"backlit" poems
The laughter of leaves
whisper testament
over cool caverns,
ancient moss
the absurdity of clocks
dashed upon rocks
while they dance,
backlit with sunglow,
at the true speed
of life
daring us to defy
the timeless tapestry
in which all are woven
Do stones large and small
not rustle
like leaves
in the eye of the mountain?
and is the leaf not as solid
as stone, to the aphid?
And what lives between
two lover-friends?
It is no brief candle
measured with ticks
on numbered dials
It moves not with the flash
of a single spark
Nor with the slow glow
of dawn
In gentle illumination
it is a soft gentle kiss
drifting on mist,
and it moves
at the speed of love,
with the rhythm of life
Copyright © 2016 K. Rush
Dec 1, 2016
Dec 1, 2016 at 7:28 AM UTC
Amnesia like leaky faucets swollen drain ventilates vapid powdered portrait
At least smiled.
Blood slightly warmed manicure and smiled in forgotten garden
Such lovely font. All wanted
Mini clouds surrounding shrines backlit green in ritual.
Smiles speak but of the wet smell of pollen and the sweat collecting in his hand behind the small of her uncrushed spine.
Curing chlamydia the straight—A fairytale. Conned alive, clumsily and bitter.
Nurtured cotton uprooted attempt. Scrubbed stains to shreds
Not even the green light merely aftermath so of course when shaking egg shells sheltering in “cold hands warm heart” chests receive the song I sing but never knew
May 5, 2015
May 5, 2015 at 4:40 PM UTC
I sit on my back stoop,
alone in the moonless dark
lit only by a window glowing
in my neighbor's new spa room.
Spikey tropical plants.
backlit by warm yellow light
are all I can see
from my vantage point
only yards away.
But my imagination runs
to visions of two lovers
delighting in their newest acquisition,
bathing in clouds
of fragrant steam,
a couple still together.
They have each other,
while I sit alone,
me minus you.
Eileen Auger
4/4/2010
Apr 28, 2014
Apr 28, 2014 at 12:07 AM UTC
i’ve long dreamt
of black flags in the streets
tonight i marched beneath
the shadow of their wings
shoulder-to-shoulder
in hope and solidarity
an anarchist professor
with a climate change activist
an independent journalist
and one of my students
as mid-November winds tugged
at her pink-and-brunette hair
she lifted a hand-drawn sign
of a gigantic sneaker
smashing a ****
and i felt
for not the first time
an enormous sense of pride
how humbling to at once
inspire and be inspired by
an eighteen-year-old
punk and artist
who asked to borrow
The Moral Imperative of Revolt
two scant months ago
then took to the streets
to oppose and depose
a twisted fascist virtuoso
for two whole hours
we hundreds owned the streets
we marched down Rosalind
Central and Orange Avenue
as protest slogans rang angelic
we raised hell and found heaven
in liberty equality and solidarity
but then the pigs closed in
cordoned to Lake Eola
to scream acquiescent rhetoric
at the fish sleeping
blissful in their innocence
beneath the jet black surface
a half-dozen cops in riot gear
astride horses loomed
ominous before us
backlit by the headlights
of the aggravated motorists
our march had forestalled
as the people abandoned the streets
we’d won so easily
i felt my chest wilt beneath
the weight of forsaken opportunity
my eyes scanned the remaining crowd
four stood strong
rooted to the concrete
by the world's weight
anchored by conviction
an anarchist professor
an independent journalist
a climate change activist
and a freshman college student
i heard the professor whisper to his student
i heard him say she'd put herself in harm’s way
that they'd lost the day when the marchers
turned their backs and walked away
but she didn’t flinch or move an inch
she stood silent and vigilant
shoulder-to-shoulder
chin held almost as high
as her Nazi-smashing protest sign
and her matching middle finger
and in that moment
i could’ve died
smiling
Nov 12, 2016
Nov 12, 2016 at 12:07 AM UTC
Fade to scene--pallet: blue and green--wide shot; mood: serene.
Establish view; a stock or few; pan right to view a distant two.
A hazy rim; we cut to HIM--so clean and prim--just as we hear the hymn...
A tear rolls down his chin. The brightness dims; music shifts to grim.
Cue the screams; cut the scene.
We're back in the now and the mood is mean.
HE'S back in a view--pallet: black and blue--the shot askew.
The mood's muted; sounds of shooting. Cue dialog:
"Look what you did..."
Camera jerks; extreme closeup: a smirk; let the ANTAGONIST work.
The wire crew's here. HERO sheds a tear. Signal stuntman on the tier.
Orchestra on my mark...
Deliver line then cut to dark.
Light's back to reality. The view won't change, you see.
There's no crew or doubles. Just a wide sea of troubles.
No second shots; no calling "CUT"; it's all open-shut.
It's not like a filmmaker's lens; it's not just pretend.
Let me script this out what you're all about:
An overconfident lout, but backlit with doubt.
All part of a cast, direct you like I did the last.
I see that you're furious, but you're hardly fast.
Now I'll produce the fear as the shoot draws near--
I've got the schedule set; we're not finished here!--
You're calling "cut," but I'm just cutting you more,
And then I'll edit you out on the cutting room floor.
I appreciate that you feel you've come so far,
But never forget this is MY movie, and I'm the STAR!
Aug 30, 2014
Aug 30, 2014 at 6:42 PM UTC
I wish the traveling circus were still around to run away to. It's not about being afraid to leave as much as it is needing a place to go. But my father was a mountain and my mother was a hole. And we're caves, mouths open and full of the cold. Been sitting so long myths have been made about the things that live inside us. The children come on dares to look in there. And yell in fear, at first only to have those sounds echo back. Then they laugh. There was never anything to be afraid of. Our bodies are full of that noise. Mostly the laughter. It lasts longer. It feels better. But is easier to forget because no one ever learned anything by laughing as much as being brave. You have to be scared to be brave. And moving from this place takes the strength of an earthquake sometimes. But you should know, your hands will never be big enough to hold all the rubble when the mountain crumbles. I remember when the cancer hit. The chest x rays from when they removed the portocath. Backlit, your chest resembles a busted cemetery gate from some ghost scene in a Sherlock Holmes movie. Broken. From letting all your ghosts go. And don't focus on all the things your hands can't hold. Your head fits just fine. Your hand. Cupped over your mouth to catch all your sighs. Can hold a cup of coffee to give to someone. Flowers. A poem. Tonight. Tonight you realize you're a mountain twice removed. A marble statue. So strong and so beautiful people will come a long ways just to see you.
Apr 8, 2015
Apr 8, 2015 at 5:44 AM UTC
Hiding behind text messages
we believe immunizes the heart
is a forced loneliness
a perpetual confinement
in a dark room, with low music
which only breeds madness
In such famine, the body desires touch
the soul craves fellowship
the mind requires intellectualism
laughs between true friends
and shared tears
of kindred spirits
Once we can no longer bear starvation
comes the gluttonous feast
As wretched hogs at a trough
any form of attention is consumed
to fill the growing chasm of
worthlessness
Blinded by false admiration on backlit screens
the body, the soul, and the mind savors
cheap flattery of dark temptations
Vulgarity drools thick as blood from blackened lips
The sweet tinge of grief
that bitter hit of hatred
spirals descent into the dark void
that forever hides the light
May 1, 2015
May 1, 2015 at 4:22 PM UTC
he wraps you in the seams of his quilted fleece jacket
only for you to tumble towards teetering ground with a
myriad of other dissipated items
a dollar bill
a cough drop wrapper
and breakfast bar crumbs.
his face backlit, the stained windows of the church
in which you have learned
that the weight of the world cracked adam's ribs
and made woman
the product of his suffering
but, eve
repeat:
you are not made from the vestige of this man nor the absence of him
you do not owe this to him
you do not owe him the gnawing on your fingernails
you do not owe him your skin, he buries himself under
creates a crater in your chest and uses your heart as his cave
you say he payed for dinner (the one that you couldn't eat: your stomach pulled inside out from worry)
that he
doesn't love you
or worse
you don't love him
speak not softly nor fading
do not let him lick tears off your face
and tell you they taste like sugar:
rip that piece of paper that he wrote his
number on
slipped his hand in your pocket at the club
for
he does not deserve you.
Oct 15, 2017
Oct 15, 2017 at 2:40 AM UTC
So we walked into a rainbow of the stars that made us stop and look in awe at what we saw
and I could see you in the coloured lights that floated through this ether light and somewhere this somehow seemed alright.
We stopped to picnic on a dying Sun and talked of when we would become a part of this creation
hesitant I kissed your face
which in this place was backlit by the moons that spun around your head
and you said,
'kiss me for the night is short
hold me and we'll move until we're both caught up',
and the heavens silent in their expanse watched this dance.
of two solar flares
two solo cares that came to life.
Though passion heard
through movement not a word was spoken
until the spell being cast was broken and the fading of the morning came
how could daylight ever look the same again?
In this the other pain I bear
I wait for her sat on the stairway going my way
and anyway
what else can I do?
Jun 12, 2013
Jun 12, 2013 at 2:19 AM UTC
Across the street,
Live the community of the old.
a network of inbreeding
left the branches of the family tree
entwined like a pipeline of too many years
that swim through the convoluted paths
forever,
sealing in the contents,
preserving the past.
Long bedraggled tresses
brush close to the latticework ground
Not a comb has come close
To break the wild knots that weave.
Nets buoy their authenticity
Forever wild,
Even though,
the world survives
on bowls brimmed with metal screws
The phantoms of depletion rise,
They are weightless, until
Pulverized
and they tumble,
Like hostages
They get caught between
The wisps of eternity.
Backlit sunset,
Illuminates the evergreen leaves,
The bulky necklace of frozen memories
Decorate my stiff neck
I am a victim of too many days spent
Watching screen protected versions of nature
that I forgot how thin skinned leaves really are
How the nervous system of enigmatic veins
hold DNA of their ancestors
Now, bathed in evening light
When heat from the stars erode from the sky
They are nothing but silhouettes of the past
Faceless, like torn out pages of a history book
shunned for its omniscient wisdom
so that the ashes can be planted
burying the past in the ground
standing still in the present
but reminding me,
the future is always as high as the sky.
Sep 14, 2013
Sep 14, 2013 at 10:31 AM UTC
he found the goddess
like so many do
in a desperate fall through foundation,
clutching to the bleak rim,
praying for context.
his last moment of wholeness
was spent with an upturned face
basking in the backlit rays
of her promise
*time passes
in a rushed imitation of
magic tricks and carnival rides*
when candlelight flew
from velvetine fingers
he hid from her shadow
humbled and yoked
the neon grin of morning
found him
clutching her breath
tucked inside the hollows
sunken through every step
there was nothing left
of his body
but two glass eyes
caught forever staring
into her waxen smile
that never thought to melt
that only broke with smoke
*tell your children:
hope is a scar
the fault, mistake
obsession with beauty
will roll you in ash
(a ghost of his telling)
and empty you’ll wake*
Mar 29, 2013
Mar 29, 2013 at 12:38 AM UTC
The gardenias' Sweet
fragrance enveloped
the backlit silhouette of You.
Profiled diffusely against the
Aura of the Eclipsed Moon,
Our Gentle Guest.
J Eduardo Ramos©
Aug 9, 2014
Aug 9, 2014 at 1:27 AM UTC
Our little collegetown is a jungle tonight,
with the deafening, staticky drone of locusts constituting
its own kind of warm gravity,
sidewalks drenched and carpeted with a rotting mess of
blood-red maple leaves, and
thousands of spiders the size of human eyes, glaring
down from the dead-center of their backlit, dew-drizzled webs.
I always thought that I'd never be loved enough.
In crafting anthologies on the angles of my favorite noses,
I pretended I didn't want someone else’s protractor on my own,
and prepared for a life sentence as the uncharted geometer,
the invisible painter, the secret poet,
the immortalizer, rather than the immortalized.
I find myself, now, to be a poem––
your poem––
etched into the curvature of your jungle-green eyes.
But walking home in our jungle tonight, I feel sick.
Your ears distort my hesitant laughter
into a dissonant, deafening euphoria, and
when I lay my head on your heated chest, I can feel the blood
gushing underneath your skin,
surging through your veins, storming, drowning
you, and I feel sick because all this love you pump for me--
all this love you are drowning in--
only rots in my guilty stomach...
When my memory is watching me
with her thousands of glaring eyes,
she will always mourn the breaking of a beautiful heart.
Oct 4, 2021
Oct 4, 2021 at 3:08 AM UTC
From day one, from the moment I was given one, my compass has had a faulty magnet
Why was that written into my script?
And why didn't I get a say in any of it?
Shouldn't I have been given a manuscript?
Explaining, for one thing, why I have to combat life and everything that comes with it?
How would you go about it?
Can't I just shrug it off, maybe let some shiit slip?
My path doesn't always need to be backlit
Certainly not by the ember of my burnout that fell from orbit
The punishment never fit the crime but I still submit that most of the claims are, in themselves, counterfeit
But I didn't quit in a panic
Not every life is a good investment
So I made the corporate decision to forfeit
Call it an early retirement
The more fitting term is a forced exit
©2024
Jan 17, 2024
Jan 17, 2024 at 3:15 PM UTC
On the bridge
between waking and sleeping
I met my father's eyes.
So beautiful and dark,
filled with quiet trouble,
and with tender invention.
Here in this nature park
green branches reach out
to one another, embracing
the air and the sky, touching,
sending chills down each other's
bark and trunk, meeting overhead.
You, my youngest brother, have
our father's eyes, and they are eyes
of pain and tenderness, of caring
every day for our beloved, ailing planet.
Above our heads, just now, down at the bottom
of the road to Ely Ford, sycamores carry thousands
of backlit leaves, each a green window into its own reality.
Who could have known that after so many months of silent solitude,
giving up completely on the illusory version of love,
a new beginning to life would begin as clearly and simply
as the moment when a butterfly, shoulders hunched in the final stages
of imprisonment within its sacred cocoon, knows unswervingly that
this is the day to bust loose, to slowly stretch wet, untried wings,
gingerly begin to flex her coloured, powdery, armature:
learning the way trust in truth and goodness
frees one completely.
*And sheets, and sheets of white light wash over me.
Sheets and sheets of white light wash over me.*
Jun 5, 2016
Jun 5, 2016 at 4:15 AM UTC
Put down the taco. Eyes close. Then - Zooooooooooooooooooooooooommmmmm!
My body at this point - already melted into the chair - head whirling cold - loozing touch hehe
Oh! Don’t leave without saying goodbye! - I said this to the infinitely expanding black void that-
“I’ll be back. I have to unlock the final triforce. It is locked behind a backlit Pluto.”
Clearly we were in a Mexican restaurant
But
The gods were clearly on his side with that pink **** and all so this chromium dude was on to
something - ope! My powers disappeared! I guess my time is up in heaven.
Dec 31, 2022
Dec 31, 2022 at 11:26 PM UTC
Loss is a heart drawn in the sand like a mandala,
Or bravery built like a sandcastle,
Too close to the edge of the sea when the tide comes
Slowly washing away every last grain,
Every speck of courage
Built up to walk across the boardwalk
To the end of the pier to look her in the eyes
And smile without an awkward, nervous giggle
To ask her to dance.
Her elegant wrist rests on the old, wooden
Pier guard rail that contrasts
With her soft, creamy hazelnut skin.
Her hair is backlit, gloriously
Set on fire, revealing her radiance.
You are not ready yet and all your plans are sure to fail.
The salt in the air is thick in your throat
As you notice how large the ocean is behind her,
And how high up the planks of wood you’re standing on
Rise above the crashing waves.
Loss is yours because you turn away
A few steps from deeper waters.
The wooden boards beneath you creak.
Nov 24, 2011
Nov 24, 2011 at 6:37 PM UTC
*I’m spending too much time on the phone
Thinking about what not to say
Rather than just saying that
I think there’s not enough time in the day
To tell you what you mean to me
So my plan is to turn this day into a life
Worth living a thousand times over
And under, in front, and behind,
360 degrees of you on my mind
I mean 160 characters is hardly enough
To describe your character and
The only emoji worth sending you
Cannot be found on a backlit screen
Or on an x-ray for that matter
It’s found in the palm of my hand
When it’s wrapped in yours
Or on the tip of my tongue
Dancing on your shore
And sure I don’t mind texting you constantly
But I’m more of a primal lover
I need to give you my entire soul
Not just a piece
While returning the peace you leave in me
So don’t worry about reception because
If you think hard enough about me
That just means I’m thinking just as hard about you
And you feel it too
So if this call ever drops
And you haven't had enough
You’ll always know how to find me*
Feb 17, 2016
Feb 17, 2016 at 5:20 AM UTC
Funny how a photograph can pump blood
I only have one of you, it isn't mine
it sits here backlit
shared with all that would gladly drown in those mischief eyes.
Your smile, a moment of calm, a second of perfection caught, always brings my own.
There is no beauty like yours, no work of art has ever made me want to overflow with passion the way you do. I could write countless poems, a thousand odes to your dimples, a million sonnets to your curls, a billion lovesongs to your eyes to no avail. So I'll laugh at your jokes, and be a sturdy shoulder, a friend. I'll wish the best for you always, while your heart keeps my secret safe. Poets shouldn't fall in love with the unloved, there aren't enough words to describe the agony.
Jul 9, 2014
Jul 9, 2014 at 5:46 AM UTC
-
upside down
butterflies
twirling
tin
sun
spins
fat raindrops
splatter
against
piccalo
wind chimes
staccato sound
drifts
an oboe car
horn
a far street
away
alto tympany
of liquid
from the
gutters
striking the
kettle drum earth
basso profundo
voices
a dark backlit
choir
from
the
clouds
rumbling
along
tree limbs
sawing
violets
and
viola
Jul 27, 2016
Jul 27, 2016 at 12:39 AM UTC
**** all artificial lights
no natural causes but
natural darkness
fake lights for true dark
blackest of blacks
like charred tree bark
leave but one imposter
glowing in the gloom
just pale enough
to write onto
and that's my door to you
Feb 21, 2017
Feb 21, 2017 at 8:08 AM UTC
~
Silhouettes, shapes,
clouds backlit
by a distant sun
rising slowly
in the east,
Cantaloupe swatches,
painting introductions
of a desirable dawn,
drape the sky,
illuminating my heart
to another
wondrous day
with you
Jun 15, 2015
Jun 15, 2015 at 7:14 AM UTC
the myths of birth and rebirth
are as old as humankind
scratched onto cave walls,
tablets of stone or clay,
scrolls of papyrus or parchment,
for hundreds of years on paper,
and nowadays typed onto backlit screens
that are recycled faster
than old hieroglyphs were understood
in our time
when refugees are tens of millions
on our globe
let us remember that these myths
have celebrated for millenia
not battles, war, or death
but the survival of the human race
the joy we feel when new life has arrived
often against all odds
the hope that emanates from godesses
or mother saints of yore
who symbolize fertility,
have brought forth saviors and new tribes
these are what has propelled us to our current state
and we do well to not forget that our fate
does not depend on people slain
but on how we can save the joy of life
and celebrate all humankind again
Dec 22, 2016
Dec 22, 2016 at 5:16 PM UTC