Submissions by paragon
POEMS AND SHORT STORIES
LOVE POEM
Published
1st Oct 2012 11:21am
1st Oct 2012 11:21am
Sonnet
There is a deeper truth behind love's dance:
Its fragile forms are stretched to hide a force
That creeps, as moonlit tidal waves advance
with ever greater distance from their source.
Such is the heart that I could never know
What force behind the hand, beyond the limbs,
Could break the cord that holds the embryo
That in your silent ocean orbit swims.
Without love's pull I would be drifting free
Beyond your sight, naked and swirling blind,
And helpless I would sink beneath the sea
And drown, as waters close upon your mind.
Love floats in light...
Its fragile forms are stretched to hide a force
That creeps, as moonlit tidal waves advance
with ever greater distance from their source.
Such is the heart that I could never know
What force behind the hand, beyond the limbs,
Could break the cord that holds the embryo
That in your silent ocean orbit swims.
Without love's pull I would be drifting free
Beyond your sight, naked and swirling blind,
And helpless I would sink beneath the sea
And drown, as waters close upon your mind.
Love floats in light...
898 reads
3 Comments
OBSERVATIONAL POEM
Published
30th Sep 2012 4:58am
30th Sep 2012 4:58am
A Summer Day in the Township (South Africa 1985)
Skeletal dogs with torn leather hides
Slink past the blackened carcasses of cars,
Shrouded by early morning dust and engine fumes;
Past battle-scarred chickens picking at craters in the street,
Between rows of commuters
Who shuffle and squeeze into the bowels of buses.
Crossroad hawkers sit guarding eggs on blankets,
Pyramids of bruised apples between their knees,
And shacks, stacked back to back,
Support naked pumpkins tanning on tin roofs.
Radios throb like disembodied pacemakers,
Over splashes of red on blistered roadsides
That sing...
Slink past the blackened carcasses of cars,
Shrouded by early morning dust and engine fumes;
Past battle-scarred chickens picking at craters in the street,
Between rows of commuters
Who shuffle and squeeze into the bowels of buses.
Crossroad hawkers sit guarding eggs on blankets,
Pyramids of bruised apples between their knees,
And shacks, stacked back to back,
Support naked pumpkins tanning on tin roofs.
Radios throb like disembodied pacemakers,
Over splashes of red on blistered roadsides
That sing...
1574 reads
4 Comments
SELF POEM
Published
21st Sep 2012 8:33am
21st Sep 2012 8:33am
The Desert (depression, camels, etc)
I am going to drown
in the desert.
My lungs won't work properly;
I am struggling to breathe.
Each choking breath makes my eyes run.
I am alone
with sand and far-away camels.
The camels won't talk to me
because camels don't talk,
and even if they could talk they wouldn't understand
that I am drowning in this dry, sandy place.
As far as the mind can see there is nobody
I think maybe I hope for too much
but I am in the pitiless desert
where everyone is striving to survive.
Anyway, who would expect to see a drowning man...
in the desert.
My lungs won't work properly;
I am struggling to breathe.
Each choking breath makes my eyes run.
I am alone
with sand and far-away camels.
The camels won't talk to me
because camels don't talk,
and even if they could talk they wouldn't understand
that I am drowning in this dry, sandy place.
As far as the mind can see there is nobody
I think maybe I hope for too much
but I am in the pitiless desert
where everyone is striving to survive.
Anyway, who would expect to see a drowning man...
1152 reads
6 Comments
OBSERVATIONAL POEM
Published
21st Sep 2012 4:17am
21st Sep 2012 4:17am
Circus (South Africa 1974)
In dancing motes of sawdust trot the zebras,
Around and around a ring of striped constraint
Til in a blur of bucking whips they turn to grey
And match the color of the rain-soaked sky.
A circus elephant, ankle fettered by chain, readies herself
For the applause that sounds so deafeningly unlike
The silent herd in her memory;
And back of the ring, three lions in a cage on wheels
wait for the usual hoops of fire,
(possibly dreaming of wildebeest).
In the hollow stands, I sense something behind me:
In the ooze of cigarette-butt mud,...
Around and around a ring of striped constraint
Til in a blur of bucking whips they turn to grey
And match the color of the rain-soaked sky.
A circus elephant, ankle fettered by chain, readies herself
For the applause that sounds so deafeningly unlike
The silent herd in her memory;
And back of the ring, three lions in a cage on wheels
wait for the usual hoops of fire,
(possibly dreaming of wildebeest).
In the hollow stands, I sense something behind me:
In the ooze of cigarette-butt mud,...
948 reads
0 Comments
OBSERVATIONAL POEM
Published
20th Sep 2012 1:38pm
20th Sep 2012 1:38pm
Praying Mantis
I am the televangelist.
I camouflage green lust
behind pious pantomime;
I am the predator priest
the raptor of rapture
selling plots to paradise
with white toothy smile.
Heaven is yours...
Your trust is
delicious
I camouflage green lust
behind pious pantomime;
I am the predator priest
the raptor of rapture
selling plots to paradise
with white toothy smile.
Heaven is yours...
Your trust is
delicious
915 reads
4 Comments
MISCELLANEOUS POEM
Published
19th Sep 2012 2:34pm
19th Sep 2012 2:34pm
Under the Bed
At bedtime I would take a running leap
To vault the darkening space beneath the bed
Where terrors, having hatched inside my head,
Now lurked, as silent monsters while I'd sleep.
Across that mortal space, in faith, I'd fly
And feel the darkness clutching at my skin,
And hear the pounding answer from within,
As in the refuge of the bed I'd lie.
Such horrors swam in ravines of the mind
That split the ground to pools of blackest fear
Where ankles first I'd (screaming) disappear
To realms where adult consciousness is blind.
My leap to...
To vault the darkening space beneath the bed
Where terrors, having hatched inside my head,
Now lurked, as silent monsters while I'd sleep.
Across that mortal space, in faith, I'd fly
And feel the darkness clutching at my skin,
And hear the pounding answer from within,
As in the refuge of the bed I'd lie.
Such horrors swam in ravines of the mind
That split the ground to pools of blackest fear
Where ankles first I'd (screaming) disappear
To realms where adult consciousness is blind.
My leap to...
802 reads
10 Comments
DU Poetry : Submissions by paragon
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