where no light penetrates
the musty chamber of an existence
gazing, otiose, in contemplation
of erogenous zones
of paralysis and moans
of the evaporation of bones…
the spider and its cobwebs beckon
dust stirring like breath
tick-tock of tears
Categories:
otiose, dark, fantasy,
Form: Free verse
Regardless of my mother's death,
One hope, obduracy, and words otiose breath
The wheels of progress never stop turning
The times shift, and my sad heart is yearning
The world continues to burst forth in beauty
To regain faith, one can never flout divine duty
Lemons had just started to turn yellow
The sky is azure, and there are plains in view
Conjointly to the bewildered trout
Somehow, the spark of passion faded out
Even as yearning is freed from restraint
I saw years slip by without one complaint
There is still plenty of love in us to pass around
I can stand with my feet sustained on the ground
And savor the peaches as a warm embrace
Where the imprint of love may leave a trace.
Written: May 26, 2023
Categories:
otiose, appreciation, death,
Form: Couplet
Hollow odes lament where waves crash depthless
Oh! How ocean lacking light spills woe so!
Lackluster grays wail unkempt longingness
Lone stander bleeds the dreams of times ago
O'er the screaming wind, a seagull's bleak cries
weeps of cloudiness usurping the day
Heaven's warmth obscured, and now coldness vies,
overwhelming where vast emptiness slays
Left purposeless, wavering dark takes hold
looping tight a lynch-like corrosive noose
Otiose life sucks vim where sharks enfold,
wrecked in sunless abyss of night let loose
But Sol, unconquerable, beams once more
and the lighthouse sings, full of birds from shore!
(6/10/18)
Categories:
otiose, allusion,
Form: Sonnet
Folks must be happy in Guatemala
With tax money frittered by Kamala
Will she visit the border
To 'stablish peace and order
Or is she just Joe's otiose* wallah**
(*Serving no useful purpose)
(**A person in charge or employed for a particular purpose)
Categories:
otiose, humorous,
Form: Limerick
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oLCHXfkGOIw
In the hollowed hush of heaven the whisper of a soul
and in the lit up room of stars an angel's karmic face
Two feathered wings aloft deliverance her goal
while one is seized on earth, the other portal graced
An otiose moon assembled a duty of the night
shadows of the 5th dimension casting in the light
prying dreams of splendor identity of life
immortal as the sun her beauty, sharp as knife
Relinquishing the feel of metal grates and pain
she soon portends her destiny before she goes insane
we need to catch that train she whispers in her ear
and suddenly she's up floating without fear
In the hollowed hush of heaven, an angel talks to God
while a stretcher is removed, the sky turns white to chalk
two feathers wings of might she doesn't need a prod
volte faced attuned and free she flies, to new EPOC.
Categories:
otiose, death, life, light,
Form: Quatrain
Painstaking plumes of surest gait
To wield diamond steel over fate;
With slow pair of wit-guarded lips,
As otiose words sway great ships.
Invincible flair and exacting knack
To stand out from the frothy pack;
Ochred with all blue-penciled skill,
For nabob’s dimwits do mimic still.
With the far-scanning aquiline eye
That fowls unborn miles like a spy;
Plus an ear for tiniest voices tuned,
For idlest vowel by vagaries ruined.
Gigantic empathy for pinched souls
Hewn down by lot’s inclement fouls;
Felt tear for fellow wayfarers stung
By blunt luck's blade rashly swung.
A little but constant sacrifice betimes,
For bereft chum eschewed by dimes;
Or even total strangers in want of bail
Out of a jinx along existence’s icy sail.
Categories:
otiose, allegory, anxiety, blessing, care,
Form: Didactic
Constrained by the sober exercise of judgment,
And dignified by deliberation and privacy.
I yanked my soul out of its secret chamber,
And held it to the mirror of my eye.
To see it like a star or moon against the sky,
But it dwindled to alarmingly small dimensions.
Fate had turned and twisted a thousand ways,
From the standpoint of expediency.
Fumbling and stumbling in helpless incapacity,
I'm greeted with an alloyed chagrin and gloom.
Then I heard a wordless voice,
In language terse yet familiar.
It wasn't a loose and otiose statement,
Unaccustomed tears threatened my seared vision,
I'm overshadowed by a fretful anxiety,
By this innocuous thought, I'm skulking beneath life.
But if I shine brighter in life,
Reexamine fate, destiny and my artistic aptitude,
If I fail, die and remain forgotten,
Study the agonies of my conscious failure,
And remember me with this poem.
Categories:
otiose, death, life,
Form: Free verse
Wrapt in the otiose aumbry of pride
A glede hythe a quiff will gust aside
Her folly selcouth
Binds her fast to her wanweird
To speak ever sooth
She is thrawn, my sister, my coëval
Into fell Truth’s ghyll she will smiling fall
Morrow’s dawnsun, rise!
Drown in the throes of today!
Sky dragons, melt away!
Morrow’s dawnsun, drown!
Rise in grief’s eternal day!
Sky dragons, melt away!
Categories:
otiose, age, anger, angst, appreciation,
Form: Rhyme
Do I Walk or I Walk Me?
Suddenly I stopped
inspired by a questioning thought;
am I walking or I’m walking me?
Am I a becoming or a being?
The whole system called I or he or she
is a cosmic reality
yet a thirst aided by insight
welled up from inside;
can this really walk or stalk
unless propelled and guided
by the inner reality?
Is walking an act of mine
or of the self indwelling?
Stunned by the divide of I and me
I was inclined to embrace the reality
when someone accosted me
asking for something otiose
which compelled me to come back
to the diurnal fact
bewildered!
Categories:
otiose, mystery, philosophy, spiritual,
Form: Prose Poetry
I feel a nauseating revulsion to see scraps of prose
Bundled together in a neatened pile in the name of poetry,
And prizes being awarded for such otiose verbiage
And praises being heaped for such boring coquetry.
Poetry, my dear uninitiated impostors,
Is the language of the mute solemn gods.
You ought to choose your nifty title well
And thus commence your verse against the odds.
Avoid Soyinka’s worn-out style of incompetent blank verse,
Instead, give it the rhyme scheme of the unbeatable Yeats;
The superior verse that one Tom Mboya has never read,
The taste that a Kenyan editor will haul over the rooftop sheets.
Line after line beg the company of some higher Muse
So that you may pen the will of the gods and not your own;
Alliterate here and there though you must not make it your aim,
Then lunge into deeper thought with a deity-like melancholy tone.
And never seek fame for your sacred poetic tasks.
Leave the young to sing your lyrics centuries upon your death,
And remember a great weaver of rhymes long deceased
And pray and wish you immortal blissful health.
Categories:
otiose, anniversary, art,
Form: Verse
IRRESPONSIBLE ENEMY
When our tears drop
and stench fire around
us,
And fire's enemy
becomes otiose and
nugatory,
Then shall tears
backfire fire's enemy
And after a very scorch
sunshine
Telling ur the end of
those former days.
Then shall our eyelids
close in sorrow
But tears have wiped
away our sorrows
And our lions roaring in
joy
Marking the start of
new days
And the end to the
palsy-walsy.
Categories:
otiose, history
Form: ABC
Forgive if I borrow, write and craft some sorrow
Beg and steal, I give you this now and tomorrow
Pen me under stars, pit me against the best
I'll write you a sonnet, put your heart to the test
Cause darlin I gotta know what it feels like
To taste glory, bring heaven from hell's pike
I need to pen a haiku and be through
Oh you thought that I meant with you?
Hell, darlin, I am seeking fame and fortune
I'll pull down stars and ink a supernova
This year I no longer stand by till it's over
Pits and Pendulum's buried under sandy dune
Desert? I will cross it then, a thousand times
Water to quench my thirst from otiose rhymes
But yet, I'll pen my name in the stars for it
Bleed heart and soul for it
But you'll find me... at the edge of a razor.
Categories:
otiose, on writing and words,
Form: Rhyme
A million thoughts run through my head,
A thousand words i wished i had said,
A hundred lines i should have read,
So many things left unfinished,
Life taken never to be replenished,
An unlikely angel in the dark of night
Resembling an outre flying kite,
Feel the breeze of freedom
when her wings spread,
Suddenly it occurs the captivity in being dead,
Confinement to this addiction
is much like being ridden to a bed,;
overnight it seems the soul was diminished,
devirginized without getting kissed,
she appears in an otiose light,
promising there is no better feeling
than aboard her heavenly flight,
Once in her embrace the skies turn red,
she gets a taste and devours like she has never been fed,
In those final hours astray one has been led,
through the dark unknown she carries me
until I disappear in the mist,
rendering me to a state of weakness and deadly bliss;
My eyes see the image of her bad intentions
but they cannot grasp the truth in sight,
By sunrise I know she will have won this fight
Categories:
otiose, allegory, confusion, death, introspection,
Form: Rhyme