Sunday, October 16, 2011

On My Sleeve

Submitted for dVersePoets.com "Taboo" prompt

On my sleeve
The dust of things I want to say
Those who pray
That I disagree
Those who I love, who will never know
Those whose disdain for me, that I don’t understand

On my sleeve

On my sleeve
The ribbed and diverse life that I want
The life that I can’t have
The place I long my nephews and nieces to see
Far off rocks sans minerals and order

Chaos

Crumbs

On my sleeve

On my sleeve
A wiped off drink
Red with the cranberry in the red of my heart
Saliva of a rambling man
Or a rolling stone like my father
Cracked and split, to spread the granite
Buttered over the meadow, no sorrow
For the subsequent, to unfold

On my sleeve

A queen of thorns
Fruit from the vines of my veins
Woven ‘round the tree I planted
She lays nailed to the cross I bear
In the cave I hibernate, wait
How innate, this seems to be
The seething hate, that I hate, within me

On my sleeve

The caged bird setting sail
Her wings too big for incarceration
The bleu eyed duchess and her aristocratic ways
Seduces my eyes, feathers my palms
Flows through my fingers

She’s on my sleeve

In my heart
On my lips
Off of my tongue
Into my pen
Through your eyes

Recycled

Washed away

From my sleeve

Tuesday, August 2, 2011

Salem's Lot

Photo Credit : Getty Images

Who are the mad ones, The asylum sentenced fools?
Heavy is the crown on the clown who laughs at the circus
Harlequins and Harlots;
Ferris Buellers and infinite days off, roving parasites
Offer a sideshow, and a Carnival Le Blanc

Carnivorous carnage woven intricately so
as to be discrete;
This humble nest
The mother roosts her egg, the chick under Orin hatched
Attached, are these larvae of like wing, Thrashers to an enigmatic will
Fly in circles for thrill, building another

Vlad reincarnate;
Impaled by their own pickets, white fences to personal salvation
All in a row, the domino Fall to another season
To behold, and let go
Go let, and campaign again

De-forceful voices, speaking soft tongues on loud whispers
Oxymorons flying against the wind of goodwills to Man
Men who have yet to self-fulfill prophecies
To them from thrones and crowns of thorns, makeshift Castles In The Sky
Hidden in a random hedgerow, on Pennsylvania Ave.

The ashed remnants of those burned at the stake
Fertilize those that speak of the flame, most deservedly so
Are they that speak such, to be engulfed in the Gulf
Just as the black liquid truth spilled free

March to the Ides
In a step
In time
Invasive Day of Pigs, like swine to the trough
Coronation Corporation : Fattened slop served cold
Dietary exercise in free thought, rendered cancerous

Dirty Queens wear Supreme gowns laced with decandence
While the House jester howls and slams another gavel
The court is full of princes and princesses
All fit the bill for their Vices
Biding for their own piece of the zoo
On a Hill
In a small town, Camel’s Lot.

I Say,
launch a LEM
for Lunacy

Tuesday, July 26, 2011

Purgatorial Pissings

(c) Andrew Calder

Posted for "Open Link Night" at dVersepoets.com


Parallel paradox, the divisive multiplier
Void betwixt parallax and mirror
Reality versus fiction, the damage done, a Dent
A Harvey faced versus façade, mirage


The translucent river at flood level
Fluid production via years in pre-disposition, torrential downpours
Longing gaze on the thought pebbled beach to the other
The certain, surest one, through the looking glass permeates


Traveled lifetime, experiential conglomerate
Beaten upon by the cerebral wave crashes
Seemingly impassable, impasse
Sans ability to float, or a boat to traverse
Daydreaming Magellan circumnavigating familiar waters


His Perfect Circle, the consistency in radial transgression
Through aqueous transmission, their electrodes acquiesce
One and One in the same
Eleven


Encompassed by the fear of n’er to return,
Broken compass sells the self, no direction, no sail to set
No soul to barter, no fare for the ferryman
Failure to launch on his anchored dock
A clock that strikes midnight every hour, on the hour
Of the orr


Bending time and space, riding the continuous continuum
A boy, A man
A mortal, A god
Universal multiverses and theories of relativity within the abyss
Through the wormhole, a bird’s eye view


Uncertain to dive, complacent to wade, the daunting task he swims
Across the fold, reaches the opposing shore, touches the other face:
The place, space, ultimate destination
Is Equivalent to the vantage’s origin
The rock he once stood from, he stands on again

Tuesday, June 14, 2011

Picture Show

Photo via : Chromasia.com

The night canvas alight o’er ones in the dark
Each of their hues tightly together, some touch, and mix
Others alone, too opaque to be construed
Their reciprocal in the sky, a splattered Pollock:
Confused, lonely, ill, famished
Those with a voice and without an audience, the brush won’t touch

Family nests, nestled so tightly, far apart
Lies that lie between them, lingering stench in the hot June air
Infidelities and transgressions of a resistant society to progression
Counted sheep medicated and love drunk by a Disney theme park ride
Never seems to halt, or never began from vertices restricted

The mowed lawns of repetitiveness, their stoic patterns a staunch reminder
While bonfires incinerate any free thought in relative vicinity
Pets chained to makeshift jails, just as their masters to themselves
Diamond rings and brick walls, heavy concrete rocks carried to symbolize
Making a greater existence for a poorer one
Chastise the pulpit politician as the convenient store for collective problem

New World Order
Check, please

Please check the cerebral cortex of these
Animals who lost their heart, their minds and their purpose of focus
At the drop of a hat, or a glimmer in the room, the span of attention gone awry
For a quick shag, an easy out, a rain delay, shock and awe

As the astro-anomalies of good fortune traverse the universe with their mind
Their pen, their swords, their identity for meaning
The willows weep for themselves,
Fermenting into the Earthly seat they’ve planted

No remorse
No regret, none for the simple invasive species
The garden hose run dry, the well depleted of resourcefulness
Replaced and flooded with the substance of lacking substance
Recreation and burning, cloned spores

Yet there’s illumination amongst them in the corner
Those not sitting quietly in the crowded theatre
At a show they weren’t in line for, a silent film that screams
What we should do, how we should be, where we should go

The Originals, the colorblind
The black and white that live in the grey
They watch the violets and the greens, those familiar  
Products of primary colors, the secondary and tertiary offspring
And view the curtain call finale’
A final brush stroke, the sky dance ceases
Leaving exhales and smoke plumes


Sunday, May 29, 2011

The Hive

Photo by:  Scott Wyden
Submitted for "One Shoot Sunday" Photo Prompt Challenge at onestoppoetry.com

The ambition of the miniscule in a conglomerate ideal
Unscathed canvas for the primordial to unearth
Take fruit to make preservative
An artificial flavor
A chemical imbalance of power
A pesticide

In time, they march to Sousa’s drums
Of Creationism
Of Capitalism
Of Nationalism
Socialism, Darwinism
Natural Schisms to draw, or paint the lines between
Imaginary blocks, states, borders and territories
Pissing ants and drone bees
Their excruciating work to build a better Hive

Cyclical repetition, hierarchy scolding hot as the Son they work beneath
Serfs on turf : Endangered, indentured servants
But not for game, or personal gain, nor for the slice of pie
For the whole sphere

As the Queen sits on her throne, observing the pawns
The Bishops slant their eyes and dot their teas with bagged lye
While the Red Knights threaten adjacent colonies, waging single letters as entire wars
And the sandcastles stand teetering upon unsteady ground, a cowardly King, weeping solely

Vast expeditions to find a crumb and reverberate the news
Only to turn a page, and invade the picnic
Insecticide for a greater good, however morose it immediately seems
The crown will nod, and all is forgiven

Masons poisoned into the delusion of “Free”
Combed by the sweet nectar of honey, unaware, of the sweet life lived short
All the ingenuity of beings
All the will and nature’s instilled equations
Can’t save them from themselves
From their Queen
From one another

From their Mother

With one swoop, She wipes them flat
With one shake, She brings them to their knees
With one spew, She liquefies their hearts and clouds their judgment
With one stomp, the Sandcastle is no more

Synchronized March of the futile continues
April showers us with remorse to regenerate
Yet the May bees and Forget-me-nots
Repeatedly forget

Sunday, May 15, 2011

Fibonacci's Field


Photo by: Fee Easton
Submitted for "One Shoot Sunday" photo prompt challenge at onestoppoetry.com

Preface: The Fibonacci sequence is the series sum of its predecessors. (i.e. 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, etc…) This sequence is found everywhere in nature, from tree growth, to the florets of flowers, to the hives of bees. It can be applied to the growth of almost every living thing, including humans. Each line of my poem is composed of a number of syllables that "swing" on the Fibonacci...

1 Seeds
2 Planted
3 In our minds
5 Uninhibited
8 To grow, to lean, to reach for more

8 In infancy, ponder the “why”
5 Observe the like-mind
3 Seek “how come”
2 Outcome
1 Here

1 There
2 In youth
3 We spring out
5 Fall; then Spring again
8 Ebb and flow : Life’s changing seasons

8 Adolescents compete for sun
5 The light that matters
3 Merely one
2 Gives life
1 Chance

1 Bloom
2 Expand
3 Spiral up
5 Long for sky unknown
8 Beautiful organic conscience

8 The vast arena we play in
5 Chaotic cosmos
3 Pale Blue Dot
2 That’s us
1 Now

1 Then
2 Future
3 Successors
5 Offspring of our spores
8 Will find a new field to call “home”

8 The few, with petals on display
5 Reach, and lead the way
3 Nary wilt
2 Divine
1 Swing


Sunday, April 17, 2011

"Things" : (A Writer's Alchemy)

Photo courtesy of Central Penn College: "The Boyer House"

The thing is

When one ventures from the abode;
                That comfortable home in our cranium
                What we previously held back,
                We tend to, (and tend to see)

The things
that weren’t there before
                But always were:

The mossy outcrop where a plastic bag
clings to a twig, and waves as the star spangled banner
of disregard

The fenced line between two pastures
The opposition of juxtaposed ownership
And different aspirations

Hatfields,
McCoys,
…Coy ones in hats
Feuds and friendships

The cables between telephone poles
That traverse the horizon, carrying text
Homes with gazebos, never used
Back porch clutter
Unkept lawns, a garden, a gnome

The thing is
                These things make us, tell a story
They show we are here, and we have placed
Something, anything on ground or reached for sky
                That we knew we’d never reach
A welcome mat to our homes, hearts, and our minds

The lineage we have
                Ingredients for the recipe of me
It’s a cosmic soup, but the past ones
                Have such an enigmatic effect, as a dim light
                In the Gobi desert of our conscience

The lone spot in barren land
The Unavoidable;
Circus elephants in the room:
                The tree line of family.

The thing is
                This tree, can be
                Elegant, elaborate, laced with royal branches
                And pretty leaves
Or low, to the ground, just trying to be
In a world of devour and survive

Recessive, or Progressive
Painful, or Pleasurable

But that’s not the point
                Or a tip to wait

The thing is
                This beauty and tragedy lies in every entity
                All the living and all the dead
                There’s poetry, there’s decency
                There’s a place to dig deep

and yet

We must respect the lining
The black lining
The white lining
The shade of grey

The thing is
                 We begin to realize
                 Eyes go wide, open and unable to slumber
                 Insomnia lends to obsessive voyeurism
Because beauty and ugliness still wage a war

The thing is
                There’s things we don’t know
                That we’ll never understand, but strive to

But at the very least

We’re doing to try.
Writing to reach “We.”
Me?
That (I think)
Is The Thing.