"astronomer" poems
Your eyes shine intensely
So intense
The midday sun seems so dark
They possess
This intense luminescence
They tease me like a planet
That longs to be explored
I would telescope them
As an astronomer admires the night sky
Peering into them
Looking to traverse through your mind
Get lost within
Reveling in the beauty that is such
Stumble across the kind magnificence
That is your gentle soul
Jan 19, 2015
Jan 19, 2015 at 3:27 AM UTC
The eternal tango of the maestro manifests itself in nigh infinite ways.
With the flick of the artist's brush, the stroke of the novelist’s pen or the chicken scratch of the scholar’s nib, legacies are etched, history is written and the world is shaped.
The astronomer, the craftsman and the physician all have one thing in common: Mastery.
Such pinnacles of skill have decades of their lives consumed, nay devoured in the pursuit of perfection, of greatness. Like grains of sand slowly falling into a furnace are the seconds of our lives, trickling, melting into puddles. But as sand melts, it forms shapes; therein lies the potential. Moldable puddles, colourless, devoid of naught but a clear medium.
Sep 25, 2015
Sep 25, 2015 at 12:43 AM UTC
He lies flat on the rooftop
looking at the stars.
Useless worlds birthing and dying
he muses
the colossal magnificence of waste
if atrophy is the verdict
why create a complex web of universe
just because someone from an island
would stare at them
in awe of the beauty
seeking a key to the riddle
himself a grain of dust
lost in reading the firmament
and not grasping
of what significance
he is
within his shrinking space and time
in an expanding universe.
Mar 29, 2017
Mar 29, 2017 at 10:32 AM UTC
When I heard the learn’d astronomer,
When the proofs, the figures, were ranged in columns before me,
When I was shown the charts and diagrams, to add, divide, and measure them,
When I sitting heard the astronomer where he lectured with much applause in the lecture-room,
How soon unaccountable I became tired and sick,
Till rising and gliding out I wander’d off by myself,
In the mystical moist night-air, and from time to time,
Look’d up in perfect silence at the stars.
3.8k
“Though my soul may set in darkness,
it will rise in perfect light.
I have loved the stars too fondly
to be fearful of the night.”
I don the belt of old Orion
and sit atop the great winged Pegasus.
I steal riches from cunning Copernicus
and sing ballads to the lonely new moon.
Look there - my bride! Oh fair Andromeda;
She bears our band fashioned from Saturn’s rings.
Her dress woven from strands of silk stardust,
we read our vows to the watching planets
and kiss under the sun’s jealous blaze.
Starstruck, we ride, comets trailing in our wake.
Dec 3, 2013
Dec 3, 2013 at 2:10 PM UTC
Dear Poet Friends, I hope you like this slice of Early History presented
below in simple verse. Please do read the short notes at the end, before giving your comments. Thanks, - Raj
ARCHIMEDES : THE PIONEERING
STREAKER OF HISTORY!
There lived in the Third Century BC, in the Sicilian
town of Syracuse, then a Greek colony,
A Greek mathematician named Archimedes.
He was tasked by King Hiero of his town,
To find the purity of gold in his crown;
Suspicious of the goldsmith having mixed
some material of inferior kind,
Which the King wanted Archimedes to find!
So, Archimedes lost in thought one day,
Entered the public bath on his way!
And as his body began to get submerged,
He happened to notice perchance,
Water spilling over from the tub!
The answer suddenly flashed across his
mind,
And he jumped up leaving everything
behind,
Wearing only his birthday suit,
Running through the street of Syracuse,
Exclaiming - “Eureka! Eureka!”
(I have found it! I have found it!)
Perhaps to become the first known streaker
of History!
While establishing the Principles of Buoyancy!
@ (see notes)
Archimedes, son of the astronomer Pheidias,
studied at the great Alexandrian city,
Remembered even to this day for his many
pioneering works, -
In Hydrostatics, Mechanics, and Geometry.
With his ingenious mechanical discoveries,
He held the great Roman galleys of Marcellus
at bay,
For more than three years, as Plutarch the
Roman Historian says! + (see notes)
Later one day, while lost in deep thought,
When some intricate problem of geometry
he was trying to resolve,
Refused to hear Marcellus' bidding,
To be slain by the Roman soldiers who had
come to fetch him!
O those Romans, with lesser brains and more
brawn!
And some hundred and thirty years after
his death in 75 BC,
Cicero, then the Roman Governor of Sicily,
Found the tomb of great Archimedes, near the
Agrigentine Gate, over grown with bushes and
thorns;
Where he lay buried in the scented dust of History!
- Raj Nandy, New Delhi.
NOTES:
@ Principle of Buoyancy = any floating object displaces its own
weight of fluid. So weight displaced by a crown of pure gold and
the one already made could be compared to find the truth!
+ Archimedes designed large stone throwers, & crossbows, and
also grappling hooks using large cranes to grab Roman ships and
capsize them!
Jun 25, 2016
Jun 25, 2016 at 9:04 AM UTC
all i think about
is art
and your fingers on my thighs
all i think about
is your fingers
and your art on my thighs
play connect the dots with my freckles
pull my hair with your teeth
whisper into my neck with
false promises of glory and
paradise in your bedroom
i cant think of anything but
your art
and your fingers
its just pencil on paper
its just your fingers on skin
but its trapped in my brain
like a loop
im on a carousel of daydreams
pull me out and lift me up
and rest me on your chest
so i can play
connect the dots with your freckles
ill find the constellations that
nature painted on your skin
youre my starry starry night
let me pretend to be an astronomer
ill play
connect the dots
with your
freckles
Dec 24, 2013
Dec 24, 2013 at 6:28 AM UTC
I want to study the universe,
I love it so much that it makes me happy when I think of it.
I get curious what's happening everyday.
Yes, I want to study the universe,
But I don't want to be an astronomer,
Because the universe that I want to study is Youniverse.
Sep 10, 2019
Sep 10, 2019 at 7:25 PM UTC
When you shed that chrysalis of clothing
Releasing the dragonfly wings of your longing
Wholly among the sanctity of your skystrung ribs
Your hips gyrating on the revolutions of the moon
The astronomer in my belly burns to look up to the sky
And see you spreading yourself among the singing night
My fingers, matches skywriting
The contours of your body
With the lingerings of fire
Nails soft scratching the runes of desire
Among the hidden temples of your skin
A secret language you twistup and rumble
In like the sea swallowing a storm
Inviting me to wade in your waters
Till the lighting comes
To reunite you with the heavens
Let me lick a long crusade
From summit of spine down
The long whirling dervish of your legs
Relight wildfires only to douse them in all
The tsunami of your wet
And wash you in the convergence of thunder
As it rumbles among the fault lines of your bones
Till we rattle the pearly gates loose
And quake the caverns of hell
Grind yourself upon me into
Something so much
Sweeter then stardust
Break your body open
Into a firefly and ignite
Upon the rough embers of my wings
This friction will elicit a diction
Spoken only in vowels and the
And in the crescent arch of your spine
As we sling ourselves skyward as fireworks
To rupture open the night
Suffocate me on the whirlwind mane of your hair
There is a lioness behind those lips waiting to devour me
A sacred hunting upon moonlight to take me in the dark
Don’t you see
All of this is yours
The rumble of the earth
The heavy breath of the heavens
The match
The candle
And the sweet rush of the burn
Dec 24, 2013
Dec 24, 2013 at 8:48 PM UTC
And as in Orion the old king-astronomer, —
says his Mistress
Rigel, or Betelguese, — the Earth's four quarters
showing four points of stars afar;
so, seem they
to terrestrial eyes, that broadly
sweep the upper
& lower
spheres as seen by the sun, by influence divine,
wheels through the Ecliptic; threading Cancer,
Leo, Pisces, and Aquarius; so,
by some mystic impulse am I moved,
to this fleet's progress through the groups
of swirling white-reefed Metazones
Aug 17, 2018
Aug 17, 2018 at 11:32 PM UTC
but what happens
if the moon
actually discovers
his real other half?
then
i'm not the half-moon
he's destined to be with.
i'm just an astronomer,
a selenophile,
lost in a love phase.
because i will still love you
even if you vanished
from my sight
and turned into
a new moon.
May 18, 2016
May 18, 2016 at 11:07 AM UTC
851
When the Astronomer stops seeking
For his Pleiad’s Face—
When the lone British Lady
Forsakes the Arctic Race
When to his Covenant Needle
The Sailor doubting turns—
It will be amply early
To ask what treason means.
2k
your freckles form constellations all over your body
and i'm the astronomer
connecting each dot with my lips
Feb 9, 2015
Feb 9, 2015 at 1:49 PM UTC
Thinking about how easy it is to forgive you
but to hard to forget you
forgetting all the memories
forget all the feelings of knowing I had something
something special with someone
who made me feel like I owned the world
someone who made comets burst when he touched my skin
who drew the galaxies across my body
and made star clusters fall from my lips
someone who looked at me like I was the universe
because he was an astronomer
there is now a black hole forming around my heart
because since I've let him go
I've been mistaking stars for crater rocks
Nov 19, 2013
Nov 19, 2013 at 11:22 PM UTC
A long time after bedtime
When it's very late
When even dogs dream
And there's deep sleep
Breathing through the house
When the doors are locked
And the curtains drawn
And the shops are dark
And the last train's gone
And there's no more traffic in the street
Because everyone's asleep
Then....
The window cleaner comes
To the main shop fronts
And polishes the glass
In the street-lit dark
And a big truck rumbles past
On it's way to the dump
Loaded with the last
Of the day's trash
On the twentieth floor
Of the office tower
There's a lighted window
And high up there
Another night cleaner's
Vacuuming the floor
Working nights on her own
While her children sleep at home
And down in the dome of the observatory
The astronomer who's waited all day for the dark
Is watching the good black sky at last
For stars and moons
And spikes of light
Through her telescope
In the middle of the night
While everybody sleeps
At the bakery
The bakers in their floury clothes
Mix dough in machines
For tomorrow's loaves of bread
And out by the gate
Rows of parked vans sit
For their drivers to come
And take newly baked
Bread to the shops
For the time when the
Bread eaters wake
Across the town at the hospital
Where the nurses watch in the dim-lit wards
Someone very old shuts their eyes
And dies
Breathes their very last breath
On their very last night
Yet not very far away on another floor
After months of waiting
A new baby's born
And the mother and father
Hold the baby and smile
And the baby looks up
And the world's just begun
But still, everybody sleeps
Now through the silent station
Past the empty shops
And the office towers
Past the sleeping streets
And the hospital
A train with no windows
Goes rattling by
And inside the train the sorters sift
Urgent letters and packets on the late night shift
So tomorrow's mail will arrive in time
At the towns and villages down the line
And the mother
With the wakeful child in her arms
Walking up and down
And up and down
And up and down
The room
Hears the train as it passes by
And the cats in the yard
And the night owl's flight
And hums hushabye hushabye
We should sleep now
You and I
It's late and time to close your eyes
It's the middle of the night.
Apr 27, 2020
Apr 27, 2020 at 9:27 PM UTC
Galileo Galilei--
Physicist, mathematician,
Astronomer, philosopher--
You angered the Roman Inquisition
And later the Pope and Jesuits as well.
Your scientific observation
That the earth moves around the sun
Was deemed a heretical revelation!
Spreading ideas "contrary to scripture"--
A risky endeavor and path to take--
Guaranteed life imprisonment
Or a gruesome burning at the stake.
Under pressure you recanted:
"The earth doesn't move around the sun."
They say that under your breath you muttered,
"And yet it moves." You lost, yet won.
Though you lived under house arrest
For years until the day you died,
Your scientific contributions
To benefit mankind cannot be denied.
It's sad when dogma and ignorance attempt
To force dissenters into compliance.
It's sadder yet that in this century
Too many people still ignore science.
Our thoughts aren't shaped from cookie cutters;
Beliefs don't all fit the same mold.
Praise to the thinkers who soar to great heights
And break authority's stranglehold.
Praise to those who dare to defy
Petrified positions or views--
Who challenge our mind-set and open our eyes
To truth and awareness, despite jeers and boos.
- by Bob B
Oct 15, 2016
Oct 15, 2016 at 8:55 AM UTC
Aborigines in the Australian outback
Among starving dingoes
A drug deal going on behind the bowling alley
And a butterfly knife waiting to be put into someones gut
Show some skin
Then maybe you will get somewhere at the customer service desk
Buyer beware, consumer keep cautious
Lay waste to that place and get your money back
They sold you an amphibian and told you it was a marsupial
The clerk wrote your inconvenience off as null
Off in Puerto Rico there's a cockfight
Pass the bug replant
Dos cervezas por favor
It's a steel cage grudge match
Brought to you by the courtesy of some man who's name I cannot pronounce
I got my invitation to this thing in a basket of tropical fruit
Someplace near substructure homes
I see a man in a bandanna looking at me
He turned out to be a free lance astronomer who has a thesis on starry quadrilaterals in the sky
He thought by betting on the bigger rooster he would hit pay dirt
But it was I who met pay day when I bet on the smaller, faster one
The astronomer had so much hate in his eyes I thought his corneas were going to burst
Be pulled out a blade and chased after me and all my winnings with the intent to puncture my torso and pillage my pockets
But had to go see a man about a horse named "Nunya"
Luckily I got away clean to tall the tale
Jun 27, 2014
Jun 27, 2014 at 2:44 PM UTC
My heart is a compass and you are the North.
I want to tell you that
you are the stars,
& I am a lonely astronomer
trapped in a city of lights.
Although I'm lost in the space
Of where we used to be,
I still find myself
Wandering through traces we left.
Grasping for your incandescence.
You are Polaris and I am caught in your glow.
Aug 27, 2014
Aug 27, 2014 at 12:53 PM UTC
~
(written in response to one by Beryl Dov)
constellationally speaking
a trophied man is one
whose weaknesses
he has overcome,
those the stars
foretold, ordained;
flaws and blemishes
the gods disdained,
who flies
with herculean
brawn and breadth;
who plies
the star ways
to their dizzying heights
and stairways
to their dismal depths.
he is…
like no other,
he is…
the lonesome
overcomer!
~
*post script.
for Beryl Dov, poet laureate, extraordinaire;
in response to his “The Lonely Astronomer”.
how anyone sees his as anything
negative is beyond me…
i see nothing but
an overcomer’s metaphor.
well done, friend!!
(and yes, by "man"
i do mean mankind)
The Lonely Astronomer:
http://hellopoetry.com/poem/1182761/the-lonely-astronomer/*
Sep 28, 2015
Sep 28, 2015 at 8:32 PM UTC
THE MUSIC OF THE STARS
Today the night sky shines bright
As though to mock the moon
That each eventide arises
Taking the mantle from the sun
All united in an assignment
To light the way for earthly treaders
The radiant stars endlessly move
Age to age whispering its great adventures
Tis music of the stars
Singing of the past,present and future
Singing of a long past left in traces of unwritten history
Singing of the presence experienced by the audience
Singing of a future concelead to mortal eyes
Tis the music of the stars
The inaudible lyrics of the stars
That need no lute nor lyre
To sooth the listeners' heart
The grace of the 'heavenly singers'
Like a spell enchants the audience
Its glory inspires the astronomer
Its music moves the poets hand
Tis the music of the stars
Singing to the 'deaf' mortal
Singing how like a porcelain his life is brittle
Singing how his life is brief at its best
Tis the music of the stars
The music of the stars :
Tis a melody that wanes
Like a script come to an end
Tis a rhythm that diminishes
The beats slowed by the dawning day
Tis a harmony that disaccords
Like a string broken from the harp
Tis the music of the stars
Singing comfort to the lonely seafarer
Singing hope to the night pilgrim
Singing praises to the night watcher
The 'night singers' leave the stage
The morning stars echoes the refrain
Tis the music of the stars.
May 8, 2017
May 8, 2017 at 2:24 AM UTC
Drinking *** to reminisce about fun times drinking *** and talking about dumb lines where a sociologist posed as an astronomer and took the moniker to heart claiming forbidden foolish nonsense of black holes and super novas and the Goddess that is Neptune. But he also forbade the odes of the old testament, he nicked the hold on my head and soul and feet until I couldn’t walk because I was too busy kicking my *** and licking my teeth with thoughts of dinner stolen from the solemn souls in the coral reefs – those that Neptune created and nurtured with nursing fingers and eyes that hid cruel truth from the water, the creatures that didn’t suffer the bite that God’s daughter took so long ago, but the flow of the current never ceases it never reaches the bleeding feet connecting repeatedly with the bottom that serves me to sit and think or **** about the gospel spilling from the hostel of the professor’s mouth. And I doubt the drought that lifted my spirits out of the well with the spout of Neptune’s ***** These days I’m on it with a sense of self-flagellation that only makes sense in the dimension of my imagination pondering the nation of the brotherhood of stars and heavenly bodies that weigh so heavy on Mars with the clingy core dragging desperate attention from divine inventions of intervention with rats and cradles. Neptune, who’s cradled in fables and left to such imaginations as those. Invention allows the suspension of disbelief and spite if one might rest in humility in face of such things as humanity where miracles are mistreated and under-recognized and falsely advertised as products of greedy eyes that lie in wait to shake the foundation and tune it to the stellar station or broadcast populated by the whispers of holy apparitions misconstrued as static.
Jacob is the heathen with reason to grasp his brother’s heel and deceive him. The treason to sit up to stand down to kiss the hem of the gown of whatever clown performs a pretty act while he’s in town. The frowns expound and expand for the man whose body spans the sand of the holy land.
Sep 5, 2012
Sep 5, 2012 at 11:34 PM UTC
Your pupils are black holes
and they tug and they tug at me
like how a tornado tugs at the gutter on the side of a tin roof house
in the middle of Oklahoma.
But instead of a gutter and rain
it's blood funneled through my veins
and instead of blood,
it's liquid love.
You're broken
and I like that and how I can just
wedge myself into the valleys of your cracked up porcelain skin
because I am, I am liquid love
and its a simple fact that liquids spread to fill the space in which they are.
Even a river.
But here's a little disclaimer: I never cared much about science.
I was only really interested in our chemistry.
And here is a little exclamation: I don't know anything!
Except that your bruises are actually interstellar clouds
and that spot right under your fingernail is the most comfortable bed of all.
I like how you're covered in speckles like a knock-off Jackson *******
But instead of freckles they are constellations
and I am a quasi-astronomer artist who believes more in zodiac compatibility
than Attiyah's Sun theory.
I think this poem is unravelling
like that sweater I left in your house once
and I think and I think and I think
these last few stanzas are the loose string.
But that's okay because we're falling apart anyway
like the pages out of my old sketchbook from ninth grade.
But that doesn't stop me from pretending that
you're a Gothic cathedral and I'm a hopeless romantic
in the middle of an architectural revival.
And that doesn't stop you from getting drunk
getting drunk off that fermenting liquid love.
And that doesn't stop our hair from growing or
the universe from expanding or
people from living in the core of tornado alley or
you from lining my heart, my heart with the pages
you ripped right out of my diary.
Jun 8, 2011
Jun 8, 2011 at 6:16 PM UTC
This is not a love poem.
I spotted you walking up the rugged, asphalt laden path,
Before the streetlamps could steal their first glimpse.
I beat them to you.
She seemed to befriend the darkness.
Out of this gratitude, she was cloaked in the garments of the night sky.
Holding all of the characteristics of a falling star,
All but one singularity.
Her light never extinguished.
Her flame never ceased to burn.
And there stood I, a simple gazer of constellations.
Trapped in her universe,
But not imprisoned.
I wish upon her;
My plummeting star.
I fell for you first.
Perish the thought,
Any that come to mind.
For you see, no star has ever surrendered its sparkle,
On behalf of the master of the telescope.
And every astronomer, both now, and from the days of yore,
Has been afflicted by this injustice.
Aug 19, 2013
Aug 19, 2013 at 6:17 AM UTC
Dear Shyla
I keep the suicide note that you've forgotten you wrote our mother folded up in a small wooden box in the corner of my bedroom
It's there so that on my worst days
When I've run out of friends who will listen
I can remind myself that other people feel this too
And after all we've been through apart sometimes our depressions and our mistakes are the only way I can remember we're related
Dear mom
I've hidden a diary you kept while struggling through your ill-fated relationship with my father
In it there are weight loss goals
Vows of marital celibacy
Existential questions
But mostly just a whole lot of why's leading you to answers you wanted to hear
While all of the things you needed to say you left in the blank spaces between the lines on the pages you never made it to
Your favorite thing to say after the divorce was that you were grateful to no longer have to walk on eggshells to protect his feelings
It has been twelve years and you still can't admit the feelings you were trying to protect were your own
And your feet still hurt
Dad
I have an envelope of pictures of you and I
From when both of us were oh so much younger
In each of them you are smiling at me
And in every one of them I am smiling back at you
I don't remember most of them I was quite very young
And for quite very different reasons I can imagine you would have a hard time remembering them as well
When I flip through the envelope I'm left sitting criss cross applesauce on a tore up linoleum floor
Staring at the scales of justice
Weighing the honest love of a drunk
Against the stoic rejection of the sober man you've become
And I am ashamed with how often I choose love
I am the keeper of this family's pain
Somebody has to
Someone has to admit it's real
One of us has to stare at the elephants in the room and see them
To know how each of us actually feels
Dear family
We are nothing more than four misfitted human beings
Tied together with tin can and twine telephones
By an astronomer, who in an effort to console himself,
Confused a congregation of lonely stars for a constellation
And eventually that is going to have to be enough
For each of us to love ourselves
To carry our own pain
I can not keep carrying all of this for each of you
I have my own pain
Which on most days is more than enough
I assure you
On most days
It is more than one man should
Sep 11, 2013
Sep 11, 2013 at 1:25 PM UTC
Gliding o'er all, through all, Through Nature, Time, and Space, As a ship on the waters advancing, The voyage of the soul—not life alone, Death, many deaths I'll sing.
Sometimes sprawling leaves just don't cut it.
Sometimes, you gotta be a badass.
Grow a beard
Cut the grass.
Get some shades,
Get a hat.
Sometimes a song isn't adequate
To express what you're feeling, y'know?
Sometimes "myself"
Needs a happy fix,
Blue skies,
Stuff blowing up and
Flying sparks.
Every now and then,
The learn'd astronomer
Brandishes a smoking gun.
Sep 23, 2013
Sep 23, 2013 at 9:33 AM UTC