In the stray lavender of twilight
as cactis' spindled obelisks
brush spreading lapis sky
a honeyed sun
holds tight
to desert crags
for a last glimpse
of fulgid sage
and adobe rainbow dwellings
sprawled in the valley.
I await the candle moon's
flickering smile
shining in gully water
and darts of starlight
glowing in my arid dreams.
Categories:
obelisks, nature, sunset,
Form: Ekphrasis
I weave rhapsodies | words dance before you
Enshrining words on paper | obelisks of enlightenment
Heartbeats quicken pulse | hark metered rhythm
As i map stars with my quill | Ursa Major could guide me
To rendezvous with cosmos | perhaps map a planet ‘B’
A cleaved tank duo can be read as one poem or 2 stand-alone tankas. This was a collaboration between Yasmin Khan, and myself. Yasmin is responsible for the tanka on the left.
Categories:
obelisks, poems,
Form: Tanka
Forgive them Father for their souls unclean
Hardened hearts that demonically demean
Camouflaged cathedrals a silent smokescreen
The towers of Babylon crumble as foreseen
Inauspicious idols obelisks of the obscene
Magniloquent mirages of man's made machine
Feeding feculent fires with gorging gasoline
Pampered populous with a Vatican vaccine
Malodorous men with a nervous nicotine
Religion waging wars like a lost libertine
Marauding morality in the menus cuisine
In man's madness a grotesque guillotine.
July.10.2017
JULY PREMIERE CONTEST
Sponsored by: Brian Strand
Categories:
obelisks, conflict, deep, philosophy,
Form: Monorhyme
In Gettysburg, the soldiers fell
In shock, in pain, in death,
As thousands from the North and South
Cried out with their last breath.
Their bodies lay in bloody fields,
A vista grim and stark;
Today, those hills have been restored
Into a hallowed park.
With monuments and obelisks
Commemorating all
Who fought and died when barely grown,
Sucked in to wartime's thrall.
A marker made of stone records
The bodies there interred,
Remembered with a name or else
"Unknown," a lonely word.
The numbers laid out state by state
Count lives the war's undone.
New York sustained the greatest loss -
Eight hundred sixty-one.
That just reflects the ones who died
Those three days in July
And after all these years, no one
Can really answer why.
The battlefields are there to see -
To visit and to tour
But sadly, war is a disease
For which there is no cure.
Categories:
obelisks, travel,
Form: Rhyme
In a while,
in a second
and rain is pouring down.
One expectation like an Alpine horn
and you hardly,
hardly
are alive.
With your little hollows you're listening
to the Labyrinth.
And I have no knowledge.
And I have no map.
But the long movement of moss on the skin
of obelisks.
The calm waters are unleashing into me
and the chestnuts are putting white candles on
(and the autumn is a palm).
Wings, raising
upwards and
upwards...
I'm calling you by name.
Categories:
obelisks, loveautumn,
Form: Free verse
you will go there
one day
where i once was
in the air i will leave a trace
where the obelisks point the way
when the great shapes shift
you will arrive where i once was
and see that my shadow on the wall
has left a stain
and will know
that we are the same
Categories:
obelisks,
Form: I do not know?
An indissoluble overcast
hazes stark starless skies,
submerging neuortic Atlanta's
shapely, contrasting shadows.
Peering through magnetic stratus
neon flashes a stuttered stammering staccato.
Silent voices scream out
from their calico maze.
Treacherous felines prowl roof tops,
searching with iridescent eyes
for unway soaring eagles
jetting through the cloudy sky
Nesting clouds reflect
patchy haloed night beams,
outlining vague shaped obelisks
rising up through a collected sky line
Piercing tenant eyes penetrate
senior level structures,
curvung window panes
enclosing mirrored towers.
Window entertainment assimilates
electronic pin ball machines,
visualing the cities blood
flowing throuigh astringent vessels.
Ant army sqyadrons, wearing
miner's helmets, march through
paved slotted furrows
hypnotically following each grove.
Categories:
obelisks, fantasy
Form: Verse