Ikigai Poet: Favorites

Oct 2019 Ikigai Poet

A. E. Housman

Loveliest of trees, the cherry now
Is hung with bloom along the bough,
And stands about the woodland ride
Wearing white for Eastertide.

Now, of my threescore years and ten,
Twenty will not come again,
And take from seventy springs a score,
It only leaves me fifty more.

And since to look at things in bloom
Fifty springs are little room,
About the woodlands I will go
To see the cherry hung with snow.

Oct 2019 Ikigai Poet

When We Were Young (I Never Thought)

Oct 2019 Ikigai Poet

Sarah Spang

When We Were Young (I Never Thought)

When we were young, all things were new
The rising sun, the morning dew.
Through you I saw the ocean first,
From stormy eyes I saw the surf.
I tasted summer in your lips
The flavor of the brackish mist
That lingered on with days and years
That veil of time was thin and sheer.
When we were young the summer months
Seemed everlasting, endless once.
Heated asphalt, mosquito'ed creeks
We dipped our toes to beat the heat.

When we were young, immortal then
I never thought there'd be an end...
I never thought I'd move away
I never dreamt you wouldn't stay...
I never thought when we were young
Your final song would go unsung,
I never thought there'd come a day
Your final words- you'd never say.

When we were young
When we
Were young
When
We
Were
Young
I never thought
You'd die.

#loss #innocence #denial

Oct 2019 Ikigai Poet

The House of Life: Introductory Sonnet

Oct 2019 Ikigai Poet

Dante Gabriel Rossetti

The House of Life: Introductory Sonnet

A Sonnet is a moment’s monument,—
Memorial from the Soul’s eternity
To one dead deathless hour. Look that it be,
Whether for lustral rite or dire portent,
Of its own arduous fulness reverent:
Carve it in ivory or in ebony,
As Day or Night may rule; and let Time see
Its flowering crest impearled and orient.

A Sonnet is a coin: its face reveals
The soul,—its converse, to what Power ’tis due:—
Whether for tribute to the august appeals
Of Life, or dower in Love’s high retinue,
It serve; or, ’mid the dark wharf’s cavernous breath,
In Charon’s palm it pay the toll to Death.

Oct 2019 Ikigai Poet

A Lady

Oct 2019 Ikigai Poet

Amy Lowell

A Lady

You are beautiful and faded
Like an old opera tune
Played upon a harpsichord;
Or like the sun-flooded silks
Of an eighteenth-century boudoir.
In your eyes
Smoulder the fallen roses of out-lived minutes,
And the perfume of your soul
Is vague and suffusing,
With the pungence of sealed spice-jars.
Your half-tones delight me,
And I grow mad with gazing
At your blent colours.

My vigour is a new-minted penny,
Which I cast at your feet.
Gather it up from the dust,
That its sparkle may amuse you.

Oct 2019 Ikigai Poet

13 honest stanzas about you

Oct 2019 Ikigai Poet

Thomas EG

13 honest stanzas about you

The poems that I used to scribble
Were fickle, were fictional
I had no raw words to write
Until I fell in love with you

Until I fell in love with your dimples
Including the ones on your back
Until I fell in love with your heart
And how you fell in love with me

Your brown eyes
Your hands poking out
Of my oversized hoody
And your hand in my hand

Your small *******
How they felt in my hands
And in my mouth
How I felt when your ******* went hard

The way you felt in my mouth
When we would kiss each other
And our lips would not fully meet
But our tongues would still play

I would bite your sensitive lip
And you'd give out to me
Until I would kiss it better again
And you would kiss my neck

And my chest
And my stomach
And all over my thighs
Oh, how we teased each other

We would share our mints
Through kisses
We'd sent ***** texts
***** pictures

We were only fifteen
We had a lot of ***
And now I'm seventeen
And you are my ex

And I don't miss you
But I wonder about you
I wonder about your dad
I wonder about your wrists

I wonder about your lungs
I wonder about your music
I wonder about whether
You wonder about me or not

I feel your stare burning me
More often than not
But my anxiety forbids me
From checking if it is true

Your laugh is ******* adorable
But your muttering makes me want to
Throw a table at your face
Leaving it as raw as this poem

Eight months together, twenty months apart.

#love #kiss #ex #eyes #anxiety #raw #*** #burning #tongues #*******

Oct 2019 Ikigai Poet

evanescent

Oct 2019 Ikigai Poet

Kelsey

evanescent

i always seem to be sitting
in the middle of intersections
like a traffic light that hasn't
hung itself yet, always
seem to be waiting in the
middle of the ghost town
of where our love was first
built. there's a hospital
down the road where the
waiting room chairs are
much more morbid than
the hospital beds and
every electric heart rate
line sitting on the screen
of the heart monitors flatten,
make long beeping sounds
like an alarm clock, like a
wake up call; they make
long beeps like the ringing
i hear inside of the phone
when i call the owner of
the voice mail i've seem to
have made a home out of.
they took every place
we kissed and turned it into
a church that closes on
Sundays and holds a choir
full of people that lost their
voice in their own war. i've
been in the line for the
confessional for about two
years now because every
time i go up to say how
badly i want you to feel it
back, i let the girl wearing
your t-shirt cut in front of
me. the sidewalks only
seem to crack when they
remember how it felt
when you walked on them,
when you gave the ground
its purpose. one of these
nights the traffic lights will
come to their senses,
drop into the intersection
and crumble right next to me
because it's not like they have
anything to stop or at least
slow down because this is
a ghost town, & nothing is coming back.

Sep 2019 Ikigai Poet

® Forbidden Feeling

Sep 2019 Ikigai Poet

Steph Dionisio

® Forbidden Feeling

Our eyes have met in an unexpected way.
He had caught my attention,
and I started to behold.
Things became a bit puzzling;
but I kept myself descrying.
As I perceived for so many days,
weeks, months...
something in me unfold.
Things were revealed;
then it showed complicated scenes.
As I closed my eyes,
he showed up in my dream.
My heart beat for him;
it felt good and seemed true.
A tiny part of me loved him in a land of
fantasy.
Then I woke up-
I am back in the reality,
where my feeling for him is like forbidden.
Now I couldn't wait for another night,
to love him in my dreams.

*-Steph Dionisio, May 28, 2015

#love #dream #heart #forbidden #feeling #complicated #originallywritten #originalcomposition

Sep 2019 Ikigai Poet

Sonnet On An Alpine Night

Sep 2019 Ikigai Poet

Dorothy Parker

Sonnet On An Alpine Night

My hand, a little raised, might press a star--
Where I may look, the frosted peaks are spun,
So shaped before Olympus was begun,
Spanned each to each, now, by a silver bar.
Thus to face Beauty have I traveled far,
But now, as if around my heart were run
Hard, lacing fingers, so I stand undone.
Of all my tears, the bitterest these are.

Who humbly followed Beauty all her ways,
Begging the brambles that her robe had passed,
Crying her name in corridors of stone,
That day shall know his weariedest of days--
When Beauty, still and suppliant at last,
Does not suffice him, once they are alone.

Sep 2019 Ikigai Poet

The typical 2 a.m. poem

Sep 2019 Ikigai Poet

neha

The typical 2 a.m. poem

The typical 2 a.m. poem is messy
because middle of the night thoughts have no structure

The typical 2 a.m. poem is deep
because darkness is perfect for existentialism

The typical 2 a.m. poem is raw
because it's hard to edit when you're tired

This 2 a.m. poem is just another 2 a.m. poem
desperately trying to be unique

#2am #thoughts #messy #existential

Sep 2019 Ikigai Poet

There is a Gentle Thought

Sep 2019 Ikigai Poet

Dante Alighieri

There is a Gentle Thought

There is a gentle thought that often springs
to life in me, because it speaks of you.
Its reasoning about love’s so sweet and true,
the heart is conquered, and accepts these things.
‘Who is this’ the mind enquires of the heart,
‘who comes here to ****** our intellect?
Is his power so great we must reject
every other intellectual art?
The heart replies ‘O, meditative mind
this is love’s messenger and newly sent
to bring me all Love’s words and desires.
His life, and all the strength that he can find,
from her sweet eyes are mercifully lent,
who feels compassion for our inner fires.’