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Melanie Kate Dec 2016
The shadows of time move over us
Like clouds rushing in to storm.
The water becomes irresolutely churned
Taking our souls with it
All the way out to sea,
Away from everything we can predict.

And while we are drifting, weathering the storm
The motion surges our intuitions
And we lose the premonitions of why we came here.

Through the eruption of thunder
Our voices are lost and we’re not listening.
In the snapping of lightening
We are blinded to the truth in each other.
So we rely on the unknown movements
As we try to manoeuvre the sails of our ship.

But there is no knowing if we can survive this.
It’s real but we thought it was a game.
And the heart beats in fear now
Rather than with the survival of adrenalin and exaltation.
MKD 2016 (c)
onlylovepoetry Aug 2016
"Love...
It comes,—the beautiful, the free,
The crown of all humanity,—
       In silence and alone
       To seek the elected one."* Wadsworth Longfellow

<>

forgive me, Henry,
for tampering with thy perfect,
these words provoke
a restless, hard earned, smouldering and enflaming,
imperfected, unasked, unsought,
yearning

to explain, share, complete, abbreviate, lengthen and explicate,
my version, my coloration,
my coronation,*
from the end of ceaseless, repetitive waves of wanting
completion

forty years in the desert,
four hundred year in ******* in Egyptian exile,
boul
der chained, uphill climber,
amazes me even now, how
did I desire to breathe,
arose to contemplate, perplexed,
why was I placed on this star,
skin branded dissatisfied, a human being,
unratified, unconstituted

just another love song, just another poem,
certainly no better, and surely worse,
than the  thousands of thousands that preceded,
and the thousand more that will come by
nightfall

surrender - I cannot surpass
what lies below

acknowledge respectfully,
the luckless, the loveless

despair can dissipate, as hard to believe,
as hard as the unendurable, I counsel not
hard patience,
instead,

awake forever impatient, irresolutely
hardy and ravenous,
for what will come your way,
when I cannot say,
but this I know,
you are an elected, selected one, and

It comes,—the beautiful, the free,
The crown of all humanity,—
       In silence and alone
       To seek the elected one


8:21am Aug. 27, 2016

<>
Endymion (by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow)
The rising moon has hid the stars;
Her level rays, like golden bars,
       Lie on the landscape green,
       With shadows brown between.

And silver white the river gleams,
As if Diana, in her dreams,
       Had dropt her silver bow
       Upon the meadows low.

On such a tranquil night as this,
She woke Endymion with a kiss,
       When, sleeping in the grove,
       He dreamed not of her love.

Like Dian’s kiss, unasked, unsought,
Love gives itself, but is not bought;
       Her voice, nor sound betrays
       Its deep, impassioned gaze.

It comes,—the beautiful, the free,
The crown of all humanity,—
       In silence and alone
       To seek the elected one.

It lifts the boughs, whose shadows deep,
Are Life’s oblivion, the soul’s sleep,
       And kisses the closed eyes
       Of him, who slumbering lies.

O, weary hearts! O, slumbering eyes!
O, drooping souls, whose destinies
       Are fraught with fear and pain,
       Ye shall be loved again!

No one is so accursed by fate,
No one so utterly desolate,
       But some heart, though unknown,
       Responds unto his own.

Responds,—as if with unseen wings,
A breath from heaven had touched its strings
       And whispers, in its song,
      “Where hast though stayed so long!”
she picks up the phone and dials
(a number she doesn't know by heart)

hello, she says, hello, he replies
(the man's voice is buoyant
upon her attention, resonant
with her affection
the corners of her maw twitch up
but only slightly, he cannot hear it
it is barred by the pride of her heart)

she continues, are you free to talk
i was waiting for you, he whispers
the faint breeze of his murmur enters
her body, lines the utopian passage
with a speed like that of cigarette smoke
(the air in her lungs turns nonexistent)

so she speaks, he listens with hushed
wind at the back of his chords
cracks pepper the tone of her speech
and she stumbles on the unexacting words
(but he thinks that it is the most tragically
beautiful sound in the world, and he
conceals the itch circling his palm
the dullness chilling down his spine)

hours later, the rant is a conversation
about medium rare steaks, apple tarts
and that old man in a red dress dancing
down the shady street they were once at

they hang up the devices smothered to
the side of their mirth, fluently
(irresolutely)
they peeled them off their ears and
laid them down on their shivering chests
(are they breathing, are they not)
they go to separate diners with that
extra bounce in their step, and a
daze in their eyes

the next time they convene
it will be as if nothing had transpired
in memory, there were no tears
no faint yelling in the background as
they utter their mutual condolences
none but the quiet, unsaid melancholy
of 'you', 'me'
of 'us'
Jon Shierling Oct 2014
So go on then, read to me from your sacred book full of songs
and half articulated dreams, spinning irresolutely toward a destination I have no name for.

Show me these images and portents, these slow chords and rhymes, high and low and inside and out, reaching into me and twisting the screaming infant of a heart that I need to so desperately give away.

Commanding me to step outside of my own experience and my own fear, asking me to follow you on outstretched wings of wax and gull feathers.

But I have known your kind, was one of you once, those figures of myth and meaning, swept away in an instant by the music that I hear and desire and suffer for, and yet shall not be beguiled by.

But what I write now, this sort of struggling epitaph of straight razors and crying boys, this is not a specific tirade against you, or my irritation at having been seen through, no no, none of that is really the feeling that I am seeking to evoke.

........................We Are The Sum Of All We Have Been,

The poor weeping ghost of William Blake back again to sit by me and wonder, what many things the world may hold...............taking me by the hand, we follow.

And yet we may and will continue to grow and flow through the ever changing riverbeds of soul if only we try, if only we seek, to overcome this thing, this empty hole that I can see following us all.

And yet, somewhere in the six inches immediately in front of our hearts, there seems to be this kind of faint glow, a multifaceted hum, projecting itself forward into a future where both end and beginning form a wonderful, beautiful whole.
Julian Delia Sep 2019
I will always love you;
Stupidly, foolishly, recklessly.
Spiraling downward, endlessly.
A connection that spans the seas, the oceans;
One that ignores pleas or motions,
One that steamrolls over dismissals,
Ignoring any and all commotion.

Maybe it’s because you’re the closest I’ve been to love.
Maybe it’s because I felt whole with your head gently resting on my chest.
Seeing you again now makes me forget what happened back then.
Your smile is like a sunset, a warm caress that puts me to rest.
It makes me forget that we’d turned our relationship into a battleground,
A battlefield painted red with the innards of innocence for the brushstroke.
A place where hopes were grounded to dust,
And pain’s parasitic relationship with distrust was profoundly compounded.

It’s almost 5 in the morning;
I miss you, even though I saw you yesterday.
This irresolutely irrational passion of mine,
These two paths that just want to intertwine,
These glances and moments that send chills down my spine -
They shouldn’t be here anymore, but they are.

Maybe, it’s because I’m alone,
And you’re the only face that feels like home.
Maybe, yours is the only embrace I can hold;
Maybe, I’m just being foolishly bold.

They say find what you love,
And let it ruin you.
Here I am, like the remains of the Parthenon;
Here I am, standing ready, ready to be led on.
Ready, bracing myself to be destroyed once more;
Ready to burn like a lit match that met fuel that’s seeped into your pores.

That is what you and I are;
I am the lit match, and you are the fuel.
Together, we make ashes of kingdoms,
Petty serfs of kings.
And an absolute mess of ourselves.
I don’t care about being right or wrong, anymore;
I just want us to make sense of things,
And see what destiny’s got in store.
Sometimes, some threads of fate are longer than you expect them to be.
kaycog Sep 2019
hoard it all, take haste
minutes go by--the captivating eyes, a waste
gleaming treasured gems restlessly stored
instead, lie in dissipation, irresolutely bored
victims hold tunnel visions routinely ensnared
every sandy grain a diamond to be spared
Lawrence Hall Oct 2020
Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com
https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

             An Old Man on a Balcony, Gasping for Breath

              Those he commands move only in command,
               Nothing in love

                                      -Macbeth V.ii.19-20

The city and the nation seem to ignore him
He stands irresolutely, heaving his shoulders
Twitching his lips, fidgeting with his coat
Behind his embalmers’ makeup seeking breath

There are no happy cheering crowds tonight
He waves only to a departing helicopter
And salutes the ghosts of what might have been
Before turning away, inside, to the silence

The people talk about him, but not to him
If they did, he would not listen - he is alone
A poem is itself.

— The End —