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st64  Dec 2014
not enough cake
st64 Dec 2014
on windy plains
flattened panels beneath tight-pressed scarves, they stand
on the edge of the highway
seeking the last streaks of eve's sun
bodies on windy plains where, in the lap of poverty, kids play and listen
the ***** little words mothers spill
a hapless world in flats steep, laundry billows on higher
than most dreams can possibly reach


1.
song to be sung, yet youth's golden mouth swift-ripped away
by hungry-crones topped in white hats and over-spiffed lines
poor boy couldn't hold it together, they fell apart
scatter the crowd in fold-up chairs to make it look less empty
spread the tea-garden in the hall, circulate those tiny packets
so much **** noise, is that all we waited for?

revolutions were built on disparity's hand ****** in the face of the poor
pity the drug of current day keeps all so well glued to the system
somebody wise once said that royalty awards knighthood
                                                *exactly for the same reason

to keep gentry where they are seen fit to belong: below
                                                           ­                   the swirl of understanding
so, there won't be enough cake for everyone.



2.
when saviours ring in the new, for a short while
and new heads bring down the old names
and gut the bastions of the past
surely, when we destroy the ugly parts of history, we conceal truth
with pompous new plaques and road names for petty achievers
even bad press is held up as recognition these days
and too many are numbed, hopelessly foiled by the feed
peck, peck.. nice, little chikken
                         (mind stuffed with trash, mouthpiece occupied)

some content to catch a few crumbs on the way down
while others tread lightly on their way out the back exit
the more we so blindly buy into the whole mess
the less we see the big pic
                           (the real one)
nebulous covers the screen so well: away from organic life
life on a farm, growing your own stuff
       needing less of plug-in
       more of play
I steadily tire of the filthy streams we're led to wade in
thick and viscous with the stench of decay
and no way out but the meeting with barbed-wire walls

oh, for days of simple pleasures.. walking in the park
                                                      swingi­­ng high into the blue sky

with eyes on the rim of the planet
a ten-cents pineapple-popsicle
and no fear of the unknown
       but beautiful discoveries, good and not-so-good

now, a man will die in the hands of a stranger's care
at the mercy of their kin's timetable
busy, busy, busy.. loved ones moving on
ah, no time to enjoy a tot, some oenomel.


3.
say, God.. you got a moment? I'd like to address a grievance or two
are we forgetting what you told us?
what was it again -- on the day, we tried to understand your identity
                                    in a tongue this world's memory suffered lapse
there was a time we understood your meaning
today, I hear your voice in the rustle out my meadow
right here
in the green leaves

I think I can hear you right
loving your remembrances.



*silent anger brews in the streets, common folk took enough
tired of threats and crumbs left by chunks others gorged on
retaliatory mountains grow, a surge in march
a touch too late to retract some acts.. for haste & judgment hurt
where many struggle to breathe, so hatred cements its template
slowly, time may crumble them to stones, then dust
            or hope build a rope from heart's twine
            or love blow breezes of care on this fiery circle
faraway, where queens live on ginger cakes and ale
on windy plains.
is there really not enough cake for all?
odd how easily media OVERcrops reality.. perhaps a slice if that pie is bein' filtered down, after all.. who knows.

welllllllllll, perhaps a li'l look-see back into the annals of history to remind us how greed will end in a head-chopping.. or two.


sub-entry: drumstick

I hold up high.. parapum, pum-pum
the banner we swore in.. parapum, pum-pum
but we do not know how.. parapum, pum-pum
drumsticks and games got shoved in
to keep us quiet and busy

surely, the graves of liberty-warriors TURN
in horror
at the grand-scale daylight-robbery
we allow and DEFEND.. parapum-pum-pum!
CasiDia  Aug 2020
Oenomel
CasiDia Aug 2020
If I were a stone
I would not believe
that the medow
looks after the rose.
To be hardened
is to be muted.
Any stone that
does not tumble
will not shine.
The truth is that
freedom comes from
aching hearts,
and full moons.
Lonely roses hidden
behind tall blades
of grass.
It's so good
to see you thrive
where you thought
you might not
have survived.
Pyrrha  Jul 2018
Braeburn Apples
Pyrrha Jul 2018
You are the poetry I wish I could write
Every feeling I get around you
Every word of yours I absorb
Every stare I wish I could immortalize
You are the poem I read over and over in my head
The one I wish was mine

Your words are like luscious braeburn apples
Sweet and transcendent
You are the very definition of oenomel
Combining strength with sweetness

Even when you are far away I feel your presence near me
I feel your gaze, your love, your heart
I can hear the beat as if you were right next to me
Like the heavy bass of a metal song it hits every note
Lulls me into tranquility

You are the reason I love to write
You challenge me to describe how I feel
Even when none of these words feel just right

How can I explain the feeling of your eyes, your smile
How can I define the connection I feel
With such a limited word bank
How could I possibly explain why you feel like poetry to me
Why your words are like a braeburn apple
And why your heartbeat is like the bass of a metal song?

If I could I would illuminate you with more light than this world could possibly contain
You'd be brighter than the sun and all the other stars
Perhaps that would help you understand
Just one drop from my sea of love for you
Nicole Bataclan Jun 2016
I met my future in the past
You kept me up all night;
Had I known
It will lead to now,
I would not have said goodbye.

I knew there was something there
Not meant for the long haul
Still went in to risk it all;
I swallowed my pride
You would become my life.

Oenomel, blending strength with sweetness
Many a time, farewell is a present;
You attract what you are
I thank you from afar;
For the rest of my days in that one night.
AA  Sep 2017
Bates
AA Sep 2017
Secrets we share, unspoken, understood,
Our souls are intermingled bit by bit
Letters stuck in cerement for livelihood,
Pushing more boundaries than you'd care admit.

Our acceptance transcends all others here,
You are the quintessence of my being,
Our intimacy may even seem queer,
Tender moments of love are freeing.

Any time together makes us cohere,
As one idiosyncrasy.
Natural feelings always reappear,
My hear belongs to you, take care of me.

You and I mother are one in the same,
We share the same oenomel Bates last name.
Priya Mar 31
The nature pays its debt to mother earth,
furnishing the soils and skies,
with beauty on wings
and beauty on greens.
The stars and the moons,
lovers and poems,
reflecting it's metamorphosis
flashing at the earth.

And a caterpillar hatches out from pearls,
looking upon sensations of freedom,
holding between his teeth, a leaf green of life,
it nibbles on life,
brimming with juvenescence.
It once takes a leap seeing a brightly coloured wings flapping,
wishing flight.
And one pleasant night,
the night laid its eyes on it,
and it trembled,
building a soft cocoon to hide in.

Hunger gushes in and kicks its warm belly,
and it breaths in the air
tangled in emotions,
misery and anger,
disgust and fear,
strength and sweetness,
weakness and bitterness,
surprise and happiness.
It weaves a blanket out of it in leisure,
thin as air and strong as a storm
wrapping it around its wiggly self,
and breaking the cocoon.

The moon falls in love
with the oenomel creature,
and watches it take off to please eyes,
and imparting color.
Love slides and plays on its wings of hope
and it calls itself,
A Butterfly.
I crushed my cigarette into the
safety of flat, white ashes, watching
the smoke tread up among
clouds creased into these
craven shapes that
gingerly fade and
escape the sky—and
muscled up out of the
white-knuckled, cloud-muzzled,
muttering sunrise, some
quaint cut of an epitaph’s
cousin:

Mold grown over the
mold again—note

What blistering gifts
entrained in a thumb-
print, callused from
picking at so many
bolts, stripped

all of it soft as the
shirts that my grandmother’d
offered me, dregs of a dew-damp
aside, those
delicate flannels
my grandfather no longer
fit in—as well as a pair of white
oversized socks that had haughtily
disregarded the fact that my foot was
larger than what strange sole he squeezed
in a work boot.

                              —

My grandfather’d kept a bramble of anvils
thumbtacked together to shoulder a shed.

Each house he’d had, four
mortgages coldly afforded from
whispering proverbs to pistons, wearing
incomparable thumbprints down into
black-iron casts of milk glass-smooth tonsures
from loosening lockjawed bolts and Heineken caps,
from sussing the sweat and the schmutz
from an engine; had
   each a similar shed,
you’d dare not mention
aloud for fear of it filling with
dybbuks reduced to
woodgrain gusseting
ribs of young Bluebeard’s
           bloated potato barn—once,

he ushered me over to witness
the door uncurl from its verdigrised hinges, and
                 rolled out a rusted patio table like
          Sisyphus taking a day at the races. He

always wore these paper-frail v-neck tees
and jeans to cover his crepe-paper body. He,
well into his sixties, still could calmly suspend himself
straight from a t-***** fence post, perfectly
level with earth, even given its
gaily lazing curve, yes, perfectly

parallel. Parallel meaning that he and the

earth should never meet, for a moment, the
two of them **** near perfectly twain, except
for the stock stiff fencepost spelling out mercy
or mercy me, maybe, too deep in the flickering
woodgrain, really, for anyone willing to see it—

He gave me the patio table to salve and
sell as a vessel of oenomel vintage. He’d

never quite found the time to refurbish it. There-
by the anvils staked their claim, and I asked,

amid a frank flurry of each of his
four hunched children scribbling
names on an **** of moldering heirlooms,

"What’s with all the anvils, Papaw?"
"You can’t have my anvils," he mercifully
muttered. "No, really," I spluttered, "why

all the anvils"—now, this old
man that my father (his former
son-in-law) commonly
muttered of, clambering
praise, your grandfather works
              like an animal; this small
                                          man, whose
                                          legs, reflecting
                                          a maglite, just
                                          might elbow a
                                          hole in the Hoover
                                Dam, this man, who
spent every cheeseparing hour
immersed in a moat of work
with a snorkel of maybe
two Heinekens nightly, told me,
colder than stars collapse, "I wanted

to take up blacksmithing—albeit
I’d yet to find the time for it."

                                  It recalled
my father’s father once confiding
in me (a seduction, really, that led
to him asking me, telling me, "You," yes,
"you should chronicle [what was] my life"),

that Arlene, my father’s mother (replaced
by Darlene, some years later) had wanted for years
to be but a dressmaker—that, evermore tacitly
tragic still, that he, whose life had demanded
a chronicle, went to "my local baker and said,

you should train me. The Baker said, 'no.
You wouldn’t much like it.' I asked him again,"
and we’ll leave it at that. He’s retired and

twice now, once
as a cop and once
as a, what’s the politest way to say it, a
corrections officer, a
                                          prison guard, left

whittling down his
ribs and knees with
a sharpened spoon he’d
honed upon how many
broken bowls of spaghetti-
ing dreams drawn up in a listless
bone-braced cyst. At twenty,
he’d sired two children already.

A tidldibab is, of course, an invented name
for a bone with a hole in it somebody took
for an heirloom instrument, one that be-
queathed the urge to make music out
of, well, just about anything really—

That was the mold
grown over with
mold again: note

what blistering gifts
entrained in a thumb-
print, callused from
picking at so many
bolts, stripped.

— The End —