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vircapio gale Jul 2012
she is my nihilistic god;

i am a stag leap.
the fainter wind-caress
felt deep in trunks and boulder bed.
i am delight for loosened thorns
that piercing underfoot will spur to run
my naked body's open-air embrace
atop the callus of my seasoned fun,
skirring flora shadow-dancing bright
descending mountainside of noon
in blurrs refracting sightful bones.
i am the sense of
transtemporal glacial moans,

the heartbeat of the soil breath
to puff from feasted log a mycophile's awe
or want for all placental webs in view
for naming earth a seeping sorrows tithe:
my consciousness of things alive.

the stinging lungs atop the path
are emblems of a winging truth
to overcome her nearing death.
i am the lingham of creations' race.
i am the sensate reeling blow by empty blow.
the gravity of light and dark;
gray theopolis of fists and falls.
envelopment of massive meanings filled
in nether-branchings' net
and mediatrix scorn: the wider world absorbs my self as ~ all~
~. .all. . ~
prating some nepenthean law
to sour our poetic hate
and deeply bury seismic seeds she wants to sow, like
ancient clues of metagender fact:
hermaphroditic **** to 'normal' eyes.
icecaps to resize and singing moralize;
a dolphin midwife toning yoni love
for labor certain nuns call "gift"
as crown of pleasure heights
on par with mysteries;
regrowing infant fingertips,
to pi recited over days,
to vaster mindscapes drawn in ways
'beyond the genius of the sea'

why wait for ease of shame?
thin veils of culture lift
and family bonds anew to tow
the peace from out irratic weight of nation rifts;
instantiations burst beyond the tunnel course~
rhythmic doomsday yearnings line the halls of humantime:
prophetic visions of a sea to come,
Utnapishtim keeps himself alive
to garden with his wife a thriving mortal line.
Quetzalcohuatl finds himself *****
to bloodlet savior sexuality,
his heart a morning star, a Mayan Venus shine.

i see the standing trees
entwine slow-love to sky
so i can swing and heave
my universe above the words,
to carry thorns as well as petals, doves.
the vision ends. the new begins
to filter dyad lies through
inter-
corporeal lens.
embodied ivy climbs the tree of death
to rewind love and deepen love,
to bound the loss with goddess wisdom ends and other ends
of ouroboros shedding clear
of limits insight thrives to near.
sunglance peeking is the hovering of me,
steady comfort crosses floating lotus feet.
the softest rock has melded under thee
to join a forest pausing here.
a berry soaks itself of all i am
while nutty chipmunks chirp in whirls;
the clouds are girls you've been,
Nephelae to tease in quenching gowns
the verdant book of men we've known, who leaf
the air to taste another form of fairness lent.
silver is the sun in times of stillness overached.
sifted tensions drift to lie awake, but
drowning in a stream of glowing calm,
i am the woody balm.
the scent of bark unnestled dry
and leaves remembrance when
the breathing stops, the final
fleshing in of nowhere, never then.
you are transcendent of transcending
pure. end, endure and lucid ending live again
in empty worship ringing plenum om.
eleanor prince Nov 2023
Run... run while you can
before the envelopment entraps you
encapsulating escape with leaden clouds
skies darkened by searing missiles
unburdening caches waiting
for the stirring of conflict
so easy to hijack
as hatred
screams
loudest
drowning
out the pleas
of nursing mothers
as children's faces fend off
old feuds and avarice of arms dealers
sparked by grief over the slaughter and scarring of children and families due to avarice of war
Nat Lipstadt Jun 14
“Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more”
(Henry V, by WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE)

Morning into Mourning

<>

I speak it softly, for though battlefield is steeped in quietude
of the lively greenery, endless lawns of healing fields
surrounded by multitudinous shades of blue waters,
my eyes piercing , joining in
as sunrising separates the veil
dividing light from dark, new from prior,
a went-before and a
soon-to-be
and a familiar-what-to-be-hereafter,
but a skyed breech it is,
with sun ray stairs inviting my
upright ascension into this newness

Welcoming the exposure of my trembling, though it is not fear that causes my shaking, but the colored warmth barely warming, yet,
stoking, stroking the drape of chill
away, away! from my night-sealed pores

the majestic surfacing of the waters peinture impasto, with its roughened but genteel thick, dabs, dots, swirls, swishes belie the overall atmosphere of calm it conveys, and Shakespeare’s rallying cry of men rises to the mind forefront, for the bay is my battlefield,
the day’s new light the breeching of the sky’s
envelopment of our world, summons to rise and
step forward intimately into the tableau of morning

into the breech, into the unknown,
to lift one more poem from breast,
shed tears of welcome, and death fears banished,
a battle to the unknown from the foretold past,
and, but


you shout
no!
<>
tis a day like all others,
of rectitude sans gratitude
another quantity of known drudgery, another,
“Woke up, fell out of bed
Dragged a comb across my head
Found my way downstairs and drank a cup”

The breach is within me,
a splitting of the head,
laid flat out upon my desk,
writing down scrupulously
officiously,
the same figures inconsequentially,
letters deranged, daily merely rearranged,
prison vista,steel and glass appearing with
the same exactitude of every day ever prior,
the sun invisible, the unceasingly unchanging
dark deep of the shadowy of manmade canyons…

speak to us no more of views, vistas,
but the fistulae, the empty places
where interconnected dots and dash’s,
light and ombre blends of dark ochre  
gradations of bland de~gray~ding
are our time’s patchworks of familiarity,
cursed with annualized daily reciprocity,
a *** for a tat,
a woolen watch cap,
a  black Balaclava,
drawn over our heads
lest the drudgery be too readily apparent!


<>
mere mortal am I,
mortal wounded by our disparate
and desperate differing points
of view,
and we split ourselves in two,
hoping for a way forward of
reconciliations,
successful hostage negotiations,
pushing these contradictions,
back inside my heads,
until confronted
once again,
and find new words coming,
to bind me of the divisions between
or even,
to blind
me to the gaps between
my left and right
brain.

for I am both men,
one and the same,
forever
battling


until the morrow, then…
morning into mourning
June 14 2024
tween 3:30 AM ~ 10::00 AM
fitful sleep, fistfuls of vision's pieces
Hannah Southard Nov 2013
We don’t usually see each other,
I’m asleep, dreaming myself a superhero, or a maybe a victim
You creep around, so as not to wake me,
envelopment in the warmth that comes from the layers and layers
I have stacked on my body
gently rippling like a sheet in a warm summer breeze.

But occasionally we meet,
my tired eyes still open wide searching for a focus point
my fingers moving lazily across the keyboard
drunk from a mix of one part darkness, three parts chill,
hitting letters to form words in a language I can assume is only understood by gods.
In you creep, slowly growing as the twinkling lights on the sidewalk
blink out,
one
by one,
hiding whatever the darkness holds.

You lose you warmth,
become a ghost passing through and chilling my bones
putting knots in my spine, hunching me over,
my legs become twisted and contorted under me
as you slowly **** the life out of one foot
sticking it with a million little needles

This is your invitation to sleep,
by making consciousness so unbearable
that every blink becomes longer, as if trying to escape whatever reality
I’ve been forced to stay up with this long.

You lay me down, pull up the covers,
holding me gently like a lover
letting me rest
letting me escape
letting me sleep.
Debbie Lydon Mar 2022
Here I am, awake, alive and in strength,
A strength that has encased itself around and still embracing,
A new cord, granted to live and suffocate,
Mine from the very moment her poisonous cord was cut,
Its envelopment has a weight that many broken hearts can't bear,
And if you can see that new cord, I can tell you, I'm not there.

Oh the costly consequences of her child's protection,
What terrors this thin film has endured and then veiled,
Such a charlatan's tongue has her actress when she's speaking,
Be kind to her if you believe you can, a cataclysm, a tragedy, from her new cord is leaking.

The thunder is shameless in its powerful percussion,
And brave is the morning with its barefaced horizon,
So surely then, one new cord can be severed and forever broken?
One hushed voice finally heard, what gilded words could then be spoken?
Nigel Morgan Oct 2016
VII

This is my end
surely this is
the end of it all
all I know is here
and though I am
young this is the end
of life as I know it
now and soon I will
see my home no more
for this is my end
here where I shelter
from all I cannot
think beyond this ending
surely the end of all
I know is here
and will be gone

(after a cine still from 1930 of a St Kllda woman)

XVIIIa

house above the hut
of shadows holds itself
against the relentless wind
on so open a shore
islands and inlets beyond
reasonable number stand
before its policies
its promontory land
Up on the third floor
light fills every corner
expelling its shadows
to the hut held
within its sight

XVIIIb

slowly the darkness
reveals less than
a shadow thrown
against a plastered wall
inside silenced from the wind
an image grows as the eyes
succumb to less than light
used to looking Suggestion
and the memory of outside
supply the rest

(two poems connected by Chris Drury’s Hut of Shadows on North Uist)


XIX

following footsteps
crisp in the sand
hour-fresh from tide-fall
now the shadows form
in the weight of press
the imprint mark
different with every
fall of limb and claw
the 3-pronged bird-foot
the sandaled human
step singular one
before another after
another until perspective
conceals and merges
into distant sand

**

silence suddenly
the ringed plovers
hold their breath
then chorus
a chirping as they wade
together in their own
reflections
the water like glass
at their feet
mirroring
movement that light
hop for a few steps onto
a slight but sturdy island

tweet then terweet
inflected upwards
a questioning call
terweet?

XX1

the taste of salt sea
in the mouth
the touch of water
thick sea-water
on the legs between toes
the sharp cold plunge
immersion envelopment

sunlight throws a cascade
of bright steps across the sea
gradually merging into a band of light
ablaze on the horizon
at the base of distant Monarchs
a silhouette of massed rock
rises from the sea crowned
by static clouds decorating the sky
gentle white ermine-soft
These poems are part of a collection of forty-five written during July and August 2016. Thirty-six of these poems were written in the Outer Hebrides on the islands of North and South Uist,  and on Eriskay. They are site-specific, written on-the-fly en plain air. They sit alongside drawings made in a pocket-size notebook; a response to what I’ve seen rather than what I’ve thought about or reflected upon. Some tell miniature stories that stretch things seen a little further - with imagination’s miracle. They take a line of looking for a walk in words.
Benjamin Woolley Jan 2012
The clouds shifting over me,
Carried as ships on a chilling breeze,
And holding a blinding anticipation
Over my taut brow,
Then bathing me in holy light,
My jacket shifting from shoulder to chair,
Again and again

There is new excitement in each change:
The pleasure of lambent rays,
Then the rush, like cool sheets,
And the tight envelopment of soft cotton.
Each time with new awareness

Suddenly I have muscles, stretching fibers,
Then a cheek, brushed with stubble,
And a chest, filling with air.
Until, again, I have no body at all,
Only the words in my head.
Orchid T Aspen Dec 2019
{|}{|}

sunflower
solidarities are pleasant enough,

{|}{|}

and they can die on the Hill over there
with the other volumes of
sunflowers,

those
that are puffed up
in their brazen majesty,

that are seeking the envelopment
of warm air,

that are vying for the ****** sun,
as always,

that are holding petals
who creep inside when put upon,

that are sobbing for the other sunflowers
as their radial compatriots,

that are living for all else
that cannot,

that are swaying with intent
that bends them off,

that are dying in beating blades
of grass,

that are toasting to deities
who are concealed in their flames,

that are writing ardently
in their soft refrains,

that are fornicating their pleasures
away from the other
sunflowers,

{|}{|}

that die on the Hill over there
when solidarity is enough for them
to extract pollen by their own strength
and pelt it at the bees
and dissolve on their stems.

{|}{|}
Dark Dream May 2021
I’m really close
On the edge
I’m fighting it
It’s calling me
I’m imagining
Sinking into its bliss
Shutting everything out
It’s my haven
My curse
I’m ready to dive
Covered in silence
My insides are boiling
They need the envelopment
I cry out
I’m tense with my scream
I hate it
I want it
Do I need it?
The unknown tortures me
I know the shadow
It beckons again
BB Tyler Nov 2012
Rapture is the sense of envelopment
A feeling like looking up at the rain
The world as an envelope
Is as it does

come on in
the water's fine
Christian Reid Oct 2014
-- Grinding Gears --
-- Flowing Fountains --
-- Beating Hearts --
-- Deafening Silence --
Ride the wave
As it dips and swells
Each undulation
Sparking spinal charges
Sending signals to
Sensational receptors
and
Flooded with
Information and Energy
they Overflow

Eroding away at
Burms of solidarity
Decimating illusions of
Stagnancy
Perturbing the ache for
Fake consistency

And Walls wilt away
Like petals of a Rose
they expose
the Universal Core
turning in
Changeless self-envelopment
Nat Lipstadt Nov 8
i love that word, puttering, my adjective
of early morning rambling, world examining,
in the early AM, treading barefooted
from room to room, a list prestablished,
+ tidy up the prior evening’s laziness,
unload with complete silence the
prior nights dishwasher, homework,
prep the couch back to pre~beat~up presentability,

make the first 16.5 .oz of Blue Mountain
Hawaiian coffee, in my art history
McIntosh mug(1),
prepare the first of the day’s bitesized
edibles,
a:k:a, Kashi crunchies, so the coffee all
falls down  to a well~recv’d internal welcoming

the timing is off, the clock has changed,
it is early but not really, I’m constantly
recalculating ‘real time’ until confused,
substituting the internal locked-in clocking that ultimate divination of right and wrong,
the betting app informs us of the
under/over hours really slept line
set by Las Vegas oddsmakers

but as usual, the digression omens come
fast and furious, up in the sky apartment
is an oasis of cloud quietude,
(where the latitude and longitude
inter-sec, where the cleansed sun softly)

ah quietude, an envelopment noun
favored over the pedestrian quiet,
my ears,
fulfilled by music via noiseless earbuds,
fills the soul, it is the milk in the
morning coffee brew of the
crossover silence, tween the skyed division

check on the woman, deep asleep,
(pronouns: she/her/mine)
her arm thrown across my empty pillow, as if holding my place in line,
like besties in second grade, a warning to other potent interlopers,
so
withdraw silent to finish the routine that
is so comforting, the polit~noise chatter has
not yet invaded, all of its associated
malice’s tumult, kept away at bay
with forethought,
and instead, thus, I, write,

in this quilt of solitude, not alone,
write of this companioned morn~born~rituals that
will be one day,
be renamed,
as a

mourning ritual,

when
when life ruefully states in its
arrogant ~ don’t ~ care, no ways,
now that,

When,
one of us, be
sleeping permanent, and the
silence be reformatted, recalculated,
the coffee will taste different, and
the footfalls no longer unsqueaking,
no need, cause the solitude is just
renamed as loneliness, and though
the tears emanate from same tear ducts,
the causal reasoning is reversed,
no longer
celebratory, and with no one to show it off,
to share,
no punch in the arm gasp
of loving recognition,

I perforce new habit,
will read this puttering,
now stuttering poem


someday as a new summary,
a substitutable morn chore,
absent
a chorus of a
singly
singular
beautiful quiet but only
memorized,
silenced applause
7:50am
Nov. 2024
I guess i do really love the puttering word, for lo and behold, stumbled onto a long forgot
predecessor writ in 2012,, at a different home  
I am an unconscious serial repeater (sigh).

https://hellopoetry.com/poem/397440/puttering-muttering-in-cahooting/

(1)  Paul Cezanne’s “The Card Players”
see https://mcintoshmugs.com/products/post-impressionists-set-of-4-mugs
Amy Grindhouse Mar 2017
the true
conquest of the bourgeois
is the
scalding envelopment
of this bathwater
and how long i can stay under
before
i have to face the blank slate
It's extraordinary. Today my existence felt like a cloud. A cloud of luminous star stuff, billowing in the dark. A feeling of spacious wonder and cosmos. Like I was within this void cloud, succumbing to the ether of nothingness and consciousness at once.

Such serendipity filling my lungs, tracing my heartbeat. I had no clue at the time. My absence of knowledge like the innocent breath of a thousand newborns.

Fleeting existential begrudgery and the radiance of every sun. I imagine the beep beep beep of luminescent wonder as the thought of light reaches my senses. A guitar solo and distant beat enchanting my soul.

But in reality, I sense nothing. Not a cold winter morning, with fog on the window from warmth. Nor the buzz of insects from spring air, breathing life into the Earth's harmony.

The tingle I feel is in my reminiscent stardust memories. Of life before life. Feeling before it was felt. Sounds before they were heard and only vibrations of the mind. Of sight being nothing more than annoying bright lights before they were calculated into something more understandable.

This is the beginning of such a beautiful moment. Indescribable and an explosion of the senses. The background beat of a chorus. The vibrance of a photograph. The contrast of a black and white movie. The boom of bass against an orchestra of sounds.

The feeling of a loved one's touch. The sound of thunder rumbling. Seeing your first array of black clouds engulf the stratosphere. The cold envelopment of raindrops covering your delicate skin.

All of life's beauty doesn't have to seem beautiful at first. Just give it time. Just give. Time.

We're all stardust here.
I used to
Feel the rush
As you'd arrive
Like the ocean
At my feet,
In anticipation
I'd run away
Before I could
Get drenched,
Even without
An embrace
I'd feel you
As if you were
All around me,
A comfortable
Envelopment
Like the warmth
Of the sun,
But now I miss
The sand
Between my toes
Even more...

APAD15 - 007 © okpoet
Where Shelter Oct 2019
May Cold

the tablet weather says 57 Fahrenheit
my ****** p.j.’s ******* say who the fk ya kidding?
May cold is different when it is chilled by ocean’s
known associates, cloudy and looking like it’s gonna rain anytime

May cold I think and the Lord laughs,
two weeks of snotty lungs ugliest congestion so bad,
the fancy people won’t sit next to you
in fancy place seats you paid for with last years loot

Your lungs looks ***** sound like a WWI trenches battlefield,
you’re sitting up at 6:00am, wearing
heavy bathrobe, hoodie, sweater and t-shirt,
but your sock-less feet scream whataboutme?

the pile of questions grow and the silence piano accompaniment
teasingly says you’ll never write again, what’s the point, so you write
for the one or two who will, maybe, wince along side of ya,
hoping first coffee delivered by a passing EMT will salve a declining body for an hour

May cold body and soul, left for to see waves, when human traffickers
who work regular jobs not-like-you, you who can’t get hired to spit in the subway,
yeah yeah everything is fine though I know the big D is coming for me,
tingling in the places where the tingling ain’t exactly next to normal

now that time’s only question is the priority of what to read first,
and first thought is of the list of reading things is so big, who knew,
it’s easier to go to pretend-work and waiting for calls that don’t come,
and the home quietude is a welcoming envelopment maneuver but the list chokes

S is fine though my slow slipping under is dragging her down invisibly
to no one but me, and only the grandkids of the crazy parents
make her light up like as only a woman can, carrying three on her horsey back
at age 72, while their couch bound mother scans Facebook thinking she’s crazy

somehow I get trapped in pictures others take and my gross weight
says delete this photo, leave no evidence that the slow killers and his minions
are coming for you, and every advantage you possess is a weight around
the skull that says, you see, I’ll still embrace you if no one else will

worlds insanity trumps the little joy I get when studying birthday photos,
knowing they will be surrendered up for sacrifice someday to a world,
where fresh running water is a past thing, and their DNA will determine what
line and place they are permitted to stand on, the antisemitism roaring its head

took a two day dump finally, which is better than gastric pain sudden,
which comes so stealthily that twice, **** my pants, just avoiding
public embarrassment, “barely,”  he writes smiling, but the credit card bill
always is due, when you get no credit for ******* up a body for68 years

otherwise I am fine, though few read my poems without a caffeine jolt,
and months went by with nothing to add, and then they hauntingly come
as often as I blowout my phlegmatic guts, and write them down to expel them
from a mind that cannot remember words for the thing that changes tv channels

so you ask, and now, maybe you will worry too, the last thing I wanted,
so hard to understand that silence was my gift to you, and every email you send,
makes weep from the idea that someone cares how I fair, and how unfair
that is to the one who cares, and I took 60 minutes to type this, and,

I love you man in ways so deep, I could fertilize you lands soil and your soul

and there could be a poem in that last line but my pointer finger is busy
wiping away tears but don’t worry the tissue box is always nearby
out of date
LaFayette Dec 2019
Envelopment of cold darkness
Empty atmosphere enclosing
Falling deeper into the void
Desperate for a sign of light
For comfort of an end to the end
Extinguishing eternal non-existence
Please God let there be God
jb Feb 1
in this very moment — wanting for nothing more,
you’ve no idea, nor clue.
this desire you inspire,
this everlasting feeling of comfort passing through my soul, covering every layer of my being.
such gentle envelopment,
infinite bliss within your embrace, and in every moment — i feel your existence.
from the taste of the wind, to the smell of the sun, your presence remains the most potent.
oozing out from beneath and bubbling to the surface,
filling into the limitless sky —
like the earth was formed for you to spread your light,
like i was born to harbor such vibrancy.
enriched by your entirety,
new to this age, but all familiar to me —
beyond these avatars, for you have always been;
the nutriment of my love —
the source of my joy.
for her, obviously :)
Onoma Feb 2019
as you eat my face in

a kiss--i stop trying to

eat yours.

to see where envelopment

goes.

just then, your eyes remembered

to watch.

then your star went north--which

i parted with laid back eyes.

seen straight with hard ease.

silvered...that soul indentured

twice equal.
Wk kortas Jul 2020
There is always the fire,
Whether in the charcoal sketches
Or the scattered canvases, each shunted off to the side
In various states of incompletion
(He offered little clue as to why each was seemingly abandoned,
As he seemed reasonably content with them
In terms of composition and technique,
Suggesting there was something else that eluded him,
Something he had misapprehended)
An all-encompassing conflagration
Which promised the eventual envelopment
Of all in its path, flesh and façade,
Mortar and muscle,
Yet the assemblage of waiters, telephone operators,
Delivery boys and meter maids
Do not, by and large, exhibit the expected terror;
Oh, it is there now and again,
Mixed in among those who would,
With a certain madness in their gaze,
Exhort the torch-bearers onward,
And there is the odd face who regard the whole undertaking
With an unmistakable glee,
But, by and large, there is a matter-of-factness about the figures,
Varying between grim determination and an utter sang-froid,
And when one of the select few he has showed the preliminaries
Noted how he'd expected the dried brush and ground cover
To burst into flame on a more-or-less daily basis,
He looked up from his pencils and grunted
When it comes, the brush won't have a ******* thing
To do with it
.
The concept of the painting "The Burning of Los Angeles" is taken from the Nathaniel West novel The Day Of The Locust.
"Where" is any junction
Of two spaces,
Two parallels in the common infinite,
Finally touching,
The realization that all extremes meet themselves
Like the skin-envelopment of a body:
Everything closes in themsleves
Inside something bigger.
There is nothing analytical in it,
But two curious eyes
Dissolving what t sees
To avoid the certainties
Of this hard, impassable world.

All movement is a rearrange,
A fugue or search for balance,
But never indifferent.
There are potentials everywhere
And there is just where we get the discomfort,
That thing that puts us in movement,
That air mass that occupies
What just a moment before was my body.

All that transforms
Leaves behind
Traces of the irreversible,
The dust that no longer will be soil,
The cracks that no longer will be building,
The explosion that no longer will be bomb.

All encloses in the extremes.
The coldest cold, absolute,
Lean lightly absolute hotness,
And the dichotomy disapears,
Everything ends up in a circle
And what once took far
Can only lead to the starting point.

The farther we can go
Is the exact place we are.
Andrew Rueter Feb 2020
I’m an immature insectoid in a *** void
a walking stick wandering annoyed
looking for a hole to burrow in
escaping the cold is a win.

I connected through love
we connected through ***
you connected your shoves
through physicality and texts.

I held your thorax
through all the attacks
through the dotted tracks
until the **** started to stack.

I thought you were Don Cheadle
but you’re just a dung beetle
preying on the dumb feeble
putting a ****** needle
on the stinger of Weedle.

Parasite envelopment
Isn’t good for development
so I decide to stay celibate
and not ***** for the hell of it.

Detaching my proboscis
makes me sad I’ve lost this
but the aroma made me noxious
and your insect bites are not missed.

— The End —