"belatedly" poems
In a distance an emptiness echoes,
another lonesome dove's sigh
is carried away with the leaves
silence annulled by tempest gusts
as late autumn winds
belatedly lay bare the trees;
the sad song in the wind
repined for golden days
bowing sun ripened amber fields
dancing with the moment's sway
now windswept wild feathers
chase after the waning sunlight
bucking prevailing headwinds
just beneath heaven's glow
sail away! — sail away!
way up on high!
O' birds of a feather
sail away!
begone — bygones — begone
homeward bound
from north and south
on an algid heavenward flight
Jesse Stillwater ... winter solstice ... 2018
Dec 17, 2018
Dec 17, 2018 at 2:07 PM UTC
i learned about loneliness last night,
belatedly, because no one ever bothered
to explain it to me- it was
something best kept for the time it existed in
the blank space where a hand had once been
a soft shaky touch
now absent
the sorrow comes in sultry waves
with the indigo tide of me missing your breath
on the hollow in my sleepy neck,
a whisper backandforth inandout and then
a hitch, a twitch and the slow descent
from sea-froth into dreamland
we drifted, content, into the
scared scarlet hills where nightmares roam
where i made my home, knowing that
in sleep your whispers still coated my pillowcase
and i was not alone
we sank, satiated, into
the wasteland in our wasted heads
knowing that despite the terror, we could share your bed
knowing that when i woke, gasped, drenched in sweat
you would brush the hair
from my forehead
i'd remember my respite
and we would settle down once again
and as i lie, disconsolate
my ribcage heaving, desolate, i pull your jacket
to my face, breathe in your scent, your comfort
rise from the depths
and thank whatever guides our fate
that i only feel this pain
in the present
Jul 22, 2013
Jul 22, 2013 at 5:34 PM UTC
on belatedly hearing of an old friend's death
A simple 18-year-old
Pennsylvania kid.
He volunteered
to lead a patrol
down a heavily
mined road.
Gifts were exchanged.
He gave them
half a left leg
and a whole
right foot.
They gave him a
shining silver star
in a beribboned box.
A few moments
of congratulations
before whiskey, drugs
and homelessness ensued.
The hero's life.
Now he is dead,
the medal long pawned.
Life can be merciless
even for the brave.
No part of this story
means anything.
~mce
Jun 24, 2015
Jun 24, 2015 at 7:52 PM UTC
Pluto, Lincoln, ****
covers of National Geographics, still
plastic wrapped, waiting for you
your grandfather
bought you a subscription
for life
he's gone a dozen years
fitting his favorite president would grace one cover
and your enslavement, **** another
Pluto sits between both on the coffee table
waiting for you also, perhaps feeling like a ******* child,
belatedly told it did not belong
and you feel that far away
Jul 7, 2015
Jul 7, 2015 at 2:14 AM UTC
The blades of grass untidy over some sub saharian variety.
The cumulus clouds are more down town
with illegal builds shimmering in the corners.
We look back at our hopes
and belatedly realise baristas have
subverted our national brew.
Sub let flats with strangers passing through
leaving catering oil drums outside.
Our national prerequisite minding ones own
allows everything unknowing to go on,
including a morning benefits agency raid.
Rules and queues consigned to ailing England
Jul 7, 2013
Jul 7, 2013 at 9:33 AM UTC
“oh, how they will all bet on morrows that strain rills after dark,
and yet the Game, unpitying, regains its lordly behest at dawn;
lean back and feel the turn of things, the chance, the risk, the almost...
ante!”
⋮
this mania!
when it wreathes,
the imperceptible of myself,
it drains through me, sedulously,
hands aquiver, sight fretful,
and the bath of wanting (and not, ergo),
spewing and fusing
inside the etna of my inlying.
you are, then, obedience itself,
long before the grapevine,
before the Cards;
rails tarnishing, yet begrimed steel,
rather ossein, or thew,
turning to a suttee so pale, it forgets its ills.
and the trains;
yes, they were gushing, though not afore;
“did you think they would arrive for you?”
they smelt into clag,
into a mist of faces, barren,
swelling and shrieking of throe,
snaking, snaking down the spine of
the Stake.
slaves betting with their ilk of ardor,
when a match struck, belatedly,
but already it is leaning toward cinders,
its shine no more
than a laugh of people,
leaving the hall shivery in its bleat,
charcoals sighing their waning,
others honing their exit.
bitterly, bitterly, i am
left with nothing to hold but smoke.
but time, ah, time,
the nimble Host,
old trickster with his cuffs of lithe,
shuffling cloaks for loose change.
he and i,
always at the same table,
and i know his favorite sleight:
to grant the boastful player
a losing hand,
and winning eyes.
the coin is tossed,
to the Parlay; so soon cast,
so soon swallowed by the piker.
the crowd, they clap for a name,
but it is never genius they are crowning,
only luck,
foremost Dealer,
with that last word,
smiling as he lays it down:
only the blind Card turned upward.
~~~
and i,
sitting with my empty cup,
still growing a taste for losing
foolish, surely,
but the loss only deepens the greed,
doubles it, whets it past the reach of will.
so ring then, coin,
dull as you are, tattered,
clattering against the floorboards.
it tells me i am counted,
measured,
already spent.
yes, yes, it is only a caprice,
but it hews, it digs,
it laughs where no mouths are,
and i laugh back;
ante!
Sep 13, 2025
Sep 13, 2025 at 6:33 PM UTC
Flowers lost in measure
At an outstretched hour
Born sightless in the once
Sacrosanct hedgerows
Picked belatedly
--And invisibly so--
Taken from their family
To unconditional surrender
Upon a cold stark table
Where those assembled
Finished off love with their meal
--And invisibly so--
Jan 15, 2021
Jan 15, 2021 at 7:32 PM UTC
The living to themselves gossip attract,
but at death eulogies mitigate lies.
Love and care from he who breathes is withdrawn,
but his slumber does attract parties.
Fake mourners with feigned tears in burials act.
They rip off and use the grieving as pawns;
Their loss is their gain, their tears their laughter.
To fill their stomachs, they sob and flatter,
as they to misery dance, from dusk till dawn.
Whilst alive, at my deeds everyone frowns.
But at death, I am a departed 'saint'
whose sepulcher you spray with costly paint.
If you must celebrate me, do so now.
Do not in reverence to my casket bow.
Visit me now in my ramshackle house,
sharply rebuke me if you have a grouse.
Do as much you can to show you love me,
do not when I sleep go on bended knee.
Never belatedly show your respect
by attending my funeral in retrospect.
Jun 23, 2023
Jun 23, 2023 at 7:22 PM UTC
Sitting in wait in a silent room,
glaring at a bright screen alone,
Wondering will you return my message?
I've always longed for what you hide,
even the things that have haunted you inside,
we're family after all; I could forgive your secrets.
Rummaging for a name never heard before,
maybe what you know will make us sore,
break our hearts in two or more,
so maybe it's a good idea you leave it vacant,
delete it all and don't call,
do what you have done best,
and just let me fall,
I’ve come to learn how to pick up the pieces.
However, there’s someone who’s always been conjointly alike,
Never been a doubt I couldn’t count on her time,
I fear the day she sheds her skin,
For that day we lose a mixture of strength and compassion,
For that woman is mother and father,
For she the hybrid we see all too often,
that can't be replaced by your presence belatedly,
for after she’s gone,
even if I had what was left of your absence,
she you could never replace,
because she knew from the start,
what had significance right away.
Jul 18, 2019
Jul 18, 2019 at 2:00 PM UTC
If you ever wonder why
poetry is flames,
you will hear my name
whispered in your room,
cocoon-cocoon-coon.
I am the embers
inside the hearth of the storm,
I leave behind remembrance
to keep you safe and warm,
I live in lingual form,
cocoon-cocoon-cooon.
What stokes the flames,
when the heart is fading
when life is braiding you
into a mess
the stress
confess
sorrow is hard to impress
ravaging you, leaving you
less
yet the flames burn on
poetically strong
indomitable words
right or wrong,
they are the song
of the chirping heart
from end to start
a noble art
and my name is there
please, don't stare,
cocoon-cocoon-coon.
I leap from the pages,
from the fires of the ages,
I have no name
but my poetic, rages
I leave behind my...
Cocoon-cocoon-coon.
I fly away,
belatedly soon,
but I leave behind
a cocoon,
for the butterfly sheds tears
racked up over the years
rising from the waves
of paupers and slaves
for the butterfly craves
the cow.
Dec 6, 2016
Dec 6, 2016 at 7:11 PM UTC
On a whim I bought a rose
When I got home I put it in an old drinking glass
with nothing but tap water
We are like that rose
Out of nowhere
Cultivated with scraps
The rose thrived off of the water
Flourishing and growing beyond expected
We are like that rose
Blossoming with nothing but bits and pieces fed to us
The rose began to run out of water and wilt
So I added more
And it regained some of its strength
We are like that rose
Adding to something that's no longer there
Grasping at moments of bliss
The rose started to die
So finally I fed it proper food
We are like that rose
Belatedly nourishing remains in hopes of recollecting what never was
But it was too late
And one day I came home to discover the rose
dead
petals scattered
limp and lifeless
beyond hope
We were like that rose
Feb 19, 2015
Feb 19, 2015 at 8:40 AM UTC
I need me a spirit, a human soul,
Somebody my body to keep,
to lay down beside me, and rock-a-by softly,
as I fail to drift off to sleep,
to sing me a lullaby, gentle, yet pure,
of promises kept in the night,
for my mind it doeth wander to terrible places,
where love turns to anger and spite.
Maria, if you’d be so bold,
as to tell me a story of old,
a fantasy fairytale of true love’s triumph,
over anguish of hearts grown cold.
If left to my daemons, my madness draws near'r,
‘till belatedly morning arrives,
a new day of promise, yet I barely notice,
perpetual sleep in my eyes…
Maria, if you could conceive,
a story for mine ears, to weave,
a fantasy fairytale of “love conquers all”,
Like the ones that I used to believe…
Dan Bryce
Jan 25, 2013
Jan 25, 2013 at 11:40 PM UTC
There's a hole in my chest,
Carved from sad, broad hands
Attached to thin wrists
That are my own.
All day and night it bemoans
Its very existence,
Its marred, pulpy edges
Because it never asked to be made.
In fact all my life I've been forbade
Of making holes, told they're voids
One cannot fill -
Better left for the lonely people.
And yet I thought a steeple
Or a plot of dirt, a flower ***
Was all the space needed
To feel whole.
So I dole
Myself one, only
To realize my mistake
Rather belatedly.
Nov 25, 2013
Nov 25, 2013 at 9:11 PM UTC
I look back to the memory of one revered
and recognise belatedly that, as I feared,
with all such thoughts that are but refugees
from Life’s repugnant and loathsome disease
that is a chronic chronicle of cardinal regret,
the anguish is not prepared to leave me yet.
The pain enters the maelstrom of my mind
sufficiently, it would appear, to raise the blind
on life’s insidious theatrical disguise
that renders impotent such exercise.
The jack hammer’s incessant pounding in my brain
brings infinitesimally lesser pain;
whilst rotting matter that life does excrete
continues to mould pallid at my feet;
and I, the perpetrator of the piece,
anticipating the relief of a surcease,
must yet continue suffering the bitter blend
of redress that forestalls the dividend.
There is a situation that, when taken out of season,
evokes a painful memory for whatever reason.
A rainbow within a bubble of soap,
the search for trouble with a bronchoscope,
the desperate wish just to recuperate,
despairing hope that they will not reciprocate.
And when all else is but a heap of ash,
other than that consigned to a memory cache,
then it is time to place within that store
those ills from which recovery can be no more;
to tread a path and seek a blessed state
from which to be a learned advocate
of such as heaven and not the living hell
in which the guilt of conscience still does dwell.
Now count your dead, you others who survive
as bees continue to enjoy their nectar in a hive.
As animals may play, imprisoned in a cage,
As we creative writers persevere despite our age.
It is but propaganda to deceive
and not sufficiently authentic so as to believe
when Death, that great aggressor, determines to intrude
and interrupt the joy of an imperative good mood.
I’ve opened curtains and raised many blinds
and peeped into the crevices of minds.
And now it seems at last it’s all been said
There’ll be no further peeps, and so to bed.
.
Jul 21, 2015
Jul 21, 2015 at 7:40 AM UTC
*The world, indeed, is too much with us...
There is a rumbling in the distance
and he turns around to see shadows;
stunning and seductive in form,
unrelenting in its melodies.
Belatedly it dawned on him,
his imagination was hijacked
with permission. And still they
rumble, ever closer; on and on.*
●○
°
Dec 18, 2015
Dec 18, 2015 at 9:07 AM UTC
I don’t know that
there’s any poetry left in me
I think I’ve bled out everything by now,
all my sadness washed away
by a monsoon of tears.
Yes, there’s only emptiness left,
keep knocking but
my hair falls out stupidly and thickly
even at your kind touch.
My veins show underneath my skin now
and I can’t remember not counting my ribs
My mother says I’m fading away
But it’s just a shell belatedly
following a soul already dead.
Then again
this is a poem, is it not?
And Hope still lingered in that Pandora’s box
Perhaps even corpses can still love
Beautiful, will you be my salvation?
Your golden hair
makes me believe in resurrection.
Feb 22, 2016
Feb 22, 2016 at 7:05 PM UTC
It was that one last drop
that flooded a brimful hollow
Welling drop by drop . . .
Lingering , . . moment by moment,
belatedly over-flowing the restraint
slowly filled by reckoned time
Gathered teardrops surrendered
from vulnerable cup of thirsting blossom
Volatile bedewed petals gently sipping
dawn's velvet mist
A tender heart ... spilling the traces of hurt
Beneath the stains of time
hidden deep within
the enigmatic pools of your eyes
The moment of love
awoken,
is a boundless
awaited sunrise
It's as if a stifled river's trickle
reinvigorates thirst,
abating its own extinction
The will to be,
heeded in a last drop,
inspiriting
new breathe of life
long lost adrift,
alone in tidewater's
contrary
push and pull
Dreaming of Spooning water
from a broken vessel
into insoluble oceans
Each loving spoonful filled
with the overflowing love
from a broken heart
To rescue from endangering indifference,
knowing only what is loved can be saved
Will you touch this aching silence and let me know ?
Gaze your eyes into this lonely sea
and let the tide pull you in
Jesse Stillwater
Apr 19, 2018
Apr 19, 2018 at 11:42 AM UTC
I wish you all
most pleasant days
no matter what the virus says
and that the year 2022
brings out the best
for me and you
think positive, test negative
a better New Year to you all
reach for the skies, try not to fall !!
Jan 17, 2022
Jan 17, 2022 at 10:24 AM UTC
Hear those Friday beats drop
from hard to soft
as seconds elongate,
minim rests to pause
until all too belatedly
you are freed to remember
Feb 4, 2022
Feb 4, 2022 at 8:05 AM UTC
Garbled groans
Emanate from
A feeble opposition
Debilitated Democrats
Stunned and still
For want of the right word
For want of a plain proposal
Meekly making
Faint sounds of life
Begging belatedly
“Follow the rules”
Cheating continues
Constitution crumbles
May 10, 2025
May 10, 2025 at 3:06 PM UTC
What goes up will come in for a landing
The belligerent crash
I'm done trying
For the cushion of wheels spun in a coast to grace
There's too much doing
Every push has me slithering
Through the spittle of lies
Spurting from vicariously indignant mouths
In their search for how hard to work to work less
To help just enough
My naive and belatedly terminated youth
I blame you
More than the latchkey existence
Left to me to **** the boredem with hope
In spite
The breakdown anti-hero prays
For a time everything is a fire in the positive
Jan 14, 2016
Jan 14, 2016 at 12:05 PM UTC
What am I?
I’m great fun and sometimes crazy,
Loud or soft with moods quite hazy,
Full of love, sorrow, unrequited loss,
One minute happy another sullen, cross.
I see the world in shades of neon gray,
Rarely do I care or anyone obey,
My vibes are epic, they constantly perplex,
Full of contradictions, invariably complex.
I can praise the Lord, drink myself into a stupor,
Stalking the room with unrequited humor.
*** is my go-to, gentle or pulsating,
Not always happy, at times tearfully heartbreaking.
I know the secret to capture every heart,
Life would be intolerable by keeping me apart.
Whatever you may think this is no passing phase,
I'm known to be pervasive and hound your mind for days.
My moods are epic, a journey to discover,
Your friend to soothe you or belatedly recover.
Come on - What am I?
Mar 21, 2024
Mar 21, 2024 at 12:57 PM UTC
Belatedly, towing a rust-worn Saab, where
many dreams and adventures are wrenched
from a youngster's brooding petulance ...
Gravel crunches under a pair of balding tires
guttural screaming to a downbeat of debt
spewing silently from a tattered billfold.
What a present: timely to an empty fridge,
in the hallway, a growing pile of washing
impatiently reeking of malodorous intent.
May 10, 2022
May 10, 2022 at 8:12 AM UTC
Radiance
by Michael R. Burch
for Dylan Thomas
The poet delves earth’s detritus—hard toil—
for raw-edged nouns, barbed verbs, vowels’ lush bouquet;
each syllable his pen excretes—dense soil,
dark images impacted, rooted clay.
The poet sees the sea but feels its meaning—
the teeming brine, the mirrored oval flame
that leashes and excites its turgid surface ...
then squanders years imagining love’s the same.
Belatedly he turns to what lies broken—
the scarred and furrowed plot he fiercely sifts,
among death’s sicksweet dungs and composts seeking
one element that scorches and uplifts.
Keywords/Tags: poet, words, delving, farming, sea, moon, tides, love, metaphor, earth, roots, plot, radiance, pitchblende, uranium
Apr 9, 2020
Apr 9, 2020 at 4:41 AM UTC
The world, indeed, is too much with us...
There is a rumbling in the distance
and he turns around to see shadows;
stunning and seductive in form,
unrelenting in its melodies.
Belatedly it dawned on him,
his imagination was hijacked with permission.
And still they rumble, ever closer; on and on.
Feb 21, 2015
Feb 21, 2015 at 3:55 AM UTC