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

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

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

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

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

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

"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.