"nightcaps" poems
i love you.
i love you.
i love you.
you prepared me for this
and i can't decide whether
it's ok for me to feel as relieved
as I do when I am not crying
i've never felt so much instant pain
and relief all at once
so confusing-- my ****** lady
who walks like a trucker
piebald nightcaps
tree terrace
800+ hours
miles upon miles of cigarettes
dengue.
my heart.
my heart.
you brought me to Christ
you showed that God is love
you've left such a huge rainbow
in the earth's clay
i miss you
i want you
but I don't need you now
you know that
we know that
my heart.
you dreamt me and robbie
will one day meet
we will
and it won't be incredibly soon
--but it doesnt matter.
promise brothers
promise sister
Ngariy.
please hug Tithinfal for me
i'm glad you are with him now
im trying to go to Yap on Tuesday
for a week to see Ray and Celine
and the kids
to see Tingin
our spots the island wide
the tunnel behind peace corps
i inadequatley described to you
but that you can now see
and feel
with ****** yapese local music
blaring in the background
i'll be fine
you know I will
with heart on fire
I reach out to you tonight
all nights.
i'll find Zeyto
i'll hug him
those eyes
i'll sit in Gilin's kitchen and chainsmoke
i'll make you proud
i'll spread your word
i'll spread your message
i'll spread your love
i'll make it to Africa
and ill see you again
before we both know it
i love you.
and i'm good
ill learn to dance with a limp
rug baadagem ni odig, tinmad
gu baadagem.
forever
forever
forever
go rest
Aug 12, 2013
Aug 12, 2013 at 7:45 AM UTC
i love you.
i love you.
i love you.
you prepared me for this
and i can't decide whether
it's ok for me to feel as relieved
as I do when I am not crying
i've never felt so much instant pain
and relief all at once
so confusing-- my ****** lady
who walks like a trucker
piebald nightcaps
tree terrace
800+ hours
miles upon miles of cigarettes
dengue.
my heart.
my heart.
you brought me to Christ
you showed that God is love
you've left such a huge rainbow
in the earth's clay
i miss you
i want you
but I don't need you now
you know that
we know that
my heart.
you dreamt me and robbie
will one day meet
we will
and it won't be incredibly soon
--but it doesnt matter.
promise brothers
promise sister
Ngariy.
please hug Tithinfal for me
i'm glad you are with him now
im trying to go to Yap on Tuesday
for a week to see Ray and Celine
and the kids
to see Tingin
our spots the island wide
the tunnel behind peace corps
i inadequatley described to you
but that you can now see
and feel
with ****** yapese local music
blaring in the background
i'll be fine
you know I will
with heart on fire
I reach out to you tonight
all nights.
i'll find Zeyto
i'll hug him
those eyes
i'll sit in Gilin's kitchen and chainsmoke
i'll make you proud
i'll spread your word
i'll spread your message
i'll spread your love
i'll make it to Africa
and ill see you again
before we both know it
i love you.
and i'm good
ill learn to dance with a limp
rug baadagem ni odig, tinmad
gu baadagem.
forever
forever
forever
go rest
Aug 12, 2013
Aug 12, 2013 at 7:45 AM UTC
We scoff at smokers ******* in stone
Yet we've held plastic cigarettes of our own
Nightcaps of cyanide to end Hell's day
A field one at that, while we wandered away
From higher thoughts and chanting gulls
Now poisoned air does fill our lungs
Singin' Glory Glory to emporiums that sell
All that we won when the lottery ***** fell.
Jun 17, 2012
Jun 17, 2012 at 6:40 AM UTC
We are in the ungodly hour again,
that sixty-minute stretch,
embedded in the nighttime,
of undisputed stillness.
A fracture of the evening
occupied by deep breaths
and oddly-human silhouettes.
The town butcher spends overtime
breaking bones, working
on the swine, and counting
the progression of the night
by the swinging bodies.
They’re cold and sinuous
but he likes their company.
The town preacher wastes time
as he knows to pace himself
by half hour intervals,
squeezed between nightcaps.
In every period he remembers
slightly less that, a boy
is to be buried by the morning.
The town beggar walks towards nowhere,
he blows an alcohol breath
into his clasped hands
like resuscitating a needy mouth.
from his ceiling-less living space,
he looks into black windows
just like we would look out of them.
The town dealer is on nothing
living back some hours he lost
Inside his head, looking, from a distance
through his eye sockets.
Now he’s on a strange sobriety and with a text,
the Londonese and the hood come back up.
In the ungodly hour,
no storm makes an eye around me.
In an un-pretty always, things just happen
to fill the timeless time.
We all assure ourselves
we’re all alone.
Dec 9, 2015
Dec 9, 2015 at 3:28 PM UTC
It’s midnight on June 24th. We’re returning from a “Hot Wax” concert - they were wretched. We’re heading back to Paris tomorrow, so we decided to just stop at the (Kube Hotel) lounge for nightcaps.
Everyone was stirred-up and tight as a violin string when we heard that the “Extreme Court” threw out “Roe vs Wade’s” constitutional guarantees - the latest signal of Americas ascendant entropy.
Following that, was a ruling that threw out New York’s gun restrictions. “Republicans wear compassion like a costume,” Anna pronounces, “what “right to life” IS there, if every nutcase can walk around with a machine-gun. Haven’t they been watching the news?”
Leong, who’s always willing to discuss the superiority of the communist system, susurrates, to no one in particular, “Abortions are legal in China and unless you have a hunting license - guns are illegal.”
“Maybe we should move there,” Lisa says, ingenuously, holding up her drink toastingly, her face tinted a gleaming, bourbon gold in reflected light.
Returning to our suite, 3 hours later, Sophy’s adopted a mode of travel involving swerves and leaning heavily on things. Which Leong, who was not doing much better, finds hilarious. “Use your signals!” Leong says after barely dodging one of Sophy’s flailing arms.
“Two loves I have - of comfort and despair.” Sunny quotes, in her richest, Shakespearian voice.
“There’ll be no uncomfortable beds tonight,” I say, searching my bag for my phone, which has the suite key in an attached card-holder. Charles’ room is directly across from ours and I see him shaking his head as both of our doors close.
We’ve adopted a motto, “live to exhaustion,” and I think, to myself, that we’re living up to it, as I flop onto my bed and the world goes dark.
Jun 29, 2022
Jun 29, 2022 at 12:04 PM UTC
When I was little,
I always wondered if people wore nightcaps to sleep to capture their dreams.
Apr 11, 2014
Apr 11, 2014 at 8:20 AM UTC
School children walk by in their dirtied rugby kits
as a reminder that it only takes five years for
inertia to calcify and turn into a state of mind.
I smoke by the front door, ear to the hallway
in case a phone call comes from the government,
lending me money so that I can break up the days.
There is no need to change. No reason to pull out
of these clothes and take to window shopping
in the market town of charity shops and fast food.
My bed is full of crescent moons in nightcaps
and faceless stars, sewn together in Indonesia,
some small hands that gave me a comfort which
faded through wash cycles and pill-drawn sleep.
I have given myself to application forms and binary,
Yes/No answers to my heritage and right to work.
All I can do is lie exhausted in the night sky,
draw the curtains from daylight, and hope that
poetry is enough to punctuate the afternoon.
I thought depression was a creative drama;
a way to filter reality into a thousand petalled lotus
flower that blooms through broken skin and sends
algae past the ionosphere and into the breathless
lung of space. There is caffeine for food and boiled
sweets to give the sensation of mint and sugar.
I thought depression was a poet's ultimate muse.
I thought depression brought the most peaceful sleep.
I thought happiness came in basaltic columns,
echo chambers that sang with water flutes and
siren songs. I thought that I would find the current,
lengthen my back, and then float to dry land.
Sep 2, 2014
Sep 2, 2014 at 8:43 AM UTC
(since my recall isn't as lucid as yours):
i'd like to imagine that these
wires and terminals traverse
and meet at various odds and ends
like laundry powder and the crumple
of leather on the floor,
summer room industrially cold
and spent curled up
from 9.40 a.m., running on four hours
though was wildly, wakefully inspired
you used to say that sleep is overrated
in the company of
pages and nightcaps, repeated and
withheld goodnights worth more
than a hundred, five times over
now i greet the ceiling away
from milky cloud and skies
in some blinkered awareness, sheets creased,
folded in a mocking design
in-between vistas of
my fingers which you clasped like instinct—
present tense, clasp
—remindful of things that are still here,
that i am no longer fiercely alone.
Apr 17, 2013
Apr 17, 2013 at 5:16 AM UTC
Strands of ridged ribbons,
Neat bows on nightcaps.
Slippers on floor placed neatly at bedside.
Bed socks and nightgowns,
Laced up to the collar.
The man says we're in for a chill this winter.
Covers pulled tight up round their neck.
Bed lost it's *** appeal.
So cold.
Still trying to feel.
(c) Livvi
Sep 12, 2015
Sep 12, 2015 at 4:54 PM UTC