Build and Burn Bridges with Franny and Zooey

There, in the silence of withering stars,
I shivered along the unruffled hills
And their sleeping eyes repents
With the congealed basin I held
Like a folded hand in a prayer

There, in the expanse and distance,
My throat swelled and burn
From suffocating the phonetics
That represents what I, alone, experience
There, in the absence of a bridge.

There, in the discreet mayhem of the night,
I contemplated in dissonant harmony
Vying like an exultant architect, I envision
In geometrical proportions and calculations
Bridging towers vivaciously looming.

There, in my pensive construction,
The foaming crest of the sea heaved

[...] Read more

poem by Norman Santos
Added by Poetry Lover
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!

Thank You For The Drink

As you percolated through the sieves
With an impassive watchfulness -
A sentry intoxicated by distress
For a comrade's fluttering sense
I waved my wrist noncommittally
And dragged my panacea wistfully
Dispensing your endeavors futilely
For you, and the rest of my everybody
Is my artillery, my only affinity left
And I will not tarnish you with my disease
I shall keep you unstained and purged
From my awry and foible soliloquy

So fret not for my erratic smiles
For I will soon succumb to your lulls
And wrought not your fist to rubble
Staring daggers at my tormenters
Because my demons are selfishly mine
And my lugubrious suppurations
Will soon decay like everything

[...] Read more

poem by Norman Santos
Added by Poetry Lover
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!

Where The Roots Sank

The incarcerated echoes
Inside your robust cage
Of ivories and porcelains
Resonated your name
Coiling into the navel
Where a brambly foliage lay,
Where one fates to fumble
Rummaging for an enigma
Ensconced in a solitary rose
With soldering petals of flame
Enervating the void dark
And the austere ravine stark
To pounce yonder your eaves,
Swell mellifluously condescending
Malignantly ascending
Like a staircase pummeling
The heaven in you tresses
And it reached my low canopies
In an eloquent fashion
Resembling the sun's expedition

[...] Read more

poem by Norman Santos
Added by Poetry Lover
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!

When the Pendulum Swings

You are the warmth of summer's hum
Scintillating the sleepy splendor
Vapid lances of the sifting sun
Palming the ashen stupor
But when the pendulum swings
A pall would mantle the sky
And hail mad daggers of tears
Obliterating what I can espy
From your morsel graze and leers
Until the climate whisk its cleaning

A hung filigree of drab smokes
Fecundates with a thrill
On two sundered souls in cloaks
Of solitude and eyes of steel
But when the pendulum swings
A blotch of lubricious red
Demented the tacit saturnalia
In convalescence—a tirade
Of false hopes in echolalia

[...] Read more

poem by Norman Santos
Added by Poetry Lover
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!

Post Scripts of Remembering

My mouth is full of rues
and my hunger is unstilted
My taste is chagrined
but as I look at you,
your luminous fist aloft
like a torch inviting moths
cadenced in propelling plight,
I can only ask for more

My emaciated wrists
and paunch contending
wager against these shackles
like how you've taught me
when the tides are high
and the sky is low

The building shades obscure
the shadows walking my path
and the bleared dusk behind
because my darkness is devoured

[...] Read more

poem by Norman Santos
Added by Poetry Lover
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!

Eden

I woke up asleep in the turbulent saturation
Of masking skins and the esoteric sensation
Of my head in a garrote solving geometric equations
The answers burst into the harried ducts
Clogging the sojourn of pulsating blood
But the more it floods, the more I flail in grasps

Lost in the chase of the body and soul
Insufficient of maps for empathy's anatomy
I claw into the viscera of the wandering bards
Hoping to scrape in the nonchalant penchant
For the hedonistic hunger eagerly fed
Subduing the treacle of genuine ardor
And the treason between the hallow bones

I wonder what drove saints into the crucifix
Do they wrangle and bicker with apathy
Were their tongues calloused for the taste
Of the carnal apples inveigling preemptions?
What triumph do they bequeath in blood and air?

[...] Read more

poem by Norman Santos
Added by Poetry Lover
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!

L'e Esprit De L'esclair

Basking into the shadows
That loomed like pillars
Raising the canopies high
Making room for innuendos
While the feet sank into the sand
With their gilded smiles glistening
You are an impenetrable mirror house
Where the clocks cannot croon
Neither halt nor pant, in askance
Rummaging to topple and unfurl
The naked terrain of conflagration
Spewing thin films of smokescreen
As walls to build an empiric wall
And cradle the ingredients of reveries
Such auspicious mendaciloquence, yet
Abatement buried its fangs deep
To inject the insidious venom to seethe
And devour the endeavor completely
Into the void belly of the vast galaxy
And as they leave without opening

[...] Read more

poem by Norman Santos
Added by Poetry Lover
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!

13: 00

Doors swung open with feigned eloquence
And eyes left ajar from daunted pretense
As time flew back towards the pleasant
Odyssey of your gentle goodnight
And the dark and piercing star-screams
Were heard guffawing and echoing
When the interpolating bliss ceased
With the last painted malady

The penumbra of the waxing moon
Incessantly stropped the brusque fringes
Of her stalemate blight, insinuatingly,
A pall of her emollient jet-black locks
Fell unto the fluorescence of her face
In the stillness of the windless sand
It whispered a riddance, droning,
That the ebbing water palmed
Into a turbid naivety: Good bye.

Your swimming eyes found a moor

[...] Read more

poem by Norman Santos
Added by Poetry Lover
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!

Ang Apoy At Mga Aninong Isinilang

Sa kadiliman ng gabing nakadapo
sa iyong mga matang nahihimbing
kasama ng maalong awitin ng hangin
at sinasamyo ng mga orasang gutom
na naghihintay ng pagkakataong huminay
sa pagduyan ng takdang sayawin;
natagpuan ko ang mga bagang nagngangalit,
ang pahapyo-hapyong silab ay sumisirit
at sumasagitsit kahilitulad ng kidlat
na lumiliyab sa hinanakit at pilit pa ring
itinatago ang galit sa likod ng mga ulap
at sa bawat mailap na pag-udyok ng pagputok
ng liwanag sa iyong walang kamatayang gabi
nasilip ko ang mga nahihimlay sa likod ng tabing -
Ang iyong kabataang tahimik ngunit
sabik na naghihintay ng kapayapaan
tumatakbo at humahawi ng walang kalaban-laban
sa hagupit ng sunog at darag ng mga usok
upang mapanghawakan ang kalagitnaan,
ang kasukdulan ng trahedyang umuulan.

[...] Read more

poem by Norman Santos
Added by Poetry Lover
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!

Drowning the Sea

My walls shudder and the persiennes rustled
Whispering secrets to each other
And tingling my curiosity
To open the portmanteaux
Where I have stashed the tides
With surges I cannot defeat
But I would not let myself deplete
Into the seductions of the ocean
And her airborne secrets

Your tides, they were pristine and feral
And I had pleasured myself
From the delusive consoles
Catching it in my palms
Like a paramour's hand
In spite of the saltiness of your fingers
That would detour from my frantic clasp
Filleting my hopes, every time
Until I gladly drown with all that I have
In your sympathy

[...] Read more

poem by Norman Santos
Added by Poetry Lover
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!