In 2013 Amélie Ségarra danced on a Grand Piano with knives
taped to the tips of her feet.
The room is empty apart from a single man in a music box
He wears a black an white suit buttoned up to the collars with bronze cufflinks,
To get up she uses an old Woven Rope in brown
You can see her nipples as she looks up, Adam's apple following her gaze
along with everything else.
She starts dancing.
From above the waist her arms jut out, grabbing widely at air and trust
But below it's easy
At times it looks harder to be the piano.
Remember how close she got to the edge.
Rapidly tapping the tips of toes, taped into shoes,
Screwed onto knives.
At times the screech was louder than the music.
Engaging her hips she’d lift up her thigh, bent at the knee
The arch of her foot seeming to just hang there.
Before it drops she makes the sound of a boxer.
Something only rooms with loud figures giving orders to lots of people
doing the same thing in repetition can bring out.
The music has stopped, so now all you hear is knee engaging ankle,
Holding up a foot wrapped in pink ruffled straps.
Smalling down an into
a seemingly endless
Grand Piano.
There’s a horse under
the Weeping Cherry.
And the Sky is Crying
too.
I’m sad that I’m happy today.
The new greens are sprouting.
It’s Spring.
The upwelling tears are spouting.
It’s Nothing.
In the shade garden the hellebores -
each a dim-lit, dusty burgundy banker’s lamp -
refuse to face the smalling Sun.
Twin Bleeding Hearts rise
in lone vigor, drizzle-damp.
In the next room, of course,
the Farmhouse Sink
is Dripping.
As it ever will.
As it ever was.
As it ever has.
As it ever shall.
As I ever will.
Doctor Maya Angelou the writer
Maya Angelou the actor
Maya Angelou the poet
The singer that was Maya Angelou
That Black lady
With silk smooth voice
Like silk smiling under the finger’s touch
She is dead
Maya Angelou is dead
How does that sound?
Do not let questions go to your head
For thoughts abound
With things that have no answer for themselves
Against the contest of death we never wins
I have memory on shelves
Of those who died and left me all their sins.
Maya Angelou is dead
Not the singer, or poet, or writer
The doctor is dead
Do I hear laughter
Or the sound of ice in glass
Before they pour bourbon, scotch or gin
And say I am only like grass
Why struggle if you never win?
The caged bird is it set free at last
Will freedom mute its tongue
What happens to the sorrow of the past
And the souls of people hung
Where there was neither cross or reason
Beyond the color of my skin
It is man alone that last a season
Thinking and believing was Maya’s sin.
D. Livingstone Smalling
Go love your rainbow falling from trees
Your spectral forests stripped of leaves
Stark branches fingering the sun's eye
The little deciduous garden waiting to die, and dappled ground appalled
I will praise the days of fainting breeze
The hurricanes swallowed by the fog, my shack at ease
I will praise the days of sea's white gnashing
At the gull swirling above the perilous fish
And the children tumulting in larval greed of freedom
As they come home from school. For dappled days, praise!
Autumn Splendour by David Smalling
dusk comes now
in dress of velvet snow
the last bang splintered fractals of light
and set the universe to dance in day and night
music made the mazed world, and spheres' songs winging flight
surged love muted strains in shells that blares
a melody and snares
singing spheres
David Smalling for "Night Melody" contest, 8/23/2012
Let us, you and I
Begin counting days
Like cents
Before the ice gets too thin
Losing monuments
Of what we were about
Here take my hand
I am a child
Children teach from dreams
God and man reconciled
Let us try to understand
The beginnings of wisdom
True values
Never perish as we grow old
Gaining momentum
Of what we are to become
Here take my hand
I am a child
Children learn from dreams
God and man reconciled
I have numbered my children
Numbered my friends
Numbered my debts unpaid
Numbered the stairs men built to heaven
But only you can teach me
To count my days melting away like ice
That I may drink of wisdom from the sun
When God and man is reconciled
Written by: David Smalling & Vienna Bombardieri
A tree mast broken
Changes pond to pillow fast ...
The frog is asleep
The lilly pad swims
And toad applauds toad in songs
The moon will rise soon
Water turns to dream
Light kisses the heart of leaf -
Tadpole becomes groom
Lilly blooms sunlight
Frog calls mate and hug to leaf -
Day weds dawn and moon
A lilly leafed hope
The frog sang and perched in pond -
Silver falls the rain
by
David Smalling
I would away fly, but why dream
All I would leave I keep to scream
The world is only me
And only I through the world stream
The farthest star is my extreme
Even more I'm lonely
It was so for God, then he spoke
Sundered now in three: no revoke
Adam imaged that pain
Could not utter what did provoke
The inner urge that longings stoke
Yet woke without complain
I too a longing bear in me
Something deep, fast like gravity
My weighted whole desires
Self trapped in its own sweet beauty
Through love to find infinity
When self from want retires
by
David Smalling
for
RUMI IN RIME COUEE
"Do not feel lonely the universe is inside of you"
I figure I could honor you with these fresh
Flowers to form my heart's true delight in praise
I keep desire like butterflies in a mesh
For birthdays such as yours, to litter your days
With happiness. Drink then of gladness good wine
May your birthday magic like diamonds shine
Filling your heart with brightness and with peace
May you live long, and love's kindness never cease
by
David Smalling
Come midnight dark and in her jewel clumped
Set her bright Iskin's blackness to better shine
By being darker than your darkened lump
Where no distinction common eyes can find.
For my pearl is not white, nor grey nor blue
And absorbs all light, nothing passes through
She is the universe of my glad heart
And to me alone her virtues impart
Fountains of milk for fevered tongue to sip
Out of her blackness honeycombs do drip
And when on her sweetness the moonlight spills
The midnight pearl reveals its sudden charm
Light drips from it, a milk mature and warm
In which heaven all its passion distills
Midnight Pearl
by
David Smalling
A flower petal
Bloomed out against sky dancing ...
Humming bird hoovers
Wings and heart posing
On a pinnacle of leaf ...
The eye snapshots love
Leaking through slow leaves
Shadowing the humming wings ...
Hibiscus with wine.
Poised on wing, air still
Honey in the flowers heart ...
The humming bird feeds.
A broken gem spills
From flowers dripping with sunlight ...
The humming bird flies
by
David Smalling
Between an egg and the cross
I pause for a beginning
Quite different from my loss
Clean as a new born leaf
From a sprig of God
I am now the fallen sheaf
And he coming like my spring
Bring dead buds to life
From his blood, the saving King
Deters the looming knife
Hoarding everything I kept
The hardened fruit and thickened cell
Separating me from the vine
The fiery colors bore nothing but promised hell
While silvern waters gurgle at my feet
Aloft in the brimstone air
He lifted to cross the oestrus could not dream
The wrenching agony
Or the precarious teetering
The final exultation of his pain
But I love better Sunday morning
The flower coming from his rest
And the hope of the King's returning
The triumph song of the blest
Easter is a twisted story vanishing the day
Frivolous little bunnies and pagan dreams
Of cash registers piled furnace with brimming hay
Let me disengage, a fallen leaf
I am nothing but beauty in the mulch
And yet some leaf grows like wings
Gathering light
And energy, making the flight
Of hope a better resurrection than spring.
by
David Smalling
Here’s to all my champions, yes you, this is my thing
You are the yam, cocoa, breadfruit, cornmeal dumpling
Pumpkin, dasheen, and potato, in my pot of soup
An excellent, poetic, supportive, pen loving group
You, David Smalling, make my day most bright
With Audrey, you encourage me to put forth a good write
Sweetheart Linda, love her spirit, says such sweet things
Constance, Sara, Wilma, Doris and Carolyn, you give me wings
Carol, Andrea, Thvia, Nette, Joyce, John Freeman, Dr Ram
L’nass, John Loving iii, Poet Destroyer, the best with a slam
Monica, Nikko, Francine, SKAT, HGarvey, Nate, Chris, Sheri, Carrie
Catie, Noel, Rachel, Robert, Matthew, Walayee, sweet like cheery
Susan, Adell, Fabiyas, Sena, Sylvia, Sharon, Ralph, it is true
Barbara, Rick, Diane, Robert Dufresne, it is all because of you
Hai Au Chu, David Byrne, Jayne, Diane, each giving as a friend
Kimberly, Michael, Kevin, not the least because you are at the end
With Thanks always, Joy (Jew)
Before there was a word,
there was a loneliness
within the pin pricked night.
Waves of vibrations, sound,
coalescent’s gestate.
Planets were birthed with souls.
There was only the soul
and a longing for words,
synapses gestating
wavelengths of loneliness,
the aching lack of sound,
and the celestial night.
Man was born to midnight
with eyes and ears for soul
to din’s discordant sound,
no harmony, no words,
aging, aching, alone,
thoughts thus, wordless, gestate.
Circular gestation
for the day became night
and weakened loneliness,
woman kind brought her soul.
Ether resounded with words
for those souls, the God sound.
Strong, sweet, silibant sound
released from gestation
song formed from combined words,
crooning fills the nubile night
joining of mated souls.
The Word freed loneliness.
No longer alone, vibrating within the sound each atom relates to the soul
Gestation continues in the never-ending cycle of night and the Word.
*dedicated to L'nass Shango & David Smalling for their inspiration.
Before the lapwing learned to fly
Before the flower came to die
Or make a presence of death
Out of the fragrance of our breath
Before the drum
And before the thunder rolled
A voice
Behind the curtain of the dark
Like a quickening, sudden spark
A voice
Across the waters scrolled
And now behold
Words with wings of tongue beating
In little cages, singing heartbroken songs
The Word
Becoming man
Dreaming of eternity out of eternity
That seems never coming back again
And I
Breaking global boundaries with my feathers
I crying to leave my chains
Like sepulchre clothing in a cave
I hating the partition of rooms, the segment of brains
Hating the new world order and oppression
Know my cage is not vitual
O let no genie turn my love into a ritual
I hear their wings beating in head
My heart is a sudden sleepless bed
I write the sound of images
My heart returning where I fled
Time and space chaining me to the dead
Things giving birth in my head.
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.