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Emily Jane Aug 2015
Today
The sun
Climbed through the air
Like a glowing tortoise

And we all sat
Under our musasa
With glistening penny cools
And freckled knees
Emily Jane Aug 2015
Tick tock
It's 2 am
Rather late
To be contemplating today
And tomorrow
and yesterday
And perhaps last June
(Remember?)
When jazz bands played
In the English sun

months stretch on
And yet pile up
in no time at all
And days disappear
And weeks run into each other
meandering (so quickly) away

Yet here I lie
As though time were
an idea
dreamed up
somewhere
As years fit into a single second
in my pondering mind

And I wonder
what will happen when the clock
slips to 4 am
and waking birds ruffle their feathers

You see, time will take me captive
And only on another rare sleepless night
Days, weeks, years ahead
I will again question
The clocks unending whirr
Ramblings from a rather tired restless mind in the early hours of yet another Tuesday.
Emily Jane Jul 2018
A patchwork of glittering metal and red brick.
Punctuated by the lapis lazuli coloured swimming pools dotting the veritable map below
Somewhere in the urban labrynth
Is you
Laughing, loving, scowling, sleeping, breathing, being.
And I am here, hurtling above you,
Wrapped in steel and aluminum, and encased by a hazed sky.
Do you hear me? The thrum and rush of a Faraway engine, an ever gliding bird that casts the briefest of shadows. Do you stop and note the rumbling sound, in amidst the orchestra of the everyday?
You lie beneath me and I move over you.
And yet, and yet,
you are unaware, unknowing, nonchalant,
and then I am gone,
Swallowed up by the all encompassing blue.
The flight back.
Emily Jane Aug 2018
2 am,
and the thoughts of you envelop me.
Your name is whispered in the blue dark.
Memories flutter uninvited.
The bruising on my heart has not faded.
Not yet.
Emily Jane Aug 2015
All they do is glisten, beckoning and prodding with gold dipped fingers. A hazy taunt, washed in soft delightful hues of eternal summer, and dying evening light and young tight smiles. Glimpses of an existence that now is rusted leaves scattered across a dusty path, an empty wind sighing in forlorn cadence, the hopeless reaches of a sleepy dipping sun. The world is spinning on its axis taking me with it and yet leaving me quite behind.
Emily Jane Feb 2017
Breathing in the hot drowsy wind
that then sits, stagnant, in the lungs
of the weary figure (mine own)
and exhaling long, the lazy summer air
as she waited (I sat for hours you know)
for the afternoon to decay
even though time itself seemed to be drugged
slumbering in the African heat.
Emily Jane Feb 2019
The mountains whisper across the rugged earth
Echos upon echos shimmering through the millennia
A language far preceding the etchings of men, scratched into the ground.
Reverberating through the depths of rock and soil and stone.
A creaking between the roots, steeping into the mantle, and into the sky.
A silent dialogue, between the above and the below, and the within and the around.
An undercurrent that flows unheard beneath the flimsy corrupting crust of mankind,
We are visitors, and it is not our song the mountains sing.
Emily Jane Feb 2017
I look at you
and note
the way your shoulders extinguish the sleepy light
your freckle sitting just so
below unaware taunt lips
your eyes
like any other
not worthy of weak knees and blooming cheeks
your jaw
jutting arrogantly,  
as though (impossibly) aware
of the slow furling burn
that is so sweetly
turning me to dust
Emily Jane Nov 2018
There is a creature in the night.
It is the wind that races around street corners
And taps on your shutters.
It is the cold silent blue lurking between slumbering rooftops.
It is the sliver of pockmarked white that casts a slinking shadow
As she climbs up the black.
It is the leaves of the oak,
Whispering
Whispering
Whispering.
Emily Jane Jun 2021
There is a world outside my window
it screams and rushes and roars  
Relentlessly in motion
a ceaseless current
of to and from
coming and going (“Wynberg !?”)
that batters against my walls
Even the trees
thrash about
in an angry hurried cadence
“You must not keep still!” everything shouts
Yet I remain
in stasis
cut off from the boundless energy
that proudly moves on and on and on
Emily Jane Oct 2023
My bones ache
My eyes are hot and raw
I am utterly cast out to sea
Unanchored
Treading water in a vast expanse of terrifying blue turbulence
I shout into the empty nothingness
Driving the air out of my lungs to call for you
"Where are you?"
"Please don't leave"
"I am not ready..."
But you are gone
and my voice echoes in the deep
like the devastating and futile cries of the last Kauaʻi ʻōʻō bird searching for a mate who will not come
So this is heartbreak?
Emily Jane Jul 2015
We all just wait
in the blue air
and shivering clouds

the sky is quiet
the trees, silent
soldiers in the mist

both are mirrors
in and out
out and in

waiting still
in an eternal glass
of frosted fingers and weeping leaves
You
Emily Jane May 2019
You
The fingers of a dying sun reach through my blinds
and find me
Absorbed by thoughts of you

Shafts of sleepy light **** me
gold seeps in and marks my cheek
I wish it were you
Caressing my back and brushing my jaw and stretching across my bed

But it is not.
So for now I contend with the touch of a dipping sun
gradually swallowed by a jealous horizon.

— The End —