"dustless" poems
there was a vase.
it was nothing special.
not very pretty
to look at.
it sat on a shelf
in a window.
it was behind
another vase, though.
the vase in front was
dustless and beautiful.
the vase in front had
flowers in it.
the ugly vase
sat for years
behind the lovely
vase.
the lovely vase had
everything and more.
elegant curves,
tasteful colors.
it was so beautiful
no one looked at
the curveless,
off white vase
behind it.
one day a child
ran through the
store.
the table by the window
was bumped
and the ugly vase
fell.
it shattered into
needle thin shards
and eventually swept
away.
the lovely vase
was bought that
day.
Aug 23, 2012
Aug 23, 2012 at 12:37 AM UTC
I saw your face in a paper sky,
Saw how good it looked in black-and-white.
The light in your eyes is
One of those pre-lit things-
That is, to say,
That when you wink,
The sky goes gray.
Heart Ripper, you're a decorative lover,
One red-hot summer.
Heart Ripper, what a gorgeous shame.
Love is love, under any given name,
But after a hit, it's forever lame.
You're the classic American case
Of mud inside a jar,
You air-brushed lonely-heart.
Perfect imperfection,
A photograph in a frame,
You're smiling, but dustless.
Dustless, and perfect.
Heart Ripper, you've gained a red list,
And another little lover wrapped up in your fist.
Heart Ripper, she's on my side,
If I can't give it back to you,
She will in good time.
Just like some music in the canal,
You remind me of a favorite song.
But this final number's old,
Over-played, over-sold.
Skipping in that broken-record fashion,
Really,
I mean to say,
That this is a tune from the past,
That's closing fast.
Heart Ripper, you're a powerhouse lover,
The blanket superior.
Like a windbreaker in December,
You're there, but not quite enough.
Heart Ripper, never fixing what you've torn;
The needle, the thread, the sewing hand--
Take this as a tune of pity,
As a brand new set of plans.
Hero, hero,
Get it while it lasts.
You're invincible now,
A regular rough horse from the city.
Go home,
And just for good measure,
Repent, before you receive
More than just a tune of pity.
Oct 18, 2012
Oct 18, 2012 at 5:07 PM UTC
Her wings fell away
And she descended into the willow
Screaming for her laughter
And wishing for her hope
She warped into a free fall
Crashing into heartless branches
Grasping for a helpful hand
Engulfed in wordless fear
Forgetting to believe in herself
Jul 5, 2019
Jul 5, 2019 at 9:20 PM UTC
City-bus is crawling one zone to another
Someone is recalling somebody silently
Entering into the dustless cool mall
I may dare to tell all the senior ladies love
May open the cellular phone.
Yellow champak smelling the teen-age
Passerby may suffer from unknown blunder
It's really an untold epic
Somebody feels someone
I may redesign my attributes
May write some lines on the corpuscles.
City-bus is entering into the yesterdays
Yellow neon-evening is moving from tomorrows
I may fall down to the stoppage
May kiss the air might touch your lips someday.
City-bus can't cross the globe
Can't find your cyber destination!
Poem 05
Book 'Beckoning Jade-Dreams' April 2007
Copyright Musharrat Mahjabeen
Mizan Publishers, Dhaka, Bangladesh
ISBN 984-8700-82-X
Aug 15, 2012
Aug 15, 2012 at 2:30 PM UTC
An ode to my long and satisfying relationship with the product of Portugal’s Douro Valley.
Golden amber, smokey smooth
Rich with pleasured bite
Spreading warmth to ample girth
The brandy’s fine tonight.
Dustless, standing on my shelf
Bathing in half light,
Golden highlights shadow deep
Paints Douro Father's right.
Born amidst the hills of schist
On vines that root in rock
In patterns neat and quite arcane
Of ancient grappa stock.
Old men sit by river barge,
Mustachioed and wise,
To argue politics and sip
God’s amber nectar prize.
Tepid sun is setting low
To throw long shadows tight,
To bathe the vines of soft green tones
In liquid amber light.
Golden spirit, smokey smooth
Glows with silken light
Satisfaction’s spreading warmth
Paints Douro Father’s right.
Marshalg
Mangere Bridge
Sipping a tumbler of amber warmth in New Zealand’s Autumn sunset.
26 March 2012
Mar 27, 2012
Mar 27, 2012 at 2:20 PM UTC
My nightmare filled with streaks of saintly garb
rousing the flares of benevolence
and the strokes of compassionate ink
scribbled on to the snow-hued papyrus.
The fields of golden grains unmasked
the unpolluted ecstacy of childlike desires
Simple.
Innocent.
Pure.
Softly swaying as the hammock in the dew air
gently rupturing the laddery pride.
It waves its resilient trunk
then stoops to the god of snow.
And the windows to the soul will tire peeking
and paint instead ashen hopes
Languid.
Reminiscent of pallid hermit
caressing colorless sands,
tranquilly hummed by the songs of a lone shell
under the unambiguous sky.
Compose your poems
now with the sallow ink
on a dustless, ethereal white sheet.
Jan 27, 2013
Jan 27, 2013 at 10:35 PM UTC
A captured breath among the ancient trees
Glowing in a perfect dream
From time and tide drifting upon your sea
In the dustless shadow
Of faint moonbeams
A fresh-bloomed rose, smiles at morning dew
Its thorns have yet to *****
The hands of time, which fairly flew
Sweetness unripe
To pick
Time and tide drifts upon the ancient seas
Rolling in a perfect dream
Capturing breaths from unplanted seeds
Before becoming
As they seem
The fresh-bloomed rose a thorn reveals
Within the perfect dream
Yet time and tide drifts into quickly heal
A captured breath
Is now redeemed
Oct 15, 2010
Oct 15, 2010 at 7:43 PM UTC
Strange bird,
His song remains secret.*
He worked and he read,
drank a few beers and laughed.
There was no other way.
Fifty years in the 3M plant a dustless sterile place –
his place in this world.
Murdered, I was left to rise from this black ditch of a river.
A black Missouri swan
rising from the chemical tar of this strange water.
The Missouri River,
a tomb from which to rise.
Hatred could have been the shuddering in his soul.
Silence could have been a frock for anger.
Once a young man, fleeing to Chicago,
he returned still furious for freedom
full of confusing words and the politics of poverty.
To be close by the big river is to be home again.
Back to my only country where the white rose blooms.
Returning from a ghost town, the old loneliness intact.
I have no roots but the ones I drag behind.
I am poor.
Soon, darkness will set in and he will loom in memory
the way new snow drifts in the from the west.
His ghost will float along the river to Montana
where he will sit, the water will flow past
and he will be younger, older than I am or ever will be.
*Quotation from Youth by James Wright
May 30, 2014
May 30, 2014 at 11:55 AM UTC
Revealed from the fullness of a glad heart
Words will only ******* my expression
The sights and sounds yet unimagined
Leaving even angels in awe
Sincerely, our best materials here are its waste
Even these thoughts put my spirit in haste
I desire to live there
So I daily lose touch with the toys here
I’ll be bold to say it’s ours
When we come through salvation, and live by the rules
Blessed assurance, Jesus is mine
By the blood contract for me He signed
Yes, this tongue can’t process its taste
Waters springing from the fountain of life
Breeze that fill our lungs with holiness
Where even the lions and lambs walk together
Streets of transparent gold like glass
Mighty gates built with priceless pearls
A city where God lives, built by God
And we are still yet to find a single dust.
- Omodunmiju David
Jul 17, 2015
Jul 17, 2015 at 4:44 AM UTC
would you like a cup of coffee?
would you like that with milk? sugar?
would you like me to be your coffee table?
sometimes i wonder whether i
make you coffee
dust the dustless windowsills
and run water over wet dishes
to justify my being-here
to justify my being
to save me from myself
Feb 24, 2019
Feb 24, 2019 at 4:41 PM UTC
Who was searching for whom
Still shivering
in certain madness
An agony burning but in ice
when was it that eyes met but
never did dreams
Who were you when
we crossed our way
In quivering desperation
Still falling under the feet of fate
we crossed and only I noticed
I noticed and never did you
Under the dustless sky
Stars fall under your eyes
and only I noticed, never did you
It was you so strange
A stranger blowing hollow horns
and only I noticed, never did you
And what was it that got crushed
and only I noticed, never did you
who is who and who needs what
what was it when everything turned to dust
noone noticed, breaking right in two
May 23, 2014
May 23, 2014 at 12:09 PM UTC
Trading life for death isn't the countermeasure for strife! As it is very "politely" too say that life mocks the complete scenario of death itself. However, if you actually started to take a little closer look at ourselves in general... You'd come to say that our very lives, aren't so different when death essentially claims them. Only when it is time for our lives to become entirely subjected upon deaths desire to appoint life to crumble at deaths very feet. Life in deaths very comparison for an opposite comparison, is seeing that it's nothing but "dust at one's very toes". But when life is about to crumble and seemingly turn into a crumbling dustless ash... It see's itself (for the very first time ever) plead too death in such a way as if it's begging at it's very, well...feet! Revealing it's form of crumbling dustless ash, even before it's become aware of that very state. As all life ever wanted (after coming to the final point in it's very supposed fluid ride of existence) was to hope for a nice ending! Until finding out that death wasn't so merciful!
Aug 1, 2020
Aug 1, 2020 at 4:56 PM UTC
I am not who I am
When I become aware of myself
For then I am that object on display
Taken in hand examined aware of that...
... Dustless spot now seen on that shelf
I am not who I was
When I first accepted the reflection
As not just a physical representation
But a cover to show and hide behind ...
.....for protection
I am not who I saw
The next time I chanced a glance
I was an ad mix - a duality
Clenched in a fierce battle or maybe a dance
I am not who I found
Looking back at me in that mirror
Each and every time - through the years
In order to see I had to get ..nearer and nearer
I am not who I believed
When I first knew I had lied to myself
For at that moment I became
That dust-free spot seen on the shelf
I am not who I remember
As the years pile up behind
As each must don glasses in order to view
The physical changes each shares in kind
But I am who I always was in my mind
When I first became aware of myself
Then as now and forever more
I am me ...
That blank and dustless spot
That's left upon the shelf
When I lift up that object...
.... that memory
That trophy ...to be dusted off
So that then the details will show
As I really truly..
....look at me like no one else
Ever could...ever would.... ever can
.... and really see me
That's who I am
I am not ....who I was when I first...
..... became aware
Of my own reflection
Aug 30, 2017
Aug 30, 2017 at 11:47 AM UTC
ghost
/gowst/
1. The bleached whale teeth of your bones covered in layers of papery humanity, the blue of your Veins as they lie, 𝘺𝘰𝘶 𝘢𝘳𝘦 𝘢𝘭𝘪𝘷𝘦.
2. Static white and less, a phantom haunting your own skin. You were murdered, murdered, murdered by this coffin of a house.
3. Dustless and fearfilled; can the dead die again?
Aug 8, 2025
Aug 8, 2025 at 4:18 AM UTC