Silence (200 of 365)

Day 200 of the 365 day poem challenge.

Word of the day cerulean meaning "deep sky blue."

Silence 

Pause.

What do you expect between breaths, between pages, between caresses.

Stop.

Press on and glimpse the cerulean night, so clear and blank, is it a canvass for us? Was it intended?

No answers. Silence.

I met a man with gums on him that liked to run and squidge together making a hollow croaking noise.

Pause.

Consider the nonsense, consider that we only have so much time. I check it regularly to ensure I am on time.

Appointments are satisfying. 

Pause.

Dare I continue, what lays between us that I cannot reach you? What is missing to complete us? I only feel shadows and claws that dig into me - you insist that I stay away.

Silence.

That's what I see in my heart a pendulum ticking back and forth, it reminds me of the end, if gravity will eventually allow it.

I am a pendulum and my life swings back and forth, back - 

Silence.

Pause. 

Nothing more. 

Nothing.

Camisado (199 of 365)

Day 199 of the 365 day poem challenge.

Word of the day camisado meaning "a military mission occurring at night."

Camisado

It is raining

It is so wet tonight

It's the type of night you 

Feel in your thighs 

The coolness tickles your warmest bits

It's the sort of night where you sit in your underwear

And the sun was there but now it's gone and the moon is ice 

And feet are cool and clammy

And you are there 

And we are there and the fan blows

And the bed takes us and me into you

And we complete our assault on each other and we lay and we mate

And then we sit quite as gnomes and listen to the tapping of rain on glass

Which leaves tiny slivers like sparks of ghosts grinding against the unknown. 

Candidate (198 of 365)

Day 198 of the 365 day poem challenge.

Word of the day Bruxism meaning "involuntary and habitual grinding of the teeth."

The Candidate 

The pursing of her lips

The bruxism of her teeth

The schism between her mind and heart

The amorphous space about her

The aura and the projections

Blue, purple, green 

The bottom of a sea choral bleached faded

Her knees knobbly poke out her skirt

Her stomach knotting over and over again and doing somersaults

Silhouettes in the adjoining board room

Tap tapping of pens 

Scrubbing out

Erasing whiting out 

White tight knuckles 

Brittle smile caving at the edges 

Hair tidy, makeup mild (relatively)

Skirt modest (relatively)

Jacket and coat formal pressed elegant.

Transit Lounge (197 of 365)

Day 197 of the 365 day poem challenge.

Word of the day fuselage meaning: "the main body of an aircraft."

Transit Lounge

The tall windows

Stare back at me and in them

I see my reflection 

A young boy runs up to the Windows

A battle weary mother at his side

He jumps up and down and exclaims with the only words he knows

I think there must be a word for this excitement

He stares out at the nose of the plane, it's great white fuselage

and the wings

His arms fidget and he points 

As if it's impossible to describe the majesty of what he sees 

There is wonder 

Nothing is mundane to him 

This is the discovery of flight

This is the discovery of the giant 

And indecipherable 

This is the discovery of the modern

The boy jumps about and takes his leave 

Then calls his father near to him

Gesturing frantic and wild 

With a smile a wingspan wide

The boy's father smiles

I find myself smiling too 

Suddenly I recall where I am 

In this great fortress that we made

That somehow belongs to them

Maybe they are alive

Maybe these great birds that beat us

Deserve more respect

The boy goes

It is time to board

Time to fly. 

Portrait of the Dying (196 of 365)

Day 196 of the 365 day poem challenge.

Word of the day sallow meaning: "

(of a person's face or complexion) of an unhealthy yellow or pale brown colour."

Portrait of the Dying

An elderly man lies upright in his hospital bed

He makes no fuss

And all noise he tries falls mute

On every ear 

His harsh complaints might as well be a dogs bark 

The man becomes sallow

Withdrawn 

There are few flowers or photographs nearby that draw him

The flower petals are turning brown

The stems sag and turn the vase water cloudy 

The tubes connect him to the hospital and to life

This is his life 

The words palliative and care

Displayed proudly beside one another

Oxymoron he considers

But no one is here to experience his wit 

Not anymore.

My fat blue tie (194 of 365)

Day 194 of the 365 day poem challenge.

Word of the day autotomy meaning "The casting off of a limb or other part of the body by an animal under threat, such as a lizard."

My Fat Blue tie

My fat blue tie rests 

Like a cow tongue on my chest

It's tip lays just above my belt

And trousers 

My fat blue tie is knotted

And tight against my white neck

It melds my shirt against my skin

Seals me into my suit and

My work persona

My fat blue tie 

Slips and slides 

Eternally shifting but to me

It is always stationary 

And time is frozen to its autotomous tail Like a pendulum.

; (amphibology) (195 of 365)

Day 195 of the 365 day poem challenge.

Word of the day amphibology meaning: "a phrase or sentence that is grammatically ambiguous."

; (amphibology)

A passing passion

Hangs in the balance

Without determination

Spiralling endlessly and myopically

The tower cranes 

Hoist an interminable load

An interminable loads continue

To be stacked like Duplo blocks

And the tower cranes are unwieldy as a toddler

Joe Bloggs catches a whiff of

Industry on his way in 

He catches up and does his business

Then he's on his way out

His suit and tie trailing

His white collar subsistence 

Failure (193 of 365)

Day 193 of the 365 day poem challenge.

Word of the day argute meaning "shrewd."

Failure 

Reading stories of long fought battles and hard fought alliances

Reading stories of helpless victims and argute defilers

Reading stories of (perhaps) wasted efforts and wasted lives

Reading stories that are inconvenient and non-ending

Reading stories about relentless forces of darkness and nature 

Reading stories of impossible struggles of tsunamis, volcanoes of famines of wars of corrupt rulers 

Reading stories of false hope felt too late

Reading stories of selfishness without remorse or recompense

Reading stories of victimisation

Reading stories of the helpless become dependent and then of the dependent slammed with sharp inflammatory stones

Reading stories of condemnation and rejection of religion of secularism 

Reading stories where there is no truce

Reading stories of rebels and regimes

Reading stories of countries lost and founded and raped and pillaged and historically languishing or historically spurned 

Reading stories of twisted orthodoxy and radical affiliations 

Reading stories of conflicting ideals and the plunge to violence

Reading redundant histories

Reading repeated mistakes

Reading forgotten failures of wars and conflicts and where it all went wrong...

Rotary (192 of 365)

Day 192 of the 365 day poem challenge.

Word of the day apoptosis meaning: "the death of cells which occurs as a normal part of an organism's growth or development."

Rotary 

The rotation of wheels 

Became the way of the world

Horses pulled wheels

Then engines pulled wheels 

Then electricity was forged by wheels 

The breakdown of the atomic wheel heralded a modern age

We each have our conception and apoptosis.

Each day the balls of my feet 

Contemplate and resist fatigue

They know only one way 

They roll forward just as sure as gravity 

My wheels turn

The wheels of my eyes are tired and dry 

Shapes blur in and out of focus 

Images projected onto the retina 

A turning projector wheel

In my mind sends ragged clips

Of memories and thoughts, lists, tasks operations that circulate back and forth 

There is a wheel pistoning 

Neurones and impulses 

I feel it zig and zag like lightning

Is my grey matter scorched 

It seems so 

Where did this weariness come from

When did I lose the momentum of polished wheels

Where did the inertia go

What was the trigger for this grounding deafening halt 

I demand that the wheels turn

I demand an end to these wearisome tones 

I demand an end to this

I demand an end.

Ocean Waves (191 of 365)

Day 191 of the 365 day poem challenge.

Word of the day anfractuous meaning "winding or circuitous."

Ocean Waves 

I feel at peace in the sight of 

Ocean waves

The ones that look green 

The ones that ripple and swirl

And circle the rocks playfully

The water is freezing 

Unpleasantly so 

Until I dive all the way in

There's no peace until after the plunge straight down

The cold evaporates and the murky world splays itself before my eyes

There is life and dust 

There are so many invisible stories here

I throw my head back like a surfer in a perfume add 

The pretentious type 

Where there's a new world 

And there's nothing but me and this cold blue 

There is no end to it

You can't break this down

You can't make it less

The greatness is there

It dwarfs everything

I am so small

I am nothing here 

I could dissolve and my skin and bones become dust 

I could become the bed of this great pythonic sea 

I lie on my back 

Allow myself to sink down

My nostrils teasing at the surface 

I feel the water smear my insides

It's salty and penetrating and itching and biting 

My lungs hiss and garble 

I jerk up

Another wave comes and laps at my waist 

Then another comes anfractuous

And another and another.

Doubting my place (190 of 365)

Day 190 of the 365 day poem challenge.

Word of the day bibliophile meaning: "

a person who collects or has a great love of books."

Doubting my place

I question what happens next

I hope the answer will come to me and I won't have to find it 

That's a pleasant idea 

But my head burns with longing

To seize upon an invisible thread and pull it bare, to rip open the vein and expose the meat of something

I sit in a chair and drift along 

Quite silent and contemplating

The air is pleasant enough neither stale nor fresh 

My legs are squashed and compressed

I foresee a long hill and the sun beating down

I see water at the top waiting for me

Cool quenching glorious 

I shall not run and the road will be long 

I doubt I'll find anything there than

A mundane pleasant evening 

That I can sink into

Like a fat man groaning into the folds of a familiar lounge 

I know that a movie plot will not find me  there is not yet a turning point im aware of and im the author so that's a problem

I prefer reading 

A natural bibliophile

Writing was never my strong suit.

I lost my patience (189 of 365)

Day 189 of the 365 day poem challenge.

Word of the day tirade meaning "

a speech of violent denunciation."

I lost my patience

I arrived and the papers were astray

I arrived and nothing was going my way

I arrived and nasal voices blasted complaints into my ears: why, what will you do about it

My plaintiff reply nothing - (my thought I should do nothing but end this call)

I lost my patience in the blazing heat

I lost my patience in my lack of sleep on sweat stained sheets

I lost my patience at insistence and questions with out end

I lost my patient when the carpet was yanked out from under me

I lost my patience by the sea

As a mother screamed for her girl to return (she was insane but nonetheless)

I lost my patience in a gaggling mob of enthusiasm

Which made me question mine

I lost my patience as the laughter and talk overflowed into my hours of prepared presentation 

I lost my patience when I went to the grocery store and wandered dehydrated and confused (a burger was not the right choice for my throat at the time)

I didn't have any left to bear your criticism with humility and dignity

So I fought

I launched into a deliberate tirade 

I fought because I had lost so many battles and I was humiliated and because I felt useless and deflated

And because with you I could fight and I could be angry 

But I lost my patience with that too

Now that the smoke has cleared

I wished I had given you my patience all of it

...its too late now though 

I can only hope and wish and pray

That perhaps at the end of the day

It will replenish that we will wear another day 

That this can be put behind 

And you'll then have what was denied. 

The Return (188 of 365)

Day 188 of the 365 day poem challenge.

Word of the day winsome meaning: "charming in a childlike or naive way."

The Return 

I am sure there will be a return

I am sure that there is a winsome sunny shore for me

Do you recognise the feeling of drowning the way it ages you in an instant and then the tension releases and droops and unspools

And becomes sloppy elastic and tired...

A sunset is a pleasant bookend

It's a conclusion 

No one ever considers what follows it when the Cowboys ride into it

That the orange glow and darkness benign and cool gives way to the radiant tyrant of a new dawn 

And the crow clawed sleep deprivation of the day

I long for a return 

A return to what? 

Going backwards to youth 

To feel sand and nothing else

To feel all the cares being absorbed the clots of problems and issues and minutiae being drained away pouring down the drain swirling the drain oozing out spiralling down 

Accept the hopelessness

Embrace the coolness

And then you'll find yourself there spat out tired but luxurious raking on the shore and your feet will take the sand and you'll rue the day 

You ever despaired 

For respite has come

The redemption has come

The resolution has come

The revolution has come 

The return has come.

Recombobulation (187 of 365)

Day 187 of the 365 day poem challenge.

Word of the day recombobulation meaning: "the act of putting back into order, removing confusion."

Recombobulation 

It might concern you to know 

That murder lurks in he passengers 

To your left and right 

Walk down one particular dimensional gate and shake in just rightly in all the wrong places 

And there it is 

The ugliness

It might surprise you to know

The pairs of eyes that cannot deny your allure each and every day

Many wanted, but unwilling to lock and link and then supposedly love or obsess or lust after or lose control

It ought to concern you 

That when you dream you're dying

Each night switching off and losing all control and yet it's so peaceful isn't it 

You want it now don't you?

Because there's nothing there really

Even when it's made up you'll wake and then know it's nothing

And say you never wake then it won't be anything at all

Each cycle of the sun and the moon

Which is in fact an orbit and gravity plays its tricks which we like to label days and months and years

After numerous bloody battles

The ways and whys have consolidated 

The messy hunk of past has been

Recombobulated.

Chips and soda (186 of 365)

Day 186 of the 365 day poem challenge.

Word of the day zephyr meaning "a slight wind."

Chips and soda

Something soft and yellow and brown and pink bursts in my teeth

The fatty loaf and its sugar sag down into my gums and stomach

There's a sugar burst and then a craving for more

The fizzy fixer follows lighting up my throat which aches for more popping carbon dioxide 

The ozone bubble erupts and splits

Amongst the gelatinous white, yellow and pink gunk that washes together and congeals and finally

Rips right out the urethra

First a whining zephyr is expelled and then the groaning starts 

As the colon yodels and undulates

Finally the gunk explosion of methane and violent smells like a volcano.

Lost touch with the light (185 of 365)

Day 185 of the 365 day poem challenge.

Word of the day Stockholm-syndrome meaning: "feelings of trust or affection felt in many cases of kidnapping or hostage-taking by a victim towards a captor."



Lost touch with the light 

There is a dormant fire

Where Stockholm-syndrome lives 

In deep attics and tin sheds

Where flesh withers

And eyeballs yearn for the strength of tears 

and the energy of agony 

And the presence of hopelessness within the shades of melancholic choking blackness

The retching shade of their own inner darkness is burning in the freezing tempest 

The absence 

I knew a story of a girl who dreamed to vomit out her demons

But was strapped down by an invisible vice and 

Prevented the scream only to smile polite like a porcelain doll even beside 

The cruel god of her world

Even beside the salvation 

Even beside kind faces

Even beside the hope of support

Even beside the world of light 

But she was lost 

She had lost something 

She had lost touch with the light. 

The Youth (184 of 365)

Day 184 of the 365 day poem

Challenge.

Word of the day vicissitude meaning: "

a variation in circumstances or fortune."

The Youth

I am golden time revival

I am held and happy

I am reborn kissed by wind

I am silk and satin 

I am lord and master 

I am eternal keeper of joy

I am put upon 

I am veneer shining

I am flexible, sultry Sunday

I am pliable and sedentary

I am short on the road 

I am keen of spirit and gait

I am love-lorn and love-torn

I am brazen bashfulness 

I am the vicissitude 

I am the plucky hero

I am the falling from grace 

I am the peacock parade

I am the inebriated paramour

I am the relentless undying

I am motivation incarnate

I am concluding and never-ending.

Enervated (183 of 365)

Day 183 of the 365 day poem challenge.

Word of the day enervated meaning: "make (someone) feel drained of energy or vitality."

Enervated

Sinking body

Sagging eyelid

Closing black heavy

Everything 

Brain whirring 

Try to reboot 

Collapsing consciousness

Tunnel vision

The fading fog of vision

Dizzy spell

Weighing down 

Sinking unpeeling

Depress sinking

Tumble circling

Sinking succumbing 

Drops sinking

Dropping sinking

Careening swooping

Down onto soft enveloping 

Suffocating sleep.

 

Welcome to the Heat (182 of 365)

Welcome to day 182 of the 365 day poem challenge.

Word of the day vitriolic meaning "harsh, bitter, or malicious in tone."

Welcome to the Heat

I see waves undulating

And the ground melting and

The fatigue groping down only heavy sodden stinky steps

I see waves in my eyes and the tired aching red rings around pupils

Blistered by the dry blast of the wind and withered by the iridescent heat

I could strike a match against my back and the blue flame might compare to this 

I can feel water being pooled out of my back and collected like thousands of little invisible creatures in thousands of rivulets down my spin are carrying my sustenance away from me 

I am become a baron landscape of hairy oiled canyons and bunions and blisters and sores and rashes 

My hair is like hay

My hands are like gluggy potato

My feet are moist swamps 

My brain is drying up...

The constant draining burn is not vitriolic it simply is and it won't end and it won't care how deeply it is felt or scorned 

But for the cool breeze or a hot breeze or any breeze

There is now the stifling stillness of heat sapped air 

Feel the collective chokes.

Be Irenic (181 of 365)

Day 181 of the 365 day poem challenge.

Word of the day irenic meaning: "aiming or aimed at peace."

Be Irenic

Be peace and calm 

Be purposive be explicable

Be reverent be sure be pure

Be persuasively benign be punctual 

Be humble be assured 

be demonstrative 

Be fierce be strong be firm

Be a brick wall when the moment calls

Be co-dependent be compassionate

Be just be warm be forgiving

Be assertive be prepared

Be scared at the right times 

Be malleable be hardened steel

Be irenic and bring peace. 

Utilitarian Monotony (180 of 365)

Day 180 of the 365 day poem challenge.

Word of the day utilitarian meaning: "having a useful function."

Utilitarian Monotony 

His fingers click and type 

Her fingers click and type

The walls of cubicles separate then

A modern love story 

Will they won't they

The phone rings their headsets light up

They animate for the allotted minute or so

Then

Her fingers click and type

His fingers click and type

The cycle repeats 

She has not time to smile

He is on his next call 

(today he magnet quota)

Secrets (179 of 365)

Day 179 of the 365 day poem challenge.

Word of the day ubiquitous meaning: "being present everywhere at once."

Secrets 

Two young lads are at a church

They clap their hands 

After the sermon 

But no one joins them

Can you imagine what they must think

Two young lads one in his bed

In the seminary the door creaks open

He has an expected guest

It is just the two of them 

Their two pale bodies in the starlight

Can you imagine what they must say

Two young lads one recites the chapter he's been taught to memorise his eyes keep each line keenly

The other sits on the church pews 

The other one can memorise little save for wrinkles and hairs and age and wrongness 

Can you imagine all that they do not say

Two young lads one approaches the other as if to speak 

This is the ultimate confession

This will be liberation

But the tall men in their capes are near at hand

They make a wall 

The crowd of others their smiles untroubled unwrinkled un-smeared

Imagine all he will never say 

Two lads in a Covent 

The lad behind the pew is tall and full-minded 

He finds the second lad jerking by his head as his body rocks

He forgets he shows the body conveys it happily to the earth 

Buries it all 

Asks no questions 

The boy is ubiquitous 

The Covent is a crypt of questions and secrets 

Imagine all that might have been.

Of the woman n. (178 of 365)

Day 178 of the 365 day poem challenge.

Word of the day truculent meaning:

"defiantly aggressive."

Of the woman n.

Likeness to lavender

munificent megalomaniac 

Splendiferous cadaverous 

Bounding bountiful beauteous

Indigo Crimson magenta

Lucifererous mischievous 

nepotist narcissist neat

Toady truculent tanrantulean 

Fervent fun frockish

Lush lullaby languishing

Suave sweet saccharine 

Coquettish course circumspect

Artful ambivalent alluring

Posturing pensive poised 

Maeve, neon, highlights

Honey orange-peel  cinnamon

Savoury thyme myrtle 

Sweet raspberry sour cherry

Marinated jasmine, oolong 

Paperbark dew smoke 

Luscious voluptuous lascivious 

Take Solace (177 of 365)

Day 177 of the 365 day poem challenge.

Word of the day trenchant meaning: "having keenness and forcefulness and penetration in thought."

Take solace 

When danger is near

When clouds are grey

When strangers frown 

And your head is downcast

Take it in absorb it

When friends recoil

When grief descends

When sombre omens appear

And you are lost in fear

Take time to remember

Take time to forget

When heroes seem empty

When rhetoric no longer talks 

When speeches are worn

And promises are torn

Take reflection be trenchant 

When rivals tear 

When countries do war

When the world collapses

And everyone seems divided

Take note it will not always be

Take note very few want this

Fall from Grace (176 of 365)

Day 176 of the 365 day poem challenge.

Word of the day torpid meaning: 

"in a condition of biological rest or suspended animation."

Fall from Grace

She fell on him

She had never felt that way

That dizzy that sensual

She was an object and

He subjugated her

And all the cliches were true

She was beauty incarnate and

He made her so with each 

Aching thrust 

It hurt and then it didn't 

And then she wanted it to hurt

Then it hurt again

It hurt when people watched her

It hurt when she tried to cover up

It hurt after she covered her shame

No clothes were large enough to conceal

So she let such cares scatter themselves to the wind

She opened her mouth and her body

She splayed herself across the streets

She was lashed and bruised 

Under the weight of all that contempt and judgment

The throne she'd briefly occupied had become a prison

Platitudes came easily 

Falsehood is easy when it's essential

He saw nothing significant

He saw no sacrifice

He saw nothing special 

And so she questioned it all

But she continued on as she must

Her emotions, her face, her legs remained torpid through the seasons

She had finally reached the end of the beginning.

Saturated (175 of 365)

Day 175 of the 365 day poem challenge.

Word of the day surfeit meaning: "overabundance."

Saturated 

There is a point of numbness

Where all the jumble of the world

Filters down the black ooze leaches out

What is left of the empty words 

I am reminded of the coffee dripping slowly through

I feel like a bloated man surfeit with big cereal bowls of propaganda and opinions and views and notions and ideas 

This high speed thing we are in 

Can still only slowly dribble down

And filter through to the masses

I hear a word, a sentence, a headline, a tweet 

Videos are easier

Photos are easier 

There is no filter 

There is no digestion

Just images being blasted smacking into my cerebral cortex

Trying to find purchase and 

the meaning is there 

If only I had the time to filter through it.

Syllogism (174 of 365)

Day 174 of the 365 day poem challenge.

Word of the day syllogism meaning "an instance of a form of reasoning in which a conclusion is drawn from two given or assumed propositions (premises)."

Syllogism

She splayed her white flesh

It was open at the chest and thigh

She was young and she smiled in my direction with red painted lips

And dark brown dancing hair

She spoke and I was not aware of the words only the grind of her hips and the music

Her breath and mine commingled

I followed her through the crowd

Just the two of us

Her head shaking not a word

Between us just a dance floor of sweat and heat and bodies 

But only the two of us 

She took my drinks one and two

She spoke said things that were lost in the rhythm her eyes were widening with interest as her chest was burgeoning and bulging out her top

She adjusted her dress straps

She was vulnerable and innocent

In that moment like a doe that begged for her protector or a hunter

I grabbed her hand 

She recoiled her face filled with so much life and the lights of her beauty

Scrunched itself up into an ugly 

Concoction of powder and grease

In disgust I grabbed her 

smearing her foundation over my hands

Watching the grease drip away

Noticing the broken line of her oozing mascara

She drew back like an injured animal

I deduced at that time it was appropriate to leave

I darted through the oppressive all seeing and unseeing eyes of the crowd

I imagined her wailing like a wounded beast but there was only the thump of the bass...

The seeds of doubt (173 of 365)

Day 173 of the 365 day poem challenge.

Word of the day staid meaning: "

characterized by dignity and propriety."

The seeds of doubt 

I missed her and all her dreams 

I thought I knew her

Then her image splayed across Facebook and Twitter

This woman obese on drink and food and laughter

So casually her hands splayed against other women and men's chests

It was an internal loss of motion

An internal slam of a train into my skull 

Lack of comprehension sensation

Do you know what it is to be numb?

To question reality?

I was part of a something and 

It was all a lie

So I sank down lying on my bed feeling the blankets Crimson fold over me and into me

Pushing me down wrapping around my neck 

Snaking over my legs and tying me done and breaking my bones

I looked up at the spinning fan cycling around but there was no staid piece 

From the dizzying laughter and phantoms of her drunk and dancing

About an invisible pole in my mind

And she was slipping downward out of sight becoming a shade and all that I knew was slipping out of my grasp and out of comprehension.