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8.1k · Aug 2014
You and I
Helen Raymond Aug 2014
You and I
A song that started clumsily, mid-stumble, then fell into a beautiful flurry of violins playing lithe.
It’s a Shakespearean epic draped in a cheap suit of modern conjectures that caught my eye.
You and I
It’s climbing up a mountain-side, daring & tempestuous -cherishing every moment, not just the peak, but the hike.
Even as you’re pushing so hard its hurts to breathe, the air so thin your gasps are overlapping fighting for air– you’ll die if you quit, having the time of your life.
You and I
Seeing sheet-music for your favorite tune, as an illiterate fool, but somehow feeling the rhythm and time.
It’s enticing & startling, it’s the smell of privet-hedge and pine –familiar, refreshing, & divine.
It’s you and I.
4.5k · May 2014
An Ode to Chemistry
Helen Raymond May 2014
We've only got a week left to last you know,
Thank every deity that ever was or ever will be.
I've aced the class now I've gotta go!
Had a wake for Wellness, and Spanish is buried -Now a funeral for Chemistry!
Banish those 'noble' gases and all that higher math.
What's a word smith need with polarity, molarity, or stoichiometry?
Well at least now I can tell an asymptote from a hole in the graph.
The freshies have it next year, but us -We cheer and sing, "BETTER YOU THAN ME!"
I know its not all that clever, I'm just diffusing some tension I've been feeling. The funny thing is next year I'm  not truly free, I'm just taking a higher level of Chemistry.
;)
1.7k · Jan 2018
Red
Helen Raymond Jan 2018
Red
A dance with the devil, fiery grace
Her lips quivered as he offered the pomegranate & she delighted in the taste
The vampire or the victim?
Not as naive as she was written.
Hot breathless gasps of passion,
As the demon cries out blessings to his salvation
A queen is crowned in the hellish nation
1.6k · Sep 2017
Silver Lining
Helen Raymond Sep 2017
She sews her wounds with silver thread
Not all storm clouds bear silver linings, you were mislead
Silver scars shimmer in the sun
Beautiful reminders of the battles that she's won
Beautiful souls are often those who've suffered most
1.4k · Apr 2014
Hollywood, Golden Age
Helen Raymond Apr 2014
Shutter of Polaroid glamour
Smile for the world, curse the camera
Hide the bruises with sequined satin
The limelight flatters skin of cold, hard stone, you the latter
Liz you marble statuette
Maril you glitt'ring diamond
Regal laugh & darling, another glass of 'champagne'
Douse your bones in Chanel
Put on your lipstick
Pull the curtain
...Start the show
We're their golden circus- "watch the beasts, tame the women, hear the showmen."
Whips, rings of fire!
Top hats & show lights...
Which's your favorite ring: the songstress, the cad, the dream?
Pour yourself a drink, repaint the mask, shining glitz & gleam.
Children of the Golden Age, driver start the Cadi
Hollywood front-page, plaster royalty.
-free verse-
Me and my friend Candace were talking about our favorite Golden age actresses this morning and this was born.
(My favorite is Debbie Reynolds and hers is Audry Hepburn)
1.1k · May 2015
Outlast
Helen Raymond May 2015
By the ancient bones of some antlered creature, singing out in ivory tones
A reckless murmur in the dark –against the tinder, a silvery flicker, a lonesome spark
Through blessed decay, youth blooms against the lifeless shivers of these old bones
Children dancing in amber cinders, hear the crows & ravens bicker, the golden peal of the lark

A reckless murmur in the dark –against the tinder, a silvery flicker, a lonesome spark
Pine of black, withheld by pillars of marble –built to last
Children dancing in the amber cinders, hear the crows & ravens bicker, the golden peal of the lark.
What a thing, the pallid palace outlived by the ochre grass

Pine of black, withheld by pillars of marble –built to last
There we caught it between our ribs, it set us loose –a clever thing, brought up to string its own noose.
What a thing, the pallid palace outlived by the ochre grass
I’ll never forget or forsake you love, always remember you in our youth

There we caught it between our ribs, it set us loose –a clever thing, brought up to string its own noose
Through blessed decay, youth blooms against the lifeless shivers of these old bones
I’ll never forget or forsake you love, always remember you in our youth
By the ancient bones of some antlered creature, singing out in ivory tones
A hastily written little pantoum
986 · Oct 2017
Critique
Helen Raymond Oct 2017
Respect is earned and not given
Don't expect an attendance ribbon
No petty compliments, no kind lies
Only truth seen through different eyes

We may be harsh, we don't mince words
We value truth even when it hurts
To plant roses we must break the earth
Challenges let us prove our worth
972 · Mar 2014
Lysis Lustre
Helen Raymond Mar 2014
Overdose of stimuli
Parade of light in the sky
Music falls, silence
The mer-men raise their tridents
     -in the air
Selene wailed, in her cot
     -the velvet bare
The diamonds flown and caught.
Drop your miniature bombs
On Marys and Toms.
Like school-boys, pulling your school-girls' hair.
Flirt with death, dance a desperate dare.
Douse Hell-fire in hemlock wine.
You're blind with *****'s ditsy shine.
Wake and sadly find, the stars -still 'live.
-free verse-
Just a quick-write, hope you liked it.
874 · May 2014
A Curiousity
Helen Raymond May 2014
I was bathing in the sterling, fawning light there dimmest be when I came upon a phenomenon unbeknownst to me.
Quiet, bluish lights dancing in the pale, blinking every time -again and now but a chorus faithfully throughout.
What was this, a faerie funeral?
Perhaps a will-o-wisp walkabout?
Fly, oh, the Valkyrie, I feel you may 've missed you two or three.
What is this hovering, waving sight -harbingers of ancient light?
Stole one from a widow clothed in black, turns out they're bonny baby fireflies, imagine that.
There has always been a plethora of fireflies in spring and early summer, but these acted in a way we'd never seen before. They flew close to the ground and their light was nearly unblinking, and so much dimmer than the norm. I saved one from a spider's web and found them to be very young fireflies.
822 · Jun 2014
Rising
Helen Raymond Jun 2014
Tumbling,
Tossing,
Dawn, midnight-midmorning’s crossing.
Comatose in an arcane ether-realm, I’m watching.
Through the pastel, piercing mountains –rifting, I lay drifting.
The curtains parting, releasing two daylight captives, falling.
Tumbling,
Tossing,
Unfinished dolls of porcelain, tangled mess of hair -streaming
A girl, brunette, no eyes, no lips –smiling or screaming.
She wears dress in tones of pallid, matching his wee bow-tie -stark against jacket wafting.
Their skin, fire-cast, spare of flush, their jointed arms –like birds, flapping.
Tumbling,
Tossing,
The boy finds rest in clouds where birds lay nesting and mists –gently cresting.
He’s posed, his hand exposed, for her hand, inanimate, he’s reaching.
She’s losing ground rapidly, with but mock sense of gravity, while in clouds peaks are breeching.
Chest shattering, glass chattering,
Tumbling,
Tossing.
Skewered bodice, broken bits of her calling, giving rise to the blind though she’s not yet done falling.
All at once, his cries come with his fresh face & his babbles, nearly maddening.
Struck with the frozen bite, eyes & lips bursting –painted from her plasticine features -her tears biting and cries raging!
From her inky tears is drawn a river, running, gently cradling before suddenly she’s drowning!
Tumbling!
Tossing!
Through the waves, her ceramics washed to skin- her hollow, broken chest now heart beating & lungs pleading!
She takes her breath from the dark waters of her rift, living tattoos on her skin now flourishing, blossoming!
Her soul, wide-awake, taking root in her skin; finding wading too shallow, she seeks higher things of depth & so flies with a lofty dive into the heavenly expanse of underwater, pitching stars for her catching.
Paying one last glance at her lost mate, cowering, she leaves him sobbing after her on a path he won’t be following.

Tumbling,
Tossing,
Surviving,
to Surpassing
...
She is Rising
-monorhyme-
No, I did not write this poem about overcoming heartbreak, but you are welcome to read it in that frame if it suits you  :) Specifically it is a thinly-veiled grand metaphor for how we must go through trials & overcome our fears before we may rise to our full potential & become who we are.
796 · Oct 2016
Starlight & Streetlights
Helen Raymond Oct 2016
Sooty sky, stars hushed and clouds flushed with florescent light,
A friendly walk with strangers in the night.
So strange when a girl so accustomed to silver starlight
& weeping pines in beloved twilight
Becomes strangely delighted by paved paths and streetlights.
little monorhyme on my mood tonight
768 · Apr 2017
Ascendance
Helen Raymond Apr 2017
I know I’ve been away
For a little while
I’d like to tell myself to bring it back
But let me stay a little bit unconquerable
A little piece of me, a piece of you
All tangled up and hidden away
Quiet ascendance  
Finding what my former self had tangled up
In savage, bitter knots of
Doubt and fear
Unraveled now by the acceptance
Sweet ascendance
Leaving me naked now in my reflections
But the less I hide, the less you see
And the more I come to relish in that victory
715 · Feb 2014
Morning Ride
Helen Raymond Feb 2014
Western winds whipping with a will
Restless rains taking refuge among the wren
You're on a running rally all on your lonesome
Gallantly exploring the pallet the elements deigned this morn
The ghosts dance, their wispy waltz shattering our heavy hoof-prints
Mosey-on 'round the bend your eyes will lend.....
This scene, near winter's end --in pastel golden air, the shadows turning themselves to where-without mass.
Hold your mouth aghast,
Breathe gently of the metallic merriment, soak it up.
Take it with you as you go.
Feast your eyes on the fresh diamond formed in the re-fined rough..
Then smile with your musings, let the doubt-lings gab if they must.

Against  the shimm'ring shivers of the white-gold mists, the grey-blue veil fills out against the frightened forest, anxious of the morn to come.
Not count yourself among those who shrink but those who harmonize with the chorus of the skies.
So be you not fearful of the morn to come, the raw potential of it all,
Rush into the recesses of the mind to find yourself rinsed in silver & gold.
-free verse-
I was taken aback by the prettiest misty morning a few days back and I quickly jotted this down. In places its a bit cryptic, but its mostly observatory descriptive
660 · Feb 2014
In Memoriam, Eden
Helen Raymond Feb 2014
Little feathered beast, come settle down to sleep.
Latticing branches will take you far from here.
Learn 'til naught's left for the cerebral to reap.
Seek divinity of shadow, gain Nox's ear
Noxious curiosity, potent and deep.
Darling, elfin wolf: your song they long to hear.
Those silly creatures, they pry and they ****.
Your beauty transcending your cries, to them odd.

A century 'mongst saplings -same of blood, not time.
Children of the night, curious and divine
Sought the mystique wielding both reason and rhyme.
Memories of Eden, on seraph you dine.
Romani wisdom you reverently mime.
Morn their gyve and sharpen your tine.
Lithe lycan, shadows claim, demure your sole crime
'Surely something as so must be stitched or sewn.
Such a thing mustn't be of nature's own.'
My first attempt at an Ottava Rima. The mood is inspired by the band Daughter, other than that...Interpret it as you will...
646 · Feb 2014
Tyburn 1
Helen Raymond Feb 2014
Lovely
Lively
Deathly
Blithely
Step to fall with Lovely, Lively care.
Love, I take your Deathly, Blithely dare.
-tyburn-
I love reading these. Short and sweet, enjoyable to read but no long-term commitment.
635 · Apr 2014
How She Loves
Helen Raymond Apr 2014
Kind, elegant fingertips
Caressing the soul through silken sheets of sensitive skin.
Tender, hungry, searching lips
Drinking in the whole of who he is in shy, loving sips.
(Quatrain) Another quick-write, some other work is stealing most of my time right now. Hopefully I'll be free again soon.
624 · Feb 2018
Missing Myself
Helen Raymond Feb 2018
More often than not my machinations are little more than fragmented ruminations and disjointed alliterations

Occasionally preoccupied by rhyme, reason, or cravings for another season

Color and light dancing against the doodles left dog-eared among the daily drudgery crowding my deliberations

Purposefully thinking my thoughts more thoughtfully in these days of superficiality and commercialized faux reality

Deliberate silences budgeted between listless noise. On days when everyone's vying for vocal real estate & everyone's talking with nothing to say.. I take a fast from my voice.

I withdraw from myself, deep within my mind.. I attempt to reconcile with that girl I was -forgive myself for letting her leave again. How can I come back to her after what we've been? I've lied to her too many times for her to let me back in.
Helen Raymond Feb 2014
Swift little flickers, frostbitten butterflies seek cause for silent tickers.
Errant thoughts muzzled, fearful to fly, forever puzzled.
Every place wrestling for resemblance: filigreed and brimming with brilliance
Kept their dizzy daydreams quite upright, poured over their faceted faces in hours twilight.
Inken sketches, florid smudges later you will find the carnage.
Nearly melted, beat those frosted wings, keep your wits about you, pretty things.
Go, flick and fleet: their flight; fly, fly always towards the light.

Soft whispers give way to angry hisses
Ever less goodness, evermore thoughtless.
Restless sounds of puncture wounds, outpouring of broken tunes.
Earth trodden ashes of the unforgiven writings call to halt the lashings.
No one hearing, none recalling the precious dress of lacing.
Intellect sparked, soon be doused; any voice of inspiration, oust.
Theft of name, take them to another unmarked grave, twisted game.
Young remember as their elders told in fright, 'fly, fly; always towards the light.'

Taste the soot on your tongue, the burn in your lungs, the breath of change this way comes.
Here they hunt thieves in the mist, starving fireflies on a mad tryst.
Run, fast and far they did, into the wastes they wade: anxious of judgment to be paid.
On the precipice you balance, guided by the insurgent cadence...
Under the needle all the more urgent it becomes, you fight with fists and tongues, pens, curses and drums!
Grow to regret their callosity for all your darling thought by the fervor with which you fought!
Hear the chorus of the masses screaming with all their might, their battle cry, "Fly, fly; always towards the light!"

Snowflakes listen in chaste wonderment of the divine's grand design.
Mutiny of the very worst kind, slaughter and smother your peace and mind.
Ostentatious trimmings traded for ember dress to set light to falsifiers'  fortress.
Keen intellects, driven mad with hunger, retract their reticent mantles to reveal peerless sentinels.
Eternally seeking serenity through smoke, as in ancient rite they fly, fly; always towards the light.
-an attempt at refining acrostic-
If you've made it this far you've realized that this isn't about smoking cigars (sorry to disappoint if that's what you were after). This is a poem about war and beauty, and their repetitive dance.
591 · Oct 2017
Subtleties
Helen Raymond Oct 2017
Startling set of subtleties laced between the shadows of common things
The shred of darling darkness you've disgraced by denying it the light
Admire the simple songs, ignore the undertones hiding between the notes
Versing the sunrise, ignoring the dewy tears in Apollo's eyes
A masterpiece can't be complete without the sum of invisible brush strokes
Secondary shadows playing with our perceptions, slip through the seams
They are quietly quintessential, unnoticeably indispensable
Writing anonymous autographs in photographs & autobiographies in poetry
Unnoticed, unremarkable, ineffable, and invaluble subtleties that contribute to the beauty of life
575 · Mar 2018
Effigy
Helen Raymond Mar 2018
Soul, trascendental tether to infinity
Voice of instincts & individuality
Ever will I endeaver to reflect this inner self in my personality
Allow this abstract apparition to cast its ambitions through my identity
We all begin with the same block of stone, family carving away deliberately, often in fits of spontaneity
Every person we touch takes a piece away and impacts our reality.
Now we're old enough to carve our souls into actuality
Its been within me since my infancy still I struggle to perpetuate its conceptuality
On occasions when I can summon its voice to my lips its gone just as quickly & I mourn for the brevity
All I'm left with in my renderings is a fragile, frugal effigy -how could a mortal hope to attain the likeness of divinity?
575 · Jun 2018
Leap
Helen Raymond Jun 2018
Seeking balance relentlessly
on a precipice..

Sometimes I walk the edge
cutting my tender feet..

Sometimes I wander back
to comfort and safety..

Am I meant to leap?

Will I fall away
by some beautiful mistake
to the place heaven meant for me?

Will I open up some unseen wings
and become what I never knew I was
and always dreamed to be?

Or will I fall
to be punished by the waves
against the shore?

Foolish flightless bird
attempting to soar..
554 · Feb 2018
Still
Helen Raymond Feb 2018
Spinning yet standing still
Everything's a tremble
All the world's a jitter
I long to hold it still

Suddenly a shudder
A chill besets my soul
Silence falls, stark and shrill
As earth and atoms still

Universal chaos
Set a shiver in me
Pleading relentlessly
Demanding infinity from mortality

As my small heart attempts to warm eternity
551 · Oct 2014
-scrawled on a napkin-
Helen Raymond Oct 2014
Life, budding from the stoic ground, or so it would seem.
But beneath her surface, goodness, virtue, and sustenance teem.
****** soil, mother of all things.
Come to be stained with blood and ambiguity.
Will we last the day?
What would you have left to say?
What will you do with your numbered days, your breaths, your words
Before you go to feed the worms?
Something I wouldn't ordinarily share due to its simplicity, but there you go. :)
510 · Feb 2014
a cup of grey among friends
Helen Raymond Feb 2014
I, this week, spied you lot in the trees.
  'Twas around the time I found I enjoy teas.
You seem the sort of strays who'd like Earl Grey,
   Who with I could spend a crisp winter's day.
~
   Was a small thing to say 'hello'.
Of you, my ken, I hadn't found a fellow.
   Gladly I find with you madness both fierce and gentle.
  Mince words for season's things, I'll put on the kettle.
~
I take wild honey in my tea,
  Toasty with a morsel of cream.
Not many know that about me.
  Yes sir, it's quite a little scheme.
  ~
But somehow the wick of this id
Is found just here, boiled leaves amid.
Defined to me not in dark ink,
But on this glass's ivory brink.
-a train of quatrains-
This is a humble note of appreciation to this site. No poetry is not my forte, but I still feel more at home here among you people of verse than I often do in my circle of friends. Though I love them dearly for their heart, their nerve, and their honesty, I've never had a friend 'among my ken', meaning those who speak through ink. So, thank all of you for piecing this wonderful menagerie of poetic styles together & know that I, at least, am all the happier.
496 · Sep 2017
Sanctuary
Helen Raymond Sep 2017
Your fingerprints mark every inch of me
Coating my words and reverie

Replaying your words like an old cassette
Your smile became my safety net

You awakened my soul in loving me
Bless you, darling sanctuary
Best friends for 7 years, dating for 2. Its hard to remember a time before loving you.
373 · Aug 2017
Thaw
Helen Raymond Aug 2017
Find me here right at home
By the leaves where I was grown
Find me calling out all alone
For a love I'd never known.
Find your courage through the fall
By your return the frost will thaw
Discover we were never alone at all
Two halves of one story. You can read them as two separate poems or as one, but they're stronger together.
373 · Oct 2016
Home
Helen Raymond Oct 2016
I wake every morning & take a breath of you,
You in your summer sharpness done up in red
-A mournful breath of you as I leave my bed.
I get up. I get on.
I get awake...
I carry on with the day.
As I bare my skin and wash away the night,
Before I cast the world in my wake, I take a breath of you..
From the shirt you left, wish it was filled with you and you could kiss away the quiet nights in my lonely room..
As I'm waking up again, a hundred miles away from you.
I get up. I get on. I.. get awake.
I carry on with the day.
Moved off to college, left my love behind. Distance is to love as wind is to fire.
353 · Jun 2018
Mortal
Helen Raymond Jun 2018
We behave like gods deigning to walk into the rain
We walk through these manicured fragments of nature on our way from one slab of concrete to the next
Reigning over our kingdom of manufactured marvels and artificial light
So tonight as I walked into the rain I turned my face up to the sky
I praised the cold, gentle touch of the universe upon my skin
And relished in my humble mortality
331 · Oct 2017
- sitting for the artist -
Helen Raymond Oct 2017
Our own histories, unwritten.
Hidden in stolen moments before the intermission.
Painted in our naked truth,
In the stunning glow of ember youth by an artist who has loved us at our worst, at our best, and through all the rest.
Only we know ourselves best, ego & self love in remembering ourselves through the tilted lense of our own perception.
331 · Mar 2018
wearing my skin
Helen Raymond Mar 2018
Before I knew I had a face, before my eyes were blue
I was an immigrant, a migrant in a world anew
A traveler, an explorer, taking note of my escapades
What hands had I?
What limbs?

There I was a creature of breath, dancing from brim to grin
With my novelty sovereignty, my command of you all
With a smile I conjured yours, with a scream I was pacified
What words had I?
What songs?

Alas you could not hear me or my wild thoughts
We could dance upon the ceiling, but you smiled dumb
So I roared and screamed like a heathen!
We were not the same.
I would  not  be tamed.

What was wearing my skin?
Before I knew I had a face, before my eyes were blue.
Before I was even a mild fancy of you.

When I was a beast of breath without identity
What was I before I was me?
What was wearing my skin?
just a weird thought I had in the shower

— The End —