"cruellest" poems
Could it have troubled Pandora’s mind,
On learning where Hope springs -
At the base of her box she chanced to find
The cruellest devil with angel’s wings?
To foresee it seep into our veins -
Leave us to blunder and fall,
Cause mankind monumental pains,
And make a mockery of us all.
As the drowning heretic looks to the skies -
Before a wave knocks him to his demise
Into an absurd and uncaring ocean.
Somewhere a poet quietly smarts
The excess love from her swollen heart
And on a page whispers her devotion.
Oct 21, 2017
Oct 21, 2017 at 7:21 AM UTC
The honey in the lion sounds like a delicious thing––
a gentle balm capable of subduing
the cruellest of monsters.
According to the stars and tattooed,
you fancied yourself king of the jungle––
lazy in hot African afternoons.
Golden and tawn with sleepy sun-gold eyes,
shaggy mane, muzzle red with
the blood of a gazelle.
Did you think me such easy prey?
Or was I so much fermented honey,
only a sweet intoxicant.
Sun warmth seeps from jungles of cold concrete.
I mistook your gargoyle wings
for those of a guardian angel’s.
I overlooked your rough skin, your
crooked hawk nose and your skinny ribs,
and assigned fine things in you that didn’t exist.
So duped, I acquiesced to your slimy kiss.
Your mouth a neglected cemetery,
teeth a row of mossy tombstones.
Vampire. Incubus. Your seduction like grotesque death.
You named me tempest in a teacup,
but I was the eye of the storm.
Until the night the eye was eradicated,
and the storm blew in,
striking me dumb with your sound and fury.
But no spattered blood and no spreading bruise
to be found in the pattern of the kaleidoscope.
No cause for alarm.
Today I am lost in a picture show,
a beautiful world coloured by nostalgic past.
Women’s lips the vivid red print of a velvet valentine.
Head in the Clouds, I fantasize about a certain scene.
Because you think violence is ****
retaliation – ********** in my dream.
Give me an eye for my eye,
for all the eyes you plucked, from women and breadwinners.
Give me blood running down your back, sweet as honey.
Sep 22, 2016
Sep 22, 2016 at 5:37 PM UTC
Remember how I looked to you,
To tell me I'm not mad?
However, I was not in view,
The best you'd never had.
I walk, your kisses on my lips,
I walk with your words, forward,
Fate declines the power trips,
And love is untoward -
I can't find you in every glass,
I can't see you in that window,
In every chance that never'd pass,
For I cannot be their widow
Like I'm yours.
Like I'm yours.
Like, I'm yours.
Like. I'm yours.
Aug 13, 2024
Aug 13, 2024 at 7:50 AM UTC
The great sun sinks behind the town
Through a red mist of Volnay wine....
But what’s the use of setting down
That glorious blaze behind the town?
You’ll only skip the page, you’ll look
For newer pictures in this book;
You’ve read of sunsets rich as mine.
A fresh wind fills the evening air
With horrid crying of night birds....
But what reads new or curious there
When cold winds fly across the air?
You’ll only frown; you’ll turn the page,
But find no glimpse of your “New Age
Of Poetry” in my worn-out words.
Must winds that cut like blades of steel
And sunsets swimming in Volnay,
The holiest, cruellest pains I feel,
Die stillborn, because old men squeal
For something new: “Write something new:
We’ve read this poem—that one too,
And twelve more like ’em yesterday”?
No, no! my chicken, I shall scrawl
Just what I fancy as I strike it,
Fairies and Fusiliers, and all
Old broken knock-kneed thought will crawl
Across my verse in the classic way.
And, sir, be careful what you say;
There are old-fashioned folk still like it.
1.8k
I remember moving in to my old flat
Down in San Jose
It wasn’t much to look at
But it was all I could afford
I was studying a 6 day degree
Hoping it would get me somewhere
It was only dollar twenty five
In the rag
Because we all sometimes have to pray
For small mercies
I had just paid out for another hidden cost
Turns out there are a lot of them
When you haven’t got much money:
$13.02 to get my room key
Or the landlady hits me over the head with a baseball bat –
That’s how a democracy works, we elect a leader
And then they milk us for all we are worth.
A dictatorship works the same way –
Only they don’t bother with voting.
This hunny came up to me,
Lips that could devour a man
A body so voluptuous
It could make a man go insane.
“Excuse me, there’s no toilet roll in the cubicle.”
**** what small hells we make for each other
Even the cruellest of men should be able to wipe their ***
At times of seeing such beauty
We become all gushing
And promise things that are simply beyond us,
In a hope of being rewarded with a mouthful of beauty
Or even better –
A bed.
So I went downstairs and had a near fatal run-in
With the Jamaican landlady
“You won’t be having no pieces of *** in your flat
I-s can be a-telling you that now!”
I returned with the toilet roll
She puckered her lips
Winked and said she would see to me tomorrow
So the next day I went round and said I had
A bit of ailing at the back of my throat
She turned her nose up and said:
“There’s nothing that could be done for me.”
And with that shut the door.
It is such a shame when such beauty gets prissy
But that is the human condition
The more generous you are
The less generous you can afford to be:
Just ask Timon of Athens.
Nov 11, 2011
Nov 11, 2011 at 4:00 PM UTC
Let me pour forth
My tears before thy face, whilst I stay here,
For thy face coins them, and thy stamp they bear,
And by this mintage they are something worth,
For thus they be
Pregnant of thee;
Fruits of much grief they are, emblems of more;
When a tear falls that, thou falls which it bore,
So thou and I are nothing then, when on a divers shore.
On a round ball
A workman, that hath copies by, can lay
An Europe, Afrique, and an Asia,
And quickly make that, which was nothing, All;
So doth each tear,
Which thee doth wear,
A globe, yea world, by that impression grow,
Till thy tears mixed with mine do overflow
This world—by waters sent from thee, my heaven dissolved so.
O more than moon,
Draw not up seas to drown me in thy sphere,
Weep me not dead, in thine armes, but forbear
To teach the sea what it may do too soon;
Let not the wind
Example find,
To do me more harm than it purposeth;
Since thou and I sigh one another’s breath,
Who e’er sighs most is cruellest, and hastes the other’s death.
1.5k
You are lying in bed,
Listening to the gentle whistle of passing cars,
And the roar of a passing train.
You bite your lip,
Nervous.
Why?
Because that is all you can hear.
A month ago, the sounds of the city outside
Would be accompanied by the screams and shouts
Of the two people downstairs
That brought you up.
Sure,
Sometimes they forgot dinner time.
Or that you hadn’t been bathed in three days.
And all they’d do at night
Was fight.
Insult after insult,
Tears and a piercing smash.
And you’d lay awake and wonder
What you’d find in pieces the next morning.
As much as you’d squeeze your eyes shut,
And bury your face in the pillow,
You couldn’t help but be lulled to sleep
By the turbulence below.
It was your familiarity.
And sometimes,
Familiarity comes in the cruellest forms.
And now
There is silence.
You can’t hear
Your Father chugging alcohol.
Silently sobbing
Under the stark, white kitchen light.
It takes two to fight.
And now there is only one.
And now you can’t sleep.
Because there is nothing familiar about this at all.
Mar 21, 2018
Mar 21, 2018 at 12:49 PM UTC
I.
Last night I lost my voice, somewhere on the streets
of central London, sunk in winter, and I wonder where it was
my frostbitten words dropped right out of my throat.
II.
My vocal chords feel torn. My voice box is raw
and all worn out and when I speak it sounds as though
I was screaming all night.
My chest is tight.
III.
Everyday I realise she's not here and every day
I forget, so as far into the future as I can see
it will be repeatedly realised, like it's today's news,
that my cousin has died and that I'm not meant to be here
to even be hearing the news because it should have been me.
IV.
Fate played the cruellest trick, the most unjust card
in the pack and dealt it, when it took Ella
instead of the one who had tempted it.
V.
The End isn't anything like I could have imagined.
It's clean as a broken mirror.
VI.
Rest in peace.
Rest in pieces.
Reflection
in fractured glass
cut in half.
Splitting image.
VII.
Number seven for the years of bad luck.
Superstitions, suspicions of guilt, make for a curse.
Morning comes like hell with a garbage truck.
I miss my cousin, who left for heaven in a hearse.
Nov 5, 2013
Nov 5, 2013 at 4:37 AM UTC
The wasted land,
Where the birds Sing,
but the people cry,
The purple city,
Burning in yellow
The cruellest month,
Which is flames mix with cold.
Sickening my mind all of a sudden.
Late winter sky is about to cry
conquer in wind,
Amber-hued, sunny and hot,
The owner of our secretes,
Hiding from our grieving eyes
Sinking in greyish blue cloud.
I found the best moment to write,
Right after melancholy moments.
From his smoothen skin to her so mean eyes,
Born something unknown desire to have,
Every touch of his, soaked in alky ash.
lets fire up that moment with unspoken truth.
Be as you always been,
Be that lover and don't be change
There was fear and the fire
With the suffused enough heart, like unbreakable
With the cried enough eyes, like compassionate
To each other, to the sea, which seems
The illusions lay before us on land of dreams,
So various, so beautiful
Neither joy, nor love,
Nor peace, nor help for pain;
Scattered the violet and blue light
Away from our eye sight
In this lonely city,
Where struggle and tenderness collide,
Swept with complex evening clouds.
Jan 11, 2022
Jan 11, 2022 at 12:16 PM UTC
To butterfly meadow she slowly fluttered
her symmetry was now of body and mind
summer did shine within and without
and those around her bathed in her glow
She could melt the cruellest of hearts
with just a kind smile, her domain was pure
I fell for her deep wonderment and grace
her divinity written in burning stars
With her love no one walked alone
there were no nights of solitude
the fellowship of the good flourished
and laughter echoed all over this land
Then their dependence became her prison
and slowly her light did fade
they drained her not for just moments
but for a year and a day
The land that once was sweet is bitter
and the people here now morn her loss
forgetting they killed her slowly
and their future was the cost
By Christos Andreas Kourtis aka NeonSolaris
Nov 30, 2013
Nov 30, 2013 at 7:44 PM UTC
You are as delicate as to lilac blossom
with slender arms that reach for heaven
your sensual movement mimics that of the tree
the rustling of the leaves are your whispers to me
You stand proud and austere
you're a blessing to be near
and to prune your branches
would be the cruellest of sins
Your dainty light perfume
the way you fill a room
my lilac, with such love such grace
my heart will always have a space
For you
By Christos Andreas Kourtis aka NeonSolaris
Aug 13, 2013
Aug 13, 2013 at 3:22 PM UTC
-Life-
Was the cruellest of gifts It gave us
Hope, but it is a coin tossed too often,
For within moments
Breath,
Beats,
Blood
Coursing through this vessel
To keep it upright, motions of every fibre
Never one without the other. But breath is
Fleeting, one stops then another moments
Now becoming less time life now evicted stops.
-Reaper-
That exhalation that signalled the end, taken
From you, stolen by this hand of bone
And kept like a trinket, something
That he has held to many times,
Lost,
Forgotten,
Dammed
Ones who he misplaced in that darkened place.
He was just one of the keepers charged with
But the flow from their to here. but all
Things have a purpose and so
This existence now claimed by another.
-Soul Keeper-
Was the cleaner of what was before,
Life's distractions, deaths fingerprints,
Where cleansed from this orb of
Thought,
Conciseness,
Essence
Of what was, two shades spiral,
One white one like a smear, some where
More of one, never one purest
Pearl or charcoal . There was always a
Hint of light or dark in every orb held.
-Scales Of Judgement-
We are weighted not by the flesh or the bone,
As they are nothing once the soul is gone
Life,
Death,
Rebirth,
Are the ever moving cogs, but some
Are broken to be put in a place
Where the broken things
Live,
Rot,
Decay,
In that place never to be reborn, this is
There end place of limbos playground.
All are judged on the scales showing
the aura of there lifes deeds
Be they heaven worthy or to the pit
There moments burn, but some are
To far gone, and in limbo they stay.
The scales are the defining moment of four stages
Life,
Death,
Energy,
Judgment
On this final journey, are you worthy, to be
In the light or darkness, to be reborn or
To the nether place of broken toys.
Live your life, but remember judgement
Is only three steps from life away.
May 13, 2015
May 13, 2015 at 5:01 PM UTC
CAUSE
Syria, the land of sin,
Struggling breath.
Peeling skin.
Born to die upon sad day.
The cruellest beast.
The devil's way.
Sons and daughters caught in blast.
That day they woke, became their last.
Let this ****** madness end.
A world that man may still depend on.
Save us all before it's gone.
(c)LIVVI
Apr 16, 2017
Apr 16, 2017 at 7:46 AM UTC
April is not
The cruellest month;
It brings
Rain.
Apr 10, 2012
Apr 10, 2012 at 3:02 AM UTC
Have been harmed by me
And indeed have harmed,
You illumine my life
And my heart
And have brought me
Face to face with
Harsh reality of love,
You showed me rage
And anger and desire
To hurt and revenge,
To disregard apology
And humility and change
In order to stab again
And this I did deserve,
However change has
Happened as admitted
By you in my embrace,
The storms of rage
Are abating and the dawn
Rises clear and gentle
With softness care and grace,
Yet now even as we reap
The dividend of peace
And I am filling that treasured
Role of partner husband
And other (albeit imperfect) half,
You turn after a queue of jobs
To say you are not sure you love me,
The cruellest blow of all
Dec 24, 2023
Dec 24, 2023 at 3:47 AM UTC
Bright, burning RED
I see it through the darkness;
The only real thing
There, tying me down,
Holding me still.
RED RED RED
And now the sun glows ORANGE.
Rising in the sky
Like a God.
Apollo in his chariot,
Looking down on us.
ORANGE ORANGE ORANGE
The sky fades to YELLOW
Now, a peculiar, ugly colour. I like it.
Your face lights up now,
Looks better this way.
The tinge of your skin -
YELLOW YELLOW YELLOW
I see you in GREEN
When I think of you.
And I think of you often.
I think of you hopefully, longingly, jealously.
I can't help it.
GREEN GREEN GREEN
They say that BLUE
Is a cold colour,
But no, it is warm. It is the sea and the sky and the summer.
They say your favourite colour is that of your true love's eyes.
Guess you're not my true love. Ah well.
BLUE BLUE BLUE
You gave me INDIGO
Roses on the first of our birthdays we spent together.
You'd tried to dye them my favourite colour
But of course it hadn't worked.
I laughed at your failure. Loved you for it.
INDIGO INDIGO INDIGO
Skies of VIOLET
Are breathed upon us by the cruellest of months:
April.
At the twilight hour the cold, callous evening
Tears you from me. Go back to her, then.
VIOLET VIOLET VIOLET
These are the colours that bind us together.
These are the colours that tear us apart.
May 28, 2014
May 28, 2014 at 11:32 AM UTC
*Misery is the cruellest friend
She climbs into bed with you and clings to you
Loyal to a fault she doesn't leave your side,
You will feel her cold fingers down your cheeks,
So rough and calloused they leave tracks in their wake.
Misery is Selfish
She hisses when people get too close to you
Too blind to see that her protection causes loneliness
Misery is angry
Crescent indents always appear on your palm
She doesn't mean to hurt you though, she just needs a distraction
Misery is hurt
She cries all the time,
Sometimes she screams.
You attempt to stitch the wound but can't find the tear,
There is no bone to straighten
No graze to bandage
Not even a bruise to sooth.
She's your best friend,
The only one you need in your life
So you hold her hand
Feel her jagged and uneven nails
And walk with her.*
Sep 24, 2016
Sep 24, 2016 at 11:19 AM UTC
Half the time I forget I'm a woman
Half the time I'll act the man
There is no lad out there who will treat me
Like the lady I ought to be;
And so I'm skulking like the teenage duellist
That I wrote into my stories, cruellest
In my smile and style, harsh blacks,
Harsh silvers, stinging hylauronic gloss
The only thing that reminds you that the tax
I place upon myself is a compromise from my loss.
I will fight all those scoundrels for me
Dosed up on Panic! as only I can be
"Whoa! Mona Lisa!" Aye, but catch me bare my teeth,
Catch me look at you, eyelashes poignards, like the iris underneath
The deepest blue
To remind you
I'm not entirely the goth I paint myself to be;
And tomorrow it'll change, as the black shirt'll be *****
And thrown into the wash, and I'll still try to cut a picture
In my poet's silk blouse and blood-red lipstick; I indenture
Them into this image - I'm surviving for every next coming dawn
But, yeah, I'm doing it in a style - that of the dagger drawn.
Mar 13, 2022
Mar 13, 2022 at 4:46 PM UTC
I suppose I could have stopped it
As the boat went through pitch and roll
As the timbers underneath them cracked
And then they splintered
As they slowly lost their fight
As they struggled
As their bones filled up with cold
I could have saved them all the trouble
As they fought with sail and rope
Their hands all raw and bloodied
Burning with the salt
If I’d just mentioned, it was more than likely
This unfortunate turn of the weather
Was more or less my fault
I could have told them not to bother
At shouting at the dark
At cursing at the howling wind
All those angry words
All that bravado
All that pointless hope
All that wasted spark
I would have saved them all from drowning
In this the cruellest of all seas
If only I’d just have said
Stop fighting give it up
Throw me overboard
Save yourselves
Because the storm
It's meant for me
Apr 23, 2015
Apr 23, 2015 at 4:24 PM UTC
PORTRAIT OF THE ARTIST AS A YOUNG BOY
Tom is 9
going on 10
& pens
" a few little verses
about the sadness
of having to
start school
again
every Monday morning."
Already young
Master Eliot
can see
THE WASTELAND
spreading out
before him.
"Monday is the cruellest day
breeding Mathematics
out of the deadened brain!"
"Damn...damn it...damn ya!"
"Language Thomas...language!"
"Shhhhh ...Tom...shushhhh!"
I comfort him.
"Shanti...shanti...shanti."
Jan 21, 2016
Jan 21, 2016 at 5:06 PM UTC
Mirror mirror on the wall
you are cruellest of all
You tell the things that never sooth
And most of the time they are the truth
You break my heart everytime
You make me feel so small
Why cant you be good to me ??
As good as you are to the wall ??
You make me look ugly and worthless
And i feel that way too .
You tell me that i am boring and sad and hopeless too.
Mirror mirror on the wall
You are cruellest of all.
May 8, 2015
May 8, 2015 at 4:06 AM UTC
I hated to pass the talking tree,
It made me feel all undone,
Raveling on in its revery
Like a racquet, coming unstrung,
What made it worse was the silken voice
Not matching a stringybark’s,
If I’d been offered a simple choice
I’d rather the voice was harsh.
It tried to attract my attention there
Each time I ventured to pass,
‘What are you going to do, just stare?’
It said, ‘Well, kiss my ***
It always tried to embarrass me
By being uncouth, and loose,
I said, ‘You’re surely the rudest tree,
We haven’t been introduced.’
It quoted Coleridge by the ream
Whenever I wore my hat,
‘A painted ship on a painted sea,
Now what do you think of that?’
‘I don’t know where you borrowed that line
I said, I have no notion, it’s
“As idle as a painted ship
Upon a painted ocean!”’
It used to sulk when it got it wrong
To wave its trunk with a clatter,
‘Who’d believe,’ it would say to me,
‘That getting it right would matter?’
‘I think He would, old S.T.C.
Would listen, hear, and note it,
Nor be impressed that a talking tree
Would get it wrong, and quote it.’
I turned up there with a saw one day
And the talking tree had cried,
‘I say, I’m not going to cut you down,’
I said, but it knew I lied.
For ‘April is the cruellest month,’
I said, and I wasn’t kidding,
I saw through its Eliot, silence its Pound
And cut off its Little Gidding.
David Lewis Paget
Jan 4, 2016
Jan 4, 2016 at 1:38 AM UTC
I could find shelter anywhere
even in the cruellest weather
but the sanctuary of your heart
is closed to me and I wonder
why you regard me thus--
did I cause you grief ? Never
did I ever such intend
or have you found another?
If loving you is a sin
then call me the vilest sinner
how would I seek absolution?
I await your order.
This I'll say ere I walk away
You aren't getting any younger
I am desirable, strong, brave and kind
Once I've gone, you might regret forever.
May 2, 2016
May 2, 2016 at 9:15 AM UTC