"gramophone" poems
Most of the times,
I feel,
that you and I,
my darling,
redefine our love on
Saturday nights.
Saturday nights,
when the sound of our
heartbeats mixes with the wine.
When you swerve your hips,
to the tunes on the old gramophone.
When every streetlight seems like a shooting star.
Passionate,
wild,
mad,
in it's very essence.
Chaotic,
extraordinary
and beautiful,
define you,
my love.
You breathtakingly
naked and beautiful soul,
is the gateway to the Universe.
Swooning and high off
your fragrance,
all I want to do is
make love with you,
till the yearning moon
gives way to the jealous sun.
Aug 24, 2014
Aug 24, 2014 at 1:31 AM UTC
Today again I saw a gate in the sky.
Streams of pale light trickled through it.
I no longer looked at the sun, only straight ahead,
My silhouette reflected in the ***** tram window.
I looked farther, hypnotized,
sipping words veiled in the dust of the autumn sun.
Dry spaces. Leaves.
Golden bile sparkled,
And no one saw this wonder in the sky.
At the stop, in the crowd rushing by,
An experiment took place:
A man wrapped in copper threads.
He searched for relief while anger bound his soul.
He fought the air, attacked with words,
Like a puppet moving in convulsions.
Hands clenched, anger in his eyes.
“This will pass, this will fade,” I thought,
Moving to another car.
A primal tremor. A change of frequency.
Someone is turning the **** of our universe.
How many more cells of the body will they spoil
Before it is ground to ashes?
Until all ends in colonization,
A reward for micro-souls from another world.
People sunk in their minds
do not hear the hum of strings.
And I plead in my thoughts:
listen, look, be your reality.
Behind the gate a hundred weeks ago,
a crackling gramophone plays.
My calm relieves someone’s thoughts.
Somewhere, thousands of hours ago,
the past becomes the future.
Next time when you pass by me, indifferent,
the warmth of my thought will warm your
Dry, wrinkled hands.
I will never know You, and I would like to know
what you will say when these trembling words arrive on the wind.
In the autumn glow of the setting sun,
Like a gentle brushing of leaves at the next opening of the gate.
I will be there in the crack like a stray thought
that wanted to become immortality.
Sep 25, 2025
Sep 25, 2025 at 5:59 PM UTC
I
From you, Beethoven, Bach, Mozart,
The substance of my dreams took fire.
You built cathedrals in my heart,
And lit my pinnacled desire.
You were the ardour and the bright
Procession of my thoughts toward prayer.
You were the wrath of storm, the light
On distant citadels aflare.
II
Great names, I cannot find you now
In these loud years of youth that strives
Through doom toward peace: upon my brow
I wear a wreath of banished lives.
You have no part with lads who fought
And laughed and suffered at my side.
Your fugues and symphonies have brought
No memory of my friends who died.
III
For when my brain is on their track,
In slangy speech I call them back.
With fox-trot tunes their ghosts I charm.
‘Another little drink won’t do us any harm.’
I think of rag-time; a bit of rag-time;
And see their faces crowding round
To the sound of the syncopated beat.
They’ve got such jolly things to tell,
Home from hell with a Blighty wound so neat...
. . . .
And so the song breaks off; and I’m alone.
They’re dead ... For God’s sake stop that gramophone.
5k
I am compelled
I do not even obliged to
In my mind I would keep the name as mıh
Eyes grow is growing
I do not know mecburum
You know me the heat.
Preparing trees to fall
Does this city is the old Istanbul
In the dark clouds are parts
One side of the street lamp is
The smell of rain on pavement
I am obliged not you.
Sometimes love is fearful dismally
People are tired all of a sudden one evening later
Prisoners to live in the razor's edge
Sometimes it will break your hands passion
How many lives are removed from a living
What if you knock the door sometimes
Humming in the back of the misery of loneliness
Fatih in a poor playing gramophone
From ancient times to play a Friday
I stop and listen to sound at the beginning of the corner
Should I bring unused gök
Week disaggregated data is available
How do I go What if I keep
I am obliged not you.
Maybe June or mottled blue boy
Ah, you do not know who does not know
Eyes hijack freighter is a desert
Maybe you get on the plane in Yesilkoy
Horripilation is all wet
Maybe you're blind, are in rural precipitancy
Wind will bring bad hair
What a time to live if you think
These wolves have perhaps mess
But without dirtying our hands Ayıpsız
What a time to live if you think
Susan would also start with the name
Order to move inside of the secret sea
No other kind will not be
I am obliged to you never know.
Attila İlhan
Jan 21, 2013
Jan 21, 2013 at 11:12 AM UTC
Your Uncle Fred
on Christmas Eve
at Gran’s house
when you were a kid
did the sand dance
wearing an old fashion
man’s striped nightgown
and a red fez
(he got that in Egypt
during WW2
Gran said)
and brown
open toed sandals
and Uncle Ed
turned the handle
of the windup gramophone
where an old
78rpm record
was playing
and there were
glasses of sherry
being consumed
and cigarettes being smoked
and you sat watching
clapping your hands
and Gran would get up
afterwards
and do her Can-Can
like she used to
as she young woman
on the stage
and Granddad sat there
quiet saying nothing
looking at
the people gathered
sipping his sherry
watching his wife
lifting her legs
her white fuzzy hair
going to and fro
as she moved
and you wanted
to have some sherry
but your mother said
no you have lemonade
little boys
don’t have sherry
so you sat
with your lemonade
watching Uncle Fred
and his dance
and the music coming
from the old gramophone
and the smell of sherry
and beer and cigarette smoke
and Uncle telling the adults
one of his old army jokes.
Sep 15, 2012
Sep 15, 2012 at 5:26 AM UTC
Gramophone records play
Scratch, play, scratch, play
Soft in the background, edging into me
Slow and easy, gentle waves.
Granny, play me La Wally again
Turning, spinning, round and round
Take me away on audio-pearls
Peace whirls me on a magic dance.
Pappa, hide the ugly monsters
Keep me safe in Noddy and Pat tales
I'd rather be caught in merry tune
Than in webs of yonder folk out there.
Momma, put on Golden Slumbers
"Sleep, pretty darling, do not cry,
And I will sing a lullaby"
Yes, I find my way homeward...
Gramps, sing me a Holliday song
The kind that lifts one so high
With Mammy and Pappy blessing all of me
Yes my happiness, I've got me own!
Dear Heaven, open windows and walls
Swirling, flowing its beautiful energy
Sore needed peace and beauty
That no eye can truly see.
Star Toucher, 02 March 2013
Mar 2, 2013
Mar 2, 2013 at 11:06 AM UTC
*I don't know the rules. If I go looking
for grace and find it, what will grace*
be but penance for my past, a silver
sinew-thread wrapping 'round old
wrongs, gray hair for the
fickle.
I've naught but want for sweet release
from this history. The bombs ignored,
repeating in gramophone static
dripping stiff
*as wet bamboo. I remember someone
once sang here, once strung together*
chords so sweet they rang like peace-
bells beneath cloudless sky. They've
rang the bell upon my jaw and
done no wrong.
It's not so much unlike one's curiously
cold reception at a funeral. The cold
and rain ****** at the skin
during graveside hymnal.
*As long as the earth continues
its stony breathing I will breathe.*
That which I cannot help but do.
Stuck between boulders, I sing.
*When it stops, I will shatter back
into gravity. Into quartz.*
Feb 26, 2018
Feb 26, 2018 at 9:54 PM UTC
Rehashing the rare
Out with the new,
In with the old.
She's always had a thing
For the things that exude
A quirkiness and a bucolic charm
The smell of old books
The black and the white
Good ol' Chaplin, James Dean
And the Sound of Music
The Beatles, a tape recorder
High-waisted pants
And the gramophone
And a rustic old bar
With a gruff bartender
Who's off his rocker
But he'll double up as your therapist
And for the boy with the dark brown eyes
Who looks across the bar at her.
And smiles.
It's all black and white again
Except this time,
It isn't her favourite Casablanca scene
But a white screen
And a thousand particles
Microcosmic
A milieu of
Unfathomable numbers float
Through the atmosphere
Connecting her to him.
And she doesn't want that.
She's always had a thing for the old,
But he makes her doubt that.
Sep 24, 2014
Sep 24, 2014 at 12:22 PM UTC
Cloudy skies
Heavy downpour
Cold breeze
Swaying trees
Misty window panes
Traffic lights
Hooting cars
Gushing gutters
Drenched trench coats
Soggy feet
Colourful umbrellas
Crowded shelters
Empty side walks
The city skips a few hearbeats
And comes to a stand still
Soon as the pounding rain stops
Everything returns to normalcy
But rainy days call for
Steaming cups
Slouchy sweaters
Fluffy blankets
Snuggles
Cuddles
Novels
Notebooks
Gramophone tunes in the background
Enjoying a little piece of heaven
While the day is washed off
Setting stage for a clean fresh start
©Sonia Ettyang
Dec 2, 2018
Dec 2, 2018 at 2:57 AM UTC
Am I relevant enough to scribble my name
on the dance card of your heart?
Your passive loyalty and interest make you to be a *******
but I've always much preferred the constancy of choreography
and heat on the Fourth of July.
So please tell me why:
Why must I always play the follow
to your non-remorseful lead?
My shiniest records were always for you
as were my collective Saturday nights,
the hours spent practicing and sweating
preparing, only to be worthy.
I should know better
seeing as this is the 14th time
you've broken the gramophone.
Perhaps it's time for a new waltz.
Jan 21, 2013
Jan 21, 2013 at 6:18 PM UTC
The many voices of the evening
gramophone the sky voice the cell phone
the tablet the notebook, that monotone
observer of mutations purveyor of maladies
the persistence of memories, pale pink light sink
burning in the fires lighting up the skies
an old pang, smitten clang, the pain balm
mug-life, pen-knife, kettle-strife, all the sheaves
them echo-songs that haunt the drill-wells
that are cut wounded and wear fetching
chants, to an yearning oblation
bay leaf, curry leaf, yes, them colander coriander
there's a rhyme of charlies, looping from
our holy wars to now our holy hours with
the ombudsman, the omniman, the only God
who used to thunder for the ****
old Zeus, the Lord of Betelgeuse, him who we
called dead, exhumation, exculpation, exaltation
an ancient loneliness that calls from the nether
depths, now science, now freedom, now pagan.
Jan 14, 2015
Jan 14, 2015 at 3:20 PM UTC
make me a gramophone – sew
it from the scraps of our shattered past,
the vinyl our memories that play
‘round on repeat. to them
we’ll dance around in animal masks like
the beasts we are.
a lion purrs,
a walrus roars,
a seahorse crushes bone,
and when we’re done we’ll rip apart
our fickle gramophone.
Mar 29, 2014
Mar 29, 2014 at 5:26 PM UTC
We're antique and aware of it,
old fashioned and they stare a bit, but that's a part of the charm, a penny farthing to ride on with gaiters to tie on, keeping the spats nice and clean.
Home for some tiffin and the lady's been shopping down at Macy's for doilies, thank god it wasn't Tiffanys for diamonds, the wireless set goes off and the gramophone's switched on, a 78 Bakelite revolves in the room where the mood's right for romance.
We dance modernistic, the Cha cha's futuristic, they'll never do better than this
then we kiss and say goodnight, in separate beds we sleep so tight and a strip of carpet between them, keeping things nice and clean, men,
you know what I mean.
Oct 1, 2015
Oct 1, 2015 at 8:35 PM UTC
thus do learn how to tolerate
the blow of wings
of the most inflammable flesh
after the successful sacrifice of the student-hostel
jumping into the peacock-foams
how dangerously is changing the total travel-route of the nail-polish
in the high tide of the coconut-kernel
that conquers the world
today the water-pigeon gets pain
only by the flute made of palm-leaf
can’t be written the pleasure-trip in boat
of the injured-knee night-queen that is deposited heavily
on the collar of the village-moonlight
even-then the gramophone would be playing on
even-then the courageous pheasant would proceed further
to throw towards the squirrel a dinner-sleep
then all the daughters in disguise of birds certainly
may come out from within the salted mosquito-net
burning open-ground in their eyes
even after
the small boats of the fig leaves
would slip from the chorus song
of the roses
then they are to be pulled forward to the river-bed
of the late afternoon
to make them understand again
that such Xerox-centre which can ignore its metallic-birth
does not grow even now on either side of this muddy road
so look at to see how the epenthesis
of the screwpine-leaf withdraws her beak from the old dome
and pours
all new mathematics
into the compact-disc stitched with the back of the sea-tortoise
if that’s not real
how in the left and right
such evil-company of the oxygen would creep
if the next part of this commentary
resumes from the umbilicus cavity of the x-mass
would the blood-sugar of the water-plankton be rising continuously
look there again
the feather of colour that is in her adolescence
touches the cold magnet of her gamut
to disperse the cherry orchards
now if the doors of this brown triangle be got open
you can see on the screen one by one
the projection of the apex-points of the red-palash
and in the night-texture of the kathakali-kathak
they are supplying continuously
small sun-shines in poly-packs
Sep 13, 2010
Sep 13, 2010 at 5:34 PM UTC
High on a hill our grandparent’s home stood,
Its majesty in stone cast a haunted look,
Light glimmered from a paraffin lamp,
Whilst outside it snowed on the geese,
As they ran to their shelter,
And the cows mooed on the fields above,
And the goats cried in the barn.
Mother pumped water from the well,
We ran around collecting eggs,
Granddad showed me how to milk a goat.
In the evenings we gathered in the kitchen,
The fire roared in the range,
Granddad sat in his big chair,
He burned anything just to keep warm,
We thought it very strange.
Mother worked at the big white sink,
Knitted squares hung from a line,
We made tiny plasticine dolls,
They slept in plasticine beds,
We drank Dandelion and Burdock,
Ginger pop and Sarsaparilla,
It came in enormous stone bottles,
Dad got it every week from a man at the door.
Most of the rooms were huge, bleak and bare,
A room we called the playroom,
Was carpeted with goat skins,
There were jars of melted metal,
Who knows why?
We were told it was grandma’s jewelry,
Melted to stop the Germans getting it in the war,
In the long hall there was a dressing up chest,
We loved to look inside.
The bathroom was a scary place,
There was a lion head toilet and a bath with lions feet,
At night we went upstairs with a candle for light,
We cuddled together to keep warm,
One night we saw fairies at the window.
Our aunty had a gramophone,
Records all scattered around,
We had to be careful where we trod,
She loved Frank Sinatra and Bing Crosby,
We didn’t understand.
Our uncle slept on the top floor,
In a huge brass bed,
One day I took him a cup of tea,
We were not normally allowed up there,
He fixed broken cars they were all everywhere.
He played late in the barn with his girlfriend.
My grandmother slept downstairs,
She always was very ill,
Wrapped in bed in a pink bed shawl,
We got her water from the spring,
To cure her, but she died.
Jun 17, 2010
Jun 17, 2010 at 3:20 PM UTC
Host maybe youre listening
Tapping at a bridge bone, teleport fonhom
I probably know it but...
Like children asking a question about a complicated thing
Simplified complicated things
Till they didnt mean nothing like they had,
When the gramophone, gammaray guts were still cramed in it
May 20, 2015
May 20, 2015 at 12:31 AM UTC
you place me on your shelf
right next to all the rest,
a commodity priced according
to which and whom are best.
you shove me to the back
so others may not see
the person who would sit
and reclaim you piece by piece.
I am a bitterness unwavered by the winds
I am an ice storm unstoppable in its onslaught
I am a tornado festering on the countryside
You are a man made up of
turned shoulders and lowered eyes,
a man who would much rather store things
than to see them in use.
Your fingers may peruse
the cylinders of my being,
it may be graced by
the loveliness of your cold touch.
However it is fleeting,
and I grow cold from disuse.
I am the item on your shelf
I am the mirror casually ignored
I am the gramophone screaming its discordant hymn
I am the void rearing its sickening maw,
waiting and watching for my prey
to wander helplessly into my gaping esophagus
I am the bat wing, leathery and clinging
to the cartilage of the world.
I am the item on the shelf,
high above the world,
looking down onto the ants
who scurry and shimmy to try to ascend.
They will not ascend
because God didn't make ants in order to fly.
Oct 12, 2013
Oct 12, 2013 at 9:16 PM UTC
Sunday morning, pit-pit patter on my window panes
hot beverage, blurred vision
old gramophone playing in the next room.
Oh, how she loves music!
40 years of marriage, her hair still smell like fresh jasmine
broken glasses, shallow pockets.
Her radiant smile, wet hair
I sniff the jasmine in the air around.
Love marriage, college affair
Love letters, and library meetings.
old days, fresh memories.
She peers out from behind the door.
Her wrinkled skin, mine too.
Her lips part as she hums along to
old gramophone playing in the next room.
Oh, how she loves music!
Mar 16, 2015
Mar 16, 2015 at 2:50 PM UTC
when it rains,
each little drop
brings forgetfulness,
in my closed world,
each little sound
brings you away from me,
each cling of glass reminds me
of an old forgotten place -
in black and white - gramophone,
dancing children, empty room,
porcelain cups painted with roses
My white gown on green dots,
Someone calling my name
from so far away,
fading familiar faces,
sound of train,
until I come back in my deja vu
childhood and find you again...
-nour-
June-013
Jun 10, 2013
Jun 10, 2013 at 12:06 PM UTC
I dreamt once that I danced with you.
Fox trot,
White dress,
Dim lit room.
I looked more like my grandmother than myself
But you just looked a better version of you.
No needle marks in sight.
You told me you liked us this way,
No fighting,
Everything clear, reality perfectly defined.
No confusion, nothing bad,
Just us, a gramophone, love,
And just when I don't need it most,
An alarm clock to wake me up.
And the sound is no dancing tune. It is
As harsh and loud
And crass
As the you who stirs beside me,
As unromantic as a broken record.
May 29, 2013
May 29, 2013 at 6:12 PM UTC
This Boyhood’s End
was mine too, but
through its music’s dance,
not just Hudson’s farewell to a natural world
of exotic flowers and flocks of birds
on the great plains of the pampas.
In Tippett’s suite of songs I first found
that ecstasy of word-rhythm wedded
to melodic contour held in place
by a singer’s voice, and a pianist’s touch
of harmony grafted from a play of parts.
Sitting on my bedroom floor
ear close to the gramophone,
thirteen and already enamored,
I listened over and again to this cantata
that has for so long held the key
to the very door of music . . .
Music may be a notion like ‘God’ or ‘love’.
Everyone identifies with it,
but it is composers who live to fathom
its depths and sound out its mystery.
Dec 4, 2013
Dec 4, 2013 at 3:11 PM UTC
i treat you like an old favorite record
i turned on the radio
and heard a poppy song
it was easy for it to interest me
and easier for me to end up switching the station
my friend brought me to an opera
i could still hear the perfection flowing
and shivers growing inside me
like mushrooms on humid lands
but you are an old loved record
that never leaves the turntable
with scratches carved into you
after spins for the lonely soul
Mar 27, 2015
Mar 27, 2015 at 12:56 PM UTC
We in the attic blanketed with dust
Waiting stiffly until The Beaumont's leave,
Us portraits and mannequins stuck like rust
Wearing fluffy clothes the butler would weave.
They leave, we awaken and run downstairs
To see the table full of wine and mess
We gather around, the gramophone blares
The butler screams, that old Anderson Wes
He looked as though he never saw a feast
Ran stupidly shaking like a drunk man
'Til the portrait of Paul said to the beast,
"You're waking the neighbors, here have some flan!"
Eyes bulging, eyes fuming old Wes breaks down
His allergy got the very best of him
Rolling on the floor covered in a frown
We watched and listened his life on a limb.
"He ruined the party!" cried Ms. LeBoot,
We were in uproar, covered in white noise
But then stood Mr. Crowser in his suit
Headless, but strong with a booming tight voice.
He said, "We shall not let his death be vain,
As butler Wes would see this to the end
Now let us dine and let us feast through pain
And unveil this dust, with drink it will mend!"
Jun 24, 2013
Jun 24, 2013 at 10:21 AM UTC
The sky is a giant gramophone of the valley flowers.
from a brooding repertoire of pin-disks
singing to me in the hymns rumbling out song
This late dusk, I am the last sheep that
got lost from the herd, now heading across the pass
in the hope of finding my home.
All my life is on trial now. You are all the people
here and I am in the dock. All that I have been
brings me here. I see amused eyes, and eyes
of suspicion. I know them eyes, these are your eyes
these are your people, and I know you.
To learn our language? I see dispersal, dismissal.
trying, to learn your language. twirling in the men.
I see disinterest. Girl from the high country
I see your moustache don't learn languages no more.
I see laughter, Yes that is what I have been
Oh my holy heavens, that I see home in those eyes.
And I said, hallelujah. at the edges painted red.
have come misty-eyed And they said, come with us.
There is a hope for home. A hearth here, not on flat.
On a slope, I have to found what I could a fire there.
Now I be over and laughter, all my hopes Moist corners
ancient tongues speaking to my soul. from this far land
come alive in tending to the home, embers break
a Cossack girl where you and the children live.
The rainbow carries, moments of reflections unlocking
to those distant shores and tears like mist and rain.
Jan 30, 2015
Jan 30, 2015 at 4:17 PM UTC
* : Janet E Steele*
And what is the body? And what is a house?
The body is home to pain,
there was a mouth that held back a scream
there are wounds that show the face of blood
The body is home to the spirit of layover,
and there he felt at home, listening to the song
time, clock & heart rippled
And what is a house? And what is the body?
The house is an area where there is none
the shadow of the body, in a corner
gramophone placed & prayer sent to far.
Home is where you come back
from a small meeting, and there you are
happy, because you have time to say love.
Jul 23, 2017
Jul 23, 2017 at 9:45 AM UTC