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Sky Aug 2018
(i only hope that it won't be so sad)

somewhere, in an empty row of trees,
that you still exist
is a truth that i cannot believe

and like the gentle sway of foxtails in the wind,
it is a truth, that can be seen
yet cannot be felt by the heart

when i was young i would squint my eyes and watch
those faraway hills, bobbing in and out of my vision

and as if to say
those faraway days will never return,
the hills in my pillowcase
are easy to see and
ever so close

...

when i close my eyes i begin to dream, what is not a dream but a spring that will one day come to me, and in that spring, looking to find again that empty row of trees, is a scene where i turn my head to home, and unlike some melodrama i can feel the sorrow on my face meanwhile i stare and stare and stare with my heart, yearning to feel something that cannot ever be seen, and that is just like the gentle sway of foxtails in the wind...
translation from a poem i originally wrote in Korean
JJ Hutton Dec 2012
Funny. I have a similar problem. When a waitress drops in to take a drink order, I can never look her in the eye. Guilt, I suppose. There’s nothing she’s doing for me I can’t do for myself. Legs work. Hands work. Let me walk to the water dispenser and press the glass into it. Let me pick up my food. Let me carry it to my table. You take it easy, sweetheart. So, instead of meeting her pupils, I find myself reading and re-reading her nametag. A silent mantra. Tara. Tara. Tara.

Thank you for saying I should be “held by my edges.” That’s a candy-coated take on the truth. A more accurate description would have been “*******.” Oh, the toxic mix of shame, alcohol, and letter writing. I’m a new man, though. Cologne and everything. I’m even done drinking. Well, after I finish this beer. Still had one in the fridge. Anyway, I’m sorry.

No, women like Heather don’t disappear cleanly. Or with grace. In the silent moments, she always looked at me like I might hit her. She’ll probably tell friends I did. Everyone enjoys a good story. She called Friday. Said she’d taken some X. Dancing on her couch. I could join her or just watch. I just hung up. Did I tell you she’s really into Anime? And she attaches faux foxtails to her belt. I’m not sure if one of those traits is responsible for the other. Wish she didn’t know where I lived.
Nik Krutilla Apr 2013
A blue haze fills my vision.
Leaves moving,
Dancing with the wind.

Naked towers arching over my head.

Walking down into a ravine
Where foxtails and wildflowers
Smother my senses.

The sky passes around so silently
Even the rain whispers.

Oak wood burning,
Warming my hands
The scent clings onto my clothes.

I take it everywhere I go.



*© NDHK
Sam Greig-Mohns Aug 2013
Dandelions thrash to the opening chorus of rattle clank by the chain links
yellow heads bobbing
tussled mops of white ****** back defiantly into the wind
until they lean against one another
exhausted and bald

Foxtails sway
feathered limbs thrumming
raised in the air like they just don't care
drumming to the beat of highway traffic
never alone
but gathered together in tight clusters
wary of outside influence

Thistles nod to smoother tunes
the conservative hemming in the edges
seeming almost out of place
until they throw down with their true colors
sporting mohawks in ever shade of purple

The show ends with deep shades of night
falling like a curtain to quiet the floral concert

Until dawn when the show goes on
Breeze-Mist Jul 2016
I sit here alone
Is it daytime, is it night?
It doesn't matter

My claws mark the walls
I must look like a demon
As I scratch my arms

My unruly mane
reaches down my back, touching
My nine wild foxtails

I howl at the wall
My songs, cries, stories, and poems
Are all I have left

I hear with six ears
If I were free, I could fly
With my four giant wings

I recall that night
When my friends fought so bravely
Are they still alive?

But I'm trapped and chained
Even if I use my flames
To try melting Iron

Sometimes father comes
With the acid cups and chains
And sometimes his hands

He called me his child
But even back then, he lied
I'm just his project

I count slaps and thrusts
Staring up at the ceiling
Refusing to speak

What month is it, now?
I have lost my sense of time
In this grey stone cell

I peel my ears up
Some bread comes through my door's slot
It's down in one bite

When I chose my friends
They showed me what feelings were
And showed me the truth

I wish I could sleep
This windowless torture cell
Worsens my nightmares

I wake up shrieking
Waking, sleeping, I don't care
The nightmare goes on

I'll never tell him
Whatever's on or inside me
I won't betray friends

The cell's not all grey
I hear music and voices
That no one else can

Sometimes I dance along
My chain and claws scratching tiles
Laughing on a shreik

There's also Inverse
My photograph negative
The ghost haunting me

Inverse keeps teasing
He points out my every flaw
I hate that he's right

I shreik at Inverse
I'm trapped, half dead, in this cell
Waiting for "father"

I bite at my chain
The door of my cell opens
"Father" comes inside
I wrote this poem for a competition called "Scare Us", where writers try to write the scariest story or poem (the scariest entry being the winning one).
Dylan McCarthy Jun 2020
a. Nocturne
Behold a heart full of stars,
a skyful of cyan grains
where we’ll watch motorcars
tracing the begonia plains.
Reflection of the pines so serene
in a pool daubed with turquoise and green.
An existence held by hands of elysian mould
paints the sundown with sapphires and gold.

On stygian seas,
the solemn moonlight smiles
as lighthouse turns
and tides caress the scattered isles.
Our dreams fill with saccharine desire
to cast melancholia into an astral fire.
Waves of warmth brush upon the gilded shore
of a pure euphoria we’ve wished to explore.

b. Island
The fires of your rainbowed tresses
endure the teeming tidal waves.
You’re dancing with starfish upon the seabed
and mingling in labyrinths from light overhead.

The mast is towering in summer air.
The sun is showering your seaward stare.

c. Nocturne
Our fantasies collide
upon a love laden tapestry
hung upon the universe
and doused in cerebral majesty.
Chameleon stalks in moonlit white
as the din of thunder quakes the night.
Old troubadour sings for the crumbling skies
and paints a floral temple within your lapis eyes.

d. Lullaby
Night’s dark halo o’er the city
showered with diamonds / veiled with gleams.
Sleepless labyrinth of gold lamplight
floods with ardor from empyrean dreams.
Night’s dark halo o’er luminous streams.

Laced in stillness, ghosts of the river,
a fog of nostalgia pours ‘cross the plain.
Silence wanders with cold shadows
trodding the orchard away from the rain.
Laced in stillness, our misty domain.

Song for slumber, a nebulous reverie
painting the valleys of our kindred minds.

e. Aubade I
Birdsong cradled on whispers of air
darkness engulfed with aurora.
Light pours across the emerald vale
and cascades upon sleeping flora.
Foxtails waver overlooking the shore,
blush skies fade to blue.
A caress of sea upon circle stones
as the sky dons a novel hue.

f. Aubade II
Dawn unveils dew swathed green /
sunlight parts the white-clad screen /
branches clutch foggy plumes
as river splits the forest womb.
We’re doused in rays of opaline,
a shawl of lavender rose,
and as our eyes fill with the morn,
we’ll paint our reams with loving prose.
a capturing of moments
Ken Pepiton Feb 2021
2020 -day 84

Tuesday, March 24, 2020
8:55 AM

Seeing wrong,
seeing all the light available,
swallowed
in the shadows.

The unknowable turns believable.
Seeing monsters made up of

fears, non knowns, and warnings of what if;

how does the seer ever see
the absense of

all that never was

appears as real
is now
visible in the light of day after tomorrow.

Expect, see, out there, ex-spectate, wait

what if this all passes

----

Meeting death in the barren market place,

this old man insisted on standing, to see past

pasts claiming causal friction grows slicker

sticky corruption shorting
utilities to
ground us.

{about five hundred million functional on-offs
fit on the silicon in a single grain,

a finite grain, in the finite sand, FYI}

pearl essence,
a layer of lacquer on a rough cut stone, a single
granular bit of silicon,
not sand, not silicone leaked from cracks and cleavages.

Real natural sand, minus the dioxide cubist shapers that
seem to hold silicon in three-d even
inside an oyster gut

flat silicon surface
formed via imagi-tec-hative prognostication of holo
grammatical

bubbles shaping spheres of pearl essence
in confluence forming skin
where once were
flat singlenessities,
little ships of life,
leaven,
from the forest floor, ripples of life,
only rational circles and every thing was as simple
as pi and Bohrian atoms.
from 1905 to now,

orbiting electrons is how most folk explain
chemical electricity,
and some try to say gravity is the force at work.

Wisdom first, as a force, knowing, sci itself comes first,

by any name you claim you know but can't say,

for fear of the power in such names, no,
for fear
of the power that makes such words, magic words,

words only magi-techs can utilize
safely in low light conditions,

layers of little lies, such as the evidence chain
back to the idea of taking, and using, perhaps,

God - big g, all emanations and flavors 's name in vain.

Jot that down. Yod heh heh heh

here, have a sound track for the battle being set in array...

Don't Fear the Reaper

40,000 every day, la la, la la la

-- blue oyster cult mythic edge of sixties band

rock rollin' music for happy sisyphus fans,

who find links to Camus in Covid 19 news, oh no

knowing growing must go on,
we eak out a spurt of

pearl essence, this could be slippery,

keep your balance, walk don't run, listen we

survived, there is no guilt in that.

Nor must we do more than mortally possible, to believe
this life is temporary, at best.

consist, insist, resistance is futile, tiny grain

irritant emanating signals



so smooth, so full of potential beauty
in this light

The Government keeps secrets. True,
some secrets are needed,
for the order to pre
vent chaos of random chance which
we all know is reasonable.

We have wars to protect those rights to privacy.

We've a right to hide our lies,

I vote no.

and as one in eight billion, on one plain
I pack a canon

with alchemical clues to choke a horse

Suppose, this is the way truth works, it finds
knowledge boxes leaking facts you are
Not allowed to know
you know,

you may
but
if you wish to know more

{WA watching unbelieve
abilite able say go or amen, or so beit is okeh, any
action provoker -- ask ask ax that's the word we was lookin' for}

we don't care
we

are the keys to all the secrets locked in words

we are free for the learning,
we mean any thing only if meaning was intended,

some idea thingy do form ative umph

sorts us from the stream, in a pan, swirl. slow sift
spread see the gleam

ef
fect af
ter affect of effectual fervent prayers, if

you can believe that.

My sci phi fantasy slips on some unknown

substance of things unseeemly bang

my bubble pops and here I am again

earthbound and sounds of
jet planes leave lines

of reasoning to wonder if nothing is separate
from anything at all.

All being posed as the ever, in

eutopian success stories passed via trans
dimensional possessors

of certain skill in tongues and interpretation,

not to brag,
but muses play a major role in arranging for

tri-lingual translations, listen

some very strange people must be kept alive.

Look around you. Why the fervor to preserve

old boomers who ignore cancer warnings?

I can't say.
I don't know. Ye, Gads, I'm one of those...

raging,
at the breaking edge, the raging edge of

ever after this. A world alive in beauty...

squirrels are cute, I have some in my yard, right now,

there is a reddish one, with beige eye-liner round
white-less eyes,

nibbling green shoots on foxtails I am dreading, while
wondering if they ripen to hold fermentible grain,

just in case the worst you can imagine happens,
and I need to get real drunk.

Look around me.
Nothing missing, nothing broken, no need
appears when I speak of the devil
and focus on the worst that
could happen,

no need revives

save remembering to breathe and step outside
when the rain stops.

Spaceship earth is listening,
these are the legendary interesting times.

Seals have been broken, and the breaking seen on tv.

We matured after allathat. There was no boom,

life haps in bubbles, at the bottom
of the final metaphor.

Knowing used, expands bubbles, and as we
encorporate

all we know, in video and so on, we signal

all we have ever known, we got the message,

this is our answer.

— The End —