Tag: poetry

Evolving Emotions: Never Quite Right

EKArts Leave a comment

A strange place

The table isn’t quite situated

On the once whole tiling

Proper is the word

 

The smell that once greeted me

Feels out of place

Inside my lungs, it is a stranger

 

What has become of

The inhabitants

Which I thought I knew?

 

Nothing could’ve prepared

My mind, my body

For this upheaval 

 

Guttural

Inconceivable

Quaking

 

In the now fractured life

I stubbornly live

My arms crave a rope

My feet, solid ground 

Unsatisfied is the word

 

This bizarre, unsatisfying abode

Which I once called home

Is now alien

With a peculiar look

And paint laced with difference 

 

Will things return

To the gaps in my head?

 

Will I find peace

And solace in the disruption?

 

Nothing will take its original form

The form has shifted

The feeling has shifted 

 

My perception has crossed

Into a foreign land

 

Unbeknownst to me

This is only the beginning 

 

Evolving Emotions: Counterfeit Consciousness

EKArts 2 Comments

Smiling faces inundate my view

Their cheer attempts to breach my brain

Hammering away at the worry

The fears

The anxiety

To no avail

 

Laughter fills the air

These lungs of mine force

The artificial happiness sweeps from my breath

Choking on insincerity

 

The sight of fresh and falling snow

Brings enthusiasm to the limbs

Mine mimic

In an awkward sort of way

 

Inside a bubble

Apart from others

Left with the thoughts

That consume me

Waking and sleeping

Smiling and laughing

 

I’m crying now

Real

Raw

Instinctual

 

Yet the worries never cease

The jerking movements

The false air

The smeared smile

 

Faking in the pursuit

Of realness

Indeed.

 

The Poetry Snapshot: From the Rooftop, an Urban Symphony

nehaallathur Leave a comment
Austin, Texas

For five minutes,
I close my eyes
and give into the prose of sound.

Motorcycles rev down 6th street
with a sense of synchronicity,
like a familial fleet.
A lasting roar of a herd on asphalt.
Tires on concrete reach a screeching halt-
a sound bite to a nearing stoplight
Racing each other yet sticking together.

A sudden splash of children in the pool
In a flash, a flicker of my eyelash,
droplets hit my skin rhythmically,
andante, andante
Its graze is cool, creating a haze so cruel.

I catch the gossip of women on a nearby balcony
A decrescendo of shared agony.
Their whispered words are rushed before thought
Hushed in fear of being listened to or caught.

A brief moment of piano
met with the forte of orchestral cheers
from Monday night football.
Empty pitchers slam the table as the crowd sprawls
Frustrated groans meet ecstatic high fives
As this game goes down in archives

Each melody is distinct,
Sharply detached, staccato notes
And creates a harmony so succinct
Before a tune is built the verse wilts;
my eyes open to the fading beats of an urban symphony.

Evolving Emotions: Thankful

EKArts Leave a comment

The comfort in knowing

All is well

And will be well

 

The security felt

When a sound

Divulges its character

 

The overwhelming joy that

Echoes through the room

At a ridiculous story

 

The calm you keep

Close to the chest

Knowing your needs are met

 

The common conversations

That you simply

Must absorb in your mind

 

The familiar scent

Of a home

So loved

 

you get in the car

your glance rips

from familiarity

each mile

unnaturally separating

 

The love

The struggle

The pain

The growth

The peace

 

The memories you crafted fade

As the path ahead expands

You know you must

Commence

 

You tremble

But trek onwards

Hoping for greatness

Cautioned towards aversiveness

 

No easier to swallow

The tears well up

As you are reminded of what you had

 

Friends

Remembrances

Home

Family

 

Even so,

Being apart

Shows how well off

You were

And still are

 

They have given you this gift

To separate from the world they made

 

And form a new one.

 

The Rise of the Band Geeks, Episode 7: The Army

Alias Leave a comment
  1. An undisclosed photo of a soldier from the Army (source unknown).

    From the tumultuous tides that churn and swirl in a slurry we hailed / Prowling growlers and missiles of ice / That slosh in the slush of hushed currents / In frenetic eternity.

  2. Readily we traversed / The pulsating subsurface and tenuous night / The venous channels and crumpled paths / Under silent symphonies and sonorous skies / Until we found you.
  3. A subtle force, we convened / Upon the bristled surface below the fickle water-sky / Across the ground that sops up shrill water / Or rejects it, eschews it into whiteness / Scattered across the tensile blades / erupting from matted black nuggets.
  4. North of the end of the shifting stew we mounted / Our tuneful armor / Our wooden round shells hollowed by erosive war / Our skins stretched so finely clumsy flesh would rend / The precious surface before which we stewed / Our moldable bodies balanced securely between our vessels and our weapons.
  5. Kindred warriors deluded by our stillness / Fused with our minds and our spiral limbs / Their blurred hands and cylinder knives / Rounded blades that sluice and pound / The sparse depths into oblivion / Elevated us with their hastily wrought words and / Thunderous melodies.
  6. Laconic, we allowed / You to swarm around us intrigued by our plush plumpness and stitched-on jubilee / To accumulate in trickles and honey droves toward our piano demeanor.
  7. In this soft stupor we encased you / Ensnared you in stuffed cages / Choked you gently into piles of fluff.
  8. Now we breathe into your accordion lungs / We snuggle within your marimba memories / We wrap our tendrils round your cymbal hearts / We feed you / We cultivate you / We drive you toward the day when the city folds in on itself and the clouded day becomes our night / We whet our spongy forms against the steel and the temptation and the war chant / We fashion your limbs into brass weapons / Your voices into roars / We disassemble you and rewire you and arrange your valves in sinister permutations / We polish you until we are not of you but are you / Until the day when the stadium submits and all of you, all of you, answer to us.  We are coming– for you.

Read More