Wednesday, January 21, 2009

Thorns And Prickles

Today's theme: Thorns.
(I don't have many poems or pictures involving thorns, so this will be a relatively short blog-post.)

First picture: (simply) "Thorn". Second Picture: "Thorns Themselves Tearing".




(The following poem could have been included in my blog-post about butterflies as well, except that I wrote it right after I last posted about butterflies.)

Upon The Dismal Thorn
------------------------

Upon the dismal thorn, an oblivious butterfly
Is poised; it rests on its linearity aligned
But always misshapen. It is never stung
By the crude sharpness beneath such silk.
And still, this bug is held and exact
In its whispered belief. And I gaze onto
The subtle wings; for, they stammer, yes,
But are tilted only in their certainty. Ah,
Upon the dismal thorn, this lepidopteran
Does not release itself from its pangs. Oh,
I find myself aware of my disdain for
That stubbornness. But yet, yet I too am
Perched within the cusp. I too refute
My flight upwards. For, I dare only
To flutter atop this distant ground. I dare
Only to fly to fetch my hunger, only to
Imprison myself inside my agnosticism
Regarding the world above my madness, above
That magnificent but decisive ceiling.

++++++++++


(This poem I just wrote yesterday. It alludes to the poem above.)

Thorn Of Glass
---------------

Severed by this thorn of glass, my soul wails;
Yet it is finally soothed by its triumphant sickness.
And, certainly, the transparent salt within me,
It oozes and whispers and is finally obtained.

Severed by the spike, a shard, a speck of image;
My gut resumes its hallucinations. And then
The anger relinquishes its stains. Then the thorn
Transposes its triangular implications upon
My death, upon my magnificence conceived.

Oh, severed by this smooth knife, I protrude
From my evisceration. And then the blade
Ascends, and I depart, and I become opaque;
I become but the flower, become but the butterfly
Perched against such stabbing, perched anew
Amongst those forgotten poems, amongst
Those infinite thorns, all abrasive but somehow
Each distant from my flesh blandly grieving.

==============

This Cloud Of The Thorn
--------------------------

Coinciding with this cloud of the thorn, withered
Is such rain, is such beauty in which I succumb.
Withered are those naive thoughts of rancid sky.
And I relinquish my fist; and it erases the air;
It captures the single droplet. For where has this
Transparent speck become itself? Where, this water
Of potential grandiosity? Yet it fails. It fails
To wash into our dreams, into misshapen rivers soiled
And jagged. Oh, circumstances remain, then coincide,
Coincide with rain, with flesh, with stabbing shards.
For we too fall. We too are made from blood.
We too are but mist ascending, then descending,
Then arriving at our own curiosity, asking, surely,
Have we finally rested upon our desires, only to darken
Or be forgotten? Ah, and then we recall, however,
We are never to love, are never to evoke
Any such clouds.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

(I think I posted this poem already. Maybe.)

Shimmering Thorns
(The Botany Lesson)
---------------------

The stem protrudes upwards and away
From its own flower beneath us, rising to
The diagonal sky. The leaves correlate
With their tapered parallelism, becoming
But petals of mismatched transparency.
The fruit implodes into its invisibility,
Into its threefold concentricity, rendering
Such seeds to be both sweet and elliptical.
The glow of this specimen denies its edge,
Accumulating within the spiral of such
A soul. And the earth under which
All seen is below, there it grows filthy
And wet and beautiful -- there it begins
To sprout then die then recreate anew
This perfume, recreate this distance spun
As if any profanity would define that flora
Of our conclusion, of our shimmering thorns.

*******************

(The last two poems mention thorns, but each is more about other things.)

Phases Of Each Imbecile's Concentric Light
--------------------------------------------------

The phases of each imbecile's concentric light
Reveal the inflection to be within a dream
Of shattered thorns themselves aglow,
Themselves glazed with such scribbles seen.
Distasteful imagination flattens before
Becoming trite then severed and aghast.
So I refute the prisms' pangs, refuse
To scream of any excreted plight,
Of any praise endured, of any rain
Made arid and torn; refuse to remain
Underneath the ceiling of blasphemy,
Underneath the convex shroud of beauty's cataclysm.

oooooooooooooo

Sideways Is
-------------

Strange and vague is the blacklight cosmos.
I gaze into its shadow, into its perfect water.
And I am cleansed, I am enraged by obviousness.
Oh, drawn as glass is this eclipse evoked;
Drawn as all purpose is our beauty endured,
Is our spectacular curvature utterly avant-garde.

Oh, sideways is the maze surrounding the blandness.
Sideways is the cylinder of cubes, is the cardioid
Rounder yet than any trapezoid. Sideways is
The thorn above our cursed sky, is the
Fragmentation of peculiarity into absolution
And obscure enlightenment whispered. Oh,
Strange and vague is the amorphous rainbow;
For it is unusual but apparent. And I know
I will never entwine within such a firmament,
Because it pretends to be too elongated for any
Of our misunderstandings to inevitably superimpose
Upon awareness, upon those dreams of speckled epitome.

...................

Leroy Quet

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