"ivies" poems
the clouds storm and stir the horizon
and swoon like a sorrowful bird,
the sun sinks the same way once risen
and deafening the fires of his word,
a lover waits hopeless and dreary,
and hopeless and dreary departs
for love not returned leaves her weary
and breathful her heart.
a vision as clear as the ages,
that reach to the soul or the heart
the storm of the clouds broken cages
long gone those soft clouds that depart
and the sea strides to shore like a viking,
and rages eternal like cloud,
for the storm now is spent and surrenders,
that once stood so proud.
the sea she will wrap me in flowers
and drown me in ivies and wine,
as the sharp winter wind blows wild showers,
that bury the aches of the pines,
and the sea i found tender with rapture
blew me back where the ages relent,
and the sea gave me back all its flowers,
for the love never meant.
desire is no pastry or pudding,
it is death, it is life, it is naught,
in its rages it cries like a blossom
that bursts from the bough and is caught,
no lover could rule or control me,
but they begged and they begged
for my love,
and the love that i gave soon destroyed me,
a lion to the dove.
yet the sea dries my eyes from my weeping,
rejuvinates like vinaigrette,
and love never once won or departing
soon buries its soul in regret,
and the sea sings like a stereotyped lover,
too broody to throw out a rose
and the rose would be tearful my lover,
seas sea e'en froze.
for the sea is a viking of passion,
strange ghost of the wind and the wave,
and knows nothing of love or compassion,
but will leave you with the dark that can't save,
i see her in the **** frost, her blossom,
the waves that still billow like sails
the foam the blue foam near the flotsam,
her song a soft silvery scale.
Nov 5, 2018
Nov 5, 2018 at 4:35 PM UTC
On a grey asphalt midwest road
lay a terrible place to weep and moan..
where white ***** rain trickles low
on poison ivies and blurry saxophones..
..with unified yellow lights that neither blink nor stare
unending love
the throbbing blue road
and metal statues whose souls lay bare.
The silent night gathered all
even my brown pain
and the terrible fall
what remained was none-so-less
threshed and withered like those leaves of green..
..empty thoughts, silent stills,
and wanderlings, with dreamy quills.
Broken i lay, with those captured skies..
flashes of lightning
empty gazes and embittered souls
painful verses of a poets play
are those terrible blue dreams, they say.
Dec 6, 2014
Dec 6, 2014 at 6:22 PM UTC
Lily, you grow delicately like the dreams in your undefiled mind,
internally defiant of your ambition to the people; kind, and graceful;
Loving all; Ivies and cattails envy you when you bloom lonely on single:
Lilypads, refusing to accept anything that you deserve. You must realize,
in time you deserve to be called by something so beautiful, and stop,
answering to everything but your full –
Name.
Nov 3, 2015
Nov 3, 2015 at 11:48 PM UTC
cave of wonder,
the black ivies of the sea,
the moon-shadows of
the shore.
Jul 25, 2015
Jul 25, 2015 at 11:36 AM UTC
Why I ever lamented
your advertisement
in the NY Times
Your sickly look, it's she you took
swept off her feet
I know how it feels
Found her again on the internet
while you were desperate
In Haifa, a million miles away from English without an accent
You hunted her down
A clown you are
She, editing dime novels by candlelight
manufacturing romance for the racks of Walmart
Next to the car mags and tattoo girls are those things
women read
gotta make a living somehow
So she can fill in the spaces between your attention
with her imagination, stoked daily from corporate romantication
She can live in her bubble world and see what she wants
eternally and think it's real
So she's better for you than me
because your love isn't real, never was, never will be
Both of you from the land of fake nobility
Prep schools and Ivies that lead to jobs
in sparkly NYC lobbies and decaf mochachinozeenos
with a side of 100 calorie pastry
Before dinner at the Italian restaurant
where you can show you are loved and love
And you, with your fakery
You shallowness, can collect your trust check
And work just a little, and blow the cold coals of her love once
in awhile to get the corporate machinations again in her head
to spin a fantasy romance
I'll look for it at Walmart.
Nov 4, 2012
Nov 4, 2012 at 9:01 PM UTC
Charred debris drowned my sun
in a rubble blackened by a wildfire
they said, have some cash, 'be here
by tomorrow, thought dimes and hundreds
could placate my torn Achilles tendon
Listen when I shout! Salvage my sun!
Sunken in the aftermath of a downplayed
spark. All these twisted ivies and things
in me, I do not want your materialistic bling
it means dust to me, resurrect him, God
Tomorrow I blanket the shadowed
fields, tawny grasses hissing in agony
left barren by their deceased rain of serenity.
Oh, I choke on the abrasive reeds! Drawing blood
from my soiled knees, Sun, Sun, Sun
Dec 6, 2015
Dec 6, 2015 at 11:31 AM UTC
At least they roll the credits slowly--
I mean, at the end of DOWNTON ABBEY,
the hundreds who worked their butts off
so you and I could see the stars on screen.
We human beings have been delusional
for millennia. Pharaohs, emperors, kings,
presidents, not to mention tycoons, millionaires--
now billionaires--and "prominent" people
from all walks of life, those who attended
Eton and Andover, the Ivies and Oxbridge
thinking as though they are inherently
better--superior, as it were--to all others
when, in truth, all human beings--indeed,
all creations--share the same divinity.
What a grand illusion it has been, Civilization,
from Sumer to the present! Willl we ever see
truth? Will we ever know that we are all one?
Or will we all perish from catastrophic
climate change or nuclear holocaust before
we achieve enlightenment?
TOD HOWARD HAWKS
Jan 2, 2022
Jan 2, 2022 at 1:59 AM UTC
empty bellies....
a swelling
glow
tissue wings
tracing smoky blends...
wet meadows
goggle eyes
stirring marshy pools...
mirrors mist
a wild chorus
dims porch lights....
a concerto
ivies arch
stretching tunes...
flames convulse
signals wave
on long grass blades
for chats
the night
flares up in flakes...
an interlude
stars back off
pulling out their lights ...
a truce
Copyright : Malintha Perera 2014
Nov 27, 2014
Nov 27, 2014 at 12:53 AM UTC
One plough amongst many runs ‘cross
An infertile campus
The threat of first frost
Following in her tow
To reap one something
From the settled bed of salt.
Combing seeds in the sod,
The anchor in her womb
Drags—soon, so soon,
The distance won’t widen, the burden will stop
Her knees will buckle in debt and chance
Will lock her where she falls
Her failure will sprout and flower.
The falling sweat flashed years before
To the juice beading in single drops
A vain nectar of her other’s field,
Biding her, come, eat of appearance;
Her crop was brown, but budding,
She left her crop to die.
Unprepared for the neglected miles
She toiled in the changing leaves
And, of course, the gilded fellow
Him, the established man
Could draw her in: with gleaming ivies
Red, tight, yellow, sweet
A wine of the eyes that sits on the vine
Families of prodigality smiles with brimming bags
Baskets pregnant in promise,
Those happy mouths full of praise and food.
For there, she followed
That procession, honest, in the borrowed garden.
Aug 14, 2014
Aug 14, 2014 at 8:26 AM UTC
it is something that has
made me once laugh.
and now that it is something
that is done to perpetuate
a divinity of its savoir faire,
or unfurl the evocativeness of
sartorial workmanship,
it is something that inhabits
me like an imagined pit
that a body should plummet into
and crash, having fallen off
from the boughs of a bottomless dream.
like snow or silence, drops onto its vastness and fastens in it such felicitous rigor greeting it
like an old companion, reminding
me of these unimpeachable occurrences: as a wrinkled log is petrified, where mosses pullulate to archipelagic green, where wild ivies sprawl like children in the high-afternoon, or clandestine Paraneoptera ensconced somewhere within the triviality
of demarcated stones in
the dark's cunning edge,
my body knows its peace,
all borderless without flounce
flourishing in its still life.
Sep 18, 2015
Sep 18, 2015 at 1:58 AM UTC
I was one to stare at the restless waves,
Hour after hour on the lonely beach
They filled my despair with the promise
Of forgetfulness and permanence.
I listened with soothing anticipation
For the soft crashing on the shore.
An uncluttered world split three ways-
A fine line between the sky and ocean grey
And the jagged graph the retreating waves
Leave in amber on the moist sands.
I sat detached among empty shells
Content that the sea spray filled the air
Pungent with the rotting seaweeds.
I was the only living thing around-
Contemplating the basic elements
To seasons defined by my clothing.
But lately I return to this wooded meadow
Where seasons rule and force their will.
Where summer is cloaked in shades of green
Which transform to the earthy tones of autumn;
Here the crystalline of the ice storms glare;
And now, before me, trees and shrubs awake,
The sky disappears to the spreading leaves
And I am one small life beneath the canopy,
As spring flowers with birdsong and buzzing;
Yet the fox and snake scatter through the ivies,
The spider webs stretch from branch to bough;
Such magnificence among the hidden terror
As all around the unseen butchers of survival
Carry out their missions of life and death-
As I play my part in the proliferation
Renewed with a simple joy to be alive.
May 7, 2018
May 7, 2018 at 12:53 AM UTC
There will come a day
When we would no longer be the same
> when wrinkles and creases
like ivies caress your forehead
> when the bitterness of this world
eats you away like leprosy
> when pain and darkness
swill out your features
like this everlasting wave of time
< I would still know this smile, this wink,
this laugh out loud
< I'd know you by your love of little things
< the eyes that are turned toward the sunshine
< the ears tuned toward the fireworks
< the shallow voice and deep words
< Then I'd know it'd be you
< I'd search you amid the crowds
< Then I'd turn my head in shame and joy
< Finding someone like you
<For this is far greater,
> than the distance, the chasm of hearts, aged times,
> and your hatred
> that separates us
Jul 12, 2018
Jul 12, 2018 at 11:57 AM UTC
Is to bottle the fireflies you chased all night,
to watch the lightning and wait for the thunder,
to slip on green moss and fall away the daylight,
to hold onto lichens and ivies creeping the corner.
to let the sunlight make your freckles tickle,
to feel the grass your naked feet walk across,
to let the snow make your nose crinkle,
to love? is to feel the time pause.
May 13, 2025
May 13, 2025 at 8:38 AM UTC
i've never seen such
astounding things
a discovery made
on a passage within
i recall sleeping
in celestial cots
made up of cygnus,
pavo,
the enticing lot
green velvet curtains drawn
block out the sun
although the windows are no more than
one
surrounded
by ivies, scripture
and platinum-tipped
pens
the era of thought
all within my
mind...
i awaken from slumber to quite different sights
the very same forces that prevail in this place,
the forces above
alluding, brooding
the thief comes too smug,
wind thrashes the sails
a cynical offering,
all grief to repent,
the season of starving,
the season of lent
isn't it odd how the winds never billow?
over the strangest utopian lands
the islands of women with no trace of men
the archipelagos of shellfish on land
and that one place due north...
beyond arctic bird coves
where wisps of the sky
grace plat-inum snow
the things that you see when it's dark on the ocean
four sailors drunken on laughter and autumn-rum
down though the seabed
the lowest of shores
the music through rafters,
flutes clamor and roar...
torn and burdened is the world,
but brokenness never equated unworth
the land once which was
trodden,
the seas overcame
i nod off to sleep
just to shake off the pain
the forces come crashing,
formed over the bluff
indifferently shouting,
unrighteously tough
here from my balcony
on french-spanish estate
once indifferent forces,
concluding in rain.
Nov 14, 2019
Nov 14, 2019 at 4:05 PM UTC
They had their heiress.
Conquest given beauteous form.
Primed and ready to serve,
Beside a puppet of her choosing,
Father promised me Prienne.
Had Jacob killed to set free,
That throne to a younger, stronger brother.
His mind sharpened to earn him a general's chair,
One I wouldn't subjugate for a change we'd,
Stand as equals.
Beside a cheering world of followers,
Eager to receive purpose through fangs,
Earned through constant trials that left me weakened,
Disheartened and cursing my father.
I'm a monster without purpose,
Why'd you do it?
I could've brought a king into this world to replace Prienne,
Once he'd outlived his purpose and I stood a wilted flower by his side,
As we faded away together. No instead,
I'll spend years surrounding my perfect kingdom with ivies,
Loyal at a whim's notice, with Dragon's might that,
Drank the world dry during that fiery age of,
Inner strife, disease and never-ending displacement.
Men and women alike sought shelter beneath our giving branches,
Back then they knew their place, were granted gorgeous subservient lives,
Observing grace given flesh with eyes unfit to touch upon,
Such rare elegance.
Mar 31, 2014
Mar 31, 2014 at 8:53 PM UTC
deep within
this walled, scrunched heart
a flower (a fool)
whose mouth is open waiting for the rain of words - we all are.
stretching in the dark as want outwrestles need in a melee
of hands, of populace bumping
into each other in an enclosed
cage like two birds wary of each other's movements,
the threat of its gate, opening, freeing one, the other, staying,
is the lilt of a song and the wilt of its sound dwindling as the urgent questions gnaw the bone of
silence trying to wring out light in the dark's tumultuous passing
waters turning luminosities
into liquid under my feet.
and now, the brew of unspoken
petrichor stirs in the ground
and the clouds gossamer than ever,
i close my parasol with my head
into the sky, waiting endlessly
for rain to quench the ivies of
love's battlements!
Sep 14, 2015
Sep 14, 2015 at 2:21 PM UTC
my love,
when the winds of
change ravage
the boughs of this union
i will cling onto you
as though startled
and frightened,
like ivies weary of their
vertical
climb
like these passerine fingers
moving closer to the
leaflets of your soul,
perching in warmth,
my little summer,
my winding aubade welcomed
with bird-song!
Sep 21, 2015
Sep 21, 2015 at 12:57 PM UTC