Tag Archives: poetry

Ecce Homo "Behold the Man" by Antonio Ciseri (oil on canvas)
poetry

Ecce Homo

The crowd stood in crowded masses.
The crowd crowned their rebel din.
Then the diadem informed them,
“Behold the man.”1

The crowd, every one of them,
demanded relief from the mirror
held to them.

“Throw this one in the drink.
Don’t drink his poison pen.
Go ahead and keep your diadem.
We have no use for other kings:
Kings of heaven and lofty things.
Things of earth hold all our dreams.”

So the little crown
bowed to the noisome crowd
and laid thorny crown
upon a silent brow.

© rl busséll 2018 – All rights reserved

  1. Ecce Homo ↩

Image: Ecce Homo “Behold the Man” by Antonio Ciseri (Swiss Italian painter and university professor 1821-1891) oil on canvas, between circa 1860 and circa 1880. Public domain.

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poetry

Widdershins

I move in widdershins;
my gains ever loses.
Would that were the
other way ‘round,
then there would be never loses.

Then I could have a plan,
then I could follow the salmon;
one last pitch at lasting measure,
one last throw across the plate,
one last stroke at persistence.

Which way is time’s turning?
Is forward not behind?
Which hand holds the Bashful Royal?
Are all the cards stacked and shuffled?
Oh, come and deal another hand.
Oh, come and deal another hand.
Are widdershins turning ‘round?

© rl busséll 2018 – All rights reserved

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poetry

Pomegranate Bells

I can hear the pomegranate bells,
bells, yellow loud with striking tells.

Strike upon the sound.
Light upon the sound.

Listen, to hear the waving
sound shade my burning lips.
Coals of fire heal.

The winds of time shake me.
Kings have come to brake me.
In the light of night,
in the fiery arrow’s blight,
they’ve come and cursed my plight.

I know the true.
I know nations fall with loud
and quiet sound,
with whispered calls,
and pandering pleas.
I know the true.

I must hear the pomegranate bells
amid the smoke and smells,
amid the wails and quiet tells,
amid the shade of whispered thunder.

Let me tell the true to tell.

One day a year,
One man, alone,
enters to atone.
One man carries twelve heavy stone.
One man steps up to heaven’s gold throne.
One man draped in pomegranate bells,
sounds for his people to hear,
sounds for the lamb’s blood to pay,
sounds for the goat to off-stray.

No silent footsteps.
No silent lips.
One day we’re heard.

Now.
Now, I’ve been touched with the coal
now, I’ll be sent.
Now, I’ll, with words, do the rent.
I’ll rent father from son and all;
nation will, with words, do the fall.
Men will be flayed
opened and bared;
with bare teeth they will stare,
with dagger’d eyes they’ll kill
and still will I stammer and still.
Still will I mumble and quip,
for I’ve been touched with the coal;
I’ve been touched by the quick.

© rl busséll 2018 – All rights reserved.

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poetry, sonnet

Peace, Peace

“Jeremiah knew the story of dying nations,
Nations set for inglorious, ignominious demise
And herein lies our story, for we are set for cremations.
My city is about to die; it’ll no longer see the open skies.
And like the children of the tribe, we behold our Babylon.
Babylon comes with hands holding plumbs to measure.
They move with speed; distance measured in marathons.
Our Nebuchadnezzar is showing us his displeasure.
He’ll take no time to discern wheat from chaff;
The weeping mother, the crying infant, the purest maiden,
And those with hardened hand will have no cause to laugh.
I pray that the earth beneath our feet we’ll not abandon,
That the sky will recall our place in the eternal sun,
That we’ll not be forgotten by the Eternal One.”

© rl busséll 2018 – All rights reserved

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haiku, poetry

T Haiku

Tyger-terrible,
twist, thunder, tear, tower tall —
tell t’all times time’s tale.

© rl busséll 2018 – All rights reserved.

Alphabet Haiku Challenge

  • Every word in the haiku must begin with the same letter

When written in English, it generally follows the syllabic pattern 5-7-5

  • Haiku/Senryu Poetry – Here is an in-depth description of Haiku/Senryu Poem (also called human haiku) is an unrhymed Japanese verse consisting of three unrhymed lines of five, seven, and five syllables (5, 7, 5) or 17 syllables in all. Senryu is usually written in the present tense and only references to some aspect of human nature or emotions. They possess no references to the natural world and thus stand out from nature/seasonal haiku.
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poetry

I can’t dance

I don’t know how many days
I will have with you.
I don’t know how you came
to be with me.

I can’t dance
and the tunes I carry
are always wrong.
Somehow they sound better
when they’re stuck inside;
then the beat is always right,
then the cadence slides
softly to the side.

How could you have come from me?

It’s not just these things,
but your warm and open
heart; your faith
that causes me to praise.
You seek to do the good.
You seek the highest mark.
You seek His glorious name.

I thank you for being mine.
I thank you for laughing lines.
I thank you for silver shrines.

You are the little one,
the one with the “funny” name,
the one that gets the pun,
the one that dances in the frame.

for the one with the funny name

© rl busséll 2018 – All rights reserved.

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haiku, poetry

S Haiku

season: summer sun,
setting: silken sabbath seat —
solid sinai slabs

© rl busséll 2018 – All rights reserved

Alphabet Haiku Challenge

  • Every word in the haiku must begin with the same letter

When written in English, it generally follows the syllabic pattern 5-7-5

  • Haiku/Senryu Poetry – Here is an in-depth description of Haiku/Senryu Poem (also called human haiku) is an unrhymed Japanese verse consisting of three unrhymed lines of five, seven, and five syllables (5, 7, 5) or 17 syllables in all. Senryu is usually written in the present tense and only references to some aspect of human nature or emotions. They possess no references to the natural world and thus stand out from nature/seasonal haiku.
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poetry

Words are Hard

In the room,
I sat in row, the first.
I sat in grade, the fourth.
I sat and stared at the room.

In the room,
A paper frieze of Presidents,
Their faces frozen,
and smiling at their residence;
Light peaked round
from the north,
And under the long windows,
Dick and Jane sang upon their shelf —
but I, their cadence, never caught.

I heard only their mumbled set.
I fought with every word met,
While Spot scampered and sweat.
And every ear judged my
whispered words so shy.

“See Dick run.”
“See Jane run.”
”See Spot run.”
Oh, stay away.

Words are hard.
Words are hard.
Words are hard
When they stray.

Mr. Taco pinched his slack’s crease,
leaning back to check the timepiece,
He smiled, my confidence to increase,
And I struggled, the sounds to release.

I found solace in Mona’s half-smile,
a Sistine festooned in marbled style,
a Watch in the Night, almost tactile,
and Michelangelo’s David, a gentile.

© rl busséll 2018 – All rights reserved

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haiku, poetry

R Haiku

Rhine river races,
runs, rivers ‘round Rotterdam —
rain rivulets, reign.

© rl busséll 2018 – All rights reserved

Alphabet Haiku Challenge

  • Every word in the haiku must begin with the same letter

When written in English, it generally follows the syllabic pattern 5-7-5

  • Haiku/Senryu Poetry – Here is an in-depth description of Haiku/Senryu Poem (also called human haiku) is an unrhymed Japanese verse consisting of three unrhymed lines of five, seven, and five syllables (5, 7, 5) or 17 syllables in all. Senryu is usually written in the present tense and only references to some aspect of human nature or emotions. They possess no references to the natural world and thus stand out from nature/seasonal haiku.

 

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poetry, sonnet

My Shibboleth

Hang it all, let it melt into my season.
Season it all with spice and let it rest.
This is not the summer to emblazon
crimson slashes across my quiet nest.
Now it’s time to rest, to take a breath,
purse my crimson lips and kiss my only.
I’ll make sure I make love my shibboleth.
For there will be time enough for lonely
days when my eye can see no lover,
when the light of summer fades and my
hardened bones feel nothing but harsh hiver.
I’ll take residence in the now, making sure
that I save not my joy and sorrow
for another time, another one, another morrow.

© rl busséll 2018 – All rights reserved.

 

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Letter Q from fifteenth century French woodcut from and edition of Vergil printed by Lambillion
haiku, poetry

Q Haiku

Quixotic questing
queen— quaking, quivering —
quaffed — quad-Quentão.

© rl busséll 2018 – All rights reserved.

Alphabet Haiku Challenge

  • Every word in the haiku must begin with the same letter
  • When written in English, it generally follows the syllabic pattern 5-7-5
  • Haiku/Senryu Poetry – Here is an in-depth description of Haiku/Senryu Poem (also called human haiku) is an unrhymed Japanese verse consisting of three unrhymed lines of five, seven, and five syllables (5, 7, 5) or 17 syllables in all. Senryu is usually written in the present tense and only references to some aspect of human nature or emotions. They possess no references to the natural world and thus stand out from nature/seasonal haiku.
Letter Q from fifteenth century French woodcut from and edition of Vergil printed by Lambillion

The Letter Q fifteenth century French woodcut from an edition of Vergil printed by Lambillion

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poetry

Sonnet Two

Clouds carry whisper colored memories
And soft lightnings — flashes like sentinels
Against a darkened pane, thick memories —
Impasto hammered pains sharp with angles.
These clouds, these ever turbulent mists,
Listen not to small voice or Thor’s hammer,
They are blind to mouse, blind to pugilist,
Blind to the pleas of the eyeless seer.
For these mists, these airy kaleidoscopes
Of reflected light, live outside hist’ry.
They dwell there e’er in the eternal tropes.
For these mists led my fathers from the sea.
These solid mists, these son-born billows,
Billow an’ dance, lifting all from sorrows.

© rl busséll 2018 – All rights reserved

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poetry

Full and Without

I’ll stumble up and take hold
of starlit dust and hold,
hold with vigor the mighty
flames of rite.
I’ll bend my knee for the fight.

I need not tell you of my plight
I need not tell you of my blight
I need not tell you of my night.

There are too many failings,
too many wantings to fill me up.

I am bottomless;
I am full
and cannot be filled.

My emptiness is full and without.

I cannot reason why.
I cannot spy into the glass
to see and correct my past.
Would that I could,
with hindsight, never to have set
foot near the pit,
never to have dared to spit.
For my strength, it flies,
it flies like lightening from the sky —
furious, pitiless, and hot.

Then I am not.

It is not that I cease to be.
It is not that I cease to reason.
It is not that I cease to have flesh and soul.
It is that I cease to look.
I cease to remember the price paid.
I cease to recall. I cease to call.

And the gilded calf, the flowered staff, and
the manna he did breathe
should be carved into me.
They should, by God, leave me with a mark.
There should be something,
There should be something,
There should be something
left upon this ark.

© rl busséll 2018 – All rights reserved.

Standard
poetry

O Haiku

Over oar, over
O’er oarsmen’s opposition —
Ocean owns oarsman

© rl busséll 2018 – All rights reserved

Photo by Emily Bauman

Alphabet Haiku Challenge

  • Every word in the haiku must begin with the same letter
  • When written in English, it generally follows the syllabic pattern 5-7-5
  • Haiku/Senryu Poetry – Here is an in-depth description of Haiku/Senryu Poem (also called human haiku) is an unrhymed Japanese verse consisting of three unrhymed lines of five, seven, and five syllables (5, 7, 5) or 17 syllables in all. Senryu is usually written in the present tense and only references to some aspect of human nature or emotions. They possess no references to the natural world and thus stand out from nature/seasonal haiku.
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