Wind, water, love, death, Sylvia Plath, Edgar Allan Poe…
Reflections – Poetry in Themes
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Category: Poetry
Reflections – Poetry in Themes – A heartrending new book
Wind, water, music, Edgar Allan Poe, Sylvia Plath…
J Edward Neill and H.R. Reiter choose a wide variety of themes, styles, and famous poets, and splash several poems in each theme throughout this elegant poetry book.
Reflections – Poetry in Themes
Now available.
A Poem…about Steak
Steak
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No one loves you like I do.
In fact, I’ve several nicknames for you—
Beef chunk ambrosia
Coronary delight
Salty, buttered rump of heaven.
All of these and more.
It’s like I said—
No one loves you like I do.
When I first met you
as a young lad
I didn’t fully understand you.
Why would they leave your bone in?
Why are you a little burned on the outside,
and a little undercooked in your fleshy center?
Also…
Why would they give a six-year old
a Ginsu knife?
You tasted as if a live cow
had strutted up to me
and begged me to eat it.
Which I did.
Some people cook you better than others—
That restaurant I used to haunt
That annoying guy with the green, egg-like grill
whose house I visit for only the one reason.
My grandpa,
the one time he did it right.
But none of them revere you
like I do.
A dash of salt.
A blob of butter.
White charcoals, hotter than Chernobyl.
It’s pretty much a religious experience,
right?
You should’ve seen my face
when I ate your cousin the other day.
Most midlife crises
begin with flashy cars
and a new therapist.
But he and I,
we sat alone in the dark,
and I made stupid faces,
while he just
raised my cholesterol.
It’s fine.
I’d die for him.
And for you.
I mean, it’s probably too late already,
given the number of Angus I’ve sacrificed
to my sacred fork.
I think the neighbor hates me.
He stands on his deck, watching me worship you
as if you were some woman he coveted,
some woman I just grilled
over a five-hundred degree flame.
Whatever.
He lurked a while, gazing at me
like a starved wolf, who is also balding.
That’s weird.
I hope he was looking at you, not me.
When I’m alone, which is almost always,
I daydream of you.
You don’t talk much.
You just sizzle seductively.
Is that even a thing?
When we embrace, every vegan
in a ten-mile radius
dies.
It’s a shame, really.
I’m sure they were good people.
But nothing like you, my friend.
You, who loves me in a way
which makes me embrace arterial hardening
like a hug from an old friend
who just happens to be delicious.
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See more (not nearly as ridiculous) words here.
J Edward Neill
Post Valentines Day Love Poem
Surrender
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In the stillness, in the moment our lips meet,
we turn to sunshine.
Our fingers, woven, are knitted with one another
like trees in ancient soil.
The rhythm of your heart drums a furious pace,
echoing inside me.
And I fall deeper.
8
You are wordless, but never quiet.
Like coals, heated in the nil space between our bodies,
we turn to fire, but never ash.
And then you climb, a hot wind upon the aching mountain
of my desire.
And I surrender.
8
In these places, no one knows our names.
No one sees our faces.
Our eyes are heavy-lidded, our breaths broken only
to kiss, and to kiss again.
We wander from dream to dream, a reverent carousel moved by the hurricane of our love.
8
I call to you, crying out your name.
You clutch, you pull me closer.
Like a starved fire, you catch and burn and consume me.
We turn to sunlight again, delivered through all darkness,
sent to this place as if born in the very same star.
And I surrender.
And I fall deeper.
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J Edward Neill
For more poetry, go here.
I wrote a poem to my son – he thinks it’s hilarious
You didn’t even cry.
Just hunkered there in my arms
blinking with meek lids
staring
as if to say,
‘Is this the right place?’
Maybe it isn’t.
Maybe it is.
But there we were, the newest of companions.
If nothing else,
you were swift to stake your claim.
That time you loosed your little bowels
in my hands.
The dinner you gave back
while in bed
on my face
twice.
When you loosed expletives
at the bedroom door
as if it were a bartender
denying you a beverage.
The time you leapt headlong
into the filthy water
and nearly died
but came out laughing.
Your odd disdain for corn.
Your completely understandable hatred
of Mondays.
Your well-aimed,
tiny yet formidable
fists.
When you asked me
whether bubble gum counts as dessert.
The way food touching
pretty much causes
the end of the world.
Eccentricities, some might say.
The building bricks
of a child
one day a man.
Not to me.
These are the foibles of a friend.
The wisest sage among
little boys
the world has ever known.
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For more words, find me here.
J Edward Neill
The Cure for Nothing – A cranky new poem
It shouldn’t matter whether
your mirror is cracked
or whole
or a pile of coins peering up at you
from some dank, municipal gutter.
The face looking back
isn’t yours.
You earn nothing.
Good or bad,
you deserve less.
The only meaning in your vibrant
but astoundingly brief life
other than the roses you never gave
the trains you never took
and the amber liquor you left
sitting on the counter
quarter-finished,
is the meaning you make for yourself.
The expressions of your waitress,
your pastor,
the doctor who will one day
pronounce you dead,
they are dust,
and you’d do well
to let them float right through
the bulbous lump atop your neck.
If having a god suits you,
don’t.
When prayer, the grand placebo,
seems to soothe you,
it doesn’t.
Whatever soul stirs
in the grey soup around your bones,
it isn’t meant for this place,
these sewer-pocked streets,
these placid suburban shacks,
the hum of your television
as it begs for your inaction.
You don’t belong here.
You never did.
You’ve always known as much.
But hell, you pretend just the same.
Don’t kid yourself.
The worth of your accomplishments,
the hill you slogged to climb
in your shiny new shoes,
in your robes
which made you look royal,
is to be the highest grain of rice
in a field soon to be harvested.
How does it feel
to be a crop?
It should be a wonder
to be so free.
To walk whichever street you want
humming a tune only you can hear
sowing the garden of your mind
with carrots, or pumpkins
or bales of black cigars
or with love
or hate
or with whatever idea, scrawled on a wad
of paper,
rolls up with the wind
and hits your heel.
Those problems you have,
the debts, the wheels falling off,
the heart raked over the coals
of your last great error,
the faults placed in yourself
or with anyone but,
those aren’t real.
You and your soul,
and your broken mirror,
you don’t belong here.
You never did.
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Read more J Edward Neill here.
Get more of his cranky, forlorn poetry here.
Poetry of the Night – A New Dark Poetry Book
Love
Sorrow
Hope
Yearning
In their first published poetry book, J Edward Neill and H.R. Reiter touch on these subjects and more.
Poetry of the Night is full of powerful, expressive poems, written in free verse, meaning no attachment to form, structure, or rhyme.
Get it now…right here.
*
Coming Soon – Poetry of the Night
Coming soon…
*
From authors J Edward Neill and H.R. Reiter…
A tiny softcover tome stuffed full of heart-rending poetry…
New Dark Poem – The Forever Man
The Forever Man
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I knew a man without a name.
He walked the streets of everywhere.
At dawn, at twilight, and later
his soles unpolished pattered on roads,
in alleys,
under eaves rotten with neglect,
beyond gates silver and gold.
He knew my name
but his, I only guessed.
*
The people in whose shadow
he trailed
looked upon him in dismay,
the children with wonder,
and the world-weary with aching delight.
The lamps, whose lights fluttered in his passing
told not whether he smiled
or whether his face was many
or only one.
*
Everywhere, I saw him.
On ships, walking the prow.
In church, standing silent
as the poor bent a knee beside kings.
Strolling beside farmers’ ploughs.
Waving his pallid fingers
above cribs.
*
Everywhere, I saw him.
‘Neath his hat, beaded by rain,
stirred no worldly gaze.
His strides, measured always
to match his chosen ward.
His shoulders, heavy with a timeless suit
made of shadow,
looked the same to me
whether in sunlight
or gilded by the moon.
*
One day, I came to him.
Was it a fever I had?
Or exhaustion in my bones?
Or had I struck the first of many nails?
I could not remember.
I spoke to him,
at him
through him.
And he told me,
“Today is not your day.
“Nor tomorrow.
“Look for me no longer.
“And find me later than you expect.”
*
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J Edward Neill
Find more words here.
New Dystopian Poem – Extinction
Extinction
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Crowning smoke
cloaks the heads of fallen kings.
And there I walk, on silent streets
over broken bridges
through the dark capillaries
of yesteryear’s fall.
With ashes, the towers weep
carpeting black the castle floors.
Their sacrificial fires, a century extinguished
but still they smoke
ever fuming
from glass eyes and stone-toothed mouths.
No one is here, save me.
Were they ever?
Ten grains of burning sand
on the fathomless shore of infinity
was the kingdom of man.
Three ticks of eternity’s clock
did we reign.
All that remains is me
straggling through grey fields
beneath crumbling battlements
crunching forgotten bones
under the last boots I will ever wear.
It was never my place
to ask why
or how.
Nor have I the desire, nor means
to dig answers from the dust
from the sunless sky
from the dwelling crypts of billions
whose laughter has gone.
No one is here, save me.
Were they ever?
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J Edward Neill
More words here
The Window Hours – A Poem
Here, I sit dreaming
by the quiet glass
through which everything has shined
dark and light
gilded sun and hungry shadow
all of them, gifts
strumming the webs of thought
in my tired mind.
*
At dawn, I search the panes
for signs of yestereve
for changes in the night
for perhaps the world had broken
as I slept.
But none, are there,
none in the glass
though many in me.
*
At dusk, I press my nose
against the highest window
hunting the gloam
for haunts yet to wake
for all things nocturnal
who must surely do the same
and search for me
even as I lie dreaming.
*
And at night, ere the witching
I am most alone
scrawling by candle
inking the world’s walls
with things that never were.
It’s then, just then
I wake from long, black halls,
and see my face, the lights in my eyes
the shadow of my cheek
staring back at me from the place beyond my door.
*
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Chasing Death – a New Poem
I fear you none.
For though you give chase across time, across ages,
through valleys blackened by pain
and pastures greened with hope,
the labor is solely yours.
You know my name, but yours will go unsaid,
indifferent,
unlooked for
until the moment of leaving, at whose gates I will no longer care.
For though I might gaze across years, across oceans,
toward a horizon whose distance I will know only once,
you cannot touch me until then.
And so I fear you none.
Strip away the leaves of others, take them as you must.
Peel dry the orchard in which I live, whether summer sapling or wintered oak,
whether friend or foe, whether loved or despised.
I care not.
For they are mine forever, and yours but once.
And whence they come to you, wordless and unchangeable,
they are immortal to me.
In spirit indomitable.
In memory indestructible.
So take them. I care not.
Once the forest falls and I am the only one left,
you may cast your shadow upon me.
Victory, you may claim, fleshless, arid, and everlasting.
And you may laugh to see me kneel in the dirt, under grey skies,
under columns of black clouds in which no heaven awaits.
But nameless, I will hold you.
And bittersweet, your conquest.
For the dark line, drawn in the sand at the time of your choosing,
is no loss to me, no more than a whisper in the eon of my soul.
And I shall fear you none.
Whether sharp and sudden or a slow carrion crawl,
my burdens will be shed,
my thousand aches mended,
and sleep again I shall until the ending of all ages.
But you, my friend,
you must toil on.
For whether here or there or a in place yet unnamed,
your work is never done.
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The Muse – A Poem
Were I a stone in a pale river,
the water would teach me
sculpt me
beguile my bones into shapes
I’d never known.
Were I a cliff, lording over the sea,
the wind would, over patient eons
move upon me,
at times a gale, sharp yet sincere,
at others, carrying the mist softly to my face,
that I might feel things
to which I’d never awakened.
Were I grass, short-lived and thirsty,
but always a friend to the sun
the rain would nourish my roots,
and beneath its clouds, it would remind me
that no day is ever-bright,
but nor is the darkness always my foe.
Were I fire, booming in the hot belly
of the earth untamed,
my release would raze the life from all things
yet in the end,
I would gladly perish,
and all else grow anew.
And were I a maker of words,
quill in hand, burning hearth in place of ordinary heart,
she would smile at me,
and whisper thoughts undreamed into my ear,
that I might wake the next morn beside her,
with always another page,
another tale,
and never a dry spell
for the garden in which we live.
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The Riot – A Poem
She lives in the wind
or so the riot tells me.
A golden flame, a pale rapture, an elemental catastrophe,
all of this, and more, the riot will say.
An invisible trail, she leaves,
on the streets we have walked, in our rumbled bed.
But she is never lesser.
Her hours of toil beget mere moments of calm,
for there is no taming her, only the lie thereof.
She walks never straight, but in tangles, in weaves,
and on wild paths only the trees can name.
She lives in the wind
or so I’ll say
from now until the end of everything.
Many will try, and many will dream of her at peace,
only for a moment’s breeze to unravel her.
to take her skyward.
to unleash her.
The riot, she is.
In body, in spirit.
And those who would tame her,
had best beware.
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A Dark Poem – Leaving in the Rain
It began the moment I left.
The clouds, black and burgeoned with dark water,
caught me, contained me.
Drums in the sky pounded the only message
my body needed to know.
For all their thunder, my bones shook.
For all their streaming rivers
falling down my fractured panes,
I should have turned back.
Brief, I expected them,
and easily swatted aside.
But the sky told no mistruth,
and the serpentine road, swallowed by the rain,
scrawled into my tired eyes
the lie of leaving.
A wager, I made with the advancing night.
‘You’ll break with the sun when I return.’
‘And go black again with every retreat.’
And impatient, I threatened.
And railed.
And made war against everything.
Even knowing the deed was mine.
But the rain only laughed.
And the night shrugged at the hidden moon.
Daring that I should do it again.
That I should return, and stride the storm
a thousand times over.
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For more words, go here.
A Poem at Midnight – Black River
On a black river, I race toward the waning light.
Westward, burning, the smoky clouds breathing their last.
My carriage vibrates on the shallow water,
the wheels wanting to break, but lacking the will.
There are others besides me, but there are none.
I am alone here, but for one.
A dusk-born bat, I see nothing, and feel everything.
Flying, wings biting at the dark, nothing slows me.
Save death.
At the witching hour, to a theme which shakes the world,
I ride.
Sweating. Aching. Hellbent.
At the black river’s end, everything.
More here.
Finding the Words
I’m not a writer. When it comes to writing anything, even an email, I put a tremendous amount of thought behind it before I begin. I’m the same with talking. There is always far more I’m thinking than saying. This is who I am. Don’t be mistaken. I have the ability to talk for hours with friends on a topic I find interesting or one that sparks my passion, but sitting down to write a blog post… I’d rather go back to my drawing or painting. What do I have worth saying to the world? I find it easier to speak through art, or poetry, because in truth I have simple loves in life.
Photograph by Amanda Makepeace
***
Satin soft petals reaching toward
the clouds, sway aloft sturdy stalks–
To and fro, to and fro.
They lure me with luscious hues
To places unknown, and
Capture me with Spring incense,
A meadow inside my soul.
Lay me down midst the Aster and Sage,
So I may rest, may dream,
If lucky, live again.
A Poem (because I’ve got nothing else)
Their notes drift in through the window
Tickling eyelids that refuse to open.
Instead of waking, the melody pulls me
Beyond dreams, a symphony of new beginnings.
I let go my troubles and worries,
Turn away from dark thoughts, those memories
Which haunt my days and loom over my nights.
Away I fly, each clang of the wind chime
Creating an opera in my mind.
***
© Amanda Makepeace
NaPoWriMo 2012