ALTERNATIVE CELEBRATIONS-:-
intended
symbolic
optimism
inspires
progress
turning DAY INTO NIGHT
veritable
sunlike
brightness
illuminates
ideas
into PAEANS OF PRAISE
hubris
mirrors
forgotten
remote
remains
Elegy – 7-17-24
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Elegy for Old Growth
Through measures of metered melancholy
The tattered winds sing a rent elegy,
A pensive wail for pristine old growth,
A drifting chant in pure pitch of final farewell –
The mute tongue howls in eulogy
For virgins of a thousand turns around the sun
For helpless giants surrendered in atonal sacrifice.
Gentle titans with feathery boughs lifted their faces
To embrace misted melodies of summer and winter snows
Forest zephyrs sang lullabies for sparrows
Nesting in their rustling wombs
Then shared the secret lyrics of their song
With robins sheltered in their lofty grace of red bark
In evensongs, matins and spring symphonies.
The myrrh of burial mixes with their lingering fragrance
In desolation and in their exposed flesh,
Nude hillsides of purple rage
Scream in final dirges of farewell
Modulated into anthems sung to saplings in circles of renewal
Little ones, like half steps, change elegies to odes
The threadbare zephyr now chants paeans to remember.
Laughter and love ,sorrow and pain
In times both good and bad
Finding the strength to meet the day
Ending with a headstone engraved
Even after death there is life
Faith leads us so to believe
In God we trust and hope
Leaning on His grace and love
Dwelling in paradise eternaL
Amid the paeans of praise of the puttI
Enjoying the fruits thereoF
Whereof there comes perfect peacE
A begging bowl, I scarce can pay thy debt,
Let me then indebted to thee remain
For life, to cherish thy bounties I get,
If I wish to give, wonder what’ll ye gain?
So then, I opt to sing paeans of praise—
A lay man plunged in hankering a heart,
A grateful toast to thee is all I raise,
O lighten up my life's much-loaded cart.
As thy child, pray help me grateful to stay,
Amidst all bounties blissfully less blasé,
By lures of life much less carried away,
Be thou indulgent to my wanton ways,
My destiny ‘tis to die dunk in debt—
Prodigal son of thine all so ingrate.
__________________________________
Sonnet | 01.06.2008 | son, prayer
Poet’s note: Man in his life span is so much under divine benevolence, he can never hope to repay his debt. All he can do is to remain ever grateful to God.
Lost in a wistful arbor, where malaise blooms,
Mists flower in hypnotic bleak violet dusks
Shades of brooding melancholy
Bruise my treasured bouquets of dreams
And plod through ponderous mists
In metamorphic doldrums
Cold inertia spirals into lamentations,
Midnights drugged with stupor
Lean heavy on my homeless hermit heart
In withering labyrinths of tangled voices,
Atonal buds of plaintive paeans,
When pensive lethargy pierces dawn.
My rose, in apathy, sees no reason to bloom
As shades of gloom birth shadow seasons
And pale fretting’s unbroken gaze dulls dawn’s hues
Clouds of sighs ravish new shoots
Born in sweet trances of possibility -
Each breath a tedious indecision wrapped in enigma.
Dullness shrouds each new growth in greyness
A slow march into inertia’s bower of cathexis.
Life is so cool
On seas and oceans
Best steamed, served over a pool
Sweet and sour delicacy of paeans
Throat where its brain rests
Engulfed head where stomach and kidney nests
Ripping teeth in stomach feasts
winter winds quiver
winter winds quiver
when ice mists ride on torrents ~
cloudy vesper veils
solstice zephyrs glaze
meadows with crystal glitter ~
vanilla moons rise
raw breath of evening
bare boughs wear rough coats of bark ~
lavender twilights
flurries of wild gales
whistle through silent hollows ~
blue plaintive paeans
boreal shadows
fly on brumaled errant wings ~
tangled berry canes
12-12-22
Syllables check with www.howmany syllables
The rapturous oceans roar
And shout their praise in gospel waves
That crash and smash
Against a cold and distant shore.
The mountains sigh and moan,
Lift suppliant arms, sing paeans and psalms
That rise then echo back
A hollow, mocking tone.
The forest trees may bow their heads
And bend their knees, but not to pray.
Instead, if you should ask them why,
They pay no heedless god tribute,
They're merely giving mute salute
To wand'ring minstrel breezes passing by.
A weaver of words in deep quiet reflects
In his mind’s prism, many a thought deflects
Within him the rainbow colors of passion rage
He scripts songs of beauty and rhyme on page after page
He has no magic, neither erudite nor clever
But hungry souls, his poems avidly devour
Stirring their hearts as wind on whispering leaves
And each line, some alluring fancy weaves
As from pen to paper his fancies flow
In a lingo that has an unusual glow
Though a great epic may not be born
His songs move even hearts of flint n’ stone
He sings the paeans of love and life
Of men in cross roads of toil and strife
He awakens dead worlds long forgotten
Taking us to magic lands never trodden
His songs have echoes of a heavenly rhapsody
Drowning the Earth in flooding melody
Fuelling hearts with thoughts one cannot name
Spawning tempestuous passions one cannot tame
Placed First.
8 Dec. 2021
A Strand (1045)Poetry Contest
Sponsor- Brian Strand
Synonym for love ah this bench,
For many a dream dreamt on bench,
The refuge of a last resort—
Felt by all that sat on this bench,
Of two happy souls’ hearty tales,
Filled to brim with joy by this bench,
Hand-in-hand old thirst when they quench,
A mute witness this happy bench.
Many come maybe soon to leave,
But where if ever goes this bench?
And when I pen paeans in its praise,
Lotus-leaf-untouched stays this bench.
Drop all pains to know, O poet,
It’s myth-like vain to know this bench.
_______________________________________
Ghazal |34.12.2020|
Topic: bench, memories, love
Inspired by a Gujarati ghazal of poet Takhta Solanki:
The Language of Blue
Sinking into the lyrical language of blue
Prime layers of still solitude speak
With muted voices
In sapphire soprano rhapsodies,
Lines of bass blushes, electric flecks of neon fire.
Hear in dusky blue’s modal shafts of light,
The peaceful plaintive sotto voce
Set an indigo scene
In delft lingua for a pas de duex
With trebling hues lapis and arbot.
Blue chants a lexis, a cerulean chroma glow
Sung in tender tenor tones patois
To translate soft sky blue aqua idioms,
As minor phrases meditate on azure,
In prose text that wafts in periwinkle blooms.
Unhurried blue on blue in plain-chant paeans,
Whispers and bedazzles teal twilight librettos
Of cradle songs in soft celeste waves
Of cobalt midnight in the consoling,
And the mystic, language of blue.
11-3-21
Contest: Blue
Sponsor Mystic Rose Rose
Trebling = triple
Arbot is a shade of blue
Chroma means glow
Pleiades P
Pulsating Pleiades
Pelione’s fair daughters
Play in pale pavilions
Paradise peekaboo
Pearls on Orion’s pelt
Plead pure plaintive paeans -
Phenomenon’s portrait
4-9-21
Contest: Pleiades P
Sponsor: Kim Merryman
I mean, long Victorian verses pining for a pure lover who never scratches her own ass.
The bronzed paeans to those who died in war or a meaningless cause.
Or the inscribed moans of the armature bard holding a petunia.
I hate it.
BUT
“If music be the food of love, play on.” OK, OK. I love Shakespeare. But he is Shakespeare.
And then I always had a thing for Viola.
And the Tower of Song. Lennie can and does bring tears to my eyes.
Or “45 years from now” the vaulting words of Stan Rogers. Gone too soon. “I wish I were in Sherbrooke now.”
So maybe I do like poetry. Some poetry.
But I don’t like my poetry. That’s for sure.
So there.
Wall in the Woods
A solitary pensive woodland canticle
Wanders through summer’s souvenirs,
A gypsy quilt of green transformed to crimson flame,
And prophesies of empty paeans swiftly riding
Through a meandering row of barren arms
Keeping silent watch at last light over crumbling lines,
Smooth river stones staggering
Beneath the jealous hand of gravity’s lament
For lost time and the skillful composer’s design,
As seasons fled to forget the wall’s divide;
One epoch stands at the trellis barrier of a foregone age
On a footpath two worlds collide - atonal echoes escaping
In a vision for once neat orchard rows overgrown
Separated from a scattered copse of Queen Anne’s Lace;
Seeking signs of clarity through slinking shadows
From the clear eyed composition, standing mid gracious ferns,
Barred from crossing – stepping over the seal of time signatures -
Yet led to find a rusted gate -a scrolling key -
To unlock a welcoming transition – melded vision transposition
A secret weald of melancholy song walking by a wall.
It has always been a mother’s way
To take care of her kids every day
She’s the first person we see after birth
As we grow old we forget her worth
When COVID-19 spread everywhere
All minds were filled with virus scare
Doctors insisted, “social distancing”
Mother quipped, “I’m not listening”
Can a mother be separated from her child?
She can never construe them to be so defiled
She has nurtured them for months in her womb
Now she will banish the virus with her broom!
That has always been the spirit in her mind
Despite the threats, her love cannot rescind
She is present whenever she is required
There is no pain that cannot be shared
O Mother! I wish all days were your days
I could sing paeans of love in your praise
As we grow old we often move apart
But still keep our presence in your heart
END
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