What crimes are these
Filling my consciousness with chaos
Speaking unceasingly of darkness and pain
Crimes of the dead uneasy in their graves
Haunting the spheres of the shadow world
Under the chestnut trees
On the hill of the cat cemetery.
I know them from their voices
I know them from their names
But these travellers tell me nothing of their past
Although their rags betray their tales
And the voyages from whence they come
The sea waves are still rocking in their brains
And the salted air is poisoned with their desires.
I feel like a tumbling kite
I don't know where to hid
I have neon colours
to paint five o clock shadow
The Pontiff has paid my full fare
Im voyaging down South
I need to afford my back
for the weary strings of yesteryear
If I travel to the moon,
an extraordinary feat
I will not find you
in the street...
If I voyage to Mars,
I want to meet you there...
If I travel to the sun,
there I will find
the afterglow...
If I go to Pluto,
I will surely find
some brother Brutus...
If I go to Saturn,
I will have your love
daytime turn...
But if I go to Neptune,
I won't find any
King...
If you go to Uranus,
neither gold nor ocean
there I will have ruinous...
But if you go to Jupiter,
I will find Lucifer,,,
Better to stay here on earth,,,
because here the story
closes...
And I will not suffer and
forever your love
Will be...!
They are living daydreams,
dressed in clouds of light
brought into being
from stardust
a lost race
Eternal, childlike
No -one knows the star
Or, from how far they travelled
To pause at the edge
of myth
To fling bright peonies into
gray oceans
to turn hopeless allegory’s
into voyages of promise
A STRAND (1060)
Contest Judged: 1/27/2022 11:35:00 PM
First Place
Voyages
In our voyages
Since infancy
We have ridden
many currents..
To Recognize..at last
All of of these currents
Seem to hide
Who we have been
All along...
Simmering on a distant shore, my minds eye floats upon.
Swirling thought upon swirling thought do my reflections grow.
Infinite realms offer fertile grounds to burrow through.
Mountains of realities the minds eye sees one as real as them all.
Traveling through oceans of ethereal thought, swimming through the
infinite, the possibilities the minds eye can see.
Rays of thought pass thru the the mind as rays of light do too.
Reflections on the infinite my minds eye wanders thru.
Accepting what I see, nearly impossible to do.
Impressions of possibilities that boil up, reaching out.
Infinite possibilities bringing closer, I aim to do.
Back I light on familiar ground having made my recent voyage, till
next I float once again through the clouds of infinitely.
Cannons are filled with gunpowder-
dozens of cannon balls sorround them;
men's muskets are cocked,
and bayonets firmly fixed against their mouths;
the ship furiously sails forward, leaving behind
terrace-shaped ripples on both sides.
Captain Redbeard is not taking any chances
in capturing the treasure map that leads
to the City of Gold.
British men-of-war are a few miles away;
the English Queen is ready for war
in South America.....
Journeys, Translation of Etiemble’s tercets: Voyages by T. Wignesan
For André Gâteau
(End rhyme scheme: aab, ccd, aab, eed in the original, the first and third tercets beginning
with “Pour vous…” and constituting one complex sentence each. One would do well to bear
in mind in this poem that Etiemble was the foremost authority on Arthur Rimbaud’s poetry.)
For you all over I laid out
my oases, all their date palms
in the tiresome desert without wells,
where the salts of nitrous valleys,
for you* only and your hollow hips
squeaked with the leaps of camel calves.
For you only I stretched out
the fine lace of the poplars
over the blue shirt of the nights
and scoured out of this bone
the winding sheet of dead stars
a place to lie as long as mine.
* “tu”: second person “you”.
© T. Wignesan – Paris, 2014
At night I feel a peace inside me
I can almost feel an arm around me
At night I feel safe
At night I see you gazing at me
I can almost hear you whispering softly
At night I feel special
At night I venture with you into the great unknown
I can almost feel you holding my hand
At night I feel alive
At night I dream of us together
I can almost feel your heart beat
At night I feel loved
Like a ghost ship
Sailing without a crew
Sails tattered by relentless winds
A hull torn by the world’s jagged rocks
Cannons standing ready for a long forgotten battle
My life drifts aimlessly
Rising and falling on the waves of turmoil
Always searching for a peaceful shore
Only finding stress, fear and hatred
Looking for that one friendly land
Where calmness replaces stress
There is no need to feel fear
And love chases away the bitterness of hatred
That land may be just beyond the horizon
Hidden by the redness of the setting sun
It is just too bad that the easterly wind
Is blowing in the wrong direction
And that land
That horizon and that setting sun
Is far behind me
As I sail into the darkness of my future
He was born in Genoa,
and his mother was Susanna;
and he set sail at the age of fourteen,
to begin a new exploration age!
His father Domenico
gave him inspiration and courage...
while his three brothers: Giacomo,
Bartolomeo and Giovanni ventured with him
on his long and dangerous voyages,
and accused of many atrocities...
they were sent back to Spain in chains!
A visionary with an extraordinary man's ego,
followed in the footsteps of Marco Polo...
and in his final days, he died a disappointed man!
Shoulders of lead
Toothpicks for lids
Iris in aqua
in sensory grids
Moments of hours
Breathing to spin
Voyage of brainwaves
to spiral me in
Black and white memories
airbrushed in blue
One of the hour
on the day I met you
Sensory sleeping
there by my side
with armloads of toothpicks
and eyes open wide
Waking is stagnant
except when in dreams
where waking is not
quite as bad as it seems
Tops are just bottoms
and bottoms are tops
to taste and to hear
'till the orchestra stops
They will play on
while we swallow the sky
with a laugh as we blink
we've got blue in our eyes
Shoulders of lead
Toothpicks for eyes
to dream stay awake
brings your tears to my eyes...
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