"aubade" poems
An ode seems appropriate
To the classical style
Of the columns and the domes
Above the green court.
Many things have adorned that dome:
Squad car, fire truck, droid, and phone
But today, viewed in a mind's eye—sunlight.
But as were that phone booth still apparent
From afar it now calls, and now I shall answer.
Over the river, and through the urban jungle,
Through the sky, 400 miles, as the airliner flies
But worth every inch, rod, meter or smoot.
It beckons to the mind and to the heart;
It beckons to the soul of a scholar.
Were I less knowing I might think not
That light fell from above onto that dome.
But rather, that the hemisphere
Gave forth the blazing light
ebullience of photons, amidst
Torrents of knowledge.
Its hallowed halls, numbered precisely,
Soon no longer a forbidden temple shall be
Instead, I shall tread there, such as I am
Learn from efforts I effect and others I see
O Halls, I shall greet thee, O Tunnels in winter
Traverse and find warmth to keep body to task
For knowledge, always, comes with a high price
In joules, dollars, cents, days and hours of rest
Long nights turn to dawns, nose to the grindstone
Maybe just one more tool; okay, maybe another.
But brother meets brother, and sister meets sister
On both sides of the river, and the work gets done.
Whether Greek or not, there is community here
A problem, or a set of them, is always seen through.
As the sun now rises, a new day sets in. In a few
hours of my life I will rise to these challenges.
With a chirping, I shall cross the paths that I come to,
Enter the halls .. and my journey shall begin.
~ D. B. Guy
Nov 3, 2012
Nov 3, 2012 at 2:19 AM UTC
Hark! hark! the lark at heaven’s gate sings,
And Phoebus ‘gins arise,
His steeds to water at those springs
On chaliced flowers that lies;
And winking Mary-buds begin
To ope their golden eyes:
With everything that pretty bin,
My lady sweet, arise!
Arise, arise!
3.8k
All those songs about waking up in a lover's arms--
I don't know what they're talking about.
Oh, I've known the happy wedding night mattress on the floor
amid the stacks of packing boxes
and the delicious view when the world narrows
to a single cherished face.
The bee, though, doesn't live inside the bloom,
and goes still inside a jar.
Touched on every side by an adoring indigo night,
there is still just one Moon.
Allow me morning alone in my garden
with just my mug and dog.
It doesn't mean I never loved you, or loved you less.
There is only one dawn--this one
and it only waits so long.
Sep 17, 2025
Sep 17, 2025 at 5:16 PM UTC
Trill of beak into birch. Dawn spooks
the graveyard into silence. A heart
hardens at God’s withered finger reaching
but not reached for. I trim the hedges
and the whir of weed-eater disturbs
a nest of yellow jackets into tornado,
dust devil, of translucent wings and sting.
I walk among the dead three times a week.
I am learning their language. They relearn
the mundanity of white noise above
and quietly forget, quietly forgive.
This hill is the crest on a wave of coffins,
each one a boat through the world below.
Submerged in a bloodshot morning
I listen to a woodpecker in its throes
of building a home out of the depths of bark.
In the chill, the soft fog rolling, it pecks
and it knocks. The doors to these lives
long closed, I hush. I do not believe God
will visit these grounds to reclaim his clay:
I plant flowers in it between the plots,
each name engraved of marble a blank stare.
The flash of red flushes from budding branches
and I return to work. No one answers.
I relearn the dead’s language, their silence,
relearn every day how to repair stillness.
Apr 22, 2016
Apr 22, 2016 at 12:38 PM UTC
Rise softly, rise gently, waking dawn
And let the drowsy sun yawn a while
Beside me, my love sleeps in peaceful bliss
With crescent eyes and a crescent smile
The morning breeze may tease the blooms
That wait to unfold with the sun's blush
- But softly, blow gently, oh morning breeze
Let the wind chimes be still, quiet, hushed
Rest your melodies, singing birds and bees
And cease the fluttering of your wings
The hum, the drone, the medleys
Quiet the rustling and the whispering
Why gurgle so loud - river- change your course
Flow far away, past the mangroves
For how lustily you gush, bubbles and froth
Shhshh...love sleeps - eyes closed
But alas - the river stays, making its music
The birds from their songs shall never cease
And the morning breeze breathes free
Tinkling wind chimes, hustling leaves
Rise - the sun shall and burst in gold
And the world'll be in daylight's warm embrace
My love will waken yet I still revel -
For sun lights the grace of my love's face
Aug 22, 2016
Aug 22, 2016 at 10:34 AM UTC
There are no bells, but they are there
lining the streets, palms outstretched
women on their knees between cream-colored petals
of orchids carelessly blooming by the drainage ditch
their scrubbed feet free of rice paddy mud
with palm fronds overhead
in their hands, cut butter and fruit
for the monks that file past in smart orange robes
if you were here, you would watch them with me
you would peel lychee fruits for breakfast
at this hour the people are wide awake
and the day is struggling to keep up
somewhere behind the early clouds
the sun is winking over the trees
morning birds never seem to sing here
where the rain has been falling for days
Oct 11, 2010
Oct 11, 2010 at 6:55 AM UTC
sing me an aubade
at beginning of aurora
serene and mellifluous
it's like a reverie, a felicity
you soliloquize, so calm
that it could be psithurism
I hear
the beating of your heart,
like the sound of a watch
enwrapped in cotton
a summer's zephyr opens the balcony windows,
so gently
dust particles are dancing
in the morning light
and are slowly falling on the white bedding sheets
do you smell the scent
of our neighbor's citrus trees?
2 hours by car is Venice
and I invite you to stay
in the enchanted and narrow alleys
with me
Feb 10, 2019
Feb 10, 2019 at 3:30 AM UTC
JANE, Jane,
Tall as a crane,
The morning light creaks down again;
Comb your cockscomb-ragged hair,
Jane, Jane, come down the stair.
Each dull blunt wooden stalactite
Of rain creaks, hardened by the light,
Sounding like an overtone
From some lonely world unknown.
But the creaking empty light
Will never harden into sight,
Will never penetrate your brain
With overtones like the blunt rain.
The light would show (if it could harden)
Eternities of kitchen garden,
Cockscomb flowers that none will pluck,
And wooden flowers that 'gin to cluck.
In the kitchen you must light
Flames as staring, red and white,
As carrots or as turnips shining
Where the cold dawn light lies whining.
Cockscomb hair on the cold wind
Hangs limp, turns the milk's weak mind . . .
Jane, Jane,
Tall as a crane,
The morning light creaks down again!
2.4k
I work all day, and get half-drunk at night.
Waking at four to soundless dark, I stare.
In time the curtain-edges will grow light.
Till then I see what's really always there:
Unresting death, a whole day nearer now,
Making all thought impossible but how
And where and when I shall myself die.
Arid interrogation: yet the dread
Of dying, and being dead,
Flashes afresh to hold and horrify.
The mind blanks at the glare. Not in remorse
- The good not done, the love not given, time
Torn off unused - nor wretchedly because
An only life can take so long to climb
Clear of its wrong beginnings, and may never;
But at the total emptiness for ever,
The sure extinction that we travel to
And shall be lost in always. Not to be here,
Not to be anywhere,
And soon; nothing more terrible, nothing more true.
This is a special way of being afraid
No trick dispels. Religion used to try,
That vast, moth-eaten musical brocade
Created to pretend we never die,
And specious stuff that says No rational being
Can fear a thing it will not feel, not seeing
That this is what we fear - no sight, no sound,
No touch or taste or smell, nothing to think with,
Nothing to love or link with,
The anasthetic from which none come round.
And so it stays just on the edge of vision,
A small, unfocused blur, a standing chill
That slows each impulse down to indecision.
Most things may never happen: this one will,
And realisation of it rages out
In furnace-fear when we are caught without
People or drink. Courage is no good:
It means not scaring others. Being brave
Lets no one off the grave.
Death is no different whined at than withstood.
Slowly light strengthens, and the room takes shape.
It stands plain as a wardrobe, what we know,
Have always known, know that we can't escape,
Yet can't accept. One side will have to go.
Meanwhile telephones crouch, getting ready to ring
In locked-up offices, and all the uncaring
Intricate rented world begins to rouse.
The sky is white as clay, with no sun.
Work has to be done.
Postmen like doctors go from house to house.
2.4k
How do I love you - in poem or prose
In a story, a eulogy, aubade or an ode?
I could love you in a sonnet
A senryu, though terse
I'd spill my heart - drop by drop
Or ink it verse after verse
I could write a terzannelle
A villanelle I could chance
Tapping on the refrain of love
The feet of romance
I could weave metaphors and similes
Sweet and sublime
Or trip down the keys
Playfully alliterate each line
How do I love you?
I can love you as I do -
In simple words that are writ -
From a heart that is true
Oct 16, 2016
Oct 16, 2016 at 9:36 AM UTC
Words
words to say
words to say for those who possess a quiescent soul
vibrations forming into susurrus breathes,
spun by Love.
Love is an oxymoronic, overly celebrated,
seemingly sempiternal happening that is eternally ephemeral,
lasting
a
very
short
t
i
m
e.
Love speaks with words that no matter how
dis-joint-ed
sound wonderfully euphonious -
a sonic euphoria
a billet-doux made from absolutely nothing
but
the very
rawness
of being absolute.
Love is a little more than
chimerical.
Love is a clinquant aubade that requires redamancy.
redamancy.
Love requires love to exist in it's eternal shortness,
to exist
in the mere seconds that are allowed
to exist in the ephemeral time frame of a blip in space
of decades and decades that no one will rememeber and that will not matter to the masses
and
will mean
absolutely nothing to everyone else except
for the one that is awake enough to look directly at
Love.
Oct 4, 2013
Oct 4, 2013 at 9:47 AM UTC
Sweet the skin,
The taste of hazel,
Her eyes the colour of passion.
The curvature of her bones like the number of August.
The sheen of her body the colour of Spring.
Between her lips the warmth of an ocean
To be liberated from its dam of cotton.
Warm silk,
Thick, warm to the touch
Like the flesh of a peach,
Sweetness of a plum.
A lock to a key,
The sand to the sea.
Freedom --
And creation.
Humidity of the Amazon,
Sweat of the wild.
Intensity of fear
Gravitys pressure
Lost in space between flesh,
Covered in a flickering light
Just the outline in your sight.
Her body akin to mans best friend
Each nerve touched to the brainwaves sent,
Glee only seen by the twitch of the bottom kiss.
As the light protrudes through the window pane,
No interruptions,
No aubade.
Into the light,
To match heat emitted of the Sun.
Nov 24, 2012
Nov 24, 2012 at 5:48 AM UTC
The level of betrayal
Hit me on multiple levels
Beyond the shadows,
Was it the Devils kiss
Those moonlit craters,
in the gallows,
That created those layers
In the mountains of the Himalayas,
Will they ever tell us,
The secrets lost within those meadows
Flourishing down at base camp.
Flying those false flags in eminence,
whilst were sentenced in the highlands.
Hidden haters,
Camouflaged in winter colours,
the mesa range
a inhabited massif,
A hint of frostbite,
That in hindsight could cost lives,
of those trapped beneath the icy nights.
The snowfall is just drop of ice,
Stinging the eyes of those blinded
by the shards of glass icicles in the avalanche.
A ridge away from the mountain range safety nets.
Disrespected tor of mother natures indignation.
Only the indigenous survive.
Yet in the flames of exasperation,
In the footsteps of evanesce,
A liquesce renders the snow storm useless,
as the sun melts the inundation of the snow slide.
An aubade ray takes over the landscape,
oxidating snowflakes one by one like a machine guns wake.
The temperate rise coincides with the rise of hope within the atmosphere.
The patterns clear and the same mistakes will be made over and over again
until the atmosphere is damaged so severe;
The sun itself will cry a tear.
Jan 10, 2016
Jan 10, 2016 at 2:05 PM UTC
i.
dear poetry, we met when i was four,
you were count lestat, and it was love
at first sight. you were made of bone
and bane, and razors, i was a mosochist
and you were a black widow, i would
know, i was there, trying to pry
open all of your eight legs, looking
for the amrita.
ii.
dear poetry, if i were to answer all
of the thirteen questions you have ever
asked me, the answers would be,
no, no, yes, march the thirty second,
"how frail a human heart must be -",
diacetylmorphine without the butterfly,
mother, yes, barely, jolene, you don't
love me, contractility, and no.
iii.
dear poetry, you have pretty legs.
iv.
dear poetry, i am an ugly archetype of denuded
adolescence and i think you smell
like teenagers and a leather hacked smothered
in *** and black labels and ck perfume,
and a pound of god.
v.
dear poetry, if sleep is the brother to death,
where does my mother lie,
before ribbons of aubade
seek the flower in the sky?
vi.
dear poetry, today i don't think i love you anymore.
vii.
dear poetry, if you were humanised,
you would be ugly. you would be defleshed,
you would be ugly. you would be marked constantly by
ugly people and you would bleed ugly people.
viii.
dear poetry, today i might ********** my muses,
i might make them wear fishnet leggings,
with ****** heels, i might give them *****
to suit others that **** them better than i do, and
it is all your fault.
ix.
dear poetry, i promise myself i would not speak
to you anymore, at least not in words, but
we both know poets are nothing but
liars, don't we?
x.
dear poetry, i am not a poet, all the poets are dead.
they died for you.
xi.
dear poetry, i am writting you thirteen letters
a year, they are ugly, like i am, they spell
an ugly word you would never speak of. you
will be anatomised, i will stuff you with
consangunuty, i will re-invent you.
xii.
dear poetry, you are older than me,
i am twenty, but you are only ten,
i am ripe, bruised, plucked from purple lips,
nothing is ageless.
xiii.
dear poetry, i am going to break you,
grind you in a mortar, roll you up,
into a blunt, and i am going to smoke
you along with the angels.
Nov 30, 2010
Nov 30, 2010 at 5:27 AM UTC
delphinium migrant blue,
and into night
we follow,
toward the residue
of morning,
where there's no time
limit to grief.
you wake with
electric intervals,
something's wrong
with yesterday,
in your head are
galaxies like grains of salt,
and they fill up the sky.
these red metallic balloons,
that come to you
when you are ripped open,
whether it’s by pain
and heartache
or you’re falling in love,
these you can’t close
yourself off to.
but what you actually want
is to bypass them,
and try to reach that
dawn serenade,
which is floating
above them,
as if golden electric ribbons
which don’t
demand repayment.
Aug 23, 2025
Aug 23, 2025 at 12:39 PM UTC
the false dawn
banishes
false hopes
of finding sleep
ahead of the rising sun
transient glow accompanies
first blush birdsong
the cardinal's aubade
ushering
greeting
the brush's first stroke
across the canvas of night
twitching limbs
bloodshot eyes
nonstop freight train of thought
all
night
long -
these afflictions allow me
to witness the lonely beauty
of today's sunrise
Jul 18, 2015
Jul 18, 2015 at 5:35 AM UTC
you will write yourself empty
with talk of sieve hands and sifting hearts
and you will write yourself selfish
before anyone teaches you the definition of the word.
poetry is as good a punching bag as anything else
and you don't have to be lonely to come back here
but it's been months and I haven't been able to write anything worth reading that didn't begin with, "I."
here is my hand-me down hymn,
my rebel yell my soft and quiet
my church floor my vaulted ceilings
my elegy my aubade my fear--
I send quarter notes stumbling
when I'm not careful.
there have been poems I wish I could write:
my mom's hands like cracked mosaics,
my unforgiving, weak winter skin,
my sister's sharp wolf heart
my dad's icicle fingers melting
an entire four seasons spent
searching for words under rocks
the teeth of my fear shredding
the meat of this poem.
it has been a year,
and I don't worry anymore.
the quiet, craggy shape of my fear
will stretch itself out in the sun
when it's time.
until then,
tell them I'm home
tell the commas to come in
tell the exclamation points to vacate their tree
tell the question marks that now isn't the time for questioning--
tell the words I'm home.
Apr 8, 2015
Apr 8, 2015 at 5:37 PM UTC
the cracks in the shades
make stripes along my sheets
eternity and death
laying beside me
it's time for them to leave
but their promises
will never vacate
the indentation on my mattress
their breathing, their whispers of truth
that progression is happening
that the world is spinning
that I am dying
spending hours assuming
that their touch will render me
into anything but a funeral
pacing in a skull
when they leave, I
am sure they will never
return. for this figment of my
imagination, has ended me
Mar 23, 2017
Mar 23, 2017 at 3:48 PM UTC
A composer
of the stars,
& astronaut
of dreams,
the unsung
swan of the
night, who
draws the
paintings
of her
thoughts,
the clouds
of dandelions
fields forever
in reverie,
her sigh settles
the seas of
lilac dreams,
as music
plays, she
enjoys the
indigo hues
of a bohemian
way of life,
and every
person
on this
earth is,
in their own
way, an
eccentric
of their
own hue,
upon the
painting of
life in the
microcosmos
to the lights
beyond, one
possesses
the traveler
in the chest,
a seeker of
the secret,
unrevealed
revelations,
a hidden
lover of
truth,
a flower
always
in perpetual
rebirth,
the secret
dancer
of the
night,
musing
upon the
wisdom
of how
every
human
holds the
aubade
within the
intricacy
of their
silver
scales,
in the
deeper
tides
of eyes
meeting
to become
one in the
balladry
of being
within each
other’s gaze,
for eyes reveal
the drifters,
who sail in
the ocean
of words
and catch
her star-dew,
where she
hears the
hidden,
secluded
symphonies,
they reveal
the lights
of their
own as
time, the
mysterious
one, flows
her fabric
and they
grow closer
to one, she
watches
upon them
unfolding,
as she
opens
her wings,
they close
their eyes,
when two
had once
seeked
to be other
than the
truth of self,
from their
chests are
opening
butterflies,
they awaken
in their
cocoon,
awaiting
the voyage
to the
moon,
the poet
sits by his
window,
and softly
sung “all of
what the
eyes see
in bloom
is poetry”
Aug 26, 2019
Aug 26, 2019 at 9:24 AM UTC
Sweet the skin,
The taste of hazel,
Her eyes the colour of passion.
The curvature of her bones like the number of August.
The sheen of her body the colour of Spring.
Between her lips the warmth of an ocean
To be liberated from its dam of cotton.
Warm silk,
Thick, warm to the touch
Like the flesh of a peach,
Sweetness of a plum.
A lock to a key,
The sand to the sea.
Freedom --
And creation.
Humidity of the Amazon,
Sweat of the wild.
Intensity of fear
Gravitys pressure
Lost in space between flesh,
Covered in a flickering light
Just the outline in your sight.
Her body akin to mans best friend
Each nerve touched to the brainwaves sent,
Glee only seen by the twitch of the bottom kiss.
As the light protrudes through the window pane,
No interruptions,
No aubade.
Into the light,
To match heat emitted of the Sun.
Jan 12, 2013
Jan 12, 2013 at 6:18 AM UTC
yestereve we succame
A lengthy ballad of longing
formerly one of obstinance
flared in a cacophony of passion
Whilst usually twirling in a seemly epitome fashion,
yestereve a caprice thought laid heavy on hearts
as there was no doubt of desire
nor were there objections to her
for even when my affections consumed you
lady desire was just an inexorable
yestereve she picked petals from a Sinensis blossom
there went the pain
any semblance of grudge
along with sanity
reason
and lastly, walls as carefully constructed as that of Pyramus and Thisbe's
such vulnerability unmatched
for your sweet scent lulled me from the arms of reason
for reason, although safe,
is the most intricate and fragile part of the ballad
and the first to fall victim to the cascade
What a fool I must be to have gladly forgotten the kinks of your hands
or the freckles on the back of your neck that form a perfect triad.
The way your upper lip curls when you grin
made my glissade blissful and passionate
Your flustered twirl
the very epitome of aubade
Ignorant of the harsh retombe of reality
Your flustered face En L'air
Every touch a pleasant surprise that formed a grand symphony
A moment of unfiltered emotion
A heavenly ballad
so cruelly of yestereve.
Apr 16, 2021
Apr 16, 2021 at 2:37 PM UTC
On a porch swing that creaks
in the likeness of ancient knees,
I think about the last time we kissed,
how it felt
so much like losing a tooth.
The moon smiles crooked, slanted,
a tilted guillotine
scarring the darkness to blur
the trees that rustle like fluid opals,
fluttering like thousands of white flags.
I was broken before you found me,
a rusted hinge stuck half open
letting anyone trespass. I imagine
you walking up the drive
in your lacey, white blouse:
a ghost of Alice lost in the madhouse
of a world fully armed by spades,
all pointed like a thousand fingers
at your collarbone. You would have
gladly bore their nick for me.
The moon is the Cheshire cat, questioning
why I imagine such things.
A dog barks at nothing down the block.
A rabbit’s outline slinks into a gutter.
Am I crazy to have loved you and sever us?
The moon blinks. We’re all mad here, I think.
Feb 17, 2017
Feb 17, 2017 at 4:44 PM UTC
you are my big sun
and i am the earth
revolving around you
yet irrelevant in comparison
to the endless possibilities
even beyond our galaxy
i am not forced
to depend on you
but you are my source of energy
and yet aside from countless stars
that are out there
you are the one providing me life
and from all the places i could be
i am here
orbiting around you
365 days a year
there's sirius
and betelgeuse
and a trillion billion others
but you are the star i choose
there's andromeda
and dwarf galaxies
and a trillion billion others
but near you is where i want to be
always revolved around you
still left to discover the unknown
but i prefer the status quo
for you are my sun
my sol
my aubade
bright star
and if you were to disappear
along with you i will leave
my dear
Jun 6, 2013
Jun 6, 2013 at 1:04 PM UTC
How many years will it take me to
forget the days we lapped the corners
of your mother's artless garden
tottering on Autumn's fruitless season.
The sunken mornings brought winds of
rupture in our chests; mingling in our
underwear, standing in the doorway
while I whistled you a song about how
intimacy can be undoubtedly forgettable like the
moon-blued waves we saw the weekend before
sleeping on the south shores of Astoria.
I expected every wave would have swallowed us up.
Sea salt stuck in my scrawny hair and we wasted
the afternoons trembling beneath layers of
flickering guilt. This moment, yearned to have
its imprint swollen shut into the crevice of my bones.
But now, its tides later and you married last October
and I don't see the point in remembering you.
Now half-drunk on an absentee love.
Jan 20, 2013
Jan 20, 2013 at 11:00 PM UTC
I want to be the bed covers
You wake to
That your restless limbs
Have smothered
That your emanating body
The fabric
You have tossed-and-turned in
8 hours hence
Imprinted with your scent
And the mouthwash
You gargle
To swoosh-and-splash
Along your tongue
To be in you
Like a liquid ache
Sloshing
Waking
I want to be the fork
You pick your eggs with
My metallic spine
In your slight fingers
Your demure hands
Scarred sustenance
Yolk sun
I want to be the comb
Tangled in your frizzy hair
Your wavy hair of smoke
And shadowed lakes
As soft as lint
Cascading
I want to be the cig
You light on the corner
To warm the brick morning
I want to hang on your quivering lips
Like an autumn leaf from a branch
I want you to inhale me
And let your body loose
Feel me utterly
Then exhale...
Let me evaporate
Into the nothingness
I was before
You
Feb 24, 2015
Feb 24, 2015 at 10:39 PM UTC