Sundown creeps,
across adorned amber,
sky whose welkin,
shades volte face,
as evening edges,
into cosmic chakra,
of visual feasts,
orange, pink, purple,
prelude which emblazon,
point of day exodus,
atrophied moon winking,
mystic morph of,
dwindling halo,
to homeward bound,
throngs thirsting,
for redress within,
winter jasmine enclave,
cabal, clique, cluster,
in shrunken retreat,
from dreary toil,
nudge from nightfall,
whose cryptic code,
a dark art patois,
exemplified by,
eastern screech owl,
whose stocky medium,
and varied volume,
that twilight tremolo,
purring incognito,
among other creatures,
wet soil genus,
brisk firefly flash,
in town backyards,
wing rubbing katydid,
tree top rasp,
or amid green bush,
chirpy cricket,
midget burrow dweller,
allow oneself to wallow awhile,
in evening habitat,
in all its allure
I have played the coward and the brave,
both the strong and the weak.
A man must be a man, and forget nothing,
keeping close to him
those times of disgrace and honor,
drink both the gall and the nectar
of a far too tell-tale life.
I review, and examine myself
without any escape-hatch excuses.
Clap my hands together loudly
praising this searchlight mind,
that is a ray of infinite power
directed from
the very heart of love.
Are we not all things,
the bold and gentle,
we the lamb and lions
interpreting the patois
of all our incoming angels.
strange they are,
yet we know them,
are them.
I have lived for the wild calls,
and the gentling murmurs,
shared my bread,
gorged from the manger.
This helter-skelter life
will be upheld
in that wordless court
where a life is scrolled out
to retell
its make-believe tales,
and the Light will not judge me,
nor I regret.
Written: December 09, 2023
____________________________________
solitary slope whispers below
by the vernacular aphonic
with a fierce wind and unbiased rock
bucolic vibe is ponderous
It's chameleon patois
In schizoid iridescence and fluffy sky
I decipher everything
while trudging uphill as blind
Into the mouth of irrational tempest
no reason to stay here
as haze covers the sky
crows excel at tracing the white trail.
The stone shoulders of the waterfall
are covered in graffiti,
letters and symbols daubed onto
small cliff faces
Gang tags I guess; covert proclamations.
Apparently Janice loves Bret also.
Yet it is a pretty place, and the water falls
as sound and light
not too loud nor too bright
a fall and flight
that delights the air.
The stream bubbles and swirls for a while
then meanders away
crossing a stretch of bottom land
forgetful of any plunge or spill.
I don’t really notice the graffiti anymore
it has ingrained its presence into the scenery
I watch only the falling water
how it splashes upon itself
creating its own watery language;
how then when it wanders away
seemingly well pleased with what it said.
I can intuit the ubiquity of that aqua-patois,
a fluid eloquence flowing over silence.
I love; I really love your voice and your diction
Recite me a poem in an unknown language
I don't give a darn about the pronunciation
Undress the words; I love them when they're naked.
Take your time; be loud, louder, harder, and then softer
Do not stop when you arrive at the top of the valleys
Increase the volume, drive me crazy and make gestures
I love the tone but I don't understand the vocabular.
Recite the poem in a language that I do not know
Bring controversial words into my brain, in my core
Force me to inhale the rhythm to the point of dying
I'm inebriated. The sly lyrics are tattooed on my skin.
It's okay to charm me, and to caress me with the words
Again and again. Read proficiently like a veteran actress
I'm heading to bed right now, to lay on my back unstressed
So I can dream like a genius in agony on the old docks.
Copyright © November 2018, Hébert Logerie, All rights reserved.
Hébert Logerie is the author of several books of poetry.
This is a translation of the poem 'Récite-Moi Un Poème Dans Une Langue Inconnue' by Hebert Logerie.
And
David J Walker
And
Who willfully enters this
beautiful land
Of misunderstandings
Its pallor a depth increased
Beyond the azure sky
the dawn a deceptive gathering
of propagated meanings
A tapestry in patois proverbial greetings
The façade in umbrage of
The Hierophants sagacious pleadings
He will leave a different man
But not alive
~Patois of Yuletide in Yellow~
Yellow sings solos in soft folds of nativity
Satin strands of a radiant star’s light
Creation swaddled in clarity
Naked joy leaps up in golden delight
While hues of holy optimism flood night
Through the colorless stillborn manger ploy
Ecstatic shades of amber evoke joy
Gold rays serenade prophecy now seen
All creation in citrine mantles deploy
Glory’s color, yellow, in dazzling streams.
Yellow ribbons weave through angelic song,
Enfold night in warm threads of a bronze day
No jaundiced joy dims this heavenly throng
Nor drapes king’s eyes from far and from away,
To reveal a starlit path – to show the way -
Glowing lanterns seek the source of glory
Anointing redemption for Eden’s story
Heralds yuletide gold glory from above,
Glows in brilliance like fire forged offertory,
Yellow exalts the purest aura - love.
12/2/21
Contest: Y
Sponsor: Constance La France
Word Chosen: Yuletide
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
The woods have been gathering here
for long generations,
they have their own arboreal language,
a nocturnal patois
ground out by layers of ligneous skins.
The language is arcane,
it arrives from deep ancestral roots
incantations that turn slowly
into the kernels of long seeded words.
Deep into the night I listen,
then listen yet more
to the garrulous gossiping
of a creaky wooden bed
chatting to a talky timbered floor.
On the fourth day I am crystal clear.
I step lightly.
I am an arctic god.
I slur no being, crack no shells.
I am vodka and ice in a quartz prism.
Day four is translucent,
a star-black taxi ride into daylight.
Glittering talk spills from my glass.
I speak in thunder-music.
My friends are radiant, they converse
in a silver patois
known only to the Dancing Masters of Woo
and their cats.
A Cantonese girl group,
the nightclub somewhere on the edge of town
After their candied love-songs,
we take them
on a rickshaw weave
to the Portuguese villages.
Dinner by the Pearl River,
a small cheap hotel.
In the morning
her face is as blank as a worn coin.
Snail trails glitter the sheets.
I am drunk again.
On the fifth day,
icebergs melt in the Outer Harbor,
I wander the back-streets of Macao
until I am robed.
The ferry to Hong Kong
is delayed by fog-laced dreams.
‘Old Spice’ and wet grass carry years
of understanding between us.
What I wear and you gather into you,
become a language neither of us know,
but comprehend in mouse-tracks of deduction.
You read grease and engine oil, as if grease and engine oil
were two parts of a book left out in the wet,
a chemical patois revealed by an inborn knowledge
of petroleum pipes, and the long-distance howls
of Alaskan wolves.
If I break wind, you run to me, body rapt and heeding,
every hair translating a smudged paragraph or two into
volumes of memory.
Rubbernecking my attention with a fixed gaze,
(No, Timmy has not fallen down an abandoned mine shaft),
you are just staring at my next question,
willing to jaw with more whiffs of intimacy.
Tales of muddy boots, the flash-fiction of urine trails,
(hers and her canine buddies, not mine),
the breezy gossip of each rabbit hole.
A jargon of us both
surfacing in her millpond eyes,
idioms cresting now on her black nose,
a cloddish lingo,
but it outruns anything that could be said.
Now...
The pat-down at O’Hare is intrusive.
I don’t look at the probing hands
or the dead bored eyes.
Schools of out of depth aliens,
are funneled through small holes
in an invisible net.
Then...
The Ellis Island cop is also bored.
He speaks ponderously,
as if the boy had no more wit than a fish.
Now...
I carry a man-bag over my shoulder,
it holds my documents.
The customs officer talks to me
in a sign language made audible
through pursed lips.
Then...
Sean looks up from his low-brow cap.
He dares not speak
least his tongue reveal
a patois of Connemara peat.
A crumpled birth certificate
is produced and stamped.
Now...
He studies my papers,
thrusts them back without a glance.
Then...
Sean keeps moving;
waiting to be pulled back,
not knowing
that the future will pull him back anyway.
Now...
Outside the terminus, Americans depart
in checkered cabs for Atlantis,
and other undocumented places.
~~~
His hair is alive,
serpents writhing, a man Medusa of the tropics,
as if he wore the demons
of colonialism and injustice on his head,
unforgetting,
a dung-brown-and-black hologram of
the ganja-fueled reveries inside,
the broken record of fight and redemption in his ears
masked by an ancient face, all taut leather,
placid with a sheen of absorbed light.
Bloodshot eyes, not insomniac,
but from the weight of things that, once seen,
cannot be unseen,
scleras color-coding history,
the blood of dead slaves on white.
Yet the heat-chilled island calls a daily truce.
In the shade of the commodious palm tree,
the bleach of sun cordoned by a shower of shadows,
even the gluttony of Babylon
and the promise of Zion can share a siesta.
Looking out to the silvering sea beyond the beach,
exchanging a patois-scented greeting
with two passing brethren whose hair hang like roots,
he puts fire to a fat, white-jacketed spliff,
herb smoke curling up,
rising,
rising,
a slow exodus up into the dusty fronds above,
hung with the fruits
of a tender mantra as,
ever,
the spirit of Marley
sings.
Concerto D'amor
Whenever I'm with you,
Other things are amnesia.
Every single moment with you,
Suits decades in a catatonia.
If you were Bermuda triangle,
I'd often tread on the blast of shangri-la;
A picnic in the devil's triangle,
Run-of-the-mill than millenniums in ball park.
You're the Bermuda triangle.
I, being a wanderer.
The strong storm of South-America pulling me to you,
And down towards your smile I totter.
If you were an Iceberg,
I'd pull my Titanic towards you,
Rejoicing as you break me apart
Waters drowning the consciousness I'd built.
You're the iceberg;
Sybaritic, pudgy and turbingly symmetrical.
And I lost in the lust of the traverse,
With my patois feels your viscera.
Be whatever you choose:
A stark lasso repressing the rim of the sea?
But by bid can you loose,
Letting your waves gulp my plenary?
My heart through its mouth bleeds yearning,
Of how often for you I did fall.
Christ on a horse! I'm crazy 'bout you, honey!
This is my seven lives concerto d'amor.
19:05:01:16:48
Ancestor. Ancestral Pen. Ancestral piece. Concerto D'amor.
Sub Categories
Looking for the formal definition, structure, and history of this poetry form? Visit the Poetry Dictionary entry below. Then return to explore how PoetrySoup members bring the form to life through their own poems.