If Poetry Could Take A Form

I.       Antiphon

There comes a point in time, when man must accept his limitations, and proceed to take one step before the next, over mortal boundaries, unto sacred earth.

Saturn watched

Paradox of one

Ra gazed

Incandescence unto one

Mercury observed

Confection baked for one

Hypnagogic ambience was but a vale away

When a Psychopomp gestured capaciously

Amaurotic visions darkened blur.

Grew typhlotic as distance stirred

Cays of dryads peak to view

As a Simurgh came to me,

Instructing I wake,

Believing what’s felt despite unseen

A merger, spanning time and space,

Unearthed wonder, as an angel

Saw a gateway to Utopia,

Deep beneath the flaws and scars

Every word, every page

The emotions, the tides

Shifting shape and size

Disbelief dragged its chain

But a pinch gently reminded

Of the reality in possibilities

Astonished, stunned

That reciprocation was alive,

That the first words of chapters new,

Had been scribed; are focusing

Yet fear—

Reincarnates failures past,

Doubt—

Reinforces each my lacks

Pessimism—

That words so real

Must have been spoken

Erroneously still

Yet,

This is when

Garuda came

And spoke to me

Of you.

II. Concomitance

Is it possible for the purities of spirit to instinctively demand, those unlikely origins to isochronally clasp each the other apparition by their hand?

Can the synchronal ideations be cast aside, as simply the spawn of chance and eyes?

Or can a case for fate be made, where kismet is positioned as a postulate, therefore enabling dissemination’s spread, promulgating providential bliss?

III.    Elusory of Preallusion

Divinity’s dominion, sovereign’s soul, dictates prescience as the commodities of pagan pageantry.  Yet, as I’ve always pondered, how one can blindly agree to things they cannot know.  How can one discard the possibility of oracles?  I believe in us all, lays dormant, a sense of the mystical, in which the governance is only as limiting as the mind will permit upon its own capacity.  Everyone experiences scenarios, scenes, where definition will not suffice, where explanation is as impossible to describe. 

Leading towards my own awakening,

I began to see, something positive

Should arrive, through the poetical

side of self.  A premonition, prior to 

those initial words, instructed that

circumstance will alter and happiness

shall return, to covet me completely.

And so the creation of the poetical psyche was born

An infinite quester was upon a search, for the elusive grail of verse.  Directionless it wandered, dimensions vast and wide, spreading declarations of imagery, to any and all who would listen, yet still, even after its voice grew heard, emptiness pervaded verb.  Wander more the spirit would, until through thoroughfare its feet would arrive, upon a palace, where the electricity of the flesh, sparked, as if this feeling it had never lost.  Alive it grew, understood the premonition, perhaps was not for inspiring the happiness of others, but for a joy to burgeon back within.

Hours would be spent, in contemplation of each term, the puzzles that the mind creates, the ideology of mystic space.  Soon thereafter the psyche knew, it no longer had to stifle muse, and like its favorite pet, the phoenix of the sky, the psyche fell that night, purged of all it held to know, the form once taken grew ablaze, and quickly each flame was snuffed to grave.  But for a moment, formless-in void, the spirit was reborn; now limitless is the extent of its poetry.

Time would blur the days from day, the hours from hour, the minutes away.  Eventually it knew what must be done, it must thank his muse, his source of inspiration.  And so, this is, exactly what the psyche did.  Yet, little did it know back then, the inspiration would become its friend, and teach together each they would, of the every possibility in life through verse.

Sand would sift, as it does, yet, one must wonder, where the course preplanned, would direct.  Reading pages from each corner the world, the psyche learned much, understood in ways it had since forgot.  Yet in the palace he would see, words distinct, as if each was patterned directly from the breath it breathed.  It wouldn’t walk too far the plank, yet to acknowledge such would be to take, a piece away, from his belief in poetry.  But he’d learn, his imagination, was in tune.

Now everyday the psyche floats on air.  Seeing signs spring from everywhere.  On packages of chocolate bars, atop an old poster for a Jodi Foster film, from a man, calling to his daughter, misbehaving, in the grocery lane, to a scary movie star, it now only sees its muse face.  But strange as it may seem, in play of words, no longer does it see her there, instead it rearranges each word round, and in subtle combinations of space and sound, it now sees itself as within found.

IV.  Every Good Play, Must Have A Song

Ivory keys turn in note; sparkling symphonic tones it wrote, higher than a cloud above, the music stirs emotive flow:

I’d like to wear you like a talisman

To keep me safe from harm

Hold you to my heart

Listen as the words sway

To elocution’s presence found

I’d like to hide you in an amulet

Protect me from myself

Hold you, upon my heart

As the hours sift along

To that lonely spot,

But with you near,

This distortion,

Will never reappear

I want to wear you like agate

And fall asleep within your milky gaze

While your chalcedonic curves

Elicit the colored bands they make

V.  Arousal, In the Land of Hades

Persephonic

Days split

Between

Here,

And the dreams

The poppy instills

Every instance

All fragments of

Traverse the numb

Every, each

Thought here now

Arouses consciousness

Of self.

The poetry of life

Is omnipresent

If only we all choose to look

The poetry of tomorrow

Resides, in part,

With the decisions we make today

The poetry of the long ago

Sure, it will echo,

Yet only if you allow it in

The poetry of the soul

Is always on

Awake or sleep,

It may be quiet

Yet if you listen

You’ll hear it speak.

Seemingly, since this poetry grew, from ghost-like fantasy, to a befriended reality, I’m aroused always and evermore.

If poetry could truly take a form…

Where Once Walked Marsh

Where once walked marsh

For questing’s grail

Worldly weights hinged upon-

-Our unpropitious victory.  We could not fail

Complication unlaced her dress,

Prompting route to fork its trail

To the right, a hazed fog split us half,

Spawning a hash of Dilaudid canaille

To port, suspicion’s fever flared complicit,  

As rancor stirred in dubiety’s gale

Where once walked marsh,

Through vales unkempt

Sifted sway of silted limb

Marred by visions dreamt

The never ceasing eyes of foliage

Pry through vine and draw contempt

Stanchion’s fossils ivy-covered,

Memorialize winnowing’s failed attempt

All shapes of creatures never seen,

Swarm the fringes of the verdant kempt

So close, now to free, yet whispers echo from the brush,

Stating, “escape you may, but you’ll never be exempt.”

From what, is all most can muster

But linger long and the thought(s) will show

Where once walked marsh

Has since been shadowed by snow

So many years have now past,

I’ve forgot how to know

In a journey of thorns, some prick while others defend

And for what, a hero’s welcome home?

At first the honor was the dignity,

The seduction and the glow

Perhaps it’s just to make the days gone appear worthwhile,

So near the grail, instead of elation, concessionary eyes back-roll

Onsets of the beholden by,

Grandeur’s chains endured through pride

Footholds first, is oft it’s last

To survive the many cracks,

One must be swift of mind

And strong with staff

But even then, the ankles may snap

Insets appear-thought not of (yet)

(yet), once renewed is now remanded back

To hope to hunt for hope

A plague to the optimist

A battle scar for most others

Where once walked marsh infused with hope,

That path, is found to be, paved by the smoke of ghosts

Where once walked marsh in boyish tread

Now stands but one of hundreds dead

Here left to hold the treasure and bring it home

To pay homage to the man now seated in the throne

As memories sort the better part of days

I often wonder if they think much of those 1000 men

Once cheered as Gods as they left bay

I wonder if they think of much, all that was lost by us,

It’s been so long I doubt they do

But I’d like to think back and pretend they do to

To the ships set to sail in the harbor

The revelry and the returning promises

Seems like all that’s gets me forward

Is a pursuit to remember, “whend-we-go”

Claudia is hosting Open Link Night over at D'Verse tonight.  The doors open at 3:00pm, and seeing it's a 1/4 past right now, the doors, I would guess to already be open.  Check out the OLN, read a ton of amazing poetry.  Every week seems to outdo the week before, which is really saying a lot, because the very first week was great.  The number of poets submitting their work has dramatically increased, which means more poems to read and more experiences to be had.  Anyhow stop on by read some great poems and if you'd like submit one of your own, I'm sure they'd love to have you:)

For my offering this week, nothing experimental as I've been doing the past few weeks, but I'm hoping you'll enjoy it.  It's a journey piece, epic poem or whatever moniker you'd like to call it.  It's loosely inspired by The Odyssey as well as Norse Myth. Varying from typical myth I thought I'd forego the battle scenes, perhaps allude to them, but make this more of a mental piece, dealing with the emotions of the questers.

The Tracks

The clicks of steel

Arouses a sedentary lustfulness,

Bearing weights- in rivet’s touch

Of nervousness, a call is made, for

Wiled distilleries- enough the rouge,

To serve as distraction’s chalice

Filled fluidly, rippling as the stones

Kick into the metal shell, elongating

At rapid speeds, in an effort to eclipse

Gravity, paired to momentum’s

Shift, an unstoppable, yet stringent path

Aimed to connect visions starts and ends

With the focal points behind the gales,

Invoking the aria of banshee’s scorn,

Are the many cites observed in flashing form

Metallic, in full fathom’s force, five

Stops left, before fingers flinch upon

The golden knob outside remorse-filled doors

Of inertia, and its many shields,

Contracted to keep safe

The fragmented and the whole

Many years left aside, those days

Before a seeker’s life enslaved

The persistence of a need for truth

That since such time has shrouded all visions clear.

And now that knowledge has been found,

The tracks are ending too.  Soon

The alchemy of the allegorical,

A pointedness that steered my course,

Shall cease as well, where soon shall come

The coda to this song, one that saw clues unturned,

Inquisitions lost and earned, pieces puzzled click to click,

Smokescreens billowed, yet somehow eyes kept track

Of all the honor in this quest, instead of answers found-

Unanticipated closure transformed, all and each-

Of my detailed notes useless, now

I ride this train from start to end, engulf the breadth of all and more,

Satisfy those unanswered words, by knowing that-

A few cars back, resides, the grail I so long sought for.

Beside the knick-knacks of upheaving roots, where new life starts

And promise soothes the distance dull, families dream of the possibilities that they hope’s in-store, rests a box of pine

That’s 84 inches long and 28 inches wide, dimensions that

Within hold the secrets of my life.  Stones spray less violently

As the steam horn hints, the tracks are about to end.

A little bit late to the party as seems to be the case with a lot of things these days, but when I read Claudia's prompt for D'Verse Saturday Poetics Link up, and then read her poem over at her site, I knew I had to come up with something, as Trains, and all they represent both historically, as a means for connecting place to place, people to people, or as the part they played in the expansion of culture and geography as well as what they mean symbolically.  So I thought about it, let a couple ideas stew a bit and came up with what you just read.

I definitely recommend anyone and everyone to go and check D'verse out and all the wonderful poets that post their work there- it's truly a bright spot for the poetic community where you'll certainly find many new poets to follow and a whole bunch of great reads.