacket of hate
And my prayers just bounce off the padded walls.
I need a knight; I get only night.
I need a hand; I get a slap.
I need understanding; I get overstepping.
I know three things:
1. Nothing will ever be the same.
2. I will never trust again.
3. You cannot will a heart to stop beating.
Sleep is my only friend, death my only goal.
That is the truth that will set me free.
So full of empty between the ears;
void breeze reasoning,
zero thoughts a-blowing
Banished to the barren cornfields,
multi-grain years of accumulated wisdom
bear no pleasant, golden-age yield
Black sky intellectual famine
was lost cause shuttered-in,
by a blight of self-centered locust feed
Constant dry spells of self-absorption: Attic dust
sparked a bewitchingly vague eclipse acceleration ...
a covering blindness of gross darkness
No candlelight activity ~ no emotional fertility
Ancient bones of moist contention
randomly doused by fiery forgetfulness
Addled gestures
buried
beneath facial dry ground,
blanches
the ash fallow soil
with expressionless sterility
Immense nothingness ... bountiful emptiness
A vacuous mental sheaf
bending to the hollow wind whisperings heard less and less
Cranial cracked cistern,
watercolors of compassion spilling
New cretin observations ...
conversation water table on the dwindle
Kaleidoscope personalities
that are always chameleon changing
Dawn memories fading, thoughts diffusing
Never able again to see
things quite right upstairs mirror prism bent improperly,
casting past reflections mnemonic shadowy
Where did a neural immeasurable,
liquid electric muse
evaporate to?
How did an oasis of joyous rumination
disappear,
without a serene memory dip
to refresh anew?
A once beautiful, fertile mind
is now
banished to the barren cornfields
A formerly wondrous field of dreams,
now listens to the Alzheimer wind
silently mind-blowing
There’s nothing between the autumn ears,
yet the summer fears springing above the chest,
keeps winter growing
A once beautiful mind
is forever
banished to the barren cornfields
To listen, agitatedly,
for the turbulent winds
to silently come a-blowing
Having nothing between the ears;
only the never-ebbing, night falling fears ...
and crashing waves of misty morning tears
A tsunami loss of knowing
Empty tidal thoughts above the chest,
which keeps on daily rising
Within the singing stillness of the sphere, I awaken from a breeze,
Consciousness, a proud guardian in the temple of endlessness,
The eternal fire in the hands of time, keeper of the ephemeral flame,
Watches with fervor the dawn's bleaching within the womb of the soul,
The caress of each now, a sacred breath,
In the sunrise of thought, a discreet flight through the branches of eternity.
The eyeball, a beacon of enlightenment, ever attentive and vigilant,
Stalks the hidden realm catalyzing the clear waters of pivotal sight,
Its nerves are canvases, meanings unveiled in premeditation,
Sometimes, it bows under the intensity of exposure,
Other times, it recreates under the caress of fulfillment, when the nagging prophecy
Receives the embodied crown of revelation.
Casting aside the quantum thread of ignorance,
The arms of wisdom embracing the sparks of knowledge,
The knowing heart's tears transform ashen puzzles
Into mosaics reflecting the passion and sharpness of new awakening,
For the dance of consciousness, luminous and aware,
Gently removing the eruptions of the sterility of indifference,
Surpassing the boundaries of the self in the search for ecstasy.
A lantern of meditation in the deluge of full light,
The shared and ample harvest - no soft crumb of bread lost,
Encrusted in the deceptive slab, the sheen of false gravity,
The splendor of the guardian, never overshadowed - the eternal morning, pierced by the torch,
Revealing the clear brilliance of joy - the identity of the pilgrim heart, dispelling shadows of blindness.
In the attentive web of the moment, consciousness weaves the scattered shards
Into luminous portraits, recontouring the open faces of generosity,
Discarding the careless spindle of inattention, the clear mark of apathy,
Born from willful ignorance, the seeker animates the hand of the attentive -
To listen! To see! To feel! To move in the rebirth of deed!
The spirit enlivened through the profoundly accented humility of grace.
In the heart of inner wanderings hides, alas, a tormented soul,
Wilted by anguishes woven at the edge of the mind, where the thread breaks.
In verses, the silhouette of an overwhelming sadness takes shape, a landscape made of lead,
Carrying with it the bitter taste of disappointment, a sheathless sword in the chest of time.
Why do you ask, when the answers are like leaves in the wind,
A dance on an abandoned stage, where the echo of your steps resounds without witnesses?
It's a self-portrait born from the depths, marred through the eyes of another,
Living its marriage with sadness like a slow waltz, in a twilight that senses no dawn.
Admirable, enchanting, marvelous, full of refinement is the soul of the broken,
If it weren’t for the arrow of separation, the cold kiss of pain, the sterility of melancholy.
An artist's soul flying above lower realities, and yet,
Gravitating towards the abyss of a solitary Parnassian - an eternal home of muses and ideals.
Two spheres, of tyrants and dreamers, spin in parallel orbits,
Touching in the grace of a moment, a spark in the cosmic night, just an illusion of embrace.
Magnetism isn't enough, their potential fusion delayed by inertia, and yet,
A hope slipping through the cracks ceases not to breathe, fragile as a shooting star in the night.
That merciless distance, the renunciation of worthy wings, leaves the soul empty,
Starved of complicity, with anxiety as its cloak – a knight of solitude.
Thus, in the ballroom of the equinox, the artist dances alone,
To music born only of the murmur of his own dreams flooding the empty hall.
Could the eternal struggle between ideas and the heavy ankle of reality be the ticket to freedom?
Or just rainwater in the desert, where the artist, a master of solitude, sculpts his phantoms,
Awaiting a world where ships from other spheres sail with fantasy-filled sails,
And where only the poet, emperor over tear and dream, can still raise his crown from the mist.
Sandpiper Pausing...Again
What times are these
where hearts run hot and cold
ceaseless conscience alerts
remind us of steel girders fallen prone
entombments sealed
their distant voice remembered well
Compassion's lens peers through
this fallen metropolis of micro-flesh
this glass transparency
engulfed by forsaken smoke
knowing today's ethereal
descends as heart's residue
embracing darkness recalled
clock hands stopping
media rushing to air-time
yet never to be out of date
Silence remembers
fused tragedies
crumbling worlds
bodies falling
hearts broken
Yet
learning comes hard
More violence breaks the silence
cacophonous pandemonium
empty shell casings bouncing
pop pop pop pop pop
children's pleas
teachers' bravery
first responder's sorrow
parents traumatized
grievance everywhere
Sterility reigns
Washington defers
barbarity's extended abyss
the next tragic moment to define
insensitive that irresponsible behavior
will spawn new memories
destined to awaken vanquished yesterdays
Like a video game of archaic gulosity
certain chameleon passions remain insatiable
indecisive apathy-driven appetites
fuel congressional obstruction
While at the shore
A sandpiper pauses
beneath remembered ash
echoed violence
unredeemable screams
floating atop societal trade winds
seeming to be never forgotten
Like other creatures of blood that flows
eyes that see
ears that hear
hearts remaining conscious
knows not cowardice
Even a bird understands that
And so...
Even as the sandpiper probes away
its discovered sustenance hard fought
its needs remaining small
congressional appetites of power and greed
continue sated only with constituency expectation
indulging in anticipated 2013's gluttonous reward
thinking the next tragedy but finger food
the next gun sales windfall a payback for re-election
answering the next challenge of moral impotency with...
Not a problem
Not a problem
Now that I have gotten that over with,
Being straightforward as a piss-ant on fire,
Telling you it just is what it is,
That behind all the frizz,
Is a beardless fake whose heraldic bearings
Are the arms of a sickly snake,
And that all this derogatory self-derision is decisively the result
Of a disease smitten assault by a prodigal bug
Whose virility is known to create sterility of poetic taste-
Oh what a waste to find oneself in such a caste,
Outcast in a landless mire of sea,
Where there is no Sea king to lead back to land,
Where seeking leads not to seeing
But only to being the miserly plot written by this poetasters hand-
Now, to repeat, that I have gotten that over with,
I can really try,
Once and for all,
To really get it over with.
Like really really real.
So here it is,
In medias res,
The big ordeal:
Merde! Merde!
J’ai oublié on this very day,
To have taken my ressurectine,
The nectar which this fool requires with some dismay
To not forget his pointless points.
Where is my medicine Edison?
Where is my pill?
How shall I cart this over the hill?
O’sir,
Dear sir,
For in the middle of this rabid petri dish of sheer excitement,
Close to moiety’s shribble,
With voice shrill,
Ready to take aim and avoid all shame,
I was, I was, I was, I swear
Almost there,
But alas,
I am,
Now out of gas,
With nothing more to gain,
A timid loveless swain,
A witless poet with no further words to amass,
A neutered puppy in a jungle,
Without a rumble,
To stumble upon just the right word,
To close off looking less like a turd,
Then this early morning bird,
Preferably one day,
Could theoretically mumble.
Did I mention that between finding Absolute Knowledge,
And miming Absolute Knowledge,
I would like to find myself snuggly ensconced in the arms,
Of not only Winnie the Pooh,
But surely Yogi Berra too?