Serpents slither here. Scorpions hide beneath our bed spreads.
Spiders, bugs, sticks, ants, and centipedes occupy our beds.
We have coasts. But what use of these? They burn with sultry heat.
Pirates sail to our harbours with their armour-filled fleet.
Predators of all kinds have filled our once lovely islands.
Where, once, flora and fauna flourished, wattles and burrs shake hands.
Our architectural castles seem to crack and collapse.
Dilapidated sanctums of temples reveal time's lapse.
Archaeologists try to explore our mausoleums.
They find noxious inland Taipans in murky museums.
Dogs bite their masters; cats, like tigers, cull their lords with claws.
Cows, bulls, and goats butt, stamp, and pin their herders for no cause.
Arrogance and aggression emblazoned by humankind
Their hearts and minds by evil thoughts, words, and deeds are maligned.
This place too is made by God, I know, like other places.
But, to cut the heads of others, here, each one runs races.
Categories:
mausoleums, evil, life,
Form: Couplet
"Some of us have secrets – William Tell."
Some of us have secrets.
Well, we all have secrets, William Tell.
We sweep them under the carpet,
or trade, for better things.
Some things we exchange,
they see us captured and seized,
canaries singing in gilded cages,
well, some not so gilded;
some are chirping up
an opera, orchestra vulgate,
the percussion,
rattled and deceased.
We pretend to live in golden ages
the buried deep inside us - we,
claw a way out of the hidden
musty mausoleums
haunting
all
the poetique
people.
The external jest,
they love it all,
they smother us
in their velvet words,
or drown us in
a baptismal tide
of touch and tell, bugs,
truth or dare,
a looney tunes overture.
Some of us have secrets.
Well, we all have secrets.
We sweep them under the carpet, or trade,
for better things.
The Apple plucked from the tree
like a story, before bitten,
placed on a head
stood against a wall
William Tell
for better things
(LadyLabyrinth / 2023)
Categories:
mausoleums, muse,
Form: Narrative
They loiter
in memory's mausoleums,
old chants,
those gilded liturgies,
ready to resurrect
and eat through the ear
with promises
under the finery
of polished myth.
Grafted onto our very bone,
these structures scaffold history
and who we are.
Now, stripped of flesh,
they moan
and rattle the dark
when given voice
by savage winds.
I have heard
the haunting echo left
in the wake
of their going.
Emptied of substance,
these vacated vaults
house only noise
from human ghosts.
I have listened
for the faint whisperings
beyond the worn out
replays of the dead,
for something transcending
numbers and name -
hear only the wind.
I keep telling myself
this is enough.
Categories:
mausoleums, absence, wind,
Form: Free verse
Skulls
cracked, hollowed
showing, decomposing, wounding
Remains, Graves, Cemeteries, Mausoleums
cushioning preserving, defending
damaged, vacant
Souls.
Categories:
mausoleums, dark, death, halloween, humanity,
Form: Diamante
Downtown Dayton cityscape
can be seen clearly (on a clear day)
from the grassy knoll on top
of the Woodlands cemetery.
Most of the more fancy mausoleums
face any other way though,
as if the successfully dead
had prospered and were now
disinterested in local legends.
The bones of great men and women
are restless here however,
they turn over the decades,
pull time over their skulls
like overly stuffed quilts.
They won't look now
at that once prosperous and inventive city
they are done with fame
but on a clear night
the city lights illumine
their sad spirits
as they dream of the degradation
of their once industrious history,
watch the unfolding decay of their works
one dirty, burned-out city block
at a time.
Categories:
mausoleums, poetry,
Form: Free verse
Graveyard craziness
Mausoleums give me creeps
Hardware not software
Categories:
mausoleums, for teens,
Form: Senryu
The finish line for the
rat-race speeds ever ahead of
its leaders;
brilliantly ruthless people;
brilliant and myopic.
One by one they will
drop out of the race;
drop down.
Today’s leaders will not be
in the race tomorrow.
The wolves snapping at their
heels would have
taken over.
And, behind,
receding rapidly, to the
horizon, will be their
grand mausoleums.
Categories:
mausoleums, business, culture, how i
Form: Blank verse
Tells a haunting darkness
To the graves & the boughs,
To relate mystic tales
To a night-wind that ploughs.
Tales which carry secrets
Now buried in the yard,
In tombs & mausoleums
Where shadows stand as guard.
Lest the dead tell mortals
Of such chronicles old,
And share this deep wisdom
Measured in terms of gold.
***********
Categories:
mausoleums, death, grave,
Form: Elegiac Lyric
Silence morphs the call of falling dusk
Gathering under fiery skies,
Stilled leaves in somber silence hang
Moping at the darkness that plies.
Dusty paths the home-bound cattle plod
Syrupy chirping of birds in flight,
Smoke from the earthen ovens pause
Wistfully staring at twilight.
Frenzied bats eke out their weary awls
Urging the evening star to wait,
To let moon lord overnight,
And muse over their morbid fate.
Wind over the placid river brings
Low tidings for cicadas to cry,
Fathom the fragrant moonflower will
Need endeavour to pacify.
When vigil of stark skeletal boughs
Stand mournful over the hooting owl,
And the mist like a wimple veils
The nocturnal creatures that prowl.
Those who lie in cemeteries stark
Berate the mausoleums old,
Affording them scant room to move
Adding to their ordeals untold.
Crimson dawn will pale the darkened sky
For light to lug another day,
Darkness would need wait again
For dusk to come upon its way.
***********
Categories:
mausoleums, nature,
Form: Narrative
With its silvery veil the moon's pallid sheen
Spectrally cloaks and invests all the homes
Transformed into midnight mausoleums
While those who sleep within can never be seen
As cold as the tomb
As miserable as a morgue
As silent as the grave
As the sheathing of a sword.
The dark shades of night unfold
Where they lie deep shrouded in their beds
Dreams dance lively in their heads
While they look like bodies cold.
Closed to all are the eyes of their resting places
Blinded to outside view
Wrapped in night's dark blue
But within their still frames R.E.M races
Outside in the gloom wreathed like hearses
Stand their silent polished cars in rows
In preparation for sadder blows
When funereal will be the verses.
Categories:
mausoleums, dark, death, night, sad,
Form: Rhyme
Embarking upon another vigilant journey, as ever searching these
Sinuous corridores in sublime; a maxims inverted souvenir; effusions
Waterfalls of wisdom to contest this, their mortuaries enigma....
Craven images incised within marble stones strewn amid the roguery
Of a silent night; rustic crossing the cold damp earth; its wilted flowers
Unto the mausoleums seminal door; twilights prophet speaking now in
*****************************************************************
...."Summations Rhymes * 'Vice Versas Impasse?!'" ~
Categories:
mausoleums, angel, art, autumn, love,
Form: I do not know?
Embarking upon another vigilant journey, as ever searching these
Sinuous corridores in sublime; a maxims inverted souvenir; effusions
Waterfalls of wisdom to contest this, their mortuaries enigma....
Craven images incised within marble stones strewn amid the roguery
Of a silent night; rustic crossing the cold damp earth; its wilted flowers
Unto the mausoleums seminal door; twilights prophet speaking now in
********************************************************
...."Summations Rhymes * 'Vice Versas Impasse?!'" ~
Categories:
mausoleums, hope, life, love,
Form: I do not know?
Contortions beloved china doll ballets; fallacies repertoire?!
Sublime, embarking upon another vigilant mnemonic journey
As ever searching these sinuous theatres jigzaw corridores to well find
A maxims inverted souvenir....
Effusions waterfall of wisdom to contest this mortuaries enigma!?
Discernful images incised within black marble stones strewn amid
The roguery of this grayish night; rustic, crossing the cold damp earth
With its wilted flowers unto the mausoleums preemptive seminal door....
Twilights prophet speaking now in summations scarlet rhymes?!
To wrest the breath from abymals reaching grasp that it may surely die; dissolve
Into a thousand broken pieces to be crushed aneath, vice versas impasse ~
****************************************************************
....“Figurines, Figments & Fragmentation” *
Categories:
mausoleums, hope, life, love,
Form: I do not know?
Rife with abstractions, and still just listening;
Leaning on pages, the night keeps glistening.
Ripping at seams, no intentions of fixing
As leaks spring up in the darkness of evening.
--
Hollowed-out souls fill the depths of this bet,
And mausoleums hold the ones straggling yet.
We're fighting ourselves over people we've met
Just to make up the ground in relieving the debt.
--
Knife with distractions, and I've stopped listening;
Meaning enrages; The light drips, glistening.
Slipping the reams, no ideas for fixing
The problems arisen on this summer evening.
Categories:
mausoleums, introspection
Form: Quatrain
Creeping behind the shadows
Awed by its extravagant architecture
Nighttime has arrived
I peered into the dark historical ages
Ornamental columns carved with exquisite designs
Soured into the sky
The scale of axial symmetry
Has conquered my eyes
Entering a garden so stylish and pure
With plunge bath of the night
Of lake emitting fragrances
Of the petal of lotus so bright
Stately mausoleums
Built to satisfy their greed
Damsels of intense beauty
Their bodies have been pleased
Of warriors and horses stood gallantly in place
Ready to fight what their emperor has state
Behind the beauty of the palace at night
All will be gone when a new century has arrived
Categories:
mausoleums, art, history, imagination, places
Form: Free verse
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