#poem
We Didn’t Know
#poem #yearofprophecies
Efficient development requires deprivement
No profit, no playground to feel alive in
Those few groomed for career cheer, mocking
“Can’t you hear; that’s freedom knocking.”
“Work for rent, or stay in school, dude.”
You get no cake for being a loser.
Orwell warned “Big Brother is watching.”
We didn’t know he meant on you-tube.
We didn’t know our life was a crime
Sentenced from birth to pay all our time
Cast from the truck to the roadside to rot
Drawn outside of luck, all about what you’re not.
Media screams their required truth feud.
Sell saturated garbage labeled food.
Orwell warned; we were warned:
“The best of you will be co-opted.”
We didn’t know they meant on you-tube.
May we attend the funeral please,
for our sweet sister?
Nibble a bit upon her vacant flesh.
The foxes, the dear little foxes.
Mais oui, mais oui, the funeral, please,
for our sweet sister.
Mais oui, nibble a bit
upon her tender flesh.
Her day is over.
He’s digging a hole in the ground for me.
He’s digging a hole in the ground for me
and singing a song of sweet “I love you’s”
all the while he digs.
(minimizing his own discomfort)
Mais oui, nibble a bit
upon her vacant flesh.
BITTER DREGS
#poem
You don’t get it.
You don’t want to.
It would be too much to bear
if you let your thought go there.
Briefly unconscious, awakened to
hard concrete ground surrounded
by heels and toes, amazing
they don’t crush me, but no,
like clockstep they walk around
though occasionally a(n unmeaning?)
shove — I’m not a someone,
just a minor obstacle
unnoted in their busy day.
No worries.
Not like shoved down under
hard muscle, jutting bone,
stinking of beer and rage;
or waking from too brief oblivion,
broken pain, bleeding
tears, torn, bruised, a
colorful toy
made for pleasure.
Then the voices, echoes.
Harpies and Sirens, Furies
and sad old women. Fingers
shake in disapprobation.
Shrill voices call me beautiful,
in the way that ugly things are.
So bad, so pitiful, cardinal
status among the neverweres.
Struggling shadows, whispering
curses demurely lest anyone
notice and throw them further
down, below duration.
Never easy, confessing degradation.
The sin adheres. No one wants to know.
The cat’s song
BY MARGE PIERCY
Mine, says the cat, putting out his paw of darkness.
My lover, my friend, my slave, my toy, says
the cat making on your chest his gesture of drawing
milk from his mother’s forgotten breasts.
Let us walk in the woods, says the cat.
I’ll teach you to read the tabloid of scents,
to fade into shadow, wait like a trap, to hunt.
Now I lay this plump warm mouse on your mat.
You feed me, I try to feed you, we are friends,
says the cat, although I am more equal than you.
Can you leap twenty times the height of your body?
Can you run up and down trees? Jump between roofs?
Let us rub our bodies together and talk of touch.
My emotions are pure as salt crystals and as hard.
My lusts glow like my eyes. I sing to you in the mornings
walking round and round your bed and into your face.
Come I will teach you to dance as naturally
as falling asleep and waking and stretching long, long.
I speak greed with my paws and fear with my whiskers.
Envy lashes my tail. Love speaks me entire, a word
of fur. I will teach you to be still as an egg
and to slip like the ghost of wind through the grass.
https://us12.campaign-archive.com/?e=58c6df03ad&u=c993b88231f5f84146565840e&id=8631cd454d
In a Disused Graveyard
by Robert Frost
The living come with grassy tread
To read the gravestones on the hill;
The graveyard draws the living still,
But never any more the dead.
The verses in it say and say:
“The ones who living come today
To read the stones and go away
Tomorrow dead will come to stay.”
So sure of death the marbles rhyme,
Yet can’t help marking all the time
How no one dead will seem to come.
What is it men are shrinking from?
It would be easy to be clever
And tell the stones: Men hate to die
And have stopped dying now forever.
I think they would believe the lie.
https://mailchi.mp/poets/october-28-2023-poemaday-12138308?e=2706955217
Pageantry
#poem #yearofprophecies
Could Christian Fundamentalism be the dread AntiChrist,
and greedy Wall Street his ravenous Beast?
Could the Second Coming be prides of young
claiming back the streets?
Could Prophecies feared and hoped
to bring Sinners to our knees
to lift the Holy into just reward
by Blessed Hero’s mighty sword
defending, avenging the meek —
Could that parade be before us,
just not the scene we believed,
preached to prove the righteous right?
Has the final fight foretold been taking form,
storm clouds positioned for a hard rain to fall,
untidy time of transition as soothsayers call,
alarm bells chime?
Is the end of this trial of dependence nigh?
Can we break the Jesus code, create out of
Apocalypse our own golden age, reign
of Peace?
CLOSE TO THE EDGE
#poem
Close to the edge, so close
And the fire’s burning.
The music’s playing old familiar memories.
It’s a grey day in late autumn
In a year of fear and hopeful reawakening —
Is there hope of resurrection?
In these grim, grim times?
But so grim?
A time to newly discover
The strength within;
To again see life as a discovery
— can it be done?
On a day so grey, in a year so fraught with peril
and misadventure?
One at a time: take things one at a time,
And they seem so small and easy.
Why hold expectations that lead to dismay,
Hiding from fantasy?
Breathe, meditate.
Build dream towers to climb to,
Not nightmares.
But it seems so safe and easy to hide
In the darkness
To never utter another “I”
To cease.
Why not?
Close to the edge, so close.
The fool looks over his shoulder.
The wise goat climbs with care.
The lonely may jump in despair.
How to be alone and strong?
Ask the high priest —
All is within/without you.
But to find that smile of understanding?
It is a search worth taking
Slow, easy, breathe.
SANGFROID
#poem #scorpio #dark
Hunger.
Too redundant for horror.
Each night to feed wrapped in repugnancy.
Hidden, alone, hunting streets of death.
No hope, nothing legitimate.
Days escaped in self-made mausoleum;
no relief of dreams, blocking memories,
enduring.
Creature of frigid streets, abandoned.
Preternaturally cruel air. Sulphur, tar,
stench of rot sans remorse or resolution.
Unnatural world devoid of end or warmth.
Even when blood runs hot into aching jaws,
metallic, raw,
no heat penetrates.
Nights stretch to nowhere.
More filth, barbarity
too familiar to offend
solitary stalkers crowding all the secret places.
There is no exit here.
No respite, release of sleep, no prayer to soft salvation.
There is only eternal degradation of soul.
Not possibility, no properties of love or fond relation.
Trial of existence with no useful expression, no expiration.
Yet in this ceaseless odium, this carnal Hell,
in this my desolate home, cold, without mercy,
in this cage of unrelenting dark,
a spark, a circle red and black calls to enter.
Here, where awareness centers, threads of bleeding vein
play at art, at shocking beauty.
Glow World
#poem #yearofprophecies
Go with the glow, bioluminescent
inscrutable bright night flare
a grove of ashes
a nest of vipers
a tangled garden lair
The forest is old,
wild road stained in adventure,
obscured in ghosts and mysteries,
sculptured by drifting seas, fallen stars,
exulted pleasure,
eternal embrace of decaying leaves, sad savagery.
There is primal fire here.
Glowing coals that never relented
keep warm our restless slumber,
feeding us through famine
burnt remnants, perennial weeds, piquant renderings.
The glow screams of escape —
our demons free
through fingertips, lips, oozing.
Cauterized wounds re-inflame, never heal.
Scenery, like a trellis
slowly turning, pauses at this
portal.
Destiny
shudders seismically.
Angels of light,
diamonds in the night
shatter into promises — pristine
honour, repose, strength —
of charismatic grace.
Go with the glow.
The People of the Other Village
BY THOMAS LUX
hate the people of this village
and would nail our hats
to our heads for refusing in their presence to remove them
or staple our hands to our foreheads
for refusing to salute them
if we did not hurt them first: mail them packages of rats,
mix their flour at night with broken glass.
We do this, they do that.
They peel the larynx from one of our brothers’ throats.
We devein one of their sisters.
The quicksand pits they built were good.
Our amputation teams were better.
We trained some birds to steal their wheat.
They sent to us exploding ambassadors of peace.
They do this, we do that.
We canceled our sheep imports.
They no longer bought our blankets.
We mocked their greatest poet
and when that had no effect
we parodied the way they dance
which did cause pain, so they, in turn, said our God
was leprous, hairless.
We do this, they do that.
Ten thousand (10,000) years, ten thousand
(10,000) brutal, beautiful years.
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/48485/the-people-of-the-other-village?mc_cid=f94ce690e1
Protection
#poem #yearofprophecies
I wind into a tight cord
expel ice-tipped thorns to repel
your good intentions.
You are not my troubled mind.
You are my always touchstone,
my center of reason, promise of peace.
In psychotic chaos, moments torn,
my instinct turns sharply inward.
Primal wariness, protection against
irrevocable reverberations of violence
shattering our sacred bond.
CIRCLING #poem
Moving out from the center.
Not just circles, fields of play,
unconscious art outlined in grains,
in Earth outcroppings.
Color, texture, depth and hillocks
to delineate geography over millennia.
Too long, too high, too overarching a view.
Inside, incremental gains, slow glimmers
simmer. We want our feast NOW!
Ready, so surely ready to shout in unison.
Spinning in separate circles.
Toes in, arms akimbo stiffened to protect.
Moving in different rhythms to different visions.
Bumping, bruising, rousing demons.
Haikuniverse is seeking submissions of Halloween themed haiku (or micro-poems, or anything 5-7-5 you don’t feel comfortable calling a “haiku”). We’ll publish 1 every hour, for 24 hours, starting at midnight (pacific) the evening of October 30.
Deadline this Sunday, October 29 at 12:00pm (pacific).
Submit your Halloween themed haiku here:
https://haikuniverse.com/halloween-project-call-for-submissions/
Scrying on the Moon
#poem #sibyl #romance #feminist #occult #goddess
~twilight of the goddess, call to song to aery dancing, lady fair your fiery trance rewinds our souls; enjoy these offerings of fancy: all art is yours ~
By sibylline light
images I recognize,
creviced captures of my life.
I know her judgment to be my own.
“Nourished by Moon rivers
mythical cavern blooms
unseen by sunlight
glow green.”
Thus she sets the scene;
becomes the prophecy.
“Purest white simplicity
curved to suggest fragility
faith fed maiden ready for
plucking,
given in bondage to womanly woes,
hard rows to hoe
for tight human hug through
crying of night.
Fate of mortal soldiers, sacrificed to lust.
Seeking relief, beg for the boon of drama
high adventure
sneaking into sad hotels
for a fix or a tumble.
Laughs,
deadly play,
danger, a real chance.
Barefoot in the snow
icy roads
winds so strong
I could not make you hear.
I thought you were my destiny.
Crazy thoughts, far from clear;
but I believed
song lyrics from Saturnine deities
would not lie, leave me
dying, fading into winter’s grey
drifting clouds,
endless sorrow endured for naught.
Lost on this careless corner,
dreaming of oblivion, intent on visions
like rain
tapping against eternity’s
vast windowpane.
Scenic serenity.
Nature’s gradations of green
soothe tired eyes,
trembling nerves, throbbing veins.
Slivers of moonlight reflect,
disperse through refrains, unearth secrets
embedded in song
effervescing through cool pure air
cleansing the uprising nestling
set aflame
resurrected
tempered mettle,
pure, wise, tested
engorged with the will
to rise”
A Little Night Music
#poem #scorpio #lyric
She appeared
out of the night.
Dark mystery arousing
curiosity,
distraction, concern.
(When will I ever learn
to let these heartbreaks
in the making
pass me by?)
Voodoo of attraction,
sacrosanct intimacy.
Impelled to submit in throes
of flagrant ecstasy.
Do what you will with me
in our secret rendezvous.
Then relinquish me to go
back to my wastrel ways.
She grabbed me with such force
I felt I could die.
And that was just her eye
pulling me close
to continue
our conversation.
Great conflagration
arose in my heart.
So adept at her art
of igniting
imagination.
Cruel fate
mocks nocturnal fantasies.
Yet, swept up in delight,
facing dualities,
the wrong and the right,
I too easily sell my immortal soul
for her eternal night.
She tastes my sin
drip laughing from my skin.
I freely forswear my life.
Fierce pierce and suck
lunge in the for kill.
There’s no greater thrill.
We descend into dark fall.
Fade into shadow before approach of light.
MERLYN ENCHANTED
#poem #scorpio
In secret unlit chambers
guided by wizardry
all eternity his(Hers) to see.
Omniscient night, he(She) stirs wonders,
bubbling sublime,
catches fluid rhythms in catechisms,
spells out vivid ceremony,
illumined rhyme before his(Her) avid mind.
Walls of obsidian crystal, unable to penetrate.
What we do for love’s allure; allowing
liens upon a will of magic.
Enchanted inward, intense, piquant elixir.
Decanted pure fumes,
deep draughts of ecstasy,
conjured music
commingle to frolic with merry sprites,
lost in beauty and laughter.
LOVE POEM AT MIDNIGHT
#poem #scorpio
I tell you my heart, wrapped in bloody
papers, rots ripe with brutal stench of
rapacious cruelty.
I deny your lilting hail, call to healing beauty.
Entranced, I wallow in respite,
the invisibility of sleep,
tightly coiled cold, alone.
Yet I fall open as you touch me.
Eyes melt shining into eyes,
lips into ecstasy.
Your fingertips feather down,
soft, alluring along my
long parched skin.
I want so to believe again
in two hearts beating wholeness.
Grow
by Ruth Ellen Kocher
I have a red onion in a green bowl on my kitchen counter
sprouting a green stalk that began as a little green haystack
bump, a knobby cyst, really, that broke surface, felt like what
I imagine I’m feeling for when I rub my breasts in the shower,
my eyes closed as if water is a blindfold allowing me to feel
within that dark any small homicide growing within me. I can’t
bring myself to use the onion, to gnash its skin, to whack off
its hard-on-gooseneck like I’m suddenly death’s
scythe, death’s brindled pet, death’s dappled good-girl. Maybe,
the onion believes in something, imagines itself still wild,
or holds in its layers the delusion of lilacs or iris or
goldenrod or blueberry or some other rambling growth
redacting my sense of abandon, here, in this too-large house,
a-lone-ly, not like a battle with silence way-of-alone-ness but
a passage. Quiet. Sometimes bright, sometimes dim, so, foreign.
I am a theft waiting to happen, a rotten spell visioning
the onion’s end. Salt. Oil. Softly seared particulate
endings. Oh, onion, circular cycle, joy-halo. Grow.
About this poem:
“At the end of 2020, I conquered some big life goals and looked forward to my future. But 2021 brought the end of a cherished friendship, then my marriage. In November, I found myself in an ambulance on my way to life-saving surgery for a cervical spinal abscess. I paced my house for two months with an IV bag, feeling hollow. When the onion began to sprout, I measured its progress each day. I couldn’t bring myself to use it. The onion gave me something to look forward to—a small triumph growing on the counter. I wanted to feel triumph again.”
—Ruth Ellen Kocher
A #forest is a #poem
in a language of life, of action.
Symbiotic swell into echoing song.
Bright catalytic light, dark layers of still
nurturing long decay, fragrant rhythms
tune to animal play and parry,
seeds join in emergent glee, new forms
for old, set in sound and fury.
Forest
the word itself carries intrigue, tales
of magic and remorse,
of maidens hiding from horrific beasts and
handsome knights sworn to fealty.
Sweet sprites, winsome serpents and ravens
whisper oracular spells to trap or free.
A mere parade of words may create no sap,
no clinging moss, no berries enticing birds
to build for a future family.
Yet a forest is most certainly
a poem.