"nib" poems
~ ⚘ ⚪ ⚘ ~
After days of long studies comes the
days of rest. My violet dreams were
slumber-soft filled with lucent lilies
of curling flames born of ever colour
known and unknown. And I stood
in awe of them as my fears fall back
and cower in the shades of my mind.
~ ⚘ ⚪ ⚘ ~
I muse at how quickly my body
relaxed. Due to my marjoram'd
pillows and sheets of pure silk
and eiderdown? Or due to the
sips of the lavender tea in my in
my teacup decorated with a
butterfly motif?
~ ⚘ ⚪ ⚘ ~
I remember the sips in fours as
I blew the steam from my cup;
The first sip balmed my lips.
The second soothed my throat.
The third lulled my thoughts.
The fourth stilled my soul.
~ ⚘ ⚪ ⚘ ~
Though the tea, the pillow and
sheets were had a hand in my nightly
rest, the real answer is on my brow -
for it was when the night's cool air
blew, and where you placed your
sweet Morphean kiss.
~ ⚘ ⚪ ⚘ ~
With a smile, I wake.
Sat on my golden summer throne
located in my marble gazebo; a
jewel in my private garden. With
thin caryatid pillars, draped in
fine doric chitons encircling me.
Their sculpted limbs hold up the
frieze carved with acanthus
that has a stained glass top of
peacocks and stargazers.
~ ⚘ ⚪ ⚘ ~
The sheer curtains billow when
the eastern winds blow. By me, a
gold side table with a mirrored top
supported by three Greek key legs.
A pewter quill pen with a steel nib
and violet feather rests by its clay
inkpot; both beside a silver sinuous
nouveau vase and a small stack of
poetry books of black leather and
gilt.
~ ⚘ ⚪ ⚘ ~
Aug 4, 2018
Aug 4, 2018 at 7:48 AM UTC
Shhh...can you hear me?
I'm hardly a pin
I'm hardly a mile away
Shhh...do you know the pain I'm in?
Look...can you see me?
I'm hiding behind shadowed eyes
And a mask of smiles
Look...will you look past the honest lies?
Taste...can you palate the bitterness?
Sharp and acrid accusations
Dancing on wagging tongues
Taste...will you swallow what is given?
Touch...can you feel my failing muscles?
Every fibre losing this very battle
A futile fight I must concede
Touch...will you save the pieces that crumble?
Read...can you make sense of my heart?
Pounding behind its bony cage
Pumping red into my desperate nib
Read...can you understand the ink staining my page?
Shhh...can you hear me?
I don't think you can
For I have ceased to speak
In the universe of man
Nov 30, 2014
Nov 30, 2014 at 11:34 AM UTC
The eternal tango of the maestro manifests itself in nigh infinite ways.
With the flick of the artist's brush, the stroke of the novelist’s pen or the chicken scratch of the scholar’s nib, legacies are etched, history is written and the world is shaped.
The astronomer, the craftsman and the physician all have one thing in common: Mastery.
Such pinnacles of skill have decades of their lives consumed, nay devoured in the pursuit of perfection, of greatness. Like grains of sand slowly falling into a furnace are the seconds of our lives, trickling, melting into puddles. But as sand melts, it forms shapes; therein lies the potential. Moldable puddles, colourless, devoid of naught but a clear medium.
Sep 25, 2015
Sep 25, 2015 at 12:43 AM UTC
.
*At the table of eternal sorrow
sits a fool with a crooked smile,
faking interest in a world obscene
and feigning the mood of yesterwhile.
Couched over bent with quill extended,
he writes his heart with a bitter beat,
floating in the mire of a memory stained,
poised with nib to command the sheet.
Capering words form across the weave
with capricious intent and shadow play,
smoke and mirrors intersect and disperse
whilst his mind carries the story away.*
© Pagan Paul (04/03/19)
Mar 6, 2019
Mar 6, 2019 at 7:00 AM UTC
.
•
be
-hold
my sole
prized instru-
ment of choice•
let it bear the wei-
ght of my unspoken
voice•in the dead of
the silent night•i'll let
loose my heart so it co-
uld take flight•consoli-
dating all that i think•
and...converting them
into the blackest ink•
only then freely......it
would spill•down
the stem and
to the nib
of my
fea
the
red
qui
ll
•
Jan 10, 2015
Jan 10, 2015 at 10:57 AM UTC
My Vellum
Alluring and demure
In your virginity
Never yet
Creased nor crumpled
Your tight young corners
Remain stiff and pert
In their newness
Your long lithe sides
Tense for my careful touch
Lest blood be spilt
My gold nib
I dip
In midnight ink
Piercing its surface skin
And lift
It drips
One
Two
Black
Secrets
Back to their bottle
My hand is poised
Over your pristine smoothness
And with calm precision
I carve broad majuscules
That twist and cut
To hairlines of breathtaking
Intimate intricacy
Quick teasing serifs
Long lingering descenders
Strokes of tactile
Joy
Then stand back
Empty
In wonder at
Your calligraphic beauty
Mar 21, 2011
Mar 21, 2011 at 3:16 AM UTC
I become more erudite at night.
I feel a sprite within me ignite words,
by candlelight I feel the old masters lift their quills,
place nib in ink and nib to paper.
I invite their words and imagery to suffuse me,
use me in this modern world.
Make new what once was old.
Where nib would glide I touch my screen,
watch avidly as sentences appear,
magic symbols transformed to meaning,
like runic stones of old, or bones thrown for reading.
My words by candlelight enfold and embrace me,
in the knowing language of the poets, bards and storytellers.
Tonight, I delight at my copywrite scribed by candlelight.
Aug 11, 2014
Aug 11, 2014 at 6:53 PM UTC
+
A bed-sits high and dry,marooned on a sandbank of night.
As radio 4-casts its nets to isolated ships like me that rudderless drift on into the light.
Still dark outside,no sounds,save the distant echoing bark of a hungry fox ----streets away.
Another dawn ripped blackbin bag of a day creeps and ouzes in
Heavy unfocused lids fogged in the steamy smokeyness of tea and a first fag
plenty of time plenty of time.
Time before the world wakes to the morning pips and its flushing, brushing, rushing sounds
A greyness gathers just beyound my pained curtains, as with a silent sigh a roosted blackbird clears its fasted throat.
Then as if by magic I 'm carried, scimming high above and beyound this mooring set in a silvered sea,on a welcomed mantra known to all.
As if a calling pray at day break,following each word in a moment subline
Un angle vole un angle vole.
Rockall - Malin - Hebrides
Humber - Fisher - German bight
Thames - Dover - Wight.
Each single secert understood and noted only by a few as I glide over in paced, pausey surf rolling words
North northeast - 994 - Falling slowly - Low pressure moving away - Gales 8 very poor - Backing 3-4 later - Mainly good - Becoming variable - Syclonic later - Increasing 6-7 mainly west - Swally showers for a time - Fair - Good.
Oh so good, each pure English comforting sounds heard over lapping waves of air.
The bushy wet nosed fox sulks and cowers away from the breaking sun, as the blackbird draws a dewdropped breath though golden nib and tapping gently, call a hidden choir into song just for me.
Reminding me of the things I'd for gotten I care about.
Sharp timed unwelcomed pips flood the ears to prise open sticky eyes from promised dreams and spoon-cuddles warm
As I set forth on wetted pavements, ready to decline into my charted day.
Yet smiling as if blessed and no longer alone
But filled with early morning salty thoughts of strangers
I
have
yet
to
meet
Feb 24, 2011
Feb 24, 2011 at 7:47 AM UTC
I test the nib of the fountain pen against my finger,
Testing its sharpness, its edges.
Then I place the point against the pale moonlight of my flesh,
And push it slowly between two ribs, skin parting reluctantly.
I carefully work it deeper into the hole created by the head, the nib disappearing into the red secrets of my insides,
Rivulets of blood running past the smooth black edges, designed to be gripped comfortably, ergonomically while writing,
Red falling down past the grasping circle of my white skin.
The tip ****** my heart, still beating too slowly, too wounded, and with a twist blood fills the compartment made for ink.
I am made of paper white and ink black anyway.
Dec 3, 2018
Dec 3, 2018 at 9:24 PM UTC
Waiting for that paper, a light
A cursor that keeps blinking for the next word
Even when the screen arranges to sleep in daylight
Fingers begin to itch and start being febrile.
An email, such a pity,
is more accessible than
a post box.
All the handwriting fonts that I did try, couldn’t,
Just possibly couldn’t mirror the impeccable tries
To struggle to be parallel to the top
Or bottom of a page.
The improbability of what the next thought would be
The prediction of where the addressee would smile
Or frown, or pick up eyes to stare at the wall for a while,
To embrace what had just been conveyed.
Letters are like light, they reach us later
From when they were born, but the spaces
they illuminate or burn on their arrival!
I wonder if our pupils shrink.
They more than just tag along, they tap in,
They’re the result of cleaning the ink from
the nib, a thousand times, over thousands
of sentences, or maybe just a few, but they do.
And don’t dare ask the pen for proof!
It’ll track down wrinkled pages
Who had their thirst quenched by
The swipes of fountain pens’ fountainheads,
And pictures of the fingers
Bathed in red, and black, and blue,
And occasionally of table clothes
Spilled over by the consequence of imperfect handles.
Imagine if light came as soon as it was made,
It would be difficult for our eyes to handle such bait
Sometimes, a pause is necessary,
Imagine a world without commas!
I’d like to peek into the writer’s letters,
Not to read, but to sense the shapes of emotions
And stretches of As and Ns, or the reach of commas
On the next line, and then, close my eyes
And shove my nose in it, to sniff hard
The paper and the blue smells,
And die doing so if it was eventual.
Jul 5, 2016
Jul 5, 2016 at 3:13 PM UTC
I am dying
From within. I don’t wish to,
But I think of this skin
That holds me
Back and I feel ill. I stare,
Glazed over, at all the happiness I have tried to
Capture in moments of grace,
And self contentment.
But this does not do me justice.
This hand does not do me justice.
It all falls short of feeling.
Now I write blankly, efficiently, capturing
What I feel because it is easy.
Do I long for you, or do I wish happiness
Would knock me dead?
Knock me down,
The earth upon my head.
I wait, I long, silently.
Suffering all, wishing nothing.
Nothing will come of nothing.
Or shall I become a sod
So as not to feel and rot,
But just rot, unaware.
I am dying, like a flower,
Whose time is limited.
But unlike a flower,
I see what’s coming.
Unlike the single, once crisp tulip
That hangs aside from the others still-fresh,
Falling from the boring vase
I see my fall
And contemplate it often.
And read poetry which seems both
To help and to hinder.
Like you, an enigma.
The feeling seeps through my nib
Through my heart, through my ribs
Gushing out onto a page, limited,
Tired but taking shape.
Hope leaves me, to be implanted
In a line
A seed,
Sewn. Waiting, longing, wishing quietly
To grow.
But not knowing that its time is limited.
Mar 5, 2013
Mar 5, 2013 at 2:13 PM UTC
Love thou mind love and love
For,love is the binding Will of God.
Dip thy nib in live and gently draw
Draw sweet,sweet scenes around.
Honour blush as Ego's Pride
Upon thy cheeks flash rosy.
Body jerked,hinges shake,Oh! Lord!
As emotional volcanoes erupt lava of anger.
Creator interlace creatues to depend
Hence,repent on,own-made calamities.
Love! give and take as much as you need-
Only that much you need not be greedy.
Lust is rust of love a desert fruit.
Being deserted,I once ran and ran
Searching mirage of human- love
With Tsunamis in eyes 'nd feeble feet.
Love is not selfish lust:
It is candle light for service.
Light:brightening darkened corners
Shows us: all are creatures equal.
As we do violate the Nature's Laws
Laws of Nature will violate ours.
Walls will be demolished,Hills and valleys
Ploughed with thunder and quakes.
Love,thou, mind! love and love
For, Love is the binding Will of God.
Dec 22, 2011
Dec 22, 2011 at 10:47 PM UTC
You're a sheet of white paper
So light,polite,soft and humble
And I'm a fountain pen
I slit my blood ink arm vein
With a sharp knife
And colours your life
And writes my love story
In your life's paper sheet
I love you so much
I promise,never you cheat
And My name's title
On your white skin
Reading your eyes
They tell me secrets
My nib always kisses you
& writes a note on your lips
You're my notebook
With pretty look
My red ink flows
make your face skin glow
I save you,not as locked
Coz you're in my heart's pocket
By shaffu
Jun 18, 2016
Jun 18, 2016 at 3:23 PM UTC
Perhaps it was too soon
but time will tell me that
it was the right time when
it got loose out of my pocket.
The agony of the lost ink pen
given to me by my grandfather
is not that it had a thick nib
that glided though sheets
of stories, gave track
to trains of thoughts.
The agony is that, I wanted
the pen to be the living proof
in his posterity, or mine
that he was a good man, and
only grabbed by the ills of habits
and inability to control one's mind
did he speak bad with others.
I had a hard time, gulping the loss
like the hardened blob of mucus
too difficult to shove down the throat
but too difficult to push it out.
But then I had no other option,
I could sulk in the moment for long,
or I could imagine that these poems,
are what would show him a good man,
despite his odds of the world against.
I'm the ink and the ink pen
and not what got lost.
For this body too is borrowed,
expenses not more than
what bought the ink pen.
Of course grandfather would
probably get angry if told.
So the agony of the lost ink pen
is that it got lost, but also found
by someone. May the person
find good use of it.
Jul 25, 2017
Jul 25, 2017 at 11:29 AM UTC
She is the typesetter’s “e”
The once-rounded uncial script,
Unbroken like the solemn vow of a monk,
His whisper, a shepherd of words under the cowl,
Murmurations of the Holy Mother to the lambswool shroud of candlelight.
His candle-flock of dreams to some hill of penitent towers, war-cowed
And broken open like faith-unfended helmets, littering the ground,
With their unspeaking tassels in babbling pagan sound of wind,
That hill too, once-rounded bare under the glittering apostles of twilight.
In the abbeywork of air, calligraphy was a cipher of souls,
He unwrested demons from an inkwell of sunsets, smothered them in blotting paper,
Freed the incarnate whole to the book of hours, nib-pointed in quills and illuminated in gold,
Line by line, in Carolingian winding sheets, he returned the misshapen to the fold,
To the carpet page of home and the warm ligatures of their waiting women.
So the shutters of the heavenly house could blow light in slanted rays to a wilderness in storm.
But he never tamed the aero-elongated, descender of Troy in a “t,”
He never knew the unholiness of the underscore or fonts as ******
Or the world unwilling to know itself in serif robes of ancient lore.
His life was a simple rounded-out syllable of one man,
Left in the muddied, unintelligible text of faith and war.
She is the typesetter’s “e” and now belongs to any hand.
Jul 6, 2019
Jul 6, 2019 at 9:21 PM UTC
Writing of a poem
Oh! How it can be likened
To having a baby!
With the copulation of fancy and thought,
Comes the moment of conception
It can happen any day
Unanticipated or planned erstwhile
On a star studded night
Or a rain drenched morn
It swims into you as a seed
So tiny… so inconspicuous
Once the pregnancy confirmed
Comes irritation, nausea
Lethargy and loss of appetite
Your stomach rarely growls for food
Clouds of words hang heavy and low,
Refusing to break into showers
They don’t gush or rush.
Ideas dry up leaving the nib parched
Lines crack n’ break
Depression follows
Discouraged, you feel fatigued
But all the while you begin to realize
That a new life
Independent of you
Has begun growing inside you
Then all the care taken
To foster the young life
You read…
You refer the lexicon
You withdraw from other works
Take rest, relax in solitude
Slowly the foetus moves
The first stirring of life!
With fond fingers, as you pat your belly
Your pen pats the paper
The first line…..
The first faint beating of the heart!
Then words….
Like little harness bells tingling
Fall in line, line after line!
Drawing nourishment from you,
The embryo grows limb by limb
The miniscule of insight
Grown after months of waiting
Into a mature body of illumination!
A stretch of your dreams!
A suffusion of light!
After the labor pains
Of scribbling and scrawling,
Writing and rewriting,
Deleting, adding and editing,
With time stretching and contracting,
A baby, no, a poem is born.
Whether cute or ugly
No mother can dislike it
She marvels at its birth
Wraps it in her warmth
She must have had in mind a name
Or seeks to find a name;
An apt name
Thus a poem with a title is born!
She wonders if her baby would lit a smile,
On others lips too
Or from them would flow,
Words of endearment as from a trickle!
Jul 31, 2016
Jul 31, 2016 at 11:39 AM UTC
Poetry is surely the finest wine
Its words most lavish *****
You get drunk with every line
By the end all sense you lose!
There’s no wine to cast more spell
Whiskey ***** gin or ***
So long in it your thoughts dwell
Soul suffers blessed delirium!
Ecstatic is the poetry’s fizz
The froth at the mouth of nib
Gushing out of passion unleashed
The kick with each falling drip!
Poetry is among the best antidotes
When I crave a drink or two
I inject its overwhelming shots
Pains melt to moistened dew!
Apr 4, 2015
Apr 4, 2015 at 7:20 AM UTC
For how many wilted white roses
and frayed silver ribbons,
might one purchase a modest affection?
How many tears,
fallen from the soiled nib
of a pen held like
a dying cigarette,
warrant an instant's embrace
in a stale, sun starved night?
The wind cares not for where it blows
but lightning avoids the
hopeless romantic,
sitting in a warm candle glow
beside a broken music box,
writing on a page as white
as ****** snow.
Tiny notes fall like drops
of spoiled honey,
while a deft hand waltzes
alone,
weaving a tapestry to
conceal the crack in the wall.
He's counting wilted white roses
and frayed silver ribbons,
before the locked doors of a store
long forgotten.
Jul 16, 2014
Jul 16, 2014 at 5:26 PM UTC
A puny nib tells it's affliction to perception sheet.
Jan 10, 2019
Jan 10, 2019 at 6:11 AM UTC
Force not,
the coming of the ink.
Judge not,
what you feel and think.
•••
Then put nib to paper
and make your mark.
Let what flows
be brazen and stark.
Aug 29, 2019
Aug 29, 2019 at 6:29 PM UTC
This is a note,
That I wrote,
With the finest nib.
Then mailed to you.
Which you read,
Then pondered,
And mulled,
Contemplated.
Then wrote
A carefully
Crafted reply.
You paused just,
A second,
Before pressing
SEND.
© Nick Strong 2014
Oct 30, 2013
Oct 30, 2013 at 6:18 PM UTC
they are all asleep
and I sneak under cover
of the lateness of the hour
to the comfort of my words
scrawled across a page in ink
from the nib of a fountain pen
they search for a target
I'll never achieve
on a journey through my head
reaching for perfection
I am tired by a world
always demanding more
than I'm prepared to give
always asking for more
than I could possibly have
but this moment is at least mine
stolen from the clock of life
Feb 23, 2022
Feb 23, 2022 at 6:57 PM UTC
these words are not apologetic;
they don't believe in lying
since words are merely tools
to flavor our blatant insincerity
these pens are not for writing;
rather, they are used for dismantling
the nib from the tube of color
to be sliced up into confetti by knives—
where the ink spills like dark blood
these poems are not for reading;
but for recording your feelings in
riddles that no one else but you can
understand, and relate to—
words coded in more words,
or in between lines with the invisible
ink of the mind and memory
these paragraphs are not sarcastic;
more of subtle reminders to you that
perhaps you should have cared
about me a little bit more than the
dust collecting on the top shelves of
your forgotten library,
while your pocket empties itself
on new volumes of books with
repetitive story plots, my own
diminishing in the sea of your curiosity
- - -
Sep 20, 2013
Sep 20, 2013 at 3:48 AM UTC
You cannot press the page as if you are trying to tattoo meaning onto it. People so often forget the words as supposed to do that for you, ink askew, words committing Hari Kari ***** nilly as they derail into one another, meaning unintelligible as the point of the modern day history channel programming schedule. It is a varsity track jacket for the masses, mass produced for those unable to sew it themselves or earn it through bestowed prowess. Even national bestsellers are written in pencil these days, and before their sentence is pronounced, the verdict has been erased by the side palm of our ever-loving adhd. The thinly split nib, the exposed *** crack of a wayward genius is mocked until covered, no longer ******** the stuff of sanity, and as a result the fools rule literature with a tin scepter of complacency.
Jan 13, 2013
Jan 13, 2013 at 8:45 AM UTC
They would not defend it -
dangling over the gate, split nosed –
the fall I watched from inside,
so jealous.
They would not reason it;
splint in the accident
of the wasp pumped crimson
lip, nor my lopsided
forgiveness for smacking
the backs of their laughter
so. They would not look
away
from the wind that ripped
my threads of hair -oil
slick - the slate of
what became so readily
an excuse to cry. Their
eyes became the
grinds in my cheek;
a pummeled day
where fists would grace
and I mapped my desk
with what they wouldn’t
do; the lines of every taut
lesson I held thick,
the thumb pounced athletic
nib of my pen
crawling my arm
with schools of red fish;
itching arithmetic.
How could they know
which colours I use
to dot the I;
that spot
being so readily marked
with their X?
Mar 13, 2013
Mar 13, 2013 at 6:47 AM UTC