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Her eyes bespoke
à depth untouched,
an allure of sensual
mystery that she kept
locked inside.

We married, but sadly,
I never found the key
to unlock the voided
recesses of her walled
citadel, containing the
inner depths of unselfish
love and beauty that I'd
hoped resided there.
She remained a self-absorbed
isolated Island unto herself.
Looks alone can be very
deceptive. Too often beauty
is only skin deep. She has
been married 4 times and
no man has found the key.
Keys cannot unlock what
is not there.
rhapsodic pastoralism
as beguilingly bucolic as tempera gardens,
where nature’s wild beauty
is domesticated and made
into a safe space for dream and play,
reverie and revelry.

with the bright dawn
chatter of birdsong
it seems to reach your ear across distance,
like a girl singing happily to herself
while walking down the road
on the other side of your garden wall.
 Jan 2023 Caroline Shank
irinia
there is something good
and some light
in this desire
enraging my cells
with divination chanting
sculpting my shape
in violent curves
I don't recongnize the hues
of mornings
because of frenzy:
the new definition of gravity
along the lines
mesmerizing visions of
softness and caring

love is a whirlwind
in any language
a clear water
so you can see
how translucent
nakedness can be

hers is
the bending of space
to smaller and smaller
atoms of delight,
fusion, diffusion, infusion

it holds you tight
from the very centre
(heart&lungs)
when it breaks you
and then these traces
the swarming of photons
in the fabric of skin
sweet radiance,
energetic warmness
an arch, a cohort of waves
crushing everything
like cherries' sense
reality sense
roads' sense

a scarring refusing
to scream/bleed
defiance of stillness
music of laughter
sun raising in your hands

there is something beautiful
for the poetess in me
it just describes herself well
for the never-day
it transmutes
anything:
beauty into horror
horror into despair
despair into words
even thought into
singing birds
“For beauty is nothing but the beginning of terror
which we are barely able to endure, and it amazes us so,
because it serenely disdains to destroy us.
Every angel is terrible.”

― Rainer Maria Rilke
Narcissus nods agreement with
Gentle breeze slipping across
An iced puddle-

Winter and the air feels clean
But is not;
Sun shines bright but is dim

As aeons dictate
Tide arrives

Take a breath,
Deep

Engulfed within the Ocean,
Unconsciousness

Let it
Trust the sun (she says)
her first rays when creation was young
and God's window opened outward
as a place of worship
born to be breathtaken
daylight imploring for companionship
and bleeding into itself
as it bleeds into the worshipper.

She notices that her own taste
in repeating patterns doesn’t mesh
with the apparently similar
patterns in Drakensberg
they obey a different logic, and the friction
between them generates
a fascinatingly ambiguous color.

Tinctured cathedral of time passing
on its first layer of stairs...
In homage of The Great Escarpment, a major topographical feature in Africa that consists of steep slopes from the high central Southern African plateau.
Quite a nocturne of events, dearest

After the zero hour shattered

Our faces split love in half

Here be a thousand pieces

From a marching orders vibration

Don't break the unconventional

Positive tension we kiss with

For every time is the last time, dearest
December's crueler than April.

Survivor stories from my youth,
Donner migrants
Athletes in the Andes
King Rat pragmatist ethic, depiction.

Whose story wins the hearts?
Whose reason causes minds to make
a way appear,
where no way was, yet now, we be
come to the future, from just now,
how come we ask?
Me and thee, alone, I see no other,
thus I read… my life,

my owned experience, true as true
can ever be, on the spectrum,
Perfect proven truth, the idea all
begins with, already

one and a, none, nada mas, only me,
I scan the ever not I
and I see. Only me, most self centered
of things,
the singularity at the core,
whither thought occurred, as what
if we knew, nothing
is a positive, point in re-ality, under
time constraints,
and breathable atmo bubbles,

dust of ever before, the just imagine,
living by faith as defined,

here, by faith, to thine ownself, be true.
Good and faithful,
servile being, you, the submitted mind,
heart-core, gung-**, rock roller,
happy Sisypheanist,
on life's downhill side.

Too true to be simple, loop de loop.

The road is a Mobius strip,
with as many twists as your average
protein molecule,
produced from dirt, ultimately,
formed from former stars's dusts.

Of course, that is, to stay valid,
on course through human events,
opportunities for the whole world

to know, a means, a use of held thoughts,
phenomenal-logos chains holding
weight a minutes needing thinking

through, dia-logos, thought filled words.
----------

The elderly Voltaire enters the frame,
carrying -- or carried on
a stipulation, a term limit, bounding
pre-suppositions… ag-response, control.

A keel and a rudder and a mast and sail,
in our mind we all have imagined,
we could, should necessity demand.

Suppose, I go light on my own  reliance
on artificial knowledge, I lean
on my leading spirits spoken words,
as spoken by my culture's steady state.

Salt, for centuries, served life. Agree,
we know Sodium is real, as a model,
made with representative shapes,
Tinker-Toy structures visible
to current-tech eye-use-enhancers,

scanning instants in the gestalt.
All the uni- units in the universe,
one time tic past last… waiting to go.

------ hours from go, begone, we are
being come
so far, so good, no pain, no sorrow,
at the moment, mindful
practice, right
in that moment, stick and stay and

make it mean something, today,
while it is called today, you may
come along, as you wish,
or feel drawn, as into a vacuous event
horizon claiming,
right, this was the edge, yesterday.
Today, this was first and next came after, the medium is the message/ like
I.

Your fingers raking
through chestnut wreaths
gapped with gloss:
the wind mussed your hair

into a sudden wild shape,
& the canal was glowing
like a runaway filament
in the buttery dusk.

You had gone quiet inside,
months before.
You slipped a spider's lyric
under my tongue.

Summer was really winter,
& winter was a belt cinched
around a hopeful throat
crawling with clouds.

II.

I'm not good on my own.
I drink too much,
I have terrible dreams,
I don't move for hours, days.

Stars bleach me, pierce deep
into a plastic rib space.
Old friends get married,
get pregnant, go invisible.

I turn on the charm,
a smile pooling amid
the pink. Whisky
floating over two tongues...

Was I supposed to make a move?
I missed a cue, somewhere.
I feel my insides lurching
like sun-broken snow.
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