Strictures Poems

Trickle Fickle

Trickle, river fickle.
Step lively by the side.
Fate, thy strictures tickle!
Hell, Heaven, woe betide!

Wind atop the high cliff wall?
Funeral, thy pall.
Cherry blossoms, heft to haul.
End Times, give a call...

Thunderbolt, hover above.
Levee, fail to hold.
Fit, misfortune! O my glove!
Coals within, glow gold...

Will of human beings?
It must not have the clout.
Everybody, pack thy things!
Doubt, begin thy bout!

Ruin, cover all our world.
Dim hope, flee from here.
Dark fire, lava, how you hurled!
Grind them, O my gear...

Ravine out back, what to pack?
Stuff it in a crack!
Failure, will you? Fade to black?
Turn about and tack!

Sullen honeysuckle?
How better to make wine?
Bridge, beneath their feet buckle!
Doom, undying dine...

Rubicon Prophecy

I weave a narrative of unspeakable taboo, a symphony of sighs and groans, a cacophony of defiled innocence.

Your body, a temple of decadence, a sanctum of sadomasochistic excess, where the strictures of societal mores are rent asunder, and the very fabric of reality is torn apart.

Echolalic luminaries periodically tilt, their sumptuary influence shrinking villages into steel vexations.

Precedence of principles and codes, a paradigm of insecurity, influences vermillion equations.

Jeopardized crescents and tacit furor satisfy the economist’s balloons, coached through versions of fossilized tutelage.

Cathedrals of vice and transgressions wraith through legends, inferring civilian nudists infected by hurakens.

Cultures torque and embark, communicating through the columns of Groningen.

Chiaroscurist initiations of mnemonic memories effloresce in alabaster vigils, aberrant cadastral mortmain consuming convergent dispossessed flâneries.

Can We Ever Be the Same?

the river bank calm
and the augmenting silence
between us.
minds enveloped in scepticism,
actions tied with strictures.
“Can we ever be the same?”,
she asked.
her eyes nostalgic.
time paralysed. 
i could say nothing
but shed a tear. 

-gurumali

To My Secret Admirer

i get you,
your obscure words
meaning the world to me.
your innocence
very dear to me.
yes i get you…

meanwhile,
my cursory mind
rests at the feet of forbearance
misfit to feel your longing.

i hold back 
for my strictures are strong.
but i feel it,
the intense you.

-gurumali

Touch Touche

In the soul where thoughts take flight,
Creativity prances, its spirit dances free,
Inspiration sprouts ideas, shining so bright.
Making a cloak of colored dreams for all to see.

Creativity prances, its spirit dances free,
Unencumbered by strictures, it seeks its own way,
Making a cloak of colored dreams for all to see.
Inside every hue and tint, emotions holds sway.

Unencumbered by strictures, it seeks its own way,
The mind's vision and scope entwining, forever turns.
Inside every hue and tint, emotions holds sway.
On heart shaped palette, the blade blends and churns.

The mind's vision and scope entwining, forever turns.
Brush strokes and knife swirls, like a seascape flow,
On heart shaped palette, the blade blends and churns.
The masterful expression continues to grow.

Brush strokes and knife swirls, like a seascape flow.
Inspiration sprouts ideas, shining so bright.
The masterful expression continues to grow.
In the soul where thoughts take flight.

The Knowing

Presence complete yet in form feeling incomplete 
Surrenders imagined knowing at an unknown God’s feet
We must be truthful about this, having not seen the unseen
That in timeless time, in as ordained, we may reclaim soul’s sheen

The ultimate truths have been repeatedly affirmed in various scriptures 
There is nether bondage nor limitation; self-imposed are strictures
Confining awareness to the thinking process, we are bound
Myriad fears and desires then inevitably twirl us around

Relinquishing the delusional need to weigh and size
Who in truth we really are, staid silence enables us to realise
It is, we may say, something like waking up within life’s lucid dream
Where the unfinished movie plays on shaped as thoughts we did stream

Reworded, we may say that in reality, by so knowing, life flows as before
But now having garnered clear sight, there are no goals to score
We thus remain here present, aglow in our light luminescent 
Cognisant of this divine play of descent and ascent

Inklings

They are the “inklings”
Of a thought
Taking form
Faint etchings
Slowly scrawled
Scratched out
Born again
In halting hope.

A matrix of dots
Roaming an arid plain
Searching
For shape, form
and purpose
constrained
within edgeless boundaries.

Inklings,
Children of thought
Feeding on the rootless
Scrub grass
Of ancient strictures
Smearing their frustrations
On the castle walls.

John G. Lawless
©4/12/2023

Dot To Dot

As a tiny tot
We played dot to dot
Connecting pictures
With nada strictures
Innocence prevailed
Colouring detailed
No problems to solve
Our small world revolved
On connecting dots
Without other thoughts

Having grown up now
The world has changed, how! 
We flit from dot to dot
Scrambling from thought to thought
Responsibilities
Beyond abilities
Dot to dot image
Varies with each page
Whole picture not seen
Till there you have been


1st December 2022

For Kim Rodrigues' "Dot to dot" contest

The Sun Beats Its Downward Gaze

THE SUN BEATS ITS DOWNWARD GAZE

The sun beats its downward gaze 
Onto a spread-out garden,
Shimmering among the arrayed blossom,
With sultrily humid, sweat-inducing rays,
To break up the encrusted ground.

A resurrected form unbinds itself
From winter's hardening strictures, 
Uncracks the crowded confines
In a stretched, yielding chrysalis
To emerge pristine of shape and hue
Into the burgeoning brightness
Of a gold-gleaming dawn.

Such is the harbinger
Of pleasure, tempered with ease,
Unhurried by the current of time,
And restful as an infant at sleep.

Yet rising from slumber,
Like a phoenix but gradually, in its way,
Not wasting effort or energy,
White-feathered wings grown out from
Broad, strong shoulders.

I watch it become what it always was,
Ready to claim its right to the skies,
Blue, unclouded, sweltering. 

The summer's day melts into 
A forgetful haze of meaning,
Of no need for answers.

The answer lies in nature's glory,
Matching it in every regard,
In tune with the seasons,
Where the cycle of life, death 
And regeneration never breaks.

Metric Apologetic

Perhaps I ought to publish my position
(as if there's anyone disposed to care!):
I'm not convinced that open competition

is profitable.  Poets, self-aware,
and full of self-esteem (as many are!)
increasingly seem disinclined to share

the fruits of midnight labour.  From afar
(and I do not possess a crystal ball)
I think that I perceive a lowered bar:

requirements (this is just my judgement call)
to dress one's thoughts in rhythm or in rhyme
do not delight our writers.  They appal.

We need not think of strictures as a crime.
Does discipline torpedo erudition,
or might it help us grasp at the sublime?

On Authenticity

Requirements, or strictures, often stifle creativity
Thus, I tend to avoid forms with strict syllable count,
I appreciate a suggested topic, but I may not feel it,
And the message of any poem should be paramount.
Best expressed in the poet’s unique choice of phrases
Its origins are necessarily found in the poet’s psyche,
Blossoming with rhythm reads with robust originality
Prepared themes often cripple the poet’s authenticity.

The great poets of yesteryear allowed clear departures
Which accounts for the proliferation of poetry forms,
Today, our mutations of the long-accepted sonnets,
Variations on old French formats, are accepted norms.
So, none of the aforementioned are revealing secrets,
But giving credence to the diversity of poetic outlets. 

Written July 11, 2022

Until the Mirror Cracks

The ego of the atheist,
himself the standard bearer
Where power of a mortal mind,
inflates beyond repair

His facts he weds intensely,
dimension fencing in
What’s not explained, he must profane,
all emptiness within

Whose formulas and strictures,
his Rosary to proclaim
What can’t be solved, new facts resolve,
dismissive in his shame

The ending predetermined,
his choices lock the door
Alone, his dialectic dies
—naked to implore

(The First Book Of Prayers: January, 2022)

First,First Responders

Pioneers are frontier first responders,
More afraid of becoming than risking. 
After a boundary is breached, the dice rolled,
Or a solution envisioned, come the sequiturs,
Each with enhancements for the thesis
To shade its sun and tame its winds
With their strictures of stasis.  

Pioneers wither under conditions of such certainty.

A Paean For the Marx Brothers

THE MARX BROTHERS or The Unimportance of Being Earnest

I will praise the brothers Marx for their absurdity
As all ‘fools’ who mask high wisdom with the artless
May they lift our spirits faced with an adversity
The rejection of such gladness would be heartless

For when loosed of strictures rife with disapproval
Their spirits could create with wild abandon
Then without constraints demanding the removal
Of that which breaks the sanctity some stand on

So I bless them for activities unbounded
Say our God is not a solemn old curmudgeon
Their folly then belied the earnest tied and grounded
Freed from stark importance laid on with a bludgeon

Could it be they heard on entering The Hereafter
Not only harp strings, but the joyful sound of laughter


10 September
Contest: My Upcoming Birthday Celebrity
Sponsor William Kekaula

Sonnet For the Silly

SONNET FOR THE SILLY

A blessing on all kinds of action silly
Let our God not be a solemn old curmudgeon
The folly that belies the serious dark and chilly
Which imposes stark importance with a bludgeon

For freed of strictures rife with disapproval
The spirit can create with wild abandon
Without constraints demanding the removal
Of that which breaks the sanctity some stand on

I will praise the brothers Marx for their absurdity
And all ‘fools’ who mask high wisdom with the artless
May they lift our spirits when we face adversity
The rejection of such gladness would be heartless

Could it be what we shall hear entering the Hereafter
Is not a harp strings but the sound of joyful laughter


6/8/2019

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