"drowsiness" poems
O'er the midnight moorlands crying,
Thro' the cypress forests sighing,
In the night-wind madly flying,
Hellish forms with streaming hair;
In the barren branches creaking,
By the stagnant swamp-pools speaking,
Past the shore-cliffs ever shrieking,
Damn'd demons of despair.
Once, I think I half remember,
Ere the grey skies of November
Quench'd my youth's aspiring ember,
Liv'd there such a thing as bliss;
Skies that now are dark were beaming,
Bold and azure, splendid seeming
Till I learn'd it all was dreaming —
Deadly drowsiness of Dis.
But the stream of Time, swift flowing,
Brings the torment of half-knowing —
Dimly rushing, blindly going
Past the never-trodden lea;
And the voyager, repining,
Sees the wicked death-fires shining,
Hears the wicked petrel's whining
As he helpless drifts to sea.
Evil wings in ether beating;
Vultures at the spirit eating;
Things unseen forever fleeting
Black against the leering sky.
Ghastly shades of bygone gladness,
Clawing fiends of future sadness,
Mingle in a cloud of madness
Ever on the soul to lie.
Thus the living, lone and sobbing,
In the throes of anguish throbbing,
With the loathsome Furies robbing
Night and noon of peace and rest.
But beyond the groans and grating
Of abhorrent Life, is waiting
Sweet Oblivion, culminating
All the years of fruitless quest.
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Already over the sea from her old spouse she comes,
the blonde goddess whose frosty wheels bring day.
Why do you hurry, Aurora? Hold off, so may the birds
shed ritual blood each year for Memnon's shade.
Now it's good to lie in my mistress's tender arms;
if ever, now it's good to feel her near.
Now drowsiness is richest, the morning air is cool,
and birds sing shrilly from their tender throats.
Why do you hurry, dreaded by men and dreaded by girls?
Draw back your dewy reins with your crimson hand.
The sailor marks the stars more clearly before you rise,
not raoming aimlessly across the sea;
the traveller, though weary, arises when you come,
and the soldier sets his savage hand to arms;
you're first to see the farmers wield their heavy hoes
and to call slow oxen under the curving yoke;
you rob boys of their sleep and give them over to schools,
where tender hands must bear the savage switch;
and you send reckless fools to pledge themselves in court,
where they take ruinous losses through one word;
the lawyer and the pleader take no delight in you,
for each must rise and wrangle with new torts;
and you ensure that women's chores are never done,
calling the spinner's hands back to her wool.
All this I'd bear; but who would bear that girls must rise
at dawn, unless himself he has no girl?
How many times I've wished Night would not yield to you,
the stars not fade and flee before your face!
How many times I've wished the wind would smash your wheels,
your steeds would stumble on a cloud and fall!
Jealous, why do you hurry? If your son is black,
it's since his mother's heart is that same color.
How I wish Tithonus could still tell tales of you:
no goddess would be more disgraced in heaven.
Since he is endless eons old, you rise and flee
at dawn to the chariot the old man hates,
but if some Cephalus were lying in your arms,
you'd cry out, 'O run slowly, steeds of night! '
Why should this lover pay, if your husband withers with age?
Was I the matchmaker who brought him to you?
Remember how much sleep was given to her loved youth
by Luna - and she's beautiful as you.
The father of gods himself, to see you all the less,
joined two nights into one for his desires.
I'd finished my complaint. You could tell she'd heard: she blushed;
and yet the day rose at its usual time.
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I close my eyes.
I am there, when my body is not.
My surroundings are quite different,
But my mind leads me somewhere else.
Memories flood and my heart picks up pace.
I am on my way to my happy place.
A fan blowing icy air fills the room,
And it chills me,
But tight arms around me spills warmth into my body.
This feels right and perfect,
Nothing could ruin this moment.
Thunder booms in the rooms around us.
The arms pull me closer,
Threatening to pull me into his heart,
Completely engulfing me.
Sweet humming and a perfect heartbeat makes me want to cry,
I ask myself,
Why does this perfect being have to be put through so much pain?
But the night continues with inviting kisses and screaming whispers,
Hushing from a friend while happiness engulfs us.
The first “I love you.” Is received and responded.
“Be mine.” Is asked and answered with a kiss and a yes.
Drowsiness swallows us together, waking up to check on each other and pull closer.
Falling asleep in each other’s dreams, we beg not to have this end.
Then I snap back to reality and smile while my heart flutters,
Needing to go back to this or recreate.
Only one person can relate,
I go and talk to him and walk with him,
Fall again.
I’m his and always shall be.
Can’t he see?
He means the world to me.
He is my happy place.
His face,
And his voice.
I have no other choice.
His eyes are the prize,
My heart’s my disguise.
So to be apart would be bonkers,
He is the holder of my heart,
He is my happy place.
May 13, 2014
May 13, 2014 at 9:50 AM UTC
Drown me in drowsiness, take me away.
I sure as hell don't want to stay.
I'm tired of trying, and then being abandoned.
So drown me in drowsiness,
Take away my horizons.
Jun 18, 2015
Jun 18, 2015 at 11:15 PM UTC
The poetry of earth is never dead:
When all the birds are faint with the hot sun,
And hide in cooling trees, a voice will run
From hedge to hedge about the new-mown mead;
That is the Grasshopper's—he takes the lead
In summer luxury,—he has never done
With his delights; for when tired out with fun
He rests at ease beneath some pleasant ****
The poetry of earth is ceasing never:
On a lone winter evening, when the frost
Has wrought a silence, from the stove there shrills
The Cricket's song, in warmth increasing ever,
And seems to one in drowsiness half lost,
The Grasshopper's among some grassy hills.
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the glass jar
full to the brim; steaming
teaming with drowsiness
he left it
out
lid-less
7 pages ,
front & back
he said he had so much to say
he could've gone on for
biblical lengths
he drove 45 minutes out of his way
just to say
nothing
Only glare
he said he thought about me
for the last 3 days
even more at nighttime
in the dark room
unhinged; TV on
I unfriended him nervously
phonecall
phonecall
phonecall
phonecall
phonecall
voicemail
Nov 13, 2012
Nov 13, 2012 at 2:38 PM UTC
I've seen bodies aching,
freshly groomed,
seeking to fill the void with
touch.
Sleeping under vibrant bouquets
of drowsiness and lethargy.
I can see the figure in my future
He's drowning in the plants of lust
But I should wait until that time.
I must, I must, I must.
Aug 26, 2015
Aug 26, 2015 at 2:39 PM UTC
I could never finish writing off your name, with your strawberry scent vibrating towards mine and your hooded eyes that covers the wrinkles and your cheek dampens when you crook a smile, I could never stop writing you.
Maybe I was just drawing a thin line with heaven and a tightrope with my eyes close and hell bent towards the unending loophole of my forsaking fantasies, I guess I might stay here. There was something about you that I cannot forsake nor repaint with foreign colors and another texture — you were as a majestic being in my lucid dream.
That even though I cannot recount my fingers one or two or five or ten, I can picture the deepening hole of your dimples whenever you give the world another unbreathable cheeky beam and I sulk here, waiting for another neon glow of that majestic world in my dreamlike prophetic future.
Something told me it was you. As I bear witness another beauty in the realm of my alternative home, maybe then, peering at the sky while I was on a tightrope is worth every penny of sleep and drowsiness gulping another 90's wine.
May 10, 2022
May 10, 2022 at 5:29 AM UTC
The sound of nothing from tearless eyes,
The fear of breathing or living a lie.
A broken heart or a memory blurred,
All the words - unsaid or unheard.
The song of a forever-a pain in the ear,
The beauty of love -a bruise full of fear,
Silence of a nightmare or the drowsiness of a dream.
The plight of a dreamer, the indulgence in reality freed,
Find me in my words or lose me in a abyss of sorrow,
Seek me in the moonlit night, make me smile till morrow.
It came through the pain, filled in with light,
Threw a memory unforgotten to lose the fight.
Sinister and wicked – time’s plans unsure,
Vulnerability at stake, time can never cure.
Nov 24, 2012
Nov 24, 2012 at 10:59 AM UTC
head to pillow
heart asleep
my eyes: exhausted
for insomnia has taken my mind
endless sleep on morning's light
yet night never takes me
irritated eyes
I toss and I turn
I beg to fall into slumber
my head does not stop moving
but then it halts
halts into the most obscure position
halts into; "why am I thinking about this"?
insomnia, it is 2015
your existence is as old as time
but instant streaming is new, and I'm not alone with my thoughts
in fact...
I believe my literary repertoire is built off insomnia...
let me sleep now for rested sounds peaceful
2:00am poems never bothered me
and music sounds better when no one is awake
but please, let me sleep
allow me to loll into drowsiness
I am telling you I am tired
2mg of Klonopin...still restless
2 boxes of chocolate...still broken
Insomnia, you are an illness
but please have mercy on my sanity
for I am losing it,
and yearn to merely breathe
Dec 9, 2015
Dec 9, 2015 at 2:14 AM UTC
396
There is a Languor of the Life
More imminent than Pain—
’Tis Pain’s Successor—When the Soul
Has suffered all it can—
A Drowsiness—diffuses—
A Dimness like a Fog
Envelops Consciousness—
As Mists—obliterate a Crag.
The Surgeon—does not blanch—at pain
His Habit—is severe—
But tell him that it ceased to feel—
The Creature lying there—
And he will tell you—skill is late—
A Mightier than He—
Has ministered before Him—
There’s no Vitality.
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Lousy with drowsiness
Trying to write
I succumb to the eyes’
Irresistible night
A serenity scenery
Reverie taunting me
Setting in stone
A tone
Ominous, haunting me
Ending, mind-bending me
Impending doom
As the dreaded contentment
An interlude tomb
Then begins to disturb
Me from thunderous slumber
A spark to revive
To describe my dead smile
Still playing alive
And imbibe the cascade
Conscious stream fear of falling
In love with the first sympathetic
Muse calling
Contained in a shattered frame
Out of its mind
Losing all track of time
Till the wake up call rhyme
Aug 8, 2018
Aug 8, 2018 at 4:07 PM UTC
I don't need drugs. My brain is drugs.
Maybe it's a side effect of a mother that dropped acid for the first trimester of pregnancy and then some.
Maybe it's a side effect of the abusive step father that told me I would never amount to anything and that I am ********
My brain processes things at about a hundred miles per hour. In conversations I am always three steps ahead of what ever was said last. I make connections in things that are unconnected.
They tell me this is adult ADHD. They tell me I should be proscribed a pill to help my brain focus.
But focus isn't what I want. Nor is the drowsiness that comes with Lorazepam, the fog that goes with Prozac. I have been separately proscribed these things without ever filling the bottles.
But I fear that if I fix all my chemical imbalances, my medical maladies, that I will disappear into a fog.
Who am I without my OCD, without my brain over processing, over loving, over caring. Without the pain in my chest from another panic, my bouncing off the walls and singing to myself.
Maybe I am unwell.
But who am I without my unwellness?
Jul 17, 2015
Jul 17, 2015 at 2:37 AM UTC
Courting cobra woman, never lets him go out of her focus,
pure passion made her hiss with delight, just on seeing him,
when her lips gathered his, her hiss led to a performance,
coiled together they swayed in sweet pressure, intensified by heat,
cobra woman told him not to be daunted by her ****** ferociousness,
her poison, he understood was pleasure by another name,
he then felt a drowsiness,so pleasant, that never will be explained in words
Sep 17, 2013
Sep 17, 2013 at 11:40 AM UTC
The soft blue-green of the moon’s light floods into my bedroom.
The day: over
Time ebbs away, nonexistent
The memories on the shelf fall off
The shattered glass grabs onto the moonlight and hugs it
The light dissipates
It leaves an empty shell, the remainder of light curling and taking off
to cover a faraway land with a soft reassurance of mist
The drowsiness underneath my eyes dwindles away
This is the noise that keeps me awake.
Exhilaration is pumped into my hollow bones
Painful buzzing cuts into my brain at random. The light of the moon fluctuates
The bitter food still alive on my tongue overwhelms my senses
The sharpness of the light penetrates my eye with force. I can’t see anything
The light bends, white and bright, the stars burrow into my iris
My bones are jelly, my brain is a cocoon of abhorrence, my heart is a balloon
It pops.
The beast within me ***** away at the jelly, fed.
The creature in my brain breaks out and flies away to infest another innocent.
The noise slips away. I’m a paper girl limp on the bed.
Unable to move or feel or think or to have a heartbeat.
Quiet blossoms inside. I exist as a metaphor. I ***** my eyelids shut.
i hope they won’t fall off
The stars wink away. An infinite, dark sky looms overhead.
The darkness is a blanket, firm and reliable, warm. I drape it over myself and vanish.
Entropy lives within me. I nurture it, because it is my friend.
It flies away into its nest of clouds. It is distant. It will not come again for awhile.
Shadows shift onto the floor and murmur.
Dreams await.
© 2018
Xandra Lynch
Dec 28, 2018
Dec 28, 2018 at 8:46 AM UTC
First period
Restlessness, shaking, fast heartbeat
Second period
Slow heartbeat, difficult to hold myself up, extreme drowsiness
Lunch
Extreme hunger, fast heartbeat, mild drowsiness
Third period
Difficult to write or even hold anything, semifast heartbeat, headache
Fourth period
Normal heartbeat, extreme joy, you
Medication always comes with side effects, good & bad
But when I'm around you, I feel like I was never even sick in the first place
Nov 19, 2013
Nov 19, 2013 at 7:42 PM UTC
Legalize it
Sitting down jamming to Van Halen,
maybe flying, but more like sailing.
Smoked, maybe just a little bud,
whatever it was, certainly not a dud.
This visuals are out of sight,
best thing that happened, all **** night.
Lose yourself in a guitar solo,
nobody leads, we all just follow.
In own house, forget where you are,
this journey has gone a bit to far.
Air guitar is losing its touch,
maybe smoked a bit to much.
Also had a bit to drink,
hard now to even think.
Just legalize it already,
no more cutting corners like Freddy.
Tax the the living hell of of it,
soon after, no more deficit.
Side effects include, fun and joy,
brain cells get a temporary destroy.
Cotton mouth and the munchies,
no more wars in foreign countries.
Laziness and blood shot eye,
but at no time will you die.
Some drowsiness and falling asleep,
but to ****** to remember how many sheep.
May lead to other drugs,
or even getting naked hugs.
When legalized, I'd be first in line,
only then will life fully shine.
Dec 27, 2013
Dec 27, 2013 at 1:10 AM UTC
it's during times like this
i crave to be with you
within a sluggish weather
melodic raindrops
smashing into the window
dancing on the rooftop
smell of the petrichor
under dark gloomy clouds
chilly atmosphere
windy drowsiness
sudden rush of sleepiness
it's during times like this
i crave to be with you
a bed too big for one
a blanket too thin for warmth
not even the cup of coffee
my lips taste and kiss
will suffice for my longing
of your presence that i miss
-djs
Jun 10, 2013
Jun 10, 2013 at 5:46 PM UTC
Sky is a taut, grey net spread,
at its best in creating panic,
relentless day a brutish marauder,
drained of color of every kind, bleak,
even thought of you distant, my nectar
plays hide and seek, I am plunging
in a hallucinatory spin, down, down.
From inside a furnace closed
with a tight lid under which heat
in it's fiery glory permeates
like never before, a full- throated roar,
without any sound it travels around,
in waves after waves after waves,
to scorch every single thing under
the blood thirsty sun, on a hurried
march for revenge,green turbaned
trees and scarf adorned branches
changed all those embellishments
gone bone dry,now stand apologetic
like kids that made bed wet and caught
red handed, shrunk in shame and pain.
Narcolepsy reigns, drowsiness
day and night, like marijuana haze
follows.
This summer makes its name stick
in bad books,making T.S.Eliot look
shame faced for calling one past tame April,
uncharitably the cruelest of it all.
But this, this is an unbridled wild horse
none can in no way do anything to stop.
When even the last drop of water from
the pond evaporates,sunburn peels the skin,
sun stroke down people, who are unaware,
cruelty of April, becomes monumental.
Perhaps in few days time May could barter
that bad name from April,I'd easily guess.
Buildings , in rows and rows lie, til horizon,
like blood drained corpses all though the day,
the appetite for life, they evidently has lost.
Song birds on flowered trees, have gone mute,
doves scamper, dart in to the air, with hope
to get few drops of water from somewhere
Kindhearted few fill water and feed on containers
for stray birds,taking cue from the practices of forefathers.
Change in climate is an ogre, that could with bare hands
smash pompous attitudes and other human constructs!
Will there ever be a limit, to the red eyed monster,
avarice, we all pamper, within our inner courtyards,
that forces human beings to to do "Harakiri"
like a proud Samurai does with his own sword.
Apr 29, 2016
Apr 29, 2016 at 8:13 AM UTC
I let myself drown asunder
Ignorance is bliss?
Or is it hum durgeon?
Do not utter the sage in you
Nor shun;
Let me lull
For today I unfurl my placid eyes
And let my drowsiness drift
Away from these snollygosters
Let these destined tides sweep through me
Whilst I gently rise,
From the ocean of rage, I rise
Drifting through notes of gentle souls
Amid these crimson glistening waves,
I bleed among roars
Whilst shores sway with sounds of tabret,
And skies dance in nacarat,
For never it welcomed; Redness,
Such unsullied, such stainless
Time hath gone, of Abel and Aron
Yet altercation wanders amongst age’s heron
Time hath gone, of forgiveness and mercy
For today, lines are re-drawn
The goodness is not your goodness
Nor dare ascertain, the mischief and nuisance
Tis but what divinely revealed
Is benevolence..
Today I unsheathed Tutankhamun’s dagger,
Today I stand against savageness
Today I paint my hands in color of mercilessness
Dec 28, 2014
Dec 28, 2014 at 2:22 PM UTC
i long for damp gold tears
from the dying trees
for me to inhale the summer's death
and exhale the winter's birth
when the air is hangs low with drowsiness
and cinnamon settles in the wind
what more can i want-
than cold nose and warm chest-
so loosely wrapped in ochre wool?
Sep 20, 2016
Sep 20, 2016 at 10:18 PM UTC
you were never one for a proper greeting, were you? always paying attention to what was going on with the person in front of you, without recognizing the fact that you were next. life wasn't a one-man show then, and it certainly isn't now. but your drowsiness has long gone -- i almost didn't recognize you. and your carefulness -- i can see that's gone, too. you know what C whispered to me when i first saw you across this room? "there he goes, handling his women like he does his guns." i believed that. so don't talk to me about love and crime and money. the world has always tasted backwards to me.
oh please, i've been looking at you this way for years. only this time i don't have the excuse of it being spring. i haven't felt a proper spring since. i haven't -- [fingers drum in hesitation.] i haven't felt anything since.
i said i haven't felt anything since -- i still remember everything that happened. and you're right, i'm getting away with it just fine. how nice, to finally be able to look at someone without all that gravity happening in you!
looking outside, it feels like i've been gone for far too long, but being in here -- i don't think i've been gone long enough. [clears throat.] did you miss me, darling?
you've changed.
i know. we're both thieves -- we can only ever be thieves, don't you understand? i'm not afraid of what you've done or what you've stolen to still be here. to be speaking to me, to be breathing before me. to be like -- like this. [right hand reaches toward sleeve but wilts on the countertop, a few inches away.] i want to know what you've hidden. it happens every year. think about it: it's almost winter. it's almost time for you to start distancing yourself from everyone around you. those sad things you do, those sad things we both do, they never happen in the spring...spring is when winter surrenders it all. spring is when the bodies start to show up. autumn is dying, winter is dead, spring is when we have to clean it all up. but spring is when the light hits them just right and they look almost -- almost beautiful. not beautiful in what they were, but beautiful in their decay. beautiful that they're on their way to becoming...well, becoming no longer. ah, wasn't spring such a nice feeling?
that's precisely what i mean. so what is it you're burying from me now? why not tell me now? i'll never be younger than i am at this moment. what about now? i might just drive into the winter with you. [smiling.]
what? [stops smiling.]
i...i don't have time for this. he's waiting for me outside.
i can't say i imagined this, either.
[leans closer in silence.]
sounds to me like you still might be asleep there, yourself. [leans away, smiling.]
oh, what would you know about beautiful mornings? you were never awake to appreciate them! no matter how hard i nudged you.
you were always so tired then.
terrible. [turns away.] and so warm. [smiling.]
...i know. we both are.
Jan 11, 2013
Jan 11, 2013 at 10:03 PM UTC
Curled up in the passenger side, my moccasins rested on the edge of the seat.
Projecting heat pleaded the piercing winter from under my skin.
My chin fell slowly as ash insulated my heart.
My lips would part as second-hand soothing soot
Grew arms and cradled my soul like the look
A newborn baby receives when wrapped in adoration.
A suffocation as an indication I was not alone.
Strangers. Soaring together for forty-eight hours.
Oblivious to dangers our adolescent wings never noticed.
Our only focus was on each other.
At first, words of conversation refused to be discovered.
But all at once we slowly uttered
Our pasts until his demons appeared in front of me.
Surprised I could still see through the windshield ahead,
I did not dread the broken being to my left.
Because who was I to judge the stranger
Who’d unknowingly love me as if his life depended on it?
Have you ever been in love with a Thunderbird?
One that flies solely in winter blizzards?
Fueled by chain-smoking cigarettes
And Dunkin Donut cappuccinos with five sugars.
It never once regarded the threat
Of driving through life
At ninety-five miles per hour.
I fell in love at six in the morning, wearing a borrowed jacket.
Coated in sleep’s drowsiness, we floated on clouds,
Dodging white paper coral trees and buried houses.
I fell in love when the world stood still
And the snow descended along with our sanity.
Somehow a Thunderbird granted me amnesty from myself.
As humanity remained asleep, with stealth
We drifted through back roads in horrific elegance
That jostled my brain until my mind was rewired to my heart
And has remained that way since.
Oct 25, 2014
Oct 25, 2014 at 10:10 PM UTC