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Best Poems Written by Dennis Foss

Below are the all-time best Dennis Foss poems as chosen by PoetrySoup members

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Nature, Friend and Foe

Nature, Friend and Foe

Speak out the words to the soft petaled plants, 
that grow wearily in the distant corners
It is there that the scrub jay alights,
squawking and gorging on berries.
This habitat has brought the wildlife to the garden, 
in an endless search for food stuffs,
always glancing over their shoulders heads turned 180 degrees, ears taut, 
translucent eyes peering, fright, flight,
an evolved history, chiseled in practical instinct.

I am speaking to you dear nature, 
from me you will learn exactly nothing, 
it is from that which you are that I will learn.  
Listen to my plaint though it fall on deaf ears.
Though you hop or walk, fly or scurry, crawl, swim or slither,
movement is your the essence, your vitality, your survival,
which appears to invite you to take the life that animates and live it to any and all ends.
Is there no loss for you, do you not care or bother for condition?

If we as a race of evolved mammalian beings were once like you,
how is it we've fallen so far from the tree and yet continue to survive? 
Did you dear nature reject us, are we a sullen body of flesh 
unaccustomed to following the laws that govern your being? 
Are we but a rejected group?

Fires that burn forests and wastelands,
ignited by the thunderbolts from Jupiter's hand
both cleanse and rejuvenate an overgrown and tired terrain; 
lava spewn out from out of the mouth of a volcano 
drives itself over the land building and combing the landscape with layers of liquid rock, 
cooled by atmospheric difference.  
Flooding waters, ferocious winds, the whirling and swirling of earth 
and its organisms of flesh and bone 
thrown up and into a vortex of howling change 
is greeted with impassivity. 

You, my nature, friend and foe, your indifference, your beauty 
and the brutality of your wrath are both vexing and compelling, 
how are we to understand and continue to care?

Suey Creek 
October, 2012

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The Wind Blew Cold

The Wind Blew Cold

The wind blew cold upon our faces,
we turned our heads towards the east eyeing a muted sun,
clouds in their weary way sagging, formless:
the moon resists it’s rising assent skyward.

Oh orb, on which we stand motionless in spin,
toss to our good graces a stitch of time,
that we may find solace in our vacant hearts, that throb outside our chests,
exposed to the elements of desire.

The prayers to hope, that fall from our tongues, 
loosed in the mind, where neuro-chatter reigns as noise,
heave sighs of wanting, deep cries and cravings long,
the cold wind burns sharply against our skin, our faces recede.

The lonely tracks that follow our footsteps radiate golden,
a heavenly chorus of slighted souls weep aloud, 
your hand, cool with perspiration glides over to mine
such an embrace is felt intensely, in silence and in awe.

Eaten up in smiles, as wordless thoughts laugh quietly
it’s a meal of granola bars and fruit splayed on a table
water and tea wash away the throaty remnants of food
as our eyes keep tabs on just what lies behind the surface.

Not much in the way of small talk falls here
but the words of repeated reassurances comfort
we walk amongst the cars, the garage reverberates
our eyes and ears attuned to our voices in space.

There is a burning in our hearts of things undone
love spills over the edge of our thoughts and sighs
we remain in our niche, an adventure we crave
our friendship is one that has thrown us far afield, untouched.

1/9/2016

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Ancient Hope

ancient hope

a moderately heavy mass of emergent winds, kick up sleeping debris from the surrounding space, spreading its floating carpet, singing in concert with sultry wings, humid and upwardly ascending, gathering behind it a light dusty snow shower of bitter loess, of tiny things, the soil of flesh sinew and bone, of cause and effect, of ages that have fallen away, echoing, buried deep within, far-flung fading cries, silently settling low.

herein lies a prehistory of things, events unknown, slurried in imagination, untenable, sure of almost nothing, the strata of movement, upheaval in reverse motion, nature singing its eternal cry, cyclic, a randomness in chaos builds to a crescendo of brilliant flashes, all photon- energetic, where mineral flotsam radiates outward forming obscure patterns, falling in space, finding place as if by intrinsic design, where oh where is that idiomorphic template not seen?

of wandering magi, of fading sand trails, of swollen feet and the everlasting verve that tugs at the heels, pushing one forward to that acid moment, strangled in the dust of vanity, crawling to the utmost height where the fall of sands, grain on grain, restate their inability to bond fast, washing over and out into the depths where a proto-historic humility silently sleeps covered, quiet and alone.

there are tools in the heart of the earth, a broadband principle of collective accumulations, scattered here and there, everywhere, no obvious settlement map; the white noise as drone amongst the minerals and biologic debris, commingling with an earnestness to bond further afield, scaffolding across great divides, as time shrivels with movement, hampering the curious eye of they who search within, the inquisitive nose sniffing up musty ridden time, the cranky deposits pay no attention, their work is done.

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I Turned My Back

I Turned My Back

A spirit casually approached, shat its parched load,  
producing a small cloth it worked its hands furiously, 
fashioning of clay and soot something to assuage a
deep yearning in its soul, something that looked,
as it looked to itself. 

I turned my back to the left, my sight took in these images,
touched to my core this phenomenon pierced hot like a steel blade,
searing a scaring wound punctually within, permanently set.   
I let out a scream, which carried back into the canyons and the recesses where smoke resides apart from fire, where water breaks into its separate molecules. 

A world-like landscape emerges from a thinning air, dusty and rough in texture, sprouting forth smallish shrooms in iridescent hues, resembling footprints in snow they shimmer and vibrate. 
The spirit and itself have moved in and around this landscape before,
leaving their footprints, their mark. 

The immediacy of my experience continues to pierce impressionably,
I am now a marked man, my goal; adapt consciously.

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Vilma

Vilma

Her eyes and her smile 
were the qualities of soul,
reached out through her essence
she brought all into the fold,
all goodness and sanity
in a world of messy things,
she worked through the undercurrent
she helped the angels sing,
"We'll miss her" is an understatement
she surfaced into our lives, 
with her undivided giving
in memory we abide.

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Ti Bon Ange Small Little Angel

Ti Bon Ange (Small Little Angel)

A small little angel looking over an edge,
Its eyes wide, alive in wetness and peering.
From a cliff it overlooks an undulating plain that,
sweeps, spreading before its eyes forever seeming,
looming, fiercely wild, provocative, even strange.

This small little angle spies a moving form,
the forms grace of movement engages the angel’s core.
The angel’s vision pierces the far distance off,
the forms mobility morphs, blinking into shifting profiles;
in yearning and desire the angel aspires to be thus.

Every nail craves a hammers striking blow,
as every fire finds its life from flaming spark.
Soul on the look out, intently watchful,
with experience dreams fluidly flow forward,
in kind, knowledge accrues like sand on a beach.

The small little angel directs its tenacious approach,
associated heartfelt action declares its course.
Sentiment slinks back in diminishing outline,
an hallucinogen of auric glow alights, proclaiming freely;
mind, body, spirit, in bold consumption.

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Tight Spaces

Tight Spaces 

I wriggle through the tight spaces, 
moving between these fussy wise cracks,
all in forward motion, my forward goal,
moving towards a light beyond, way up ahead.
A dimming glow, like a watery eye,
lubricating and easing my movement,
creates a viable, mercuriai, rhythmic pulse,
inching ahead, around and about and through.
Oh, these god-awful restricting spaces,
these furious fissures, these viral veins of transit,
all full of twist and turn, all jumbled up, all cramping.

The odor in this tepid din is one of aged musty moldy funk,
my twitching eyes, my heavy breath, my chest expanding, 
breathing, through the yogic cure of stretch and release, I release.
Oh the pain in renewal, the ambition, it’s longing sighs alight,
clear through into my head, invading my core to my out stretched toes,
the wriggling motions do transmit waves of sensuous ciphers,
my straightened back charging to the crowning crown.

The light, oh, that dim light,
that hollow orb, the rays of dust backlit and starlike,
heavenly cloud of ash and shadow beckon;
floating as a holiday parade in slow motion
as if marching bands were moving asymmetrically,
seemingly chaotic, at random, cacophonous, atonal, obliterated,
a system of god-like symmetry in flux and flexing,
a multiverse of star clusters, clustering,
fanning-out into oblivion and its surrounding vicinities,
neighborhoods of gaseous clouds chatting,
straddling the outskirts, the farthest margins away;
of hemispheres and their continents, of space and its off-spring,
orbiting, careening, bounding, all which way, any way,
together, family like in its seeming disfunctions, outward.

There’s an itch at my back, unreachable easily, irritating, annoying, 
I’m going to let it be, it’s too much work to assuage, 
forward motion, my forward goal, moving inexorably, 
the light ahead awaits in patience, just beyond the next obstacle.

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A Jerky Reverie

A Jerky Reverie

Where is the moon just now?
The light shining from the sun
appears, to have blotted it out.
The stark darkness of a motionless 
void, where atomic debris not seen,
passes
 through it, violating solid state.
Harmonious discontent, disconcertedly 
in serial fashion proceeds atonally
in a jerky reverie; weeping tearfully
musical notes arise in hesitance, seemingly 
from nowhere, like faint smoke arises
from a fire, brooding, over irrelevance.

Why is the light so dim?
A serene moment, born alive, outwardly
gesticulating, silently swaddling a mindful 
yet unarticulated and self-willed thought, 
a thought which plummets over itself, 
as over a precipice, steely, shortsighted, 
perhaps longingly, into a discordant 
pool of afterbirth, languishing momentarily, 
recognizing its purpose, to enrapt, to give notice!
Who blotted out the sun?
As hairy beasts of long, long ago
tramped bipedal out into grizzly landscapes 
where voluptuous volcanic teats 
alined in all their glory disgorged
hot lavic, retch, painting again a textured
grit, a layer of time, stratified, new,
brilliant, flawed, awaiting encounters.
The bony beasts, brains now enlarged,
experienced, tooled up, science in
mind, recursive by design, calculating,
manipulative, mindful meditations
on control, edgy love slap, forthwith as a
dangerous impulse, unto itself and it.

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Where Do You Want To Be

Where do you want to be?

So few raindrops fall in our summer’s here
This drought is deep and hot and long
Sweat pours down my brow, the air is dry
There is no escape from the heat
Except in the shade of this tree

My heart feels light, sometimes my heart is dark
At times it exists in shades of gray
When it gets dark I reach for the light
And when it’s light I play it out
To the break, to the break of day

Life is such a trip so many places to go
And in my mind and in the skies
The oceans take me upon the flow
So on a plane or in a train, on a boat or on the road
My destination’s making way, I release and let it go

I know a man who is staring at the end
He carries a weight I have not yet known
His spark of life is fading out in time
He’s going off to another home

We’re all riding on time, this time
We’re all standing on the edge of our world
Turn around and you might get lost
You’ll never know just what you face until you open your eyes

Have a drink it’s on the house
Sit down and share a meal
We’re all gathered here to celebrate
It’s all happening here, it’s the place to be
It might seem like a game of chance, roll your dice
The stage is set and we’re playing it out

Raindrops are scarce, the heat bellows out
The sweat on my brow beads a lash
An escape beckons deep in my canyon of self
Where do I want to be?

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This Starry Night

This Starry night
Where Heaven meets Earth
When Time meets Space
As Soul meets Body
When two Friends Destinies meet
As Words caress Lovingly in Vows
We others look on
Tears are shed
Then Joy meets There
To lift your Hearts Entwined
On this Starry Night in Celebration