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Feb 2014 · 1.2k
Stranded
Marshall Gass Feb 2014
The fear of being alone causes the explosion of strange
sensations to surface from the deep
denizens of an inner cauldron where
settles a sense of imperfect calm.

Deceptive volcanoes of anger
also lie dormant for centuries
waiting to blow star flung.

Just when the conquests of years of thinking
through the destruction
you arrive at a tsunami song
that needs tuning.

Some  more bruised bodies
scattered minds
with pieces lined up in perfection.

Walk on into the blistering night
unafraid of solitude.
Feb 2014 · 788
Progeny to Power: Part 2
Marshall Gass Feb 2014
The hawk nosed general in the grey suit sniffed
out his enemies, labrador like, nose to the noise,
chest beating, bleating, blaring in the thunderous
applause, that made his ego bloom amongst the corpses
of the shrunken heads and hands reaching out for bread,
in the shut down quarter of the empire
where the eagles flew in/ out dropping mustard,
caught between a  deadly sandwich of
closed escape routes.

"Burn them all" he said, and turning to his sidekick,
he smiled a thin smile, devoid of the god he worshiped
in the minarets on the mosques that stabbed the  blue sky
with their sharp bulbous  needles of  attention.

At twelve the muezzin called the faithful to prayer and
moaned for mercy on the unbelievers.The call echoed
and reverberated down the streets.
The mustard closed the eyes of  the city where the
gas cannisters jangled on thin nerves and let the
people  sleep forever.

The grey suit, now eau de cologne  scented handker-
chief  
hawk nose sniffed
wiped his forehead and walked
spritely to his armoured vehicle, to call his wife
and enquire if the kids were enjoying their summer swim.

"Yes, darling!" she tingled with excitement.
"How's that part of the city
where these rats live?"
"Good love! Just need to smoke 'em
out some more!
By tonight I'll be home for dinner. Bye for now!"

The line went dead
with twenty others, fried in the concrete
pan of a bunk buster bomb dropped from a drone
with butterfly wings and a sharp upside down minaret
nozzle of spray now stabbing the earth.
Earth to sky, sky to earth?

The barbed wired brains circled the city.
Children soon crunched cockroaches,
mice and rats and grass salads, autumn leaves on wild spinach
thousands  died eating succulent poisonous roots.

Even the carrion claws refused to descend into the darkness
of carcasses that lay down in the streets to pray forever.

The water turned green with envy as lichen,
clogged with blood and ***** and bones rotting
under bridges, ****** up the blue river
and sent the beavers into burrows of omerta
The world watched and waited.

?

Around the dinner table the grey suited general
tucked his napkin under his red,wellfed face and smiled
at his lovely wife in a designer outfit.
" Pass me the mustard please, darling!"
Feb 2014 · 564
Black Power
Marshall Gass Feb 2014
Slice the city into two parts
rub  salt into open wounds
break down the armoury, shell out the sickles
and spikes and bamboo arrows dipped
in poison berries ripe as raspberry juice
and arm the tribes with tentacles
that search for other tribes
lurking in the shadows of the camouflaged blackness
pull 'em out and punish them in broad daylight
take an arm a leg -cut a tongue loose
so words uttered will sound like jungle anecdotes
in a litany of lies.

I will come swinging
with a mascara maiden
and two henchmen trained as axemen
intent on cutting policies of power
into shreds of excuses to remain seated
on a throne of oiled skulls and feather dusters

Take heed, brother
I buy guns for a slot of land infested with rhino
and elephants and diamonds
as big as hippos dipped in strange ****** rhythms
a thousand years old brewing quietly.

We own this land
The white man came in and took it
"He got the land we got the bible"

We must take it back somehow
and sacrifice all of ourselves
in due process.

Slice the land into two chunky pieces
You take one
my mistress takes the other.
Feb 2014 · 1.1k
The Meeting
Marshall Gass Feb 2014
The invisible hand that stretches across
Oceans and  barbed wire boundaries
Has more fingers than the streams of light that cascade
from the heavens into the dark recesses
of your magnificence.

There are moments when all seems lost
But the shadow of darkness is dispelled
And replaced by this glimmer of hope
That softly and subtly invades
Your magnificence

Even as we explore the faint avenues
That wound their way into our consciousness
We clearly seem to understand how our journeys
Criss-crossed over exotic landscapes
And stark desolate realties
To merge into a moment of  mystery.

We have finally met.
Now more human than before
The pages  of our past turn slowly
The notes we compare are cryptic and careless
But what we share seems to have been sculpted
By the same pen filled with the same ink of wisdom.
Feb 2014 · 581
Progeny for Power
Marshall Gass Feb 2014
I came from nowhere into the sunlight bright
staring harsh at the way it looked when released
from the thick of dark  dank  open spaces
of the mind like skyscrapers
looming in awe at unopened alleyways.

Writers and Poets with dark and dense language
lurked on every page offering
wisdom and wonder at all that existed
and I was taken aback by the grit and gristle
of their tongues in torture and bonehard
determination to say things real and true.
My first lesson was obedience
at the citadels of learning.

Soon the words began to form and fix
in the minds eye, each picture drafted
in the souls eternal fire of seeking solace
from within a lone slim space of knowledge.
We were wild then, travelling in jungles
where beasts roamed with hookahs and chains
and belted the night with rabid beats
of rhymes and rhythm bongo drums
that cascaded through waterfalls of lust
and loneliness.

woodstock soon came around with a growl
from Hendrix and a soulful guitar solo
that lifted our energies beyond mud
and music into higher ground where
love and peace co-existed with boundaries
and lines of policemen with batons.

Soon we loved each other on the streets
of shame uncaring for the masses that lay
strangled by traditions of the old
and battered regimes. Our music carried
us into a universal song which started
then and never stopped four decades gone.

what we started in those freedom years
still parades the streets of our individualism
today with a different costume.
The shackles that we unchained
were replaced by those who felt burdened
by the guilt of freedom and excess.

Even today the Capitols burn with angry mobs
tearing political fences and building barricades
of stone hard determination and raised fists
in defiance of subjugation and slaughter
as they race towards a wide open gate
where walls and ****** windows do not
get them down fast enough.

The cities will continue to burn
to mark the decades  we bled loose
the power from dictators armoured carriers
and concubines of greed and injustice
as we ourselves built shells of steel
around our embattled homes and liberties.
Freedom is a right. It will be fought.

In every continent there burns a bonfire
lit by few that smoulders and shudders
in the rubble of military might
but that will not deter the protection
and peace. The bonfires are fed by the few
who boiled their blood in their thinking
for all the others.

Over the radio and tv promises will
echo hollow and insipid as the faces
of the masters who seem impervious to pain
and unwilling to smear the ashes of their own born
against their foreheads of power.

A time will come when peace will settle again
and the rousing reception of rain bearing
clouds will cool the tempers of the trusted
and the untrusted.

We will soon be gone but we leave a legacy
of will that will course through the veins
of our children and grandchildren
and for years to come the poems
we write will stand testimony to the demons
we locked back into the cages of the past.

The power to pen will return to the people.
Takes you back to journey for freedom that started in the early 70s and still rages.
Marshall Gass Feb 2014
Just after the ebb and flow
of staying locked for a lifetime
in an earthly connection

comes an unknown
spectre
we can only guess

all those theories
from holy books and men
untested

we go because
we have to
your time is done

and the pulsating final
flourish
leaves behind a memory

shackled to those we love
until they too
must let go

of who we were
when we lived here.
once upon a time.
Feb 2014 · 755
anonymous
Marshall Gass Feb 2014
Beneath the barricades of lotus fronds
and flowers, lurks beauty, brains
all watching  the goddess of shadows
seeking respite from the burning sun
and banter of imagery that clings
delicately to the fabric of questions
seeking anonymity.

Once in a while the curtains draw
and a  face appears. smiling, seeking
showing a glimpse of magical moments
tempting, teasing, wonderful
carved in a flash of inner beauty
that straddles the page
and withdraws back into the
folds of wonder.

" I bet the suspense is killing you!"
Who am I?" She said sweetly.

I searched through all the pages of poetry
and people columns, ears to the ground
surging through swords and diamantes,
villanelles and wonders
swords and acrostics, aquatics
and wooded forests near tempered lakes
picnics and parks
and I watched the sunset settle
in a twilight sky of burgundy
and roses. All.

I did not find you heart beating
against my chest
or my words echoing its hypnotic
trance against your ears!

Anonymous  it will be.
Feb 2014 · 379
sunset boulevard
Marshall Gass Feb 2014
we sat on the sunset boulevard
watching the waves hit the waters edge
into submission/peanut packets in hand
and bananas in brown paper bags
awaiting to share its tasteful death with our lives
we sauntered into conversations of the past
and present to a point where we arrived
bathed in the glory of companionship.

After years of knowing each others weaknesses
and strengths in all matters of the heart
mind and body-(bed included)
we at last were able to make peace
with our sweltering egos and the evening
heat to understand how we journeyed
through life with fewer wounds than
our fellow men all scarred and bruised
and beaten down by adversity.

The only reason, it seemed to us
and our journey was its casual composure
and careful regard for each others
individuality. But, we even, floundered
at the many instances when hurt and anger
took over the calm temperaments
and we moved on to the next alleyway
without carrying all that useless baggage
to break our backs into boredom.

The recipe was now ripe for the peanut ponder
and the banana benefit of the beautiful
night and its nakedness.
Feb 2014 · 361
The Answerphone
Marshall Gass Feb 2014
There is no one to take your call at this time
Please leave a message
and I'll get back to you.

Oh yeah?

Your call is important to us
Please leave a blah blah blah

Oh yeah? you are not important
to me though.

The number you have called
is currently unavailable.
Please try later.

Can you give me back
my 20 cents please
you twit!

** ** ** and a Merry Christmas
to all our listeners!
Mine.

I never got a postcard again.

0000
debt collectors
are usually born in foxholes
from grubby mothers
and wayward fathers
Thats why they have four zeros.
They want to know you
but don't try hard enough
with those four zilches!

Please leave a message
in my comment box.
I'll call in later.
Happen to you. Comes with the frustration for free.!
Feb 2014 · 328
Hate and Anger
Marshall Gass Feb 2014
Spilling blood in the dead of the nights
mind
is easy.

Getting caught is the hard part.
Hate carves a language
where you wilt in its acid tongue

Enemies invade  when you least
want them to
reside in your best thought.
Parasites. Bloodsuckers.

Keep clean
the page you write your life on.
Go prepared with light
into the dark tunnel
where you love and hate.

Tomorrow
can be worse than today.
Feb 2014 · 454
The Bishop
Marshall Gass Feb 2014
The bishop knew his bounds and his curved sceptre
swept like a serpent up to his face
elongating his brows into wisdom beauty
but his eye wandered to the lady up front
with bubbly buttocks
and tight skirt.

Even his scriptures wobbled against
the power of adrenaline rushing
down his swollen
veins into his vesicles
where he still remained a bishop
with the diocese backing his holy grail
on the road to heaven.

With all those thoughts behind the mitre
and the dash of plumage purple
the bishop often wondered
what life would have been like
with the same spoils the church offered
and a warm woman in bed.
No Offense
Feb 2014 · 325
Solitude
Marshall Gass Feb 2014
The fear of being alone causes the explosion of strange
sensations to surface from the deep
denizens of an inner cauldron where
settles a sense of imperfect calm.

Deceptive volcanoes of anger
lie dormant for centuries
waiting to blow star flung.

Just when the conquests of years of thinking
through the destruction
you arrive at a tsunami song
that needs tuning.

Some  more bruised bodies
scattered minds
with pieces lined up in perfection.

Walk on into the blistering night
unafraid of solitude.
Feb 2014 · 333
30 years from now!
Marshall Gass Feb 2014
Thirty years from now
no one will know the colour
of your eyes the car your drove
and the sound of your voice
or the house you lived in
Even the times you swore
you denied bread
to the outstretched arms
milk to the baby
wine to the wise
and love to the unloved.

Unless

you make a mark of man
in the footsteps to the temple
where lives an invisible being
resplendent in mercy
forgiving
and infallible to all
and accept
that your own universe
was crafted by this creator
with your name
scrawled in calligraphy
on a special page with your name
and number embossed
b?
d?
who am I?
What should I do?
to leave behind the best of Me?

© Marshall Gass. All rights reserved.
Feb 2014 · 282
The Poetess
Marshall Gass Feb 2014
In the stillborn night the feathers of a frantic day
tickle the fancy and spill out
into sheets of dreams dreary

for tomorrows spellbinding faucet
of words to capture
explicit images of feelings
rushed to the tone of lone dreaming.

Hark the wind whispers secrets
to the trees waiting with leaves
to dance in the accepting arms of whispers
as it washes through the waterfalls of sound

Once in a while the heart stops short of racing
at the sight of an old lover
complicated by time and temperament
the poems roll off a press
invented somewhere in the chasms of the mind

I write because I am compelled to capture
words that pass by within reach
to entertain the wondrous pictures in my brain
that seek to form into slim fabrics of ecstasy.

Often I dance, dance in rhythm beating
a wicked bending salsa  that brings my lover
to me on bended knee. Love and poetry
dance together.

Any day give me a woman that bathes
in the soap suds of poetry and I will have
found me the rhythm of a fulfilled life.
Is this the way it happens for you?
Feb 2014 · 1.5k
Crush and Cruise
Marshall Gass Feb 2014
The weight of the wisdom we seek eludes
us as we stagger into dark dens of knowledge
suffused and selected, stored in gigantic libraries
of the mind by those
who know
yet wont divulge the details to those
who wait
arms outstretched
for the yearning.

In between lie wannabes
who seek the sun of comments
to glorify themselves as a birth right
unwilling to accept the acid pen
or pain of knowing how falsehoods
lie like wounds exposed to inspection.

Writing poetry in plain language is better
than compromised with complexity.
Just the words and visuals singing on the same note
should suffice to stir the minds magic
to ecstasy.

The crush of wisdom dispels us from climbing
over the boundaries of decency
to sizzle a comment with depressing ease.
You can hear the ego deflate and flatten
akin to a robust balloon descending
to earth like a flightless fancy
with no wingpower.

Not every poem straddles and sparks
in sheer finery
Lots and lots of them refuse to take off
and surrender to the minds star burst
of meaning.

In a days reading maybe
of a hundred, just one line would light up
a dark sky like a comet racing across the page
leaving behind its fairy dust
for us to ponder upon. One diamond
in the dust of lifeless energies
is worth mining for!
Feb 2014 · 490
Summer of 90
Marshall Gass Feb 2014
She was all that, tall and filled
with mathematical curves and points
in languid poses aware
that male eyes grew bigger at her *****
welcome.

*** her legs never stopped growing
and barely touched the ground
poised and ready to pounce
panther like grace and beauty
to wrap around adventure
beckoning.

She wrote poems too
insipid though
moonbeams and roses
love and languish
imaginary lovers, unfulfilled dreams.
That sort of stuff!

I had her figured one whole summer
and my numbers and curves vastly improved
to the touch and taste
and her eyes swelled dolefully
at my cryptic poems

When she went back to hubby
She offered just one comment
on those vast tracts of writing:
Sounds good, but what do they mean?

Honesty makes your heart flutter.
I know that for sure. Winter arrived.
A warm fireplace. What else
Feb 2014 · 1.0k
Amandla!
Marshall Gass Feb 2014
Amandla!

Locked  in  societies cages  where the sunlight streaked in with
black and white uniforms with bars and batons
to hold them in place
shackled to their destines
to die in policies polluted by skin and colour
these people fought against
The oppressors determination to reduce
An entire nation to subservience
Until one man swam against the apartheid  tide
To a prison of meaning.

At last in the wide open spaces
Where freedom grew  with the flowers
With chains of people dancing in the streets
Of  hope in the future

Alas the high  tide turned against
Them and those at the front row who lead
The back row to brutality soon found
The dancing invited the shackles again
And they all locked themselves in the same suffering
As before, one by one.

Except no one  they could  blame somebody else
but his own black brother.
Feb 2014 · 734
Asylum
Marshall Gass Feb 2014
The walls caved in
and the glassy eyes vacant
saw things few could understand

Walking miles between fences closing
both inside and out
barbed wire dreams of no escape
desolate slow time
wasting away in wonder
at a blade of grass
a distant ghost in a strange dream
and smiling at god knows what

each one was happy
in that cage
where the mind was free
body trapped
Death was in no hurry
to claim them yet.

We all live in asylums.

© Marshall Gass. All rights reserved.
We all live in asylums except we share the same space in degrees. Even love is an asylum.
Feb 2014 · 386
Catchin' up
Marshall Gass Feb 2014
We may have lost ourselves in a world of wonder
and not with each other.
The problem is knowing that connections
need energy to survive
and love needs an equal portion
of love to be regenerated.

Now we must catch up
somehow
rebuild those fragile bridges
that kept us going
even if there were torrents of time
and temperaments that frayed the edges
of our dreams
and spilled over into our daily lives
driving the wedges of distance between us.

No matter what
Lets renew that kiss
and cuddle and hold hands
where the frogs croaked in ecstasy
at our courtship
and the lilies just then blossomed
parting lips to meet up

Catchin' up will
bring s back together.
Feb 2014 · 1.2k
Seed
Marshall Gass Feb 2014
Cruising between the haze of knowing and unknowing
sits a large vacuum of infinite questions
why am I here? what am I doing?
Where is the next stop to get off this journey?

And so on,
until the answers return in resplendent shape
colour and size, confronting you
with its incessant reminder
that Q's and A's don't always
have connections.

I am but a seed in one great pod
waiting to be thrown into the winds reach
to sail on a summers day
into infinite earth, buried deep until
I rise again in the arms of spring
To bud and blossom in the knowing
of life.

Take heed
at who I am
around me.
A look at a seed about to spring to life.
Feb 2014 · 451
Body
Marshall Gass Feb 2014
Blue before birth
to spark red and flushed
slapped straight to life
the organs begin to burst into beauty
thumping pumping until rhythmic
flows combine in combination with
senses to create an exquisite form
of life
you.

Take charge of the day
moment by moment
grow and flourish
in the bow of beauty and life
and spread you wings
on the the thermals of each moment
lift high, soar,sweep down and settle
where the your flock rests
waiting for you to arrive
to take part in the ritual
Take Part now
A vast metaphor to compare birth.life and death as part of existence. Comment on how you see this happening. This is my first poem on this site. Encourage me to stay and write for you.

— The End —