"finitude" poems
~
*The disruptor,
whether digital or analog,
strikes the bell,
bioengineered automaton
—a manufactured life form
given little agency or dimension,
mnemonic to the finitude of life,
and subtle muddling of humankind's
supposed moral transcendence.*
~
May 2, 2021
May 2, 2021 at 10:59 PM UTC
677
To be alive—is Power—
Existence—in itself—
Without a further function—
Omnipotence—Enough—
To be alive—and Will!
’Tis able as a God—
The Maker—of Ourselves—be what—
Such being Finitude!
2.2k
this cold sunrise will choke on all the dark, sunless ways that i am in love you. sweet one, let's watch the light as it falls apart and crawl, like ether on our golden skin. this is us sitting in the last of september's lights — this is us in the finitude of poetry, and i have never seen anything as beautiful.
Sep 5, 2021
Sep 5, 2021 at 1:28 AM UTC
holdover from the air cools bitter awash of dark and a turning horizon without centre. where i entered an empty frame across distance and skin like smoke. ive been having nightmares of cosmic terror a sublime loss of control like paper tearing in the chaotic drifts of broken eddies and other everyday things an inward open mirror a sunlit line wavering to heat disintegration dispersal erosion and death. ive been reading uncanny fluctuations in the sign of things in a power too great and sparse to comprehend overwhelmed by haunting finitude as time veers into collision and the fleeting panic of yesterdays blood. i find myself shaking at the thought of contact the electromagnetic law of repulsion built into the fabric of my flesh eyes turned away like a promise all language from dead stars. dragged along these orbits my skin trembles and i am hateful. faces blur in passageways half-lit rooms smudge across the surface of my memory until i see nothing but the colour of what was tightening the cords of my ribs stumbling inflexion. in the precession of traffic light blurs through my sleeve and i realise i was invisible all along and that i did this to myself and that nobody can help me and that i did this to myself and that i will retreat further and further and further because if it hurts to be abandoned it hurts more to be approached and misunderstood. the masks the words the acts the plays and beneath it all fear cruel mounting hopeless wretched fear eyes turning fingers running over and over until they break the lines of my face a ******* i turn the clocks upside down. i take the batteries out of all my electronic devices. i break the locks on my door. only then does morning come.
Feb 7, 2018
Feb 7, 2018 at 10:51 AM UTC
Marooned within a span of finitude
We claim we are lost forever!
Our hearts beat violently inside our rib cages,
Trying to tell us truths that we brush off as myths.
We paint our houses and bodies with brilliant colours and darkest inks,
Hoping that it would make up for the ugliness we harbour!
We spin fantasies locked up in self-made prison cells,
Sidelining the hideous realities as not part of 'our story'...
We carry our vulnerabilities as a taboo,
(I, sadly, would not blame each one separately for it)
We have woven this illusion together with our cloudy minds.
If a bird could judge high from the sky
It would have made out the fragmentary lives we live in...
Inside a single fortress surrounded by high walls, yet violence if we traverse the margin between two rooms!
If and only if, we would have understood that it doesn't require too much a sacrifice to unite
That we can leave our homes simply plastered and our minds simply open.
Urged by a force to change, if only we had exposed ourselves to paint graffiti on that common wall that surrounds us,
Splashing ingenious shades of love and brotherhood,
Of a fluttering feeling of oneness and entanglement.
We would have laughed together, danced with glee and holding our hands together we would have escaped unto a better reality...
If only it was true, I wonder
How spectacular a place the world would have been !
Jan 15, 2021
Jan 15, 2021 at 8:49 AM UTC
Fluttering to the ground
An autumn leaf
Floating like a feather,
The embodiment of heavens heart
Ascending towards that quondam.
An aeon contemplating creation
Zoariums; moulded from dust infused.
Immortality desecrated
Their fane, desolate
Gods will mans dying nature.
The rivers rose above
The highest mountains quaked
As tears reign below
Upon the blood soaked amber earth;
To the cross his body nailed,
Hours fervently passed
Cloud vapour appearing to evaporate,
Bearing the weight of mortal sin
The saviour hanged; azoic.
The anatomisation of finitude!
Crowned man infinite,
Enlighting the darkest souls,
The lighest souls descent.
Bleating like a lamb
Twilights slaughtered salvation
Riding the thoughts of heavens dream;
Two empereal doves
Homeward flying.
1997 ELEETE J MUIR
Jan 11, 2014
Jan 11, 2014 at 12:18 PM UTC
The space between chaff and
grain...misshapen yield vying
for the ecliptic plane.
As eye to eye...to be plucked
from what is gathered.
Moments timeout their
defining...what beauty hobbles
its poetry?
Something in league with or
without...passes off a kinship
nearer and dearer than bone
in plain conglomeration, as
strung to skeleton.
A seeing through of boundary...
as always open to season,
change by its allowance changes.
Our parenthetical infinite is
blessed/cursed with peripheral
vision...anonymously...
glory blurrily grows.
Begs from form what itself begs
form...we are thus force-fed
finitude, till what infinitude comes
of our eyes.
Mar 2, 2015
Mar 2, 2015 at 11:46 AM UTC
eeeeeeeeeevvvvvvvvvvvvveeeeeeeerrrrrrrrrrryytttttttttttthhhhhhhhiiiiiiiiiiiiiinnnnnnnnnnnggggggggg
dies
everyone lies
we all wear a disguise
no human can possibly fly
immortality
is a fiction
our fixation with youth
is an addiction
the truth descends from our perception
what are we left with?
inception?
another form of self-deception?
i don't know what
this or anything means
are we individuals?
or are we collective operating teams?
Nov 23, 2020
Nov 23, 2020 at 4:47 PM UTC
She is the ocean,
and you:
painfully aware of her finitude.
and you
want to be the universe,
fire and chaos forever.
Jul 2, 2015
Jul 2, 2015 at 2:32 PM UTC
Thin wafer of silicon
Placed on my outstretched tongue
Giver of life(lessness)
Finitude is beautiful though
****** digits splayed
One thumb grows from my tongue
Sep 20, 2014
Sep 20, 2014 at 11:11 AM UTC
sometimes you come back,
like the peculiar awareness of finitude
soft footed
after we’d been in that small room together
cold
pouring out in white light
leaning over and smiling gently
with a surety of falling snow winter outside
and you described seattle and kurt cobain
and showed me your jars of sand and jars of honey
and I smiled gently and loved you.
and we went out in the cold and you smoked a cigarette
and everything around us was hushed wet in dark gray
you were something that made me ache
honest human, dark and earnest
opened ahead of me
wise and naive
I felt like I’d known you somewhere before
I held you in my vision but didn’t speak
as you told me what men had done to you
I picked up something that was shining on the ground
and thought about what men had done to me
Jun 18, 2012
Jun 18, 2012 at 2:06 PM UTC
wet stoops
wet sleeps
down beside
vibrant hulks
of day into night becoming
a persimmon fleshed in robes
of sweetish musk of raging dark:
that blind canny o' comely marsh
where sweats tallly the brisk frigid
smirk of winter coming into between–
i cannot fathom
nor wonder 'pon a thing more
violent **** or primly stolen
than the absurd tumor of suddenly
which every immense second of life
Is.
and how do i call it?
how do i name it by itself?
is it nameable?
is demanded some strict finitude of immutable logic?
or is impossibly monikered in nothing short of illimitable self?
(and who have I been? have i been myself? where did i begin? and shall i ever end in knowing?)
Nov 29, 2014
Nov 29, 2014 at 4:19 AM UTC
the loving is folded inside the aching.
the rich and deep is the sandy beaches reflecting in a million directions —
the light blinding and the earth burning, it is everything
at once.
the splendor of magnitude contained in a moment,
the moment is bursting at the seams now.
the thread unravels as the sheets unveil the
limitlessness of time - the error of its conception,
the paradox of infinite finitude, of finite infinity—
we are living life in the spaces between certainties.
we find our rhythm to the music of experience
and we fall into ourselves, and find home between our ribs,
nestling into the cavity of being, we trip into each other,
fall in embrace, and rise in ecstasy of laughter.
we are copper rays of light, exuberant !
flitting between the maple leaves
we dance with the tails of grass
we hum in synchrony till the moon reflects our lily cheeks.
and we taste the stars and see the galaxies behind our eyes,
the construct of days fade away and it is only space
between certainties of light and dark
and we inhabit it with a bold stomp and a wild laugh.
Oct 9, 2018
Oct 9, 2018 at 12:52 AM UTC
I walk a few blocks
Or so to the bus stop,
On my way to work,
Every morning,
Except for Tuesdays
And Wednesdays.
Each time,
A motionless possum
With a ****** mouth
Greets me, as he lays
Comfortably on his hard bed.
Each time,
Becoming more
And more impersonal.
A full coat of fur
Replaced with a
Grey mushy mass.
The undisputed fate
Of all living beings.
My possum friend,
Will not be the only
One who does not
Leave a legacy behind.
(c) 2015 Brandon Antonio Smith
Oct 24, 2015
Oct 24, 2015 at 10:10 PM UTC
Without you spiders spin cathedral cornice in the white room
Without you the heart is merely muscle shoving blood
Without you the wolf shivers and the mountain howls
Without you all lengths return to finitude attached to nouns
Without you the albatross sinks into the cradle of the spray
Without you summer is frost under the tree bark
Without you time's arrow lies mute in the quiver
Without you a man walks the beach, he can contain nothing but himself.
Aug 30, 2014
Aug 30, 2014 at 11:33 AM UTC
When she was nudging in her mom's womb as a lil nymph, her mother used to feel her. When her nymph escaped from the pellucid zone, she began luring her via worldly objects. When she became a toddler, her mother grasped her hands and stood by her. When she became an adult, her mom left her thinking that she is mature enough to take decisions. At that time, she experienced such traumas which she couldn't solve on her own. She longed for the arms of her mom to borrow some strength from them. She craved for the face of her mom to extract some of their beauty to beautify her life. She desired for the eyes of her mom to enhance her vision. But, she didn't desire for the feet of her mom because there lies a paradise according to all.She wanted the love and warmth of her love; the whole mom to the infinitude of soul and a finitude of a body. But but, mom came forward and offered her feet so she could press them and move towards paradise. She was shattered...
May 1, 2015
May 1, 2015 at 5:05 PM UTC
Fog billows over to company, drear,
Of the sad wide river, armadas of mud
Charged to go forward yet locked as they appear,
Where I am in constant motion, confined to constriction.
Noon is never as bleak as it is now
Growing ever darker
With bags beneath its eyes
And the shining sun a novelty
A flag of finitude the morning star flies.
Take up the banner since this land is conquered
Emblazoned in every miserable seam,
The mark of tragic mien.
And if this is my greeting into the world,
Surely it’s my way out,
Awakened and forced to the blurry line
Between the oughts and desires against
From here to dreams, then permanence
No other want plagues them, also, like this.
Then I’m in the company I can call my kin
Who shall greet me as I greet the day:
Et panem meum, et fratrem.
May 26, 2014
May 26, 2014 at 11:05 AM UTC
With lines of finitude painted cream
And light
I sit alone with no one
In waiting
Stalling for what, you may ask?
A putrid letter on my lap
The misshapen form appears in front of you
A laugh out of uneasiness
Traveling to a foreign land
Hand print teller's of one dollar fortune
A mistake of love
And if I were to open up myself up completely
Would you even have the time to listen?
Who does anymore? Really listen?
The intricacies of sound entering one's ear
Has been ***** and abused
There is
So much
Noise
Now
There is very little silence to remind us
What is waiting behind
Each of our very own doors
Turn away
Run and hide
Surround oneself
With battlements
High walls
Chain mail and all
But, do remember,
That will not protect you
From every man's
Fall
Absent memories of past-lives
Float on the fornicating
River of our parent's lie's
They've seen and not told us
Perhaps they've seen nothing at all
So not to share was not their place to do so
I ask to continue the search
For faith
Not religious
Not political
Not communal
Not social games
Go forth and search for
One's own faith
Have you not seen one's own core?
Have you not felt its heat?
Have you not tasted its sweetness?
Have you not drifted your hands
Over the fine, soft and smooth pelt
Of oneself before all this noise?
It is beautiful
I am
You are
We are
Quite beautiful
And the creative act goes
From land unknown to
Known
Where criticism and form
Restrict what was once pure
Oh Purity!
Untainted by man's world
Yet sharing just a glimpse
Of what once was
Like stale breath
We breathe this round-faced
Polish muse of a memory
Churning for the hope of forgiveness
But only receiving melancholy
Even a fellowship would not take the pain away
Even the balance of the world on my fingertips
Even two hearts filled with love swearing never to leave
A bank with infinite sums with one thousand and one locks
Would not take the pain of knowing and not knowing away
A chair by the river
See it rest there
Sitting with itself
A woman crossing the street
The child running in front of her
A bus stop and a trashcan filled
To the brim with the tossed
A sight of normalcy though
The bridge that hangs above them
Reminds her of their
Deepest dread of obscurity
Our struggle against meaninglessness
But have faith they say
The creator wants to
See thee
Soon
Dec 30, 2012
Dec 30, 2012 at 3:20 AM UTC
Lovers
Never are near
Of the other
Dream and communion
peeping
Ghosts walking alone
As stars spying
sealed drawers
We always expect
the barking lovers
cry
The disastrous finitude
while the exploiting worms gnaw inside the seed
of the sun
with empty eyes
water cradle of rocks
Until the unsuspecting heaven
with its porous moss
charm sirens of fearsome eyes
That kiss without ease
The desperate heart
Hopelessly entwined with all
Aug 22, 2014
Aug 22, 2014 at 2:52 AM UTC
Finitude, the luck of humanity
Where gods sit on clouds
Dreaming to be cleaved from eternity
Nov 20, 2016
Nov 20, 2016 at 10:31 PM UTC
I love the idea of identities,
but hate the nomenclature of names.
Names, stubborn in their own finitude
never seem to satisfy as description.
They are pricetags handled roughly by
the obese woman behind the
counter.
Rung up, given a value, bagged
without ceremony.
And when the job is done, she offers a verse.
Identity–much sooner forgotten,
transcends description.
At times, as static as a name,
but with potential for progress
be it in the mundanity of the positive
or the exhileration of negativity.
Identity is definition beyond words–
not so constrained by action or thoughts as
personality, or
as dreadfully uncontrollable as genetics.
Blessed with relativity
it is the “who” behind the why and how
where “when” and “what”
matter less than from which horizon the sun desires
to peek when it wakes.
It is perspective filtered through perspective;
a treasure undeserving of a
bill of sale.
Yet so easily sold
Sep 12, 2015
Sep 12, 2015 at 10:55 PM UTC
What space allows, presence threshes.
Devotions mean nothing but prattle of the neighbor.
We inveigle them to sleuth us, and now we have their
word pressed against their neck, like a dagger.
In this weather, I have no excuse for blood.
If words were bodies, then colonies here quench before
vanishing in air, with an exasperated apparatus.
What light swallows, darkness heaves.
Devotion is the hearsay of intuit. Sensing out the farcical writ
as though embossed in flesh, here where lines split
across a sure-footed paper. The **** delimits
a famished movement. Nothing like this abstract,
if not collage.
I know a hand’s intimate framework. Space knows not
a trifle, and presence quick with finitude.
Here we expose margins and squint at presumed limits.
In the deepest midnight before we sleep, we crumble at the
portent of the borrowed heat we are to suffer,
seeking underneath moderate climates, this home.
as in any other home, our feet dragged along corridors.
wander-wearied, our place within ourselves
we savor with denial.
Apr 25, 2016
Apr 25, 2016 at 5:13 AM UTC
Black pitched broken up
The lights in our house
Reflect in flicker against
Mother's broken China cup's
But I'm losing sight of the stars
In a blackening sky
Against a rising tide
Where all that once was right
Proves now only to be wrong
I turn over the final page
Of a burning novel that lays unafraid
Here lusting over love and hate
Nothing but lost souls
Crowded tight inside faceless cafes
Perhaps we are destined for such
Seemingly unfortunate misgivings
Where each every one of us
Reaches a point that is past forgiving
Or maybe we are so sick and tired
Of hearing of all the world's sinning
But let me continue...
Tears only hold their meaning
When dropped from love or
The loss of It
I accept the finitude of life
I do not accept the finitude of life
I live in a fighting stance
Until my legs give out and
My knees are unable to hold me
Nature does not worry
About these annoyances
She created the paradox
Stepped aside
Leaving us with small talk
Deeming one another divine
I struggle
I live
I stumble
And yet I live
But I have seen it
And there is the moment
The space
Between moments
A breath without technique
Without structure
Organization, friendship, love, or parents
Chest split open to the hungry
Nature that greedily yearns
For my blood and bones for Her dirt
Disregarding my spirit and soul
And leaving the most thought of
Holiest of holy possessions on an Earth
That gives as much as **** about us
As we do -
Thus, I face
Into a homely wind
To dream to drift eternally
To be born
To be human
To be man
To be alive
What pain we go through to feed this life
And
The next
Jan 8, 2013
Jan 8, 2013 at 5:33 PM UTC
Job made God mad.
Go check it out.
Chapters 38-41
Of the Book of Job.
Job was praying to God, but
Challenging His wisdom and justice,
Demanding an explanation.
So God said,
"Brace yourself like a man;
I will question you,
And you shall answer me."
And God asked Job
If he was there
When the earth was formed,
If he could send lightning bolts
On their way,
If he could give orders to the morning
Or show dawn its place.
And things like that.
Job couldn't do anything.
At first, I was distracted by God's anger.
It took me a minute to see the point.
Now flip to Ecclesiastes 3:11.
This is what it says,
"He has made everything beautiful
in its time.
He has also set eternity
in the hearts of men,
Yet none can fathom what God has done
from beginning to end."
That makes it make more sense,
don't you think?
God's telling Job
that He is all-knowing,
infinitely wise and powerful.
And wholly Good.
Job can't understand the greater picture.
In our ignorance,
we get angry at God.
And can you blame God
For getting a little frustrated?
He has a perfect and good plan,
There is a reason for everything.
We just don't understand
In our finitude.
So we get angry
When God is really being Good,
And we just can't see it.
God told Job to
Trust Him.
Look at all I've done!
Look at my goodness,
My power,
My wisdom.
If you can understand all of these things,
If you can do all of these things,
You will understand my ways.
But we cannot.
That's faith.
Not a leap in the dark.
A decision to trust the Most High,
Based on knowledge.
But passing from knowledge
To the things that we cannot know,
Like the greater plan that God has for us.
It's just hard sometimes.
Mar 13, 2014
Mar 13, 2014 at 4:58 PM UTC