"browner" poems
Lo! where the rosy-bosomed Hours,
Fair Venus’ train, appear,
Disclose the long-expecting flowers,
And wake the purple year!
The Attic warbler pours her throat,
Responsive to the cuckoo’s note,
The untaught harmony of spring:
While, whisp’ring pleasure as they fly,
Cool Zephyrs thro’ the clear blue sky
Their gathered fragrance fling.
Where’er the oak’s thick branches stretch
A broader browner shade,
Where’er the rude and moss-grown beech
O’er-canopies the glade,
Beside some water’s rushy brink
With me the Muse shall sit, and think
(At ease reclined in rustic state)
How vain the ardour of the Crowd,
How low, how little are the Proud,
How indigent the Great!
Still is the toiling hand of Care;
The panting herds repose:
Yet hark, how through the peopled air
The busy murmur glows!
The insect-youth are on the wing,
Eager to taste the honied spring
And float amid the liquid noon:
Some lightly o’er the current skim,
Some show their gayly-gilded trim
Quick-glancing to the sun.
To Contemplation’s sober eye
Such is the race of Man:
And they that creep, and they that fly,
Shall end where they began.
Alike the Busy and the Gay
But flutter thro’ life’s little day,
In Fortune’s varying colours drest:
Brushed by the hand of rough Mischance,
Or chilled by Age, their airy dance
They leave, in dust to rest.
Methinks I hear, in accents low,
The sportive kind reply:
Poor moralist! and what art thou?
A solitary fly!
Thy joys no glittering female meets,
No hive hast thou of hoarded sweets,
No painted plumage to display:
On hasty wings thy youth is flown;
Thy sun is set, thy spring is gone—
We frolic while ’tis May.
3.1k
as memories of cerulean waters fade,
in autumn’s shade,
new visions unfold.
in this city of inconstancy
the air is crisper,
leaves browner
and love within a stone’s throw.
sipping golden drops of burgundy
simply smile,
cuz our bodies are now one
and our lips have locked,
as i worship you
with one hundred and eight pink lotuses.
one lotus for each secret wish of mine!
the morning moon
gives me
the devil’s wink, 😉
knowing this pristine truth.
© 2021
Oct 2, 2021
Oct 2, 2021 at 11:07 AM UTC
Thugs
Go to Stanford.
And the construction workers
I've seen
Are more likely to spend
Their downtime playing
Video games
Then smoking the ****
And I've seen my
Fair share of manic,
Wide-eyed young Filipinos
Like myself,
A little browner,
A little more beautiful,
I'm a little more racist
But
It's not okay.
Maybe.
Maybe not.
I guess what I simply want to say
Is there is a simple joy
To watching fingers
Of all kinds
Mold and shape futures,
Whether it be in the form
Of softened concrete slabs
Or the hard writ
Of word,
Whether it taste
Of exhaust smoke
And leather
Or orange juice
The school
Is the sky
The blue sky and the
Fields and university
Is a gold-ringed
Fist and in this
Respect we all have
Our PhDs.
And as for this sheltered
Unsheltered rooftops
Holed like ozone
World we've all built together
Well,
We try to find words for it
And collapse.
Dec 16, 2014
Dec 16, 2014 at 10:34 AM UTC
I live in strange cities and talk with strangers
About things dear to me
I walk on alien paths and eat foreign food
And remember
I paint **** women, their hips large
Dark hair and full *******
And I know
We all seek perfection, not knowing
We are already perfect
I sing, my notes rise and fall endlessly
Like a tireless swallow in the sky
And I praise
Hosanna in the highest
And as the dust motes dance in the wintry sun
In my wooden church, I am transported
To singing with Irish nuns
My skin browner, in a country of heat and dust
A country of mangoes and temples
Of saffron and silks
And as I don my jeans
Memories of my mother’s swishing silks
Take me home
But I live in strange cities and talk with strangers
And home is just another four letter word
Feb 22, 2016
Feb 22, 2016 at 4:29 AM UTC
A new species still being studied-
They have a compulsive obsession with mutilating their bodies
They yank out hairs in the place on their face made for expression
Daily they scrape off natural hairs from their limbs
And from under them, considering the act as simple hygiene practice
Some will even lay in a chamber of radiation to cook skin browner
And smear a smelly cream to make the skin look slimy shiny and 'sexy'
They scorch their head hair to change the texture for a day
And they draw on their faces with crayons made from wax and oils
They prioritize displaying of the body shape over movement
With their tight denim body coverings and waist clinchers
They wear coverings of their feet with a stick replacing the heel
To look physically attractive, despite the injuries and lesions
They're expected to keep a casing over their chest tissues in public
They hide their pheromones with alcohol and fake smell of plants
They keep private and hidden that they perform excretory acts
And they're never content with the meat casing they're trapped inside
Only (almost) satisfied looking at their reflection and seeing a lie
Jun 5, 2016
Jun 5, 2016 at 7:31 PM UTC
Then, bedded atop cushions of dark blood,
the blonde neck of a white woman.
The sun ravaged her hair
and licked the length of her pale thighs
and kneeled around her browner *******
yet to be deformed by vice or birth.
Next to her lay the ***** horses’ hooves
had stamped his eyes and brow to a pulp. He dug
two of the toes on his ***** left foot
deep into her small white ear.
She, though, lay and slept like a bride:
at the brink of happiness, of first love
as before the outbreak of a wave of Ascensions
of warm, youthful blood.
That is, until the blade
sank into her white throat
and spilt an apron of dead purple blood about her waist.
Mar 22, 2010
Mar 22, 2010 at 5:08 PM UTC
I live in strange cities and talk with strangers
About things dear to me
I walk on alien paths and eat foreign food
And remember
I paint **** women, their hips large
Dark hair and full *******
And I know
We all seek perfection, not knowing
We are already perfect
I sing, my notes rise and fall endlessly
Like a swallow in the endless skies
And I praise
Hosanna in the highest
And as the dust motes dance in the wintry sun
In my wooden church, I am transported
To singing with Irish nuns
My skin browner, in a country of heat and dust
A country of mangoes and temples
Of saffron and silks
And as I don my jeans
Memories of my mother’s swishing silks
Take me home
But I live in strange cities and talk with strangers
And home is just another four letter word
Feb 20, 2016
Feb 20, 2016 at 2:22 AM UTC
Remembering My first taste of coffee--
just another commodity
standing outside Lowell Tech, a local factory,
a city corner in Haverhill snows— a worker's town
Passing out leaflets for a vapid Revolution
Another action/demonstration
to “Seize the Day!”
No computers; no social media
to fill the ranks of rallies at that time
So we froze our ***** off
trying to explain with sound bites, frosted breath
and fogs of rhetoric
A truth-- so tyranic, remote, arcane
too preposterous to even process
let alone explain
Standing there behind
its barbed wire reality
smoking from its stacks
the poisons of its process
Standing there
Stamping blood into my feet
Trying to convince my freezing self
my breaking heart
that all this truth?
was truly worth it!?
as I threw my education and my life away--
Trying to convince
...that inside that building
IT-- was being made
****** and
that Agent of Death and Defoliation
of an orange persuasion
so our war could have its way
with rice paddies and jungles
and people of a browner, poorer smaller bent
While on the home-front
we filled the mill with unwilling bodies
that died somewhere else
off site...
“Outta sight”
...or maybe some years later
from toxins dumped in river
left to leach to cancers somewhere else
into the ground they sink
Through tentacled subsidiaries
restructured divestments
Legal dismissals
of responsibility
the players run like roaches
for the exits
One fast move after another
they dissolve disperse
morph into
renamed ****** entities
Clean up their storefronts
clean out our pockets
while “providing jobs”
“investing in community”
along the way
Putting on a Goodwill Tour
Then
taking it away
“What? We never said....”
We'll take you down
leaving only the stench behind
Mar 6, 2019
Mar 6, 2019 at 3:01 PM UTC
The best thing about having dark skin is that the scars camouflage themselves,
That you don't fit into the pale-skin-dark-clothes-slit-wrists stereotype
That you're more likely to be profiled as a criminal than "emo,"
so no one ever bothers to check anyways.
The best thing about having dark skin is that my burns heal,
they leave barely noticeable discolorations in my dark skin.
That only I can make out the slight change in shade from brown to browner.
And maybe you could too, if you squint a little.
Maybe, just maybe you'd see the dark brown stripes
painted permanently against my even browner wrists.
The best part about having dark skin
Is that no one checks your wrists,
because everyone is too busy looking at your curly hair,
your big nose,
your big lips.
"are you on welfare?"
"do you use food stamps?"
"do you eat watermelon and kool-aid
with a side of fried chicken?"
Because no one ever stops to think
that black girls
would ever think about hurting themselves, too.
Feb 3, 2014
Feb 3, 2014 at 11:44 AM UTC
I'm my mother's blood and bone
Features on my face are shown
Identical birthing hips
More alike the more I have grown
And same bit of mischief is harbored in my eyes
In a slightly browner shade to focalize
Motionless in front of reflection transfixed
Cannot help but overanalyze
But on a binge of self-pitying despair
How can I mosey forward with only memories there?
Similarities between are reminders everywhere I turn
Her soul absent and I am all too aware
It comes and goes in undulations of pain
Lost in labyrinth lurking in my brain
Crippled by spilled love that will never return
Only empty echoes within broken heart remain
Feb 9, 2025
Feb 9, 2025 at 4:13 PM UTC
being older
i am only browner and more solid
more clogged
weights drag at face and heart and ****
oof, age
like a badger in the belly
growls and nuzzles
Aug 8, 2011
Aug 8, 2011 at 8:51 AM UTC
It could've been the hottest day of the year. The kind of heat where the brown gets browner and everyone has that glistening sensation that's really just a mild layer of sweat. It was the kind of heat where that light scent of must mixed in with the incents and kush clouds.
Jul 19, 2013
Jul 19, 2013 at 12:05 AM UTC
Brown hair that has been styled to the perfect quiff,
eyes browner than my favorite chocolate flavor to match.
Hands that are smooth,
yet rough from the years spent drumming.
A smile that some would call goofy,
bring me back to those days everytime it's on your face.
Voice,
not deep...
but deep enough to make my heart flutter whenever my name was said.
Arms that pulled me in close the first time we hugged...
The same arms that let go of me that day.
The deep voice that whispered, " I will always love you, "
so softly...
if that's even possible with a voice like that.
A smile that seemed to fade as the days went on,
that we didn't see each other.
The hands that cupped my face,
for one last kiss,
and the eyes that are left in my mind.
Hair that no longer tickles my neck.
when there was no space left between us.
Because something I have always regretted losing was...
you.
Feb 24, 2018
Feb 24, 2018 at 4:36 PM UTC
isn't it funny
how
autumn
brings out
the brightest
and
most diverse
colors
smells
sounds
despite the fact
that it signals
death
in the slow
way
that stains
red
the green of
life
and brings it
to its knees
on the
colder
harder
browner
ground
Oct 9, 2016
Oct 9, 2016 at 9:26 PM UTC
my grandfather has thin skin
he says
after I watched him buckle after a bunch in texture on the floor
a wire
a corner
a buckle in the universe
where man falters where he is confident to walk
and I watch the blood in a ****** mary leak into the corners of a white leather couch
a drink, spicy and cold
less orange than the purple that swells under his skin
and redder than the faded napkin I wrap around the icepack
he has eyes browner than my brothers
less brooding, more soft with an illustration,
a knowledge of all his children's lives
and I wonder, a tight cliched anxiety in my chest
would I ever be so lucky
to worry
about all my successful children?
or would it ever keep me up
to wonder
if they were happy
or after everything, all the gravel and grit
or after everything, in their lungs, in their brains, in their skin,
smoothing right, all their rigors
humming under their hearth of hearts
if I would just go to bed,
happy they would be okay
or
happy there wasn't a buckle in the universe
Dec 14, 2018
Dec 14, 2018 at 11:07 PM UTC
we want browner ******* set them back into the sun. the pink ones are still burning under the shirts.
nothing can stop the radiation
today
and the birds are resting awhile on the fence, with their mean, dinosaur eyes
-waiting to
scavenge our bodies.
Jun 9, 2016
Jun 9, 2016 at 12:17 AM UTC
I carry it with me wherever I go
The times we spent together
The heart I came to know
In my life I gave you my best times
We didn’t talk about the weather
It was an exploration of our minds
So many years have passed
We lost a mother and a father
But the memories are what last
I don’t think life passed me by
You’re not just an old letter
People can see you in my eye
You took your leave by your hand
I don’t know if living long is better
I don't know what God has planned
I wonder if I would want to know
Are we just a left behind feather?
There is no pretension after we go
Every year I think I’m dying
It’s when nature becomes browner
But then I survive my minds crying
I don’t live for love on the horizon
I just pray for the pollen of an old flower
The night kings finally became human
Sep 15, 2017
Sep 15, 2017 at 11:51 PM UTC