Going With The Tides
A Haiku Pair
Loneliness sometimes
lingers like cold in your bones
and damp in your soul,
even when the tides
that washed it up have long since
moved to other shores.
On the Distribution of One’s Heart
On the Distribution of One’s Heart
(A Haiku Quintet)
I had given my
heart to someone who
didn’t
didn’t
know how to hold it.
Instead, they cradled
it like an adolescent
with a stranger’s
child:
child:
awkward and uneasy,
with a fear of falling
head first and snapping.
I gave my heart to
someone who didn’t
quite want
quite want
it and was surprised
when they gave it back.
They said to keep it
safe, but
safe, but
their fingers left
bruises.
bruises.
Death Throes
Morbid fascination
kills me again and again.
These are the death throes
Of our potential.
This is the not the martyrdom
I try to tell myself it is.
It is assisted suicide.
Nor is it the first time-
Reincarnation ad nauseam,
Same me, different yous-
Till nirvana:
A state I cannot reach.
It sickens me,
The way I crave
Your attentions.
Like Tantalus I thirst
And am never satisfied.
You bloom perpetual
While I fade like echoes.
Jeweled fruit that fall
From your lips
Into my ears
Sweet fruit, biting aftertaste,
Like soured wine to the dying man,
Leaves me empty and bitter.
I am killed softly
By the words you never speak.
Carnival Poem I
(I’m not dead).
Carnival Poem I
The music whips you into mania
And the sweat of the masses incites to ecstasy
If religion is the opiate,
This is the tonic.
Sweet like cascadoo,
Rush of power like cocaine,
Addictive like morphine.
We are the vessels
The street is the vein
Infecting all with
Wuk-up-yuh-waist-osis
And free-up-yuh-self-itis.
It is a chronic epidemic
Where the only cure
Is to succumb to the disease;
More riddim,
More kaiso,
More tempo.
Frustration
I’ve been feeling it so long
I’ve forgotten it’s name.
It comes and it goes,
Like the tide
With its ebbs and flows,
Like the moon
It waxes and wanes,
It is never really gone,
Just lingering behind sight,
Lulling with monotony
Like waves crashing
Against the shore,
Till I’m waist-deep
In despair, waiting
To cycle out.
Ode
*NOTE* this has been edited. and i’m much happier with the edit.
Ode
Your voice is sweet and slow like honey dripping off a spoon,
And the way your lips caress each word; parting is such sweet sorrow.
Your scent intoxicates my being
With its murmurs of power,
Hints of vice
And the lingering notes of fixation.
Your pendulum see saw hips hypnotize my eyes
So I play right into your smile
When our eyes meet, time moves poco rit,
As you weave your spell on me
And when we touch,
the heat crescendos, my heart beats staccato allegro
And the blood plays fortissimo in my ears.
Fruition
(Clearly i’m on a roll today! must be the no sleep).
The words form like fruit in the tree of the mind,
If left too long, the birds of distraction
Peck away, leaving only, and even then
Only perhaps, a husk to make more fertile grounds.
Pick it too soon and hope against hope
As you force it to ripen that comes out right,
But the skin is too green and the flavor is wrong,
Though sometimes you can catch it at
Just the right time, and nurture it in a
Paper bag, and when it is ready,
Even through the slight tartness,
You can barely tell the difference.
And sometimes, the fruit falls,
Perfect in it’s form, succulent in
Its cadence, from the tree of the
Mind, directly to the mouth.
Insomnia
They promised that insomnia
Would bring words
Like long awaited rain,
But instead it
Keeps you awake too late
With your distractions
And makes you miss your thoughts,
Then sleep long enough
For the days
To seem one.
Insomnia only brings
Diversions,
Frivolity
And agitation,
And when that
Wears you out,
A sleep too black
For thought to thrive.
Insomnia doesn’t bring rain;
It is the storm grey
Cloud that teases
And threatens,
Then flitters away
Whispering promises
To come another day.
The Journey
The move from
mind to pen,
pen to paper,
paper to
keyboard,
Word to world,
Is a journey
where
thoughts are
lost
found
replaced
like baggage.
Filled with
love
hate
need.
The need to be
read
shared
understood.
They cannot stay
under wraps
under your wing
underappreciated.
If you love them,
begin the journey,
set them free.
New Frontier
So funny story about this poem… The timestamp for the creation is the 5th of august 2008. See what had happened was I started this poem and just never finished it… I couldn’t quite find the direction I wanted it to go in, until one night, the fevers of writing possessed my brain, (lol whut??), and it came to me. And so on the 22rd of September 2010, in the late hours of the night, I finally freakin’ finished the poem. And here it is in it’s longsuffering glory. The title is a work in progress. Give it a year or so.
New Frontier
Poetry is the new frontier.
To me, it is a frightful forest
Full of ideals, towering and exotic
Clever words, double meanings
To intrigue and delude
Like a subtle jungle cat
And eat me alive at the sign of weakness.
But in this jungle of irony, paradox and rhyme,
There are no natives
Each man to brave the wordy wilds alone,
Leaving trails and allusions of trails.
No man can charter a course,
Because as quickly as butterfly words
Land upon the tip of your tongue like leaves,
They flitter away,
As swiftly as the slender snake of ideas slithers away
Through the grass of inspiration,
Gone in an instant.
Yet some times it reaches you
Like bushfires in a drought of thought,
Brought by lightening
And raging till it is doused
Or, if left alone,
Consumes,
Burns,
Devours,
Every fibre of your being,
And it wears itself out
And eventually the last ember dies.
All one can do,
Is not move too fast,
Too suddenly,
Least you disturb it
As it falls,
Springs,
Becomes,
Is,
As delicately,
As remarkably unremarkable
As a falling snowflake,
And capture its beauty
With the paintbrush of your words.
There it is. Can you tell where the two year gap is?