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Best Poems Written by Henrique Oliveira

Below are the all-time best Henrique Oliveira poems as chosen by PoetrySoup members

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A Sonnet To the Iphone

I shoot up above the silent, spellbound crowd,
Gaping down at their bright hands with glassy eyes,
Then I pierce the satin clouds that dress the skies,
And drift in space toward that eternal shroud,
The vast field of stars that angels tilled and plowed.
How the crowd tilts down their heads with gazeless eyes,
Staring tongue-tied at handheld luminous lies!
Yet I, head high in the clouds, remain unbowed.
 
But what have I found, while the world wastes away?
Some seek lowly lights, others shoot for the stars;
Some keep as pets the very pests they should slay,
Others spread their wings and apace fly away;
To light up the pages of our dim memoirs, 
Let us wake up and roar, we must seize the day.

Details | Henrique Oliveira Poem

Revenge

The dull drip, drip, drip of thick, blackened blood pours
into the veins that beat a path to my heart,
with each feeble pulse, bit by bit, ripped apart
by a dark beast inside, which rages and roars.
I know from my past of lost romance and wars,
revenge has no method, it’s more of an art
that hijacks our acts till this life we depart,
or till at long last we have settled our scores.

Spellbound by payback, I choke on my bile,
and barely pay heed to the pathway ahead;
with the past on my back, each inch is a mile,
and the blue in the sky's a bright, burning red;
then one beautiful day I wake up and smile,
forgetting the reason for losing my head.

Details | Henrique Oliveira Poem

A Lullaby For the Drowned

Moon kisses blown by evening’s silver lips
caress the ocean's pricked up ears. They hear
a mute rage, frothy hackles raised to spear
a passing fleet of ghostly nightbound ships.
Dead dreams float up as daylight slowly slips
into the deep; again we face our fear
that dying might not be the last frontier.
A final move to hell requires many trips.

High above the deck, I spy over the bow,
watching for shoals and reefs that lurk below;
my crow's nest cradle teeters on the bough
the wind will break, though when I do not know.
Then we will plunge into the sea we plow,
lustful and wet. How can we sink so low?

Details | Henrique Oliveira Poem

Dirty Angels Lost

Hear the untold song we sing at any cost,
Though the crowd may laugh and children, jeer:
Through the parting clouds, lascivious angels leer,
Till a fall from heaven spells their holocaust.
Sing the unsung tale of dirty angels lost,
Licking off our faces the salt of our dry tears,
Our bloodshot eyes shut tight behind our fears 
That our guiding stars will never come uncrossed.

Now our yellowed ledger shows a settled score,
But devils from the past gnaw on our souls,
And ghosts that we have wronged come to the fore 
Of our fading memory, riddled with holes.
Because we are quickly rotting to the core,
We do not grieve at all when the grim bell tolls.

Details | Henrique Oliveira Poem

The Long Burial

With a strange, strangled gasp, we gulp the cold air
Crisscrossed by bats in their mad zigzag dash
From out of this cave, out from under this trash
That suffocates us, up our noses and hair;
Blind in the pitch-black dark, we make out the glare
Of bright, shining people who turn into ash,
And ashen-gray minds that sparkle and flash;
The death of the light is a tangled affair.

So we stumble on, tripping from day to day,
Seeking sun in these pits of shadow and strife,
Nodding and smiling even as we decay;
As we go on walking the edge of this knife,
It dawns on us that this anguish will stay
Till the last shovelful of this burial called "life".

Details | Henrique Oliveira Poem

Never We Cry

The clock cheers them on as the seconds march by,
As the bitter night rains down upon our backs;
Yet in our time of darkness never we cry.

But because moments will fleet and hours will fly,
In vain we attempt to freeze time in its tracks.
The clock cheers them on as the seconds march by.

Halt! we command, to the dread that we sigh,
For with death in our hearts we cannot relax,
Yet in our time of darkness never we cry.

Obscure memories visit us as we lie,
Viewing a distant past through present-day cracks;
The clock cheers them on as the seconds march by.

No matter, we think, for the night will soon die,
And we will awaken with knives in our backs;
Yet in our time of darkness never we cry.

Day will once again come, for no reason why,
But to let in time to plot timeless attacks.
The clock cheers them on as the seconds march by,
Yet in our time of darkness never we cry.

Details | Henrique Oliveira Poem

Count Not a Minute Gone Past

Count not a minute gone past,
Scurrying 'neath the brush at our feet,
Nibbling on toes and morsels of flesh, lying
Inside this box we now call home,
A strange miasma hovering above us and squinting
To examine the white in our hair, the wounds in our hearts, 
A head with no body now mouths pretty words,
Looking so tired, so tired,
As Death turns for a second look, another laugh,
Appalled at the distance of years,
Driven mad by a life cleanly wasted, 
By this drum in my head,
Beating seconds into a frenzy, giving birth 
To the minutes and hours, paving the way
For an ancient future that silently stutters
And finally knocks at the door. Come in.

Details | Henrique Oliveira Poem

Joy At the Dying of the Light

At close of day, my wild spirit sprints away 
From the barren lands where shriveled creatures quake
In fear that the night light might a desert make;
But the silent stars that witness day's decay
Gleam forever in a soft, heavenly way,
As they look down on lizard, gecko, and snake,
And all earthbound creatures that tremble and shake
When the sun ceases to shine at close of day.

But it’s when light stops shining that life begins,
For in the dark, I must love myself or die
(Too often I've sinned unforgivable sins);
So I look past the fire round which the Earth spins,
And seek out the stars behind day’s glaring sky,
Because, in the end, the good night always wins.

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Slaves

With a lashing to the back of my mind,
Gray, morbid thoughts I had long left for dead
Race up with rage to the top of my head,
Filling with words that I carefully grind,
Until meaning itself starts to unwind;
Drowning my life in a cesspool of dread,
My dark past dares my blind eyes, Look ahead!
But then when I turn it strikes from behind.

Thus the present ties us to selves long gone,
Buried in our yard inside shallow graves,
That every night we secretly visit.
Though today may implore to us, Move on!
To the past we remain little but slaves,
Toiling away in pain most exquisite.

Details | Henrique Oliveira Poem

A General Warning

Smoke from pursed lips wafts and wends
Its crooked path from lung to grave,
For a second perched in my trembling hand,
Quiet like a wisp of snipe stuck in a hazy bog,
Trapped in a swamp of sin and vice,
As a cool death eyes my troubled ghost,
My wailing spirit, suckled by this dry teat
Lit by an orange light, a weary puff blown
By a whisp of breath, as pale fire
Burns the warp and woof of a tired soul,
But days and nights no longer matter,
Could that be death at my chamber's door?
The call of night too loud to silence,
A maddening rap upon the window
Of this threadbare, smoke-filled room,
Where sleepless on this bed, a casket really,
Through the floor I fall, into the ground,
Till with a final puff of smoke I am no more.