"delaying" poems
I remember when I wanted to be
Anything and everything somehow
Now I’m starting to think:
Was that jus childhood or I am different now?
I haven’t achieved anything yet
I’m ordinary and average
I’m no one you’d remember
The world is not my stage.
Still, why do I feel I don’t need any help:
When it’s obvious that I do?
All those people giving me advice,
Why can’t I just listen to you?
Why does it take so long for your words
to sink into my brain?
Why can’t I see how much I lose
And how little I gain?
Why did I make myself this way?
Why can’t I make myself change?
Why can’t I just do it?
Why am I so strange?
Why are there so many “why?” s in this?
I need to stop making excuses
Stop procrastinating and delaying
I should just get down to it.
There are things I need to do
I need to learn how to talk
I need to start listening now
I need to crawl before I walk
Today, I feel like I’m worthless
Tomorrow I’ll feel fine
I need whatever I’m feeling now
To stay inside this brain of mine.
I’m too young to be worthless
Too young to keep on crying
Too young to even feel this way
Too young to stop trying
I just need to find the will again;
The will to do something great
Find it, Keep it and never let it go.
“I am the master of my fate” (Invictus, William Henley, 1888)
Aug 26, 2014
Aug 26, 2014 at 2:56 AM UTC
Dangerous roads
and starless nights
a/c out
and faulty lights
squeaky brakes
a seat that bites
you can take your truck and stuff it
endless circles
lonely bi ways
without a net
on the highway
it's time that i just
did it my way
you can take your truck and stuff it
you can take your truck and stuff it sideways
right there where the sun don't shine
you can take your truck and stuff it sideways
it's not your life that's on the line
you can take your truck and stuff it sideways
right there where the sun don't shine
you can take your truck and stuff it sideways
i'm on my way....and that's just fine
paperwork
time delaying
canvas straps
constantly fraying
you ***** to me
but i hear naying
you can take your truck and stuff it
life's short
i'm not waiting
takes too much
to keep berating
i'm getting *******
and we're not dating
you can take your truck and stuff it
you can take your truck and stuff it sideways
right there where the sun don't shine
you can take your truck and stuff it sideways
it's not your life that's on the line
you can take your truck and stuff it sideways
right there where the sun don't shine
you can take your truck and stuff it sideways
i'm on my way....and that's just fine
Sep 14, 2014
Sep 14, 2014 at 1:31 PM UTC
I ******* rock it
Then I lay it down
I am not a quitter, sick spitter
**** I just flow in rounds
atmospherics an
******* stellar sounds
Lyrics of astrophysics,
like chemistry
I just shape the ground
just huddle
But do not make a sound
I crush a cypher, decipher words into crooked nouns
Instant reaction to actions,
My riddles break the crowd
I've adapted to hard labor now
Can't **** with the vision
I'm here to **** it
and change the sound
Bicycle wheel spinning, I'm grinding
I need to get around
Flow soulful, for the soul
like I'm the golden child
Y'all so so, I go super sayin
No super wild
No delaying, I'm not evening playing
You're played out
Penetrator is coming through now
Left-over flow ******* better eat their food now
2016 fiend, ***** this just a new style
I hit the restart button, say **** the hard drive, bike peddling to work say **** the hard ride, living life is easy I say **** the hard times
I'm choking the game, I'm looking to ******* hog tie
Business this
you can **** on my long tie...
Young killer
been spittin it for a long time
Past due with my ******* come up
Ain't nobody ******* with the vision I'm blowing up
Cutting all these lames like division
So I can it add up
All of the positives, at heart I'm an optimist, don't **** with my oxygen
You can't breath what I breathe, **** your accomplishments, I will squash all of them I just abolish bums
Don't **** with my vision, I will **** for what is mine
and do it with precision
All these hoes just multiply
I divided with the quickness
All these fakes just want to try
don't try cause your missing
**** all of the rules
***** I am a misfit
I am just a ghoul, no goblin, no riches
The world is full of fools
Who can't **** with my vision
Nov 22, 2016
Nov 22, 2016 at 1:19 AM UTC
The old tainted laamp
Waits on the wood
Where wall meets wall.
Waiting
for a lightening bolt to strike
in me.
Waiting for uniqueness
to flow.
Giving something as
noticable as the glow it once shed.
Yet storms are
delaying waiting for
their moment
to wake me up.
But as we both wait
for the unique
We'll just
sit
and stare
at each other.
Feb 4, 2011
Feb 4, 2011 at 9:57 PM UTC
I feel so powerless as the news relays its latest story
Of a vicious storm revolving the area you're in
I wish you'd appear on the television,
So I could reach out my arm and drag you to where I am
The storm's been flooding streets and delaying travel
And soon might be wrecking homes and crushing lives
I'm so afraid of you being taken away
It'd **** me to see my beacon lose its light
Sep 19, 2014
Sep 19, 2014 at 9:04 AM UTC
This was written a few Septembers ago. Walking on the streets of a now deserted beach island, only the leaves, in various states, to keep me company.
September,
walk with me,
under bridges of wedding tree canopies,
still green aplenty,
tho subtle marked for change,
making summer illusions,
environmentally unsustainable.
September,
stroll on pathways
of lesser, off the track, shaded lanes,
the sun blocker trees wear new necklaces,
brown and yellow diamonds,
a coming attraction of
their denouement,
their denudement.
The September trees are:
Ever so slightly stooped,
bent with weight of a surety,
knowing with high certainty,
their future, bleak,
bowed and drooped,
discouraged by the
cold travails soon to arrive.
Living in the recent past,
I am dressed inappropriately,
white tee and shorts,
past pretender,
still dressed in my
Gap issue summer uniform,
summer suspended animation.
Island streets are de-humanized,
gone home are the children,
newly fallen leaves have,
their place, taken.
The leaves are:
magically organized along
the sidelines of empty streets,
quiet stadiums of would be
kid's touch football fields.
browned, crisp and soulless,
first greet this solitary stroller,
like a cheering throng of ghosts,
celebrating a sighting -
man, as a seasonal fossil,
one that still is living
and worth reminding, yet
human too shall pass when
his fall arrives.
the leave's cheers make over
into jeers and mocking laughs:
Oh humans, they say,
your summer songs naive,
mais tres charmant.
On Crescent Beach,
the driftwood sadly forlorn,
looking more adrift than ever,
for no one passes to express
admiration at the past seasons
Nouveau Expressionism,
an objet d'art lonely,
for the beach gallery shuttered,
raising questions existential.
Is driftwood on the beach sans
human admiration,
art, truth or refuse?
I am looking backwards as the
Earth moves forward.
My own axis, my eyes,
conscientious objectors
refuse to be pressed
into service of the seasons.
No, no,
to involuntary servitude,
to rotation and revolution.
Nature's witnesses,
trees and leaves write
their own poem,
of foolish men who:
Bow and droop,
discouraged by the
travails soon to arrive,
Delaying their own fall,
finally shed summer delusions
like leaves upon the ground,
summer poetry silenced,
summer suspended, no more.
Dec 7, 2013
Dec 7, 2013 at 8:06 AM UTC
Kissing me
Vicious was my scheme
I made a story of tainted glory
Anticipating his biding sincerity
Craving the touch of my hips
Misplacing perseverance
Delaying conscience
Losing rationality
Watching his admiration
Over compensating captivation
Realizing his conspiracy
May 13, 2016
May 13, 2016 at 9:11 PM UTC
The past
always seems
To chase after us
When I choose to lie
I've learned to never
Let it go any further
If I know
I did something
That I'm accused of
I confess
I don't want to play
Cat and mouse
Delaying the inevitable
Is the worst game
You can play
And never win
If I did it
Then I did it
And that's all
There is to it
Apr 23, 2022
Apr 23, 2022 at 1:54 AM UTC
”against your will were you created,
against your will were you born,
against your will do you live,
against your will will you die, and
against your will will you stand in judgment before the
King of kings, the Holy One, blessed be He.”
Rabbi Elazar HaKappar (C.170 - C.200 CE)
(Ha Kappar: the one who made and gave atonement)
<§>
***in these, the years of my erosive declination,
when the noble prize, time for introspection,
once was a chore of delaying, now no longer can be off-put,
the certainties of Elazar, offer guidable satisfactions***
***the nighttime review, resurrecting my life, the gaps,
the untaken actions, those dream-schemes speak loudest,
memories of what should have been, are a litany of what ifs,
prosecutorial accusations of crass wastage***
***against my will, the charges brought,
against my will, plead guiltily my innocence,
against my will, knowingly, time’s erasure judgment,
secures my fate, all the granular cells causal dissipation***
***my warped willingness to be a coward,
it was my meditative, to natural be the lesser man,
choosing the safety premise, the road most oft trod,
the addition of my meager totality, willing given***
Even if all these land mine/roadblocks
and summary judgements are against my will,
willingly do I confess, in all innocence, my guilt,
“if it be my will”
Apr 4, 2021
Apr 4, 2021 at 2:45 PM UTC
Merging the surges.
Converging the urges.
Surveying and delaying.
A brutally soft touch.
A swift tug.
Scramble to the rug.
Hop, twirl, stamp.
Intrinsic epidemics.
Employing harsh thoughts.
Enjoying warm laughs.
Instant confusion.
Undeliberate actions.
Sub-consciencely projected.
Magnified emotions.
Disrespectful conclusions.
Foundations laid, entrusted.
Irrigation failed, erupted.
Defied by fate.
Jan 22, 2012
Jan 22, 2012 at 8:34 AM UTC
It started with a kiss
Hand in sand
He swept me into the mist
That wasn't the plan
The music rang through both our ears
Playing & playing
Delaying, delaying.
What was this
Not dominance
But a mutual self-inflicted full oneness
Acting out not a doubt
Gain some control
While the body suffices & one feels whole.
Wholeness or numbness one will never know
Whilst playing & playing
Delaying, delaying
The inevitable
Jan 13, 2021
Jan 13, 2021 at 1:40 AM UTC
He knock my hands away.
My grip loosens.
He is insistent
He is persistent
I am only delaying.
He is rough in his haste
but it's my heart I'm praying...
won't rip & tear and meet the fate of my underwear.
Oct 12, 2018
Oct 12, 2018 at 10:06 AM UTC
staying up late just thinking of all the could-beens and should-beens that could and should have been us.
what if we'd tried a little harder? persisted a little longer? held on to each other as tightly as we should have?
would you be by my side then, instead of the empty void staring tauntingly back at me?
would our hands be clasped together, interwoven,
your eyes that once bored right back into the back of mind haunting me wherever i would go,
your touch tattooed into the skin of my palms as they once were?
what if i hadn't let go?
what if i'd learnt fate's cruel lesson that
possessing the trait of fickleness never awarded anything but everything slipping past, earlier?
would you be willing to stay with me then, and forgive me for all the wrongdoings that i would inevitably cause?
would we have ever evolved into more than just an idealized dream drawn from a fragmented memory,
the idea of an irrevocable love that despite having been mulled over for what would've seemed like an eternity,
has never seen the light of reality before?
then again, everything does appear only better when it's all in your head.
when i can still pretend that you are who i expect you to be,
and i may be accepted for who i am truly,
excess baggage of unneeded insecurities and imperfections weighing me down and all.
is it better to be cleanly rejected or to be
torn down bit by bit,
night by night,
spent just staring at a blank screen and waiting,
hovering over imperishably,
pure naive hope fuelling the drive to continue delaying the inexorable?
foolishly believing that crossed fingers and
any lingering feelings that hadn't yet been sieved away by the
jaded culture we exist and drown in today
would perhaps, even if accidentally,
as if out of a fairytale that i starkly don't belong to,
send me a text back?
Jul 25, 2018
Jul 25, 2018 at 7:06 PM UTC
Dip down upon the northern shore
O sweet new-year delaying long;
Thou doest expectant nature wrong;
Delaying long, delay no more.
What stays thee from the clouded noons,
Thy sweetness from its proper place?
Can trouble live with April days,
Or sadness in the summer moons?
Bring orchis, bring the foxglove spire,
The little speed well's darling blue,
Deep tulips dash'd with fiery dew,
Laburnums, dropping-wells of fire.
O thou new-year, delaying long,
Delayest the sorrow in my blood,
That longs to burst a frozen bud
And flood a fresher throat with song.
2.3k
With a "STARTLED" Jolt at my breakfast table !! The Headlines SCREAMED out at Me,,,,, "F A V O R S* TO BE SHUTTERED " This was a Bit-Much I thought. "FAVORS" was to be closed for good and no one even had the Gall to call and tell Me ! "ME" the Very FIRST customer and the most steady since the Major Grand Opening>> ten years ago_____"TO THE DAY" ! To the Day?? GOD, that sure seems strange, What are the odds of that happening, I Pondered? While Delaying Pondering, I decided to read the OBITUARY regarding FAVORS. Hmmmm, , Let's see, You've got to be kidding, they are taking out the tables , My Favorite FIRST. And my Goodness, even the Wine, wonder if I got the last bottle of that 1953 Fracioussa ?? A taste of such Mellowness and lingering Kindness ! Kindness surely isn't what has caused the DEMISE of
FAVORS" . Demise of such a GRAND Place "Was-Not" left to chance, someone has deliberately caused this Tragic End of Such Magnificance ! A TEAR IS ABOUT TO "WET" the page NOW ___,but___the phone rings and my thoughts are brought to it. It is a Mysterious call, some strange Voice, Telling Me to *HURRY on down to "FAVORS"___"RIGHT-NOW" !! Now?? "YES-NOW" !!So, on to FAVORS, to watch them take out the tables, and yes take out the wine of that favorite place of Mine!! As I step out of my CRAFT and onto the MONOLINE, the Hustling, bustling of the crowds, reminds me of the longing of that "FAVORITE PLACE OF MINE"
Oct 4, 2010
Oct 4, 2010 at 4:50 AM UTC
Never finding expectation to exist beyond the last known blip of the past, projected through my back, in tackled grounds, bound, in the banter of spectators, speculating the specifications of specialised weaponry, silencing the empathy, and seducing my enemies in the isolated idolatry of their stupidity that i sculpted from the scrutiny, that was wished to have eluded me but soothed my playful solidarity to my sickly game called reap and sow instead.
We are all dead, all dead inside, residing in thriving wounds.
Left unsaid in rhymes etched in tombs.
In the lies of old bafoons
I shall not fight, myself, as they do, nor shall i defy whats right just to eat tonight.
I will fight until I am mine and sleep.
Cradled in my shrine of thoughts amiss, in the frost of loss vs reward.
I am torn, between torture and a vultures wait of the prize to pedal the pestilent pettiness to the edges of my testaments, in the truth of youth-less suicide, slicing social structures into cylinders to swing in circles around the room.
Swooning, in my looming threat of self immolation to warm the heart with shopping carts of satire, killing the sad away.
Delaying the the decay of hope.
A stay of patience in my irrelevance,never hesitant in my clever projections of nothing.
I feed you nothing
But emptiness
Shuttering in the sultry shade of my suffering and loving every moment of it.
Saying nothing too much in things of such insignificance.
Spilling the mizpellings and settling for wordlessness after a good ***** of belligerent arrogance.
Im tempted to quit but my wick is lit and to submit now, would just put the fire out and i want to watch the burn.
Dec 13, 2012
Dec 13, 2012 at 11:41 PM UTC
when he was 84, he rarely recalled
the Great War, though he left a finger somewhere
in French soil, and on deep sleep nights,
few and far between, it would call him
a spectral image of gas dead faces
drifting through like sallow clouds
in the charcoal sky
his nephew was the only one left
to fish these green waters, to court the steady
trout that he too saw in his dreams--all the others,
even his own sons, marching in the concrete squares
of the cities, visiting now and then like peddlers
hawking wares he could not understand...
soccer games and mutual funds
gourmet feasts at eateries
with cryptic names
the lake was still the same
the loons chatting, the waves lapping
but without his Helen, the fish he caught
were usually granted reprieve, saved from
his sharp gutting blade, her sizzling skillet,
and without her beside him under her ancient quilts,
the nights were not longer, for grief, he knew,
did not stretch time, but only
made its circle smaller
was a sun sated Saturday
when the nephew had honey do's as good excuses
and the old man was left alone, sitting by a black rotary phone,
waiting for one of his old nine digits to dial the new nine and two ones,
it is what they all would have expected, a cry for help, a long mute ambulance ride, them seeing him helpless with hoses and wires, delaying the funeral pyres, as was the custom in this post teen century
instead, though he felt the anvil on his chest,
and sweat drenched his JC Penney work shirt,
he moved not his feeble fingers to the phone, but his fated feet
to the lake, once only a long a hop from the porch, now a mammoth journey, ten, twelve Sisyphus steps downhill--when he reached the waters edge, the fowl called him casually, their slow song on the currents,
and he sat in the fresh grass, watching the painted blue sky
he saw the fins of those he had set free, hoping
that would count for something
when he curled in fetal repose,
and closed his eyes
by this lonely lake
Mar 5, 2015
Mar 5, 2015 at 10:31 PM UTC
O Swallow, Swallow, flying, flying South,
Fly to her, and fall upon her gilded eaves,
And tell her, tell her, what I tell to thee.
O tell her, Swallow, thou that knowest each,
That bright and fierce and fickle is the South,
And dark and true and tender is the North.
O Swallow, Swallow, if I could follow, and light
Upon her lattice, I would pipe and trill,
And cheep and twitter twenty million loves.
O were I thou that she might take me in,
And lay me on her ***** and her heart
Would rock the snowy cradle till I died.
Why lingereth she to clothe her heart with love,
Delaying as the tender ash delays
To clothe herself, when all the woods are green?
O tell her, Swallow, that thy brood is flown:
Say to her, I do but wanton in the South,
But in the North long since my nest is made.
O tell her, brief is life but love is long,
And brief the sun of summer in the North,
And brief the moon of beauty in the South.
O Swallow, flying from the golden woods,
Fly to her, and pipe and woo her, and make her mine,
And tell her, tell her, that I follow thee.
1.8k
The Condition of My Heart
by Munir Niazi
loose translation by Michael R. Burch
There's no need for anyone else to get excited:
The condition of my heart is not the condition of hers.
But were we to receive any sort of good news, Munir,
How spectacular compared to earth's mundane sunsets!
Mystery
by Munir Niazi
loose translation by Michael R. Burch
She was a mystery:
Her lips were parched ...
but her eyes were two unfathomable oceans.
I continued delaying ...
by Munir Niazi
loose translation by Michael R. Burch
I continued delaying ...
the words I should speak
the promises I should keep
the one I should dial
despite her cruel denial
I continued delaying ...
the shoulder I must offer
the hand I must proffer
the untraveled lanes
we may not see again
I continued delaying ...
long strolls through the seasons
for my own selfish reasons
the remembrances of lovers
to erase thoughts of others
I continued delaying ...
to save someone dear
from eternities unclear
to make her aware
of our reality here
I continued delaying ...
Keywords/Tags: Munir Niazi, Urdu, Punjabi, translation, Pakistan, Lahore, love, love hurts, heart, heartbreak, condition, mystery, pashto, relationship, delay, delays, delaying, mrburdu
May 4, 2020
May 4, 2020 at 2:57 AM UTC
Dip down upon the northern shore,
O sweet new-year delaying long;
Thou doest expectant nature wrong;
Delaying long, delay no more.
What stays thee from the clouded noons,
Thy sweetness from its proper place?
Can trouble live with April days,
Or sadness in the summer moons?
Bring orchis, bring the foxglove spire,
The little speedwell's darling blue,
Deep tulips dash'd with fiery dew,
Laburnums, dropping-wells of fire.
O thou, new-year, delaying long,
Delayest the sorrow in my blood,
That longs to burst a frozen bud
And flood a fresher throat with song.
1.7k
Trapped inside my own head.
My own heart.
You cant imagine the pain I hold.
The lonely-ness.
The empty-ness.
My soul is molding.
Decaying in the summer sun.
Washing swiftly down the drain.
Delaying damage that's already done.
Drowning in a flood of summer rain.
Dec 8, 2009
Dec 8, 2009 at 8:08 PM UTC
Blithe dreams arise to greet us,
And life feels clean and new,
For the old love comes to meet us
In the dawning and the dew.
O'erblown with sunny shadows,
O'ersped with winds at play,
The woodlands and the meadows
Are keeping holiday.
Wild foals are scampering, neighing,
Brave merles their hautboys blow:
Come! let us go a-maying
As in the Long-Ago.
Here we but peak and dwindle:
The clank of chain and crane,
The whir of crank and spindle
Bewilder heart and brain;
The ends of our endeavour
Are merely wealth and fame,
Yet in the still Forever
We're one and all the same;
Delaying, still delaying,
We watch the fading west:
Come! let us go a-maying,
Nor fear to take the best.
Yet beautiful and spacious
The wise, old world appears.
Yet frank and fair and gracious
Outlaugh the jocund years.
Our arguments disputing,
The universal Pan
Still wanders fluting--fluting--
Fluting to maid and man.
Our weary well-a-waying
His music cannot still:
Come! let us go a-maying,
And pipe with him our fill.
When wanton winds are flowing
Among the gladdening glass;
Where hawthorn brakes are blowing,
And meadow perfumes pass;
Where morning's grace is greenest,
And fullest noon's of pride;
Where sunset spreads serenest,
And sacred night's most wide;
Where nests are swaying, swaying,
And spring's fresh voices call,
Come! let us go a-maying,
And bless the God of all!
1.7k
the half-life of a resolution
~for maaidah durrani~
“your words really spoke to me and
i deeply encourage you to write more”
<•>
any resolution
barely lasts to the completion of its
flyby, tower-buzzing,
razzmatazz appearance,
colliding with the wall called
not today a/k/a,
tomorrow
tomorrow takes the lead pole position,
the conditional timing prepositional,
the delaying exscual misanthropic of
but one more,
whatever, it’ll keep for 24 more,
holding out the pretense of hope
for the resolute dissolute
sure, for sure, tomorrow,
will dissolve regret
tomorrow will write of poetry
but not a poem,
tomorrow will swear my
resolutions will be enacted
or, at least,
erased and re-written,
the oldest first when
re-added to the top of the list
tomorrow
will honor thy request
keep on writing for I’m no fool,
1200 plus poems, I’m yet a novitiate
I will keep your request as
one I’ve can never
cross off my life’s list
but tomorrow’s resolve,
be a better man,
leaner, briefer, kinder, a better lover,
sadly
the list has overrun the white pad,
the blue lines refuse another resolu....
Feb 25, 2018
Feb 25, 2018 at 5:16 PM UTC
A holy demure had risen
from the thoughtless exposure
that crumbled under her heels
each crux up Olympus;
And I, forever faithful,
belaying her ascent, unfounded,
delaying my own, grounded as
her head breached the clouds,
A fairytale if not for the landslide
burying me under stone proof
of her unfathomable scale
out of my rope-burned hands
that only God can measure.
Jul 25, 2014
Jul 25, 2014 at 5:19 PM UTC