"expanses" poems
How much do I love you?
Hold your breathe until you can't hold it any longer.
That feeling of wanting to breath... that's how much I love you.
Look at the ocean, and its wide expanses that you can only see a small fraction of.
The size of that ocean is as much as I love you.
Look up at the stars. There are trillions of them. There are far more than we will ever know about.
The expanse of those stars doesn't equal how much I love you.
Now look me in the eye. My eyes have seen the beauty of the world. But nothing as beautiful as you.
That is how much I love you.
I love you more than I love being able to breath, My love for you is larger than the water I need to survive. My love for you is so much more than anyone could ever understand. My love of your beauty is more than my love of any other thing to ever exist.
And that,
Is how much I love you.
Jun 7, 2015
Jun 7, 2015 at 12:50 AM UTC
“isn’t it crowded in california?” people always ask me
but you should have seen the way it looked from the sky
expanses of empty valleys
mountains of uninhabited ridges
cities that i could touch with my fingertip
much like the stars in the dark night air
and green as far as the eye could see
the silver snow that dotted the land
reminding us not to forget about it
never had i been so far above that i could notice it all
always stuck in my corner of the universe
and you should have felt what i felt
knowing that there are still
areas of my heart that have yet to be
realized and explored and populated
by anyone who is not you
even though at one point
you occupied the spaces
the cracks in my chest and lungs and limbs
so much that i thought you were a piece of me
but the seasons change and so do people
so my winter will be drastically different than my summer
when you climbed out of my life and into another’s
and hearts break and shrink and expand
to make room for different hearts
(mine’s currently in the process of getting rid of you)
Jan 8, 2015
Jan 8, 2015 at 12:13 AM UTC
Small and observant,
this girl child already loves her solitude.
Dark eyes taking in everything for much later,
long hair a little mussed-up, tumbling over feet pyjamas,
she stands quietly in the doorway of her little bedroom.
Across old parquet floors, into spare white rooms
she gazes at the grown-ups in their party clothes,
secretly planning that someday she will be one of them.
Plain white origami birds, suspended from the high
vintage ceilings, hand-made from her poet-mother's
typing paper, are the only decorations.
The soft, indirect lighting, all invented by her father
out of simple things, creates a perfect visual tone.
This quiet inventor has also chosen jazz he loves
to animate the evening for his friends.
These grown-ups in their party clothes,
yellows, greens and reds, puffy skirts, stiletto heels,
men in simple suits, white shirts, thin black ties,
talented painters, holocaust survivors, intellectuals,
talking, laughing, smoking too much, martini glasses in hand.
What stayed with her most was the music, and the way
it brought the whole world right to her.
Jazz from here in her native city,
Soft, sultry Bossa Nova that her soul knew even better.
Only some of what she saw that night became the life she chose.
The intimacy of observing, of silently forming words around
what she saw, talking and laughing with friends,
loving passionately, getting scorched to the bone,
and the music, the music....
The music would always stay with her, leading her across
wide expanses of this beautiful old world
to the parts of it that she would someday taste, and see.
Her life would become the stretching wide open of her heart.
To love it all, to write about it all.
to give this back, someday,
to the music, and to this big, beautiful old world.
Sep 18, 2015
Sep 18, 2015 at 11:28 PM UTC
Island,a piece of land surrounded by water,
So are we when you actually sit and ponder.
Water is what surrounds that piece of land,
And thoughts are what surround us, vast expands.
Exotic, tropical and beautiful expanses they treasure,
Much like the beauty within us beyond measure.
Some discovered and mapped and yet others still untouched,
We too expose ourselves and some still remain in 'emselves clutched.
Surrounded by a tropical beach some are and others in a dense gloomy fog,
We put up so many appearances, all assumptions and views to clog.
A threat an outsider may pose to the paradise they hold within,
Laying a foundation of trust is what's required before explorations begin.
Every island is unique and beautiful in itself,
Every person is a limited edition model on life's shelf.
An opportunity to experience such beauty needs to be met with gratitude and respect,
Grateful one should be to experience such beauty and not heartlessly deject.
For an island once deemed ugly will set up a fortress of its own,
People will crawl into their shells never letting anyone in their private zone
Oct 24, 2015
Oct 24, 2015 at 4:15 AM UTC
It's such a beautiful relationship
like birds cleaning crocodile teeth
feeding on what didn't make it to the stomach
these words rely on me
A vessel
and hopefully they don't
act like hermit *****
because without them
I would just be a ***
who drinks and smokes too much
But as long as I have the ability
to manipulate the world around me
in the chaotic rush
of my infinite mental expanses
and nooks and crannies
I can give them life
like a midwife
I bring them into the world
and name them poems
or stories
so that they might live forever
burned in the retinas of strangers
or etched on the wood of my desk
I hope we will always
need each other
Feb 26, 2013
Feb 26, 2013 at 10:55 AM UTC
I long for solitude;
The day's barking tyrants
Drained my reservoir.
Thirsty for life,
I search for my oasis
On life's arid expanses.
I witness the crucifixion;
I watch firefighters burn books;
I can't resist the sirens' call.
The ionizing words mutate me;
I read, and I'm pierced.
The tyrant's visage, shattered.
Apr 26, 2021
Apr 26, 2021 at 11:17 PM UTC
a tornado from the blue
of unleashed amatory instincts,
with a Kamasutra mind
in full play, from the center,
more inventive than the original;
your sudden appearance
in my orbit, after a while,
for this intervention extraordinary
had splendid consequences.
hell, one never could have asked for more!
Making me passionate
beyond my tolerable limits
with violence fashioned as love bites,
wild play of nails on skin expanses,
and other salacious techniques
were as ever, your optionals--
worked on me like never before
I reinvented myself
as a natural in the art of
complete merger-
the yoga of mind and body
the perfected art of Eros,
exactly the way you envisaged
the waves still madly erupt
for you to take care,
which ever way you like.
Nov 8, 2011
Nov 8, 2011 at 11:07 AM UTC
Moments, each like a drop of rain
That is the continual movement
Of the Omniverse
Forming, falling, breaking and rejoining,
Inhaled back up to the skies
And starting all over again,
Eventually, even the Gods,
Like energy into matter
Like electrons and protons and neutrons
Like atoms into molecules,
Like those bodiless strands of DNA
Floating in magnificent soups of matter,
Cloning themselves,
Like the cells they formed connecting and creating life,
Systems of energy making machines,
Like the bodies that wasted away
When their brains became their graves
Breaking away into pure information,
Finding each other
In the vast expanses of space
And reconnecting like the broken lines of a puzzle
Finally piecing together
To make the image of a single universal being…
They too shall join and make one,
For many are the plains of the multiverse
And many are the gods that stare out
Into its infinite dimensions.
Sep 15, 2012
Sep 15, 2012 at 1:43 PM UTC
I'm poring over your words...
Sophistication beyond compare
I can only savour in gulps
Such fantastic fare
•••••
Your stars are sculpted out of porcelain
Whilst mine, white washed vinyl
Your haloed moon, commands immediate attention
Mine only hovers...
As elliptical paint over stencil
Oceans of yours brim full
Catching the shards from the noon day sun
When mine suffer from receding tides
Turning into stagnant estuaries
where water hardly runs
Myriad views from snow swept mountains
You paint perfect with delicate pairings
Stuck with a view from a porthole
Sometimes all I see,
are the vast expanses of tumultuous endings
•••••
Still poring over all of your words
They all weigh much
but soar like feathers on birds
Artform fit for gods beyond compare
Drowning in the magic...
Of your incredible fare
Aug 19, 2015
Aug 19, 2015 at 11:49 AM UTC
Hello old friend,
With your tall sweeping evergreens
Towering almost endlessly
Into a blue clear sky
The endless swell of traffic
Cars peeling down the street
The smell of roasted coffee beans
From some hole-in-the-wall cafe
The obvious transplant donning an umbrella in the Autumnal warm rain
The light sprinkling of water enough
To nurture the verdant green
Hello old friend,
Mt. Rainier, she greets me,
Looming ever majestically
Over expanses of tree and road
Her white peaks cresting over
Fields of blossoming flowers
The tulip fields scattered across the sloping
Skagit Valley, her vineyards spanning for miles and miles
Hello old friend,
Seattle's grungy nature
Masked by her streets of trendy
Cafes and farm-to-table restaurants
Her mom and pop cafes
Her canvas gray dress marred by graffiti
And street tags
The busker on the street corner panhandling for change
The homeless sheltering under a cardboard blanket outside of a Starbuck's
The transplant with the umbrella stopping down to drop change in their jar
The crumpled dollar
The locals who pointedly ignore him on their way to work, to school, back home, to somewhere...anywhere...
The constant dazed bustle
The stench and pungent odor of ****
Curling around every seedy corner and
Affluent street crossing
Hello old friend,
It's been a while
Let me nestle into your newness
A new coast greets me across the horizon
Replaced by homespun everything
Pastoral fields where the bovine and equine reside
Hello old friend,
I suppose you're home now
I suppose you're home...
Oct 30, 2021
Oct 30, 2021 at 10:46 PM UTC
I am an escaped prisoner from barred disillusion,
A personable recluse fighting the illusion
Of an introspective extrovert who finds solace in confusion.
I wonder how it is that I find optimism alone,
When collective pessimistic thoughts condone
The woeful tales that howl and moan.
I hear voices of people that aren’t there,
Yet find myself in calmness aware
Despite their tormented accusational affair.
I see ideals living and thriving out there
Even when apathy or indifference ensnare
Battered hearts and worn out minds in despair
I want nothing more than to ‘want’ so desperately
I hold onto desire so restlessly,
That I’ve tired the being of my entity,
I am an anomalous paradox captive to the sea
Where waters churn in active disharmony,
Yet comfort as it may my tranquility.
I pretend that I’ve already staked my global legacy
As if my words, thoughts, and feelings,
Have changed the world entirely.
I feel everything as I believe it should be,
Riding the waves of intensity
In emotionally humble serendipity,
I touch the stars in remote prose,
Wandering the vast expanses without close,
Wherever my mind goes, it goes.
I worry about the future of humanity,
As if I was merely here to watch observantly
From some unknown eternity.
I cry for those in silent pain
With fake smiles of disdain
Who dare not speak for thought in vain.
I am a quiet observer of the human condition
Checking and balancing sedition
Though never granting my submission.
I understand the fallibility of the mind,
Gathering as many perspectives I can find,
Theorizing everything to which I’m inclined.
I say it’s all relative but it’s all relevant
Prone to be dominated by the prevalent
Missing the subtleties that are heaven sent.
I dream when I’m awake through my ideals,
Even when they’re still just spinning wheels,
Hoping they gain traction as time reveals.
I try to be better than the day before,
As that’s the best way to keep score,
When the world has us compared to others so much more.
I hope my legacy is genuine,
I regret nothing even when I sin,
As time wears down my wrinkled grin.
I am only human, to live and to die,
That’s about all we can be or rely,
And honestly this notion breaths me a sigh.
Sep 16, 2018
Sep 16, 2018 at 5:11 PM UTC
Rolling hills and sprawling trees
Easily lost in expanses of green
We lose all our troubles, worries and cares
Sometimes ourselves in the frost-bitten air
The smoke from the fire rises and curls
The quick flowing stream tumbles and swirls.
The tent in the meadow, my humble abode
Like these old mountains, my problems erode
The sun sprints west as nighttime steals in
I hunker down to escape the cold wind
The fire and I swap stories and smokes
He tells me the stories of long bygone folks
When the cold is too much, I call it quits
I take a quick pull and crawl in my tent
Out here I can't feel the weight of the world
My shoulders are free, my mind is restored.
Jun 13, 2013
Jun 13, 2013 at 10:47 PM UTC
i crave the universe; it's expanses, outer reaches.
i want to drink from the big dipper, have my fill,
be merry.
escape with me, from the wicked pull of gravity,
leave this ***** scarred earth.
i want to inhale these scattered constellations;
exhale galaxies, nebulas.
i want to leave these silly material things behind,
we can leave ourselves in this beautifully infinite silence,
let the stars tell the stories of the great orion and cassiopeia.
leave your own footprints on the moon, on mars,
wherever you wish, starchild,
there's too much to see when you live in an
u n f a t h o m a b l e e x p a n s e
staring into stardust,
staring into the roots of you,
of your creation,
of your nebula-blood.
your star-bones.
Jan 23, 2013
Jan 23, 2013 at 7:56 PM UTC
I came from the sunny valleys
And sought for the open sea,
For I thought in its gray expanses
My peace would come to me.
I came at last to the ocean
And found it wild and black,
And I cried to the windless valleys,
“Be kind and take me back!”
But the thirsty tide ran inland,
And the salt waves drank of me,
And I who was fresh as the rainfall
Am bitter as the sea.
2.1k
Drawn on strings of moonlight visions are whispered in love notes and poetry
Future brushstrokes on the echoes of eternity
Enigmas in candid but if you look closely
Sun petals
Soft tempos
Giving solace and solstice to the sun-kissed and weary
Delicate and hardly above skylines and kiss me’s
Daydreams and the uncanny act of tripping on galaxies never lasts through the laughter and the sadness in the symmetry
Despite the next level of genesis in trinity
Stands the heretic consumed with the brevity of setting free
Amassed and exhumed the expanses of longevity
Sporadically bloomed now the tragic is ahead of dreams and shivers in the night
Unparalleled and strung by kites and carousels and river streams
Never made of sense in seems the abstract is the kin that breathes in metaphors and similes
Terraforms and then it leaves entranced within lost reverie
Such is love and loss and finding peace
And across the stars I’m still finding me
Jun 26, 2015
Jun 26, 2015 at 2:24 PM UTC
oh, my god,
stop praising little girls for being "tiny" and "slender" and "willowy"
for being skinny.
because the scale offers validation
and eating cheetos and twizzlers and cookies and candy without gaining a pound becomes an accomplishment
a sharp and boasting laugh
ha, ha! i can eat all the **** i want
and still be /skinny!/
because a girl will feel pride
in her ballerina legs and bony joints
and guilt
in her best friend wishing she were as small.
because "skinny" stops being an adjective
and becomes a definition.
because being skinny becomes
owning stacks and stacks of size zero jeans
but ******* and shimmying and squeezing your *** into them
(god forbid you buy a size two.)
skinny becomes looking flat in the midsection
but only if you eat triscuits for lunch that day
becomes seeing the outlines of individual ribs
but grabbing with a grimace the layer of fat and skin that covers them
becomes standing with legs spread apart and back tilted and eyes squinted
and looking maybe kind of like a forever 21 model,
until you sit and your thighs melt into huge endless expanses of tissue
becomes avoiding the bathroom scale because you told yourself two years ago you'd never get above double digits.
becomes knowing that most girls would **** for your body, or for the absence of your body - for the carved out spaces where flesh could be.
becomes feeling guilty, feeling ridiculous, feeling ungrateful
becomes never admitting to anyone that you feel anything but skinny.
Nov 2, 2015
Nov 2, 2015 at 7:38 PM UTC
[Dedicated to Horace Sheridan-Bickers]
A vision of flushed faces, shining limbs,
The madness of the music that entrances
All life in its delirium of dances!
The white world glitters in the void, and swims
Through the infinite seas of transcendental trances.
Yea! all the hoarded seed of all my fancies
Bursts in a shower of suns! The wine-cup brims
And bubbles over; I drink deep hymns
Of sorceries, of spells, of necromancies;
And all my spirit shudders; dew bedims
My sight -these girls and their alluring glances!
Their eyes that burn like dawn's lascivious lances
Walking all earth to love -to love! Life skims
The cream of joy. If God could see what man sees,
(Intoxicating Nellies, Mauds and Nances!)
I see Him leave the sapphrine expanses,
The choir serene and the celestial air
To swoon into their sacramental hair!
1.9k
Being fatigued has its benefits: I don't give a hoot.
(sonnet #MMMMMMCCCCLXXXVI)
Talk to the silence as a train growls thence
Through wooded stretches, 'neath the bridge detail,
Sans more than rumbling deeply on that scale,
And think of how wee cricket voices fence
These ghastly plains with fiddling oer suspense,
Nor listen cuz--those days are gone and fail,
At least my solace in their joys does, pale
Expanses washed in moonlight not mine hence.
Or not the maple's knobby roots as twere,
Its canopy of shadow lace I knew
Last year, that freedom of the lake in tour
Gone, I remember, as tinnitus to
Effect half waltzes with the clock's demure
Tread, ticking, whilst...what is't that no man woo?
09Jul17b
Jul 12, 2017
Jul 12, 2017 at 8:29 PM UTC
Spark the stars into being
You settle like the dust
Of meteorites, falling stars
Over the memory of dark skies
And endless expanses of black
You are a night sky
A million stars that light up
The darkest parts of the universe
You are supernova bursts of light
Stars bursting into being
And flickering out
A million miles away
And all I can do
Is write about the stars
And never even dream
I could be even one.
Aug 31, 2012
Aug 31, 2012 at 7:20 PM UTC
Errant, vast, my expanses
in the depths of hypnotisms
so ancient… still so spicy…
Reverberation of distant essences
is the adamantine wake
of dreaming satellites.
I collect rainbow sparks,
exalted
by craters of inlaid borders.
I would feel a silky tinkling
echoing in my throat,
but without a key,
the unknown does not reveal the intent
of me put down on this world...
Apr 6, 2016
Apr 6, 2016 at 7:48 PM UTC
It is a replicable dialectic
that swirls in my mind
like a spiral of cigarette smoke
covering fluctuations
of diffused expanses
of transferable hallucinated images
relying on an artificial artificiality
to generate a reality
one that amplifies a calisthenics
of maximized reduction
in the blank vacuum of space
allows those sophistication’s
where there is a scrutiny
of exclusions
that may perhaps betray
the concepts of others
those correlatives
of our own creative interirority
where a mind may repeal a transgression
for it is breakfast in the time
of the Wizard Pig
Apr 21, 2013
Apr 21, 2013 at 5:24 AM UTC
*The hill, meditative and tranquil
at its acme, stands a tree majestic,
a grandpa banyan, lost in thought,
birds on his crown sing all day long,
many different tunes
that merge in to one, and wafts in the air
the silver cloud, transparent above the hill
in its morning meditation
stands still
below the hill is a river,
the water runs deep, so pleased it seems,
meandering around the hill,
hurrying on its way to the ocean,
yet unknown.
In a boat the lone traveller sits,
as the wind blows the boat gains speed,
he looks at the mast, so white,
the sun sits above it,
vigorous, splashing light,
around the boat he sees a shoal of fish
languidly swim,
a fish, he is in life's stream
a ray of light, a drop in the river
a wisp of cloud that drifts and dissolves,
bit by bit in blue expanses,
All one, just many facets of eternal.*
Dec 2, 2013
Dec 2, 2013 at 7:46 AM UTC
When surgeons open my body
They’ll find
E v e r g r e e n
Snow capped mountains with endless expanses of ice
They will find a certain
s t i l l n e s s
No whispering between the trees
No flowers singing in the sun
I’ll be dreaming of the heat
I’ve been missing in my fingertips for so long
I have frost bite
on e v e r y s i n g l e o n e
When surgeons open my body
looking for my heart
they’ll find S t a t i c
A silence that e c h o s
A kind of silence you only know after tragedy
I have
An e m p t y space
where my lungs once were
Holding N o t h i n g
but a vigil witnessed only by one small girl with t i n y t i n y hope
All fading away
in the abandoned town
I have resting
between each breath
- When the surgeons open my body
- They will find many many secrets inside
Jul 30, 2021
Jul 30, 2021 at 7:42 PM UTC
In the minutes and hours flying by
Interlaced in their quiet chaos
I find myself wondering,
Amidst this storm of experience,
On moments past
I find it curious
How in these long expanses of time
I become jealous of those
Who can find the seconds instead
Living for the moments which matter
I drive sometimes
Late at night
And as the street lights illuminate me
However fleetingly
I imagine those moments
As memories
Ones I haven't had the honor to savor
I sometimes lose control
Of this concept of time
I allow it to dictate my position
And I forget
About these moments
Almost naïve
In why I was ever jealous of them
I see a shallow rim of water
In the wake of my path
But most times I don't see the ripples
Around individual steps
I look down and suddenly
All that exists is a line of disturbed water
Supposedly where I had stepped before
I hope I find these moments
These steps
These seconds
Illuminated by arbitrary street lights
Standing in the wake of these ripples
But this time
Savoring their individual tenancies
Interlaced in their quiet chaos
Jul 25, 2018
Jul 25, 2018 at 2:32 PM UTC
Fire is in his eyes, in the pit of his belly and *****
a fire ball he is, zooming through the sky of desire,
the longing for her transforms in to a roaring fire
within him, it untiringly rages, slowly gets sublime
It warmed him, blood coursed in force through
the veins like a river full of molten lava, with a mind,
he was blazing his trail, with accelerating creative urge
lovers of beauty saw him as a firefly of high skies
brightening vast expanses of inner sky, like none else did
she was the serendipitous spark lighted him thus
the fuel that propels, the 'anima' behind his phenomenal drive
He was burning to find a moment to commemorate,
this fire, his desire for her, not a bit less even after all these years
unexpectedly she appears, at the moment that thought occurred,
she smiled, it's radiance fell in to his psyche, froze as a golden idol,
Wasn't it what he desired? She getting etched as the spirit of a smile!
Feb 1, 2015
Feb 1, 2015 at 10:02 AM UTC