Things beautiful are strange and fitful a lot;
Delicate, changing and entangled in a knot-
Now bright and the next instant rather dull;
Seeming complete just before being all null
The feel of alure and appeal that made it so
Is lost, or drains out just in a moment's go!
Aversion erodes what was so lovely and dear,
While evasion moves the inner straggling fear
To ruffle and void the crude, puzzling delight
Of freeing from the spell and its fanciful flight,
At once by choice and coerced, in potent power.
The drives to glorify, and make it immortal, lower
Escape into the virtual domain may find the glot
For the replica of the real with the missing plot;
Thus to hold on to times ever after,with instress
Using words, colours, chisel or muse to express
And the pleasing charm of the affected percept
Is rendered into a hypnotic,fallacious concept.
Hair, or body, or eyes.
Eyes are straggling behind.
Nothingness.
There exists such thing as beneath.
And around.
As if I could reach anything with these hands.
This sweeping, winking tall grass.
My mind.
Dumping out a howling water bottle.
Sweeping with a broom, broom, broom!
Then it clips and clicks with empty teeth.
My brain closes up a bit.
So I can hear again.
Hair, or body, or eyes.
I have millions of eyes.
Some of them are waking.
Some of them are smoldering.
Some of them are me.
As a bit of hair moves out of my face.
The struggle.
You can see my eyes?
Not anymore.
Pitter patter on rain polished pavements
Tears straggling down window panes
The rattle of ricocheting raindrops on galvanised rooftops
Spiralling eddies in bull's eye puddles
Umbrellas ,shields fending off the sharpness
Of blasts of non-stop water bullets
Insidiously a soft drizzle penetrates
Right through to the skin
Producing shivery limbs
And chattering teeth
Transformed by the sun into glittering diamonds
Which disappear with the welcome arc of the rainbow.
I do mind it but it is getting easier to be in economy when my mind tells me I deserve first class.
The careful management of available resources has somewhat dimmed but with manageable.
My life is a season or a sunny day compared to the Earth and as each cell betrays ,gravity beckons.
I see friends and family and they are departing. And their song goes with them but I listen still.
Listening in the night and crickets salute my aloneness. I see my father, hospital gown as his companion, I hand his waiting mouth a lollipop and a smile.
Mommy snores and speaks her own language and I listen anyway. Kissing her face I know I’ll see her and she mumbles and eyes alert looking at something. Brushing her straggling hair I see the youth and a drink of water goes far for her parched lips.
All is quiet as I wake and the Fourth Watch. God is here and has to tell me importance. I must move constant of the plan. Alert and at the ready for the fugitives of the Watch. I was salvaged from the heap so I must keep a look for those. Willed for the weak and alone I must carry across the line to redemption. Never weary and never falling along the way. Together we will.
Speeding out and back around the sun
The comet came on its periodic run
Straggling tail spread afar
By the wind from the star
Carrying deep at its heart
The vital spark for life to start
Each package held there steady
For despatch to any planet ready
For the precious gift given to few
The chance to nuture life that’s new
One last look but nothing found
Maybe just maybe next time around
The mission continues at its alloted pace
Time and distance both vast in outer space
The comet carried on its periodic run
Speeding out and back around the sun
Staying by the sea, now at sunset
With the light slowly fading into greyness
And the waters lying quiet
A peace fills me as never before
Dismal fears barred entry into the soul
Mind freed of all disquietude.
Through the soft whisper of waves,
A low sweet melody finds its way.
Listening to the gentle sibilance of the sea,
A new insight suddenly dawns on me~
None but we are to blame
For all our angry bickering
With all swirls and whirls underneath,
Is an abstruse calm in the deep.
In this continuum of flux
Is a permanence – abiding and perpetual.
Staying by the sea at sunset
With its still waters glimmering in twilight
And the stray clouds straggling in the sky,
My soul undulates with the slow rhythm of waves
And in me fills a calm submerging all vexations
And breaks a light, luminous and clear
A glimpse of a scintillating radiance – ethereal!
July.22.2022
Submitted for 2022 Poetry Marathon Mile.9.Poetry Contest
Sponsor- Mark Toney
It rained and poured heavily as never before
Washing away hills,downs and the plain;
Sure it was a commited lofty drain
To revive the struggling, straggling live galore;
Lightings thunder like pretentious promoters
Heckled over the ravage and disorder
Off and beyond all stay and border;
Nothing but just Water : muddy ripples and floaters
Strange it is the serene freshness and poise
Follows all such mockery excess and ablution
The essence of being is contained within evolution
While all human play and way fills noise
And only sound and fury to conclude
In hallow vain , absurd and futile a feud.
The fading ancient sun casts long shadows before me,
as I shuffle slowly and sluggishly down asymmetrical lanes.
How age mellows me like ripe watermelon, squeezing me
until all my ambrosial juices run acidulously dry as dust.
Unsatisfied desire, mental torment and general malaise
conquer my better moods of love, devotion and quietude.
Straggling with widespread dishevelment and disillusions
I try in vain to set an orderly pattern to my straying aims,
hoping some guardian angel were to take my shaking hands
to lead me onwards steadily towards some well defined goal.
Mark my furrowed forehead, tap solidly at my potential energy
fill my withering wrinkles with some sense or empirical reasoning,
but at least give me one essential gift, that a grumbler I'll never be.
Short black pants with straggling hair
Holding a glass of beer
Laugh loudly, wrist with grasping
Squiring and dancing nightlong
Acid house echoed all over
White shirt foxed a red lips mark
Push desire until maximum peak
Blind choice makes you die
Death shall bring loves
Life shall also too
I felt compelled to sniff the likes
Around the air, so cool
Eagerly I looked for the tenderness of you
Deep into that darkness kissing
What could there be more purely missing?
To warn me about the liking true
only this and a true friendship spiking
while I pondered, pushier and striking
LOVE
I have dreamed of the fancies
the laud blamelessness appreciating
Waiting, with my waiting
all my soul within me accumulating
Back into my memories desiring
all my soul within me stating
deep into that darkness worshiping
and its eyes have all the entreating
LOVE
Back into my memories straggling
And the loved one never bracing
The storms came misplacing
I felt compelled to sniff the feelings
Deep into that darkness daring
And the rubbing was declaring
The warier welcome whispering
Through which came chatting, chatting, chatting
I remember I was obtaining…
LOVE
7/2/19
Written by James Edward Lee Sr. 2018©
Written for project North Omaha Writer’s Group assignment 2019©
Copyright © James Edward Lee Sr. | Year Posted 2019
a lion pride surround a straggling calf
its pitiful cries are heard -
as a lone bull charges
Date written 22nd March 2019
For writing challenge 4, March 2019 -kimo - poetry contest.
Sponsored by Dear Heart.
How foolish
Humans seem to be
When
The Good Lord has provided them
With
Whatever it takes to become unique
They
Instead are desperately straggling
To
Resemble someone else!
© Demetrios Trifiatis
27 January 2019
Tears of a depressed man
Counting stars in the sky is all I can do
Letting the cold spread all over my body
Shedding tears sometimes is all I can do
Cutting my veins and bleed
And taking a bath in my blood
Dreaming about my old self to be back
Straggling to live another day
Waiting for my long night to end
This is all I can do
Trying to figure out the raison
When I'm awake and when I slept
But I couldn’t do either
I neither know when nor where
Such a quiet monster had came
I could hardly believe it
I'd tried to end my precious life
At the opening of the plantation gate,
in the letting out of the slaves
Freedom came with an empty purse,
as well with a curse goodbye
Labor weary lost strangers
straggling along
the lone, dusty auction road
Back and forth a heated argument goes,
moving onward ...
life is better which way
Chains of dependency drags some back,
fetters of anger thrust others forward
To and fro ... back and forth
is the black eye in the pyramid
American experience tug of war
Ebony disunity is zygotic yoked at freedom’s dawn,
dysfunction is the birthright
of a byword nation
An ill-conceived, ignorant legacy
is the premature incubation
of an uncharitable emancipation
Movement of the branded herd,
(their b and b skin is iron womb stamped in)
aimless and without purpose,
settles on self-predation —
a cancerous gift of conditioned oppression
Present day wanderers in an urban wilderness,
dressed in their funeral sanctified Sunday best
Their traditional day of restless sabbatical rest suggest:
which way ain’t been no better either way
The furry band of thieves crawl in the night,
wielding Zorro masks and sly grins,
soundless in single file,
under fences and through prickly bushes,
the little ones straggling in back,
they come upon their spoils,
ripe and red for the taking,
juices flow down their chins,
a light has flooded the crime,
their last bites taken,
fleeing satisfied
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.