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Best Poems Written by James Midkiff

Below are the all-time best James Midkiff poems as chosen by PoetrySoup members

Details | James Midkiff Poem

Aubade On the Morning After

Im half awake, and glaring at the sunrise
distant brilliance slowly eating at my dry eyes
squinted to best witness the aureate Apollo
refract off blades soaked through with dew
heaven's first blush, midsummer quiet, and coffee scent
cast clarity, light unveiling the burden
weighing down on every living being
clearest with the coming of the day
burning black holes into my brain's blank slate
sundering my soul 'till shatter state
fast approaches on the infinity of empty space
veiled out ahead of me

Restless with the lethargy of baring witness
I stir the pit, and catch flames leap up
from within carbon prints of gray matter
quelled embers lay suffocating beneath
ash dunes and smoldering phoenix feathers
matted and clumped by filmy deliquescence
spent of all but their will to rise again.

I grasp at the green broken glass
strewn about my feet like seeds
planted by last night's ignorance
and the sin of forced forgetting that
we all someday pay recompense
for our vice's and the gluttonous
way we all practice immoderation.

The world is quiet in lull
humanity lost to an illusion
breathing soft
and sleeping soundly
altogether

We exist
to want and rub against
the way the world turns on
a crooked axis, each moment less lucid
than those sunspots and dewdrops
coursing through dirt-clay veins and
branding the cracked dirt with morning

I cant shake loose the afterimage
imprinted on my blunted senses
experiencing everything I reach
is less than whole
understanding the universe
exists as fragments blackened in spite
of time's one plight forever pulling it apart

The sunset split the sky,
the fire danced and spit,
and the condensation clotted.
I seized eternity that morning
amidst the doldrums of sleeping masses
its truth intimate and calming.

I sense slumber cease and the suburbs rustle
the dreamers stumble about in waking
to shower away their sweat and dreamt delusion
start their cars, and drive away in sync
I listen closely to their heavy sighs
the shift of sagging shoulder plates,
bent under with Atlas tugging at the reins
kind's struggle never ceases to
echo off of terra firma, quaking
with each clanking of the chains
that bind our beating hearts to
alarm clocks, freeways, work weeks
and the torment of monotony

Details | James Midkiff Poem

Modern Shaman

Charcoal tar and gold brown tobacco
are both packed into a paper stick pressed
firm and trusting to the lips of a modern shaman
inhaling a cloud of harsh, strong, bold, and bitter barbs
that caress the tongue and prick and stick to pink organ flesh.

Disorientating nicotine is potentate in his scheme
it's purpose similar to black coffee; smooth and polished
blended beans for those late nights and early mornings.

His baked euphoria is living a constant maximum dosed out
and measured into separate jars of aromatic herbs.
Some for brewing, some for burning
each action acting in different ways to bring forth the contained mystic
hidden, shackled, held bare within his copper frame
conducting the currents of living, learning, thriving emotion
and like alchemy the chemistry
is solid.

He is the sum of all his parts.
He is the sum of all his senses.

Jolts, bolts, and shudders are
controlled through clever use of contraband
to establish simultaneous fluidity of thought and action;
Thereby soothing the soul and softening the daily struggle;
bluntly unnatural to every one of us
simple lovers of peace and passionate emotion.

He chases the dragon
He chases experience
through vistas both brief, and limited in scope,
to gain a sense of things
Great.

He is rounded at the corners
He is the sum of curved edges
smoothed and polished
(like coffee beans) in composition
balanced
by talented influence.

He is the stone worn strong
by paving a path where none is present.
He is the sword forged strong
through temper and tradesmen excellence.

He is man standing tall against the landscape
held up as a bastion of collected worth,
with marbled walls all round in a carved statue of constructed rock
aged fine by the time and the wind of the element opposition.
He separates the skyline,
the layline,
the landscape,
and delegates the elevation of the land beneath his feet.

He moves, builds, crafts, and dictates
(as the spider to the fly)
to bring his titan pen to the white page;
empty and inviting.

Details | James Midkiff Poem

The Ocean Breathes Salty

I watch as we all march blindly into the swells feet first,
scraping the ocean floor with drudgery
drowning in this academia, with starfish and sandcastles
and sentiments that wash away with each coming of the tide

We haven't always been as marching ants,
back to back and hand in hand
we've built this land from nothing

The past recedes and tomorrow rises,
time progresses: open minded
while we all dredge with stapled eyelids
still planning out our everything

Forever long, the brine blue tide is
always beckoning us onward.
Its too hard to tell when father time is
playing tricks on me.

The future is grim, the reaper's dead-bent
on harvesting the seeds we've sown
fathers who've passed on debt long owed
to sons who laugh hard while they hit the road
like water flows all the way to the sandbank
I cant help but wish on starfish sinking out to sea
that tomorrow is still a glass half-full of new surprises
vast and outstanding before me.

I took for granted the grand horizon,
full of beauty and hope, and a sun that still rises
over sandcastles crumbling into their counteraction
the certainty of sand that never sticks together long.

I took for granted the way that nothing is
the way it used to be
or was
or could've been
and how its all been done before

Can anyone look up,
when their feet are down
and they waltz on far less sacred ground
than those who came before them.

The nature of the ocean forms to fit its mold
with its blue hue reflecting bold
the sky and all its glory.

We march onward through the rivers rotting
with the raindrops spotting our overcoats
we march onward for the sake of stopping
sometime when we are old.

The ocean swells with the river's rot
the tide compelled the stars to stop
and the fish all cry as people keep on drowning.

The reaper is told to cut his losses
to save the few who still have conscience
and to try again tomorrow.

Tomorrow's glass, half-empty in want
is chock full of the river's rot
and the conscious few left fearful.

Details | James Midkiff Poem

F*** Love, We'Re Crazy People

(If I could spit venom, this paper would hiss.)

I cant sleep,
it's dark and i can feel your memory biting
my eyes are sore with the persistence of it
weeping, rasping, clawing, grasping at my spine
(still too apathetic to grant me the bravery
to walk away and not bend my honest head to you).
I lay uncrowned, and forever in spite of you
cowled, full scowl despite the lovely sight of you
and still that look, the "in love with you", it gets me,
it breaks my will with the slight of you, I'm tipsy, and
it breaks my heart that you'd drive right off forever.

I'd forgive a slight of every type of hue,
but baby this one's past my standards
so let words hail down like falling planets
(where i held you, you were stranded...)
forget my plight, you never cared a damn bit
you abandoned every care you might have had, 
and you preplanned it
so don't play lover now that you've left me scared
because scarred is exactly how the heat will sear
your statistical abuse into my tender heart-strings
recording what was love once, and deserves to be preserved
before every fantasy dies, and love with it burning
to ashes before my very eyes so fast its
turning to ashes so fast,
and I'm dying.

Another slavery for more lies
that bound her hands from reaching out to me,
her hands from reaching out to keep
the notion that maybe i might be someone
instead of just another anyone, like the way
everyone treats everyone anymore.

You bare the soul weight of promising to be different
the soul face for all of my resentment,
the true face of responsibility,
heavy is the head that wears that crown,
and heavy is the head that you let down...
so lets let your locked lips be the end of it
because if you couldn't say something then,
then to hell with love, you had your chance to save it.

I asked you nice through subtleties
to cradle close and safe my heart, a gift bestowed
to willing fingers still playing patti-cake with my emotions
I asked you nice, because You said you loved me,
and I still believed there was some meaning to that word.

My life is one big irony, bitter
like Shakespearean humor, deathly sonnets
heavy fates, and love as truth,
more irony.

F*** Jude, no one will understand this poetry
not one mocking soul can piece two words of mine together
i am the mad man,
but every syllable sets in it's cast stone for reason
i will go forever misunderstood,
i will get on: forever misunderstand me.

Details | James Midkiff Poem

The Seshat Headdress

The Nile riverfront is awash with rich tones
golden sand, brilliant white water, and thriving greenery
scenery too heavy for the papyrus its printed on
the sky is ablaze with the reddish orange of iron rust
dirty yellows cascade about the passion charred city-scape of Cairo
hazy with smog and smothered by a blanket of hot stale air
the sun setting casts shadows about the streets like ghost riders
four mounted omens of doom and decadence
and the darkness takes root in the river's delta
mixing and churning the sediment to clay
to be molded and sculpted by sharp falcon hands
with prodding finger-tips like talons
into a simple ankh of immortality
baked black and sharp by the elements
into igneous obsidian
amidst the fields of the Garden of Cafour
sand glass shards are encrusted into strands of hemp
tethered to the limp, free-hanging symbol of eternity
ominous jagged coal and glossed emerald crystal
lush thick lazy opal plumes cascade across the country-side
where fakirs breathe In the pearl and budding life
burnt and coiled down the long necked pipes
of blind prophets, glazing over the iris
loosening the shackles of the soul
and guiding the dye-dipped camel hair
of drugged out poets of the past
into cunning mastery of craft
ash spirits are exhaled into the crisp dark of night
where indigo and violet hues stain the horizon bold
battering and bruising the heavens
peppered with shooting stars
a stellar tapestry

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Aiolos and Aglaia

Our skin’s a splendid pigment blend
of browns and tans and milky white
in coffee creamed and sugared
Bittersweet.

A mighty steed compelled by lust
                  lays
cobblestone
Beneath the booted commonwealth
and is blessed to bask in the compassion of another.

A hooved stampede of pegasus
riding high
            and heavy
panting out steam in long hollow gasps,
while grasping,
Clenching.

It was
nostrils flaring:
A primal storm of
upside downs
complete with shaking sound effects
and earthquakes of the back.

Shifting shoulder plates and arching up
we broke new ground then broke apart.

Details | James Midkiff Poem

Fiat Amor

I want
like sonnets beckon
a love so true as fiction
investments deep in true reflection
emotional direction
I will that she will for me
as though we together share in love
a simple passive harmony.

I am a mess of things
of jumbled thoughts and misdirection
an honest soul with no momentum
stunned in the face of the universe
and she would love away the emptiness
bring to life the subtle verse
of dead poets in lively reenactment
like her to me is my Sonnet 29
and in her presence I smolder
with the intensity of her admiration
and I in bed entwined by wrist and hip
feel so baked by summer's loving sun
her warming smile, and tracing fingertips
in midday slip to comfort's siren call
and nap away the day in lull
with her and feel complete.

What a beautiful mess we'd make
all skin tones and white sheets
so beautiful would we
that the dust from my dim room
caught mid-flight in sunlight's glint would
seem to sparkle more in your presence
than the many days it spends in the solitude
of my lacking company.

But be damned if fables ever see the light
of day today in any sense,
and die all the fairy-tales
and old love true and bold
smothered by their consequence
the world is lost and gone
without the sounding of a requiem
for dreams now dead and absent.

Details | James Midkiff Poem

Consilience

Snow-drifts
as time
along a fifty mile strip
of cracking tar rubbed raw by the constancy
of speeding cars roaring past this crumbling city,
indifferent to the frost matted fields
or the give and take of December lovers
walking hand in hand up High Street.

Work shifts
along
as long as they've ever been
and we talk less now,
now that she's busier
our weekdays waste by
and I'm awake, always
trying to sleep all the time.
My life is wound tight in a stress-cord
I don't want to unwind,
I live once, burn strong,
and then I die;
Don't lesson the experience.

So indulge.

Swift dips
in her form cut
along, like a razor
my lust has lost control, revel in the nature
of the smooth slips of skin between plaid fabric
tracing her hips and tasting her depravity
it begs as much as beckons to give to the insanity
to indulge in the heat, the passion, the intimacy
of her pressed close to a heaving chest, proud
with the lunacy, of effort and reward,
the consillience of the moment
hinged on the edge of each other

those things will come less and less
in life and that's a fleeting truth
to dwell on,
so everyone always chooses
the lesser path
the one that leads to nothing
time is longer lived together,
time is longer spent always loving every moment
in between the things that wear us thin.

Loneliness is the cold fire
that ignites at the core of my everything
it moves my world, my feet, and my focus
from you to the wrath of the locusts that
plague my every waking moment in this place
I hate that I'm so far away
from everything that matters.
I hate that I'm so far away
from where I want to be.

Details | James Midkiff Poem

Missing Prom

I was listening to Central Park West
topping violet over clouds of brie cheese
cream whipped to compliment my moscato.
Her lips curled around another strawberry bosom,
blossomed fleshy dark sun tanned and sweetly bold.
Her geisha tongue danced around the tart,
the juicy sanguine rasp,
so slightly sweet its softness melts away.
Replaced quickly by a bruised berry
all black and blue plump and full
lying at the bottom of the bottle.
We were both smiling,
intertwined in bed, drifting, thinking
Coltrane always closed.

Details | James Midkiff Poem

Pulse

Lay rest
your heavy head
upon my sunken chest
with a sense of satisfaction.
Sleep sound
and deep entwined
with me suspended
in your snake-oil skin.
I'm hanging loosely
off your contented breathing
heaving
out and in
with each seductive tempest
gale of passion, love, and sin.
Your slender nails
of window frost trace
trails of quicksilver
into my silhouette as runes
of icy vice and pleasure
illuminating each awkward imperfection
and setting me at peace
between your heartbeats.