"inconstant" poems
She was told to get to a nunnery;
Warned not to get involved,
To step aside.
His love was inconstant as the moon,
Defined by worthless trinkets
And very poor poetry.
Instead,
She went lily picking,
Broke her mirror on the bank
(is that a belly bump sinking),
Shattered him to despondency.
It's time for poison and rapiers:
The royal family's dead;
The stench is lifting.
Aug 15, 2015
Aug 15, 2015 at 10:42 AM UTC
I love her with the seasons, with the winds,
As the stars worship, as anemones
Shudder in secret for the sun, as bees
Buzz round an open flower: in all kinds
My love is perfect, and in each she finds
Herself the goal: then why, intent to teaze
And rob her delicate spirit of its ease,
Hastes she to range me with inconstant minds?
If she should die, if I were left at large
On earth without her-I, on earth, the same
Quick mortal with a thousand cries, her spell
She fears would break. And I confront the charge
As sorrowing, and as careless of my fame
As Christ intact before the infidel.
5.2k
I exist in a world of careful structure
Taken out of Chaos and made habitable
By strict planning and strict ruling—
Structure is imperative
Order keeps us going
Deviations are not allowed
If you wish to live in my world
You must learn to follow rules
Reliability is key
Being dependable as the rising sun
Predictable as a new moon
Always infallible
Disappointments are not tolerated
Insufficient will be cast away
Deviations are not allowed
So if you can’t be trusted
Then you don’t belong here
There will be order in my house
For in games of two, there can be no others
There
Are
Rules
And they exist to keep us out of Chaos
They exist because structure
Ensures that we don’t collapse
So when your eyes are wandering
You are marking yourself as inconstant
Dangerous
Unacceptable
And I will stop at nothing
Until you’ve suffered for every sweetness you’ve laid at another’s feet
I will stop at nothing
Until you’ve learned that you must always choose me
I will burn you for every betrayal
And some will call me jealous
Dec 27, 2011
Dec 27, 2011 at 5:41 PM UTC
I have a confession to make, I said. I drink to forget all
That my failings and foibles beget. Sobriety
Sends me to most fitful sleep. No rest for he who in his unwaking hours
Mulls over the wine of his life, which he sours
With his own cork of guilt and self-conscience. All mine self-confidence
Derives from Contradictions repressing. Catatonic sleep of great notoriety
Is my limbo, my heaven, perchance my sick death. The
Removal of a blot on the face of this land should solicit, I fear, cornet
Mouthed angels to sound clarion of victory. If I was religious
I should become a flagellant invigilate most excellent
Flayed as the poacher would the pheasant.
And the landowner would the poacher.
Silence from both. I take a drought from my drink, she a small sip.
She looks at me and I look a way.
Do you want me to pay for this? She asks. Just the tip
Quoth I. Another drought and a sip.
Another.
I break down. I have nothing to believe in,
To believe in foul dogma to wash my soul of sin
I find repugnant. Belief in Progress and people and
The wonder of Nature is akin to praying to the inconstant sand
Castle made by the hand of a passing child.
Belief in my girlfriend! More my love’s greatest failure
To grant her the care and affection she deserves
Due to my sand castle of pride in which I do serve.
And thus do I say, to purge all my lust
There’s only one way, in Self-disgust I trust.
Mar 24, 2014
Mar 24, 2014 at 4:42 PM UTC
I break,
Under your hands,
Conforming,
To your pressure,
And substance,
Religiously studying,
The design you've made of me,
Fitting the corners,
Becoming the curves,
Filling arms,
And leaking,
Inconstant,
From moonlight eyes
Nov 6, 2011
Nov 6, 2011 at 1:28 AM UTC
Old fashioned girls with indifference in their eyes.
a will to be different.
a desire to be unique, but an emptiness fit for the farthest reaches of space.
a pathetic excuse for an individual are you.
the exact copy to that of a ghost of nothing... vain fantasy, as inconstant as the sea.
but dependable are your downfalls, everyone see's your issues.
if you were smart, you'd take it off.
you'd shed your skin and be yourself.
deny the paint on your face and the fact that we can all see it, we know you think you're above it.
you may think what you say doesn't reach my ears, but your ridiculous calls and impunitive voice are what I hear above all else.
it'll escape your mind, and I'm the one who will remind you of what it once was.
I'll get in your head, you're thinner than you think, your being is nothing, and your demise I will be.
your downfall is on a platter dear, take heed and be smart or behind your back is where you'll find the MOST disappointment of your life.
wish all you want, wishes are nothing.
especially to the undeserving.
Oct 16, 2012
Oct 16, 2012 at 3:19 PM UTC
In a hologram
I am the man you would like me to be
not real
but you see
it is me,
so
why do you want to know
who that I am?
but the man that's an image
a man you would pillage
and keep for your own.
Pictures that grow up and slow up,then show up just who that you are
an image that's far too inconstant
a solent
a side by the sea
aside from you and me and the oceans that we see
there is only a halogen lamp which tramps out these scenes and in the inbetweens of our dreams
I will be forever
the screens on the doors of the more that you want, and the more that we need,
the more we will seed the cameras with film.
and developed could it be
that we see so much more?
Aug 13, 2013
Aug 13, 2013 at 10:17 AM UTC
My heart like the ocean
Ebbs & flows with the presence of the moon
Aye, the inconstant moon
In all it's silvered graces
Shimmers only of it's own accord;
Like yourself
While you light the sky
Life's burdens are but jetsam
cast away
The ship of my soul is lightened
to freely follow loves wind
where ever it does catch my sails
But in your absence
I am lost on a tumultuous sea
Likely to sink
In the wake of this tempest
I seek solace in the stars
But flotsam am I,
As I know you shine not for me
Apr 21, 2014
Apr 21, 2014 at 1:20 AM UTC
I asked him why he did not travel on the roads anymore
He blamed fear and age
In my mind, I told him:
"I like the bittersweet taste of danger touching my lips"
But it was much more than that
Because you, constant and inconstant part of my body, which brings me contemplation and solitude
Let me bathe in the night and search the stars in the sky
As the midnight wind hits my body
I don't need anything else, just movement and freedom
I'm a hurricane, I'm everything and I'm nothing
My mind frees and turns itself off, to rekindle more attentively, more alive
And then take me to unfamiliar and distant places
And I will feel the breeze of the ocean,
And I will see the distance lights of the city
They shine just for me tonight
Competing with the starry sky and the moon reflecting on the sea
Just like lullabies on my mind
I don't need anyone, I am everything and I am nothing
I am a silent hurricane
Devoid of fear in its dark and tropical flavor
Climbing wet roads filled with nature
And just then
I will finally feel the bittersweet taste
Of freedom touching my lips
Mar 23, 2019
Mar 23, 2019 at 1:20 PM UTC
Oh, think not I am faithful to a vow!
Faithless am I save to love’s self alone.
Were you not lovely I would leave you now:
After the feet of beauty fly my own.
Were you not still my hunger’s rarest food,
And water ever to my wildest thirst,
I would desert you—think not but I would!—
And seek another as I sought you first.
But you are mobile as the veering air,
And all your charms more changeful than the tide,
Wherefore to be inconstant is no care:
I have but to continue at your side.
So wanton, light and false, my love, are you,
I am most faithless when I most am true.
2.8k
I always knew about the ocean's calling, deep in my heart. It keeps me wandering to find what I yearn for — could it testify the animosity of being insatiable?
I wait on the shore like a lighthouse guiding your way back to me, as if I hold faith in it, like it is a perseverance that grew in my chest. I am certain to the florescence of my flowers and to its withering as I know the durations of its life and death is when I could meet you again. And though, the inconstant desolateness of the ocean continues to wait.
Mar 26, 2024
Mar 26, 2024 at 9:41 AM UTC
Lupine, lupine, from where did you come?
Your soft purple springings flow from the paths
And white mountain boulders
To linger in green breezes.
Lupine, lupine, stay a while
Though winter’s on its way I still
Know you can outlast
The inconstant summer sun.
Lupine, lupine, hold me steady
Through the tangled hills I roam
Searching, maybe, for a meaning
Something worthwhile, something to call me home.
Lupine, lupine, don’t forget me!
Let my memory live with you
As under the snowy earth I lie
To await the ending of all time.
Dec 12, 2011
Dec 12, 2011 at 12:59 AM UTC
When thou, poor excommunicate
From all the joys of love, shalt see
The full reward and glorious fate
Which my strong faith shall purchase me,
Then curse thine own inconstancy.
A fairer hand than thine shall cure
That heart which thy false oaths did wound;
And to my soul a soul more pure
Than thine shall by Love’s hand be bound,
And both with equal glory crowned.
Then shalt thou weep, entreat, complain
To Love, as I did once to thee;
When all thy tears shall be as vain
As mine were then, for thou shalt be
Damned for thy false apostasy.
2.2k
In a misguided attempt to escape you
I fled to Nietzsche.
Weak
Inconstant
They are cats and birds
At best, cows,
he mocked.
I don't know about that
But I've never stolen glances at a cow
And felt my heart turn to ash
At the gentle devastation of its beauty
While praying that the mild curry in my mouth
Somehow shrivel up my tongue
And singe off the unspoken entreaties simmering within.
(And my affection for cows
Extends only to veal cutlets)
Today
Nietzsche and curry failed me
Tonight
It'll be the familiar embrace of alcohol
Until you fly back to Beijing.
After which
Are other substances and their derivatives
To deal with the fallout
Your transient smile
Wrought on my worn soul.
Mar 20, 2014
Mar 20, 2014 at 6:03 AM UTC
Crown of dandelions
Against her hair, they shine like the stars
Goddess of the night
Journey into a twilight neverland
Drunk on midnight
Tell me a secret
Invisibilites shadow
Inconstant time
Cloak of darkness
Forget forevermore
Ashes of dawn
Statue of dusk
Weary wanderer of once was
Touch me
Body like a skyline
Dreaming from a mountain top
Electric charge ecstasy
Melted freedom
Wrap me in your words
Glacial disposition
Stains of demons
Angels embrace
Linger
Apr 30, 2017
Apr 30, 2017 at 6:16 PM UTC
Washing over, it is a surprise
No noticeable trigger, even in retrospect
Nothing, and then BAM
A brick wall built in a moment as you step forwards
Hard to describe, my pen rusty from sitting tucked up in a drawer for so long
First I am me
Then me but not the same
How to define that inbetween?
Inconstant, shifting without warning
Dizzying to experience, shifts my emotions sideways
The one who laughs the loudest needs hope,
The one who is the rock needs stabilising
Or else TIP down as the little stones beneath shift around,
Down the cliff from the plateau
Leaving everyone else to cling to the rockface
How do I tell you that SHE makes me feel sick
When it had no effect yesterday?
It isn't he, nor always she, but neither ze nor they.
I am more than IT but less than she
How to tell you that she isn't me?
She was yesterday, the day before,
Today I am only me, as of 22:34
Tomorrow who knows?
But how to explain.
The battle of clothes.
Yesterday, curves accentuated
Today, too tight chest
Tool loose waist too tight hips
Nothing fits except the tears which spring to my eyes
Ever more easily.
Staining my cheeks, my sleeve sodden
I face the world and smile, laugh the loudest, help the most.
Nobody sees me crumble as i shift again,
Stagger slightly as it moves
Not back to where i once was,
But somewhere different once again.
My strength comes from me, but sometimes I can't help wishing I was an elder daughter, a big sister, an average teenage girl.
That girl who smiles and laughs as you walk by?
Who you are jealous of?
She needs help more than most
The very word she can be jarring
But SHE smiles.
That clever girl who goes to the Catholic all girls around the corner?
Who you are jealous of?
Stupidity and cowardice to not be herself lie beneath.
Buries herself in schoolwork
That beautiful girl sits at a nearby table?
The one you are jealous of?
Beautiful is a dagger in her heart.
For she is not she nor he
Only somewhere in between
It is you these 'girls' are jealous of
Apr 1, 2016
Apr 1, 2016 at 6:24 PM UTC
candle essences portraying the room
as a waxed out sort of gloom -
flickering inconstancies shadowing the
wall with silhouettes as inconstant seas
swaying the milky wall with an undertow
that invites the paint in my mind
to drip leaving a revelation to rewind
to every broken dream, every time you
reached out and felt fingertips slip
with a handle so tight yet no reflecting grip -
thoughts to paper leave the
keyboard clicks echoing a room
compressing notions in a waxed out
sort of gloom.
Aug 8, 2015
Aug 8, 2015 at 4:05 PM UTC
Humans being are
the inconstant animal
;
at face value
you rarely know
what you're facing
.
No tail-wag
for happy
or angry,
the perfect smile
hides the bared fang.
Emotions ebb and flow,
friends come and go.
Small wonder we
love the ocean;
consistent, insistent
waves of mother-water
soothe our tidal souls.
May 11, 2016
May 11, 2016 at 5:15 PM UTC
The sun glares down
Over lost, weary travellers,
Casting crimson
Over the rolling dunes.
Their shadows
Fall upon the sand;
An ocean of tiny little grains—
Moving,
Always moving
Under the wind,
Like travellers themselves—
Millions of them,
Moving,
Shifting,
Changing,
Constantly inconstant.
The lines atop the dunes—
The divide where light and dark
Separate,
Alter their shape
With the shifts in the sand,
Wriggling like a snake.
This view,
This world
Of rolling dunes,
Stark segregations of light and dark,
Sandy, cutting winds,
Was not made for strangers—
For these poor wanderers.
They wander,
Like tiny ants,
Upon an endless, reddened landscape,
So far from their nest—
Made up of grand structures,
Taller than they are vast,
Crafted carefully,
Brick by brick.
Unshifting,
Unchanging,
Stark and clear against the sky.
Far too compact
To allow room for wandering.
Glass and stone—
A wall against the winds.
A place
Where these strangers weren’t strangers.
It was there—
Right there.
Standing above the dunes,
Reaching out of the sand
Into a pink expanse of clouds.
But no,
These strangers
Remain strangers,
Wandering a world
Of harsh beauty
And wondrous irregularity.
Jul 19, 2018
Jul 19, 2018 at 7:01 AM UTC
a contradiction contracted in
lowest terms are
you.
[it’s metal edges]
your beauty is
of
a
garden
(suspended at mid-
clouds), to enter
and
to say
that in such a
variety of
flowers
there
can not
be
one that
attracts
you
to pick it
to dismantle it
and
to
neglect
the
rest.
[it’s plasticized segments]
you know how to
quickly imprint
yourself
on me
when
you laugh
at times
and
conversely
you weep
and
you are like
those skies
that shake me
to my core
when
they are
blinding
on one hand
and
violently bleak
on the other
so
clearly
fractured
they shake
me pierce
me
pierced
i am
by
you.
[it’s just thinned points]
imagine if
a chameleon
started
to
acquire
each
gradation
of
another
creature
in the form
already
similar
to
it:
where
could
he
ever
escape?
[it’s inconstant semicircles]
(i can not
delineate
you
it is like
sketching
a tidal
wave
nobody
can:
painters
invent them)
[and it’s shoved arches]
i’ll tell you
of
a
woman
her soul
shattered
and
subsequently
imprisoned
splinter by
splinter
in hail
stones
she
fell
and
she felt
herself
crashing
at the same
instant
millions
of times
however
she
never
went
insane.
[it’s torn curves]
(and I know well
how a continuity
interrupted
succeeds
to make
you
fumble
convulsively
but it’s not
enough
for me to
restrain
myself
don’t
ask
me
to)
[it’s petrified vertical axes]
what i see
is
a cross
section of
enclosure
handfuls with
disconcerting
efficiency
consisting
of prisms
and
you know how to decompose
yourself inside
an innocence
delimited
you proceed
by inconstancies
you lacerate
metabolizing
you struggle
silencing
and
i could
only
teach you
one thing:
gray is not
a faded
version
of
black.
Dec 19, 2013
Dec 19, 2013 at 9:04 PM UTC
When I consider every thing that grows
Holds in perfection but a little moment.
That this huge stage presenteth nought but shows
Whereon the stars in secret influence comment.
When I perceive that men as plants increase,
Cheerèd and checked even by the self-same sky,
Vaunt in their youthful sap, at height decrease,
And wear their brave state out of memory;
Then the conceit of this inconstant stay,
Sets you most rich in youth before my sight,
Where wasteful Time debateth with decay
To change your day of youth to sullied night;
And all in war with Time for love of you,
As he takes from you, I engraft you new.
1.3k
Wanted: v.; to desire, to lack
I wanted you to be the stars to my sky --
I would have let you form
galaxies and constellations
to the edge of infinity,
in whatever shapes you pleased.
I wanted you to be the pen,
while I, the paper,
let you write across me,
telling me your story,
blending it with mine.
You were the avalanche
to my echoing heartbeats:
unstable, unstoppable,
a snowflake turned by rage
into a force incomparable.
You were the thunder
to my summer storm:
inconstant, intemperate,
a distant reminder
of things worse to come.
I wanted you to be a sonnet,
but instead you were an elegy
for a love unrequited.
And I would hold your hand,
but I can grasp a pen;
and it makes me free to know
that unlike you
the pen
will not
let go.
Oct 15, 2013
Oct 15, 2013 at 6:20 AM UTC
(*Written for a contest “Write a poem based on a poem.’
Inspired by: “My Cat Is High, and So Am I” by Thomas W. Case*)
Honey, I was ****** so ******
I hardly knew what was going on.
That’s when I saw it was gone.
The moon, I mean - hold on -
*Takes a swig of **** but sugary lemonade*
I watch the moon - when it’s there - you know?
I’ve always loved the moon - its reflective glamor,
the way it seems to bend light around it,
like a beautiful woman walking into a bar.
The moons like my cat, she has beauty, without vanity
- and without much gravity - like, you know - the moon.
But as I was saying, it was gone - suddenly?
It felt sudden - and visceral - like I’d misplaced something.
I know what you’re thinking, and no, it wasn't behind clouds.
So anyway, man, I looked around and there it was, as if by magic,
it couldn’t have been any clearer and it's never looked nearer,
than it was, right there, in my rear-view mirror.
I had to laugh. You see, I was ****** - so ******
****** - but I’m never alone, when I can commune with the distant,
inconstant, love of my life, the ever-argent moon.
Jan 8, 2024
Jan 8, 2024 at 10:32 PM UTC
Your skin is not a history of seeing
but of being seeing.
So heavy it has grown around the questions
which live in this postulate world as birds.
Inconstant and full of chatter
One season they built a nest in you
near the sea,
diving and disappearing
as the plover does through a wave
to return upon freshly turned earth
a robin.
O lidded One,
what is this heat which would bear sit
with plain silence on kitchen tables.
Aug 22, 2011
Aug 22, 2011 at 7:51 AM UTC
Sorrow is a hot flush of prickle
salt filled pearls that spill over
the dry reds of your cheeks.
Sorrow is the swollen ache in your
throat that tugs down on the corners
of your mouth:
gravity that seeks to bring
nose to grass,
forehead to gravel:
the little razor
that dig into your blackened flesh.
Sorrow is the way your own arms
seize themselves:
freckle to freckle,
hand to hand,
all identical and opposite.
Sorrow is knowing that
all sounds coming out of your
own mouth and all self-caressing
comfort is utterly
and irrevocably
and inexplicably
vain.
Sorrow is the cool glass
you smash your brow against
in reflective attempts to cool
poundings in your temple
and calm the only constant of life:
drumming, hot-blood pumping
four-chambers that will one day
Fail You.
Sorrow is dirt you inhale
into your starved lungs when
it buries your head in
earthy embrace
awaiting your thrashing to grow still
as you’re shushed like an animal
before butcher until
your hair blows gently
in the wind.
Sorrow is the way pain like fire
licks every crevice of your sweet skin
until molted scars like old corpses
swallow you whole
making you utterly
and irrevocably
and inexplicably
unrecognizable.
Sorrow is the eyes of your friends
refusing to meet your own
until the flicking of blues and greens
and browns and blacks
to any place besides
the empty whites of your own
is dizzying
is numbing:
an electric buzzing of static
in grey matter.
Sorrow is an invisible hand
wrapping gently around your neck
pushing you under the oceans
of your own briny making
until your foam kissed lips
are blue and cold—
parted slightly in a dead hope
that someone will revive them.
Sorrow is the vice clenching
bloodied tissue of
your battered
and bruised heart
tightly
and tighter still.
Until it is stagnant.
Until it is inconstant.
Until it’s too late to tell anyone
what
sorrow
is.
May 6, 2012
May 6, 2012 at 4:05 PM UTC