All My Poems

[dyingflame]

So, I've decided to open a thread with all my poems - so everytime I write one, I will update this thread. Anyone can post comments and even your own poems given they are thematically related to the current poem :) enjoy. I will start with my latest and go backwards in time, unless I write another one, which could be any moment



I wrote this last week: "Faces, Floods, Pebbles"


They will come for me in the form
of people I half recognized on the streets
narrowly missing their shoulders
while trying to walk to work,
glancing up from beneath my eyes,
my vision shuddering beneath
my skin against the wallowed air,
moist and hidden in the coat of
damp buildings leaning on each other
against the colourless downpour-

and in faces I dreamt about who drowned
while sitting down and waiting for early trains,
happy soldiers on an eternal orchestra
of violent exchanges
in the garden of fables
where cracked ribs are prized
as gold.

The hook is caught in my neck,
pulling at me, tugging at my windpipe
And I choke in the sweetness of my own blood
And I jerk into life as my only breath
leaves me into the eyes of others
who play but do not dream.

Oh,
pebbles,
pebbles,
guiding our feet,
lining the pavements,
of the trodden streets...
catching us against nets
strewn across the coast
as the tide and waves rise
and the light goes out,
the rocks crumble
and they recruit
in the shallow waters-
lining up beneath the surface,
creeping up the shoreline's spine.

Where did they all use to sit before this flood?
What held them down?
And why are their still bodies dry-
but their faces are wet
and their eyes twinkle
as pebbles do when lost in sand?

[dyingflame]

Mirrors

The broken mirrors we bought together
now held solid and aloft
only by the wind slapping my face
reflected in the acute tremble
of the shards
while my voice retreats
and bells ring out in the hollows,
of caves in foreign mountains.

I understood while I slipped the stairs
that this was the battle that we have always lived;
the one fought out under the rain with blunt swords
and a few feet away from discarded glass.

I have hundreds of photos.
All of them do not show the exact scene
we had aimed at. For even when our backs were turned
the mind was set
behind the reflected glass;
we sat
apart.

My eyes began to itch but I ignored them,
until the pain spread into the tips of my body,
reflected in knives, in plates, in those fateful two words,
and the imaginary cars and flowers withered
as the sprinklers threw lifeless water on top of us.

The humanity urged us to sleep,
to sew our mouths shut and shout in silence
in thousands of our images,
where the finely edited reality
suited our daily need of petty deeds
and drew out the reflexive actions,
of our very human struggle.

[dyingflame]

Women in a Field


Crouched over their precious hopes,
their older scars still tremble in directed pain
of hours grinding down the soil and looking up
at trails squashed beneath a concrete bearing truck.

They trundle by each day, rumbling the road,
unknowingly repeating the same old courses,
while they yearn to escape into their dreams,
sucked into an inescapable black hole.

Yesterday morning,
the crops died again,
and this dream faded for life’s sake.
rushing up for the warmth of the summer,
which made them all think
of eating out at fancy golden restaurants
while rain pattered down gently.

Yet the dry harmonic aroma of fertilizer
throws them back together with their minds
into the reality of mismatched chairs
and the frustrated anger at the sun’s white glare.

Memories hover around the moist warm air
and fill the roads with the music of these fields.

[quasimodo1]

To dyingflame: About "Mirrors" Some poetry succeeds because it is good; some because it displays intense sincerity. This poem does both. quasi

[dyingflame]

thanks quasi, well I think that means your perception is quite acute- Mirrors is indeed the most sincere of the lot- I was going to through a lot of emotional upheaval when I wrote it, which I'm over now, and which I had thought I had left behind in the past for good. I think :Mirrors" is the most personal out of them, but the most universal as well. "Women in a field" is too distant from me, it's just a metaphor, so it is less ..sincere. And "Faces, Floods, Pebbles" is the product of a new technique I tried out on it. So it might not resonate that much

[PrinceMyshkin]

Some truly striking lines & images here. I was especially impressed by



my skin against the wallowed air,
moist and hidden in the coat of
damp buildings leaning on each other
against the colourless downpour-

and



as the tide and waves rise
and the light goes out,
the rocks crumble
and they recruit
in the shallow waters-
lining up beneath the surface,
creeping up the shoreline's spine.

[dyingflame]

thanks :) It's really nice when people appreciate the effort I put into the imagery I choose.I wonder how they make you feel :)
I want to see some of your poems as well..
My next one is :



Beneath the Balcony

The ivy used to hang in streaks,
clinging to the fire-wrought metal,
snaking down the limestone walls,
finding the roots lost in the soil.

It was a path out of one life into another,
out of the city, into the forest,
a daring game we used to play;
to climb down it, slither down
and find ourselves at street level
beneath the balcony, alone.

Those balconies were our first regimes,
where we used to plot our escape,
jutting our eager faces towards each other.
in the shadows of giants that spawned us.

We were so close to one another,
always, since childhood,
except for that one foot gap,
that drop to the lands of mystery below,
which we discovered only later in our lives,
when our smiles and brighter eyes-
(our similarities)
had lost their importance and allure,
and made way
to our differences.





don't forget, the more I post, the more into my writing past I go- this one was written almost 3 months ago already

[dyingflame]

my latest poem: "The Darkroom"


I walked into the chamber of black,
holding the filter tightly in my hands
gripping it until my fingers fell off,
and hurled it against the unseen wall-

But I had misjudged and hit the window
from which no sunlight streamed through
(unknown to me it had been hidden,
cunningly behind a pair of grinning curtains)

I couldn’t see the net, I had no racket,
and luck was not on my side,
so I switched on the light before
I sat down to stare at a blank wall
where all the stains were growing in streaks.

However, it was still dark.

The chair beneath me, was it real?
my fingers had fallen off, I couldn’t feel it,
my eyes were shrouded, I couldn’t see it.

But I was sitting,
apparently alive,
dreaming in a whitewashed room
devoid of furniture.

I opened the window
(I had to walk to it, find it, throw it open)
hoping to find a shred of life beyond the cars,
but I was at the top of a cliff in the clouds
so all I saw were
six billion people
all blindfolded,
walking around,
randomly banging into each other

and walking on.

[quasimodo1]

To Dyingflame: An interesting if disquieting piece with some impossible dicontinuities; are they meant to be there? Although I like it, I get an impression of incomplete statement. One readers opinion. quasi

[dyingflame]

hello quasi, thanks again for your very sharp perception- at the time I wrote Darkroom, I thought it was complete. Now, I have expanded on the style, structure, theme and notion to create the following one. In a sense, Darkroom was only this poem's spiritual predecessor, though not it's draft, as you will see



Alone at the Summit

I placed the alpenstock firmly in a nook,
and quite easily made it up the final bend of rock,
panting slightly, but still glad,
my forehead puckered in the snow,
my fingers were raw,
my brain still numb enough to think
of gliding back down,
afraid of being alone at the summit.

I threw away the flimsy walking stick
and picked up a piece of earth instead;
holding it tightly in my hands,
gripping it until my fingers fell off,
I hurled it back down the crevice
I had laboured so much to escape.

(In a sense, I was throwing off the weight
of being a creator to something-
carving away a part of myself that loved
the height, to find pleasure in the fear of falling,
calling back to primordial essence
of open enclosure’s force to move the world.

For, here, the sun glared brightly,
glorious threads of smoke brightened up the landscape,
ropes were strung around ancient kings of stone,
undoubtedly by some old race of much wisdom.)

But I had misjudged and hit the window
of my house where my wife was waiting
for me, anxiously looking up at the sky,
and hit her on the head and probably killed her.

I squinted down, concerned for her,
and couldn’t make out anything down below at first,
but then my eyes adjusted,
and alone at the summit,
as an eagle I saw them moving, or stopping,
all together, in surging motion waving
at the base of my realm,
unbroken in their tender chains
that linked their dreams together
through all the broken landslides.

23/10/2007