"afternoons" poems
Leaning into the afternoons,
I cast my sad nets towards your oceanic eyes.
There, in the highest blaze my solitude lengthens and flames;
Its arms turning like a drowning man's.
I send out red signals across your absent eyes
That wave like the sea, or the beach by a lighthouse.
You keep only darkness my distant female;
>From your regard sometimes, the coast of dread emerges.
Leaning into the afternoons,
I fling my sad nets to that sea that is thrashed
By your oceanic eyes.
The birds of night peck at the first stars
That flash like my soul when I love you.
The night, gallops on its shadowy mare
Shedding blue tassels over the land.
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It terrifies me that we only get a limited amount of time with people. And that some people get more time than others who should have. I’m forever envious of those who’ve gotten more time with you than I have. That I may never get to be with you as long as they have. That our time is running out. And I miss you already. And I never want to say goodbye. At first it was slow, late nights in your car and afternoons in my bedroom. But now it feels like it’s happening all at once, like you’re doing a snow angel on my heart and it keeps getting bigger and bigger. Kissing on the sidewalk, holding hands in your coat pocket because I forgot to bring gloves. Wandering around museums and having hard conversations on your couch that make me love you even more; even when the air becomes glass, I can’t stop thinking about how lucky I feel to know you. That there’s no one else like you. My heart aches in your arms and aches when we’re apart. And I just want to be as close to you as possible, for as long as possible, because you are the most beautiful person I’ve ever met, and I love who I am when I’m with you.
Feb 20, 2015
Feb 20, 2015 at 1:55 PM UTC
I miss,
staying in my room,
on rainy afternoons,
making each other wet.
Aug 2, 2018
Aug 2, 2018 at 4:15 PM UTC
In the cold, dark
of January,
I remembered
you
the most.
As the chill
snapped bones
like branches,
as the afternoons
bathed themselves
in gray,
as the birds
and the backs
shook,
so did my lips
around your name.
I'm so happy
January is almost
over now.
Jan 11, 2019
Jan 11, 2019 at 8:10 AM UTC
I didn't even ask
To be your sun
Or your moon.
All I wanted
was to be
Your Sunday afternoons.
How many empty calendars spaces
I wasted,
Waiting for you.
Jun 10, 2017
Jun 10, 2017 at 4:10 AM UTC
Sitting on my bed
Gazing out at the view
Laptop in lap
I wonder
Being of mixed race
The truth of my origins
The blood coursing through my veins
Goffle they would say
But iv always believed a man's skin colour doesn't define who he is
Kwabulawayo
A place where he is being killed
Home of the Ndebele
My hometown
Built on the ruins of a Royal town
uMzilikazi ,Leander Starr Jameson ,Lobengula ,Cecil john rhodes
Men of courage
Black and white
Fought struggles
Years before my birth
Mater Dei Hospital
My journeys beginning
My grandfathers end.
Joy and pain
My hearts memories
From Primary
Whitestone
Green fields
Where i spent my childhood
Life's little joys
Clay-yaki
In the rain
Barefoot.
Speargrass
How it stung
Running through the grass
Taller than i was
Forts
Built with shoelaces
Marbles
Fights in the sand
Afternoons spent picking mullberyys
The girls dormitory
Offbounds.
Matrons
Got me the cain
Thursday Nights
Prefects Priveleges
Sports
Cross country
The houses of Tuli, Shangani, Shashe
lifelong friends made
A place frozen in memory
Home of the best years of my life
Tears streaming down
Every Sunday evening
The way back
A boarders sentiment
Lasting 5min till reunited with friends
Tuck shared
Eskimo Hut
The Green Mamba Or Pink Panther
The food hall
Quiet
Till dessert came
Mr Haworth
Everyday
"The queen would be disgusted if she saw u eating"
The tide of his time
Wandering around my childhood
I bumped unintentionally into
Maturity
Starless nights
First kisses
A little bit older i was
Aug 21, 2010
Aug 21, 2010 at 8:34 AM UTC
When my heart needed to be broken,
When others needed to be fixed.
When fear took over my thoughts, When love and lust had to be mixed.
When my memories started to fade,
When afternoons needed to be drowned in whiskey.
When waves of jealousy kissed the shore,
When continuing our adventure was way too risky.
You showed up just in time.
Feb 26, 2015
Feb 26, 2015 at 5:29 AM UTC
Let us go now into the forest.
Trees will pass by your face,
and I will stop and offer you to them,
but they cannot bend down.
The night watches over its creatures,
except for the pine trees that never change:
the old wounded springs that spring
blessed gum, eternal afternoons.
If they could, the trees would lift you
and carry you from valley to valley,
and you would pass from arm to arm,
a child running
from father to father.
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Never, never again?
Not on nights filled with quivering stars,
or during dawn's maiden brightness
or afternoons of sacrifice?
Or at the edge of a pale path
that encircles the farmlands,
or upon the rim of a trembling fountain,
whitened by a shimmering moon?
Or beneath the forest's
luxuriant, raveled tresses
where, calling his name,
I was overtaken by the night?
Not in the grotto that returns
the echo of my cry?
Oh no. To see him again --
it would not matter where --
in heaven's deadwater
or inside the boiling vortex,
under serene moons or in bloodless fright!
To be with him...
every springtime and winter,
united in one anguished knot
around his ****** neck!
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I do not ask for youth, nor for delay
in the rising of time's irreversible river
that takes the jewelled arc of the waterfall
in which I glimpse, minute by glinting minute,
all that I have and all I am always losing
as sunlight lights each drop fast, fast falling.
I do not dream that you, young again,
might come to me darkly in love's green darkness
where the dust of the bracken spices the air
moss, crushed, gives out an astringent sweetness
and water holds our reflections
motionless, as if for ever.
It is enough now to come into a room
and find the kindness we have for each other
— calling it love — in eyes that are shrewd
but trustful still, face chastened by years
of careful judgement; to sit in the afternoons
in mild conversation, without nostalgia.
But when you leave me, with your jauntiness
sinewed by resolution more than strength
— suddenly then I love you with a quick
intensity, remembering that water,
however luminous and grand, falls fast
and only once to the dark pool below.
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all of the words
you speak
today and tomorrow
are in vain
for you do not wish
to throw rocks at my window,
you know very well
i am already on my doorstep
waiting for you
you love me in songs played
on tuesday afternoons,
gaps in conversation where
three words are meant to fill it
and faded journal entries
dated when time was blind
you’ve written disguised goodbyes
beneath my eyes
and subliminally (explicitly)
whispered (shouted)
to move on, move on, move on
each moment i’ve tried to draw you nearer,
you do your best to push me further away
but even from a distance,
you are still holding on
let me go
let me go
let me go
so i may finally
let go
of
you
Jul 16, 2013
Jul 16, 2013 at 10:22 PM UTC
It's a still morning, quiet and cloudy
the kind of grey day I like best;
they'll be here soon, the little kids first,
creeping up to try and frighten me,
then the tall young men, the slim boy
with the marvellous smile, the dark girl
subtle and secret; and the others,
the parents, my children, my friends —
and I think: these truly are my weather
my grey mornings and my rain at night,
my sparkling afternoons and my birdcall at daylight;
they are my game of hide and seek, my song
that flies from a high window. They are
my dragonflies dancing on silver water.
Without them I cannot move forward, I am
a broken signpost, a train fetched up on
a small siding, a dry voice buzzing in the ears;
for they are also my blunders
and my forgiveness for blundering,
my road to the stars and my seagrass chair
in the sun. They fly where I cannot follow
and I — I am their branch, their tree.
My song is of the generations, it echoes
the old dialogue of the years; it is the tribal
chorus that no one may sing alone.
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anonymous winds
bend tall Timothy grasses,
wake rabbits napping
in the brush
they ripple the surface
of the stock tanks, tickle the haunches
of the beasts who wade there
to slurp the tepid waters
they birth red dust devils
for my eyes to follow, as they scud
through mesquite, and hopscotch over canyons
older than time
one day, soon, they will blow
over a shallow earth bed; I will not hear
their sibilant song, but my sleep will be deep,
unperturbed by their mystic music
Jul 1, 2016
Jul 1, 2016 at 9:37 PM UTC
Twilight silhouettes.
An evening cigarette, up on deck.
The sun sets - on the far side of the cliff -
While the boat
Dips and lift, dips and lifts.
Golden brown all around legs returning
A golden sun is burning out
Turning down the volume on the sky
Now the whiteness of the day seeps through
Our sand-entrenched shoes and is swallowed
By the vastness of the wine-dark sea.
Our salt-encrusted shoulders have rolled no boulders
To touch the sun at noon
Long afternoons through hazy pastel views
Till the day’s foaming sea breaks
Upon the hilly hooves of Spanish rocks.
Meanwhile, the spine of a sleeping giant
Lies in a hazy snooze,
Its camel back runs grey to black
Across the flat horizon. Pupils widen
As the semi circle of gold is swallowed whole
The velvet sea rolls gently for Poseidon.
Feb 20, 2011
Feb 20, 2011 at 5:33 PM UTC
Jackal in his church pants,
Bad kid with punk jams,
Cramming nonsense in his conscience,
Skateboarding prophets,
Dividing light into chambers,
Bag of **** for his neighbors,
Turned into a living demon bleeding thru the paper,
Applesauce in the inside,
A coconut shell for the front,
Pineapple knives for the slaughtering,
Right into a strawberry's gut,
He was not a normal scorned, occulting youth,
But the lore of a regretful teen plaguing the afternoons,
Till that strawberry gut cracked his coconut noggin,
And shall he rest in bygones and Hanna-Babara monsters,
Mar 29, 2015
Mar 29, 2015 at 8:41 PM UTC
Hazy half-light mornings interspersed with giddy sleep
Silent showers and quick grooming
Breakfast maybe, chores and work and walking in my slippers.
Afternoons tense with labor and stress
Broken up by slow-falling meditative mind rain
And usually Fall Out Boy in my ears.
Quickdark evenings.
No light.
Demons aren't occupied with being scared of being burned.
Staying up until god only knows and then some
Laying in the dark and feeling panic
Ice bones, fire veins, a noose around my throat
And not even in a **** way.
Shaking, teeth chatter, eyes roll, spin, turn, off the bed.
Sit on the floor. Lay down. Room's spinning.
Stumble to the dresser.
Grab the cure.
Illegal cure, no one knows anymore.
Dulled by use, old when taken, press harder.
Crimson bubbles, drips, rolls and stains.
Demons lap it up, whisper thanks, leave.
Sun comes up, lay in the half light.
Fall asleep giddy with pain.
Jun 21, 2014
Jun 21, 2014 at 5:29 AM UTC
Existential cruelty of a long abandoned Friday
Remembered once, twice
then forgotten by 8 pm.
The shots of Chiraq and memories of Hatshepsut linger effortlessly on his doorstep in the dark of sunlight,
but smiles in his lap disappear on the pavement beneath skyscrapers
before the dead of noon.
His mind travels to the curvy bodies of Monroe types.
A palm, a fist, a thumb
caress ******* and legs before he wakes
to find hair on his pillow and lips in his face
where only days before a yellow sky and bright green eyes waved and faded.
And all because interracial pride and prejudice leaked toils and tensions in the face of Basquiat
Where once African princes and white German queens
spent Tuesday afternoons charming their ways into each others' beds
and sighing at the disgust stamped on the faces of strangers.
Jul 12, 2013
Jul 12, 2013 at 11:43 PM UTC
well, first Mae West died
and then George Raft,
and Eddie G. Robinson's
been gone
a long time,
and Bogart and Gable
and Grable,
and Laurel and
Hardy
and the Marx Brothers,
all those Saturday
afternoons
at the movies
as a boy
are gone now
and I look
around this room
and it looks back at me
and then out through
the window.
time hangs helpless
from the doorknob
as a gold
paperweight
of an owl
looks up at me
(an old man now)
who must sit and endure
these many empty
Saturday
afternoons.
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Do you remember Saturday mornings?
Passing notes across the table,
Exchanging juvenile expressions,
Laughing and learning
About who we really were.
It was during this time with you
I discovered myself.
Now I'm lost again, I need your help.
I have forgotten Saturday mornings,
And Friday afternoons,
And every late night.
Do you remember Saturday mornings?
Nov 15, 2014
Nov 15, 2014 at 2:59 PM UTC
I thought of killing myself because I am only a bricklayer
and you a woman who loves the man who runs a drug store.
I don't care like I used to; I lay bricks straighter than I
used to and I sing slower handling the trowel afternoons.
When the sun is in my eyes and the ladders are shaky and the
mortar boards go wrong, I think of you.
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When I think about the future with you I smile about the little things
I think about the late nights on the couch, eating leftover Chinese food and laughing until we cry
I think about the days at the pool, putting sunscreen on your back, and finding your sunglasses for you because you misplace everything
I think about the sunny afternoons, exhausted from the work day, and you're pouring me a drink and telling me you're so ******* proud of me
Aug 22, 2021
Aug 22, 2021 at 11:54 AM UTC
I still remember
the drawn out afternoons,
the minutes passing without a thing to do,
the clock just a metronome
keeping us in time.
I poked fun at you without reason;
jealousy leads one into themselves it seems.
Do you recall?
We were carnal beings...
I'd apologize for my egoistic banter,
but apologies are best left to the
eulogizer,
and this may be some sort of graveside whisper;
a long-winded to-do list of idle talk.
I'd call you
"Lesbia", "Rosalind",
"my diadem stashed away",
but twenty-two months wore words away
and it would seem like frantic blandishing.
Maybe in my own life
I may be able to demonstrate
what William Yeats had meant
by a body quarreling with it's soul,
but I think -- You're delusional! --
that I could be content.
I remember everything ---
I remember the yielded heart feels a subtle sting.
The yew chattered in the wind outside your
window and I felt rooted
as I told you
I was you and would always be.
But twenty-two months is a long time.
Sep 21, 2012
Sep 21, 2012 at 2:54 PM UTC
Peach salsa
Has that tangy taste
Between sweet and spicy
Burning tongues naughtily but nicely.
Peach salsa
Is the quiet librarian of dips
Unassuming until the bun comes undone
And blink of an eye she’s a firecracker in bed.
Peach salsa
Tastes a lot like you
And our Sunday afternoons
Experiments with papaya and pineapples
Tossed in with tomatoes and crying onions
The perfect recipe for a little change and a lot of disaster.
Sep 18, 2013
Sep 18, 2013 at 2:32 PM UTC
his lips would remind you of cold tuesday afternoons made for coffee and falling apart. he never really kissed with so much intimacy but he kissed me nonetheless, and maybe those were enough — those steady, demanding kisses, until all i'm left with are sighs and shoulders carved with his name. my fingers, lost in his hair, like withered roses catching fire. my lips, swollen and red, like sunsets begging for the night to come home. my heartbeats, carelessly, hastily stitched inside the hem of his sleeves.
but i stayed in his apartment, slept in his bed, and wore his clothes; like an incoherent word misplaced in a haystack, like a poem, half-naked on the kitchen sink, unraveled by the faintest brushes of skin. slow and claiming. fast and rough. he never really held me close enough, tight enough, but he held me nonetheless, and for a while — just for a while, i could pretend that he wasn't the embodiment of all the things i got to hold but could never get to keep.
he never really looked at me with love or with an intensity that burns, but he gazed nonetheless — almost lost and lust-hazed; calculating and restrained, like i was every poetry he wasn't supposed to write but had written anyway. and i gazed back, at my hands resting against steady movement of his chest, at his dim-morning eyes, at the slight part of his lips.
and his lips — i know they would remind you of cold tuesday afternoons, made for coffee and falling apart. and i know that it wasn't love.
it wasn't love,
but it's pretty close.
Nov 11, 2019
Nov 11, 2019 at 7:29 AM UTC