"gravely" poems
I want to touch my fingertips
To the center of the brim of your cap
And run them along the edge
One hand in each direction
Until the stiff peak gives way to soft fabric.
I will gently slide my fingers
Under the edge of your cap
Until it lifts off your head
So that I can toss it behind you
To be forgotten about.
I will trace your jawline
While you say things
In that honeyed, gravely voice of yours
Only it's not quite gravel- not that harsh
More akin with rough sand.
Then you will smile
And your teeth will shine white against your tan skin
While your eyes crinkle and laugh
And I will fall, sinking into their pool
Of warm, caramel coffee.
You will find my hand with yours
And interlock your fingers with mine
Holding them both to your chest
Your hands are large, rough, and strong
You only hold my hand, but my body is paralyzed
May 27, 2012
May 27, 2012 at 3:26 AM UTC
I couldn’t be around you without feeling
as if my world was crashing down.
Twice I walked away but you kept
holding onto me.
Your love dominating,
controlling, and reckless.
For us both ‘WE’ became an addiction.
Our physical connection creating a real
emotional entanglement.
The intimacy escalated not with your love
and respect rather with your insatiable ******
desires and deceit.
You came closer to me than anyone ever had.
To say that we were totally engaged,
consumed with each other would gravely understate
what you did not only to my body, but also to my soul.
It was a crazy love.
When your presence met mine.
I’d forgotten the meaning of peace of mind.
Self-respect had flown away,
integrity fallen by the wayside.
I didn’t know who I was with you.
I didn’t know who I was without you.
Yet, I couldn’t leave…
Even though deep in my unconscious
I knew 'WE' were wrong.
My addiction wouldn’t let me go,
your addiction wouldn't let me go.
And I stayed…
Your behavior came so close to crushing my spirit,
my will to live.
In your compulsion to protect your deception
you abandoned me,
my life hanging on by a thread, I could not sleep or eat,
I could not breathe.
It was like being in a coma that I was fighting to survive.
With intensive professional help
I was forced out of the coma.
I survived.
Now I see
I stayed, not because I loved you
I stayed because I didn’t love me.
Passion kept me bound.
Truth be told, to be totally honest
I stayed out of fear, fear of missing the passion.
But now I know I’d rather be alone… than
shackled by the anguish and drama you swore was love.
As the synapses of my brain reconnect,
the evidence of controlling emotional abuse,
of possessive manipulation, overwhelms my mind and body.
I see now I wasn’t built, wasn’t ready to understand
your type of love.
I can’t deal, can’t bear, don’t deserve,
your emotional betrayal and abuse.
I have kept your secret for you to tell.
A secret I will never betray.
Now no longer together
locked in by your silence,
perpetuating the manipulation,
forever destined in your secret,
your abuse continues.
Mar 13, 2013
Mar 13, 2013 at 2:23 PM UTC
When did you become a stormy sea of obsession?
Confining in all of your ways
Renouncing all moves in any direction
When one does not yield to the calls, you play
Attempts to govern unclipped wings can be exhausting
The very thought is so gravely insane
Yet you still despondently try to cage in free spirits
With those borders you set and maintain
You reveal uncertainty in your own validation
In the faith you hold in your own
When you desperately try to close off the sky
From free spirits thirsting to roam
Did you know that your borders are guarded by insecurity?
They are useless and protected in vain
Take a look inside the cages you obsessively provide
Not a single free spirit remains
Jul 7, 2010
Jul 7, 2010 at 6:31 PM UTC
The weeping
of the guitar begins.
Wineglasses shatter
in the dead of night.
The weeping
of the guitar begins.
It's useless
to hush it.
It's impossible
to hush it.
It weeps on monotonously
the way water weeps,
the way wind weeps
over the snowdrifts.
It's impossible
to hush it.
It weeps for things
far, far away.
For the sand of the hot South
that begs for white camellias.
Weeps for arrows without targets,
an afternoon without a morning,
and for the first dead bird
upon the branch.
Oh, guitar!
Heart gravely wounded
by five swords.
8.6k
i very strongly doubt
that you have felt an ache
in your bones
as gravely as i have
when you walked away
from us.
Sep 8, 2014
Sep 8, 2014 at 10:44 PM UTC
Oh! a bare, brown rock
Stood up in the sea,
The waves at its feet
Dancing merrily.
A little bubble
Once came sailing by,
And thus to the rock
Did it gayly cry,--
** clumsy brown stone,
Quick, make way for me:
I'm the fairest thing
That floats on the sea.
"See my rainbow-robe,
See my crown of light,
My glittering form,
So airy and bright.
"O'er the waters blue,
I'm floating away,
To dance by the shore
With the foam and spray.
"Now, make way, make way;
For the waves are strong,
And their rippling feet
Bear me fast along."
But the great rock stood
Straight up in the sea:
It looked gravely down,
And said pleasantly--
"Little friend, you must
Go some other way;
For I have not stirred
this many a long day.
"Great billows have dashed,
And angry winds blown;
But my sturdy form
Is not overthrown.
"Nothing can stir me
In the air or sea;
Then, how can I move,
Little friend, for thee?"
Then the waves all laughed
In their voices sweet;
And the sea-birds looked,
From their rocky seat,
At the bubble gay,
Who angrily cried,
While its round cheek glowed
With a foolish pride,--
"You SHALL move for me;
And you shall not mock
At the words I say,
You ugly, rough rock.
"Be silent, wild birds!
While stare you so?
Stop laughing, rude waves,
And help me to go!
"For I am the queen
Of the ocean here,
And this cruel stone
Cannot make me fear."
Dashing fiercely up,
With a scornful word,
Foolish Bubble broke;
But Rock never stirred.
Then said the sea-birds,
Sitting in their nests
To the little ones
Leaning on their *******
"Be not like Bubble,
Headstrong, rude, and vain,
Seeking by violence
Your object to gain;
"But be like the rock,
Steadfast, true, and strong,
Yet cheerful and kind,
And firm against wrong.
"Heed, little birdlings,
And wiser you'll be
For the lesson learned
To-day by the sea."
7k
Ten years ago it seemed impossible
That she should ever grow so calm as this,
With self-remembrance in her warmest kiss
And dim dried eyes like an exhausted well.
Slow-speaking when she has some fact to tell,
Silent with long-unbroken silences,
Centred in self yet not unpleased to please,
Gravely monotonous like a passing bell.
Mindful of drudging daily common things,
Patient at pastime, patient at her work,
Wearied perhaps but strenuous certainly.
Sometimes I fancy we may one day see
Her head shoot forth seven stars from where they lurk
And her eyes lightnings and her shoulders wings.
5.5k
If only we could begin again and slow down the pernicious pace
We ruin our oceans, the land, our air even outer space.
If only we avoided such precarious paths that may lead to disparity
If only we knew what action is needed now, to deal with the reality.
Ecologists warned, yet still observe with ever-growing anxiety
the growth of harmful long-term effects on Earth's biodiversity.
If only the air wasn't gravely polluted, so the atmosphere begins to fail,
so wreathed by carbon dioxide layers, extremes to climate may prevail.
If only Earth's lungs cease being shrunk by profits heedless exploitation,
existing relationships are considered scarcely in these aberrations.
If only a solution for discarded synthetics which float in ugly hordes
on oceans global drifts, disaster occurs wherever it reaches landfall.
If only we can do something, a belated but resounding universal call,
If only we can safeguard the future before there are no options at all.
If only we could begin again and slow the ruinous pace... if only
If Only
M C Crowder
@scorsby
19th November 2018
Jan 2, 2019
Jan 2, 2019 at 12:00 PM UTC
Through the white, beating Texan heat,
water towers cry out titles
high above the flat land
where kids from the roadside houses
run around in stained tank tops,
dreaming of their own names up there.
The long and burnt grass cuts their ankles
and the dry cement scrapes their feet.
The midday ritual begins in a racing circle
raising dust over the roofs and into the shy afternoon.
Around 5, the roadside families reunite
in front of their houses to watch the daily traffic jam
and observe the variety of faces through the glass windows,
which after a short while do not seem to vary at all.
But today, something else had their full attention.
The sky was never seen this low and the clouds
turned a shade of black
so dark as to be almost green,
so the eldest women on that single row of houses
declared bad omen. The next early morning,
the closest water tower laid gravely against the ground.
Already, a small boy had climbed on top of the tank,
soles bleeding, and waving
his shirt into the wide clear sky.
©2018 Alex Bex - www.alexbex.net
Jan 20, 2018
Jan 20, 2018 at 12:54 PM UTC
When I enter a bakery,
I gaze at the variety ,
Of fresh baked cake,
And cookie dough ,
Ready to bake,
I smell the tempting flavors of donuts,
And the wide range of cookies with nut,
I glance at the crossiant,
Something I gravely want,
I order a coffee,
And a crossiant,
To satisfy me,
I taste the luscious buttery bread,
And relish the spread,
Enjoying without worry,
Well this is the,
Adventure of a bakery
Feb 26, 2016
Feb 26, 2016 at 7:26 AM UTC
In this evil year, autumn comes early...
I walk by night in the field, alone, the rain clatters,
The wind on my hat...And you? And you, my friend?
You are standing--maybe--and seeing the sickle moon
Move in a small arc over the forests
And bivouac fire, red in the black valley.
You are lying--maybe--in a straw field and sleeping
And dew falls cold on your forehead and battle jacket.
It's possible tonight you're on horseback,
The farthest outpost, peering along, with a gun in your fist,
Smiling, whispering, to your exhausted horse.
Maybe--I keep imagining--you are spending the night
As a guest in a strange castle with a park
And writing a letter by candlelight, and tapping
On the piano keys by the window,
Groping for a sound...
--And maybe
You are already silent, already dead, and the day
Will shine no longer into your beloved
Serious eyes, and your beloved brown hand hangs wilted,
And your white forehead split open--Oh, if only,
If only, just once, that last day, I had shown you, told you
Something of my love, that was too timid to speak!
But you know me, you know...and, smiling, you nod
Tonight in front of your strange castle,
And you nod to your horse in the drenched forest,
And you nod to your sleep to your harsh clutter of straw,
And think about me, and smile.
And maybe,
Maybe some day you will come back from the war,
and take a walk with me some evening,
And somebody will talk about Longwy, Luttich, Dammerkirch,
And smile gravely, and everything will be as before,
And no one will speak a word of his worry,
Of his worry and tenderness by night in the field,
Of his love. And with a single joke
You will frighten away the worry, the war, the uneasy nights,
The summer lightning of shy human friendship,
Into the cool past that will never come back.
3.8k
She walks in the hallways nothing but couples holding hands and proclaiming their love to one another. She stares at awe, wishing for one day to be married and to never divorce, but the timing is just not right for her. She's a sucker for romance novels, she's loves getting lost in their magic. All her friends are dating now, but she is not ready for commitment. She is not ready for the heartache, or the pain of getting hurt. She pushes everybody away once they start to develop feelings for her. She's afraid of getting hurt, so she must hurt them before they can hurt her. She slowly pushes them away and she slowly creeps into the shadows afraid of being seen by the boys. Oh! But by midnight, she'll be up all night reading some romance novel, but she is not ready and she is content with not being ready. Relationships are normal, they say, relationships are natural, the say, but they will never look within her heart for she will never give herself up like that. She is afraid of men. She is afraid of boys. She is afraid of confiding her love in someone that can leave right before her very eyes. She is not ready for her romance novels to be fake, she still lives in her dreams and in her dreams, no one gets hurt, but this is the real world and she is bound to get hurt. She locks up her heart, only willing to give it to the man who stays to find the key gravely contained within Her soul, way beyond a human's ability. She does not want her imagination on love to be fake. She does not and will not let a boy ruin her expectations on love. She is too young for that. After High School, you'll forget me and I'll forget you. Nothing will work, everything is only temporary. She is not ready for commitment. We are too young to commit ourselves way beyond the next minute. I am not ready. I am afraid of boys. I am afraid of men. I am afraid of getting hurt. I am afraid of commitment. I am afraid of never being loved. I am afraid of being loved. They just don't get it! Men are stronger and more aggressive and just like that, they can make way with you. I am not ready for that. I am not ready for love. I am afraid of being loved. I am simply afraid.
Jun 2, 2015
Jun 2, 2015 at 11:32 PM UTC
The morning mists still haunt the stony street;
The northern summer air is shrill and cold;
And lo, the Hospital, grey, quiet, old,
Where Life and Death like friendly chafferers meet.
Thro' the loud spaciousness and draughty gloom
A small, strange child--so aged yet so young!--
Her little arm besplinted and beslung,
Precedes me gravely to the waiting-room.
I limp behind, my confidence all gone.
The grey-haired soldier-porter waves me on,
And on I crawl, and still my spirits fail:
A tragic meanness seems so to environ
These corridors and stairs of stone and iron,
Cold, naked, clean--half-workhouse and half-jail.
3.3k
I demand to make my choices.
We are here to raise our voices.
These irreversible changes are locking us in cages;
These are real, life-or-death issues.
This is no show, and these lives are no Broadway stages.
Let's talk about decisions;
Let's put aside biased visions.
Let’s talk about who makes these decisions;
I’m looking at you, old white dudes in boardrooms.
Last time you took a class in sex-ed,
Gatsby and Daisy were just about this close to being bride and groom.
Let's talk about consent;
Let's use this space to vent.
Let’s talk about who has the right to judge;
I’m looking at you, anti-abortion crusaders.
Feeling threatened by strong women and their placards and posters,
Like they’ve got pistols in their uterine holsters,
Like they’re all daughters of the dark forces of Darth Vader.
Why do we insist on going to war with each other?
More importantly,
Why does our ****** education,
The root of this problem,
The rotten core of this issue -
Why does our ****** education **** so much?
Why do we talk about choice for a woman instead of the choice of men to respect a woman in the first place?
Why are we still debating?
Grown men telling women to listen,
It's absolutely infuriating!
Let's fight for rights and quit the hating.
Women are resorting to desperate measures,
Whilst men walk away with fulfilled pleasures.
I adopt this tone gravely;
Women are jeopardising their safety, daily.
Is a living woman worth less than an unborn baby?
May 25, 2019
May 25, 2019 at 5:18 AM UTC
every time he touched me
i felt him memorizing me like a wreck
every time she touched me
i felt her heartbeat caught in my own neck
they are problem solvers.
i had cushioning companions
fuller and calmer than me.
perhaps someday i'll tell them this
if i ever learn to handle it:
the open, raw closeness.
In the meantime, i'll remember her
laughing into my legs
immersing us in the soft hair from her head
and his enchanting voice
inflating my lungs;
the simple gift of speech in bed
the moment right before their contact,
a few light-years away from being.
the moment between shine and its reflection,
just a hollow eternity to all the space in between.
company?
I starve for the long moments
that thick time of silence together
feasting on whatever he just said.
community?
I crave gazing at an orb of truth
wholly understanding one another
a vague sense of being like her family.
civility?
honoring the ghosts of our realities
and remaining gravely touched
by the mortal ritual at hand.
I couldn't deserve either of you
just promise me you'll understand
or at least try to
get the **** off my land
Jul 3, 2015
Jul 3, 2015 at 10:17 PM UTC
I loved you strong, with all the recklessness I possessed,
Yearned to share with you all I had to confess.
Believed it would be palliated in your pristine hands,
Watched it slip through your fingers like worthless sands.
Enamoured and imprudent, I jumped right in,
Unaware your depths were too shallow to swim.
Naïveté; my judgement had faltered,
All of my worth lay bare, and you resigned, unaltered.
Gave everything I knew with nothing left in reserve
Long forgotten it was me I should serve.
It was a hope laced channel for all the healing I desired
but you were inept at radiating the compassion required.
No understanding for this fragile task in proposition,
A rare gift to be cherished that you gave no recognition.
And there was too much exposed for you to forsake,
Too much that wasn’t earned; my calamitous mistake.
For these blood stained bones you lacked the tools to unearth,
You were never the answer to my rebirth.
Gravely inexperienced for this feat,
Your heart was too sheltered
and your mind too weak.
I gave you completely this intimate token,
But you failed to see how I was broken.
May 14, 2015
May 14, 2015 at 8:24 AM UTC
Within that magical moment
The world is at one and at ease
Everyone is loving their neighbour
And we have control of disease.
But it doesn't last, it cannot last
It will all go back as before
To the dying from hunger and violence
To man’s unending desire for war.
One man plants a crop for food
But another man reaps the gain
The one making life from the profit
While another’s reward is just pain.
That man is black, or yellow, who cares!
His blood like yours is red
The bullets or knives that pierce your skins
Would make you both as dead.
A man gets beaten in the street
His crime was being gay
Who gave those others the right to judge
Will prejudice never go away?
The ones with strength to dominate
Should nonetheless take heed
When they themselves are wanting help
Who’ll stay to fill that need.
I hear the ever-growing rains
They flood the town and field
Where hardship’s felt so gravely
Where man is forced to yield.
Perhaps we brought it on ourselves
We feel the need for so much
But there are so many more with nothing
Who’d benefit from a gentle touch.
Back to that magical moment
It’s the one just before I awake
Where the next moment comes and it’s over
And it can’t be put right with a shake.
©Joe Wilson – A Magical Moment…and then it’s gone! 2014
Apr 20, 2014
Apr 20, 2014 at 11:03 AM UTC
Tender weather summer
slumber ponder hunger
cover wonder lover
runner hunter comer
mainly gravely greatly
rainy daily ready
achy heavy crazy
lazy safety lately
hunted spotted haunted
solid gauntlet granted
plotted started halted
flawless gunner wanted
Dec 23, 2013
Dec 23, 2013 at 1:24 AM UTC
To sleep, my mind impounded,
My heartbeats, bass, lowly-sounded,
Each beat, a note upon mine ticking meter.
An unfamiliar feminine voice, not hers, poses,
Questioning noises, issued from a blackened figure.
This human-shaped metronome,
A singular inquisitor,
In rhythm, but not in rhyme,
Gravely announces repeatedly,
T'is your time, t'is your time,
Each pronouncement,
Spoken n'spiked distinctly:
*"Your prose now ended,
last-gentled sweetly."*
Wondering still, is it just sleep or truly death,
This forlorn eve, to go, to meet and greet,
Without having said my finale prayer.
Unprepared, thus with unaccustomed flair,
"Unfair" doth me protest, a newly-minted naysayer,
My book incomplete, black-brother frere!
If death indeed you be, my fellow cloaked-rider,
Then make me a one-last-time composer.
Let me whisper once more inside her,
A last poem of the greatest brevity,
But of the greatest import, laden heavy!
Good bye, my love, goodbye....
This closing writ, my finest ever...
Oct 6, 2013
Oct 6, 2013 at 5:21 AM UTC
Laid now on his smooth bed
For the last time, watching dully
Through heavy eyelids the day's colour
Widow the sky, what can he say
Worthy of record, the books all open,
Pens ready, the faces, sad,
Waiting gravely for the tired lips
To move once -- what can he say?
His tongue wrestles to force one word
Past the thick phlegm; no speech, no phrases
For the day's news, just the one word ‘sorry';
Sorry for the lies, for the long failure
In the poet's war; that he preferred
The easier rhythms of the heart
To the mind's scansion; that now he dies
Intestate, having nothing to leave
But a few songs, cold as stones
In the thin hands that asked for bread.
2.3k
It is evening, Senlin says, and in the evening,
By a silent shore, by a far distant sea,
White unicorns come gravely down to the water.
In the lilac dusk they come, they are white and stately,
Stars hang over the purple waveless sea;
A sea on which no sail was ever lifted,
Where a human voice was never heard.
The shadows of vague hills are dark on the water,
The silent stars seem silently to sing.
And gravely come white unicorns down to the water,
One by one they come and drink their fill;
And daisies burn like stars on the darkened hill.
It is evening Senlin says, and in the evening
The leaves on the trees, abandoned by the light,
Look to the earth, and whisper, and are still.
The bat with horned wings, tumbling through the darkness,
Breaks the web, and the spider falls to the ground.
The starry dewdrop gathers upon the oakleaf,
Clings to the edge, and falls without a sound.
Do maidens spread their white palms to the starlight
And walk three steps to the east and clearly sing?
Do dewdrops fall like a shower of stars from willows?
Has the small moon a ghostly ring? . . .
White skeletons dance on the moonlit grass,
Singing maidens are buried in deep graves,
The stars hang over a sea like polished glass . . .
And solemnly one by one in the darkness there
Neighing far off on the haunted air
White unicorns come gravely down to the water.
No silver bells are heard. The westering moon
Lights the pale floors of caverns by the sea.
Wet **** hangs on the rock. In shimmering pools
Left on the rocks by the receding sea
Starfish slowly turn their white and brown
Or writhe on the naked rocks and drown.
Do sea-girls haunt these caves--do we hear faint singing?
Do we hear from under the sea a faint bell ringing?
Was that a white hand lifted among the bubbles
And fallen softly back?
No, these shores and caverns are all silent,
Dead in the moonlight; only, far above,
On the smooth contours of these headlands,
White amid the eternal black,
One by one in the moonlight there
Neighing far off on the haunted air
The unicorns come down to the sea.
2.2k
When
cheaters and liars
rise to the top of the polls
When genocidal speech
wanna be torturers
let their goals unfold
advocating killing relatives
Something every drug lord knows
When words don't mean anything
Images are everything
When words and images disconnect
When words don't work
It's what we call psychosis
in the psych biz
We're all thinking
That can't happen here
A cousin they call Germany
Refined
Civilized
Educated
Defined art
Music
Ethics
Found out exactly what every **** head
knows when you go too far
There's gonna be advanced window patrol
Getting out the duct tape
Wrapping up the house
Can't let any light
in or out
You may end up in leather restraints
On a plastic sheet on a metal bed
America better call the crisis hotline
Stand in line for same day services
5150/Legal 2000/72 hour commitment
Being a danger to self and others
Rapidly becoming gravely disabled
Hold on, I'll write that Hold now
Bring out the atypicals
Risperdal Zyprexa Serequil
Take an Ativan
Take a Zanax
**** it take a ******
If you don't come back down now
Find the ground
You'll be okay
In a decade or three
The suffering of course
Will be burns in the third degree
Psychosis can be unkind
All civilizations have their day
Incline
Recline
Decline
It can't happen here?
Chaotic brutality knocking on the door
You gotta know what's in store
We need an intervention
Breathe it back on in
It can still be okay
Reality check
Words sometimes mean something
And people sometimes mean what they say
And though
Images dissolve
Evolve
Fracture and split
Those that are seeing and hearing
What's going on
are holding their breath
Wondering how crazy it's really all gonna get.
Feb 24, 2016
Feb 24, 2016 at 10:30 PM UTC
“The grief therapist will see you now.”
the perky redhead told us.
Her rolling hips then led the way
majestically before us..
Final arrangements must be made.
as our loved one is gone;
Melvin joined the choir invisible
singing his swan song.
He had been fading badly,
and we knew the end was near.
Now he’s a mortuary client,
pausing for his final bier..
Thank God for prearrangement
or we truly would be gored.
It gets to be quite expensive
when you’re sleeping with the Lord.
He’s shuffled off this mortal coil
and brought the curtain down.
Soon he’ll be checking out the grass
from six feet underground..
Melvin has given up the ghost.
He was snuffed out in his prime.
He cashed his chips in early,
passing on before his time.
“Your loved one’s in a better place.”
The Undertaker gravely said..
“His ancestors have embraced him
in a place of light, not dread.”
Some will say he kicked the bucket,
checked out early, bought the farm.
The religious say he’s with the Lord,
The perpetual light is on.
Melvin, were he here with us,
more likely would have said
a better place for him would be
that redhead’s poster bed.
Dec 8, 2011
Dec 8, 2011 at 7:24 PM UTC