#tennyson
Is it better to have loved and lost
than to have never loved at all?
Well—you tell me.
Every time I see that face,
I wish I could turn you back into a stranger—
so the sting in my chest could fade
back into ignorant bliss,
unbeknownst to the pain of love.
When I look at you I see
the boy I told,
“I could never be loved,”
who smiled and swore
he could see the love that exudes
from the cracks of my soul
,
What beautiful words
that once lit up my heart,
now make it scorch,
and burn.
But even through all that...
I still miss you.
And I miss you that little bit more
when our song plays on the radio,
and when I watch our favourite movie—
again and again.
I say,
I hate you.
So why do I still feel sad
it’s over?
So please tell me,
because I still don’t know
is it better to have loved and lost
than to have never loved at all?
May 12, 2025
May 12, 2025 at 7:48 AM UTC
'Tis better to have loved and lost
Than never to have loved at all;
But, like the Ghost at Pentecost,
True love stays when it comes to call.
Of all sad words of tongue or pen
The saddest are these: "It might have been!"
For _us_ the saddest words are _not:_
What might have been has been _a lot!_
Jun 12, 2024
Jun 12, 2024 at 4:21 PM UTC
Greater than all created things summed up
And multiplied by immortality,
The LORD attends to every buttercup
And blade of grass and bird and bumblebee.
The greatest knows the least; and every man
His every hair has been accounted for;
And all of him is fitted to God's plan
The world and all creation to restore.
Everything's His to give or take or loan,
And nothing lies beyond His lone control.
Everything's His, and every _thing_ is known
By Him who sees all parts and every whole.
He understands, both root and all, and all
In all, the flower in the crannied wall.
Jun 30, 2022
Jun 30, 2022 at 6:18 PM UTC
Three poets
rot down a river bed
their body decomposing
except their head
still composing poetry
and recite being dead
where poems still flow
I’ve heard them read
*one was caught
by the sun beam
flickering ripples of light*
*another fought
by a splashing bream
kicking up a fight*
*the third flowed down
the rapid stream
where water foams white*
I, one day went fishing
and caught myself a fish
down the river swimming
quoting Tennyson
Dickinson and Finch
I set it free
because poetry is freeing
Not every line in the end
is a hook
three dead poets can testify
down by the brook
May 3, 2022
May 3, 2022 at 10:59 PM UTC
"'I am half-sick of shadows,' said the Lady of Shalott."
-Lord Alfred Tennyson
…but half of her bends towards them,
these whispered tableaus, her spine tilting backward.
She carefully hordes them
like granules of opal. Her hands become lacquered
in half-dreams and dyes,
and her tapestry spins into colors so rich
even she is surprised
that her fingers have laced every cross, every stitch.
She is sick of half-shadows;
she wants the thick darkness to drown her whole essence.
These sparkles and dayglows
will stir her to madness in milky-white crescents,
and she will sink into nothing
without any name on the heirlooms she weaves;
She will fade into nothing,
and no shadows will weep on the day that she leaves.
Mar 16, 2020
Mar 16, 2020 at 12:09 PM UTC
Black moss and flower pots.
She cometh not, she cometh not.
Lonely and moated,
Rusted nails broken.
Dew with tears,
An hour before sunlight.
Cold winds wake,
A greyish mourn.
Clustered marish-mosses,
Silver green bark.
In a dreamy home.
Among wainscot,
Door hinges creak.
Like a mouse,
She shrieked-
She cometh not, she cometh not.
Mar 16, 2019
Mar 16, 2019 at 8:06 PM UTC
The ocean, consume me.
I hear your call to me like a mother cow to her calf,
A low drawling echo that grows with the hour.
Or the calf to its mother,
you call me home
to suckle on my breast where in it my heart beats.
Drum, drum.
Be still the drums.
Laying deep in dark abyss.
The drums, the drums.
I smell the salty air
It haunts my passage, staining my dress
with crusted, crystallised foam.
Will this heart ne'er be clean?
To be filthied by shame, now unworthy to him
by the sea and what it has done to me.
I wait for you.
You growing pains, you. You wisdom teeth pushing through.
The dust settles in my candle light.
The little white flecks fall together like prancing dandelion seeds
as fragile as children who have been wasted in your hands like white gold,
thrown away.
What they could have been had they fallen to my hands.
Rosey and blue-eyed with marjoram soft hair.
So I wait, breath now freezing with the in and out
steadying as the tide rises.
It calls me to consume me.
Dare I step to it? Submerse my feet within the waves.
One more hour, one more day - tick, tock, tick, tock.
But what if this hour he comes my way?
Descending from heaven, knocking at my gate.
The crash of the ocean against my hull.
Wait, wait, for my life and forever, I will wait.
The ocean, consume me.
Jan 31, 2019
Jan 31, 2019 at 11:53 AM UTC
"The old order changeth, yielding place to new” 1
On that cold night Sir Bedivere looked long
Into the dawnlight where three Queens gold-crowned 2
With Arthur passed at last into the West
And the sun rose, but not upon the King
Then in the silence of the raw new year
A masterless knight turned unto the hills
And after wanderings there took the cowl
And among new faces told the beads of worlds
For us – our old year too is someone’s new
With quiet grace and faith we pass from view
1 This line appears both in “The Coming of Arthur” and in “The Passing of Arthur” in Tennyson’s Idylls of the King, framing the arcing narrative.
2 The three Queens, too, appear in “The Coming of Arthur” and in “The Passing of Arthur.” They are perhaps symbols of faith, hope, and charity from 1 Corinthians.
Oct 26, 2018
Oct 26, 2018 at 2:41 PM UTC
"Cannons to the left of them, cannons to the right",
The boy exhales deeply,twirling dust motes in the light.
His pencil moves laboriously as his notes limp to the end,
And he shifts back from his studies and grimaces at a friend.
The girl gazing along the row admires his boyish face,
The frown lines from thinking have left a shallow trace,
So she whispers across to him that he needs to smile,
And he grins at her and stretches, adds annotations to the pile.
I observe him from the whiteboard,
Feel a rush of maternal pride. Young, strong and full of hope,
The world is open wide.
Then emotion clutches at my throat, sins forefathers have done,
A hundred years ago he'd have been,
In the trenches with my son.
Mar 26, 2018
Mar 26, 2018 at 6:50 AM UTC
He sat in his chair with his back to the fire,
He deliberately sought to make the air chill,
His hand on the paper lover's pink with desire,
But his method of savagery not lust but the quill.
His starchy stiff collar was tightly ill-fitting,
His shoes chafed his ankles but he did not care,
His breathing was hot in the cool of the evening,
His fingers streaked ink through his long wavy hair.
He scowled at the pen and he frowned at the paper,
The writer accursed his impotent art,
He wrote with great ease those magnificent ballads,
But useless he felt at affairs of the heart.
He rose and he cast all the sheets of fine paper,
Into the fire and he winced at the heat,
He lit up his pipe, eyes smarting at the vapour,
And bitterly cursed this impossible feat.
For who but a fool smitten for a princess,
An admirer for now but soon to be queen,
When he just a poet and a poor one nonetheless,
And dandy Prince Albert just arrived on the scene.
He slouched at his desk and once more made a scribble,
Decided to write the biggest lie he could call,
For who but a fool would believe in such drivel,
“Better to have loved and lost than not loved at all.”
Oct 12, 2017
Oct 12, 2017 at 3:45 PM UTC
I wish I lived in Wayne’s World,
where Wayne and Garth are real.
I wish I had Cassandra’s curls,
and her *** appeal.
I wish I dated Jason Dean,
and coloured him impressed.
I wish I had the killer gene,
but never ever confess.
I wish I went to Ashfield Hospital,
and looked a little on edge.
Explored shutter island in the spittle,
and made the Marshall pledge.
I wish I lived with Yeats,
or in the lonely moated grange,
I wish I danced on table tops,
my body for money, fair exchange.
I wish reality didn’t exist,
or better yet just me,
all those opportunities would be missed,
and at peace I’d finally be.
May 9, 2017
May 9, 2017 at 3:58 PM UTC
Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?
No—
That bard Will has beaten me to it.
Half a league, half a league—
But the Light Brigade gives its thanks
to my Lord Alfred.
I know why the caged bird sings!
Oh wait—
That’s what Maya knows.
Two roads diverged in a yellow wood.
I’ll take the road less traveled,
but only cause that’s what Robert said.
What’s left for me to write?
Thoughts swirl in my head,
and out through my pen.
Art has taken written form.
I know what I’ll write.
The world will love it.
I will love it.
And I’ll keep writing,
I’ll keep writing till the sidewalk ends—
Really, Shel?
You had to take that one too?
But no matter…
I’ll show you,
someday.
Oct 11, 2015
Oct 11, 2015 at 6:34 PM UTC
“Half sick of shadows,” cried the Lady of Shalott,
half sick of darkness growing, doorways
twisting, with faces grotesque on yellow wallpaper
and speaking woe in whispers passed
dream-thin through limbs and veins and minds
because a window is a stop sign until
opened, and locks are stitches sewing chapped lips
tense as the web woven, intricate designs
layered vibrant color on a lonely loom in a tower
otherwise lightless, heavy with pressure,
bearing down on the Lady of Shalott and her art--
made up in the image of Camelot.
Aug 27, 2015
Aug 27, 2015 at 9:25 PM UTC
Up on Church Hill
I think of my love
& Tennyson, long gone
Up on Church Hill
Up on Church Hill
I look out at Steep Holm
and then at Clevedon pier
Up on Church hill
Up on Church Hill
the last swallows are soaring,
last summer days calling
Up on Church Hill
Up on Church Hill
by the poets’ walk
I sit as it gets dark
Up on Church Hill
Up on Church Hill
I shall leave my heart
& then depart
Old Church Hill
Aug 23, 2015
Aug 23, 2015 at 10:59 AM UTC
Break break break
On the sand that still waits, O sea.
And I wish that time could erode
the past that unravels me.
O well for the barefoot boy that
passes the length of the shore.
O well for the fisher without a net
who forgot what the struggle was for.
And the weathered ship moves on
to the place where its cargo must rest.
But, O that I could disembark
or unload this unconquerable mess.
Break Break Break
At thy faithful cliffs, O sea.
But I fear that a day I can never repeat
will forever come back to me.
Jan 19, 2015
Jan 19, 2015 at 9:07 AM UTC
To You;
To you; possessed of such a tempting grace,
moving so sublimely through star-struck space;
Can I ask of you this quiet question-
Why do those sad tears frame that flawless face?
What’s the reason for that careless lesson
that laces your well-controlled complexion?
Have you, through some finally-found fancy
been shown the harsh meaning of rejection?
Maybe, you dreamt of a light romancing
Under the moons bright, fatal faerie-fire
Its sight telling tales of your desire,
Your sad love ethereal- Transient?
No? I didn’t think that the murky mire
That we call “Love” would have you trapped today-
To make such stories of these fallen fae,
As an excuse to perform worn word-play---
Or! Maybe, it’s some other telling tale
That put you into this unjust travail-
And left you with those mislaid streaks
Across a face falling pallid and pale.
Had your plans reached the goal- that high peak,
Then plunged; wasted - leaving you worn and weak
With no way out, no truly clear choices,
No way to gain the happiness you seek?
Did you want a house with joyful voices,
A backyard echoing lilting laughter?
Has some callous event foreclosed that chapter
Filling your soul with some private poison?
No, I don’t think that’s what I‘m after.
You’re not being held by some coarse constraint-
Nor your body filled with some tragic taint
that would leave you so faltering and faint.
Do you long for adventuresome release,
Your daily work having no such surcease-
And staring entranced-so at the stratus,
You dream of those mighty in name and deed?
Those stories, the ones that you always read-
Do they make you long for that single pleasure,
Proof of beauty and things unseen, proof of need-
Proof of some fantasy beyond measure?
The sacrosanct is in those clouds so rare.
Don’t lose faith in finding the forever,
And magic is there, suspended in air
As long as you don’t consider never.
Maybe, I could help in your endeavor,
Together, a meeting of star-bright minds-
Rhyme after rhyme, perhaps we will find
A path that will meld fantasy and time.
So Lady, giving thought where it’s due then,
I can only tell you this plight of Men
And be it my damning declaration,
I will never let you be hurt again!
You will never want for stone or station,
Nor need to seek some other relation.
If the dreary dusk deigned to mar your mood,
To make a Sun, I’d master creation!
To your beauty I would always allude,
(The runic tint to those even-ether eyes)
Only to the lay does the truth not soothe –
No comparison would bespeak of lies;
So Lady, let my love for you give rise,
To the dawning of our sublunary Sun!
For you; My suitors pledge that come what come,
On my honor, my life; Thy will be done!
May 4, 2014
May 4, 2014 at 12:49 AM UTC