Hall of Inspirations 2006
-
Posted by peebrain on 9 March 2006
Tonight, my dreams
Tonight my dreams will wear away the wind,
as the willow bends her knowing head. She weeps.
On painted silence a jasper boat will linger
by a sunless sea, mooring for the morrow.
She braves your voice, a treacherous tide
sunning the pale lids of jadeite islets.
Your eyes, the sublime blue of deadly ether.
Tonight my dreams will wear away the wind,
it will graze the autumn meadows,
slanted like my unappeased vows --
it will unravel the last chorus from an ancient book:
my fiction weaving, my inarticulate lies. -
Posted by peebrain on 9 March 2006
Angel Wings
I am the sole survivor
of the red heat that swarmed into our town
seventy years ago, before the bugles
cracked in stunned abandonment,
before the streets collapsed from the insanity
of kinsmen running like yahoos with liquid skin
pooling around their knees, eyeballs bulging from
the simple physics of expansion.
My business is words, yet there is none
left to explain the vast
penumbra of white amber black.
I am the sole survivor,
I am alone with the dead.
Scraping congealed veins and muscles
in strips, off cobble stones on streets where
I had my first kiss, my second, my third --
then rinsing them in a soup of lye and thyme.
I hurl sated buckets over the bridge like
showers of red roses trailing a bride's veil.
From our withered hearts, perhaps
a mass murderer lurks, waiting to strike,
waiting to dig his bloody chipped claws
into an artery, sever with a flick of his --
I am the sole survivor,
trapped in a deconstructed armoire,
devious splinters reaching into hell
to raise fire and brimstone to my knee.
The sea is a boiling crimson,
while vultures watch the skies hungrily
with their putrid beaks. They mourn for what
is denied to them: the scent of decay
steeping in rot. They stuff promises
in my mouth and cackle as I vomit
them out onto my feet.
I am the sole survivor,
but penance will come in time:
I fasten crude leather straps
on blistered, mangled limbs,
draw bloody curlicues on waxened feather sheaths.
On my angel wings -
protruding in stark relief - I rub
salve dangerously, with simmering intent.
As I stood tightly at the precipice,
throwing my hair back as my last act of defiance:
Everyone forgets that Icarus also flew
before his fall. It is the same when love fails,
and breaks Atlas's courageous back.
I may have come to the end of my triumph,
but this will not be my failing:
In falling, I savour flight's sweet delight. -
Posted by preya on 11 March 2006
people
bleeding into a bowl where they
collect this sort of stuff
and as the edge of pain dulls into
biting
the claws of sinners add salt to the
invisible wound
people, people, people
push and shove towards the stars
so they can throw them down to the
savage garden
where lips caress daggers
and even the sweetest
especially the sweetest
mask the taste of
acid poison
lost and battered in a world of
deaf taxi drivers
and cold, glossy eyed
soft toys
a world of inky pens that
bleed ice blue, and
fade
away
when the rain falls down
and everything is a maze and mirror of
grays
it's colour, they swear, but
you know what you
feel
people, people, people
glancing into pools of water
with distorted perfections
that their reaching fingers ripple and
kill
grasping in vain
but it's not my fault
run, run, as fast as you can
but the road is an elaborate circular trick
with well placed tripwires
of words
and of razor blade glances
till you fall and
bleed
into a bowl where they collect this sort of stuff
and then they'll leave you like a
grownup's rag dollie
somewhere in the mist of
lost time
grandmama, grandmama
what big teeth you have... -
Posted by peebrain on 12 March 2006
Sedition
I depise you.
Not because your skin is the color of warm liquid chocolate,
not because your eyes are the hue of warm cerulean blue.
I despise you,
because I warm to a conduct tending to treason,
because I love to break your spirit like iron in a cryogenic cell,
brittle and unregarded.
It is that simple, my slate is a harsh pallor of titanium white.
So what if you descend into blackholes of desire like everyone else?
"Elses" judge as swiftly as I, only I forget to keep my mouth shut.
I despise you,
for worshipping a pandemic of idols that grow out of fashion
as callously as you switch coloured contact lenses,
for sloughing your face in an acid bath, bleaching your roots
to blend into the fringes of another faceless crowd.
I despise you
for maintaining a pretense of Christian civiility behind your boxy glasses,
for victimizing sweet, honest folk, whose sin was investing in your friendship scam.
So what if your skin is a pale sickly yellow? Your heart is infinitely sallower
like mine, only I forget to keep my mouth shut, and bleed my sleeve for all to see. -
Posted by LazerLordz on 12 March 2006
Cry Freedom
See the chair, see the door.
Wonder in your dusty mind what lies within,
what lies in marveled ruin,
whether anyone cares if you are seen.
Take the step, jump the Brooklyn,
steal mines from Picatinny Arsenal?
Your friends sing to you,
they serenade you with
a post-Orwellian monkey symphony,
a miasma of cackles.
Do you see your life, your destiny
plucked before their time
by a man earning three green slices
of Americana Redux;
the antithesis
of a Tokyo kogal who
left her noodle cup
lying in the autumn breeze.
Live hard.
Ticket valid for a single entrance. -
Posted by ironoxideman on 13 March 2006
to grow a rose?
to grow a rose
but to know not how
perhaps one should
smother the young seed
with all the warmth one has
and let loose a deluge
of uncompromising hope -
Posted by peebrain on 14 March 2006
Deadlock
I'd love to own an Olivetti, but I am sixty years too late.
So I raise a silver screen instead, who raises a pixelated brow
in finesse, and sneers at fickle filamental thought.
No longer content with waiting, he seeks pleasure with static.
Even grown-up words have ceased to make sense.
Adjectives like "staunch" and "profound" easily twist
themselves into dyslexic cameos, stilted and profane.
Elsewhere a bohemian crowd breaks gamely in song.
I shut it off, choosing to let restless hunger feed off
professional fear. It drips stealthily from unsteady fingers.
Raucuous twenty-somethings laugh and jeer, not caring
that I have wrapped myself in a wet, sweat blanket,
that I tremble as a gut-chill pierces the base of my spine,
and lingers in a needling pulsing shock.
For me, I whisper, for me, for me , for me,
over and over again as I will silent fingers to speak.
Where inspiration breaks apart chunnelling pistons,
and resets tousled junctions in delicate silicon circuits,
my dead calm lover evades. Coyly, I chase her in a labyrinth. -
Posted by peebrain on 14 March 2006
Coming home
My father wore his skin like a sewn-in shroud,
when he died his belly sighed and his eyes grew wide:
a pale moon smile glazed his fine porcelain face.
On the seventh day, the priest knocked on our doors,
flung rancid flour on the oak of our floors, as if it was his right.
He was right, the dead knock on doors in the thick of night.
When the clock chimed twelve, my mother, turned matriach by living,
heaved a string-reddened cleaver with all her corded might,
her sudden wail loud enough to still the living and raise the dead.
Tonight my father strolled on a pavement of white.
I could have sworn that I heard him laugh as he shrugged
away his souless shroud and sucked on the marrow of melting wax. -
Posted by Bluesky_Liz on 15 March 2006
Stay by the body
I remember little of the moment death touched;
I can recall only that deep-throated rumble
and the smell of burning hair and grass. Overhead,
the sun winked goodbye as ash-gray clouds
devoured her face, her light.
Then I was aware, seeing all and around at once;
I saw my form lying heavy on its side, my face,
gray; my eyes, shut. I sat on a rock, weighing
choices: to stay or to leave. I decided itÂ’s best
to stay by the body.
Time passed, marked by shine and fade,
visitations by mud-caked mongrels, flies
pregnant with eggs and scavenging ants.
IÂ’ve scared them off; my formless presence,
a presence nonetheless.
Then came the servants of dismemberment;
single-celled masses undid my body inside out,
outside in.
They distributed my flesh without permission
until bones lie naked, exposed to the weather
that will beat them with water, wind and ice. Still
I remain, I must stay by whatÂ’s left here of me.
I have forgotten what else there is. -
Posted by dsnake1 on 15 March 2006
It's cold out there
it's cold out there
even for a ghost like me
trapped in the realms
between the living
and the damned
once
i saw you wept
at my tombstone
your fingers brushing
the marble
as you once
brushes my hair
tonight i sat
by your bedside
the room lit faintly
by moonlight
the stars spoke
of different lifetimes
i was just looking at you
your eyelids fluttered
in fitful sleep
i wanted to touch you
to brush your hair
but
i'm afraid
it might startle you
because once
you called out my name
tried to stretch out
your hands to me
and then fear gripped you
like a vice
and you switched on
the lights
my touch is cold
my touch is icy cold
and yes
ghosts do cry
not the salty tears you shed
the air just wavered
like sea fog
a cold draft swirled
frosty breath
to every nook
find another woman
who will love you
brings back the warmth
to your life
and then i will
go
peacefully..
till then
i'm sorry, you shivered
even under the sheets
but i just can't help it
even divided by barriers
of space and time
i love you too much
i love you too much.. -
Posted by KittynMeow on 15 March 2006
The Dance (2)
A lone shade
mutely waits, breathing
snake-like wisps spiraling
in the humid breeze.
A nameless tune
hummed softly, solo
against the distant chorus
of midnight traffic.
The corner window
on the top floor,
singled out
from the fluorescent parade.
Twin silhouettes
waltzes, on the lighted screen,
tangled and intertwined
in a liberated dance.
A callous epitaph
mourned to opened eyes,
dissipating the warmth
of the forgotten spectre. -
Posted by ironoxideman on 20 March
litany for an apology
Sorry to you,one most esteemed
who,if you never deemed to show
your most desired,coveted countenance
i would persist in my dreams of you,
deck and frame your obscured image
with cherries,roses and starlight
Sorry to you,one most beloved
for having wrecked your nerves,
that our brief ties you sever
and from thence my name you
thrust into the channels of the lowest
frequency
Sorry to you,one most sought,
for in our daily exchanges
your presence in my life grew familiar
such that i commit sacrilege
against the sanctimony of -
what we had between us,now stripped of its flesh
Sorry to you,one most unyielding
apologies for i never articulated
those words that might have rekindled
the ebbing embers of a fading dream
never been moved to brave action
impervious to conceit and self delusatory biddings
Sorry to you,one most reluctant
to the very final hour where
the cool gleam of polished intellect
stole over a vulnerable soul -
Posted by ironoxideman on 20 March
2-D Origami
you handed me a paper heart,
so carelessly,so without thought
a sheet of unread letters
you offered it to me
placed the apple in my eye
we were in Eden
and i passed it down the line,
your device of temptation
i am loath to savour the juice
you converse with serpents
you believe their lies
and you keep their forsaken aqquaintance
for an irredeemable price -
Posted by ironoxideman on 24March
GEEK TRAGEDY
stood I,
silent by the window
the stars above,now
swing into view
they burn so bright
but how, they are few
my tread was silent
no shadow behind me fell
visage of no concern
you would not know me well
doors all silent on a hinge
unbidden was how i came
but hear,this i would confess,
that mine heart is clear of sin.
So stood I before her bed,
a pale neck exposed,
covers over skin,so spied
a damning alluring sheen.
her hair is splayed out over
a pillow like a river in darkness,
the wind tugs at those strands
twirled about an unseen finger
what form of creature should know
how i am suffered to linger.
I watch those sealed eyelids
and imagine the sights within
something gnaws at my heart
as I stand mere inches apart
from my living breathing dream
Pulse quickened
I reach out a hand
for the flower i would
with my life and hopes to tend.
I reach out a hand
it slips through my fingers
like grains of fine white sand -
Posted by Master -_- on 29 March
Stranger in the Midst
The closer you became,
The more scared i was.
The moment it appeared insane,
was the reason for my cause.
To care for him always,
Uncannily was my job.
Your emergence in his gaze,
My attention rightfully robbed.
Tigether for a decade or two,
Easily surpasses your years.
But all the things that you do,
Easily erased my fears.
How long for me to accept you,
as someone not easily replaced.
My sentiments for you never grew,
For a woman i may seek solace.
You can never be my mother,
my confidante or chaperone.
You are just but another,
A woman i have just known.
You want to spend together with him,
You have to get through me first.
Accede to all my fickle whims,
and bow to my unending curse.
I maybe mean to you,
But it ended all last week.
A bride so happy in blue,
Made me tear like a creek.
However, hard for you to be,
My mother in due time.
I have learnt and i have seen,
that accepting you isn't a crime -
By expiringpoet posted on 12 April 2006
-
By expiringpoet posted on 14 April 2006
The Marriage Bed
In my marriage
the BED
is the
political centre
Where administration
And
Intelligence
Takes place
Not to forget cultural
Exchanges
(and more)
.....................of course
the
exchanges
are always
friendly
but
A berlin wall
separates
His space
And mine
By his preference
And my
...................superficial
Assent
That half space
On the right
Of the bed -
his last strong-hold
A place which
Is his alone
I cannot intrude
A friendly arm
Or stray a
careless leg
To steal
some
warmth
Left on the sheets;
for fear
my actions be
labelled
a violent incursion -
By peebrain posted on 17 April 2006
In Dreams We Break (A Villanelle)
In dreams we break, and are torn asunder,
shunned while velvet nights shudder and rage,
so we wake to escape, our spirits bolder.
Cahiers, written by a nameless author,
though modest, defile with each stained page,
in dreams we break, and are torn asunder.
Exuent a fear impossible to master,
a dark light prances and torments the stage,
while we wake to escape, our spirits older.
Cursed is this contract, to place an actor
confessing her lines, even moved to persuade
as we dream and break, and are torn asunder.
A minstrel sings of Tristan and Isolde,
lovers crossed and doomed by curious fate,
unlike them we wake and escape, our spirits lighter.
Jostled 'tween two worlds, yet courage is steered
by checks and balances, a bittersweet adage:
although in dreams we break, and are torn asunder,
we shall wake to escape, our spirits bolder. -
By blue_blue_bedsheet posted on 21 April 2006
Idolize
I see you through rose-tinted glasses,
You're perfect, without any flaws,
My devotion to you is boundless,
Defy Physics and any human laws.
Your every word is convincing,
To me, it becomes the Truth.
I really don't mind sacrifying,
My faith in you, no one else can move.
Possessed? Bewitched? Brainwashed?
Or just a fool with fever?
I really don't care what others think of me,
As long as i'm still in your favour. -
By LazerLordz posted on 21 April 2006
part-timer
sixty percent of me
still thinks you're
a girl, interrupted
and here I am
trying to fix
that cable
which connects
you
to
this world.
am I trying
or is this
a dream
a waking smile
which I recall
vaguely, in a way
like simplicity
raises a question
about life.
who's? -
By expiringpoet posted on 22 April 2006
Hey, Mister!
So I stumbled into an area
Rank with stench
of sweat, seductive
sex and squalor
A plump old pimp sings to me:
Hey Mister! look see;
Pretty girls so young,
donÂ’t worry, donÂ’t worryÂ…
He didnÂ’t have to
be in suit and tie
It seems to me
he didnÂ’t need
a Marketing degree-
for men to flock
to him. This Pied Piper
who trolls this street-
his song is wanton-ness,
Sick and sweet!
This ill song so tempting
I fight for my betraying body not to turn weak
Ladies of the night
in this glare of bright lights,
wait with glassy eyes,
with hungry sighs
But listen, their wait will not be long
Again I hear the Pied PiperÂ’s old songÂ…
Sick and sweetÂ…
Sick but sweetÂ… -
Posted by blue_blue_bedsheet on 25 April 2006
Let Go
Untangle, release,
let it go free.
Unshackle, uncover,
let it be what it will be
Tired of clutching
till knuckles turn white?
Not weary of resistance
you have to fight?
Letting go is hard.
Worse when it strays beyond your control.
But if you really love it,
give it space to grow. -
By peebrain posted on 25 April 2006
Diner
Now I know why you hid letters
in your breadbox, bound in transit
and cluttered in commonplace things --
an overripe pear, pale yellow brown,
a dish wide like the moon's white;
underneath, clear water to keep
expedient ants at bay; a dash of butter
streaked carelessly on day-old platters;
Now I know why you sing Doris Day
all day on an ancient boom box,
as you wait tables, giggly schoolgirls
crowing over the latest release single,
spearing seared asparagus as an
afterthought, scrawled shaky doodles
on flimsy paper napkins, torn when
the biro runs out of ink, and forgets
to lubricate finely meshed fibres.
Now I know why you kept your thoughts
neatly filed in a cabinet marked "P"
for "Purloined", write off bad cheques
without reservation, with a handsome
Waterman, while considering
the rising food cost, the fat trimmed
away from the whole; You always
had on your eye on the greater picture,
so scene-stealing mimics cannot deduce
your divine demi-glace, reduced to
a hidden card up a greasy jacket sleeve.
Now I know why you bit your inner lip,
as you plan the menu for the following week -
no one knows the establishment is closing
as we speak; you may have lost your recipes,
but your bundled letters, loosely woven
from a history of satisfied customers,
lie still in a complacent breadbox,
permanently shuttered from the rest of the world. -
By expiringpoet posted on 28 April 2006
The Interview
I had an interview
last week
at an Art Gallery
I think it went well
She asked me
if I know Cubism,
Impressionism,
Surrealism-
and whether I can
intelligently converse
about them
And how about Da VinciÂ…
TitianÂ…BotticelliÂ…
The Old MastersÂ…
what do I know of these?
Can I talk about the Renaissance
like I had been there?
Do I know the difference
Between Chiaroscuro
And Sfumato?
My body propped on hard chair
As a product on display
My answers were scrutinized,
measured,
held to light
for authenticity
She smiled, and continued
The friendly interrogation
My answers were composed,
gilt-framed
and served
to her in careful swashes
and brilliant blending
of knowledge, wit and recounts
of my experience.
I hope
she was impressed -
By peebrain posted on 29 April 2006
Show Me Your Fingers
show me your fingers:
are they scrubbed freshly
and pared down like
chinese pears?
annointed with fragrances
from persia and arabia?
always,
visibly, and more:
tiny crescents,
rose-white and certain,
framed like quasars
against the morning sky,
against silken caramel
or honey and molasses,
begin and extend
the ridges of your landscape,
the pulsing dents of your
articulate veins.
show me your fingers,
so I can trace idling paths
down the soft underside
of unmarked territories.
show me your fingers
and I will kiss them
one by one.