"cygnus" poems
You once told me that when we die,
we become another star in the night.
I never really cared about your zodiac and lunar signs,
I never paid attention to the solar action shooting by,
You'd wonder if it's magic plans or broken scrap that flew the skies,
You were psychedelic dresses, I was only wrapped in suit and tie,
It never blew my mind until I finally gave your truth a try,
I glimpsed the puzzle pieces in the time before the moon would rise,
A tapestry on galaxies, depicting myths, and human lies,
I guess you proved me wrong again, I was quick to scrutinize.
Now, I'm studying the subjects and sitting in observatories,
Thinking back to when I'd write them off before I heard the stories,
Earth is boring now you're gone, I hope you're up there yearning for me,
Every star's a soul, I'd see you but there's nothing worse than stormy
Nights and light pollution, it's a blinding kind of nuisance,
I'd be admiring your fusion but the sky has turned translucent,
But still I'm plotting charts of stars, I'm always making observations,
Waiting for the day I get to see your face in constellations.
I wanna chase you forever, whether heaven or hell, I'll go,
Can't let you float away, I'll take a world tour with my telescope,
The way I speed through hemispheres, this night will be the death of me,
But otherwise I'd only see you half the year, you're my Persephone,
I'll trek from Arctic harbors, give binoculars to polar bears,
Shiver in my igloo, hands together, say a hopeful prayer,
And no, I won't be lonely there, your soul will be a solar flare,
You'll whisper an aurora, northern lights to let me know you care.
I'll whistle Canis Major and Minor, and let Orion guide me,
I'm quite unlikely to quit, what kind of guy would I be?
To search the Seven Sisters for an eighth and get inside their psyche?
I'll question Cassiopeia, Cygnus, and Pisces nicely,
Ask if they've seen something fishy, and then I'll talk to Taurus,
An orbit tourist, I'm daunted without the gall to forfeit,
So if you're gone, then I'm glad that this was all you taught me,
I live each day for the night and just endure the morning.
Jan 31, 2019
Jan 31, 2019 at 3:50 PM UTC
I am a beautiful song
Humans do not see me
But the stars besiege me
And my vision is for they.
For they see me truly,
In the night sky we play.
The humans beneath are nothing
I forget them now.
(A sign for us alone
We who see beyond
The swans we are are seeping
Into the great pond.
Past the way of milk
We've lost the bounds of silk
Woven for the lost souls
Yoked to sirens' ilk.)
We see.
We sought.
And not for nought.
We sing, we.
Oct 8, 2019
Oct 8, 2019 at 11:10 PM UTC
you smell like water boiling
with maybe a teaspoon of salt in it.
like safety, like a prelude to food,
like the reason everyone gathers in a kitchen during a party,
like home. which is cliche and sappy and ultimately true.
my least favorite poems tend to talk about how
cliche they are and how it's true anyway.
it's true I don't know another way to say this.
not yet. i think i'll learn.
there are constellations that you can only see from the other side of the world, that i've never seen.
the southern cross, phoenix, carina.
constellations I've seen over and over again.
orion, cygnus, the pleiades.
I've never seen them in your eyes. I'll never see them in your eyes.
There are still a whole universe of stars behind them.
Jan 4, 2015
Jan 4, 2015 at 10:45 PM UTC
I see you in the stars
Somehow you have been changed
From how the mortal eyes have seen you
Your mouth which used to speak
Of hatred and hope oblique
Becomes a beak without your teeth
Rage was born
But it will die
When its thrown into the fire
A brittle constellation
An ancient observation
You invite your guest to **** them
The poison of your being
These wounds caused by your sword
Let Heracles avenge them
All night
I look at you
Such beauty born from hatred
The knives in your hands
Cannot be be held by wings
Your arms that change until you drop them
The blasphemous skin
And fingers meant for ripping
These are the feathers that replace them
The sound of blood
And ugliness
Becomes beautiful music
May 1, 2016
May 1, 2016 at 1:15 AM UTC
You remember that cow they told us about?
The one that jumped over the moon?
Well.
It never came back.
It’s hind legs were so powerful,
it’s hooves so sturdy
that he jumped from here,
on earth,
all the way over the moon.
All the way through the asteroid belt
past Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune
and even Pluto,
that tiny little sphere of ice
those *** holes at the International Astronomical Union
declassified as a planet in 2006.
The cow died before it got there though.
Maybe because there’s no oxygen in space
though I’ll never be certain.
But his body kept on floating.
Still propelled by the force it left earth with:
a dead black and white cow
sailed out of our solar system
and into the Arm of Orion.
But the light from Rigel and Betelgeuse
chased him away.
Blue-white and red supergiants have that effect on people.
Or cows.
Even dead cows.
And so, our travelling hero, who I’ve now named Frank,
spiralled through 0-gravity
and ended up
on the other side of the Milky Way.
Cygnus. Cygnus’ Arm is what caught him.
Cygnus and Frank became good friends.
Who could imagine!?
A dead cow and swan made of stars!
How preposterous.
But eventually they spread apart
(as all friendships eventually do)
and so Frank was left without a companion
and drifted off through space once more.
And we haven’t heard from him since.
Feb 3, 2014
Feb 3, 2014 at 1:16 AM UTC
Give me the chance
To show you how to paint the wind.
We’ll be streaked in marigold and
Calypso blue, acrylic staining our
Hands and our faces and our legs and
Our lips.
Give me the chance
To teach you constellations at night.
I’ll point them out for you, each
Star comprising Orion, or Cygnus, or
My favorite, the Little Dipper;
We can trace them all with
Our fingertips.
Give me the chance
To dance with you in the rain.
Water droplets glistening in hair,
Lashes, as we twirl silly in
These sopping clothes— still tight,
Our grip.
Give me the chance.
Give me the chance
To whisper something in your ear.
A delicate sensation, like lace or
Light embrace, my words
Fluttering into your mind like
The butterflies we caught when
We were kids.
Give me the chance
To look at you a little longer than I’m supposed to.
I’d forget I was staring and then you’d
Turn towards me and I’d turn
Mad red because I was caught, and so I’d think to myself,
“Look what you did.”
Give me the chance
To get lost in your voice.
Language becomes a different entity when you speak;
The way your words wrap around me is
Mesmerizing, and each cadence strikes some
Chord deep within me that I thought
I hid.
Give me the chance
To ensconce myself in your heart.
I know I am small, and obscure, and odd, but
You are a Divine Truth, and before you
I knew only lies, and deceptions, and a bland and colorless world which now
You have blessed.
Give me the chance
To think about you every hour of every ******* day;
My entire being revolves around your existence and
Your beauty and your overwhelming goodness and
I try to stop but
These thoughts will never cease because you are you and
I am obsessed.
Give me the chance
To love you with every fragment of my heart.
Give me the chance.
Sep 26, 2018
Sep 26, 2018 at 7:01 AM UTC
If music were Arrhythmic it would consider us
On tinsel wire lit into net to beads
Eternally reaping
The clink of solar windmills
Echoing, echoing until it becomes flesh,
Tired, ringing decibels
Filling with water and becoming eyes
So that Death is a character
Swimming just past the horizon;
Collisions become heartbeats
Become locomotive thoughts
Charging westerly winds
Until our faces hone, stormed
And born.
Only my soul is left to fall,
Cygnus x-1 in a pool,
My life a distant call
Catalogued by the stars,
Noted for declination; classified pulsar
My words are dust in another’s space
But they recall fire and I blazed;
Numerically, years;
Physically, rage
And the only thing that breathed were dreams
And they sail, eternally, past the rhyme (Time)
They’ll still float when I return to haunt you;
They cast no light but they guide and sigh.
Alive
Aug 30, 2018
Aug 30, 2018 at 5:11 PM UTC
I look up..into an blackening sky
and imagine a wonder as I fly..
gaze upon Cygnus the swan
and think of X-1 residing inside..
A spinning hole of fourteen solar mass
as black as the devils devious ***
enshrined in belts of orange and red
energy stolen from the star that has bled
Into its fierce companions consuming hole
gnawing on the sun like deaths own toll
blasting out jets like an angels glowing trumpet
swallowing stars like a streetwalker strumpet
Its partner a sapphire star seriously suffering
the loss of mass with no way of buffering
its pull into the black holes continual maul
matter tattered like an old beautiful shawl
six light years away from our Earth
as a massive star its original birth
as a super nova mass playing its role
shrank into a carnivorous black hole
X-1 sprawled as a devouring creation
cruising through the Cygnus constellation
event horizon spinning 800 times a second
even as it grasps and continues to beckon
deadly beauty dancing in an obsidian gown
wearing the stars matter as an elegant crown
energy it has stolen and devoured whole
lost forever to the mouth of a black hole
Sep 1, 2016
Sep 1, 2016 at 11:30 AM UTC
-The stars in the sky have done nothing,
-Nothing, I think, to deserve their immortalization in verse
-They are the gas lamps still burning
-From the Universe’s Victorian Anglophile phase
-Old lights we haven’t looked at long enough
-To make them fade away
-The stars are dull and distant
-And yellowed with age
-When you step out to confide in them
-On a clear Winter’s night
-And instead find yourself starstruck
-To be surrounded by shattered sky
-Collapsed at your feet and dazzling only for you
-And the deer
-Picking through this fallen snow
-In quiet meditation
-Maybe the snow dazzles only for them
-It knows your heart looks skyward
Mar 17, 2013
Mar 17, 2013 at 8:45 PM UTC
i slowly cave in on myself
and the sky smells of falling stars—
i can taste it, leaking in through
the cracks. i ascend, like a hot
air balloon, my body filled
with moonlight, the dust
falling off the trail of a comet.
the night is dripping paint,
navy blue and black, the ravens
are cutting holes in the air and
neptune shines through, a minty
frost, ice and starlight. my feet
are far above the clouds—an
icarus floating in the dark,
dark sky, and i reach for cygnus
—no more light pollution here.
lyra plucks its golden strings
and the moon sings a lullaby,
sweet and slow like drops
of mercury. and there, as
stardust glows through my skin,
replaces sore organs with light
and swallows each aching bit,
i sleep.
Jan 5, 2017
Jan 5, 2017 at 2:49 AM UTC
kayaking, on the same lake
since college, two score before
by the tiny bay ice fishermen swore
was haunted--having lost one
of their own, only last winter
if the dead man's spirit lingered
he hadn't heard or seen it, and the bay,
though small, was deep, calm
he rowed daily to this big cove
a treasure trove of quiet and color
without a house or pier in sight
as the sun was sinking
into the lake one August eve
he heard a hissing from the thick
stands of pine
webbed feet, he did not imagine
could be as treacherous as talons
but the were, and the knobby beak
of this mad mute swan felt like pliers
when it yanked on his ear, ripping
nearly half of it off
it took but one sharp blow
from his oar to thwart the attack
and the giant bird disappeared
into the dusk
in its wake a pool of blood
and pain he had not felt since hot shrapnel
pierced his young shoulder
in that crazy Asian war
the battle lasted
but a few manic moments
as is the case with most wars of the flesh
though long enough to end his silent sojourns
on this still blue glass, now shattered
by flapping limbs of man and beast
Dec 3, 2015
Dec 3, 2015 at 8:38 PM UTC
I’ve been sitting here
Sitting here on this distant planet
For what seems like years
I ran away to get away from the dark.
Away from a broken heart
I’ve sat
And I’ve stared at the little dot every night
That little dot that I had once called Home
That no longer was Home in my heart
Then you appeared
A cluster of stars
Peeking out from behind the clouds
I wanted you
in that very moment
I needed you
This distant planet I sat upon knew
It Knew you were the one.
The one I needed to call Home
so it sent me off.
And I took flight once more
Soaring through the galaxies
Past the planets who nodded at me
They too knew
Knew that I was headed towards you
The cluster of stars.
When I arrived
It was unlike anything I had ever seen before
Your stars,
no longer a random cluster
they had a place
they had purpose
they had me mesmerized
when I met you I was reborn
reborn into a star
a star who’s only purpose was to be with you
to complete the cluster
the constellation
you became my favorite constellation
you ARE my favorite constellation
WE
Are my favorite constellation.
Oct 5, 2018
Oct 5, 2018 at 10:02 AM UTC
I smelt your sweet scent whilst traveling home,
And got overwhelmed by my emotions,
Remembering all we said and done,
My tears became an ocean.
Though the sea of time has drifted us apart,
And others than I have given you love,
Know that ever here that’s left in me,
Is yours just as it was.
Jul 15, 2022
Jul 15, 2022 at 3:54 PM UTC
i've never seen such
astounding things
a discovery made
on a passage within
i recall sleeping
in celestial cots
made up of cygnus,
pavo,
the enticing lot
green velvet curtains drawn
block out the sun
although the windows are no more than
one
surrounded
by ivies, scripture
and platinum-tipped
pens
the era of thought
all within my
mind...
i awaken from slumber to quite different sights
the very same forces that prevail in this place,
the forces above
alluding, brooding
the thief comes too smug,
wind thrashes the sails
a cynical offering,
all grief to repent,
the season of starving,
the season of lent
isn't it odd how the winds never billow?
over the strangest utopian lands
the islands of women with no trace of men
the archipelagos of shellfish on land
and that one place due north...
beyond arctic bird coves
where wisps of the sky
grace plat-inum snow
the things that you see when it's dark on the ocean
four sailors drunken on laughter and autumn-rum
down though the seabed
the lowest of shores
the music through rafters,
flutes clamor and roar...
torn and burdened is the world,
but brokenness never equated unworth
the land once which was
trodden,
the seas overcame
i nod off to sleep
just to shake off the pain
the forces come crashing,
formed over the bluff
indifferently shouting,
unrighteously tough
here from my balcony
on french-spanish estate
once indifferent forces,
concluding in rain.
Nov 14, 2019
Nov 14, 2019 at 4:05 PM UTC
I don’t know about Scutum-Centaurus
And I don’t know about Perseus.
I don’t know about Norma
And I don’t know about Sagittarius.
But in the Milky Way’s Orion-Cygnus
I’ve looked at every single being.
Among them all in their cosmic realms
My Galactrix, you are the sweetest thing!
Aug 5, 2020
Aug 5, 2020 at 6:20 AM UTC
On the night of the Darkmoon
High summer, stars like jewel fire in the skies
Cygnus spreading her wings over all
In the kingdom of power
The Orange King is dancing and chanting
Dumping his buckets of warm spittle over the Dreamers
Even here on the guarded Isle,
We can hear their screams
The grey boys who follow the King
Crawl out of their cocoons, cradling their black weapons
Now in the height of the Darkmoon
The siren trucks are carrying the victims of the King’s speech
Murdered and clutching their dead children
The Grey Men in the high towers murmur
And count their golden trophies
Still it is a Darkmoon summer night on the Isle
And as dawn begins to break
We can see shy red flowers on the bean vines.
We pray for healing and the cage for the Orange monarch
But our hope is feeble on this early morning. Aug. 6, 2019
Aug 6, 2019
Aug 6, 2019 at 12:41 PM UTC
there are poems
I do not share
with the world
many of them
are songs
I do not sing them
for anyone
I hold them in my heart
like a swan
Mar 14, 2019
Mar 14, 2019 at 7:22 PM UTC
I like to imagine the sky above me, a canvas,
floating in the sea of the sylphs, and I,
a paintbrush, white and orange on blue, and green
when I steal from the fields and farms of unsuspecting families,
and red, too, like the dirt under unsuspecting families,
—like on the hill to the pond when I first met you,
a blank canvas colored the colors of the rainbow, like
your voice, your eyes, your dress of feathers, flowing,
a crayon of light on the asphalt of life,
dyeing, dying, the color of Orion's bow-hand
as he slings your legs, one meat crayon after another,
one color after another, and finally you, my most beautiful,
—and as you looked toward me with eyes of dusk,
I looked across from my triangular wings of summer,
and saw that the night sky is black,
just as the asphalt is but a grave for crayons of the rainbow
because too many humans are artists.
Jun 12, 2020
Jun 12, 2020 at 4:03 AM UTC
The stars call
But we can never answer
We can but look
But never visit
Fuzzy beautiful images
Sent back for study
By machines
With names of great ones
Long since dead
Swirling nebulae
The most beautiful colors imagined
In shapes of horsehead and *****
Butterflies and other fantastic creatures
Stars form connect the dot pages in the sky
Named for Greek myths', and animals
Pleiades, Orion, Pegasus, Andromeda
Ursa major and minor, Cygnus
The deep field picture
Show us the breadth of the universe
Galaxy upon galaxy
Rings, and helix, and discs
Planets we discover, the possibilities
But we just know they are there
Because of a wobble, or a dimming
Of the star they orbit
Light years separate us from our quarry
Unsurmountable distances
With today's technology
Perhaps some day
Sep 30, 2016
Sep 30, 2016 at 11:36 AM UTC