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you took the swan road
your kimono hangs quiet
both of us empty
Zywa Feb 23
The ground beneath her

feet has taken her, the earth --


whose praises I sang.
Novel "The Ground Beneath Her Feet" (1999, Salman Rushdie) - Orpheus

Song "The Ground Beneath Her Feet" (2000, lyrics Salman Rushdie, music U2, album "All That You Can't Leave Behind")

Collection "Low gear [2]"
Nishu Mathur Feb 21
Don't wrap me in a hearse of gloom
When it's time for me to go 

Don't drape yourself in black or white 
But in the colours of a rainbow

Shed no tears of death in life 
Let your heart feel no  pain 

For I will be in a sky of blue
With sunshine in a frame 

Spread my ashes far in a river 
I'll flow and meet the sea 

On waves of moon bathed silver 
Sailing I shall be 

Leave me too with flowers 
With marigolds I will stay

A whim of floral frenzy 
Will touch the sombre  grey 

I, a part of earth and water 
Why mope and sigh and grieve  

Burned by flames of pure fire 
I'll float like a feather on a leaf 

Though with a cry we arrive 
There's laughter when we're born 

Let the smiles linger on
Why make it oh, forlorn 

No tears of death in life 
No crease, no sorrow's crinkle

Think of me with happiness 
And know me in a twinkle 

Don't wrap me in a hearse of gloom 
When it's time for me to go 

Don't drape me in black or white 
But in the colours of a rainbow
Old poem
Zywa Jan 31
It has made me sad

that I cannot remember --


my dream about her.
Novel "Buiten is het maandag" ("Outside, it's Monday", 2003, J. Bernlef), §  7-2

Collection "Moist glow"
Melody Mann Dec 2023
looking up looks good on you,

you weren’t of this world,

your heart was beyond the realms of reason,

a ray of sunshine returns to its source today,

continuing to shower her light on life as she did for 84 years.

Looking up looks good on you,

you make mortality beautiful with such celestial hues,

bringing peace to the plants you tended,

solace to the animals you fed,

and warmth to the hearts you touched.

looking up looks good on you.

Watching her as the last breath had already left her grasp… to see a light cease… was a conflicted reality. She was there — but gone. Finally freed from the cycle of samsara. Touching her face, seeing the color wash away the pains of yesterday, and feeling her body chill to a gruesome cold… it was in that moment I realized she won’t complain i’m cold anymore. She will warm and light up the sky with her smiles now.

Mortality is but a fickle yet omnipresent reminder to cherish each moment as it scatters past our horizons. It is but a gentle reminder to hold onto hugs a minute longer, savor a conversation a sentence deeper, and sit in the sunshine till dusk greets our departures. It is in the everyday we remain rooted in the reality of what lies hidden in the inevitable. Thus, in the moments mortality beacons at our doorstep — sending the gruesome chill of conclusion up your spine — cherish the warmth that radiates within your waking breath. It is in the inhale and exhale we seldom forget the gift of today that is bestowed on our conscious.

The ability to create, to debate, to deliberate on the topics that itch our fascination lies within mere moments of the now. She taught us to immerse ourselves in the ravishing splendor that life is because the inevitable looms above us all. Such a kindred spirit was she, a woman with a heart of gold. A soul that radiated in a light blind to the common eye. She held onto a glow that constellations graced — a burning light in of herself.

looking up looks good on you.
journal musings from the morning after your departure; an ode to my grandmother.
Anthony Moore Nov 2023
A dagger,
tip tentatively dipped in blood

a meager droplet at most


hardly heavy handed



a playful pin *****




the implication is clear





a duel to the death.
Rosie Oct 2023
You linger like a ghost
between the lyrics I can't stop listening to,
Like that black dress I refuse to get rid of
covered in cobwebs and dust from the darkest part of my heart.

I'm so haunted by the mistakes I've made
these memories bury me in a graveyard of pain,
It'd be healthier, I know, if I'd just let this all go
but I'll just have to reap what I've sowed.

And though my hands shake and my forearms ache
the pain helps me understand the worth in it

It has to be worth it.

Or what's the point of surviving this ****?
They never truly leave you.
Mugerwa Muzamil Feb 2018
Moon dangles for ages
Stare as men rage
The sun sunning
Unreachable gold shinning

Our hearts shaking with blood
To pump life in our deeds
Wither not till you're mine
Shun the paths of villain

A love clot in my eyes
So sad your byes
Death stealth as a wave of sleep
Abandoned souls do weep

Dearth of pulse we delve
In this earth we know but leave
The sighing of the last breath
So you try to stop the wrath

Wail for certainty sons
Write your names on the sun
As you swear to change ways
For which you stirred in days.
Dedicated to those who lost a loved one through violence.
Bruce Adams Jul 2019
She collected lolly sticks,
        The ones with jokes on them:
        Why did the chicken cross the road?-type stuff,
Which she stained brown and used as floorboards
in her magnum opus.

The Tudor house was the best one.
It had servants’ quarters
And a kitchen with little hessian potato sacks made
of something or other she salvaged from
somewhere or other;
And the floorboards looked so real:
        painted lolly sticks
        but almost evoking the smell of varnish,
        layers of polish on a floor trodden by centuries
        in perfect miniature;
                                                Almost­.

This was the last of the three
                                                or four
                                                        doll­s’ houses she built;
The devil’s work for her idle widow’s hands.
She built this one while you were entering your final
        stalemate
that doomed dance that sits so permanently
on your conscience
like a sack of compost
full of water.
        (I choose this simile only because
        I found this in my garden yesterday,
        and it was ******* heavy.)
On paper it was simple:
        You gave her your house,
        She gave you hers.

And so her house shrunk around her and
became a dolls’ house of your own making,
Irrationally
                        she saw your god-hands reaching in
to manipulate and
extort her.

She was wrong, of course.

You were making good on your promise.
You would come through for her in her frailty.
You did – but

it was a promise you made more to yourself than her,
And she let her illogical mind
        never analytical to begin with
        now razed and blinded by grief and loneliness
                        (there was nothing to work with)
poison your good deed,
you were both dolls now.

Eight years later she died lovelessly.

She retreated into her sitting room
        the only part of the house that stayed the same
        after you moved in –
                the walls closed in to contain it
                constrict it
a hospital bed and vinyl chair with commode,
and the brown laminate floor
        just like
        her lolly sticks.

You administered painkillers
Admitted the nurses
Negotiated with your estranged brother.

but her paranoia rotted everything
and your hands cared with compassion but not love.

Gone, now,
the dolls’ houses remain.
An inheritance of clutter
in a house you bought.

You answer the phone
                                        breathlessly
      ­                                  aggressively.
You have been heaving the big one up the stairs
        that sack of compost
        that heavy conscience of yours.

You will be heaving those ******* dolls’ houses around
until I have to buy your house and care for you.
But I am telling you now:
        I am putting them in a skip
        the moment I have the chance.

They are not imbued with the joy they gave her
any more than
                        by keeping them safe from landfill
                        you can imbue them with the love you withheld.

They are painted lolly sticks and sewn hessian.
They don’t contain any more of her
than the bits of paper she kept
        passwords and bank balances
        dates and instructions for the Sky box
There is nothing left of her to protect now.

Open up the hinged false front,
                tip out the miniatures
                let the little figures be free,
                                be landfill
                                (isn’t that what dying is anyway?)
all the tangible things she touched and loved
are not avatars for her touch and her love.

The past is not present through the preservation of objects.
The past is not erased by the advancement of time
                nor can it be undone by corrective action.

Now she is on the other side of the road,
        (why did the chicken
        behave.)
She has no further use for the things she left behind.
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