These 16 poems make up my very first collection of poems which I titled, Scorched Ink, in 1995, when I was 27 years old. They were composed between 1992-1995. There were only eight copies printed off a friend's word-processor, which I handed out to a very choice number of close friends, so this posting of these poems on my blog is their "official" debut in a public forum. Scorched Ink was followed-up two years later with Owls on the Roof, which consisted of 27 poems, and then over twenty years after that with my most recent collection, which is still available, at least on Kindle, on Amazon: Such Late Fugitives. I included one of the poems in Scorched Ink, slightly revised, for Such Late Fugitives - a poem titled, "Convalescence".
The image above was intended to be the cover (back and front) for Scorched Ink, illustrated and collaged by New Brunswick artist and poet, Madison Shadwell. It's being used here for the first time in public, so my thanks, again (30 years later!), to Mr. Shadwell. I didn't use my middle name back then like I do now when presenting my poetry.
Contents:
1. distillment
2. Conception
3. The Stage of This Play
4. This Paradise Needs Sowing
5. An After Thought
6. The Virtue Conceived
7. The Reprimand
8. My Own Private Phantasmagoria
9. Convalescence
10. The Ill-Deciphered Tongues
11. Darkness and I
12. The Aspiring Doors
13. The Redemption in Music
14. The Seminal Pulse
15. The Inspired
16. The Gift Relinguished
distillment
A decorum impoverished
from lack of...
Light.
A smouldering array of hopeless despair,
refrained buoyancy; a bastard's tear.
Resigned to the abyss where no
resilience abides to any degree of continuity.
The mind is a slave to sloth unwanted.
I borrow a grin from a pixie to carry me
through the drudgery of a day.
Will 'o' the wisp
for the famished heart.
Will 'o' the wisp,
and the fears embark.
Conception
We have sated our throats for now.
Our minds in question have yet a further
quest in this, the endeavor of the soul.
The enterprise to climb the altitude of
rapture and sip from a cloud, to muse and
tease the buds we have graciously enjoyed
in this embryo we call thought.
The Stage of This Play
Lying virtually parallel to a ghost
that sings a sweet melody and gifted
in rhetoric as lyrics are born under a Fall
sky. Revenge is a kind of kiss, but a sanction
is required, for a boiling point would only
mean chaos in these troubled times.
To be understood in a courtroom is to
write the human language behind a
set of bars all our own,
with enough room to fill a decade
and dream of a masterpiece able
to rival Shakespeare under means of
borrowed love, for thou which has it,
loves through words at his beckoning,
and breathes through stanzas to
be adored a century more and studied
under foreign roofs, employing a
madness for love but hated for
its sincerity, only to be understood
through misunderstanding.
This hilarious tragedy is still running, and
tickets are to be won.
This Paradise Needs Sowing
My earth is able to be dug. but
the soil is sour and my ears hear a
billion cries. The archers bow is arrow-
less, and targets are flourishing
behind walls of eccentric minds just
waiting for bridges to cross and feelings
to meet. Pondering is dangerous in this
town, where tongues flap in constant
directions unforeseen, but needed never-
the-less, more and more and more.
Does a child have a chance in
this thorned garden to kneel and pray
as mother and father had or had not
done, and wish for a fantasy to take
them away to peaks of immense
Imagination as an escape
for what must come.
Underruled governments hold you for payment
before dreams can commence reality.
Eggs are cracking under a scorching
Sun, frying its hopes on my soil and
poisoning this modern Eden.
An After Thought
Could there be an uncut truth?
To moods where smoke is felt,
but never seen?
Unfixed motion runs a barren course
through rainbows of emotion,
and hated, though loved, to extents
never dreamed.
The petals to these
flowers are dead to be born again
under a freezing sun, for laughter
and fierce anguish, as minds struggle
to withhold its growth under extreme
knowledge that only makes sense to
other people but never understood.
A cunning song is heard through a
rusted throat as notes are bellowing to the
smoking sky on days when children are
reeking from the heart and question
marks haunt their thoughts.
Where's it all begin?
What do I lose to gain in a world
of beauty so vile,
it would embellish through demons?
The Virtue Conceived
The instruments to my leisure lie
solely unbalanced, under a darkened
cloud where the weather is unpredicted,
and dances could only be
performed dressed in a faulter's cloth.
Life's divinity is a shy smile
willing to shout in joy when 'tis safe
from nature's crimes, and denial of reason through
feeble minds.
The wit of her womb must penetrate
love's soul and pervade the generations
before the rot is in the air
and blood.
Streams aflow with wines of the
finest lessons in all creation, to free the
chained and bounded hearts.
To soothe its kiss on the lips
of all who prance, though wearily, on
the banks of nature's fields, where
vile deeds are born not.
Birth to the words are mine to follow.
The Reprimand
The dankness of dawn wept by a prosaic dusk
Impeded my morning's rest with imminent revile,
As the snappings of bones and endless drones sunk
My sloven soul to the bottom of a pitiless earth.
Enraged! I slammed the listless self of my being
On a dry bike, my coach to the ominous proceedings,
Which awaited me before a committee of trees;
Nature's stalwart fringe enveloping the plaintiff's circle.
With the fervor of an assassin's lawyer, I spewed
My litany upon the foliage of an unsuspecting syndicate.
The shameful sky could only gape, hoisting a multitude of clouds,
As I reproached my muse for its indifference and idleness.
Vindicated by this torrential awakening, I proclaimed
My ascension with the bards of the past and the poets
Of the future: "Make way for the enraptured one, fiery
Pen in hand, brother to the denizens of Azure!"
My Own Private Phantasmagoria
The entry was curious; not impervious to the absurd.
I wore my scowl like a blazoned shield,
As the music's vulgarity smothered my reflections.
Salvation was crucified, creation was stupefied.
I grappled the lands and oceans with desperation,
Imbalanced at the core of my exploited soul.
Where there lacked reason, eruptions culminated
Into thick-tarred nonsense stifling all hope.
I was rendered naked by this corrupt trance,
Knelt before a demon's symphony of idols.
Dancing shamelessly, red-eyed nymphs teased
The very nerves of my oppressed erections!
Shattered in tattered gardens, warped vegetables imploded,
Stealing the faint light from the vigilants guarding
My heart, whose rampart's mortar melted helplessly,
Creating an avalanche, snuffing the wills of life.
I slumbered on, oblivious of any direction,
Collapsing, where lay a shabby raft before
A sinister and pure black sea, devoid of any horizons.
Blinking, I then found myself relenting for a perilous journey.
The blinding sky incarnated one phoenix after another,
Scorching my eyes, yet transfixed to their blasting
Infernoes as deafening laughter from familiar voices
Whipped my tongue for some infantile screams.
Amidst this hellish clamour my shield cracked,
Revealing a fissure, containing the embryo of surrender.
The skies tore open with a tempest of salt rain,
For I could no longer stave off the welling in my eyes.
My state seemed irreparable, as I languished
In this most nightmarish horror, coerced to beg
For release, away from all my perpetual suffering
At the hands of some senseless, tormenting nebulas.
The sudden clang of time awoke my conscience
In pools of sweat, fully aware of the anguished tides
That now dissolved into silent beats of denial,
Arresting now the dormant knocks from Hell.
Convalescence
Darkness peers behind a jaded tear,
unabashed at its willingness to evoke despair.
A meek and meagre hovel for a heart indeed,
to only beat in silence, aloof from optimism's flame.
The daily mirror reflects a venom of contempt,
where a new gash degenerates into an indefinite scar.
The transitory days rupture the soul,.... fade out
..... fade in .....
This elevation has a butterfly wingspread
beautiful and meticulous,
like a lover in a stillframe, locked
and eternal.
There's a fond repulsion from storybook
complacency.
Hug a horror from the past,
letting it free at last,
biding its time in oblivion,
as far away from me as existentially possible.
A wayward child applies an ointment of innocence
and vision is now widescreen,
and the senses bite, they gnaw
and tear:.... Awakening!
The Ill-Deciphered Tongues
"What exactly do you mean?"
I ask myself in judgement's spotlight;
Consumed in anxiety, that I should accost
my thoughts with such a stern, insinuating finger,
as my ego lay helpless before an arsenal of
irrepressible doubt and suspicion.
What so-called education presents itself now as
my vanguard of defence? Wit? Facts? Theory?
All caves in upon me at once; merciless, sinister,
impalpable.
A source unknown to the surfaces of my immediate state!
An eruption of nerves with reverberating intensity
exposes a would-be charlatan, if not for this internal
disturbance that so diligently screens my every
thought and force-feeds me truth serum.
The liberties of honesty have cross-examined my
objectivity.
My mind's in calamity as it possesses my
subjectivity.
Labyrinths and mazes teeming with symbols and archetypes
seize me from the four corners of my being.
And I shudder instantly as the seconds die.
"Logic and reason are hereby accused of treason!"
How indelible are their philosophies, with such a vast
gallery of identities, when so many tongues have used and abused their
quasi-constitutions?
Death has intervened, masquerading as war,
by political "children" in their best tribal apparel,
resolving their credence disputes, with self-imposed
atrocities, believing them to be sacrifices for justice.
Ah, yes! Sweet justice - she's forever misconstrued.
But isn't everything? - echoes abound.
I'm forced to concede in accordance to that
infinite question, under sieged by mirrors.
So why this malicious attack upon a soul
willing to self-deprecate in the name of truth,
that ineffable answer to Man's perpetual struggle?
Tongues have been attempting to decipher
its cryptic terms at great cost.
Honor? Veiled in flags and emblems; statues and
anthems; kings and queens; priests and popes.
Insignia for the pompous?
Has that anything to do with truth?
I sense the scale tipping,
Then drip, drip, drip, my mind salivates, but from where?
And trip, trip, trip, a stumble and a grumble.
"What exactly do you mean?"
And, alas, I realize the first great stumbling block
that has incited so much hostility.
Darkness and I
The night, the uncertain night
has fashioned its shroud around my soul,
dispensing with a day's worth of illuminations,
and now negates all my heart's delight.
What force unknown has aroused such a disarray
of tremulous feelings upon my hours of searching?
I'm as confined as Hamlet, a slave of delaying,
a deceiver of time.
I'm as helpless as a newborn, relying on my
fictional guardian's care.
An incubated man.
The castrated shortcomings of a severed nightcrawler,
dragging a cerebral trail of lost thoughts.
Involuntary abortions, miscarriages of mind, grappling the
enormities of a wounded Anima.
Locked in and thus locked out!
Tronced and poised for an unruly demise, begging
for a feminie grace to open her gates,
emitting the inspired rays of a new day's sun, dripping
the dew to intoxicate anew the withering muse.
The night is my muted companion, and we wait with urgency
for our soul's lucidity.
The Aspiring Doors
I know not where to go!
My mind abandons me, due to a repressed mental dominion.
This scentless air has suffocated the immensity of all
possible dreams.
The muse circumambulates, waiting for its call
to this duly adorned engagement, chock full of
motley anomalies with hidden faces. but audible
snickers.
The colors are nuances, waiting for the make-up crew
to provide a suffrage.
Then violins will weep in technicolor, and cellos
will master the strokes of calligraphy.
The celebration awaits.
The Redemption in Music
Violins of sympathy have wept this symphony,
a restoration for a languished soul.
Notes of majesty have conquered this travesty
and regained the vanguished gold.
Melodies so moving, blessed in soothing, a phrase
that welcomes the new kingdom.
Songs of azure and angels as pure, commence o Joy,
a found soul's lost freedom!
The Seminal Pulse
The backyard swans infused the street lamps
with celestial calm that penetrated the lushful
foliage of the neighbouring trees and sublimed the
visions of a wakeful nomad,
disturbing his pen's coma.
which now danced silently across his page
with lustful passion,
begetting verse,
as if Genesis had travelled full circle
to create again the Earth's first
innocence.
The Inspired
Lurking harlequins, imbued in blue, have
fermented the folklore of some past sanctity.
Ushering doves
form their gliding
gyre, milking the autumn
sky with desire's funnel,
and quenching my thirsted
mind's eye,
coating my ears with creation's elixir.
Cascading sound
waves of iridescence
embraces a child's sway.
Prancing about
in joyous
frolic,
inviting exotic climes from
Netherworlds,
to possess and nurture the myriad visions that
s u
w n
i i
r s
l in on before a bevy of
stolid senses, famished like lost worlds,
praying for the bountiful to come and replenish
the once infertile soil of yesterday's dreams,
awakening now in sweet verse received from the plentiful skies.
The Gift Relinguished
The severed correspondence from nature, a faint light
where once whirled a vigorous muse in all
its zesty colors, scents and sounds, now dies a
slow, woeful death with only strength enough
to recall a child's garden of abundance.
Imagination's thriving song has given way to forward grey.
Why does Man's vital gift yield to reside in Limbo?
It drowns and suffocates, succumbs for beguiled treasures.
It clutches with obsession to a lineage of material desires.
Primal urges await, clad in cunning facades labelled with love.
copyright 1995/2025
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