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Hall of Inspirations 2005

DeadPoet
10 Jan 06, 17:18

Posted by peebrain on 26 November 2005

Whatever is said

Nothing is said, nothing is done,
Whatever is said and done, belongs
to stone. Written in Solomon's statutes,
it is sealed and sunken and doomed.

The body said, it is winter without cause,
it is a summer void of blooms. The
monsoon comes and passes, it belongs
to no one. Whatever is said and done,

is set to stone. A missive carved into
porous peet, then buried in layers of time.
Nothing is said, nothing is done,
It waits for no one, it waits for a chance

unveiling. Like old dithering Crone sloughing
her layers after a cycle of maid and mother,
washing the taint of worship. The pagan says nothing,
and does nothing, so everything else is forgotten

and saved in stone. The primitive hard disk,
the jargon of old tales. Saying nothing yet
hints at a fount, of truths left unsaid
and undone than revealed to one. The Solomon
songs are the most spurious ones, singing of all
and confirming none. Nothing is said and done.

Nothing is said, nothing is done.
Whatever is said, belongs to no one.
DeadPoet
10 Jan 06, 17:19

By ironoxideman posted on 27 November 2005

lament,0545

i've seen what little hope i could
in scripture,from the wise,
in all that breathe,in all that thrive
and each time,when i crest
these knolls of shortlived euphory
mounted in hope of the best
my dead weary soul is discarded
at the bottom of bogged despair,a fitful rest
and at each spot of my dismal retirement,
raised in acknowledgement,poetry in testimony of a failed test
ring such words as bitter as weedsap
a nonwithstanding requirement for an everlasting predicament.
DeadPoet
10 Jan 06, 17:21

By ShrodingersCat posted on 2 December 2005

Portulaca Rose

You gave me a flower today
plucked from the plant whose name
i can never remember
growing in the terra cotta pot
hanging by the kitchen window

You stood next to me
flower in your hands
silly smile on your face
as you wait for me to notice you
- tousled hair haloed by the
light from the flourescent lamp
that was getting rusty
and we couldn't be bothered anyway

A split second passed by
when I wanted to tell you how much
I love your artless ways

You thrust the flower towards me
with your soapy fingers
and I took it gently,
fragile little thing it was,
warm rosy blush on a dying stalk
and kissed it,

and knew, despite my thoughtless ways
you know how much I love you
anyway
DeadPoet
10 Jan 06, 17:22

Posted by peebrain on 6 December 2005

If I Close My Eyes (in the style of Neruda)

If I close my eyes and pray to an atheist god,
I can still see you, shimmering in the pale moonlight, your form
and your colour are the way I love them, infinitely.

Sometimes I catch the solemn fragrance of roses in my sky
and my twilight bows deep into destitute seas. For
you have gone, spirited away by a yearning greater than my need

If I close my eyes, I can still find that sweet, sacred spot
that once burned fires of passion, the warmth of salty air on your lips.
Where the last passion vein lies, is forever cooled by cruel waters of mourning.

My nocturnal regard slumbers fitfully. It is as if my heart has flown from
its prison to call to you, to want you, to rest on your shoulder, to whisper
promises over and over again, on a net of joyous song.

If I close my eyes and pray to an atheist god,
I can still feel your fingers entwined with mine,
so tightly we held each other, there is no beginning
nor end; a mirage of twin loving souls dancing on water.

-----------------------------------------------------------

How to Write a Petrachan Sonnet

My stomach is lead with a bottomless dread
Trembling fingers mark a trepiditious hand
A fool's venture - this unpopular trend
Unveils a hack poet who's no Right Said Fred.
Where should I start and how should I tread
Rambling thoughts, the mind's fair-weathered friend.
On paper no doubt these words seem grand
But damn those critics, my efforts they'll shred.

A scenario so dire it's become a refrain
An unfortunate tale I loathe to relate
Winter or autumn - or May's summer rain
Beauty and Nature form this form's template

But so long as there's you - my bee in my bonnet
It's easy to write a Petrachan Sonnet

---------------------------------------------------------------

Estella (a character study)

Foolish, common boy-man, save your cheap
valentines for one more deserving of banal art,
Not me. I have no heart, no sympathy, no softness --
only coarse paper clenched into a contrived rose.

I am cold as insincere praise, perhaps
more subtle, but not less parched. Ring the bell
if you seek a lifetime of deception and regret,
my snares are the finest in the land. Otherwise

bury my name in your ledger book, your dreaming
nightmare. What -- of this dull emotion? Desire is only
a feeling of lack, better discarded than lingered on
your quixotic lips. Visionary boy -- or man,

I could be studied, torn or even burnt --
Don't forget, paper is only an element of ash.
DeadPoet
10 Jan 06, 17:25

Posted by peebrain on 6 December 2005

Goodbye

When the trees have faded and the skies turn to grey
When the streets have emptied at the end of day
There is one last passenger left standing by
the silo, willing to say, but never could, goodbye.

When I am gone and the transit tube stops
short of driving me away and back to you
When the band stops playing our song, hopped
on to new repertoire for applause and Motown blues

there is one thing left that never could be said
without blanching, a sudden blood rush to the head.
If motive makes the fact, then you live in dreaming
and bound to leave in wake, a motion most telling -

There is leaving and there is leaving you, but
I'd rather say hello than goodbye to you.

---------------------------------------------------------

Bone

It begins as a
symptom of disease

(a sudden dryness in your mouth
and you squeeze your heart with
an incredulous fist)

Slowly, your mind clouds over,
butterscotch taffy spun
into endless strings of gold;
You think you've mastered the
Midas touch -- except
all you've really done is to
give yourself a next generation
of cavities and a blackhole of
debiltating shame.

Nobody asks for it --
just a smile or swing of her hair
or a careless arm flung
across another's shoulder --
that's enough to creep up
and eat you inside out.
Like a glass splinter worked into
your heart, bit by painful bit.

This is a bone-hurt. Not just
a hurt in the heart or a throbbing
in the head. But a true-blue,
bees-knees sort-of bone-hurt.
It rushes up the tiny fissures in the bones,
and expands like a belligerent Gloop,
until your bones explode
into a firework of splinter and dust.

This is a bone-hurt. It gets under
your skin and fills you up and rips
you apart from inside.

And it begins
as a symptom of disease.

------------------------------------------------------

Cause And Mystery

She collapses on cold, glistening tiles
still slippery from rancid soap,
contemplating, oozing acrid earnestness,
the speckled edge of Daddy's razor
palmed from his vanity in the morning.
She's had one too many downers:
Cause and mystery turned to rust.

Her eyes are misty from the steam;
It's 3 o'clock, and her face is the colour
of cold, dead leaves. Fingernails chewed
to the quick, unlined skin scrubbed cleaned
from the pawing of Daddies twice her age.
Limbs akimbo, in a wordless plea:
Cause and mystery turned to rust.

The cellphone lay in pieces, next to
her heaving skin; underneath her socks
and toes were blistered burns from
the games that people play, working
pallid skin into knots and ribbets plucked
from rooftops and bearded barley.
Misty eyes, wide in wordless plea:
Cause and mystery turned to rust.
DeadPoet
10 Jan 06, 17:27

Posted by peebrain on 6 December 2005

Perfidia

Delusive hope, so often
the fickle partner of strong love
dwells in the well of lost plots,

where malformed ideas ferment
in the ironic shapes of narrative streams,
permanently dammed

'til an invisible hand offers
salvation to all who are faithless,
boojummed into a cynic's myopic view

from cliches and ideals and scorn
a faint gossamer thread is woven,
strung across one world and the next,

always in search for the elusive raven,
a cunning jester festering in Poe's wake,
he clenches melancholy like a worn silk scarf.

Within the rubik cube of space and time
flies a scarlet ibis banished
from a rime of sea and salt, silently watching

Delusive hope, so often
the fickle partner of heady wine-love,
curve her lips in a Sissyphus smile.

-----------------------------------------------------

To Wurtzel, whose pain is human and strange

Twenty-three pills crushed, bent double
from the grind lined up like smartly dressed soldiers
shipped off to war; they march on plastic countertops
stained saffron with coffee or backs of moleskins -
ready at a moment's notice
to rape onion sinuses
with a single dynamite charge, a deafening roar
no one else hears but you and I
they are our lovers, these enigmatic agents
always within reach, by the telephone or the rolodex
a wallflower's best friend at a book signing
unselfish while others wear thinly
as we wail, "me, me, me" in piteous need
for the next quick fix, to sleep
to eat, to speed.

----------------------------------------------------

The Pleasure of Seeing You From Afar

The pleasure of seeing you from afar
is a pen tipped in iron --
words flow bold and resolute until you wander
carelessly into my path, and stop the world on its point.

I have circumscribed my world around you.
It is impossible to love you twice; but I listen
with my eyes -- for the air that you sigh is
uttered, vibrant, shaped, articulated like
sonorous thunder in the skies of skies

It is impossible to love you twice,
yet the beauty of those in transition, and those in isolation
paints passion like a requiem for a blood-filled vein.
A poet's words simply are. They are both the void and
the space that fills. Every excess is a mistake.

The pleasure of seeing you from afar,
is why I've built a colonnade for my dreams,
surrounded it with intervals, colours, even echoes
of a narcissus's whim, if only -- if only
for the simple pleasure of seeing you from afar.
DeadPoet
10 Jan 06, 17:27

Posted by peebrain on 9 December 2005

if i, were you

if i were you not;
the moon is thinner
than fine, white hair is
passion playing, over

pale stricken, a song
thing simply confusion
on the laps shifting tercets;
poems revolving in between

you were I not;
the moon is the orb
on my thistle church,
forgetful like fish
white lips --

red vinegar
wine; rum running
on a sun shiny
thread -- if
i were not you
i am trapped in.
your air and
the sour seasons
of good-days,
in-between byes.
DeadPoet
10 Jan 06, 17:42

By peebrain posted on 6 December 2005

you tore me apart (in the style of e.e. cummings)

you tore me apart (i tear open my heart)
but i gather the shards, i am never without it
(if you go, i go where you go); and whatever
is left is by me for your leaving, my darling
i want
no love (for you have gone, my church) i fear
no sorrow (for wisely i know you only, my pale)
and it's you are whatever my senses decree
and whatever my thoughts will whisper is you

here is the truest torment that everybody knows
(here is the fount of the fount and the hearth of the hearth
and the fire that burn like ire in the skies; which sinks
lower than a bottomless pit or confederate lie)
and this is the sorrow that's keeping the past apart

you tore me apart (i tear open my heart)
DeadPoet
10 Jan 06, 17:42

By xking posted on 8 December 2006

This time last year

This time last year,
I began a journey with her.
A journey so special,
together we travelled.

Through mountains and ridges,
our love crossed all bridges.
Through all good and bad times,
The ups and down this twelve months.

And as i look back on the year that passed.
This one thing i'm still so sure.
The best thing which i've done last year.
Was to find someone like her.
DeadPoet
10 Jan 06, 17:43

By peebrain posted on 8 December 2005

Island State

I could never keep track of all the names
the critics claim for my beloved,
a once-colony of sapphire isles squeezed
on a pinhead of a city state.
More than just Safire, the caning
of Michael Fay, Singapore is
the apostrohpe before a stop --

An iron tree raised above a colonial crop,
roots unseen, it blooms in waterless shade.
DeadPoet
10 Jan 06, 17:44

By peebrain posted on 9 December 2005

Solitude Standing

I soak up the sun from a seat at Starbucks,
it is solitude's port of call,
serving fixes in a spoon, to a grim republic
whose trappings peel like a vinyl floor.
On the body, on my skin, is a layer of something
that I squirm, eel-like, from within.
This is not me. I am not of this
burning buoy dictating the last hour
of a deceased pyre, raging against the light.
Instead, I fold the edges of my arms and read
to the be-bop beat, wondering why
strange solitude chose pandemonium to rest its feet.
DeadPoet
10 Jan 06, 17:45

By HENG@ posted on 10 December 2005

Death of an Angel

White feathers scattered,
Drifting in the wind.
Drops of black blood,
Stains sparking wings.

Crumpled beauty lies,
Shattered visage of peace.
Darkness glowing brighter,
Light of being cease.

Unspoiled love divine,
Adoring pollution of hate.
Lost innocence of heaven,
Hell's dawn mankind's fate.

----------------------------------------------------------

Do You Believe in Magic?

Do you believe in magic?
White rabbits in top hats?
Pretty girls sawn in half?
Tricks and shows and parlour acts?

Do you believe in magic?
Charms and chants all kept in sacks?
Mighty warlocks in darkest armour?
Ladies in scarlet and cats in black?

Do you believe in magic?
Diamonds of power and enchanted pearls?
Runes and symbols that heal or kill?
Boys who sleep and wake up as girls?

Do you believe in magic?
Dolls who come alive at night?
Pretty toadstools in a ring?
Faeries dancing in moonlight?

Do you believe in magic?
In Ragwitch Lilim and evil spells?
Doorways to another place?
Portals unto nineteen hells?

Do you believe in magic?
Ancient ones with dark visions?
Nyarlathotep and the end of the world?
Elder Gods on death missions?

Do you believe in magic?
In strange things unexplainable?
If it happened before your eyes,
Would you run and tumble?

Do you believe in magic?
I must say I do.
I started believing in magic,
When I saw the great Cthulhu.
DeadPoet
10 Jan 06, 17:46

By peebrain posted on 13 December 2005

if babel teeth and babel tongue

if babel teeth and babel tongue
weaves a wire rope sling
of loosely stranded vowels:
we could a syntax have
without parentheses,
a mere mutter to invoke
comprehension. A gust rigging

your long slow tones and my
staccato speech into a massive
sail we will. On the the river Nice,
you and I lament, la-la-la,
and the water rewinds like film
reversed on its sprockets

if babel teeth and babel tongue
captures, on a double exposure,
what we used to be, I could rent
the distance between us
with adjectives, sweet memoirs
of a sunkissed negative.
DeadPoet
10 Jan 06, 17:47

Posted by ShrodingersCat on 19 December 2005

Emissary of the moon

He comes
touching and leaving
going and coming
teasing sorrows
catching her lightly
and letting go;

taken by the wild wind
a careless smile dancing lightly
across lips pouring
into the embrace of fluid dreams

turbulent trails
left behind in
tumultuous sand
pouring into the embrace of fluid dunes
sparks dancing lightly,
wildly in the wind,
catching her light
teasing the shadows
coming and going
touching and leaving
shattered silver behind
DeadPoet
10 Jan 06, 17:47

By preya posted on 19 December 2005

Dusty keys

the years lie thick on
the last child in an emptied home
sitting in a corner
an old dream
waiting...

let's indulge in one last song
i know you'd like to dance again
even if it's only to a memory

for you've grown old and gray
my half-forgotten friend...
we've all grown old and gray
inside

lift the cover in a cloud of age
and the laughing notes are so familiar
if just a bit
out of place
though my fingers have grown and changed
the song is still there
if just a bit
faded...

now all the strings have loosened half a note
and the childish melody is playing
in mournful minor
instead

then the movers drag even you out with a clatter
and i can't hear the dusty keys
anymore
DeadPoet
10 Jan 06, 17:48

By peebrain posted on 22 December 2005

the faces of god

My god is never your God never is
a personification of something impersonal
like dull newsprint tracts and craftwire truths
that you twist with pliers and ply like desire.
My god is a god without capital, it is a faith
without a name -- as natural as the turns and tides
from the moon and back; as comfortable
as the comfort of breathing the line
of life and death is my god is my god.

My sacrament is the celebration
of an inherent good, that lasts
from one iota of humanity to the last
vanquished spark of thought.
It neither capricious nor vengeful
nor a summation of all the things you took
for granted and lost. My god is a god
that inscribes the consequences of folly
into limestone that refuses to be swept away.

My god is as imperfect as I am.
But it is stronger than I
am stronger than free will. It bends with
the wind but never uproots: sturdy branches
from which integrity is born. My god
is a kaleidoscope that permutates planes
like a fan of cards by a carafe of wine.

My god is a god without capital,
my god is a god as imperfect
as a homily without words: a tabula rasa
once written and scratched on a slate
is my god: the many faces of a divine
that I see in fellow men, and I strive,
and I strive to live my life searching for
unsung psalms and elusive tenets:
to live my life with grace, integrity
and a love that is mine is my god.