"harrowing" poems
#*Lord Jesus, Plower of my heart,
though the darkness descends around me
and heavy moods fall over me,
though the warm feelings of intimacy begin to fade
and encroaching melancholy threatens to set in
like a cold reversal of the winds,
still I will rejoice in Your presence with me,
for You are causing me to press beyond—
beyond the delightful sense of You
and into the delightful assurance of You.
If I know nothing else, I know that You are here,
You are faithful and You love me.
So I will keep clinging to that
when everything else seems to slip
like dust through my fingers
and all hope of good things
in this life grows dim.
I will cling to the promise
that You are clinging to me,
that You’ve got me no matter what,
that You are never leaving or letting go.
For You are the unchanging I AM
in my ever-changing circumstances,
through my ever-shifting emotions,
over my ever-shaking life
and around my ever-feeble heart.
Here is my hand, Lord Jesus.
I put it safely in Yours and trust You
to lead me through this dark night.
Work Your holy, harrowing fingers
deep into the soil of my heart
until every idol is uprooted,
every stone removed
and every broken place restored.
Thank You, Jesus.
I love You.*#
Aug 1, 2017
Aug 1, 2017 at 5:16 PM UTC
A populace filled with totalitarian tranquility
The supposition that the world is in a harmonic homeostasis
Blissful ignorance that leads to careless calamity
Amid the uproar of the most populated of places
Therein lies the seed of humanity’s deceptive destruction
A solitary host housing a virulent virus
Infectious disease that proceeds crisis and corruption
Hope only stands with the powerful and pious
Prognosis describes communicable cannibalism
Rabid outbursts show signs of voracious violence
The harrowing pandemic leads to ceaseless cataclysm
Cities and towns suspended in systemic silence
Habitations riddled with gratuitous gore
Hope fades in the wake of the crimson carnage
The pestilent hoard feeds to a glutton’s galore
The Author of humanity publishes the final page
The closing verse rains down a rapturous recompense
The high cost of a dense population paid at humanity’s existential expense
Oct 31, 2018
Oct 31, 2018 at 11:06 PM UTC
This little heart of mine
often you nourished it
and cherished it gladly
as if it was a sweet smile
among a million primulas!
Oh, this little heart of mine
how often should it be scrutinised
be squeezed into the flip side?
What magic, should it show up?
Though no longer one sheds a tear
but spares a dose of love.
The sweetest moments in life
only come from love.
The harrowing ones are
no strangers—too big and bold
and could flesh out with no bound.
But fill this with only a slice—
not the lot—just with a bit of love,
this little heart of mine!
May 9, 2017
May 9, 2017 at 5:03 PM UTC
Wise scarecrow with
Awareness both harrowing and
fallowing, wisdom and knowledge.
Straw in glove you stand in a field
straw man, scarer, protecter of the
unseen world, and fields.
Kuebiko (崩え彦 "disabled prince")
you have no legs to roam,stood out in the wet and cold.
You and I Mr scarecrow are alike, no working legs.
Afflicted bodily,our minds still know
Impaired we are a pair of straw myths
Because he stands all day outdoors, he knows everything
Because I sit all day indoors, I know time.
May 12, 2014
May 12, 2014 at 5:44 PM UTC
1540
As imperceptibly as Grief
The Summer lapsed away—
Too imperceptible at last
To seem like Perfidy—
A Quietness distilled
As Twilight long begun,
Or Nature spending with herself
Sequestered Afternoon—
The Dusk drew earlier in—
The Morning foreign shone—
A courteous, yet harrowing Grace,
As Guest, that would be gone—
And thus, without a Wing
Or service of a Keel
Our Summer made her light escape
Into the Beautiful.
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A SOCIETY WRITTEN IN FLAMES; SHROUDED IN DARKNESS
*The tears flows in an endless way
Bemoaning the days of yore
Watching with eyes that sparks red,
Sunken and beaten from the tragedies of yore
Helpless and wishing for a relentless call
As tragedy hits her most sensitive part,
Bemoaning the tides,
All her days of glory,
Now a shadowy story*
*She had been ***** by her very own,
The children she yearned and bled for,
The men she fed and trained,
Where her rain fell full and vast, to soothe their hearts
Where she gave it all, and smiled, hoping that someday, they will realize her sacrifices and sleepless nights,
Her nights of terror and horrors
Where she stood in the midst of the stormy eerie night, shrouded in darkness*
*It was her ******* they ****** and clunged to,
It was her arms that shielded them from the shadows of the dark,
But when they grew and flew,
She waited still
Praying and wishing they would remember the days of yore*
*Then the dark hour rolled away,
And when morning came, it was harrowing.
It was harrowing how she waited abandoned and dejected,
As her sons and daughters peaked at the sky,
Trampling her down,
Relegating and belittling her
Painful it were, as she cried from the agonies of the days of yore,
Where she laid all her virtues down,
Giving it all to see her children smile,*
*It is this dejection that has brought her to tears,
It is this wickedness of a child to a mother, that has made her weep endlessly
It is this tragedy that have swallowed her glory,
As her children keeps flying above huddles, in peace and harmony,
Forgetting her,
It is this callousness, that pushed them to sapping her virtues and enriching themselves with it thereon*
*What is worse than a child abandoning his mother?
It is this penchant, that drives them
It is the love of greed,
It is the seed of corruption,
It is not an inherited trait,
It is a despicable decision
Like a monstrous shadow,
Twirling the back of the night.
It is the fire that burns within their heart,
The fire to **** steal and destroy
To take what she can never give again
To live,
To live big at the expenses of others sorrow and agony
It is this evil that has perused Nigeria and has rendered her a roaming wretch
And now tragedy looms,
It booms and blooms,*
A society written in flames
Who will save MOTHER NIGERIA?
Ovi Odiete© 2016, Oct. 31
All rights reserved
Note
Children here signifies the evil politicians and men that has sapped our country dry with their evil penchant
Oct 31, 2016
Oct 31, 2016 at 7:03 AM UTC
lying awake
and looking for all of the answers
in my ceiling.
asking why
it has to be me who feels this way
(feeling completely lifeless, and absolutely hopeless)
asking You
“haven’t you taken enough from me?”
“why must you haunt my dreams?”
and the only bit of light i have
comes from the streetlight by my window,
it shines on You.
and from the corner i hear You,
with a vacant and harrowing tone.
and the detached vowels and consonants
echo throughout the hallways.
they hang themselves on the wall
as a reminder.
“they say nothing kills a man faster than his own head”.
Mar 29, 2018
Mar 29, 2018 at 9:00 PM UTC
the cosmos
a web of plantary oppositions squares and triangulations
curses and blessings
demons, humans and gods
friends and enemies
each a constituent
a revolving carousel of heavens and hells
the macro, an umbrella of spilling stars
like shattered glass in flames
outer and inner stone & gas planets
wandering infinitely
like strays
others in tight gravitational ellipses and eclipses
the elements of fire air earth and water
from the most subtle formless
to rocks flames oceans and the air we breathe
disjuncture
in a
a mix-meister
a gruesome churning mouth swallowing our delicate membranes
and we wonder
why
we are in pain
why
we are nourished by flesh
as we ourselves are consumed
filled with blood and nothing
and deadened by marking time
all hungry shells
and why
we wither to dust
as do suns and moons
and gods themselves
all of us children of monsters
and corpse eaters
born of magnitudes
episodic collisions
and harrowing creative destructions
the dead living and the living dead
with eyes that flicker only on half a landscape at a time
a holloween
of pyramids and bones
always running from wolves
because we are meant to be eaten
okay my darlings
now
lets try
focused breathing,
and boundless light
lets try
being Hindu
Sep 16, 2018
Sep 16, 2018 at 2:23 PM UTC
The devil's speech say they:
Rolling, clattering, frolicking, hungry.
Billows of charred skeletons embrace the air
Black soot pumped straight from the pyres of Hades
Congealing to clouds of evil intent wherever it roam.
That charred old shell so terse,
Black as sadness and dead as a hearse,
Darling to death as he brings on the rain:
The dry rolling thunder of the funeral train.
In the coughing desert
Not a thing dares roam
Neither wind nor creature
And neither stick nor stone.
But then the silence disturbed by a horrible shriek -
The railway screams in horror and the train itself speaks, saying
"Tell me, thou innocent,
Why feel you special and best?
For when all is done I take you
And return you to my nest;
Your world is bright and happy
Full of high spirits and song,
Though soon you too shall step aboard
And join my faceless throng."
Hot saliva on the heaving engines:
Weeping, groaning, ghostly, parched.
Rusted joints spewed onwards grinding resisting
Movement spat out like a violently beaded string of curses
Sloppily uttered as incantations of a malformed mouth!
From that charred old shell so terse,
Black as sadness and dead as a hearse,
Darling to death as he brings on the rain:
The dry rolling thunder of the funeral train.
That dark train cries out and all around
A mourning whimper rises like slumbering fog-
Bleak and yellow it obscures the land
Seeping out insidious in strange locales all:
The old lonely fisherman
Sleeping on his wharf,
The frustrated hawker's
Windblown barefaced booth,
Silent streets crying for attention,
Dark places hidden at the corner of every eye.
That solemn train cries out and all around
Her mourning whimper rises like harrowing fog
Calling all to upright attention and fear.
Looming like a spectre but a breath-span from your window
Slowly closing cold dread claws-
Naked numbness dumb as ice-
Cold dread claws upon thy waist.
And you,
You poor old thing,
Shivering in your pitiful shack of bones,
You never had any chance!
You were only human.
You were only human, you poor old thing.
Barreling on with brimstone slang:
Clang clang! Dang dang! Beelz Bub!
Sputtering an ocean of curses from turgid goat-flesh
Born of sadness to cause even more, yawning great maw
Jowls clanking with fresh hot oil drool steaming stark and lewd, and yet
That charred old shell so terse,
Blacker than sadness and slain like a hearse,
Is all that gives meaning to our every gain:
The dry rolling thunder of the funeral train.
Oct 4, 2011
Oct 4, 2011 at 12:10 AM UTC
Driving through Louisville
in a driving rain storm
at dusk
Jul 4, 2015
Jul 4, 2015 at 7:12 PM UTC
Rising from ashes like the fabled phoenix
Growing out of nothingness to a possibility of life
I am but a tiny whisper of a breath, still struggling to be.
with life renewed yet to be lived.
I am born to a freedom to be
what I will… what I choose to be.
Can I truly be all that I am; what I was made to be?
My slate is wiped clean by you.
Debts repaid and fears released,
Replaced by age and broken hearts.
Why did this have to be so harrowing a life.
Why did I have to die to live?
Aug 20, 2012
Aug 20, 2012 at 8:46 PM UTC
Between the stone the moss had lay
Cries of help left there to stay
Love and joy lost in the gray
A sight of the land so haunting
The boats on shore were but a few
Huts were scattered across the view
From erosion, the sands withdrew
Not one but I had stood the ground
At this very place where I had grown
Years ago, I had willingly shown
That I too could have walked alone
To reach a place of anew
But on my journey from the sea
I heard my people’s harrowing plea
From miles away—_how could it be?_
Had the winds taken them away?
Now that I have come return
Time has passed and I have learned
That each life will have their turn
To be at sky's mercy
Apr 28, 2018
Apr 28, 2018 at 1:13 PM UTC
I am water,
the good
and the evil,
defended by foes;
abhorred by friends.
In the nightfall,
I am but water
with harrowing tears.
Jan 9, 2014
Jan 9, 2014 at 6:33 PM UTC
the garbage truck didn't turn up to-day
and the neighborhood trash stunk all day
a gross smell drifted across the street
it was akin to a rotting pile of peat
the council have heard the odd gripe
they've been told that the ******* is ripe
the residential area is no perfumery
our quarter acre blocks are so stinky
we'll be forced to vacate the neighborhood
as uncollected garbage is far from good
the air is heady with stale fish and curry
vegetable matter and an assortment of slurry
it is hoped that a truck can soon be found
as we'll be decamping the area's bounds
our noses have had a harrowing time
inhaling a stench which isn't sublime
Nov 24, 2013
Nov 24, 2013 at 7:42 PM UTC
Can something really be beautifully tragic?
Is it possible for a being to be gracefully destructive?
How can a life be insignificantly worthwhile?
Does that mean an existence can be grotesquely appealing?
Could you be more radiantly pitiful?
You are stunningly heart-rending.
How are you so delicately harrowing?
You are harmlessly treacherous.
Apr 28, 2015
Apr 28, 2015 at 11:21 PM UTC
Rendered offenses
Sweat in the opinion, sakes
And due attention, to reason amends
Acting only a little saner, the stark stare a host makes...
Do you notice, evermore?
Anyway, the truth we prepose of...
Has a callous beginning, too sore
For a challenge of wisdom, that even does?
Prayers of dour anger...
For the aspire and means we favor
With a realm to a touch, tough knowing you and life's danger...
The reality of another fight, with sin as the futures flavor?
Speed has a question, dwindling in the wind
Suspect days, to redoubt and list the scope of an argument
That has the silence we afforded it, to keep the shadows of kin
Proper is as proper had, the hush of simple tomorrows, a problem to relent...
Toward sharing, the taste of a hoping kiss...?
That when recognized, sympathy is an answer; only a heed can tell...
The prayer of estrangement, has become a chastity's wish
Will a savior in love, know the better of kindness; here's your hell...
With a baring lip, that has suggested a toothsome reply to quips
And hearts to accept the solace of terror, a harrowing finish to past lies...?
That began and ended with a promise found in the bolting and gray wits
Of a dread simplicity, still running to wisdom's charity, which requited...
Sep 21, 2023
Sep 21, 2023 at 8:55 PM UTC
1343
A single Clover Plank
Was all that saved a Bee
A Bee I personally knew
From sinking in the sky—
‘Twixt Firmament above
And Firmament below
The Billows of Circumference
Were sweeping him away—
The idly swaying Plank
Responsible to nought
A sudden Freight of Wind assumed
And Bumble Bee was not—
This harrowing event
Transpiring in the Grass
Did not so much as wring from him
A wandering “Alas”—
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The stellular supernal of
Translation exalting the
Absurdist rudimentary
Vale of tears; the place
Death was born blanketed
In twilight's eternal
Oblivion, breaking
Immortality-
The propitiative law
of Medes and Persians
From time out of mind,
'Whom the Gods love die young';
The amaranthine race to
Drink from the retentionist
Cup filled by Medea's ichor
Imbrued kettle readying for
The harrowing of Hell.
Eleete J Muir.
Sep 4, 2014
Sep 4, 2014 at 11:04 PM UTC
Down through the tomb's inward arch
He has shouldered out into Limbo
to gather them, dazed, from dreamless slumber:
the merciful dead, the prophets,
the innocents just His own age and those
unnumbered others waiting here
unaware, in an endless void He is ending
now, stooping to tug at their hands,
to pull them from their sarcophagi,
dazzled, almost unwilling. Didmas,
neighbor in death, Golgotha dust
still streaked on the dried sweat of his body
no one had washed and anointed, is here,
for sequence is not known in Limbo;
the promise, given from cross to cross
at noon, arches beyond sunset and dawn.
All these He will swiftly lead
to the Paradise road: they are safe.
That done, there must take place that struggle
no human presumes to picture:
living, dying, descending to rescue the just
from shadow, were lesser travails
than this: to break
through earth and stone of the faithless world
back to the cold sepulchre, tearstained
stifling shroud; to break from them
back into breath and heartbeat, and walk
the world again, closed into days and weeks again,
wounds of His anguish open, and Spirit
streaming through every cell of flesh
so that if mortal sight could bear
to perceive it, it would be seen
His mortal flesh was lit from within, now,
and aching for home. He must return,
first, in Divine patience, and know
hunger again, and give
to humble friends the joy
of giving Him food--fish and a honeycomb.
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Reluctant traveler on a dusty road
on a path not of his choosing..
As he struggles with his load,
he wonders what he is losing.
Feet blistered from the harrowing walk
face weathered from the sun
his hands, they bleed
his throat is parched,
yet water does little for the need.
He convinces himself it is for the best
And accepts it in his mind.
But his heart is hesitant to catch up to his head
afraid there, of what it might find.
Reluctant traveler on the choppy seas
distance has not been smooth sailing..
His conflicted soul he tries to appease,
and he wonders if he is failing.
Steadily he moves, still looking back to the shore
of the ocean inside his mind.
Meanwhile, waiting at his horizon’s door,
is what he had prayed to find.
She waits for him inside his eyes
so deep he cannot see her
behind the lens where truth resides,
she waits for him to free her.
But on his boat he drifts along
carried by the current’s roll,
still looking back, he misses the beacon song
from the lighthouse of her soul.
And so she waits
resting deep,
deep within the ocean of his eyes.
As off he drifts,
drifts to sleep
while the emerald currents reflect the skies.
Their paths, though seemingly guided
may never come parallel;
And kismet conspired with the stars and collided
but only time can tell…
Jan 20, 2015
Jan 20, 2015 at 10:31 AM UTC
If the Tiber floods and the Nile fails to
If the overflowing mouth of Tamesis runs dry
If the weeping willow withers as the blackthorn breaks
And the regal golden eagle fails to climb in the sky
If the dried-up land yields a drought so parching
That the overarching urge is to drink yourself drowed
If the Dead Sea waters lose their saline flotation
And the carrion-grabbing vultures wheel in from miles around
Then Gethsemane's gates will crack open just a little
And the flowers of the garden will give off a sour scent
As their brazen roots recall the night when they were fed with blood
Dripping softly on the hallowed ground of dying man's lament
If the water rises slowly and yet still without abating
If it swallows up the chariots of sun and man and steed
If the kings step out and stumble to the grave, their destination
Will be broken, bold and cheerless: will be harrowing indeed.
Jun 23, 2015
Jun 23, 2015 at 12:30 PM UTC
This is the last time I write about ships; the mighty seafarer, clasping in the deep. The last time the esoteric tides capriciously change their erratic minds, left torn between rousing up to fight and solemnly crawling into the shapeless night. I’ll haul, I’ll haul. Outward bound, I’ll haul away from the safety of the buoy, through a thousand spiralling knots, batten aground and set anchor upon the recondite bay. I’ll avast the journeys where the compass takes an unprompted turn, where celestial proves consort to nautical woes, awoke awash amidst the darkened shallows.
This is the last time I go back and fill vast depths, bearing right, then left, across the beating breadth. This is the last ring of brash audacity resonating in chime with the gull’s hooded pride, the last of the salt and sway commandeering the longitude of each tumultuous ride. I’ll roll, I’ll roll. Hanging on behind, I’ll roll with the salted souls of Nelson and Hook as they furl and collide, hand over fist, drawing the curtains from their chariot’s majestic height. I’ll gybe and set back to sail, quarrel with the rushing sands, and grace every fractured notion that tooth and nail can siege the devil’s rest and forge currents capable of hustling both vessel and man.
This is the last of the gallant endeavours, set adrift from buccaneer’s voyage to a solitary pulse at the end of storm’s tether. This is the last stern embrace of Poseidon’s harrowing howls, the last of the rapturous applause mordant as it rises and swirls, the last time I wrestle away from his scaly hold. This is the last time I change tack and set course into the path of the sound, where finally, the tides settled
I’ll release control of the helm.
Aug 4, 2014
Aug 4, 2014 at 8:26 PM UTC
To-night is dark, so
step lightly and carry
a large lamp into
the howling woods
Wisdom says run, run
to dark caves and
harrowing silences
mirror the bottomless
The abyss, gazing
headlong into itself,
recoils in horror,
shudders dis-eased
And only lamp-light,
courage flick'ring
in oppressive depth
persists, defiant
A stain on un-becoming
a trampler of stars
peddler of filth
who knows all the answers.
Oct 16, 2015
Oct 16, 2015 at 11:26 PM UTC
*serpent girl dancing
on a red stone cobbled hill
ritual of
Leviathan
trident to the belly
on stained alters bleached
blood and sweat sacrifice
candles burning
from the bottoms up
dipped in tears and pearls
nothing she won't do
swaying her hips
rhythmically
while toothless mouths sobbing
gum her body
a curse of deification
necromancer
*** pact
gorgeous fornicator
walking under water
her heart like a diamond
player of the infernal tarot
creeps daughter down on all fours
eating ***** with her butter *** up
quantum jumping
doing the planetary bunny hop
on vacation in a fire red bikini
and la dolce vita sunglasses
shes a guest of the sage of pyramids
catching solar rays
reading
from the book of doom
and fake dogmas
lips like obsidian fire
that eat bad children
especially ankle biters
scryer of black warped mirrors ranting
singing in the Vatican of the dead living
worm girls kissing muscular arterial shafts
and ***** in a twist
while making vampire paintings
in dark ritual adorations
****
of
oodoo
voodoo
i
do
to
you you
plying your soul
with dreams
of
Hollywood
cinema
and headless swiveling
Bollywood
jitterbug
beating devils gory
with harrowing archfiends
and ****** heels
for
love money *** and combat
gods above
angels to the flanks
north south east and west
seventy-two demons below
a crystal floor of vice gripped cherubim
with steal shewed pentagrams
holding dominion
with golden ring
enclosed in a synagogue of will
she's my hot randy *****
in leopard *******
don't **** with her
she eats souls
like taffy
while posing
as a kitten
outside her window*
May 23, 2017
May 23, 2017 at 8:05 AM UTC
I again visited my garden of despair
Watered with tears of woes and neglect
And now that the pond of bliss is arid
I once again asked myself
What flowers can thrive on these barrens?
Then I glanced at the blossoms of withered memories
Scattered as wreckage from a landslide
The bushes of harrowing pain I found
Arranged in a line of endless thorny shrubs
Decayed trees bearing the fruit of deceit
Still cast a shadow of contorted lies
I then trod as lightly and slowly as I could
Then plucked a fruit from a rotten tree and got its seeds
And with a chalky smile I hummed a quiet tune
Even in the death of my garden
I saw the promises of healing
As I walked past the rusty trellises and tarnished fences
I welcomed my sanguine memories of perfect and scented blooms
Visions of sun-drenched leaves greeted my anguish with a sliver of silver lining
It doesn’t matter if my garden left me with nothing
What now matters most is here in my hands are seeds of hope
Feb 23, 2019
Feb 23, 2019 at 10:10 AM UTC