I often trim the excess from my poetry
Then miss the savored layer of extra fat
Having discarded taste for meaning --
Rejecting one of my own principals,
No one knows the truth about anything --
Like spirits of a cave kill with help from
Scentless gas – the mind can do the body
More harm than excess grease and tardy
Hygiene. Not advocating for filth...but have
Fun first.
Turns rusty as a hopeless, charred, lost waiting.
But no withering, camouflaged, stinging feelings.
I have joyless, expressive, harmless recipes.
And nothing else in the works, not even a crunchy taco.
Turns out that things need stuff.
Or brain chemicals.
Neurons, charred, scabbed over.
Turns out there’s no wavering when it comes to spilled stuff.
The hospital churns out lost, rusty, scrunched up people.
Not even a minced onion left in them.
Just brain chemicals.
Wavering butterflies, invisible, and scentless.
Turns out that I need a bed to sleep in.
But someone scattered ashes all over it.
Turns out?
There’s a spell that would undo the minced meat feeling.
Charred, scabbed over again.
Brain chemicals.
And harmless recipes.
"Leaders" are sweeping us toward the drain.
Lined with the halos of fractured hope.
They seed the soil and skies with green dragon eyes.
Not bothering to hide their brackish hearts anymore.
They've filled our havens and cities with black-souled deities.
If anything, COVID-19 taught the elites,
that mankind is easily converted to swine and sheep.
Mankind will readily cloak their smiles, stay inside, deep inside.
Mask up and shut up indefinitely.
They'll shy away from funerals and weddings of loved ones.
Under moderate threat and prodding...call it barbed conditioning.
Our nose rings grow thicker-the future grows grayer and dimmer.
Nothing emerges from the drain say for a rouged echo or three.
A new world order, a most unholy trinity.
God is engulfed in his blue period.
Has grown into a blossom of indifference.
Quite scentless and so very distant.
He primps that dome like it’s his crown,
A shiny orb, the talk of town.
Shaves that bowling ball twice a day,
No rogue hairs dare to stay.
Refined olive oil, scentless, slick—
His scalp’s own secret, glossy trick.
Then Axe spray rains, a scented storm,
Because the ladies find that charm.
Post-shower, towel wraps so neat,
Humidity’s spa for his heat.
Pores open wide, like welcome mats,
While he admires himself in flats.
Mirrors lurk in every nook,
Catching every shiny look.
Not married yet? “I’m picky,” he grins,
Waiting for love to roll right in.
On his dresser, a brush sits proud—
No bristles live, it’s just a shroud.
A hairbrush purely for show,
To tease the girls who don’t quite know.
No follicles, but full of flair,
Hair-care metaphors everywhere.
A follicle-free knight of sheen,
The baldest king you’ve ever seen.
In a world where shadows stretch across asphalt streets,
the modern man searches for his soul among dazzling advertisements,
alienated, stripped of ancestral creativity,
transformed from a creator into a silent consumer,
his smile, a mask on a billboard,
bearing the pride of a scentless existence,
in a world where presence becomes absence,
and essence is lost among useless objects,
our souls are just echoes in empty boxes,
and in every perfect smile hides a silence,
a silent cry for meaning, for a rebirth,
but we are trapped in mazes of shiny packaging,
where time is measured in products and not in moments,
and we, prisoners of a prefabricated dream,
lose ourselves in reflections of a distorted reality,
seeking to find, in this deafening silence,
the answer to the question we've forgotten to ask,
in a universe where authenticity is a luxury,
and truth, just a distant dream we chase,
while we dance on the edge of a collective oblivion.
That only sun, only moon, only star each one quests for
That beacon that burns on eternally in each one's core
Isn't it love—that's kind, warm, gentle, selfless, and endless?
Isn't life without it, like a fine flower that's scentless?
Going beyond mundane attraction and affection heights
It's love that rises from a heart that kindles lacs of lights.
Delight of devotion, desire, and dream for the divine
It shines, like lamps of Deepawali, within each one's shrine.
Through, with, and in its light, each one single-mindedly walks
Each one breaks all blocks that hurdle the trails like boulder rocks.
Doesn't one face the futile amusement of absurd death?
Breath merged with the divine breeze—doesn't one attain rebirth?
Leaves of Lilith, fall like butterflies
as I slither in souls, secluded by time ~
where treacherous tulips still mourn the death of magnolia moon,
hidden within scentless sepals, which couldn't be their evergreen anchor...
Hear the echoes of grieving dawn,
whose tamed scars forgot to unfurl my truths beyond memories ~
scripting me like misplaced intuition, surfing on those whispering waves,
for I've always blossomed upon heartaches, in gardens of metaphors ~
hibernating as the turmeric taste of melting sun...
I'm the untouched ink of sin ~
swirling across silver patience ebbing along the starlit peacock-golds,
where daffodil dryads throb in ancient dyes and I'm caramelised...
above sonnets soaked in skeletal promises,
my reason rests within wisdom, an ageless mirage...
A canvas on beach
Beyond fortune's reach
Where ocean's opulence beseiges
The sand
That remains arid
Beneath my hand
I scribbled falsehoods
In sand of seashore
Washed away the waves
But I re-bore
The facade of sandalwood
With scentless core
I became the artist living in dreams
Suppressing the internal surreal screams
Praising the sun's loveless heat
Scorched scars linger but my fabrication's neat
Dusk broke, I anticipated gentle breeze
But the sun abandons me to freeze
I pushed away the ship meant for rescues
Succumbed to the charade upon demonic cues
A captive now of hollow laughters
The island stands on fragile rafters
Isle's canvas was built to swallow
A soul lost in its own hollow
Drowning in deep bruised darkness
I search for heartbeats lost within,
Vapors that veiled the vermilion of sunsets,
Orchestrating a funeral for moon-kissed vows, now deceased.
Riddled with regrets and unspoken apologies,
Creating confusion across the constellation, whilst I ponder, was-
Every rose in our garden a scentless lie?
In rhythmic pouring
and accumulation
of polished tears
cold against the cheek
Moments of uncertain time
as ash and dust
A buttery sun burned hope
- light gradually disappeared
lost its precious lustre
Broke the harmonious bond
of the power of love
scentless greenhouse orchids
we are all chameleons
- can't ignore
O lord, deep sorrows weigh on my heart,
You created me,
Where shall I go?
Without you, To whom would I share my sorrows,
I am a white flower in the garden of Autumn: scentless, colorless, and etiolated.
I too wish to bloom in the garden of verdure.
O lord; embrace and bear hug me,
I am broken, a wanderer, and aimless.
My life is abandoned, everyone. Everyone came.
They bruised, battered, and blighted me, went and left me solo in the garden of Autumn.
My sepals and blanched petals whimper there,
O lord; If you won't rescue me,
I think the white flower may die in the garden in Autumn.
I know I am a colossal sinner and sins have dimmed away my beauty and charm,
I don't want to die being a sinner.
If I died, I would die like a waste then,
If so, how can I stand in front of you? I can't endure it and would feel ashamed.
O lord; look at my garden of Autumn and transform it into the garden of spring.
Let me perform the elegant deeds,
and then I wished to die
A clever sphere through midnight's shadow rolls,
its course through clouds, like ships through hidden shoals
and drifting hearts out searching for their souls.
A game of hide-and-seek - through forest members peek.
A wishful lost mystique - to kiss a lover's cheek.
Like promises, you glow then disappear,
then gone, until you glisten in a tear -
too late to dry a page where ink-stains smear.
So, even through the day - in sunlit visage stay,
the brightness can't allay - a scentless heart's bouquet.
Your crescent grin is burned upon my soul,
yet, I cannot pretend to be unique;
to find clandestine countenance appear,
and capture daydream's wishes where they play.
I exist bound by you
like wildflowers planted pitilessly in dry soil
that plunder and devour the strength of my seeds
My stem grows pallid
My petals scentless and uninspiring
My roots withering in arid dust
strangled by weeds of apathy
Parched in the blight of callous care
Squandered in winds of insentient lies
That snare fire like fugitive arsons
Burning me with insensitivity to shrivel and sicken
As you beget your vanity with the strength
Of the Sun’s scalding degrees
So scarce the waters of your compassion
that scarcely feed my soul
I stand naked, bare and weak
in the barren home inside your pain
I cling harder to grip
As I wither in the dust of lonely casualty
Strangled and forfeited
I slowly die clenched in your fist of willful despair
trembling from your demise
As my unseeing love yields the compromise
May 24, 2023
Brian Strand Premier No. 1219 Poetry Contest
Every Spring they march relentless
ugly as sin and almost scentless
My well-groomed lawn devastated
annual ambitions again frustrated
'Cos' 'Wendell's Weed Killer' didn't work
though highly touted by expert jerks
At $65 a bag, the stuff wasn't cheap
with joy I sowed, in tears I reaped
But not to worry, I'll pick a bouquet of 'Dandy Lions'
for my wife next Sunday ~ 'With Love from Brian'
Mountain laurel perfume wafted in the soft breeze.
Myriads of flittering birds sang in the trees.
At peace on our cabin porch with feet on the rail
Until a trumpet blast called me to hit the trail.
When at last would come my soldier’s release
To return to our laurels, birds, and peace?
With the martial trumpet silent once more,
All survivors returned to their home shore.
Would I limp stiff legged down the last mile,
To laurels, and birds, and your peaceful smile?
Alas, but a dream that came not to pass.
My future lay beneath the clover grass.
Wrapped in red, white, and blue came my release,
To scentless laurels, silent birds and wailing peace.
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