Unrecorded Poems

Unrecorded

She flew out of a lark's mouth,
she was high in a cloudless sky.

I had a telescope in my mind
and an old VHS video recorder
for my left eye,
my right eye
had already been blinded
by self-winding hummingbirds.

Her apparel was transparent,
her hair was transparent,
her elfin ears were feathered
and those feathers were transparent.

I thought this is going to be hard to capture,
the telescope has had a foggy lens for ages,
and nobody has a VHS recorder anymore.

The skylark started to cough,
falling far on broken wings.

Meanwhile,
the transcendental and translucent
swiftly descended,
as smoothly
a hard-working Mary Madeliene
on a Dollar Store smoke break.

I was slipping forward through a moment
that was entirely transparent.

She dived into my mouth so damn quickly.
Hidden behind my trembling epiglottis,
she began to sing of our love,
a song that got louder and louder
until it was almost (actually) unbearable.

Even so, my outdated recording equipment
had grown far too transparent
to show anyone or provide any tangible evidence
of her invisible existence.
Nevertheless,
I continue to birdwatch on the moon.

Tidal Excire

Words captured in amber for all eternity—valued for their unique resilience as the tides of time cannot erode them. Our deeds like skipping stones on water sink in although they go unrecorded; the ripples soon fading from memory, becoming a distorted reflection in a cracked mirror.

tides gather the echoes to be expelled in a sigh
   a melancholy
      taint the turbulent waters
washing up on the shores of life

     the waves 
reaching the sandcastles of desire
     an undercurrent
                       dragging the dreams out to sea

an occasional regret
    never on display
fading with time
     r.i.p.p.l.e.d  dreams
             like   R I L L S   on   the   breach …

extending a hand in friendship
being the rock in someone’s life
           leaves one with a sense of 
           PURPOSE
                           as tidal excire exhales …

Her First President

Bondage was good for us.

"Master-me,
you are me taking me.” She was right,
I would lose myself in her.

She’s related to George Washington,
an unrecorded blood tie.

Her flesh is a sensual braille for shaping hands,
her unresisting art a deft choreography
of her once mute history.
We are deep sea divers
pushing against an erotic gravity.

Somewhere in another story,
an aged Washington
shoves his shriveled member
into another young black woman.
Should we honor both?
Dark is the page unturned.

Symbolically, in our own way,
we both took pleasure
in burning down
the Presidents fine white mansion
            many-many times.

Rural Ghosts

The chirr of parched insect wings –
bible dust preaching
from long abandoned boots.

Baked into the sky
homesteads linger on the burnt stumps
of exhausted summers.

Dander creaks on dry porches,
wardrobes and rooms open 
in a denim haze.

Homesteaders planted a light here
then at days end
dug it up
in earthen mouthfuls.
Aprons were filled, table-tops charged.

Out of the back of a model T
a dapper man sells brushes,
he speaks of things unfarmed
the Brylcreem shine of city sights
until she is swept away.

Such moments go unrecorded
unless by chance you find
a strand of long hair
whipping astray on a skewed field gate.

~~~~

edit

Unrecorded

He is watching an in-flight movie,
staring at it in steerage
as he fades away.

The boarding procedures were too slow,
there were delays.
Tightly stringed tensions
arose between ears and nose.
Cardiac murmurs grew raucous.

He is a pilot, but not on this aircraft.
He’s flying a Piper Cub over Sri Lanka;
much younger of course,
alive not fading -
a dead girl is laughing once again.

He wishes that he had
found someone to film that flight, 
it was never a movie
and he needs a different picture to watch,

especially now that he is slowly floating 
alone like an air balloon
over a disappearing landscape.

Lost Valley

There has to be a sudden sunlight
breaking the mist and clouds.
A shaft of dazzling brightness
that lifts the murk completely
off the landscape.

Conditions must be just so,
then there it is
you are looking down
from the high moors into a lost valley.
A place unrecorded on any map
yet many claim to have glimpsed it.

A sweet verdant expanses of rolling hills
through which a rivulet sparkles as it flows
over chalk white stones.
Yellow-green is the pasture
and gold the tips of the corn grass
but this is only a transitory vision we see,
a momentary mirage,
then the clouds mash together,
mist covers the view once more.

We are left with just these tall tales
that we swap with other walkers
in the village pub below.

Mystery Tour

The guide with his cheesy hat, and colorful umbrella
encourages us to: gather 'round.

His anecdotal spiel is by rote,
his shtick fact-slim and slick,
but it’s also my current gestalt
as I am dragged unwillingly
along by his ‘cliff-notes’ speech.

One ruined effigy catches my eye
Its a fair facsimile of myself.
He (a god/king of some minor something),
looks mildly disgusted,
as if a bothersome fly had landed on his crumbling nose.
My bored skeptical face
reflects perfectly that sour mien of his.

At last I am processed meekly back onto the tour bus,
where predictably,
my fellow passengers are already peering forward
into a new fancifully imagined future and past
an unrecorded ersatz history
and ad libitum supposition,
which is hard to take.
for I and that crumbling king
are not anyone’s theory.

The Tasty Bits

Initially, I was convinced
that she barked madly at the moon,
enraged to find that tasty bit
of cheese was out of reach again,
diurnal pantomime played out,
quixotic tiltings of the mind,
quotidian, unfiltered thoughts
best left to unrecorded dreams.

But unbeknownst to me, there lay
hidden within those stranger lines,
contagion or a viral code,
a stowaway that slipped through the
defenses of my mind and made
its home within my furrowed brow.

What wondrous, vile, infecting muse
is this that I now too am drawn
to cycles cursed, responding with
a seeming lack of will, as does
regard this free and rambling form?

I do not know, and caring less,
I seek the tasty bits with great
delight, to savor, contemplate
until again, I can draw near.

Unrecorded Extinction - Cop26 Ii

She’s not as dramatic as a hurricane or forest fire
Just someone’s old mother
Arranging her daily dignity
In an unrefrigerated apartment

She’s got a cushion chair
An oxygen tank
A bed
Her toilet
Weather Channel on the TV

She’s survived past her friends
The world’s last Sparrow chipping at a bird feeder
Night muffled of its insect thrumming
Mountain creeks hollow of Salmon speckle

She’s like them
A white flag draped over her rocking chair

108 degrees yesterday
112 today
Tomorrow?

Ceiling fan useless against the boil on her stove
Whistling to the empty room

She’s gone to sleep
Steaming
Lid rattling

We will all sleep eternal sleep very soon

Her only son breaks down the door at high noon
Cries alone
At her feet

Swallows the embers of her toes

Crumbles to dust
Himself
In the whirling arms of the unrecorded extinction.

Antediluvian

On site of this forgotten Babylon
What powerful but unrecorded race
Once dwelt in this annihilated place
What strange creature’s kin
to inhuman race
Dwell deep in antediluvian hells 
Uncanny things creep 
and scurry in forgotten realms
where Poseidon reigns in dark 
crumbling cathedrals built 
to worship cryptic gods from
outer voids darkest empires 
What hell is this of undiscovered divinities 
Babylon burns as nations 
of man conspiring to touch 
the face of an imperfect god 
sink to depths deeper undefined 
What afterbirth of leviathan
hide in secret chambers 
plot damnation to human minds 
insanities spawn monstrosities 
that doom mens soul and break their realities 
In sight of this forgotten Babylon
Along a desolate Mesopotamian shore
What powerful unrecorded species 
dwell with in this annihilated place
Where strange creatures akin
to the human race
Dwell deep in antediluvian hells

Ode to Lovecraftian lore…

Missing Time

Focused, concentrating 
 on some random 
   but persistent thought
 riveted in ruminations 
   fixed on point and purpose,
 ponderings deep and dark 
   in retrospective scrutiny;

Aged, antiquated, 
  moments and years,
 decades and suddenly a century
   passe, slipped into senescence 
 names, history
  lost in time.

Startling, staring, fading away, 
 hazing in dull images 
   out of time and out to space,
 evanescence, dispersed, 
   vaporized, evaporated,
 lost in the moment, 
   dematerialized from reality.

Time intervals, stretching, elongating
 millennia unrecorded
  scratching  at eternity,
 forever modes, ended
  life spans, lifetimes, legacies
 names, history, forgotten
  in missing time.

Undeveloped

He assumed they were just not used
to the intricate mechanisms of a Browning Box camera.
Images of his young life never taken.
An undeveloped child, an unrecorded life.

At aged seven an awkward boy was caught
on an obligatory school photo.
A sole token; evidence of a former existence.

Later friends shared images of their youth,
while parents beamed over shoulders.
Piles of recorded years as thick as decks of cards
were brought out and examined.

He gulped at the spontaneity of the fingers,
that clicked off every smile and giddy event.

After they died, death revealed
several spools of undeveloped films.
He knew that any faded moments
contained within them
would never be his moments.

He had long chose not to be invisible,
or a victim to any closed
or shuttering window.

Counting Hawks

Counting perching hawks
trying to watch what they watch
while a speeding car 
beneath tense feet
races to overtake whatever blocks
each sideways glance.

Fifty percent of all bird songs go unrecorded.
Multiplexed avian modulations leave us
questioning our own questions.

Pylons loop their feelers,
thread fragments of electric birdcalls 
into sun-slashed glass.

Eyes wide 
trying to stay alert to the dangers
a highway offers as it dares all to slip
and slide 
into a higher gear of insanity.

Taking in all possible flickering’s,
peripheral snap shots ticking off images
as they disappear into the gone.

Hawks don’t sing or warble,
their voice is hidden between
screeches 
of triumph and fear.

Maybe there is a soft voice
for hawk chicks, and their mates
ritornelli sub-sonically cooed through
a razor tongue,
songs never heard 
above the roar of our own ears.

The flashes of sound and sight
are blocked by tall trucks
the idling utterances of
stalled traffic
as we wait for the call of the wild
to filter through 
a sparking matrix of thought,

but the wild does not call 
it only looks at us.

The Future Claimed

Moments of clarity stop the clock,
but time rolls on and on

Unrecorded, to stay embedded 
in each wish unfulfilled

Tranquilizing the fleeting doubt 
that truancy sets free

Returning with the future claimed 
—to liberate the past

(Villanova Pennsylvania: July, 2020)

Rural Ghosts

The chirr of parched insect wings –
bible dust preaching
from long abandoned boots.

Baked into the sky,
homesteads linger on the burnt stumps
of exhausted summers.

Dander creaks on dry porches.
Fallow rooms open wardrobes
in a denim haze.

Homesteaders planted a light here,
then at days end,
dug it up
in earthen mouthfuls.
Aprons were filled,
table-tops charged.

Out of the back of a model T
a dapper man sells brushes,
he speaks of things unfarmed,
the Brylcream shine of city sights
until she is swept away.

Such moments go unrecorded
unless by chance you find
a strand of long hair
whipping astray
on a skewed field gate.

• Short Unrecorded Poems
• Famous Unrecorded Poems
• Best Unrecorded Poems
• Read Unrecorded Poems
• Long Unrecorded Poems
• Unrecorded Quotes