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nosipho Jun 2010
In the stillness of the night beyond one can see,
When the expanse holds the stars for my mid-summer’s dreams,
Where only the presence of the birds of the night calms my spirit
And in such stillness fear preys my soul.

I could only find my wellspring of life quenched to aridness,
And only as a mirage such life exists in my being.
I find my thoughts confined in my deeds of shame or rather
Those that the enemy claims, and so
I find my cries being droplets that befriend my cheeks,
To cease and move on is as building a home as a house of sticks.
For in this journey of mine, the storms rage and roar and in such stillness
I only could hear them call-in thy gentle whispers they are as frequent
As the leaves that drop from a tree in fall.

In the stillness of the night- whom do I call?, when all lifelines
Seem to be on hold.
“Hello it is me speaking-do you recognise, Please be patient, please Hold”.
My mind is in ruins; behind cages for life in the desert has no patience.
Only it persists to feed on my soul and lives on my very last breath-
It is to my wonder that life is not the breath and the heartbeat,
For they continue to live even when life is gone.

I look up to the hill for whence my help cometh from,
Such knowledge is as vast as the sky, when only sand dunes are before my eyes.
However, I look up to the hill from whence my help cometh from,
For in such a hill rest my soul and life that has been redeemed.
Rest the life that is orchestrated and moulded into a perfect ornament.
In such a hill, rest a life that is of harmony, that is of melody ,
that the angels stride before because of its music.

In the stillness of the night, when the stars are shining and the moon
Is half asleep. When the flow in rivers walks in silence and only the insects sing.
I now find my thoughts confided in you saviour,
Even in the valley, the arid deserts and the stormy seas.
I find that you are my source of being-even far beyond what I can see.
JP Goss May 2014
The sun, so lover-like, ran her fingers
Through the glistening leaves,
Movements soft, so full of intention
Their waxy dew, shuttered in response,
A low moan played in the breeze,
The light of sonority contrasts the electric
Disharmonies in the stormy afternoon.

Though I could feel a forest now eased
The river that runs through
Carried the blood of a plural heart
Beating with a passion akin in power, though enemy in fashion,
As its waves beat the banks
Eroding them into, eating up the aridness
As though slaking were its due, muddying the sky’s blue
From its surface, piercing the eyes from its reflection
Discouraging, this turbid froth, from worth of further inspection.

It rages and rages over rocks so violently
Picking at its slimming walls, making and claiming
Detritus along the path so that all the beauty a river is
Crashes, collides, and disfigures—a chaos growing
Bigger and bigger—the speed of its wrath
Bespeaks of its wake, blasting the earth (Watch it dissipate!)
Out of my sight it runs its due course south
Spitting the detritus that arrives
At the mouth.
Today I didn’t see those ever-so-close couple.
In the lonely forenoons
When you could hear the leaves fall
They were there
Like two devoted doves
Whispering in each other’s ears
The wonderful nonsense
Only lovers can indulge in.
Then they laughed like rustling leaves
Drowned in their own twitting
Without caring a fig for my presence.
But today was the day
When wrapped in my own aloofness
Walking alone in the rain
I sought those two.
Like the empty bench
I missed those tweeting two
Warming up a desolate space,
Scared they’re lost in life’s aridness.
Wes Jan 2011
I am not actually alive
Really it is true I am not actually alive

You think I am because I look and breathe like I am alive but deep down inside I am dead like a cut flower that lies in a vase.

Sitting the there bestowed upon you to gaze at in glory for the few days I have left with my beauty before it wilts and shows you my true colors.

The dry aridness of this place has withered up my body and soul.  

The cold has reached my heart, I am only with myself laughing out the true colors of my joy and mixing my sour tears of sorrow.

I am a man of defeat that has reached his end. separated from my foundation I am no longer alive.

I lay here surviving on what is left stowed away before my better half was cut from me.
Selena Irulan Nov 2013
I am not actually alive
Really it is true I am not actually alive

You think I am because I look and breathe like I am alive but deep down inside I am dead like a cut flower that lies in a vase.

Sitting the there bestowed upon you to gaze at in glory for the few days I have left with my beauty before it wilts and shows you my true colors.

The dry aridness of this place has withered up my body and soul.  

The cold has reached my heart, I am only with myself laughing out the true colors of my joy and mixing my sour tears of sorrow.

I am a woman of defeat that has reached his end. separated from my foundation I am no longer alive.

I lay here surviving on what is left stowed away before my better half was cut from me.
kairos Oct 2015
you and i,
we meet under the stars

our passion for each other
burning as passionately as the stars

we meet with chapped lips,
the cold air ****** out

we burn despite the cold
we musn't stay warm.

i don't know how long the fire will last
you've rekindled me but now i'm afraid

i don't know how this will end
will this be a tragedy also?

you watch me struggle in the distance,
i've told you everything about my past

but you'll end up leaving like everyone else
so this time i'm not going to hold on as tight

i don't know how this will end
maybe i will just leave

if i leave before you do
that wouldn't hurt for me,

right?

ohh,
my heart is like my chapped lips

cracked and deprived of precipitation

i think the aridness is going to drive me wild
my mind has become a desert

blowing in the emptiness,
the cold of the nights

ohh,
my heart is like my chapped lips

broken like ceramics

you have the chance to fix it,
but you have a bigger chance to break what's left over of me

i think i'll just cover up my insanity
with some chapstick on my lips

so no one sees my thoughts
that come from below and up above
Clem Dec 2016
We are hollow—
not vessels, not bottles under the tap--
Not empty-to-be-filled;
we’re empty-to-be-empty;
those shriveled dried egg pods

you find on the beach,
never meant to hold more
than the potential for a full-grown skate.
Souls were there once, but they died
quickly after we emerged from our casings.

You aren’t sad—
you’re hollow, and I do not infuse
your shell with the warmness I
feel for you, a shell topped off with empty,
any more than a dry cup

can love itself to fullness.  
My fat arms will never be able
to trade their misplaced heat with you;
How hilarious to picture empty eggshells
walking around town, watching tv,

driving to work or, most ridiculously, feeling,
or attempting to mesh their bodies together.
How laughable, you hollow thing, to think that
our egg-thin forms could warmly interlock.
Why, you’d crack in half—you’d splinter—

and not yolk, no no, nothing so concrete, but
merely the memory of yolk would spill
out, ooze out,

get under my dry crevices, and make
my aridness
a lie.
anilkumar parat Jun 2021
The morning was cloudy
when we set out on a long drive,
just the two of us,
our car laden with much luggage
and a pile of dreams.
That was long ago,
the 'once upon a time'
of a distant era
when they shook hands and hugged
in farewell,
when they didn't wear
cloth masks that hid their fears.

Overcast skies turned,
as we drove on,
into blazing blinding horizons
bereft of clouds
and brown barren landscapes
bereft of green.
and we thought
we'd turn brown too--
we, our car, our tires,
our breath, our thoughts--
merging into all that
aridness.

But soon we drove into
winding hairpins,
up and up and up,
then down and down
into verdant vistas
where, whizzing past us,
were fat cows with big udders
and their happy calves
and paddies
and green leaves with their trees
and pregnant streams
and men and women
dreaming all their dreams
and we thought
we'd soon arrive.

Did i fall asleep at the wheel
or am i still in a dream?
Or was some spell broken
at the stroke of high noon
when dreams turn into nightmares?
Or did we time travel
into now, into here,
into this strange new era
where fear reigns
and masks rule?
where the only remnant
of our past is Death
and the pain of separation?

Maybe we'll wake up
and resume driving
maybe this is only some
resetting of Time,
some reboot to crush
a bug in the software
that charts all our maps.
Maybe we'll see again
the simple things we knew
back then,
when we knew
how to smile,
how to hug,
to love.

Meanwhile,
we stare.
at a rotating circle
that keeps saying
loading...
loading...
loading ...
how we broke
how we broke
how we broke
we were

we were made
no

we were born
we were born made
made
for each other
like the flower
blooms
made
blooms
made
blooms, made, to bloom
from its seed
the formula of life was written
and you were my blooming
you opened my eyes to the light
to the aridness of the dark
but
I saw you
linger
even as you taught me hope
how you toed the shadows
thumbed the seams
of life
to give death
a peek

and I shuddered
for I know it then
how I loved you
that's why
I learned to love goodness
for I remembered how
every time
the darkness spat you out
the blood
was too much to clean
it had to be burned
prayed away
commanded
warred with
your blood or his, as well...

I learned to love the light
but in time
I would learn
I loved the light
so much
for saving you
that I
learned you into forgetfulness
into regret
I learned you into spite
as, despite how I loved the light
because of you
I learned, I only loved the light
in the end
the darkness ate all that made you
visible
to my heart
visible

but I still knew you
knew you
I still knew
you were all I ever wanted
dreamed of

even in loneliness
abandonment
even in the arms of a thousand lovers
fragrances beyond aroma
beyond memory
beyond touch, I felt them
and in the midst
of the tumult
the waves of their sating
the kaleidoscope of *******
a thousand sighs
a thousand hot, sopping shivers
a thousand moans, all whispering,
tenderly, my name,
all in your voice
your voice
in your voice they chorused
and I was abloom
with the hearing of you
in their thousand harmonies of one you,
I loved you, all over again
and realized how,
though I love the light
the darkness in it,
what brings contrast
meaning to all the joys of life
what brings purpose
is how you, in your darkness
are my darkness - that you do not complete me,
you empower my reason to live
and I see you, unliving,
never knowing love
as it is the curse of your being
when you are with me,
you forget the dark
you forget the pain of what awaits in it
and you cling to me,
like breath in the lungs
like blood in the veins
our clinging is,
       what IS

and you become the light
you become it, as I
become the dark
to give you breath
to give you force in your heart
that it may be again
that it
your heart
may beat again
I become the dark
I lose the light
that you may see me
beyond the glare,
catch a glimpse of me, again
for when my light is lost
I know you will abandon me
call me cursed,
unholy, for what need a man
a thousand holy ululations of wives enthralled
to hear his wife
scream in the dark
that she has lost herself to dark princes
who ever would be princes
for kings they never became
and never would become
patricide of the light, they earned their keep
as princes
fallen, with you they played,
in your womb, and your blood they drank
that's why,
a thousand was plenty enough, to drown out
the sense of loss of you, from the abandon of me
that you purchased your pleasures
I made love, made marriage, made home,
with a thousand women, as still, you were never lost to me

still you were what bloomed again
with every peace found
I kept a part for you
every new light I loved
I loved you greater
I love you still
I love you as the time of day loves itself
right in the moment
in the present
where, when we first met
first kissed
first made our way, across the altar
made love, in those presents
I am present
with you, your presence is with me
I know you
love you, in the midst of our present
our every present
you are the gift of living
in my heart, my soul
my spirit,
the morning birds are your laughter
your touch
your will to love me, despite all we've suffered
you are eternal
and I am nothing
if not faithful
to a woman who has never been
what anything is worth
giving up on
for
or to, when you are that weight, on the scale
I am the balance that never tips against you
I am that one flesh, weighted with you
for to abandon you, would be to not love myself
and so, that that I love myself, has me loving you,
I wait for when you, yourself, will love you, too,
for maybe, if I'm lucky, for the first time, you will
finally, begin to love me back, for the first time...

... maybe
It's strange what life can be when we forget how to persist in what's important, and remain faithful to all of those whom we love who are important, regardless of what they do or what they mean to us due to what they've done.

"Love conquers all." (A conclusive-paraphrasing of 1 Corinthians 13:4-7)
Vishal Gupta Nov 2017
To survive
the aridness of
separation, in future.

My pals, I'm irrigating
my present with
thy companionship.
Dr Peter Lim Dec 2019
The beginning hints of  the end
the way back to it the end its nexus finds
a day or a lifetime is purely subjective
in separate and myriad individual minds-

life is lived most in the in-between
where both the beauty and terror lies
the human drama is about personal survival
in the aridness of the self that's far from the kiss of paradise.
Dr Peter Lim Jul 2018
But realisation
  comes too late
  time then was wider
  than the open sky
  but the living
  knew not
  how to celebrate
  they walked
the same paths
to  the old silly songs
they danced and sang
in denial
they told themselves:
life is all good
and tomorrow
is  a distant metaphor
wine let's drink
and more, pour
the night is tender
and young- for sure
life will be on our side
there's no reason
our joys to hide
proclaim we should
happy times shall abide
those who stay away
are missing the ride
we are not born to despair--

winter days
they won't delay
summer smiles
have vanished away
that which was once
a green field is now
covered with mud and clay

in this aridness
singing birds won't stay
no happy sounds heard
of children at play

the hedges where once
roses their grandeur
did proudly display
had seen their last days of decay

youth never felt nor knew
beauty would some day
its wrinkles  display
innocence was short-lived
soon became experiences' prey

tears are in vain
they fail to assuage
the heart's pain

for dreams have perished
and no longer shines
the light of day.

— The End —