"etched" poems
Beauty lies bereft and bound
it cries for help but utters no sound
mascara kisses fade from your lips
etched by lovers worn fingertips
purple rings around sullen eyes
the broken skin it never lies
fists of thunder make not the man
nor the swift strike of back of hand
a thousand apologies can never repair
the displacement of a single hair
for she is not an object for you to own
she is a Queen that deserves a throne
and if she allows you to enter her chamber
it's also her decision if you should remain there.
Jun 28, 2018
Jun 28, 2018 at 5:32 PM UTC
Dear Reader,
if you're reading this
it means
I'm dead
as a paper
_free_
to be etched
with the poem
I tried to write
so many times
when I was me-
Feb 1, 2019
Feb 1, 2019 at 9:15 PM UTC
My heart lay bleeding at my feet
I stare as you tear it apart.
I stagger back as you take your walk alone.
You say you're off balance,
So I go and the sides are even again.
You won't miss me when I'm gone.
You were my best friend and more.
I still want to be your friend, too.
But I need time to heal my heart.
You're not really gone, but to me you are and I miss you.
And I know you're not coming back.
So I'll see you around and we'll say hello.
I try, but can't put into words:
The sound of my heart shattering
The sight of the permanently gray skies etched into my mind
The feeling of your arms... I'll never feel again
The scent of the tears on my face
And the taste of them in my mouth
But my senses are numb.
I notice these things, but don't really feel them.
Isn't it tragic?
Oct 27, 2011
Oct 27, 2011 at 4:36 PM UTC
Dal Lake
I float on Dal Lake
Suspended
between the thick soupy crisp air of soldiers
water lilies, Kashmiri bread
and the Muslim prayers
that penetrate the hardness of war
chanting Allah Bismallah
Floating Islam
Holy words drenching the air
Drenching the green cloth of Hindu soldiers
Sliding down the cool metal of a rifle
9 years of war
1,000 houseboats lie empty
in the Himalayan fog
Intricately carved furniture
Thick with dust
and the powder of blood and bullets
Himalayan silhouette etched black
against the song of lotus gatherers
Foggy voices like cloud of moon
Lotus lake
Gray of war and desperation
Children beg
1 rupee
1 rupee
1 rupee
Endless monologue
Parched like lotus shaped paddle
They throw flowers to me
endlessly
I throw them back
endlessly
Time passes slowly
like smoke on a lizard’s tail
trailing in the thick, rancid air
of burning meat and maple leaves
Like a shikara
moving over the glass of Kashmir
The sound of a dozen Bangees
floating over the water
Hollow, solemn and mournful
Echoing against the hardness
of the surrounding mountains
The circle of Himalayas
Like a womb
around the prayers of Pachin
In the middle of the lake
I hear the call to prayer
Azan Nemarz Suba
Azan Nemarz Pashin
Azan Nemarz Degar
Azan Nemarz Sham
Azan Nemarz Koftan
From dawn till dusk
Azan
4 mosques
4 singers
4 directions
staggered by a breath
like an imperfect echo
Azan slips into the pockets of island soldiers
Waters the impatience of soldiers on the shore
Steals into the vacant eyes of soldiers in the Mosque
They want to go home to their wives and children
They want to leave the place of prayer, which is not theirs
The place of prayer, which has seen death
The place where God was pushed out
In order to not see the killing
To **** what they don’t see
The place, which was no longer a refuge
Outside
Dal Lake turns to the color of red lentils
cooking in a dented metal ***
In the Shikara boat we eat dal and rice
and throw scraps into the silver water
where it washes up
onto the ***** boots of a soldier
I hear the dull gray click, click of his rifle
as it touches the ground
The prayers have ended
Aug 13, 2014
Aug 13, 2014 at 3:34 PM UTC
The road behind bares us a backdrop, too many nights find us fractured in our thoughts and the dreamers we once were are far from the two people who stand today.
We're broken, mere splinters of our shipwreck past, driftwood on a shore that drowns every time the ocean breathes.
The path is littered with slaughtered dreams that didn't bleed.
As time and tide wait for no man shall we find it a tragic scene?
simply erased with the sunsets demise?
No one gets away without a scar and mine speak a road map to chaos
and a found hello to you.
Mine own scars are fingertips
gouged into the sand and faded
but salted by tears of the ocean, inerasable by the tide.
A soul washed up upon the shore, a road map etched delicately into fine bones.
You can trace where I'd been before. All roads lead to your hello.
In broken lines and have uttered phrases and one too many empty night.
Backdrop of chaos does paint in the darkest colors you could ever imagine .
How does it gets so flawed by our own creations and vices my dear?
Does it still ring ever so true?
The bell rings true whispering distant voices
Empty nights are just bottles lined up as dead soldiers
We contemplated our own truths and fell victim to our own vices
The backdrop is black, no colour beneath skin.
Honestly? Where does our downfall begin?
Two ships underneath the nightscape past the spark once understood the flame and nothing more .
In empty alleys, like cats to prowl, we find our moments, and then bury our thoughts to lay for no others to see.
half written papers and half heard conversation the keys of the piano haunt the silence as myself shadows that still remain.
Nothing is but a thought and those are like dead flowers laid to waste a reflection of far better times
The night crawls to meet the day as it has so many times before.
The thought of the minds bottle lay empty upon the table.
A fond farewell is but a sugar coated goodbye.
And I seldom have minced my words to mask their sting.
The page forever bleeds.
Pages that lay scattered on a ***** floor
Bleeding ink into cracks
that will forever more
hide the spirit of our souls.
Jan 29, 2015
Jan 29, 2015 at 7:23 AM UTC
*erstwhile a halcyon extant universe incessantly ceaseless
cradled itself in hues of violet phosphorescence
laced with cobalt shimmering stars
perpetually whole it nonetheless
sought to know itself
encompassing all that is bubbling over in effervescent ebullience
intertwined with indescribable catastrophic splendor
it shattered into tens of millions of splinters
of eloquent efflorescent light
shining in the night
each splinter heretofore imbued with sempiternal felicity
began to conjure sumptuous dulcet elixirs
furtively seeking out savory emollients
to mollify the pique of separation
plummeting they fell
into monstrous competition seeking demesne they lost the purpose
of gaining awareness and intelligent consciousness
surreptitious estrangement overflowed
deluging them in excruciating agony
thus an epiphany was born
the carving of the beleaguered fragments inked with tremendous pain
created a transfiguration of splinters to crystals
hence enlightenment commenced as the gems
magnetized together constructing a world
where omnipotence shines
the ineffable beauty formed by the reintegration of crystals
far exceeds the original as they dazzle with universal light
bursting from diamonds etched in deep wisdom
flooding the firmament with kaleidoscopic
rainbow strobes cascading the sky
©2016janetaylor
May 1, 2016
May 1, 2016 at 1:23 PM UTC
.
I've stared...
Longingly forever into you
You'd stare back but you never really knew
Hands of hours, minutes and seconds I've shook
All the time I've carelessly took
I've witnessed...
That etched on each one, that amazing smile
A crutch forged of sunrays that had carried me many a mile
It's all that I have to know of you
In this endless chase I've sought to pursue
I've envisioned...
Different ways you'd wear your crown
Various trimmings on lavish gowns
Smitten by the way you sport your paint
The nectarous song sung in your gait ever so faint
I've imagined...
The addictive rise and fall of your every breath
Bringing me back to life after every death
Pulses of sweet nothings that never did ebb
Ensnaring my heart with your silk spun web
I've believed...
You are the queen of my future tale untold
I've felt it so real like verses written in bold
But I've awakened from slumber into terrifying reality
Pains me to realise that you're nothing but imaginary...
Nov 7, 2014
Nov 7, 2014 at 8:25 AM UTC
You say I'm childish
For freely professing
All the words that are
Etched on my heart
As if I had any
Other choice but to
Be buried by them
Sep 10, 2025
Sep 10, 2025 at 3:40 PM UTC
They’d waited too long to say
“I love you”.
3 words. 3 syllables.
Yet they held millions of emotions unspoken.
and now that they’d done it, they wouldn’t,
couldn’t, stop
they told each other all the time, at the end of the argument
and before the good news.
In the middle of the storm, even though it was hard to see, and after, when the raging winds had settled on a breeze
before the rising sun turned the sky pretty colors and after it flickered out and faded away into the dark
Underneath the stars that their love had been etched into
There was no love until death for them, because it would never stop
I love you beyond
Jan 16, 2019
Jan 16, 2019 at 7:42 PM UTC
I often envisage love
as snowflakes-
Each of us have it different
but it’s really just the same
with its imperfectly etched beauty
only few can comprehend
Its beauty can never be
expressed in words
or even a sliver
of what it’s worth
The snowflakes are piling up
and the shivers are ethereal
we don’t even realize
that it drives us delirious
The snowflakes keep piling up
but it doesn’t end here
it’ll drown us in its avalanche
and leave us gasping for air.
-m.j.a
Feb 18, 2015
Feb 18, 2015 at 6:45 AM UTC
Every blue patch on the sky keeps an eye,
cherishing clouds dancing, hovering over.
The songs of deep blue ride the heady air,
only to be stunned, all of a sudden,
at the first sight—
sung down on a perfectly placed mural.
The Queen of Sheba tiptoes this way;
King Solomon leans to the ground,
only to find seas of silent blooms
musing, dipping in sun-kissed dews—
on gently tilted roses that will not fall,
not from this picture-perfect, navel-high!
Velvety, the rose rises from the ground;
the forever-green Earth hangs low,
in the dew on the rose that will not fall.
Blossoming, eyeing an acute high,
evermore hopeful to scale upward,
toward the faraway, awaiting heaven's pool.
There, the spotlight does not move—
neither north nor south, nor up nor down—
until Queen Fathima, the Queen of Heaven,
steps on the "as above, so below" slope.
There, the newly resurrected Earth will be primed,
its minted atoms vibrating beyond bounds,
rising, for the first time, atop the navel-high.
Perfectly wrapped, the atom's circle finally turns on—
the stepping stone that holds no pi-decimal hole.
Pure Scientia hangs on the door of Paradise,
awaiting the numerically perfect Queen Fathima to step.
God willing, she will work in beauty:
the most sought-after, perfect works of art—
the lost masterpiece, not in translation,
but hidden within the pi-decimal abyss of Earth's depth.
Lo, the gleaning Sleeping Beauty peeps,
trailing the role model Queen.
Fathima—the first woman to enter Paradise—
walks the walk: perfect, straight, numerically precise.
As if she always knew, back from the Earth,
of the murals ahead, hanging on Paradise’s wall,
mathematically exact!
Mirrors of imagination, new wonders on Heaven’s way,
etched in the murals at the golden section, navel-high.
She zooms past the ever-spinning atom’s perfect span,
cemented at the entrance of Paradise.
Yet leaves no footprint—
for she never did, even on the sublunary Earth.
A new wonder blooms in the classic old eyes:
oh, Pi, still irrational, still pondering,
at the measured, eternal navel-high!
Oct 31, 2018
Oct 31, 2018 at 5:02 PM UTC
etched under my skin
flame roses blister
scars on the palms
of my hands bleed
stigmata thorns
my eyes freeze to crystal
the tears around my neck are
fashioned in lace black obsidian
my lips - the color of amber
and fire - are vows
never broken
my moons are scarlet
my stars are cold
my sun is silver
and beaten GOLD
soulsurvivor
9/16/2014
~~~
May 31, 2015
May 31, 2015 at 9:37 AM UTC
Oh, how dark our history is
You, my author of misery and pain
With fingers set to scribble my demise
This is our story, writ with chaotic pen
One that left calamity in its wake
You would always start the chapter
Every page inked with words of black
On the point of a pen, you'd viciously write
Using the sharp edge to stab into my being
Scripting, deeply, my eternal damnation
You erased my name and made me delusional
Always forcing me to your divine will
For the pen, always mightier than the sword
Was kept toward the edge of my neck
Swearing to strike at any given moment
Always determined, I'd end our sentences
Fighting to gain balance and bear the final period
Yet it was not without consequences
For you and I were wrought with scars
Etched into the bottom of our hearts, a burning black
If only these words painted a happy picture
But the thousand only paint a picture of pain
A dreary battle between two broken forces
On timeworn pages, brittle-ing on and on
Begging for the piece that holds our final chapter
And that chapter swiftly came for I was the ending
Leaving in the night, gone without a trace
With no words or ink left as a guiding clue
Carefully escaping from your paper prison
Free from the agony of the writer's press
On that day, I began my life again
Starting a happy story; free, original, and new
A home of letters filled with love, life, and joy
Where I'd never dare see you again, my dear, dear author
And never bleed black from your miserable weapon
May 21, 2016
May 21, 2016 at 10:22 AM UTC
Maybe it's time
to realise that
I do not have
to search for love
elsewhere;
not when it's etched
into my being--
my identity.
Maybe it's time
to not salvage
that love for anyone,
but embracing it
for me.
May 16, 2015
May 16, 2015 at 12:45 AM UTC
We are all silhouettes
Wrapped in the tapestry
Of a blooming night
Outlines etched messily
Into a cotton wool sky
Beautifully imperfect
A stray wisp illuminates
Sings sweet like our
Honey bee laughs
We smile, always
Endlessly sunshine yellow
For here we are youth
Wild like dandelions
Rebelling against being
A common flower
We paint the word ****
In shining glitter
Send it to outer space in
A paper airplane
Then dance on crazily
Like the night is infinite
Dreaming for a forever
May 4, 2018
May 4, 2018 at 2:09 PM UTC
Last night I
had a dream that
you died.
Everyone we knew
came, said their I’m-so-sorry’s,
and
left, filtering out the front door
slowly
like sand through a sideways sifter,
leaving behind pieces,
words and memories
and casseroles I
could not taste.
And the whole time
everyone was here,
you were here, too.
I could hear
you, smell
you, feel
you.
I could feel you
surrounding me like the ghost of the baby blanket
I once had and could never leave at home.
I loved you here and here you would stay, with me,
and now you would never leave.
I could keep you.
You were bound to me.
But the ties that bind are tight and you did not like me leaving.
You could not go with me and
you
accidentally
and without words
by holding, enveloping,
suffocating
you told me
that you did not want me to ever leave again.
So I stopped.
I stopped leaving.
And the calls stopped, too.
The invites. The lunches. The impromptu trips to town.
All unnecessary noise.
The people left. And then it was just you and me.
Until one day I saw what you had done.
Tripping
I glanced in the mirror and saw.
You had etched yourself into my face.
Dug with your nails
terrifying ravines
escaping the corners
of my eyes. Pulled down
my mouth and every
shallow natural valley turned to
deep empty bowl, hungry and wanting.
My eyes no longer held light.
I saw this, all evidence against you,
and I still loved you.
You had hurt me in ways you never had
while you were here – here – and I knew.
And I still loved you.
Slinking up the stairs
I called you to me. I felt you surround
faster than before and
closer, tighter, colder.
Suffocating, stifling and
so destructive in how you loved me.
Slowly but faster
I grew to know
I would not become you and
you would not become me.
We were stuck on other sides of the mirror.
I was so angry
at what you had allowed me
made me
begged me to become.
Realizing
I gasped and put
hand to heart
it hurt so.
I stood upright
how long have I been bent
took in one long deep breath of stuffy air
how long since I opened the windows
and called you to me
when have I last heard a voice not my own
called you to listen.
I felt the loss of everything else
friends
family
adventure
excitement.
Nothing was left of that here
and I was so angry
and I am so sorry
and I yelled
I screamed
I roared
why are you still here
why are you making me like you
why did you come here and
hold me
and keep me here with you
I am not the one who is dead
and I said
and I regret
and I am so sorry
I can’t have you here
go away
and
leave me alone
and you did.
You left me
all alone.
Why would you leave me?
May 8, 2014
May 8, 2014 at 1:06 AM UTC
A steady minded person might tell you that everything can be measured, calculated and converted into a language of black and white, solutions worked out with sharpened pencils.
How do I measure my heart breaking?
Tell me,at what rate did my heartstrings snap when he told me he was leaving?
How long until all of my broken bones turn into dust?
Calculate at what speed the tears rolled down my checks.
How many doctors will it take to sew my heart back together?
Was it when he crumpled me up like a wasted idea etched onto a piece of notebook paper that everything started to bleed?
What part of my brain did his gentle hands touch that woke my monsters from their slumber?
How many days until this aching in my swollen chest turns into a gentle throb?
When will I be okay again?
Takes this pain and your sharpened pencils and rip the numbers from the dead hands of his name. Do away with the emotion like he did away with me.
Jan 4, 2016
Jan 4, 2016 at 9:54 PM UTC
You asked me to put on some makeup.
Well, dear.
I would need too much makeup,
to cover my scowls,
and this ugly thing I call
a face.
There would never be enough makeup
to cover up my scarred heart
and attempt to make it look whole and pretty.
There would never be enough makeup
to cover my sarcastic and strange humor,
make myself sound smart, pretty, cute.
There would never be enough makeup
to cover my soul,
make it seem pure,
innocent - the way you want me to be...
I've been exposed for too long,
too many burns, and scars race across me,
everywhere,
too noticeable, too many
for me to ever use makeup.
Makeup will never make me look pretty.
It will disfigure all that I have,
take away the stories that are etched onto me,
it will cover what defines
me.
Dec 6, 2014
Dec 6, 2014 at 6:48 PM UTC
Even the idea was worthy of a fight
and all too much preparation.
We dolled ourselves up for alienation,
even though the faces present
were so familiar and etched into memory.
Who are you Mr.Cool?
If that is your real name.
Whiskey breath and filterless smokes
only impresses the girls in the movies,
with scripts written by clueless men
like you, who can't supply injury
so they bring only insult.
You are a secretary bird,
a mime, and the copycat kid.
Trying to be a bad boy and hide
amongst the spoiled brats you claim.
Keep on burrowing and severing ties,
ravishing resources leads to ruin.
You say you've heard rumors?
Well, I've heard facts.
I've seen facts!
Your parasitic disguise will crumble
under the weight of your genuinely selfish persona.
While the company I keep will only know
the side you wished to reveal
in front of all the pretty boys and girls.
Sep 4, 2013
Sep 4, 2013 at 12:04 PM UTC
I do not fear death.
But I do fear wasting life.
I don't fear the pain
of my skin burning,
the emptiness
of my last breath,
the aching
of leaving the ones I love.
I do fear
the lack of scars etched into my skin.
I do fear
the emptiness
of my thoughts.
I do fear
the tears that I will never cry
of a broken heart.
I want to meet all the people of the world
and share our ridiculous stories
before my lips become silent.
I want to make mistakes
and learn to be right the next time
before I see the Devil.
I want to fall in love with the Earth,
with the people that walk on it,
with the mud that gets under my nails,
with the sunlight and rain that my skin soaks up
before my body shrivels into ashes
flowing in the wind.
When the comes that I should die
and I still have not lived
I should beg the Lord
Give me one more day
I beg you, please!
I wish to feel the sun bake my withered skin.
I wish to smell the bitterness of the sea.
I wish to see the stars dance at night.
and hear the laughter of children running by.
Let me live
for one day
and I'll let an infant take my place.
I do not fear losing life
I only fear losing a life a that never got to live.
Jul 10, 2012
Jul 10, 2012 at 1:33 AM UTC
I am but willing prey to the wiles of the full grown moon.
She guards the night sky...
While I patrol these grounds...
Grieving over the seconds that have gone too soon.
I am a vessel... all emptied and barren.
what once was full,
now echoes faint
the glories of yesteryears.
Afloat still, adrift upon the currents... aimless and sullen.
I am a ghost... haunting no one but my own.
Immortalised...
Anchored...
to a body of mist and haze...
Occupying this space where worthy wind had once blown...
I am a beggar offering nothing but my open palms.
Hope etched tight
into my knackered knuckles
and calloused digits.
Please... take them in yours...
soothe them...
grant me your touch, your coveted balm.
Jul 13, 2015
Jul 13, 2015 at 10:28 AM UTC
I am told to believe in myself
look past the flaws
imperfections,
because all those things
define the uniqueness
within my body,
my soul
but what I see
when I take that
prolonged, aching glance
into a mirror
as cloudless as a
summer evening
is everything
I am told doesn’t matter
but
how do I ignore veins
crawling up my legs like
the spiders they're named after
or
fat under my skin
that seems to expand so widely
it is impossible for my
eyes not to trip upon it
and
wide hips
unfocused gaze
gaping pores
unshaped lips
rippling marks
etched on my skin
as a form of punishment
for being myself
sloping thighs
feet like
the twin towers
giant
tall
wide
deep
is that what I am?
uncertain
unknown
unloved
but in the end just
“unique”?
human
we’re all just human
but then
why
do I feel
so
mis
understood?
Oct 4, 2014
Oct 4, 2014 at 1:52 AM UTC
running
deliquescing into nature
i am engulfed in stillness
i encounter a deer as i round a corner
its chestnut eyes intensely sense
something wild within me
transfixed
we meld palpably
whispering our essence
myopic views warp into acute focus
golden flowers stretch and arch
and yawning into the sun
swell with bursts of luster
whilst violets polka dot the path
with lilac luminescence
dead tree trunks
mutating into masterpieces
yearn for new life
drawing in the squirrels
yellow-bellied birds
hover
sensing my motions
whilst woodland winds undulate
pine scented waves of sea salt oceans
my ears enchantingly enhanced
by bristling leaves caressing trees
as scintillating amber butterflies
dance in synch
with the clock tower’s
ancient chiming
a gust of wind
catches a patch of sand
and sends it quivering
fusing high in summer air
then falling soft as feathers
hidden fairies prance about
answering unheard questions
problems dissolve in emerald meadows
without a hint of striving
essays write themselves
upon my mind
poetry flows through me
wings of meadowlarks
trace my face with nuances
interlaced with connotations
rushing home
i write it down
then bowing i take credit
for what was etched upon my soul
by a sunbeam in the forest
©2016janetaylor
May 25, 2016
May 25, 2016 at 10:09 PM UTC
Without you is like life without joy
Without you I know not true sweetness
Without you I am but a bitter misery
You who I made from scratch
And baked lovingly in a batch
Your delectable aroma etched in my memory
Your soft sponge so very airy
You are my sinful indulgence
Truly you are a decadence
Feb 23, 2014
Feb 23, 2014 at 5:03 AM UTC
We were poets,
Once,
Hearts etched upon our sleeve
The lords of our intent,
Words bloomed for all to see.
Each branch of thought considered,
Chiseled,
Whittled to express.
Carving the forest in our likeness
We paved the landscape with our breath.
Woods would sway in idle days
Sunkissed glades lay bathed in gold.
Nights waylaid by dancing maids
Cheap ale and tales of old.
Fires burn, flames unfold.
Though
Embers remember
Tender clutch of the cold.
We tend to forget the bargained,
The sold.
Up rivers and creeks,
Paddles, disowned by the meek,
Cast away to distant shores.
Glades decay,
Fade to grey.
We become poets once more.
Apr 13, 2017
Apr 13, 2017 at 4:01 AM UTC