"obscuring" poems
1260
Because that you are going
And never coming back
And I, however absolute,
May overlook your Track—
Because that Death is final,
However first it be,
This instant be suspended
Above Mortality—
Significance that each has lived
The other to detect
Discovery not God himself
Could now annihilate
Eternity, Presumption
The instant I perceive
That you, who were Existence
Yourself forgot to live—
The “Life that is” will then have been
A thing I never knew—
As Paradise fictitious
Until the Realm of you—
The “Life that is to be,” to me,
A Residence too plain
Unless in my Redeemer’s Face
I recognize your own—
Of Immortality who doubts
He may exchange with me
Curtailed by your obscuring Face
Of everything but He—
Of Heaven and Hell I also yield
The Right to reprehend
To whoso would commute this Face
For his less priceless Friend.
If “God is Love” as he admits
We think that me must be
Because he is a “jealous God”
He tells us certainly
If “All is possible with” him
As he besides concedes
He will refund us finally
Our confiscated Gods—
28k
Elated to see you aloft in the night sky
To what do I owe this enchanted boon.
In the merry company of winking stars,
Enthralled by this sight as I admire my moon.
Bathe me in your streaks of translucent silver.
Accompany me through my sleepless nights.
Watching over me with unwavering vigil.
Swathe me in whispers of peaceful respite.
Oh how you govern the raging tides of my soul.
Rest your gaze as the waters break upon my shore...
Erode and weaken the load strewn over my burning shoals,
Sands drowned breathless but craving for more.
Few nights now... Smitten as you coyly turn away.
Thick strands of shadow clad hair in gentle cascades,
Alluringly obscuring a slight fraction of your face.
A tiny crescent blanketed away; into the blackness it fades.
More nights pass... Now I see only a lesser moon
Leaving me with only half; darkness so had claimed.
Please make yourself last; you mustn't leave too soon,
I'm not ready to be left crippled and maimed.
I silently look up as more nights go by.
I watched my lunar love dissolving into space.
My heart too, torn away a morsel at a time...
Finally she had gone; without a sliver or a trace.
Every nightfall since is rife with emptiness and despair.
I asked the stars if they could soothe my gaping void...
But they'd only twinkle in indifference...
Regardless of the pleas I've employed.
Unsure of how many rises it has thus been.
Nights only brought the onslaught of mocking stars above.
Still I toy with the promises made overhead,
For the awaited return of my crazed elusive love.
I know it's frivolous to think I'm the only one...
There are others who pine just as I do.
But I yearn the most for your sought after attention,
For our hearts have sung in every colour and every hue.
Anxiety at peak, dismayed almost broken,
Then I hear a sweet song sung; distant and far.
A song that shared the words we once had spoken,
Again enveloped in translucent silver, with relief I sighed...,
"There you are..."
.
Oct 21, 2014
Oct 21, 2014 at 9:03 AM UTC
And when I met that girl in San Francisco
Off a dusty little pier
with rotting wood
and squawking seals
And screaming bayside wind
She caught me off-tropics
and danced with the grace
of a palm tree
lines between the quaked
concrete
off telegraph avenue
On an obscuring Sunday morning
and no
she didn't go
to church or any silly thing
like a temple or synagogue
She said those were no places
for god
God was the trees
We smoked cigarettes and got off to each other's
carcinogenic practices
oxidizing a little faster in conjunction with hopeful
Formaldehyde
Deriding the formalities
of small talk and trivialities
She liked her guitars with nickel-wound strings
I with nylon
But I couldn't play songs
that sounded any good with them
while she could
and did.
and girl did it ever sound good
She'd laugh at the contests on the radio
while we drove on a half-moon
to half-moon
full and whole of ourselves
We'd stopped in the lobby of a cheap motel
And waltzed to background
muzak
wacked out of our minds
Sniffing in deep huffs of subliminal
divinity
Understanding
loving
that mind-numbing
monotony
muzak...
ppsh.
Who ever really listened to that?
And then she left
at the end of one fine winter day
in a cloudless sky I waved
watched her plane
skip off
towards the edge of a pale blue horizon
back south
to warmer climes
to wherever she truly stayed
The tugging on my heartstrings
chimed grotesque in
precise
D minor.
Jun 6, 2018
Jun 6, 2018 at 9:23 PM UTC
Mirror
by Kajal Ahmad, a Kurdish poet
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch
My era’s obscuring mirror
shattered
because it magnified the small
and made the great seem insignificant.
Dictators and monsters filled its contours.
Now when I breathe
its jagged shards pierce my heart
and instead of sweat
I exude glass.
Keywords/Tags: Kajal Ahmad, Kurd, Kurdish, translation, mirror, shattered, magnified, dictators, monsters, jagged, shards, sweat, perspire, leak, bleed, extrude, protrude, glass
The Lonely Earth
by Kajal Ahmad
loose translation by Michael R. Burch
The pale celestial bodies
never bid her "Good morning! "
nor do the creative stars
kiss her.
Earth, where so many tender persuasions and roses lie interred,
might expire for the lack of a glance, or an odor.
She's a lonely dusty orb,
so very lonely! , as she observes the moon's patchwork attire
knowing the sun's an imposter
who sears with rays he has stolen for himself
and who looks down on the moon and earth like lodgers.
Kurds are Birds
by Kajal Ahmad
loose translation by Michael R. Burch
Per the latest scientific classification, Kurds
now belong to a species of bird!
This is why,
traveling across the torn, fraying pages of history,
they are nomads recognized by their caravans.
Yes, Kurds are birds! And,
even worse, when
there's nowhere left to nest, no refuge from their pain,
they turn to the illusion of traveling again
between the warm and arctic sectors of their homeland.
So I don't think it strange Kurds can fly but not land.
They wander from region to region
never realizing their dreams
of settling,
of forming a colony, of nesting.
No, they never settle down long enough
to visit Rumi and inquire about his health,
or to bow down deeply in the gust-
stirred dust,
like Nali.
Bi Havre (“Together”)
possibly the oldest Kurdish poem
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch
I want us to be together:
we would eat together,
climb the mountain together,
sing songs together, songs of love,
songs from the heart, sung from above.
I want us to have one heart, together.
Many words in this ancient poem are in doubt, so I have excerpted what I grok to be the central meaning.
And because Kajal mentioned Rumi, here are my translations of Rumi:
Raise your words, not their volume.
Rain grows flowers, not thunder.
—Rumi, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch
Birdsong
by Rumi
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch
Birdsong relieves
my deepest griefs:
now I'm just as ecstatic as they,
but with nothing to say!
Please universe,
rehearse
your poetry
through me!
Apr 1, 2020
Apr 1, 2020 at 3:00 AM UTC
Four walls; a pair of cupped hands.
Jaundiced like an open eye; an open cove
Prescribing solitude to those whom solitude cannot withstand,
And I choose this cold corner which is furthest from the door,
To be where I am not, before
Your proclivities become my own, I write. I write,
My window holds my breath and frosts the world,
The moon in his amber gown, dressed in chatoyance and spite,
Godspeed; dark, dark shroud for naked skies!
Six floors, walls, doors from you am I.
I couldn't write when the sun peered in,
Her inquiry evangelizing the specks of time left upon the glass -
I've heard it all before; God's shining face leaves none unloved (unseen)
but his spotlight has no starlet; so who can see me up here?
We can't see from windows, dear.
I'd live and sing for the cloudless hall
The nursery of misanthropists crawling on the grey cobblestone
And the lilt of the wind on the rose; through squares nice and small -
The peevish moth shudders at the sight of itself obscuring the day through the glass.
It seems we're always in the way.
May 11, 2018
May 11, 2018 at 5:40 PM UTC
Ignorances innate wove curtain of veils
Cut usunder heretofore obscuring
Bodhicittas valedictory wintry gloom torn
Of enlightenments will factioning the
Silenced mammonish city kingdom truced
As the wings of Azrael clinch
Earthly thistles; monolithic raiments
Deposed Hull, Hell and Halifax parcae
The willowing of light unfettering Fenrirs
Durance, howling aconite psalms suspiring
Suffrage relict paving with mewed stars
Redemptions tithed talents bequeathed
Of Heavens sinister prayer burning
Acinta dusts thine ashes threading
The wilful sword of Gods destruction.
ELEETE J MUIR.
Jan 13, 2012
Jan 13, 2012 at 8:44 AM UTC
we damage our feet
squeezing into stilettos
we pluck our eyebrows
we polish our toes
we **** in our stomachs
afraid of what the scales will show
we scrub ourselves with a thousand lotions
spray ourselves with perfumes
it's as if we need to be sanitised
from the dirtiness that we learnt from the womb
from all the messages that we've consumed
messages insidiously obscuring the truth
Feb 18, 2021
Feb 18, 2021 at 11:30 AM UTC
Darkness suffocates me.
Ever-present blackness fights to enter my bloodstream
Worming its way through my pores
While tendrils of grey fog claw at my eyes
Obscuring my vision
Suddenly a light appears.
The tendrils retreat,
Skittering into the surrounding shadows
White fire circled by a hazy purple brilliance,
Floating in my direction
A positive thought.
Possibility
“I am a good listener.”
Corny, yes
But I like that
For a moment, I like me
Connection
Brilliant fire envelops
Light radiates from within me
A supernova, I shine overwhelmingly
Before collapsing in on myself
With the light gone
I lie in darkness,
but not despair.
Glowing dimly,
A flickering ember sits in the corner
Hope
Nov 14, 2012
Nov 14, 2012 at 1:01 PM UTC
The skies grow dark,
Clouds gathering,
Obscuring the sun in an instant.
The last stand,
One final protest,
As defences break,
Screams,
Pain,
Blood,
Death,
Fills my head,
And all becomes clear,
Di Ffrin, Di Sstrek,
Is my reality,
A sweet melody,
Unsettling,
But sweet,
Oh yes!
It consumes me,
The light leaves,
All becomes dark,
And all makes perfect sense,
They could not help me,
There was no way they could,
But now I have it,
What I need,
The realisation,
In the darkness,
The Purity of Lies.
Apr 1, 2015
Apr 1, 2015 at 11:49 AM UTC
I am the lust of the universe
longing to know itself
I am the thoughts like a cascading stream
water pummeling the rock of my soul
molding, shaping, forming, conforming
I am the peace of the bamboo forest
a society of shoots
shades of green solitude
standing together, clunking hollow,
serene, transfixing parallel angles, mesmerizing
obscuring the gaze beyond, reflecting within
drops drip and fall with a shake
I am the child throwing sand into the ocean,
jumping from the rushing water
challenging fate with a raised fist and a laugh to do his worst
I am the dancer in the waves
lifted by the tides
pirouetting in the current
I am the red stone cliff on the sea shore
sovereign stratum carved
growing with green, lush yet hard
I am the buttressed black lava rock
standing in the water, remote and mysterious
accepting time and erosion, jagged
I am the new sun rising red
arising from the mountain mist swirling on the ocean
ascending from the clouded horizon
a grand illusion of motion, perception, the seer
I am the beach wood
fallen from the trees standing
as sentinels to the ebb and flow
laughing in silence with the wind and the sound of tides whooshing
I am the surfer
riding the energy of the earth
slicing across the liquid wall face
I am the flag of men
unifying and dividing
I am the sand welcoming water and feet
soft as creamy butter
I am the mother and the son
replenishing, trailing, following, playing, watching
sharing belly buttons
I am the butterfly gliding on the Kona wind
wandering immortal
Jan 5, 2014
Jan 5, 2014 at 8:05 PM UTC
This silk is eager for damp skin.
It clings greedily to the peaks of
your topography, obscuring, like
fog, only the depressions.
I am a basin filled with fluid,
eager to capsize,
to spill out over this tile floor
like so much vanilla bath water.
At your heat, I boil.
I billow out from beneath
cream and sugar taffeta
with the whispered sigh of
softly hissing steam and
in tendrils, my tempestuous
mist and moisture form
settles lightly into your
crevices.
Apr 16, 2019
Apr 16, 2019 at 11:08 PM UTC
Raindrops striking the window pane
I need to wipe them off...
I try,
BUT, they keep gushing
Blocking sight, the scene, efforts in vain
Bluring everything, obscuring everything
WAIT
Is it just me?
Then I realise - I'm crying
.
That window will break, someday, some time...
Shall that crack in that window..
"Snap!"
everything shall spill
Rain will flood in, and it's more than my eyes they will fill
Drenching everthing
Someone needs to wipe them away!
I'll try. I'll TRY. I'LL TRY.
Why isn't anyone helping me?
Mum, why do you stray?
.
Raindrops are falling,
Raindrops getting desperate, falling harder.
No one understands why they are, not even my Mother
They etch and carve at my window pains. Slowly..... eventually..... it will end in drains
Slowly.
Eventually.
One day.
.
Hallucinations. More carving, from cheeks to arms
Raindrops turn red.
No longer in drips, more of streams and river beds
Down the clear glass, seemingly steady and seemingly smooth
They keep waking me up in the middle of the night
I can't sleep. On my bed I flop.
That familar tune - monotonomous, dreadful:
"Drip, Drip, Drip, Drop."
Do you have them window pains?
Feb 22, 2012
Feb 22, 2012 at 11:23 AM UTC
All I can see
is a wasteland of
stone, glass, metal,
and wooden rubble
in an open air prison
where children are living.
Six thousand bombs,
stirring up
thick clouds of grey dust,
obscuring the horrors
people are enduring.
The attackers are
barely even
warning people
to move on.
The exits are blocked.
The power and water is off.
The suffering doesn’t stop,
and these civilians
are unable to leave.
How are you unable to see
the hell spring of grief
that is burning human beings,
the furnace that still cooks
even when no one bothers to look
because all of the crooks
were just waiting
for the perfect excuse
to make the news
with a justified genocide.
Mass ****** and more oppression
with the weapons
America supplied,
and guess what,
another child just died,
more parents got radicalized,
and if they survive
will you be surprised
if hate is the new demoncont.
that wears their tired red eyes.
The rich guys lied and decided
that unequal retaliation
is perfectly justified,
so we are on a road
to the extinction of
human decency
as the world murders
our collective humanity.
Crack, boom,
the sound of thunder blooms
orange heated chaos,
breaking the foundation
an entire building.
A whole family line
gets an early burial,
as what’s left of my heart
gets carried inside,
popped in a box
to be buried alive,
because their beat
was the same as mine.
Nothing I write
will change the minds
of those unwilling to
listen and see people who
are close to total annihilation,
as deserving of love,
and compassion,
but even so
I am still asking.
Help, please, help!?!
Instead we get beheadings,
mass shootings,
****** assault,
retaliation,
and the expectation
of more tragedy to come.
I can easily condemn
violent actions taken,
but I need to understand
the origins of this rocky foundation,
and potential solutions,
because I can’t stand the
horrors I am facing
without eventually breaking.
Dec 2, 2023
Dec 2, 2023 at 8:46 AM UTC
970
Color—Caste—Denomination—
These—are Time’s Affair—
Death’s diviner Classifying
Does not know they are—
As in sleep—All Hue forgotten—
Tenets—put behind—
Death’s large—Democratic fingers
Rub away the Brand—
If Circassian—He is careless—
If He put away
Chrysalis of Blonde—or Umber—
Equal Butterfly—
They emerge from His Obscuring—
What Death—knows so well—
Our minuter intuitions—
Deem unplausible—
3k
Where is death today?
Busily hiding the bodies,
Or hunched beside a car loosening wheel bolts,
Placing a dark hand over a traffic light,
Squeezing the shotgun trigger,
Or strapped in a wheelchair
Disguised as a patient and wheeling rapidly around the hospital wards,
Removing the soap.
Or maybe cycling down the motorway
The large black cloak neatly bundled into the waistband
Right trouser leg tucked into a black sock
A bone poking out the toe
The Reaper strapped to the bicycle crossbar
Blade hanging to the rear
But not obscuring the red reflector
Wearing Kevlar gloves when handling the scythe
And Vis a Vest neatly tied with a bow
At the very least a reflective armband.
Or possibly fixing a puncture on his way to my home...Bad form then
On arrival should I greet with “Come in, you look perished! ”
Discuss the weather as a distraction
I could offer new socks
Like every interview this might not go well.
Jun 4, 2017
Jun 4, 2017 at 7:50 PM UTC
Are you that lit candle, to show someone the way? Are you shining in the night, as well as in the day?
Are you that lit candle, keeping someone from stumbling? If someone happen to trip, this will be very humbling.
Are you that lit candle, that's shinning bright? Are you delivering people out of darkness, down the path that is right?
Are you that lit candle, with a clear reflection? It's up to you to continue to shine, regardless of any rejection.
Are you that lit candle, that sit high on a hill? Are you placed in the right spot, so your light can be revealed?
Are you that lit candle with a perfect glow? Make sure it is shinning, so people know where to go.
Are you that lit candle, brightening everyone's smile. It will help them to receive strength, to go the extra mile.
Are you that lit candle, only to hide? Obscuring the light to enter, all types of people eyes?
In this world today, everyone need the light. Keep your candle before them, in plain view of their sight.
By, Author & Poet, Sandra Juanita Nailing
Apr 14, 2014
Apr 14, 2014 at 2:25 AM UTC
Pretty boy, singing your pretty words:
pouring liquid symphonies into my ear,
knowing exactly what I want to hear.
Stolen words, from a romance guide;
pried from the heart of your previous lover,
and some two, three, four or maybe five girls other.
Cooing sweet nothings in your honey voice.
It is not enough, a mating ritual parade,
because I’ve been there before and I know your charade.
Don’t you understand? - what you did to me.
Demon possessed or a facade dropped,
the memory: the pain, the anxiety, the shock.
What you want is untouched, an untampered babe.
Yet again, you devote your concert to me,
but I don’t want it and you don’t really want me.
I am stitched back together, corrupt by your hand.
Your photocopied scars adjourn my skin,
but the ink seeped deeper, obscuring your sin.
And you’ll never understand, what you did to me:
because you’re still a pretty boy, with your pretty words
and I'll deal with the trauma, my story unheard.
Nov 2, 2018
Nov 2, 2018 at 9:22 PM UTC
The inlets
Wrap around the water
Writhing in the fury of the ocean’s waves,
Obscuring the distance they reveal
To the eyes that gaze absent mindedly
Down their beaches and their cliffs.
Indifferent to the conflict below,
The sun blazes down
But the winds cleanse the skin of its heat
As they are driven from the sea.
The sea that breaks the stoic rocks
And casts the sand’s lonely grains
-Along with the many homeless winds-
Across the beaches which slope
At the feet of their stony bluffs.
But the cliffs stand in austere grandeur
Defiantly surveying the endless waters
Whose numerous, ceaseless, enduring waves
Are kept at bay by the towering unity.
I am of the wind that has no home
In the conflict of sea and land
I am the sun that lights this vision:
Firmament of hills, sea and sand.
Tides come and go but never leave me
Sands shift in time but never deceive me
As sun I shine light on all at hand:
This ceaseless meeting of sea and land.
Sep 19, 2012
Sep 19, 2012 at 6:00 PM UTC
Upon the gate
Words inscribed
"TRESPASSERS BEWARE"
Behind me mist recedes
Steep cliff revealed
At the brink I tense
My footsteps echo as
The gate looms larger
Damp black rocks under
Hits me the tortured's howls
As I step across the threshold
Legs steady, eyes set
Dense fog obscuring
Flame and body
The torch flickers
A winding path I follow
Patient and unwavering
With sword unsheathed
Cold wind announces my destination
Before me the chasm yawns
From my hands the flickering torch
Fell boucing down jagged rocks
I grasp the hilt of my sword
Light refracting off the blade
I hold it outward through the fog
Its light dimming by the minute
And await the terrors to come
Rumbling from the distance
The gate crashes down
Darkness falls upon this realm
The chilly wind picking up
All sounds coming to a halt
I close my eyes
Steps unsteady as I pick my way
Not knowing how many
Gasping I pull my feet back
As it touched empty space
Then tentatively I inch
Forward with a heavy breath
Until I stop at the very brink
For a minute staying still yet
With a lurch I slip into the chasm
Cloak billowing above me I
Flail around in a frenzy
I feel the cool hilt still and
Point the sword downwards
Taking a deep breath and
Bracing for the impact
Jul 25, 2024
Jul 25, 2024 at 7:37 PM UTC
thinking about how cops are beating protestors senseless not even 20 minutes from where i live.
thinking about how they block off the streets and stand unmasked, batons in hand, other hand resting pointedly on their gun.
thinking about how it could be me next— another unspecified black face and black body and black existence snuffed out— a hashtag, a mural.
(and those are the lucky ones.)
thinking about how a memorial is the best case scenario for a black life.
thinking about the bodies in the street.
thinking about blood splattering the ground, mixing with paint and obscuring the “black lives matter” lettering on the road.
thinking about the chalk art and loud music in a neighborhood soon-to-be-gentrified.
thinking about how we’ve grown used to the stench of rotting flesh outside our doors.
thinking about the taste of blood in my mouth from my nearly-severed tongue i didn’t realize i was biting.
thinking about the tension in my neck and jaw.
thinking about the way my eyes never seem to close.
thinking about the eyes that will never again open.
thinking thinking thinking.
Sep 27, 2020
Sep 27, 2020 at 4:27 PM UTC
Red lips
Bright eyes
You're my everyday eclipse
A celestial body obscuring other guys
With you
There is no other
The skies may be blue
But with you, it's full of thunder
Sparks fell
Traveling through
Every nerve; every cell
Feelings of love imbued
Celestial you
For you are like a gift from heaven
Supremely good; Forever true
My valuable possession
Do you now see
How much I am in love with you?
Nov 1, 2014
Nov 1, 2014 at 12:15 PM UTC
Through the fields of stars and through the black forest,
And always West, trailing behind them a glowing disk,
With their frizzy coats and gnarling smiles; the heroes try to **** them with meteors.
Scattered shards of stone-fire bits, and the ashen paw prints evading it,
…and the horse shines upon Lykaon’s grave.
Howling are the wolves of Phanes, their number growling with the rains.
And matching windy howling screams, with hoots and hollers inbetween…
The great horns point at the wolven den, from which Fenrir’s gaze sees all man’s sin.
And the flames of Cerberus lick the hori-zon;
…as he descends into Hell’s cave,
And the Drakon hungry for lycanthropes, he hunts the plains of Hades;
But the cunning beasts avoid him while calling out to the moon, over their master’s grave.
Calling out over Lykaon’s grave,
Cyclopean-cotton collects, a smoking pillar covering guide. Obscuring the light and now they are vexed, as the Lykos struck down, they have died.
And their flesh is what the Drakon does crave, as they are devoured on the stones of Lykaon’s grave,
…at that place known as Lykaon’s grave,
Struck down with asters
and gobbled-up,
over Lykaon’s grave.
Wyrd-wolven stars at night
…over Lykaon’s grave,
A werewolf at,
The entrance,
To the cave,
And that King,
…who stands before Lykaon’s grave.
Jun 14, 2016
Jun 14, 2016 at 3:00 PM UTC