[Poetry] Some Scant Poetry: "Angst in Progress"

Caring not for the philanthropy of others
The noir in my thoughts more caustic than lye
I sit back and watch the unfolding carnage begin to paint
A picture of the reality that is the American Dream

More deadly sins than seven stack against the chips
Betting contrary to the house, armed with nonsensical verse
Carefree sentences passed down in hubris
Pale in comparison to the cries of the unseen victim

Action begets reaction, reaction breeds discord
The greed of a world with too much to spare
Forget as we may, tribal warfare resumes
As it has for millennia on end

For at the end of the day we are still as hungry
As we were at the genesis of homicide

The ebb and flow of the universe will not stop for us
For it gets along just fine without meddlesome
Creatures who could not even harness their own minds
Ground into dust and forgotten as we once were

Though it not be death that part us hence
But the return to the stars from whence we came
As atoms and particles exploring the heavens
Free as the sky and the wind in the trees

Starstuff is all that we are
Though I would dare to be more

7000. Thanks all!


"Still Awake"


Sitting at the edge of clean, pressed sheets
Charcoal tears making you the harlequin
Translucent curtains mark the schism
Reflecting a house divided

Within the throes of Dionysus
Lucid thoughts and drifting cancers ingrain
Blindness infects, scatters the soul
Erecting white noise to shutter truth

I see the scar tissue, amend my broken bones
Accept a choice known to be fraught with wanting
My pain is relevant, though always distant
Empathy as lost as the memories of us

Fashioning fiction, I pretend not to care
Don the shroud of a hardened exterior
When I stand just as wounded as you
The thralls of my fantasies just as crafty

Back to back, breath to breath in the dark
Silence all we need yet everything we abhor
Repose is fleeting when in the arms of a stranger
Whom you loved all along, but can’t remember their name

Crossing each other on the midnight train
Reflections guesswork to the ephemeral hunter
The ghost on the windowed boulevard speaks volumes of memory
As sunset shadows dust the broken skyline

A stranger-sly creeps into my dwindling days
At the cusp of my step, my sight, my very breath
Grotesque introspection drifting within shuttered moonlight
Staring, mimicking; invading as I stand in juxtaposition

Cut us both, we bleed in opposite yet equal portions
Identical in our flaws – curiosity blended with fearmongering
Wanderlust heeds the ache of tired bones and diminishes
And the starside traveler grows weary of the collaborator

What gift to give to sate the demand of the journeyman?
What name to adorn upon an ever-changing façade?
Mirrors chant truths akin to the heathen gods of old
The machine of time slow, its constraint lost to meddlers

You cannot escape the doppelgänger’s whim
Run as you may, medicate as you might
Destroy your synapses with god-fire and drink
And yet the shadow remains -- you

Breath as cold as the dying winter
With a heart as restless as a war-torn sea
The distance divides the calming embers
Of the wanderers intersected in another life

Days slide by into an unknown future
Choices made in hubris and conjecture
So we ride to the dawn, damn the consequences
Living for the moment, for only so many remain

Tomorrow is the myth told to the children
Of dreams and of fantasy to soothe just fears
Truth lay more sordid – continuation is a lie
Sleep and you vanish, only to awaken as some new monster

I still smell you in my waking nightmares
Chase your ghost upon the moors and highways
Dreading the day that insomnia runs its course
Leaving me alone in my head…with you

Phoenix of the moonlight, living for but hours at a time
Bursting into flames at the slightest weakness
I fight my lost battles still, from dusk until dawn in perpetuity
And ponder if your heart still beats there, too

Changelings caught in the womb of loss
Long for simpler days against persistence
Grown too large for their skins
They shed one life in favor of another

Forsake the choices of wanton yesteryears
Of dreams culled in silence, of nights spent in solitude
Lands left forlorn at the break of day
Laid to rest at the dawn of whim

Incognito innocence crumbles as the locks are picked
Walls crashing down at the slightest touch
In the arms of a sympathetic, perfect stranger
They find solace from the world gone mad

Escape is fleeting as light through the window breaks
The coming of day and the returning of cyclical life
To be dead to the world for one night and one alone
Gives hope to the nameless as they return to the machine

Love, loss; sometimes better than numbness
A reminder of the humanity possible
Even if for but a moment against the sands of time
Stands as monument to our daily detachment

A cold wind exhales from the mountain’s peak
Chill from barren rock forged through time and violence
Quietness deafens raw city-senses
And you grace the sight of God unmasked

You feel small when at the roof of the world
Dying under such duress as loneliness renamed
Yet you feel at peace, the unseen journey nigh complete
And could remain for a while longer

Could be fear, could be folly in the haunting snows
But you feel you can hear them against the bitter

Strangers, empathetic wanderers caught betwixt
Starlight and daylight like evanescent moments
The ghosts of your blood spread thick upon the mountainside
Funneled into your veins; all secrets forever within

Who are the gods flowing through your heart
The heroes, the villains; the unsung standard
Your humanity the dreams of countless thousands
Who lived and died for you in the maw of clarity

Yet still you cry for yourself, like that of generations
Forgetting the blood paid that you might garner an ort
Forgetting all that glitters stands insufficient
To bring back the lost days of the dead

The future at the forefront of peripheral doubt
And a terse heart caught in midsummer
Unsure if one more winter it can brave;
The coming of an immaterial storm

Standing in the streets of an unknown tomorrow
Where memory blurs with reality and dream
Softhearted words caress a war-torn heart
As we reach the eventide of goodbye

Warm sunshine and freckled green eyes plead
A hand to stay the darkness when mine could not
Evil recollections fade in the midst of such wonders
And all that is a man yields

But not to the coming of a new age
So I say, remember me

Ours that which is stronger than will
Ours that which is purer than life
Meant to be, needed to be
But for a moment, but for all

The stars sway as they shed tears from the heavens
Urging me home and you to stay
Love is a destiny, fate a precursor
But neither for us to decide when and where

One last adventure into the unknown
Or perhaps the start of many more
Ten days spent in the maw of hell
Almost pale in comparison to the door at our feet

The mind may wither, time a waxing bleach
Our shadows never again to walk this earth as we once were
But yours will remain for a time longer
And my freedom will become yours

To bear the expense of a spared memory
So I say, remember me

Even when the storybook comes to its close
And the light in those eyes pales against our resting star
Our ten days brighten all that ever was
And all that ever may be

I catch the tears that would sorrow the earth
Hold close the fear of these unmapped streets
Your own adventure also now begins
But never again to be alone

So I say…I will remember you

Stargazers dare dream against the grain
The shackles of expectation curious and wrought
Creatures of nothing, audacious and fearless
Would grace forever but for fragments at a time
A lifetime to one, but an ephemeral moment in all

Different colored lenses become placed upon our brow
Scope and sensation varying with age and understanding
Be it wanderlust, a hunger for the unknown
Or simply the desire to abandon one’s sires
And for a short while displace one’s madness

No rocket or device known to man
Could truly bear him hence into that forever
The short tether remains: a collar back to the flock
And so the sailor returns home, home from the sea
With no bounty, save fading memories and dust

If only we knew the horrors both wicked and profound
Of a universe so blithe to our musings and trespasses
If only we could understand our place and purpose
What great undertakings to quell the restless soul
And leave our presumptuous dark age

No, not yet
Not when the animal inside still draws blood
And is far more cunning than wise

You have a wonderful way with words. It'll take me some time to read through the rest that you have here, but you have great stuff =). I also really admire you for writing longer poems. My own stuff ends up being really short, because I find it difficult to come up with so many great lines for one topic. You however, are great with this.

an animal that is far more cunning than wise. A great description, it really captures that something that is wrong with too many people.

Appreciated.

I see intelligent thought daily in regards to functioning within our social boundaries, but true wisdom...now that is a rare occurrence. We do strange things to each other, terrible things even, and justify it in the names of things that aren't even tangible. I know I'm as guilty as the next. It's not real, any of it; a construct of our forebears. If the world were to drastically change tomorrow many of us wouldn't know what to do -- we're thralls to the system, to our own fears, but know nothing different so are content to remain.

Do I understand it? I certainly do, for I am part of it, but do I identify with it? That's a question that will linger for a time longer.

To quote Tears for Fears, "it's a very, very mad world".

Time stands still as a moonlight garden
Adrift from the furthest shores of memory
Just beyond the cusp of a dream once lost
Beyond the breath of wanton yesteryears

Surreal against the machine of unsung youth
Vagrant images tantalizing to the weaver’s ply
Forget one’s self in the current of unknowns
For we are the love we bear, not the burdens thereof

Today or tomorrow we may surrender our last
For hope, for fear; for nothing and everything in kind
I may love you until the stars grow dim in their solitude
But so little remains for one’s nomadic self

Questions without answers, forever and ever lost
Whispers of a soul without map, without compass
So slow to realize the destination to be extraneous
As the marvels of a life lived for others drift past

A choice to be made; penultimate to one’s own legacy
Made a thousand times over without rhyme or reason
To breathe with your lungs, force the blood through your veins
And fight for a tomorrow that might have never been

We are the tentative, the evanescent, the forgetters
So, so lost within our own forswearing of certainty
Yet, in our definitive moment, so much remains to be gleaned
In just a sidelong glance, a feeling; a longing kiss farewell

A couple things to go along with this one. First of, I just realized that this week was the four-year anniversary of this thread. That's one big swath of poetic mileage, wow. Secondly, I was also made aware that this pile of rubbish has moved into the top ten for all time views for written works on the ZU.

I actually have been debating on when to close the thread down and start a new one...but no, not yet. As soon as we pass 10k...yea, then it will be time.

Until then,

~ DB

"Ensnared"

Derailed at the sight of what was long forgot
A tempest beauty caught betwixt fire and water
Liquid is her mind, as fickle as the sky
A dancer's grace to such stationary movement

A look to break a man, hunters left by the wayside
Ruin and loathing her footprints throughout time
A goddess of the unknown, cunning yet silent
Cares not for the pursuit; only what comes simple

A wild in her eyes captured fleetingly
Though unable to harness, calm, nor understand
A torrent in the quiet, rage upon the cusp of her lips
When a kiss turns deadly and prey becomes the huntress

Oh, the horrors of the heart when one loses himself
In the arms of a demon who treats not in gold but in blood
Merciless, heartless, she feasts upon your mind
Leaving nothing but bones bereft of naught else

Be wary of the siren, the most dangerous of game
A folly to pursue such ideals of splendor and lust
For drown you will as she anchors you to the deep
And you become lost in her eyes, your soul forever hers

Death in the shroud of a starlit mist
Corporeal in motion, evanescent in doubt
A flight through the mire lay treacherous and wrought
With the ghosts of an empire long left to the wind

Fear is the monger with a sly grin and gold
Adventurous to a fault, calculated like time
Purchase her wares, the price but a little
Such a vain, bantam thing like the soul of a nation

And she whispers…
Bring them

Gods of the hunt, priestesses of the night
The ravager of worlds as slow as decay
Civilizations crumble and hunger for redemption
But to their sorrow comes but the echo upon the wastes

A diaspora of generations long bereft of rationale
Gifted to the keeper of thoughts and of seasons
All gathered to her through attrition and duplicity
But a little, such a little; but such a little bit at a time

And she whispers….
Kill them

The sundering of the voice that fuels the blood of a species
The slow, withering gape that begets a lessening creature
Until dust creeps into the veins of every newborn child of promise
And bloodless your humanity dares become

Memory and yesterday stand without grit
But a stranger’s now and my forgetting
The unknown future without promise
An unfolding tale of the greatest of unknowns

The function of a mind, the form of the unique
Billions upon billions piled beneath the earth in silence
Stars ever changing, seasons ever shifting
And the unsung voice lost upon windy plains

Bread for today, a bullet for tomorrow
The lives that we touch stay but for moments at a time
Immortality a dream, for even gods are forgotten
When they die in the throes of Dionysus

The ritual madness of the prodigal

Too, too late to undo the ghosts in the mirror
Each breath and heartbeat a beginning and an end
Rubbed raw by the setting of a thousand suns
Only to be lifted up by a thousand more

To think, to live, to draw free breath
To survive against all odds for reasons unknown
Too expensive, at times, to live and live well
But all too free to die

Names and occupations fill out our time
Give a little, take a little ‘till the day is done
More machine than man for the serfs of inheritance
And the way things are go on with or without you

Until a lifetime passes…and nothing’s changed but you

Be the change you want to see in the world
Not all who wander are lost
There is time for everything
I am death, not taxes. I turn up only once

Was listening to this: "From Within"

Endless night at the madman's call
Sunlight scathing to skin worn raw and thin
Bury the past with time and forgetting
Fade into nothing and rest in amity forever

Beneath the garden rows and neatly-trimmed grasses
Hidden from sight with but slabs of stone as monument
Lay the victorious dead and their vanishing tales
Of lives lived in a cacophony of wandering souls

Hear their lost voices upon the midnight wind
Smell their memories when perception is keen
Listen to the call of your forebears, of near relation or no
And know that you never walk alone in life or in death

The blood in these fields is ripe with resonance
So much life lived, so much forgetting coming in tow
To fear being forgotten is to fear death itself
Curious as to fear inevitability and lessen a life's meaning

To find beauty in the moment, love in the discord
To feel the sun on your skin and the soil in your hands
We are all the walking dead, the offspring of the dying
But I am alive beyond the chain in which I am linked

Uncertainty is the air that I breathe
Confusion the voices at my ear
Animal the instinct in my bones
And a miser of thoughts not worth knowing

But hope remains still for the children of Eden
That home is always closer than we think

Pieces of a life scattered throughout space and time
Shards of a memory from stardust and coals
A changeling’s ruse without reason or rhyme
Coalesce as it sails o’er nebulous shoals

Lit by transitory radiation and anchored by gravity
Fused through emotion by fire and ember
The keeper of souls long rent by infinity
Too worn by the winds to dare remember

Impact

Continents fracture and oceans boil
Devastation on scales known only to gods
Hearts stand firm against the coming foil
The true test of courage against stark odds

The remains of a species whittled down to a whisper
Exhaling to the heavens, a silence then ensues
So much life lived now all gone with a whimper
As the vanguard pays its past dues

And but ghosts remain to play in the junkyard

Truly great work, Doran. You deserve to have your work bound and sold, were that your wish for it to be done. Richly descriptive with plenty of contemporary commentary. Very charismatic use of diction, I say. Have you placed your work on any other websites or magazines?

Perhaps you'd be interested in investigating my work as well?

Satan in the Hearts of Little Children

Thanks Shade-erm, I mean Beasty. I have considered investigating the poetry thought for publication, and I have made quite the pile here that I could draw from, but have been focusing on finishing my next book first (only 80 pages left to write to complete the rough draft, oorah!). I've posted a few of these on Deviantart, but otherwise this place has been my home for the past handful of years.

ZU literally taught me how to write on so many levels. The least I could do is offer some exclusivity.

Cries of pain ring out in the dark
Sunshine barred through smoke and black rain
Invisible poison ravages unsuspecting flesh
And death is indiscriminate

The destroyer of worlds has crept in and settled
Knitting a foul nest of the dead and the dying’s limbs
Shadows burned into concrete stand as memory
Of manmade sunlight unleashed upon the unsuspecting

For good or ill, evil lesser or more
Matters not to those who bones crumble with step
A generation marred by unthinkable devastation
While the rest, detached, cheer in hubris

Such is the domestication of man
From wild to compliant beast
The animal within remained and does still
But can now do so with a grin

Scars remain on those few still able to show
Of memories that ought to have never been
The rest of the world forgets as they fade into nothing
But the ink on the page of perspective