#ennui poems on Hello Poetry

Anisah Feb 2021

second-rate skies standing solitary
frozen in their own mediocracy
conforming to the wills of majority
because I'm bored out of my mind

fingers tracing the swirls on the ceiling
feels like gravity herself is competing
and all I'm doing is moving, listless
I guess I'm out of time

so maybe I'm a little distracted
like particles of light are refracted
perhaps just a little compacted
from the cages you call fine

living without joy is no policy
so they make it out of complacency
questioning the laws of morality
and answers by design

but I'm reading all the words that aren't written
and suddenly I'm willing to listen
the stardust we're made of will glissten
because freedom I will find.

- Anisah Mariah

#ennui #bordem #contemplation #complacency #supression #freedom

Travis Kroeker Jan 2021

The Daily Rind

Life tastes of old bread and long-opened chips.
A haggard breath hanging in the heat.
A swollen tongue lolling and sticking to the roof of your mouth
getting in the way of lazy words that seek to dash the doldrums.
Sometimes the gaze of life is piercing and sometimes (now)
it is donut holes iced over and left out overnight
and then left out overnight again.
The muted voice of an underwater murmurer muttering
into cotton-filled ears something half-hearted and uninteresting.
Life is umami for dessert after a gluttonous feast
and never have I so craved the bright citrus peal
of an orange.

#monotony #ennui

Aerien Nov 2020

tough love / resigned

I have resigned myself to this;
time stretching onwards a pale weak grey like that of a dove, promising peace
-- sod your peace, after all, heaven is a place where nothing ever happens --
-- heaven is Las Vegas -- everything and nothing all at once,
and around the corner of my hesitation
comes a voice as lifeless and mutilated as the rest of me:
"shut up and live."

I have walked unshoon through dust-choked wastelands
where they strung belief and imagination up
from the flagpoles, by their throats
and burned all our dreams to light up
a night grittier than a mouthful of gravel in a desert.
tracing my tracks and trails by the bloodprints
left by bare soles lacerated by shattered dreams underfoot.
"just shut up and live."

I have dreams, curiosities, wondering too deeply
what the last moment on Earth would be like,
what it would take to breathe through the end
and run face-first into oblivion or whatever's beyond it.
I sicken, and weaken, and wake up gagging on my own sweat
and the echoes of a voice made harsh by dysagapi:
"shut up and live".

#depression #discontent #living #mentalhealth #ennui #cynicism #exorcism

Raghu Pratap Oct 2020

Why does it take long for poetry?

Why does it take long to write a poem?
are months consumed into few fleeting feelings?
a poem is severed.
Of feelings that need to be let go of,
a delusion of a listen,
poem doesn’t listen,
what does it do?
An appearance for
no purpose,
but to be outside
is like braving the wind
to tell the wind you have braved it,
is this a poem?
None of us know yet.
Mounting feelings in an abandon,
a poem deceives,
and leaves them for dead,
for forgetfulness is eternal,
and the rest rot in several lifetimes,
but the burden?
Unburden, eventually?
The poem is ******,
Can we let go of it at all?
It persists.
We let them know we were there,
to come face to face with selves of us,
that we have avoided,
does the poem really look out for you?
And asks, pretending you know?
Do we need no end?
We are here to while away time
and tell them
we whiled the time away.

#solitude #loneliness #ennui #love #existentialism #remembrance #impermanence #meaninglessness #surrealism #postmodernism

Alfred Jacob Mohan Aug 2020

OUR LAST WALTZ TO FOLLIA

My heart writhes of pain, in the chilling fire
The fire for which she gathered, tinder
My quill and his ink froze, in the chilling fire
The fire which she gathered for my pyre.
My vellum sits bone-dry, in the chilling fire
Her fire, which burns my voices to cinder

Every fortnight, I see her glistening eyes
Reciting a monotonous sonnet of grey
That sonnet would never ever suffice
In sheathing me from her stagnant voice
As she smothers my final embers of life
As she “graces” me staleness from life’s fray

Her brushed hair, smooth in bronze.
Her florid face, baroque and supple.
Her lips, curled to a fluttering smile
Her gait, silent, steady and subtle
Her eyes, icy daggers skewering my heart
Her fingertips, flames freezing my breathe

I await in void as her hand rests on mine
Glaring the gloaming sky with heavy eyes
She drained my soul into a dead mine.
But... she birthed my precious Daphne
A shallow stream began from my dry eyes
“I miss our waltz, I always did, Ania.”

The ink on my quill began its flows
My heart repose, as my Ania mellows.
But sorrow, clutch me, she was my Ania
I shall see her very soon, in our meadows
We will have our Final Waltz, Ania
Yes, Ania; Our joyous waltz to Follia.

Identify the hidden virtue of the character, the character's identity. The answer might be in her name. Anyway, enjoy this lovely little creation of mine.

#love #emptiness #ennui #cold #flames #freezingfire #waltz #follia #ourlastwaltztofollia #alfred

Meysa Apr 2020

toska

I feel
less volatile
less awake.
I've been biting my lip
livid.
Wearing my own blood as lipstick,
tears as mascara.
Whilst solidarity whispers dark words into my ears.
Meanwhile,
the crowds
they tell tales
of how pretty
I look.

- please see the definition of toska, as no single word in the English dictionary has the ability to encompass the depth of the word

#toska #ennui #makeup #tales

Rick Warr Dec 2019

ritual time again ...

mauve and red on azure hue
jacarandas, flame trees and summer blue
that time again of heat
and inappropriate rituals

we grew here
and santa clause flew here!
who does he think he is?

roast dinners while paul kelly
asks who will make the gravy

bush fire victims needy of funding
while millions are spent on fireworks
as though there wasn’t enough smoke
or air pollution

families who avoid each other
through the year
gather with cheap coloured paper hats
and pull the ritual bonbon
and tell bad puns
to fill the gaps in conversation
and the cicadas sing out
the banality, the ennui

while cashed up families
tow caravans up and down the coast
to camping area suburbias
and celebrate their right
to overeat and drink beer
their god given entitlement
to be strayan
and talk about queue jumpers

that’s why i make my own ritual
based on the good things
of that time ...

respite from daily routine
time for quiet reflection
on the worth
of who you are
and who you’ve helped

the things about xmas in australia that i don’t like

#ritual #xmas #australia #ennui

Juhi Aug 2019

ennui:

something chasing after me, saltine
biscuits trailing my feet, salty tears soaking
them through their flaky meat, lotus dreams and
finite weeks, never running away from time, instead
waiting for it to catch up to our heels and
leave crumbs behind

time was sluggish and easy when I took it into my arms,
pliant when I bent it around my arms, hula hooping
lifting me to the tips of my feet, time knew me
better than the parents I’ll never meet,
dusty paths and soles of feet pattering on
sizzling concrete

time tells me that I should have been a runaway
ennui says I’m ***** souled and
listless and too far away
sugar in gas tanks and fingers plugged in ears kind of thing
chasing cheap thrills to kingdom come
until the moon is a gleam of white and
mixes and melds with the lines of
empty candle wicks

pop bottles popping off, night breezes, a kiss under palm trees
(ennui uplifted momentarily)
southern Arizona and cool synths, runaway dream
onomatopoeia making a home in our daydreams
furtive eyes seeking to find God, but
reality crashing down around me

#ennui #listlessness

Juhi Aug 2019

ennui times three

hello? relative listlessness says
greeting myself and my other selves
bringing them together with twine
and setting it alight

anyone? clouds of words siphoned underneath
my feet, too many eyes that I find myself, strangely,
unable to meet
alone and afloat, submerged in the sea
simultaneously sinking and floating in
groups of threes
matching my heartbeat
making my mouth sweet

there? the ocean bed I never expected to see
nothing in my line of sight, so perhaps,
there wasn't really anything ever to see
voice bounds off into the periphery
between the boundary of things I try to meet
but can never reach

#ennui #listlessness