Unpainted sky

Night Sky – Abstract Landscape Art Paintings by Artist Ajay Rajpal Delhi

Long time, no chat. No see, no touch, no kiss, no nothing, and nothing but feel.
At least he still had that, he thought just now, though in the pitch of darkness
He’d rather the feelings were not exempt from the sullen landscape of negation.
(Almost scribbled “barren” there, but who ever knows what goes on underfoot.)

With skin, barely healed, itching, eczema hidden, he sits in restlessness of wait.
The path to his mailbox is overgrown. Overhead a sky, unpainted, a canvas
for sooty brushstrokes, for striations yet uncarved. Imaginations darkly seen.
He grips his fountain pen, handmade paper stretched, in possibilities, unsoiled.

The sky starts darkening, as he sits in his fugue; dusk birds twittering.
A log on the fire creaks, drops and sighs, warning: I’ll be dead soon.
A moth brushes his face, a crepuscular wake-up call. His limbs are stiff.
The evening is here, an aged retainer, standing, waiting for his order.

Patching connections stretched thin by time, frayed and forgotten,
His thoughts, nebulous, drift in and out, peering into crevices long vacated.
The words spoken only in imagined conversations, never daring to see daylight
whispers of divergent paths on the other side of his ardent embrace.

Where we stand, so we fall, so it seems,
And yet, and yet, he reaches for that moment,
And now, through pitted rocks, dense undergrowth,
Climbs the road to happiness, and her.

Progress made with the wry realization that his turbulent and fanciful conceits
Have been simply ways to soften his guilt, regret and disappointment,
Avoiding the responsibility he should bear for their demise.
The rich imaginings servicing his innate neediness for absolution and pity.

Only in the dark does he get to see the smile, in the silence hear the laughter ring
A place set beside him at the table for despair as the nib scratches the paper,
And his skin; he draws the most recent of uncountable breaths.
He addresses the picture frame facing the wall. Long time, no chat.

—
We have not done a collaborative poem in a long time. But now we are back. @pbermabloom, @brudberg, @sleepingdingo, @myvogonpoetry, @stair71, @vivchook and @troublegummer

Craft Dreams

It was either ascend by metaphors or go under a plain life
Sink, immerse, suffocate and drown in gyring commonalities.
Or so she presumed back then, persuaded as she floated,
Drifted and slided on tropes, and her own buoying youth.

On a neap tide she rose and with the spring thaw
The flood waters gushed and rivulets carved
Inscriptions on mountainsides. There she found herself,
A participle on an outcrop phrase, dangling.

Slowly, shapes around her coalesced and solidified
Small children sprouted at her feet, squalling and thickening.
Or were they phantoms? Drowsing, chin dipping, she’s not sure,
Sobs and wails mingling with sounds of swooping seagulls screeching.

Rocking in a way that felt internalised, she thought awhile
Translucence was her view; light and shapes that she tried to understand.
Passively she existed, but experienced a vividness she could not explain
Things seemed to happen to her without choice. Was that her choice?

Yawing, shrieking, spiralling, rudder gone, almost breaking apart.
Drowning, not waving; hallucinating, not knowing if this is Life’s cull.
One last gasp, some space to decide. Battle on through turbulent tides,
Or beach yourself in dry dock, writing rusty memoirs in eternal solitude?

Abask she moors herself, shadow-stretching under canopies.
She sighs and drops her gown, dust and rust, she hurls herself
and leeward leans, In seagull droppings no more lapping waves
she’s burned her metaphors, ashore her end is sure.

Once more we managed to weave a collaborative poem. This time starting with a picture, focusing on verbs, and trying to make it into an elegy.

Collaborative poem by @permabloom, @stair71, @sleepingdingo, @troublegummer, @vivchook and @brudberg

Hidden Truths

Copyright Björn Rudberg

Hidden truths
exposed as lying smoke;
sombre syllables of sullen clouds.
Once captured as an asset in their balance sheets
and silent wings of a smothered gull
Now its frozen tears are
Broken shells,
Tokens from a midden
Once hidden, rising from the cutting,
Reminders of people we killed and dispossessed
To grab our wealth, however flimsy.
These ancestors abide.
Always there
the omnipresent might
of shiny purgatory pipes we dread
in oily arguments and given compensations
of discounted gasoline and games
forgetting melodies –
wondering
where did the world go wrong?
The collective skills of humankind –
Genius, curiosity, guile and conscience
distilled within these metal sluices,
syphoned to the pockets
of the few
The disconnect divides
Faith and faithless, believers, liars
High rise friars and broadcasts of promised immaculates
Clasp our hands, intertwined in wiring
Mouths open, eyes are closed
Salvation –
disguised by persuasions
inducing our passive acceptance,
resisting cultivation of enlightenment.
The sobering approval of flawed
arguments make us ask
Is there hope?
In Earth, beneath concrete,
Tiny tendrils insistently press,
Unseen, probe the weaknesses of lime, sand and stone,
And wedge verdant fingers into cracks.
We will emerge, as all
Hidden Truths.

A collaborative triquain chain by @brudberg, @sleepingdingo, @troublegummer,@vivchook and @stair71. To be shared at dVerse Open Link Night today.

Shadow Play

I stand, feeling I am about to be spilled to the floor
Until you touch me and I am sure
As a moment exists, that moment can just disappear
And its shadow may last forever
Sometimes the best things barely last at all
As we change without knowing we are better.

My yearning for you seems to have lasted forever
And now to be realised, it leaves me aquiver.
Your breath on my skin fans the flames of desire
The soft words of encouragement are all that I need
For the frisson to turn me molten inside.
I stand, feeling I am about to be spilled to the floor.

The reality I’ve known until this day
Has seemed a dull charade, a shadow play,
Projected upon a tattered bedsheet.
I fear that this new-found clarity
Is but a veil of dreams, and I will wake,
Until you touch me and I am sure.

The certainty lasts but the duration
Of a breath, a gasp, a moan, a whimper
Wretched knowledge rears its ugly head
Hated wisdom of temporality and transience
Bitter insight, lamentable realization that
As a moment exists, that moment can just disappear.

Like the sheen from the stars is drowning
in the tide where your whispers caressed
my earlobes with promised forevers.
Like water is pulled by the force of the moon
our moments are scorched; I’m blinded by darkness
and its shadow may last forever

Shrouded in a place of unspoken passion.
Occupying the vacant territories where our
spirits briefly found footing as one.
Was it a real liaison or simply an illusion that
fades when eyes are fully awakened?
Sometimes the best things barely last at all.

Uncertain again where once certainty stood,
chasms surround my sense of what was good
in our twinned life. My tongue can’t grasp the words
I need to say to stitch a bridge between us.
Conjoined time mysteriously shifting fast and vast
As we change without knowing we are better.

This month our poetic offering is an effort in collaborative form, the cascade

Collaboratve Poem by @troublegummer, @vivchook, @stair71, @permabloom, @brudberg, @myvogonpoetry and @sleepingdingo
—
January 31, 2015

Rocky Pilgrimage

My pilgrimage has led me here.
Stationed among the downy clouds
yet securely moored by ageless stone,
to give account to whispers in the wind.

I hear from deep within the cairn,
the voices from my distant past,
of every end that came to this
of every soul who passed before.

Stack of grief, stock of knowledge,
Help me, be my stepping-stones,
For the morrow beckons still
From the far-off future frontier.

Silent, stately imposing looming power,
Passive and constant yet growing,
Each step I have made, each struggle manifest
My life, my regrets, my losses, my loves

The tribulations of a life lived hard,
hewing blocks of inner fortitude.
Flimsy pile of grace under pressure
a granite strength only loosely bound.

This pile has been my North Star heretofore,
My heavy leaden heart’s magnetic tug.
Each slipping stumbling step, each wayward walk,
This granite beacon guided me anew.

Each point of balance grounds me, guides me, gives me
Heft and gravitas I’d otherwise lack.
My eyes scanning the cloud-embanked horizon,
it’s time for my feet to find the steady track

Collaborative poetry by @MyVogonPoetry,@brudberg, @permabloom, @troublegummer, @vivchook, @stair71 and @sleepingdingo

Night Steed

Up in the middle of the night, the pounding in his temples
A deafening echo of yesterday’s loss, and of the days’ before,
He wished hard for a distraction, but none was forthcoming.
Maybe a dog’s barking soon, or rain? Hell, even hail would do!

Even the worst of those moments he wants now
Even the most mundane when he closes his eyes can be back
He’ll live in the past and he’ll await what is to come
But now he’ll deny until it fades into being gone

In the shadows, his mind tracks his breath’s shallow cadence.
In. Out. One. Two. Time begins to unravel.
Bringing snapshots of memories overlapped and strewn about.
Each to be stored and savored, safe from coming storms.

In shrines and boxes he stored, wrapped in tissue-paper
sparkling turquoise glitter by the sea, the spell of spring
when buds are bursting, the smell of roses and the warmth
of the hand he held proposing and his heartbeats when she smiled.

The darkest-hour gloom is shrinking now.
He’s lost the chance for the solace of sleep.
Pools of viscous darkness still linger in his mind,
Yet hope begins to flutter behind tired eyes.

The dawn presages one more earthly spin
for this rocky outcrop in a distant arm
Of this glorious galaxy of stars,
Where precious hearts will race, precarious.

As rays of light penetrate his turbulent thoughts,
New resolutions coalesce and are released
Destruction always leads on to renewal and rebuilding
Where forgiveness can be the mortar of this new life
Together.

Collaborative poetry by @permabloom, @troublegummer, @myvogonpoetry, @brudberg, @sleepingdingo, @stair71 and @vivchook

Ode to Carl – Ottava Rima

A poem in Ottava rima was our brief,
But in brief; it won’t happen, all right?
I planned a mock heroic epic, of a thief,
Instead, he stole my sleep last night.
Writing verse of a particular sort,
Requires time and wit, which both I lack.
My midnight thoughts have come to nought,
I’ve let the team down; I’m just a hack.

A mock heroic epic tale of crime
Does sound the sort of thing that could be fun,
But, in the end, it’s just a silly rhyme;
If, in the end (and during) you had none,
For G-d’s sake then it’s just a waste of time.
Were it our undoing, best it’s not done.
If it’s not fun, well then it’s unpaid work
And what fool would do that? I’d rather shirk.

And here was I, this poetry novice
Thinking Ottava Rima a Microsoft font.
But to write the epic tale of a goddess
My neophyte skills have left me want.
But writing is something that gives me solace
So I’ll make my mouse my magic wand
And send my lines to those that know
And have the best chance of giving it a go.

Ottava, Shmettava, this whole rhyming talk,
Has reached its pinnacle, we’re all halfway done
Yet this work’s no more than erudite crock
With nary some flesh or worthy good pun.
I better step in to praise, not to mock,
A true, odic legend that Twitter has spun
‘Bout lasses and lads who team up for verse
Infinitely better than this, not worse.

Ottava Rima? Hakuna Matata!
No worries with eleven syllables here.
You say pentameter I say “Tomata”!
They’re absurd, are those rules to which we adhere!
Words can flow like those boats at a regatta
But it doesn’t mean I’m making sense, my dear.
We’ll try something new for this month as a brief
I stare at my effort muttering “oh grief”.

Ottava Rima’s a heroic feat
and soon performed in ink we’ll see its end,
in courageous scribbling there’s no defeat.
Heroic mock of self is better penned,
in rhyme and stumbling meter, you can’t cheat.
And soon I raise my glass to poet friends,
Across the internet – we made it through.
We’ve showed how Vogon poems can be brewed.

After a month’s of respite we are back with a heroic effort at Ottava Rima…
This is a collaborative effort of @sleepingdingo @stair71 @vivchook @permabloom @troublegummer and @brudberg
—
October 25, 2014

A Missed Connection

Phone in my hand, I wait for the train.
My eyes keep flicking to scan it again.
Absent is the text you promised you’d send.
The subtext appears: my future holds pain.

The stars in the sky to your eyes would lend
A sparkle, a sheen, to fidelity bend
I tremble with fear, it’s breaking my heart
The bile in my throat – could this be the end?

Accursed be a love, once riven apart,
A ship on the seas, beyond any chart.
I’d sacrifice, kill, if I could return
To when we first met, that hope-laden start.

A time when our love did recklessly burn
Weightless, but solid, no mortal could turn
Together our beings and bodies as one
unshakable union no one could spurn

We were a knot that could not be undone,
A speeding car that could not be outrun,
My romantic fantasy rendered me blind
I stare at the screen wondering what I’ve done

I’ve begun to feel that we’re no longer aligned
Our passionate embraces the new daily grind
I know you’ll despise me as your ball and chain
That’s why my gut tells me you’ve left me behind
—
A collobarive Rubáyiat by @sleepingdingo, @brudberg, @stair71, @myvogonpoetry, @troublegummer and @vivchook

The last dance

The night sky sparkles like a chandelier.
She waits out the waltz on the balcony
With a champagne cocktail raised to her lips,
Wondering what they’d think if they but knew.

She is tired of living in this provincial city,
The small change of cliché they all proffer.
Wait till they hear she’s run off with her lover.
She smiles, thinking of the cacophony to come.

Not that she’ll see their Chanel-painted lips,
gasping like stunned carp flapping on a deck.
But behind their efforts to console her husband,
each will wonder why she chose her, and not them.

The dance floor was overflowing that night they met
spilling out the same assemblage of usual suspects.
Save one, who with a tender brush as they passed,
caused a ripple that would soon become a wave.

Oh how the surf, the kind that bobs then rolls away,
Just picked her up, took her within its liquid embrace,
Set her on its buoying crest and moved with her.
She hardly looked back, one with the undulation.

One thought, one move, one choice, one act of the heart
Disassembled the intricate layers they once lived,
“Look forward, never back, look forward, never back”,
Her whispered mantra, as she goes, untethered

And in the wake she leaves – there’s falling stars
To shattered chandeliers the music ceased to play
In harshness of the morning sun – the void she left
A horizon filled with the relentless whispers from the sea

A collaborative poem by @stair71, @sleepingdingo, @vivchook, @myvogonpoetry, @permabloom, @troublegummer, @brudberg

Jasmine

Does life flourish, heat up, bubble over and burn out
Festering faster under a sun deceptively animating?
She swooned in fear and consternation, wavering,
Seeking faith in three stubbornly blooming jasmine flowers.

Oh, that she still possessed the vapid vacancy of youth,
When hope’s fountain sprang as limitless as the ocean.
Shielding her eyes from summer’s harsh bright glare,
She scans a long-diminishing horizon.

She’s searching for a sweetness in lapping of the timeless waves
That single touch of honeysuckle in the blistered breeze
That remaining residue of grace in a pockmarked face
She seeks the melodies in silent thunderheads above.

Swirling skies darkening lit on edge by dying haloes
She contemplates and sees it as hope flying or hope fleeing
The air has texture, there’s colour in the silence
There are memories in the scent of summer’s surrendered smiles.

Oh, how his languid grin distorted those ravaging scars of youth
The hardship of his visage belying the stoic stillness beneath
Even in summer’s tempests his coolness a palpable force
As intoxicating and evocative of those jasmine so long ago.

The darkness dwelling, deepening; the day is over.
Retracing their path, her remembering not met with his recall,
The wheels jam against a rut, and breathless, she can’t say further,
And even if she could, he would no longer understand.

Our collaborative poetry for dVerse OLN. By @permabloom @stair71 @brudberg @troublegummer @vivchook and @sleepingdingo