The Ziggurat
So.
I am completed now,
and what have you learned
that you did not already know?
Closer to the gods, I suppose,
who seem somewhat indifferent
if you ask me.
You are the ones making all the noise.
I have no complaint.
You treat me well.
You lavished millions of man-hours
to forge and lay my bricks.
You commissioned the finest work of artisans
to inscribe my walls.
I am admired,
worshiped perhaps, by many
(not all, I notice - I will keep their secret).
I do stand tall and imposing,
and the view is quite nice.
The birds, in particular, seem to be appreciative,
catching soft thermals from my sloped sides.
They glide without effort at the pinnacle;
some even daring to land.
And that’s about it for me.
What did YOU have in mind?
Categories:
ziggurat, allusion,
Form: Free verse
Amazingly, Alice assaulted an antelope
Because Bobby’s beavers became bold,
Considering cantilevered canines
Deliberately devastating donor’s doled.
Evelyn entirely excited electric eels
Failing forlornly from forward fencing,
Gaining ground gathering genuine gold
Her happiness heralded high financing.
I indicated initially incapable innocents
Justifying joyous juxtaposition jousting
Keeping kind Kenneth’s kindreds knit
Losing language like legally lost lusting.
Maybe minding manners means more
Neither newness nor novel necessary,
Occasionally opening old occlusions
Promises perfectly positioned pituitary.
Quite questionable quicky quirks
Rage rampantly removing regulations,
Summarily startling some supervisors
Touching their tempermental trepidations.
Until unusual undertakings understood
Veritable vigilantes visited volunteers,
Wildly waiting where we wandered
X-citedly X-iting X-istential X-ospheres
Yonder youthful yaks yielded...yikes!
Zebras zigzagged zestfully ziggurat-likes.
Categories:
ziggurat, fantasy, fun, word play,
Form: Abecedarian
The queen of winter comes.
An expressionless assassin
who feels no passion, she comes
as silently as the shadow of a cloud.
She may come crowned by aurora borealis,
or in ziggurat-like steps of paralysis,
but the song she sings freezes earthly things
and her chilly breath brings a sleepy death.
The queen of winter comes.
A deadly kiss from those frozen lips
can shatter skin like glass.
May howling hounds warn you
and blazing fires warm you.
The queen of winter comes.
.
*They’re predicting a bomb-cyclone winter storm here Saturday. The queen of winter comes
Categories:
ziggurat, deep, school, snow, storm,
Form: Rhyme
On the sky's hummock
she is like a ziggurat;
a gardener of
stars who takes care of
their shining watching over
their sparkling glimpses.
My only hope that
maybe she intend to look
after our little
and unfortunate
star too. The dim one under
whom our love was born to beam.
Categories:
ziggurat, city, light, love, sad
Form: Choka
Spiderweb phantoms of the energy lattice,
tension spires where emotion opaquers
draw from the void.
She'd get up early
and rent a hotel room
where the staff would remove
any paintings or pictures from the walls.
She brought the Bible and a deck of cards,
plus a thesaurus and a bottle of sherry -
ha! you know this sounds good -
she'd play solitaire if she needed to get in the mood,
she'd write on yellow sheets of paper with lines on them.
That's the way Maya Angelou did it.
If there's an intersection between physics, philosophy and religion,
then I'm going to be very pleased, incorporated,
maybe even superluminal.
The layered ziggurat that you climb,
the humming iridescence coming from within,
the high priestess is at work.
Counterfactual definitions,
waveform collapses,
conservation of information.
Can random data be generated?
Derived forms,
ancient watercourses,
rapturous from trying too hard.
So, let's kill the essence,
leave ourselves hollow silhouettes,
fast-moving blanks,
or the ultimate satisfaction
that goes so slow we won't live long enough to touch it.
December 13, 2016
For Lewis Raynes' contest - 'In your head'
Categories:
ziggurat, mythology, nonsense, words,
Form: Free verse
Quite apart
from anything to touch,
more is an increment
that lies behind the consciousness,
to swell the mind with new imagining,
inexhaustible—thriving in its sacrifice
just as a fountain
throws its treasure to the sky.
Still as a vision never seen before
and nevermore returning,
haste to burn it into mind and then
away, away across the clover fields
to seek the wooded edge aglow
with inspiration's light.
It is just such fantasy as that
to feed a passion where reality
emerges from a thought created,
just as God ex nihilo sought out the earth,
the dew upon the ground,
the misty heaven, the distant haze
of peace.
In dulci jubilo,
the endless questions
form the ziggurat
of humankind's delight—
the endless answering
a sacred palindrome
of an eternal life.
~
Categories:
ziggurat, faith,
Form: Free verse
I do
work for
you, and I know
what you seek to build,
you merchant, you creditor,
you money-man. I know because you
made us all the way we are, weak.You made
me into some monster to do your dirty work, some
Golem. but I am wise to you, you ugly vulture, I'll not pull stone
for you more. You seek to build a masouleum, a glorious tribute to
you and your school of thought. But you are not soveriegn of the Nile, and
we are not your slaves. When this ugly ziggurat is pulled down, no man will be buried
within a bloody mountain. We will all be equal, unified by the embrace of silicates and
stones.
Categories:
ziggurat, on work and working,
Form: Shape