Long Sulphurous Poems
Long Sulphurous Poems. Below are the most popular long Sulphurous by PoetrySoup Members. You can search for long Sulphurous poems by poem length and keyword.
Once they named me god.
At my mouth they placed figs, oil,
to the lip of my fire,
sang their children’s names
into my warm, sulphurous breath.
They named my smoke a blessing.
They read the fire in my throat
as fathers read a child’s brow,
and trusted the mountain to sleep.
But then I awoke
The seal of my deep heart fractured
and poured night over their doorways.
My rivers of flame took the olive groves,
the market’s clay jars, the bridal veils—
took every voice that had sung to me.
Now my blood lies blackened,
cool as a curse beneath the moon.
Yet it retains the mould of their streets,
the shallow bowl where rain still gathers,
the doorway’s buried threshold,
the clasped hand none may uncover.
Pilgrims come with polished lenses.
They praise the dark waves of my skin,
say:
How still. How beautiful.
They do not hear the dead
turning in my stone.
I hear them.
In the long moonless watch,
their prayers return unbidden—
not as incense,
nor as praise,
but as small voices under rock,
calling the god
who did not spare them.
At times the soul gets clenched,
in an unspeakable grief.
In a demoniac grip,
it chokes and w r i g g l e s~
The pain of being stung by a dozen scorpions
or hacked piece by piece by an axe.
Tremulous grows the heart, over love that is spent,
Seeks in vain to revive the joy that is gone,
Strains to lift up the veil that d a r k e n s the soul,
Wrestles to come out from the desolate cave of black solitude.
The more it struggles to wade through the mess,
the deeper it plunges into the morass of despair.
Clung on talons of excruciating pain,
wailing a long wail of never being understood,
the mind goes berserk~
w
h
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i
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g
and
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i
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g.
Anytime the volcano might erupt,
emitting fumes of sulphurous smoke,
with asphalt lava, spilling out,
blowing life with its violent breath.
The law says you are where you are
Yet every human creature we touch
We find the Stink and Speech of Hell
So from these vapours we conclude
Where we are must be Hell
But saints don’t live in Hell
So this must be an attack
Of sulphurous vapours
Mists from hell creeping into Paradise
An infestation from THEIR HELL
Like St James surrounded by demons
Or St. Anthony tempted by creatures from Hell
Or Christ descending into Hell before Glory
Everywhere is infected by demons
Everywhere without protection
No place free of them
Like Hieronymous Bosch and the
Garden of Earthly Delights
This is an Earthly Paradise
Filled with demons Everywhere
Every shape and form criminals
They come to you through their garbage
Only standing on the threshold of Heaven
Looking down on these vile things
Do these ghastly beings seem pitiable
Only there does protection and sanity come
Only there is the sight clear and forgiveness possible
Do not touch or re- member them
Do not bring them into your mind
In memories, sights, speech
Have no intercourse with them--- for
Within minutes your soul will be torn and rent
Just let them roam
Soon they will be gone and destroyed
Café Terrace in Arles, France
Beneath stars of heavenly grandeur,
In a café, romance prospects dwell brighter.
Patrons’ entertaining escapades of camaraderie
Charismatically whisper away the evening.
Visible under the illuminating gas lantern
Of sulphurous yellow, revealing customers
Who say, “S'il vous plaît” to the French waiter
As passersby stare at empty tables.
At the street’s end is seen a church spiral rise,
And in-between the buildings’ windows of light,
Over the cobblestones, the calèche chatters
As people yield to the horse-drawn carriage.
Une nuit d'été de bonjours et d'au revoirs
(A summer night of hellos and goodbyes)
On Place du Forum in Arles, France.
***
Note:
“Café Terrace in Arles, France” is an ekphrastic poem describing the painting “Café Terrace at Night” (1888) by Vincent van Gogh (1853–1890).
It was the missing decade
of my life that came back,
late on one clammy night.
Wearing your visage
of a foraging girl
at the foot of a tranquil Vesuvius.
Spent though I was,
for those decades still with me,
I sat awake listening to the warmth of open windows.
The decade came to me,
in figments and memories
wheezing a few questions.
This room is known to me,
as is the night,
as is the flaying heat,
and the carved words
on the creaking charpoy
by some distant uncle.
I melded with the light squeezing through
into this dark, sulphurous room
like an exile away from my maker.
The decade came to me
and sang lullabies
of princes who never were.
I have kept my vigil
until the mirror ran dry
and returned to sand.
The decade wears me now
as I am, the hunting boy
by a shimmering Ganges.
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Date: 07/05/2017
Wasted Energy
Darkness descends like a ribbon unfurling
As astronauts in space orbit the churning Earth
And observe the lit orb that is the world below.
Likened to a planet on fire in sulphurous yellow,
Though impressive to see, it is a waste of energy
To watch as photons flow at the flick of a switch
In the night when people should be sleeping.
Light pollution! Conservation is sorely lacking.
(The First Law of Thermodynamics states that energy is constant;
it is neither created nor destroyed but can be converted.)
Dams constructed flood lands to create reservoirs;
Waterfalls are shut down, and rivers diverted,
Destroying land use and animal habitat.
Fossil fuel stations and nuclear reactors are built,
Which pollute the air and swell waste dump sites
With radioactive and other toxic materials.
Fields are littered with windmills, solar panels, and mirrors
Consuming yield acreage and resources and killing birds
To generate electricity so that humans can live comfortably
In an electronic, surreal, guiltless, controlled environment.