Submissions by heterodynemind
POEMS AND SHORT STORIES
Martial Love
We thrust and parry
Then step aside for the occasional respite-
This complex minuet we're born to
This waltzing with weapons drawn
Ready to strike, defend, or acquiesce:
Man and woman- never worshiped
At the altar of either
Instinctive distrust reigns
The known is cheapened by words
Even sleeping virgins are tainted
The world makes whores and liars
Of the humblest saint- beware,
The daggers tongue is never satisfied
Except by fresh blood
Even if the wound be ancient.
Then step aside for the occasional respite-
This complex minuet we're born to
This waltzing with weapons drawn
Ready to strike, defend, or acquiesce:
Man and woman- never worshiped
At the altar of either
Instinctive distrust reigns
The known is cheapened by words
Even sleeping virgins are tainted
The world makes whores and liars
Of the humblest saint- beware,
The daggers tongue is never satisfied
Except by fresh blood
Even if the wound be ancient.
710 reads
1 Comment
if some electric joy
if some electric joy could paint us
here in the vivid shards of wasted glass,
or create a beauty that's never been drunk
we'd question our surreal imaginations,
drugged by passion's symbolic chisel;
the blue aesthetic of an angel's dust,
of abstract life more sensed than performed;
the psychedelic absurdities in bolder strokes:
I'd sing your nude genius sculpted through every world.
here in the vivid shards of wasted glass,
or create a beauty that's never been drunk
we'd question our surreal imaginations,
drugged by passion's symbolic chisel;
the blue aesthetic of an angel's dust,
of abstract life more sensed than performed;
the psychedelic absurdities in bolder strokes:
I'd sing your nude genius sculpted through every world.
761 reads
0 Comments
Flesh of the World's Flesh
Flesh of the world's flesh;
Seething sea of wriggling bodies-
All breathing in breaths,
All hiding from deaths.
Looking out a single eye;
Thinking thoughts to ponder why
They have to lay them down and die;
In countless graves, the bones will lie.
Still and cold as earth below,
When the winter season's come;
When the gales of winter blow,
And the trees all bare their boughs.
Seething sea of wriggling bodies-
All breathing in breaths,
All hiding from deaths.
Looking out a single eye;
Thinking thoughts to ponder why
They have to lay them down and die;
In countless graves, the bones will lie.
Still and cold as earth below,
When the winter season's come;
When the gales of winter blow,
And the trees all bare their boughs.
926 reads
0 Comments
Shopping Spree
Once a nameless woman went on a shopping spree
And started a revolutionary movement,
Without even realizing it; strolling through miles and miles
Of underground malls, with fake palm trees and scentless orange groves.
Returning home, all the store mannequins fell into step
Behind her, and shadowed her going into the apartment building,
Up 20 flights of stairs; thousands of empty rooms,
Each one with a bone cross, nailed above the door,
All the doors unlocked with the same skeleton key.
And then they all went downtown, to volunteer for Selective...
And started a revolutionary movement,
Without even realizing it; strolling through miles and miles
Of underground malls, with fake palm trees and scentless orange groves.
Returning home, all the store mannequins fell into step
Behind her, and shadowed her going into the apartment building,
Up 20 flights of stairs; thousands of empty rooms,
Each one with a bone cross, nailed above the door,
All the doors unlocked with the same skeleton key.
And then they all went downtown, to volunteer for Selective...
1249 reads
1 Comment
Halcyon Sun
Sad, beautiful days
Embrace me, from some stranger land
Than told to truth, beneath a sniper's moon.
I must go there to unfold the dawn-
Quickly; before the moon's shadows can find
The red radar beam, that's behind our eyes.
Now longing owns the temporal shell;
There's one name, one lone figure
As distant as the blinking stars.
A gesture may have to speak our words for us;
Or sometimes, only an expression;
Or just the direction we happen to be facing.
In a wider arc, I sense your being
Big as the ocean, deeper than sky;...
Embrace me, from some stranger land
Than told to truth, beneath a sniper's moon.
I must go there to unfold the dawn-
Quickly; before the moon's shadows can find
The red radar beam, that's behind our eyes.
Now longing owns the temporal shell;
There's one name, one lone figure
As distant as the blinking stars.
A gesture may have to speak our words for us;
Or sometimes, only an expression;
Or just the direction we happen to be facing.
In a wider arc, I sense your being
Big as the ocean, deeper than sky;...
819 reads
1 Comment
Non-Locality on a Kitestring
I can feel this consciousness;
That it's nowhere, and yet it feels local:
It's not in the rocks or the soil, the trees
Or the sky; it goes where I go
And I know where I'm going,
But it goes without knowing.
Time and distance mean nothing to it.
And I'm its parasite, all the while believing
That I'm the one in charge;
Keeper of the maps and the shoes,
The tires and the itinerary.
Without it, I'm nothing and nowhere,
Just as lost in space as it is.
But I can't help fantasizing
About being the kite for once
Instead of always...
That it's nowhere, and yet it feels local:
It's not in the rocks or the soil, the trees
Or the sky; it goes where I go
And I know where I'm going,
But it goes without knowing.
Time and distance mean nothing to it.
And I'm its parasite, all the while believing
That I'm the one in charge;
Keeper of the maps and the shoes,
The tires and the itinerary.
Without it, I'm nothing and nowhere,
Just as lost in space as it is.
But I can't help fantasizing
About being the kite for once
Instead of always...
762 reads
2 Comments
Be It Done Unto Me
I ask this in your name, O Hallowed,
From a heart that is perfectly fallowed:
Please save me from bores,
And biblical whores
With religion roots much too shallowed.
Be it done unto me, O Lord
With a gun, garrote, or sword;
If that preacher espouse,
He will come to my house-
Just beat my head with a board.
It's all, to thy power and glory-
But please, don't repeat that tired story;
I know you'd come back
If they'd give you some slack
And quit chanting they're so very sorry.
Please save me from poems of the religious...
From a heart that is perfectly fallowed:
Please save me from bores,
And biblical whores
With religion roots much too shallowed.
Be it done unto me, O Lord
With a gun, garrote, or sword;
If that preacher espouse,
He will come to my house-
Just beat my head with a board.
It's all, to thy power and glory-
But please, don't repeat that tired story;
I know you'd come back
If they'd give you some slack
And quit chanting they're so very sorry.
Please save me from poems of the religious...
801 reads
1 Comment
After You Had Passed On
After you had passed on
Your things came to me, looking to be loved again
So bereft; so alone were they-
The colorful silk scarves, the chunky jewelry
They wanted a home, a family life
And they wanted to stay together
But the faint whiff of grief that clung
To them; clung like stench, to an overflowing river
Or like the low clouds that hang over a wasteland
That questionable scent
Made me think too much of death, decay
It stung, reopened again longing's rude wounds
Though some day, I might go visit them just once
When...
Your things came to me, looking to be loved again
So bereft; so alone were they-
The colorful silk scarves, the chunky jewelry
They wanted a home, a family life
And they wanted to stay together
But the faint whiff of grief that clung
To them; clung like stench, to an overflowing river
Or like the low clouds that hang over a wasteland
That questionable scent
Made me think too much of death, decay
It stung, reopened again longing's rude wounds
Though some day, I might go visit them just once
When...
752 reads
0 Comments
He stole his eyes from a milk-glass moon
He stole his eyes from a milk-glass moon,
From drops of peridot scattered at sea,
Hidden beneath a moon-shadowed ruin.
His father not caring where or with whom,
Or from what rare ocean his being might be-
He stole his eyes from a milk-glass moon.
He learnt his letters from a dark winged loon
Who flew where the mountains caress the trees,
Hidden beneath a moon-shadowed ruin.
His speech was a garble of false and truth,
Whistling like a hollow piped reed,
He stole his eyes from a milk-glass moon.
His eyes a contagion of waters...
From drops of peridot scattered at sea,
Hidden beneath a moon-shadowed ruin.
His father not caring where or with whom,
Or from what rare ocean his being might be-
He stole his eyes from a milk-glass moon.
He learnt his letters from a dark winged loon
Who flew where the mountains caress the trees,
Hidden beneath a moon-shadowed ruin.
His speech was a garble of false and truth,
Whistling like a hollow piped reed,
He stole his eyes from a milk-glass moon.
His eyes a contagion of waters...
849 reads
2 Comments
Remembering the Ring
Mother died in the bed in the small, single hospital room
Beside one tall window which revealed
More concrete windowless walls, opposite an asphalt ravine
Where sometimes perhaps, ambulances
Pick up the newly deceased.
She died with that ring on her finger:
Nobody had taken it off; the pseudo wedding ring
Because her rings had become much too large
For her thin and bony, but still oddly elegant hands.
Out in the hall that night, at the most inopportune moment
I remembered the ring; but I could not
No- would not, attempt to take it off...
Beside one tall window which revealed
More concrete windowless walls, opposite an asphalt ravine
Where sometimes perhaps, ambulances
Pick up the newly deceased.
She died with that ring on her finger:
Nobody had taken it off; the pseudo wedding ring
Because her rings had become much too large
For her thin and bony, but still oddly elegant hands.
Out in the hall that night, at the most inopportune moment
I remembered the ring; but I could not
No- would not, attempt to take it off...
771 reads
2 Comments
Be Careful
Be careful of close auditoriums
And thick stanchioned stadiums
Watch out for iron gussetted doorframes
And bar covered windows
For your loneliness will trap you there
Backed up against the steel barriers
And probe your trembling thoughts
With it's dark truncheon.
Stay away from mirrors
Which can reveal your state of solitude
Automobiles which will show your inertia
Rollercoasters which can skitter you into the past
Without so much as a roll-bar
And arms, perhaps most dangerous of all-
Just before nightfall.
And thick stanchioned stadiums
Watch out for iron gussetted doorframes
And bar covered windows
For your loneliness will trap you there
Backed up against the steel barriers
And probe your trembling thoughts
With it's dark truncheon.
Stay away from mirrors
Which can reveal your state of solitude
Automobiles which will show your inertia
Rollercoasters which can skitter you into the past
Without so much as a roll-bar
And arms, perhaps most dangerous of all-
Just before nightfall.
726 reads
0 Comments
Miscalculation
I envy the cool darkness, now we're apart
And the warmth which wrapped your body:
Cocooned by your breathing,
The secret shadows and angles
Which gradually changed every hour
Like a dark sundial recording
All your limbs tiniest convolutions.
I know there was a sort of
Kabalistic synchronicity
Some algebraic function
And if only I'd studied more;
If only I'd applied myself better
I wouldn't have gotten all the equations wrong
Lost the notes, failed the exam.
I remember those once acute angles
How they fit so perfectly my...
And the warmth which wrapped your body:
Cocooned by your breathing,
The secret shadows and angles
Which gradually changed every hour
Like a dark sundial recording
All your limbs tiniest convolutions.
I know there was a sort of
Kabalistic synchronicity
Some algebraic function
And if only I'd studied more;
If only I'd applied myself better
I wouldn't have gotten all the equations wrong
Lost the notes, failed the exam.
I remember those once acute angles
How they fit so perfectly my...
790 reads
2 Comments
DU Poetry : Submissions by heterodynemind