"lamppost" poems
In bed, I lay
upon my cushioned existence I stay
but outside the world's at play
birds swimming in the sky
and trees that gently sway
dancing the day away
and I continue to lie
the distant sounds
of yawning grounds
two parched lips
as the Earth does rip
let the rain come
so we may take a sip
heavens nectar
falls upon a discarded deckchair
striped like candy cane
blotched with the rain
scattered upon sandy dunes
could this be a monsoon
ironically late
but still worth the wait
paid patience admission at the gate
one ticket to wet wet wet
this is what patience gets
just need a raincoat
so I can appear in the matrix
how can you hate this
a neopolitan sky
dripping with colour
if I were a scholar
I could espouse on its many virtues
instead, I turn up my collar
and tip my hat
a little milk won't hurt you
an umbrella swung round a lamppost
and now I'm Gene Kelly
still wearing a raincoat
but dancing
romancing the moonlight
for night has snuck in the back door
like an absent teenager
but this too shall pass
soon the dunes turn to grass
and I too return to task
a new day
at play.
Oct 7, 2018
Oct 7, 2018 at 2:35 PM UTC
at first i did not realize what you meant when you said 'i love you'.
i thought you'd said it because you knew just how vulnerable i was to you.
you knew what i felt was real. but what you did wasn't
you were hiding behind a mirror that only reflected the love i had for you.
the things that weren't really there.
i did love you
i shouldn't have
but i do not regret kissing you that night under the lamppost
and i do not regret staying in my room all day long with you
but i do regret that first kiss
by the ball field
the night you vowed you would never stop loving me. the night that i was truly undoubtedly beautiful to you
i felt that.
but now i feel nothing for you.
you were the closest thing I've felt to true love and definetly the closest to heartbreak.
for months i couldn't breathe
my eyes were the red of blood
my checks were puffy as clouds
my skin was salty and id lost all passion for mascara because it only seemed to run down my face within minutes of applying it.
i laid in bed nearly all day
i couldn't move or speak
you had shattered me
and here i am
being you're friend
watching you kiss her
watching you hold her hand and watching you love her.
but i don't feel pain anymore.
i feel something worse
i feel empty
Dec 12, 2014
Dec 12, 2014 at 4:11 PM UTC
Motorway Lamppost
Buzzard with his Evil Face
Watches the Rushhour
Aug 13, 2013
Aug 13, 2013 at 1:18 PM UTC
In our love for the wind and all that passes,
Each smote of self, a wisp of loss and absence,
Like the snow pendulous slips over last grasses,
In the glow of the lamppost and unholding fences:
So too the thousand-grains of breath
Blow through our bodies’ incandescence,
And in the starlit-smoke from the dragon's mouth
On wings of filth swirl the bone-edge of death.
Mar 18, 2023
Mar 18, 2023 at 9:20 PM UTC
Somehow
I am surrounded by suns and stars
Me
A measly old lamppost that can barely stay lit
In the shadows of their bright lights
I'm barely visible
Who wants to watch a flickering lamp
When there are beautiful suns and stars all around
My heart is breaking
But they don't mean anything
It's just what happens when your a broken lamppost
Surrounded by suns and stars
No one can help me
I can't find any beauty
All I can see are suns and stars
And I feel all alone
A broken lamppost
Old and forgotten
All but abandoned
I just want to feel loved
I want someone to show this broken light
That I can be star
Or maybe even
In my dreams
I can be the moon or sun
In someone's eyes
But tonight I'm a broken lamppost
And they are more beautiful lights to watch
Aug 22, 2015
Aug 22, 2015 at 12:19 AM UTC
Someone undeserving of my devotion,
ugly and beautiful,
whispers that scratch up all my dreams,
crazy glue,
a strutting rooster, cocking its vibrant scarlet head back and forth,
a wolf crooning into the night, only to eat me a minute later,
an ornately decorated box, containing a demon of possession,
a precious ******* up vinyl record,
an expensive bugatti that everyone wants but no one can get,
a snake, venomous, but protective of her eggs, really just scared,
a lamppost that's tired of it's job.
Nov 4, 2014
Nov 4, 2014 at 3:22 PM UTC
For at least a week now,
shrivelled leaf-like globes
of heliotrope and platinum,
umbilical cords
caught on the top
of a lamppost's ***** finger,
jostling, huddled together
in the breeze
like players in a scrum.
I go past on the top deck,
see those wrinkled baubles
skirmish, wish to leave
and drift in mist
before rasping
with a whimper,
an out-of-breath splat
of colour caught
in some tree.
Mar 8, 2013
Mar 8, 2013 at 10:16 AM UTC
~~
Southern winds have gone away
The music player has hanged
When playing the last romantic song
The Chill North wind is Sigh of yours
Has grown the pale Afternoon
How stupid the fade trees Standing!
Distant garden flower's Petals
Wither,
Helpless,
Careless
Midnight dew
Create the illusion of Sound
Nearby Lamppost,
Standing in the dim light fog
Alone,
Retreat
As the Calling Owl of the Night
Smokes of Cigarette lost in the Shadow
Putting the day,
Slowly vanish before
As the Mist
Along the road that you have left
Looked at me Surprisingly
Opening the door,
Just want to scream for unknown reasons
Once Again
~~
@Musfiq us shaleheen
Feb 11, 2015
Feb 11, 2015 at 3:39 PM UTC
on the night train to Vienna I dreamt
as the soft tangerine light bled into the windows,
tumbling down infinities of Italian countryside
absorbing into my retinas in summer shades
of dusk-colored haze
entranced I was--
a nervous girl of sixteen years,
uncharted valleys sprawling ceaselessly
at the beds of my fingers,
love languages my tongue could not yet
stretch its fibers around
freedom forming its hunched silhouette
just outside of thin glass windows
cooled by the night’s apprehensive breeze
endless, it seemed
the rumbling blur of possibilities--
my hands sedated for the first time in years.
quietly existing in the jolt of a moving cab,
the subtle ricochet through the faint lamppost glow
of fragile Austrian dreams.
home-- four thousand and forever miles away
and yet here was fine, just fine
a girl with stringy hair and a steaming cup
of midnight European tea
as her mother sighed to herself in the
peak of her American afternoon,
wondering whether her baby had found sleep
in someone else’s morning.
Nov 2, 2016
Nov 2, 2016 at 9:22 PM UTC
There are metallic, life-like statues of human figures scattered through my city, often on park benches. You must look twice the first time you spot them, and sometimes, each time, as they are so nat-ural, that they fool the retina image of man.
The traffic light,
red to green,
yet my limbs,
froze fruit solid,
release catch stuck,
unflippable,
somehow plastic freezes,
mobility skills rusted
by December's hampering
cheeky cheeks,
a seasonal reddish copper
discoloration of the extremities,
a harmony of no sensation
A comet stuck in
pedestrian neutral,
collided/jostled by
starry eyed
Fifth Avenue
street walkers and tourists.
my presence sensed,
touched, yet avoided,
unnoticed,
like streetlight,
lamppost, mailbox,
I am, a body,
at rest,
unseen
but on display
in the art gallery of
Manhattan's Lost and Found
In the section of the paper
where the
unimportant local news is
sliced n' diced
into single paragraphs,
of human interest,
tidbits, amuse bouche,
items of
major minor interest,
The New York Times
reported the discovery of an
unauthorized lifelike
bronze n' copper sculpture.
eyes of polished nickel,
heart of stained steel,
rendition of a man
so lifelike y'all do a
triple take, smile,
take a cell photo,
phone a friend
his embodiment can be found
on the rounded corner of
Columbus Circle, @59th St.,
where you enter Central Park.
upon a bench,
man clutching Sunday newspapers,
a pair of scissors,
coupons cut,
scattered at his feet.
a homely but comely,
****** expression,
one of bewilderment.
A tiny plaque on a brass plate,
at his feet,
hints of his progenitor and human origins.
Artist: Unknown,
Materials: Organic Metals
Title: A Living Finish
Nov 18, 2013
Nov 18, 2013 at 5:38 PM UTC
The light softly flickers
As you pace and stall
Wait for me here
Listen for my call
Up on the old bridge
I can feel your body fall
Watch the light flicker
'till there's no light at all
Jan 17, 2021
Jan 17, 2021 at 10:06 PM UTC
We sat outside the coffee shop
next to a fire,
watching the sun set behind decrepit buildings.
I lamented over the lack of a roller rink in the area,
reflecting on memories of wobbling around in circles
with dizzying lights and blaring speakers
ejecting Pink, Daft Punk, and Eiffel 65 onto my critical youth.
I felt like a king.
We finished our smoothies and retreated
to an empty hotel parking lot,
where I taught her to skateboard.
One foot over the front bolts,
the back foot over two of the back bolts
but resting over the tail,
kick, push,
it's in the ***** of your feet--
weight distribution.
Tic, tac, scrape, thud--
she falls repeatedly
and gets back up.
I admire her resilience and perpetual smile--
This is what skateboarding is all about.
We roll around the hotel parking lot,
our endpoints being a lone luminescent lamppost
and a telephone pole beleaguered by a plot of shrubbery
that demarcates itself from the pavement.
We circle around the poles for hours,
forming an imaginary oblong track between the two,
our laughs carrying into the cool summer night lullaby
that sang the drowsy small town to sleep.
The fading throb of the wedding reception
at the bottom of the town square by the wharf,
carrying over to us.
The stores closed up hours ago,
silent empty windows reflecting the lonely streetlights
and our ambulance back at us.
We skated on unperturbed into the night hour.
A man walks outside the hotel
to have a cigarette on the sidewalk--
I imagine he is watching us and admiring our glee.
Rolling between this telephone pole and lamppost,
the glare and reflection of the empty silent windows,
the soundtrack singing above our heads,
our laughs, and the tic-tac of skateboards
and groaning of wheels over stubborn pavement
bringing my melancholic reverie to a halt,
recognizing and understanding happiness in the present moment--
This is my roller rink.
Jun 12, 2016
Jun 12, 2016 at 1:13 AM UTC
I am staring at the red hand demanding stop
in a mostly silent rushing manner with any
urgent notice for the blind lost in the crushing banter.
And there is white hot anger in me
at the flamboyant capsules borne along to be seen
it is Soylent in essence proudly proclaiming to be green
I am flaring at the steady hand pandering
hot in a most heady hushing stammer.
Myths nay jerkingly, quoting for us
the signed history and sing lush slander.
And there is white hot anger in me
at the clairvoyant ape who is now born
chain-smoking and mean;
it is annoyance in adolescence rowdily
claiming to be clean.
Nov 2, 2010
Nov 2, 2010 at 9:58 PM UTC
For Sam Cook and Michael Lee
While standing at Marshall and 140th
the lightning over the horizon begs me to come to it
it's like the flickering streetlights, seeming like silent firefights,
simply asking to be looked for.
When I still elementary,
I used to watch the sky as the bolts shocked the earth
and I'd count:
one
two
three
Until I heard the boom and crack of thunder
three miles away, at least, the fourth graders said each second was a mile
it could have been true, it could have not, yet still I watch the light.
The flickering of the fading streetlamp tells me that this moment is not going to last forever
that it will not be heavenly or touchable, but it is there
and it wants you to touch the light as it flickers like a strobe light
like kids playing with the tabs of flashlights
and like the first discovery of light switches
and I'm reaching out so far.
Trying to grab hold of a piece of simplicity,
of normal,
of what I can always find:
Mistakes and wounds
and trying to hold on
Because lately, it seems like the only places we want to flicker are in the clubs.
Standing on a planet where illness and difference are cause enough to torch cities.
We like to light the fires and we like to watch them burn,
but we could care less about what their burning
and it seems like the dark ages came and stayed,
But like tributes to Guy Fawkes say:
*A man can be killed and forgotten,
but four hundred years later an idea can still change the world*
So I think as I stand at that intersection
watching the streetlights and the night's light bulbs flicker on and off like the light in my head
I can feel my fingertips prickle and I seize that moment to reach for the lamppost and final destination
those kids are flipping tabs faster and faster
my hair is at attention
and I can feel the race.
For a second,
everything slows down.
The streetlight stops flickering as my fingertips come upon it
and the lightning illuminates the sky
I can feel the breeze push my hair to this minutes path
and for a second,
I have something.
I pull my fingers away from the light and it returns to its flicker
the lightning fades away
and the boom comes in.
And here, standing at what once for me was Marshall and 140th
I realize,
that all I have
is all
I'll ever claim to know
Oct 21, 2012
Oct 21, 2012 at 6:48 AM UTC
Hot today
Road-crossing slow
Couples snail-walk
Love on show
Buses queued
Shoppers bagged
Cars throb-beat
Traffic drag
Mid-road-island
Man is lost
Tiny dog
Seeks lamppost
Time getaway
Stop revolve
Go home vicar
Mystery solved
Jun 5, 2011
Jun 5, 2011 at 9:30 AM UTC
*Loving you is like
Seeing the first lamppost light up
Then watching all the others
Shine one by one.*
Sep 30, 2015
Sep 30, 2015 at 7:41 AM UTC
poems are raining down from the ceiling.
poems are crawling in from the windows.
the garden is blooming poems.
it is also a poem.
this house is mostly poems.
the yellow dog in the yellow house is barking poems.
the girl who lives down the street is a poem
and she speaks to the neighbor in poems.
me, watching them from my window, is a poem
and all the words i want to tell them are made of poems.
her brother rides a bicycle poem
and the laughter he leaves behind is a poem.
the man who walks by smiles a poem.
more children come, dressed in poems
and they begin to play, which is my favorite poem.
the sun sets, like a poem
and the darkness that comes is a poem.
nobody goes home, and this too is a poem.
the crickets begin to sing, which is a kind of poem.
today is all poems.
the lamppost is shining poems,
the light is a poem,
the cold coffee is a poem,
this window is a poem,
and the night that holds all of this is a poem.
oh, i never want to leave.
Jan 19, 2019
Jan 19, 2019 at 6:39 PM UTC
Come ask me questions
of thoughts I’ve forgotten
and send me dreaming
to a distant road
where music is free
and tired feet
don’t stop dancing
when the tap is dry
Moon heron blue tide
Wandering naked lonely
Covered in feathers
faster bird flew
Where long haired brother
smoking soothing sadhu
can sit at leisure
or stand or lay
(or be lain!)
Lovers fall off the train
Drinking wines on Summer strut
Trough graveyards old tombstones
White women in dresses
With cotton torn old sole
rubbed closet rug
Shoe stains got gritty
in dusty old trunk
Her wig bleach bald
eyes lacking interest
Tired old neck feels
like a head on a stool
Thespian laughter
grouped in the attic
They animate slowly
in the shape of ‘you’
Ghosts get me closer
on hot summer drives
Up North to see dams
and **** forest rivers
In dark we then travel
with Kings of old tidings
and Queens who lay buried
the lamppost their bed
Laying so gently
the Bishop wife Medley
The grass that laid bare
of yesterday’s supper
The lamppost we take
a notion of tender
Still a safe haven
so deep in my heart
The sunset of splendour
the primary sunrise
they howl their jowls
Hysterical laughter
Dec 2, 2012
Dec 2, 2012 at 12:47 AM UTC
I was in the street of a busy city.
One of those cold concrete cities
With loud noises and fast paced people.
Standing alone in the warm smog
Nobody noticed me as they passed by,
Walking to wherever they felt they needed to go.
I may as well have been a lamppost.
Not even that, they would notice a lamppost at night
When they use it to guide their way home,
From what ever they were celebrating that evening.
They don't think they could gain,
Any kind of their quick bursts of joy
Through a conversation with me.
Like junkies they go through life
Looking for the next high,
Hoping that whatever high they're on
Will help them get to the next one.
They can't see me.
I am alone.
Chasing lamposts.
Mar 25, 2012
Mar 25, 2012 at 8:16 PM UTC
"I wish we could have came into each other's lives
at a better time for me."
Because that's how things work.
It's all about timing,
and you ran the clock.
*** alarm,
wake up call.
I didn't even take my shoes off.
You talk so loud but you never say a thing.
Just push me against car doors
in the parking lot outside your apartment
with the lamppost's reflection blurring
on the rain covered pavement,
a ***** mirror
smearing our shadows together.
I yell but you only answer
with the breath from your open mouth
as you kiss the frustration out of me—
suffocation.
Your tongue speaks a language
only I thought I knew.
Turns out she did, too.
Jan 14, 2014
Jan 14, 2014 at 12:33 PM UTC
*to be
or
not to be*...
he stands at the lamppost, screened from view
evening light slopes across the street
and cuts an oblong square of light
from the Hotel de Ville lobby-entrance.
she wonders who he is, standing there so
almost melding into post, his nondescript shadow sidling alongside
while early eve strolls through Le Parc des Céléstins
steady presence, half but not quite menacing.
he gazes down at his silhouette, Gauloise alit
and it, in turn, looks into the kerb...or up at him...
he turns his head up slowly, hazy wisps
as bewilderment draws reredos.
she hears footsteps clack across the parquet floor
as someone leaves the rez-de-chaussée
she wonders what he wants; why he stands there
who he waits for; and why so long.....
she can never see his face, ponders much on this
she longs to understand, yet feels afraid
as if she's seen that shade before, across the road
moving slowly, as the hours steal away...
visible from her second floor, she eyes
daddy-long legged limbs and dangly shapes
he has merely wandered into his past
seeking only the one he hopes to find.
traveled so far and sought so wide
crossed oceans, traversed treacherous terrain
perseverance the clutch word of the day
only to linger long to recover dashed prize.
later, as she peers into the heavy night
from windows shut, all her eyes can pierce
are nought but empty shadows 'neath that solitary lamp post
seems the mist carried off her spectral fear.... as well.
*or...
did it?*
S T, 28 June 2013 (Fry-day:)
Jun 28, 2013
Jun 28, 2013 at 8:00 AM UTC
since I last
rode a bus,
no, poems aplenty
have poured and dripped
from ink-saturated fingers,
here there and everywhere,
disguised by many a nom de guerre
the bus riding infrequently,
as work no longer demands me,
I ride for the occasional occasion, when legs won’t
carry me the far away distances
they say violence in the city
is random, and just seems worse,
seemingly a newspaper creation,
but I know better, and random violence &
poetry inspiration do not walk or talk
hand in hand, not for the hands that write…
in every crack, lamppost,
festooned
with flyers for concerts years ago,
poems reached out to me, write, right?
I too am papered with memories of long-ago
city travels, picking up scenes & dreams
that became poems, instantaneously, scrambling,
to get home with them retained, untainted,
preserved with the freshness of city smells,
city swells, homeless, rowdies & oldies shuffling,
the interwoven of disparate desperate humans,
fodder once and now for Walt Whitman’s leaves,
each distinct needy for something else,
but for me,
just one city big view, a Cloister’s museum tapestry,
remade, rewoven anew every moment of every day
and a poem-rough tumbles from
without
&
within
,
Oct 24, 2023
Oct 24, 2023 at 8:55 AM UTC
Stand strong and tall,
old lamppost.
Stand holy and unforgiving.
A nuisance to young teen
lovers,
groping in their parents' cars
Savior to the children,
extending their parklife,
as so they may not face
age and life,
for another hour or so.
And know if your bulb ever runs out,
I'll warn the women
to stay out of the park,
after dark.
Apr 4, 2014
Apr 4, 2014 at 1:13 AM UTC