The Warden and The Prisoner
The turbid air was a danseuse
Protecting my livid vision
I was in the deflating heart
Of this turbulent ocean
Of people living in direst—
Fixers without their fixes,
Journeymen fated to sojourn,
Poets of hallucinogenic riddles,
Mad men of mad realities,
And mad men of mad expectations.
From the latticed grills and sanguine floors
Silence spoke of emancipation
Blaring the lamentations in the palms
With the swansong of this requiem
Playing a vehement scherzo
Invoking a bad case of dysentery
To gyrate at the corners of my head
Churning the rusty gears to run
And the verdigris bled out
[...] Read more
poem by Norman Santos
Added by Poetry Lover
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!
Struggling For The Dead
From the dampen earth, where the tall grass blades
Never glistened with the svelte grazes of the moon
Slathered with petrichor and moonstruck iridescence
I crumpled the fragments of your soul, the humidity
Festooned with varmints' sinewy crawling tingles
And delinquent stifles from translucent genocide—
A caroming weeps of treason of the salted bones
And putrefied flesh, disintegrating the strangled soul.
Beguiled as a lachrymose hero in a phantom warfare
Hands flailing with the flutters of defeat and barricaded
Chance of redemption; a long dead barren ground unshaken
By any toiling cry and unsheathed swords, I shrill my bones
Just to lament a line in the harried specks of time;
The blame is in the warm crimson draping the hilt
In the pain reckoning life, erected like a statue
Apt for this eloquently written statuesque direst
Where you swam leisurely under the charlatan sun
Devouring the portrait envisaged in the lunatic ball
Gravid with the enthralls of perpetuity, it is a lie;
Now die, sink into the water and let the bubbles
[...] Read more
poem by Norman Santos
Added by Poetry Lover
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!
Odyssey
Proud admirals
dressed as belligerent
soldiers of the
platoon of defiance,
assailed to the torrents
in the stygian abyss -
a vertical horizon
between the albatross' wings
The unconquered expanse
instilling lamentations
in the rain's
vapidly prancing winds,
dreaming of a place
where the weather
used to reside
like a lazy sun
tucked with a pistol
under his mattress
[...] Read more
poem by Norman Santos
Added by Poetry Lover
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!
Yalda
Wolves cried for the moon's return
Along with the aubade of the beaus
Beating themselves for their truant muse
But I am not amongst these paramours
And their torrent brawls with oppression
Because in this prolonged dark vesper
You will never be my shattered moon
For you are its very absence -
You are the darkness that enwalls me
And this tryst - a pilfered time
In consummate darkness where everything -
The somnolent sands of time,
The weeping banshee of the yesterday,
The weaving arachnid of the tomorrow,
The city's vindictive rules and calculations,
The prison of the soul, the rhythm of hearts;
Lost their keen eyes in senility
And in this parallel plane
That scarcely comes like the wind
[...] Read more
poem by Norman Santos
Added by Poetry Lover
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!
A Wrinkle in the Horizon
These skyscrapers,
These houses fastened together,
Heads fondling each other
Pawned in a gamble of hearts
Draped in deep scathes of black;
Impedes and obstructs the beautiful haze
Of the vapory gloaming and destructs
The unrestricted chortles and whimpers
This town is a spiraling tragedy
Wielded by lachrymose heroes
Defeated and outnumbered by
The myriad of phantoms of the past
No, this place, drastically wallows
With or without you and your
Inconsistencies, this is not an anchorage
Of our convicted allibies,
And the susurrations behind the door
Should learn to knock knuckles
Speaking not only of selected names
[...] Read more
poem by Norman Santos
Added by Poetry Lover
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!
Labyrinth
It descried me,
The sleeping tiger's fang
Hampering my neck,
And the endless brunt
And the plastered smile
Shrouding the perdition
Thawed with the white snow
As stark as amnesia
Where am I
Amidst your indifferent stares?
Cloy me again
And pilfer my vision
You are my adamant eyes
Sunken in delusion.
It caught me
The lacquer compassion
And the myopic acceptance
Chafing the fortified resistance
To undrape the bronze skin
[...] Read more
poem by Norman Santos
Added by Poetry Lover
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!
Behind Your Motorbike
Your not so subtle
sagacious whims
cradled in brass knuckles
flummoxed
when you stripped
the callused skin
into a brusque
mad sea
of enigmatic
enthralls -
Have you seen
the albatross shuffled
its seaward compass
inveigled to your
thermal fan?
Where were you
behind the machine
that bludgeons
your words -
[...] Read more
poem by Norman Santos
Added by Poetry Lover
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!
Without You
On the wings of the night
I wager for another glance
the doors were closed
even before the departure
but the windows are ajar
on your open sleep
There is a limbo behind
the beseeching and crestfallen
but this yearning cannot lie,
its veracity cannot be tamed
so I tethered myself, caged myself
until I grew more savage
and even more desperate
I miss you and I miss you
too much that it would kill
like a lynch embracing tight,
you descend into my skin
like a fang and every night,
[...] Read more
poem by Norman Santos
Added by Poetry Lover
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!
Garden Of Drudgery
My vicious skies disengaging the exiguous quasars
To thaw the soldering frost-mourn aloft inside
And the maudlin with a frozen brook in a jar
Drowned with shriveled legs from the labyrinthine stride
Now, above head is a mirror of the vast sea
Of people feigning their sedative bliss for agonies
And abortive sorrows propelled in the chalcedony
Sinking everything in a valley of roses and drudgery
Come, lay with me and muse as the albino sun
Scull its superfluous fingers to sine the parliament
Of hostile macabre breaths debauching the wan
And pointless toiling to own or keep the firmament
In the brambly floor of this frowned vale
We shall lacerate to bleed out the vying soul
Until our skin can feel no more, our bones so frail
Shall not break no more, and we will be the lips of the hole
In this garden of drudgery, fluttering with the plucked petals
Everything is painted with the darkest golderfloes
The nadirs are preempted fluent in stains of the vestal
And walls are mightier than the bridges' tows
[...] Read more
poem by Norman Santos
Added by Poetry Lover
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!
Postcards
The pageantry of bliss -
I watched them in full light
that burns out the soft graze
Why, on a sunny August,
with passersby gilded by ebullience
do I have to be a wretched man?
The mirrors bend backwards
to my toppling complacence
and slivers uncouthly when
I unfurl my crooked teeth
in what should look like a smile
I counted the black birds
that perched on electric lines,
I counted the phone's dial tones,
but I cannot count the thorns
tossed upon my open sleep
that sent my dreams in an asylum
[...] Read more
poem by Norman Santos
Added by Poetry Lover
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!