Author: kwirb

#30Days30Sonnets

An Open Sonnet For Ignoramus

  • by kwirb

AN OPEN SONNET FOR IGNORAMUS

They walk among us – Ignoramus – as shimmers.
Frightfully,  they awake, oblivious to its hosts.
With their gleaming eyes that glow dimmer,
they consume in breaths, among us as ghosts.

Growling sheepishly with their fiendish smiles,
laughing therein, where there is no laughter.
With their pompously petty excuses running miles,
laps around our grave – Ignoramus – happy, thereafter.

And perhaps my thoughts, though morbid be,
Are mere assumptions born from lucid pain.
But when shimmers solidify to blind my family,
It quickly tips my scales from sane to bane.

These faulty souls bring out my actions worst;
You’ll beg my pardon, as my family always comes first.

@kwirb #30Days30Sonnets
On a road trip! Sorry it’s late…

#30Days30Sonnets

Fleetingly Momentous

  • by kwirb

FLEETINGLY MOMENTOUS

In gems of fleeting moments – our present –
feats and convolutions tick and intertwine;
a galaxy in eons of twinkling evanescence
transcends the zeal of matter, space, and time.

Echoes of clouds as breathy mists in chasms,
taunt a celestial elegance baiting the abyss;
persistence, impetuous, awoken by flailing spasms,
overcoming flitting thoughts of losses missed.

I comprehend these sounds, – so familiar –
the laughter and adventures that led to them.
a stellar love heard in almost whispers,
a clever, gaudy brilliance from pebble to gem.

Heaven must exist, else where do prayers go?
These memories engulf me, eviscerating woe.

@kwirb #30Days30Sonnets
September 16th 2015.

Dedicated to Heather and her family, today especially.

#30Days30Sonnets

RED WINE

  • by kwirb

RED WINE

They swirled as one in slaps of supernal viscosity,
in an ominously sealed capsule with little disclosure.
Her neck was slender, a tempting generosity,
while his shoulders sloped into their disparaged exposure.

They fought a floating balance, colliding from bottle to glass,
as they minded considerate servings of their munificent candor;
they deftly consumed towards its bottomless crimson crevasse.
Thru vociferous labels enraptured, their drowning heeds meandered.

In fixed hushes mixed with their tumbling, scraping feet’s heel,
they began to murmur, rumbling in hint-surrounded undertones;
Not-so-suddenly, they’d revealed what they’d meant to conceal.
Merriment ensued, furthered by cyclones of delicate covers blown.

In their unwrapping another cap and unraveling of more twine;
they had sought the blissful stillness lurking in their red wine.

@kwirb #30Days30Sonnets
September 16th 2015.

Thanks, Shannon. Couldn’t think of a topic. I hope I did it justice, lol.

#30Days30Sonnets

Tales

  • by kwirb

TALES

I want to share dainty little tales with you,
Or scantily tell you over quaint little stories;
(about how love is painless and always true)
how villains can win and bask in their glories.

Would you find it heartbreaking and unbelievable?
Or maybe believable, yet morally questionable?
Perhaps filled with far too many goals, unachievable?
Or foolish characters making choices, unacceptable?

Eventually, I can promise you a lesson or two,
alongside a tragic hero, who is unsung and spent;
a plot twist here and there a leery subplot through
which the story tumbles down its predictable descent.

Perhaps, with you, I do not need to share these tales.
Since, in hindsight, it wreaks of you in familiar details.

@kwirb #30Days30Sonnets
September 14th 2015.

#30Days30Sonnets

Superstitious

  • by kwirb

SUPERSTITIOUS

There are old superstitions that often mislead
into believing the improbable truth; and it’s somehow
pliable yet sturdy in form, from then until now.
It is from these menial things that we formulate creeds.

But when proof prevails and truths concede,
there is something strangely poetic that it can allow
leeway from our vagueness’ blur to our furrowed brow.
It is a stampede of misleading feathery feats, indeed.

Extract the feats of one way beliefs and decoys of joy,
from skies full of jagged stars, points of moot,
wayward truth; Recall it’s guffaw heard in silence.

Reminisce in these altered personas that we employ
to cope with jolting doubts afloat in this cloudy truth;
Timelessly barking at your useless, defiant misguidance.

@kwirb #30Days30Sonnets
September 13th 2015

#30Days30Sonnets

Recycled Me

  • by kwirb

RECYCLED ME

Who is this me that one claims to be?
Is it the I or the eye of my begging’s cry?
Freely fleeing from the gleefully escaped me?
Or that I try to be sly in defining what’s “my”?

Where does it end or can I only tend to blend
in being unique and seeking better technique
while bending? Descending into an ultimate dead end;
this antique is a streak of tweaking’s weak.

Will I still grow or even find my soul
in this mess of stress and quests for less?
Or undergo buckling beneath turbulent flow
that suppresses the recesses of what I’d digress?

Am I less archetypal in this final cycle?
Or a less recycled, final (spiteful) title?

@kwirb #30Days30Sonnets
September 12th 2015.

#30Days30Sonnets

On a Day Like Today

  • by kwirb

ON A DAY LIKE TODAY

Reflections on glass and perceptions en masse;
Wear masks attained, brain pulses strain –
Where hope can’t last and courage must pass
through trials and troubles and pain.

And up from the ashes, these fascist masses,
Like wingless phoenixes in ashy deepness,
in grass too brown and brass, lyrically harasses,
this edict of dreaming in scenic, heavenly helix.

The stares we can bare from the prejudice wearer
and the mumbling and buckling of steps that stumble
on impaired prayer where the only terror’s error
is the humble still fumbling in tumbled crumble.

On a day like today, hope must remain
As our half empty hearts ebb and wane.

@kwirb #30Days30Sonnets
September 11th 2015.

Poetry

My Brother, It’s 2001.

  • by kwirb

MY BROTHER, IT’S 2001.

Traitor! You were supposed to be my brother.
You were supposed to love and forgive.
You tried to tear us from one another.
Instead you remind us how to live.

You remind us that life isn’t fair.
You remind us that we are one; with the world; one nation.
You showed us, as our brother, that you’d dare
to destroy a part of you: Creation.

You want to tear us apart.
You want to take our lives away.
As if you, my brother, had no heart.
As if you, yourself, don’t live day after day.

Many did cry, many did suffer.
Many wished it were all a dream.
You didn’t cry, but you will suffer,
you’re gonna wish it were a dream.

All those souls are gone.
All that’s left is a hole.
You may think you’ve won, my brother,
the one without a soul.

Victory, you don’t have
for you, my brother, are a coward.
What did you expect to have?
After destroying those Twin Towers?

Did you want love? Freedom? Attention?
Or do you just hate us so much?
So much, that it’s too much to mention?
Hatred to the point of such? Of such.

I can’t believe I was alive that day.
The day we all ended up dying.
I can’t believe the price we had to pay,
nor the tears we ended up crying.

God, did we even have to pay that price?
Tell me, my brother, I need to know.
You play our lives like a game of dice.
And you have absolutely no remorse to show?

My brother, you were not sad to see us go.
You are not sad to see us go, my brother.
You’ve sunk to a morale so low; so low.
I’m ashamed to call you my brother.

Sibling, do you want me to die like a son-of-a-bitch?
Or will that not be enough for you?
Do you want me to put the gun to my head, pull the trigger, and NOT flinch?
Or is that STILL not enough for you?

I don’t understand why you don’t give a damn.
Nor how your hate is the definition of homicidal rage.
Why couldn’t you just reach out your hand?
Why did you choose to reach this stage?

My brother, I can only wish that it weren’t too late.
The tears and this, we will not forget.
Because, with all your hate,
not enough tears in solitude can be wept.

Brother, why did you do this to you and me?
Why did you put those disgusting thoughts and images in my head?
Why did you choose to make a world where hope is made a folly?
What made you think it was worth the bloodshed?

A dagger should be welded into your heart of steel,
You cold-blooded murderer.
Our gaping wounds will never heal
because we know you want to take it further.

If you are not frightened, then I fear for you.
Humanity has been defined and now I am scared.
Sometimes I just close my eyes and say, “It’s not true.”
Leave everything behind because I’m so scared.

I can’t believe you’re human; that you have lives.
Of course, with that amount of insanity,
you took your own lives, others’lives, with lives.
What is your definition of humanity?

When those towers fell, my heart sank.
When people began to run, I felt weak?
My own brother made us walk the plank.
It was my life that he wished to seek.

When we thought it was over,
when we began the search of bodies to find,
when, to our own brother, we turned a cold shoulder,
It was at that moment that humanity was blind.

Later we’d say, “After the attack…”.
People, brother: It’s two thousand and one.
I feel like history is back.
Like we’ve only just begun.

Early morning September eleven,
the world changed with a crash.
Thousands too many of souls went to a heaven.
People such as you and I: gone in a flash.

New York City remains the city that doesn’t sleep.
The city where Lady Liberty has new meaning.
The city that hasn’t really begun to weep.
New York City: Forever-Healing.

So, my brother, what do you want to do now?
What is it that you wish to prove?
Are you preparing for the next surprise how?
To wake us on a new day filled with a more terrorizing morning’s dew?

Flying had always been the ultimate freedom.
Flying was meant to be free.
Yet that was how you chose to steal them.
To deprive them of life’s freedom on a killing-spree.

American. Canadian. Black. White.
What the hell’s the difference?
Why must we all die for one man’s plight?
Why do our children have to witness this?

Brother, how are you still alive?
I, myself, can barely walk this Earth without feeling the pain.
How are you able to jump and jive?
At the thought of your own family being slain?

Now that damage has been done, I feel useless,
And somehow you’ve continued, as we try to leave all this behind.
New Yorkers and mankind alike are clueless
And as you choose to continue, humanity is (yet again) redefined.

Brother you, too, one day shall in the fire burn.
And on that moment when we think it’s over:
we will grieve at more lives wasted.

For each of my brothers and sisters will want to take their turn.
Indeed, tomorrow is a new day,
for someone else’s pain thought another brother’s hatred.

received_10153540932127403received_10153540932167403-Joanna Francisco
September 11th 2001.

As the title suggests, I wrote this in high school on the evening of
September 11th. There are some pretty good metaphors and some decent flow of words here and there, but I think between the angst/hormones/lack of vocabulary, it’s not as superfluous as I’d remembered, but it’s still commendable for my age then looking at it 15 years later. Images courtesy of Alexis Ward, taken from that year’s yearbook.

#30Days30Sonnets

Power Pursuasion

  • by kwirb

POWER PURSUASION

How did this battle for powerless power
and in its devoured scowls empowered,
did we cower at the hour of weakness’ shower
whose flowerless towers made vows more dour?

Time and again, with the happening’s pen,
we tend to offend with a blend of impend,
from chagrin has-beens and wise men therein,
we overextend our dependence on pretend ends.

With innards aflutter we prayed in dismay,
and our mind clutter’s utter, we bade into sway.
We mutter and stutter, blockades of delay,
and slaughter in gutters of weights and decay.

This power cascaded, evading invasion degraded,
but raids of parades unaided have little persuaded.

@kwirb #30Days30Sonnets
September 10th 2015.

#30Days30Sonnets

Umbrellas and Raincoats

  • by kwirb

UMBRELLAS AND RAINCOATS

Between what you see in out of tune strings and half notes
Like pages you’ve read with useless words that do not rhyme
Or ballad patterns wrong, these rhythmic songs in half time–
somewhere in them lies poetic things that you wish you wrote.

You write of a field of umbrellas and raincoats.
As you stand on the soaked land of rain’s victim-riddled crime,
hearing whistle winds who refuse to meantime chime,
within, dark clouds sputtering on you no quotable quotes.

Construe excitement from wet dullness into words surreal.
And try to avoid deliberate poetic device citing.
You can also try to surmise what your sonnet implies.

Yet, you always write what you think and not what you feel,
then proceed to tell others, “This is poetry writing…”
But, between you and I, this umbrella and raincoat are dry.

@kwirb #30Days30Sonnets
September 9th 2015.