Poetry doodles

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I write quite a lot of poetry. It's easy and quick and sort of writes itself, one line suggesting the next.

Here's one.


NIGHTMARE

Gargoyles from the sea come in
And drift the streets at night.
With iron claws and dripping jaws
And eyes all milky white,
Their freezing breath
Is plain pure death
Committed in low moans
To terrify and petrify
Down to the blood and bones.
Their shadows fall on walk and wall.
They sniff for warm red blood
To liquify and purify
Their veins, which run with mud
All full of worms and stinking germs
Mixed with pus and piss
Which make the gargoyles itch and twitch.
They breathe in rasping hiss.
Into the cellar windows crawl
Or lie flat on the lawn,
Waiting with their white spark eyes
Until the gray of dawn.
Then, slowly, dribble back again
To depths beneath the waves
To wait the rise of night and dark
In murky deep sea caves.

xmas isn't even here
but already i dread the new year
the coming gray damp cold january
is to me but depressing and scary
it's like pushing a big ol' stone yet again
up a steep slippery hill against the grain
why can't it just be december forever
and for once and all, january never?

And another, somewhat different:

FRANK IN CONTEMPLATION

They call me Frank these days

And the name implies me many ways.

My character is blunt, somewhat unswerving.

My features rather crude, I am a creature

Of many parts, they say, unnerving

In random chaotic fashion. But, anyways,

I function. Admittedly with little passion.

Those hormone fires sparking desires,

That smolders into what inspires humanity

To love, to hate, to insanity, to inanity,

Do not reside in my inside.

My thoughts have space,

Do not jumble or collide.



I am a spare parts man. My maker

Doctor Frankenstein, gathered fingertips,

A fine array of noses, lips,

A box of ears and bellybuttons, fifteen,

Pink, well formed and quite clean.

My bones had lain with frozen stones

For decades, disinterred but well matched

And sturdy. Three from an acrobat, one,

A delight, once lived inside a knight. Two patched

Out of pieces from a horse, a cat, and just for fun,

Two from a calf

And one from a giraffe.



Am I human? Mostly, I would say.

But can any normal human say more?

Speaking Frankly it seems not.

Any peek into the random mind

Would find, perhaps a common spot

Where each could join, relate.

Happily to twist and knot.

But minds are vast topologies

Teeming with mythologies.

Here and there a mountain peak

May glisten in the light

Of clean perception,

A point to guide the wild ride

We all endure for reception

Of markers inside

To know what’s wrong,

Or what might be right.

But deep down low, below

Where fantasy is spun,

Where hot blood must run

With energies that spark and glow,

Where frigid caverns harbor fears,

Stalactites bleeding tears,

Strange pallid creatures spawn and grow,

Blind, with trembling antennae feeling

To supplement their senses, reeling.

Here is where our mind appears,

Here is where the join begins,

Where necessities and desires

Ignite to free their eager djinns.



Being thus, both minus, plus

In fragments of humanity

I teeter in my loyalties.

Inflections there roil and muss.

Internally no royalties

Dictate my state of insanity.

My mind, from the good doctor’s hand

Was pieced in ways, sometimes grand,

Sometimes out of opportunity

From a mélange community.



Centrally there was the plan

To integrate disparate parts

With surgic skills and arcane arts

To merely duplicate a man.

But my baron had a mind

Of extraordinary kind.

His thoughts were rather wild and free

That wandered into rare country

And harnessed serendipity.



He viewed the brain as working space,

A foundation kind of place, a base

Whereupon to erect, construct, and intervene.

Intimations, cross connections, strange collections

From exotic sources. Monkeys, mice, even horses,

No sense to be conservative, release creative forces

And sweep the whole horizon on the biologic scene.



With appreciation and surmise

He snatched the brains for eagle eyes

And to set the world agog

Applied the slimy senses from a frog.

Out of a squid he stole great nerves

Laid out in lines, tangles, curves

To olfactions from a dog.

Thus it went, adventure bent,

And no particular intent

But merely elected eclectic enterprise

To appropriate variety to human guise.



So thus am I constituted

In ways strange and convoluted

Some parts blatant, some more muted

To contain within my brain

Much surmised and quite a bit

Simply grabbed and uncomputed.



But now the doubts, most elegant,

Are running out in this rant.

Am I animal or plant?

I really cannot say.

A few genes from mushrooms

Were inserted

(Some upright, some inverted)

Fitting in quite alright

So I’m mildly saprophyte.



The conclusion, in confusion, comes to admit

I’m a bit of this and that most adroitly fit.

My claim to humanity, although sincere,

Based on just my form is not too clear.

I walk like any bird or man

Converse like any parrot.

My fingers are slightly thick

Resembling a carrot.

I cannot classify my thoughts

As fish or fowl or oyster.

Some ideas float to me

Not fitting for a cloister.

My mosaic being borrowed with great plunder,

Is strange undoubtedly, and something of a wonder,

It partakes of living things, a smorgasbord of life.

Nothing clear nor direct, not any absolute,

Not more human than an ant, or, perhaps a newt.

I am a universal, a poem said to living,

Proteins intermingled and delightfully forgiving.



It’s not a bad thing now, amidst our human fighting

To be a being out of many, accepting, not benighting.

All living things, derive their wings,

Their eyes, their ears, their hearts,

All their bones and working things

From each other’s working parts.

For life is made to see, to hear, to dance in sunlit joy.

It matters not what parts you’ve got

Or what you might employ.

We live, we love, we reproduce,

We are of Earth and air,

We’re born to laugh and love and sing

And strike away despair.

I am a being of all of us that walk or swim or fly,

Exist in space, seize this time that flows so quickly by.

I am you and you are me, it’s all so very clear.

Our time is always merely now, our place is always here.

So join with me in ecstasy to surely be aware.

This world is made to be played, intensively to care.

^^^^
wow

Here's another:

NOT QUITE SO BRIGHT

I see the tiger in the zoo
With days and months and years
Of nothing to do.
His yellow eyes are filled
With infinities of tragedies.
This box of iron has willed
He must carry to and fro
His heavy yellow yearnings
Whose wish is just to go.

Some delinquent night I could try
To slip back here, when the moon,
Blindfolded by a cloud, its eye
Undiscerning to permit
The mice and me
A modicum of
Invisibility.

I would find the tiger’s cage unlocked.
“Come!”, I would beckon with my finger
And, in delight and surprise,
He would arise.
At first, in haste, we would not linger.
A quiet thunder in his throat
Would reveal an urgent note
And we would quickly pace
To make ourselves remote.

Through the murky alleyways
And ill-lit streets we would flee.
I would scout ahead
And he would follow me
Until we reached the sanctuary of my place
Where the doorman, ever discrete,
Would let us in
And gaze politely at his feet.

Up the elevator we would ride,
My finger on the button to my floor
With the tiger, yawning, at my side.
And then to bed
Where I would snooze
With the tiger stretched upon the rug
Which he would choose.

Next morning, in the bright of day,
We would make our plans.
I would figure out a way,
While making scrambled eggs
In several frying pans,
How we would spend our day.
But first, I must teach him
To perambulate on two legs.

That done, he’d don a derby hat,
A cut down pair of jeans
And, above that,
A sweater, turtle neck
And running shoes.
And then, we’d hit the deck.

On our morning’s stroll
He’d twitch his ears
At the taxi hoots, the buses’ growl
And suppress his disconcerting thought
About the city traffic clatter.
He will wonder why I brought
Him from his sterile sanctum
Into the nerve-wracking panic.
But it really wouldn’t matter.

Offhandedly he’d gobble down
A dog or two,
Perhaps, a pigeon and a sparrow.
This would cause distress.
I cautioned his ability
To violate finesse
He must maintain civility,
Or we’d end up in a mess.

Back at home, we’d discourse on
Basic metaphysics.
I’d do the dishes while he’d dry
And juggle them for kicks.
Nietzsche was his man, of course,
While I inclined to Kant.
He’d speak incessantly with force
With a tendency to rant.

In the end, he’d do well.
His personality was strong.
Wall Street was his first aim
But he’d ended in Hong Kong.
He’d be successful, as things go,
Being so relentless,
Becoming a rich CEO
Totally repentless.

^^^^
wish I could write like that, in a 2nd language to boot!

Here's a recent one:

THE BURNING

Time is fire.
Flames touch and contemplate
The whiz of is,
The fleeing now
And render it to dust.
One must allow
The evanescence of reality
To flow and form,
To turn and burn,
To eviscerate concern
So the lightning flash
Of instantaneity
Transforms all to ash,
To flakes and broken glass
To possibilities unrealized.
Each second is a blind step
Into the dark of what may be
Where one can only guess, not see.
One cannot spot
What is yet not.
There must still be
Some latent possibility,
Some value sense
To recompense
Cloudy unknowingness,
An egress to possess
Solidity.
It is a ghost.
At most a host to hope.
There is the lightest scent,
The vapor of an element
Of security.
A spice in air
To repair despair.
It does not sustain
Nor does it last
This whiff of God,
This gentle touch of tenderness
Cannot spare
Crumblings of reality.
There’s nothing there.
Nothing there.
Mere sweet breeze.
A caress of ease
From God knows where.

^^^^
these need to be bound in a book! maybe offer them up on amazon that way?

Thanks for the thought, but publishing seems like a pain in the ass and perhaps expensive and I have heard that poetry never sells anyway so why bother? I am an old man and have written about a thousand poems, most of them pretty crappy but a few that are fun. It's more interesting than doing cross-word puzzles.

Here's another:

WHATEVER

Whatever is the sea where we swim.
It is the sky, the air, the velvet black
Where lay the diamond stars, galactic necklaces,
The pearl moon and the ringed jewel of Saturn.
And through which the fury of the Sun dispenses life.

Whatever is the flash and vanish
Of the smallest bits of matter
That come and go in brief haunt
To jiggle emptiness into cosmos.

It is magnificence of running horses,
Terrifying flash and grumble of a lightning stroke,
The gentle sway of curtains of a heavy rain,
The majesty of a cat.

Whatever is a mother with her child,
The picket fence of day and night through time,
The mindless calamity of tsunami,
The vengeance of atomic fire.

Whatever moves the universe,
Relentless and ignorant of good or bad,
Unaware of ugliness or beauty,
Neither kind nor cruel.

Whatever made the fog the dog the flea the frog
Tyrannosaurus and Alpha Centaurus,
The apple, ant, asp and ape
Made you, made me.

Nor can we say
What it may be.

I knew somebody who with their own dime self-published some stuff because he wanted it to outlast himself. what you have written deserves no less.

Insofar as I can make out, with the USA going hell-for-leather to start an atomic war with Russia and China and the world population enthusiastically generating global warming with cheap oil and a good deal of the agriculture and fishing industries killing most of the ocean and poisoning farm products with insecticides and weird genes I sincerely doubt life on this planet will survive until the end of this century. Why fuss over poetry?

Here's another:

THE ARTIST AS TRAVELER IN TIME

Could I move through time the way I tread space
I would no more attempt to resee Caesar
Than stroll from Brooklyn out to Central Asia.
But within the tight neighborhood of my life
There are many things I would unknot and redo.
This then is the trap of traveling through time.

So a painter can revise, rethink, realign
The canvas as a total surface, so would we,
To attain a perfect life, analyze and reconsider,
Readjust each small component,
Remove a second here, a minute there,
Devise new particles of time and consequence,
Cement them tight into place.
We would become purists and at end,
Relate all to all.
It might be we could be satisfied by just one perfect moment.
All else wiped away, that moment erect in eternity .
A crystal dewdrop poised upon a green blade of summer grass
Glistening in the momentary glance of a summer sun.

that one especially resonates with me. but I am surely not unique in this respect.

Sometimes I am grabbed by history as:

WTC

Who could think of these
Two fine white shafts
Of stone and steel, keys
To something beyond utility,
More hung from the sky
Than based on solid ground,
As anything but an immensity
To delight humankind
With the capability of mind.

But things that overwhelm
Are affront to some
Whose joy resides in that realm
Where the urge to destroy
Dominates the fervor of life.
They smear excrement on white walls,
Attack Rembrants with a knife,
As it is far easier to destroy
Than to create.

No white paper fist can grasp
The totalities that cancel three thousand lives.
No net of letters express that gasp
At sounds of screaming terror, crash of flying knives
Of shattered window glass that drop with bodies
In a horrid rain down to the street
With broken stone, bent steel
In a ghastly mockery of Magritte.

A vicious gesture , both immense,
And void of any basic human sense.

Their absence now has a solidity
Greater than their presence was.
All those lives, that stone and steel
Vanished in an instant tragedy.
A moment that still seems unreal
Manufactured from pure stupidity
A glance at the space which they once held
Is a monument to the volume they had filled.
That emptiness is stronger now than anything
Which could signify what was relentlessly killed.

And, for fun:

MISTRESS'S FAREWELL


Have you ever seen a lady with fried chicken in her hair?
Or slept with thirty seagulls in very deep despair?
Have you witnessed glowing sunsets while hanging by your teeth
From a thirty meter tree with hungry roaches underneath?
Have you thrilled to singing waffles doused in motor oil
While demented chimpanzees wrapped your feet in metal foil?
Have you soared above the Andes supported by umbrellas
Lifted to the zenith by four thousand farting fellahs?
Or wandered on the shores
Of the far away Azores
While your ears were gently trembled
By the most persistent snores
Of a somnolent tarantula
In stylish striped plus fours?
If so, there is little I can add to your life.
You had better leave me now and go back to your wife.

reminds me a bit of ogden nash

Here's one on language:

MULTIPLES

If you are shocked by flocks of foxes,
Deterred by a herd of birds,
Never fear, it’s quite clear
You can be coerced by words.

Crowds of clouds, schools of fools
Probably screw up the rules,
Never mind about ghouls,
Grouping them disrupts their cools.

Rags, we know, do well in bags,
Religions have their orthodoxies,
Normally packed up in boxes,
And centipedes with lots of legs
Are shipped in bottles, jars or kegs.

Ideas move in disciplines,
Impulses shift alone.
Fears can multiply most surely
By radio or telephone.

What causes things to scatter
Or, perhaps, to clump
And what we name them may matter,
Be obvious or stump.

Classes labeling the masses
Are, of course, selective.
Questions arise, with some surmise.
Are they connective or defective?

Never mind, it’s mind that binds.
We favor generalities.
We whim their names in mental games
With uniques and pluralities.