You sound like a fingernail
dragged over a blackboard.
Every word cast as blackmail
from a forked tongue in cheek.
Bathed in the vile, bile of diatribe,
masticated to be flung as dung expelled.
Your snarled words reek with
the dissonant cadence of discordance.
As your eyes flicker
from side to side with lies,
you look away, unable
to face me, eye to eye,
unmasked,
unshielded,
nakedly exposed,
in tune tonality,
truthful.
Categories:
unshielded, break up, heartbreak, music,
Form: Free verse
The first Sunday I knew emptiness,
The day midnight opened its door,
With me, this hollow has stayed,
A symphony that has intermittently played.
Unshielded I was for this,
Halted it had me in my footsteps,
I walk like a wounded hare,
At me, grief has chosen to stare.
You eased into the night,
I lost hope’s light,
My soul is despondent,
I'm a tree with feeble boughs.
Sunset memories cloud my chamber,
They stealthy creep into my slumber,
You said twilight has a voice,
This I hear in turbulent rhythms.
June 16, 2023.
Categories:
unshielded, grief,
Form: Rhyme
Soft skies of blue and ivory
Circling the planet of light and ebony
Colored eyes enthralled by the cold of the night
Waving lightning mantled by fright
Winds embracing acquiescent bodies so bleak
Unshielded pillars of the strong, not weak
Grounds bracing the faithful with might
Bounds of serenity awaits so light
From His numen all wonders come in piece
Bodies and souls live and die with peace!
Categories:
unshielded, faith, life, light, seasons,
Form: Imagism
Aficionados here and there,
People craft, lead and build.
Those traders are teasers of the wind,
Sail and sail, draft and rate,
Be your own rafter till you lead the machines.
Magician of genius,
Roundtables of roundabouts,
Wheel and chain wheel every unshielded process,
Superhuman intellectuals fragmenting puzzles of equations,
Build this new cybernetics!
Nemesis are the rivals of each creationists.
Mechanics are our homepage.
Categories:
unshielded, allusion, art, imagination, magic,
Form: Free verse
Unshielded
when the night curtains fall.
In the dark room
and alone,
when I finally give in
in exhaustion.
Still in fear
that they'd beat me to death.
But I always wake up
the following day;
with my plagued eyes in the mirror,
and out to fight another day.
to come back
to the lonely dark room,
when the night curtains fall.
Categories:
unshielded, anxiety,
Form: Free verse
Autumn Leaves
A children’s chorus opens with “Get Your Kicks
On Route 66” bringing some to smile or lip lyrics.
Others, who are closer to the intersection,
Are long since past the range of reception.
A woman is shuffling among us, shoeless,
Muttering. Any twitch is invitation to press
Further her ever more desperate pry:
“Have you ever been to Lamoni?”
How like a box of keepsakes whose key
Has gone missing is a lifetime of memory
Without recall; to live in the moment solely,
If not for an inner solace, would bear lonely.
Stares introvert now to the folds of inner space,
The mind’s eye probing for the soul’s place,
As the remembered world slips from reach
And the ebbing tide completes its breach.
The psyche again complete in its simplicity
Is unshielded from a voice of ethereal authority,
Beckoning, as from a cave beneath a waterfall,
“Come, there is life beyond this veil and pall.”
Copyright Paul Thomson 2018
Categories:
unshielded, goodbye, memory,
Form: Dramatic Verse
Yesterday ...
a lifetime of romantic dreams unfulfilled
Love to me
was only silver screen cinematically real
My heart held no one close,
the arms of acquaintances framed an empty repose
Pictures of loneliness adorned my vacant house of hope
Yesterday ...
an endless overcast sky of gloomy gray
Love so elusive,
like a parade of butterflies fluttering by
The flower of my heart was open,
but love never a-lighted upon it
Today ...
somehow was different someway
Love smiled at me,
when a maiden so fair crossed my path
Holding no umbrella,
unshielded from the down pouring rain
I covered her with my canopy,
and therewith a virgin conversation began
Today ...
a spark of desire kindled in my heart
Love reached out to me,
and I felt the touch of another soul
more lonelier than perhaps even I
But the sparkle of hope for love
always danced exuberantly in her eyes
Teaching me that she
forever rested in the next day
Categories:
unshielded, hope, love, relationship, romance,
Form: Free verse
Make me the food of the future,
An Egburegbu soup with teeth and mouth;
So that I can unveil the butterfly's teeth,
The palm of the sea can have a taste also,
That Egburegbu like the tears of the hungry sky.
Give me the food let my head rotate
Like the rotation of the earth on its Orbit;
Whose unshielded body light up the world,
The Egburegbu soup could water my tomorrow
In appraisal to my home country, Nkporo.
Make me the Egburegbu with mouth and teeth,
So that my stomach can be happy
Visiting the home of unsatisfied men;
Whose stomachs crave for more Eba to dance with.
"More Egburegbu soup, more Eba, more tomorrow,
More of pretty body that can radiate the world and purge away its sins of lack and backbitting"
All scream with their pantless mouth.
Categories:
unshielded, africa, art,
Form: Free verse
Father once told me
darkness is absence of light;
spaces void of sight.
Fall is marching near,
stealing the identity
of the oak and pine.
The leaves surrender,
responding to gravity;
strewn like scattered chords -
Individually,
specks of changing emotion
watching from below.
The tremulous night,
suspended in a moon beam;
unshielded, alone.
Hues of green dispel,
replaced with burning orange
and delicate brown.
Aromatically,
summer invokes departure,
fixed in memory.
Categories:
unshielded, absence, autumn,
Form: Haiku
(20-01-2011)
He stands there
There's neither a way to hell
Nor stairs to heaven
His fate,
Has been proven
He sees her, crying on him
He can tell through the glimmering glim
Himself, lying unshielded
He has been killed
Categories:
unshielded,
Form: Rhyme
In this prison I now reside
Ready to put my fears aside
Shielded from all hurt and rejection
I hide inside my walls of protection
Inside this mass is a is my fearful soul
release me from its gripping hold
The anxiety is numbing, the pain is real
To step outside my circle of fear
This new path I follow will be for me
A new beginning I will see
To conquer this challenge day by day
I grow stronger every step of the way
To face the world unshielded at last
Gives me the strength to bury the past
Categories:
unshielded, hope, inspirational, me,
Form: Couplet
A feeble old woman lives down the hall,
we chat on occasion.
I indulge her constant kvetching of youthful occupants invasion,
since this erstwhile hotel's trendy loft conversion.
Crook'd finger and conspiratory whisper
lure me to door ajar.
She tells of the latest spat between two male lovers living next door;
bitter pursed lips mouth, gays, a lifestyle she abhors.
Clad in wool coat, in August, faded scarf
hiding brittle grey hair,
gnarly fingers clutch at worn collar, scent of mothballs hangs in thick air;
up-turned nose revering fragrant yesteryears.
Deaf, my gaze is drawn within the open loft
where a grand piano,
sits, awash, in vast rays of sun spilling in from unshielded windows;
age-yellowed keys playing notes she no longer knows.
Miss Catherine, are you divorcee or spinster,
or a mournful widow?
Did melodies seep from beneath steel door and waft through open windows,
while in lovers arms, you danced in moonlit shadows?
Torches passed, some girl down the hall, fancies me
'an old maid with her cats',
eye to peephole, ear to door listening to youth go quickly past;
curious if in my day, rakishly I danced.
Categories:
unshielded, people, time, old, old,
Form: Rhyme
Shining sun searing, sizzling, my scorched skin.
Summer summons suddenly, stories set sometime ago
Stories shaped so astonishingly, some say shadowy specter
Silently satisfied I sit, savoring seasoned story-tellers
Steadily speaking so sweet.
Soliciting salacious, sarcastic stories
Some stories sassily satirical.
Searing sun, scorching, smoldering our unshielded skin
Summer sings syrupy songs, songs so sweet soundingly
Symphonic
Smooth, symbolic, and surreal.
Summer sun setting silently
Setting silently summer stars...
Categories:
unshielded, imagination, nature, seasons, sun,
Form: I do not know?