"orion" poems
The moon shines a cool blue tonight
as we entwine our fingers, laying on the baseball field
beneath diamond heavens. We lie
in silence, in the moments when the Universe reveals
itself, and contemplate the distances between one celestial body to
another, the space between
us growing as I turn south
to find Orion while you seek Cassiopeia in the north.
Shooting stars cross the sky, and we wish separately on dead
stars and dead dreams, lights already grown red and extinguished
as we whisper in the dark, passing
between phases.
And in the end we're all left searching.
Mar 4, 2015
Mar 4, 2015 at 8:51 PM UTC
ever since i was young,
my gaze was drawn skyward.
i could tell you the story of orion,
and how to brush bernice's hair,
before i could tell you that two plus two equals four.
i know more about our vast universe,
than i know about many of my friends.
if you are not well acquainted with a pisces,
let me give you a bit of an introduction:
we are compassionate, imaginative,
we adapt to whatever is thrown at us,
and my personal favourite,
we are unfalteringly loyal.
however...
we are full of self-hate,
prone to laziness,
we are escapists
and horrendously easy to manipulate.
i believe my horoscope today is complete ********
i do not feel utterly lovely,
i know i will not score a date
because no one feels for me romantically.
i've nothing to flaunt.
the horoscopes are saccharine lies,
but, those traits? those are me.
my soul is ancient,
i feel the pain of struggles i have not faced,
or rather, have not YET faced;
i will split my soul in two
i will break my bones
i will give every drop of my blood
i will breathe my last breath
for those that i love.
i spent two years of my life giving my heart and soul to a sagittarius.
philosophical, adventurous.
i admired him so.
but his negatives--
inconsistent. overconfident.
careless.
he was a burning house.
my mother, also a pisces, when all was said and done,
told me to stay away from those sagittarius boys.
they're dangerous for wary, fretful fish like us,
who ask 'from what bridge?' when we are told to jump.
Aug 17, 2014
Aug 17, 2014 at 11:02 PM UTC
It was golden and splendid,
That City of light;
A vision suspended
In deeps of the night;
A region of wonder and glory, whose temples were marble and white.
I remember the season
It dawn'd on my gaze;
The mad time of unreason,
The brain-numbing days
When Winter, white-sheeted and ghastly, stalks onward to torture and craze.
More lovely than Zion
It shone in the sky
When the beams of Orion
Beclouded my eye,
Bringing sleep that was filled with dim mem'ries of moments obscure and gone by.
Its mansions were stately,
With carvings made fair,
Each rising sedately
On terraces rare,
And the gardens were fragrant and bright with strange miracles blossoming there.
The avenues lur'd me
With vistas sublime;
Tall arches assur'd me
That once on a time
I had wander'd in rapture beneath them, and bask'd in the Halcyon clime.
On the plazas were standing
A sculptur'd array;
Long bearded, commanding,
rave men in their day—
But one stood dismantled and broken, its bearded face battered away.
In that city effulgent
No mortal I saw,
But my fancy, indulgent
To memory's law,
Linger'd long on the forms in the plazas, and eyed their stone features with
awe.
I fann'd the faint ember
That glow'd in my mind,
And strove to remember
The aeons behind; &
21.4k
From where I lingered in a lull in march
outside the sugar-house one night for choice,
I called the fireman with a careful voice
And bade him leave the pan and stoke the arch:
‘O fireman, give the fire another stoke,
And send more sparks up chimney with the smoke.’
I thought a few might tangle, as they did,
Among bare maple boughs, and in the rare
Hill atmosphere not cease to glow,
And so be added to the moon up there.
The moon, though slight, was moon enough to show
On every tree a bucket with a lid,
And on black ground a bear-skin rug of snow.
The sparks made no attempt to be the moon.
They were content to figure in the trees
As Leo, Orion, and the Pleiades.
And that was what the boughs were full of soon.
21.6k
By David John Mowers
Oceanus, Acheron, Styx and Gyges, Phlegethon,
Phaeacians lament, mourn the loss, Scheria, dissolved in froths.
Virgil’s tale, found correct, a land too good, a nation wrecked,
Nausikaa, burn the ships; their minds released, cool airy nips,
Below the wave, watery grave, submerged to bottom, fathoms by stave,
Fathoms some more, until the whorl, descending to, another world.
Through Omphalos, to Land of Sleep, awaits a beast, where time has ceased,
Darkness here, underworld, cold and frigid, below the whirl,
In solemn grave, souls released, judged and counted, by the beast,
Deeper than, the deep itself, past drowning fairies and dying elves,
Who did mourn them? Those golden men, magic mariners, Mino's kin?
What wrong was seen? What vice not true? What awful sin? What did they do?
One thousand years, first black age, Two thousand more, to find the stage,
Cast off Aries and cast Orion, to find beginning, of Golden Lion.
Man of Heavens, Beast agrees, Bull of Sky, Ox of seas,
Land of Punt, Land of Éire, Ogyges blue, hearts on fire,
All the seashores, all the mines, Tribe of Dan, from ancient times,
Port of Sais, Port of Thera, Port of Lagash, bygone era,
Sailor’s horse, Minotaur, a lyre is crying, strummed guitar, nation dying, abattoir.
Ochre foams to sanguine depth, there they rested, where Kronos slept,
He’ll never answer, he doesn’t care, we’ll never know, if this was fair.
Our hearts in sadness, hands on the gates! I curse you Poseidon!
. . .and your Sea of Fates!
Jun 4, 2016
Jun 4, 2016 at 7:58 AM UTC
Raindrops on golden hair.
They are brown spots, little spots
Scattered, wind blowing them
Left and right,
Towards her forehead, smooth
Save for two red bumps above
The eyebrows.
Towards her neck, little hairs
Standing, stubbornly, scornfully,
A protest against the
Rainy chill.
These freckles on her crown,
they are tiny constellations.
I want to join them up,
I want to find Orion,
Trace my fingers against Lepus,
Understand the lines of Indus,
But I can't.
Sep 10, 2014
Sep 10, 2014 at 9:43 AM UTC
A moonlit dance beneathe constellations
not Taurus or Gemini, Delphinus or Orion
but stars we named together
linking lines from star to star
hands pointing in air so cold
a tear falls and
another
leaving a roadmap on my cheeks
that you
chase
chase
chase
lifting the palm of your hand
so cold to the touch I shiver
feeling the beauty of my tears
that glisten like Venus in the midnight sky
of this cold Parisian night
you smile in jest and
I misplace the space
between you and I and that sky
whispering "do you love me?"
how could I resist the beauty of
our second to last kiss.
© Sia Jane
Apr 28, 2015
Apr 28, 2015 at 7:24 PM UTC
Do you remember the garden?
Do you remember the garden?
Where
we
lived.
The Charlotte roses filled the wild,
peace was uncaged, unbroken,
and the dragons and doves flew together,
And the thousand horses ran free.
And the thousand horses ran free.
I notice resting inside your eyes
and heart hasn't been so hard. Wrestling for you,
holding you,
like a child, it hasn't
been so different.
I'm taking you back there, Eve
into the Land of Eden,
just drink of my lips
a little longer and you'll remember
and see.
Do you like to dance, Eve?
Let me make your imagination full
Then let me bring it to war as we step
into it's gates.
Let’s Dance.
For the wind of the evening
still weaves dreams between
the heavens and the earth.
There. Look.
For your heart outshines the moon, I see the hurt, the regret
The pain in the pool of you precious eyes.
And I still see you, I still love you
For you.
I hear the rhythm of your breath
and dreams, the electricity and earth
of your voice. I see the blood written
words in your heart, let me show you what
they are.
Now see the memories come
together, as you believe.
The endless garden,
the red cedars,
the cool four rivers crashing
near the rock, where we once slept.
And look, where we hid.
See, like I promised you, we are here again,
we are here.
Where the petals sip the dew upon
the face of the earth.
where the rain and the moonlight has
not fallen.
Now look at the stars, Eve. Everyone of those stars
are named, the star of Orion, the Bear,
and Leo, everyone of them.
Everyone of them will fall
Everyone of them,
Everyone of them.
So don't be afraid in your pain
in your feelings,
just come to me.
For you can take my hand,
and be safe in my arms of
love. Even when it all falls.
Even when it all comes crashing down.
Just
Trust me.
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Apr 6, 2015
Apr 6, 2015 at 12:08 AM UTC
Clusters of stars burst to life in your eyes.
Your heart is like Nebulus;
Orion - your mind.
You are a Constellation
Of magical sensations,
No natural explanation
Can anyone find.
Glorious spectacle.
Worthy and respectable.
Very unpredictable;
A Constellation sublime.
Fireworks are boring.
I'd rather be adoring
The beauty of your glory.
A vision in the sky.
Suspended over mortals.
No entry through your portals.
No duplicated models.
You're one of a kind.
You are a Constellation.
A memorable elation.
You'll have my admiration
Until the day I die.
Jan 26, 2011
Jan 26, 2011 at 9:19 AM UTC
Between drags of my cigarette,
I lie back on the concrete
and stare into the night sky.
The stars are beautiful tonight, aren’t they?
Not because the air is clear,
or that the heavens are unusually bright
but because tonight I see their depth,
their quiet elegance,
the way they gather into a canvas
stitched across light-years.
The way they align feels like perfection
a harmony born of distance,
comfort found
in the vastness of the abyss.
I trace the Big Dipper,
Orion too.
Not for anyone else,
but for the stone that cradles my skull,
for the roots beneath the soil,
for the spiders weaving
in the leaves at my side.
I’m almost finished with the cigarette now.
But some part of me wants to stay out here,
just me and the stars
serendipity
in their quiet, endless beauty.
Sep 25, 2025
Sep 25, 2025 at 8:20 AM UTC
All the words he never said
Were written in the stars
Look at me,
They seemed to say.
I'm still here
Let me guide you through the night
All the nights we used to spend
Outside the garage.
His favorite constellations embedded in my mind.
Orion the Hunter.
It would never get old.
I was an image of my father,
And together we could stare at the stars all night long.
So people always ask me
Why I am fascinated with the stars
Why at nights I look up at the sky and smile
And I tell them,
He used to admire the stars as I do,
But now,
He is up there.
He is guiding me throughout this life.
My dad is my favorite constellation.
Feb 19, 2016
Feb 19, 2016 at 9:16 PM UTC
i am worn books and french vocabulary, ice cold chai and steaming earl grey. i am stone stares and eyes watering, uncertainty in silence and sharp decisive conversation. i am shaking hands and reciting poetry during anxiety attacks and i am indie rock showers and top-of-your-lungs pop radio in the car. i am empathy without sympathy, crying in the bathroom stall and i am childhood cartoons and your favorite stuffed animal and the beach in the summer. i am desperate to be alone and desperate to scream and desperate to find someone who knows what i mean and still likes me. i am comfort zone constellations, Orion's belt on every nighttime stroll, i am the hollow tree in the backyard of the house we don't own and i am my handwriting and the words in my poems. i am everything you have made me out to be and i hate that; hate that you see all my flaws so clearly but that isn't all of me and i know that now.
i am the trinkets my grandmother left me and her eyes when she looked at me and the way she cried when she read my poetry. i am a thousand ways i have loved those dear to me and the children who fall asleep on me and the way my cat runs to me and i don't need your or anyone's approval but God's and my own. thanks anyway.
Apr 7, 2018
Apr 7, 2018 at 5:10 PM UTC
"Honestly? I'd just cover that up", he says
Orion's not moving. Stars don't move.
They may die, they may dim, they may traverse galaxies
Change position in the night sky with the seasons
Give me one. good. reason.
To cover up my compass home,
The one good thing, the one beautiful thing,
On this scarred and wretched body?
"We'll put Orion somewhere else, start over"
You're not my mother, ripping out a new piercing
Locking the door on a daughter and her father
Drinking and dating and thinking "start over"
My skin is just my skin, the moles and ink
And decisions are mine to live in
How dare you claim yourself an artist,
yet break down your clientele, your canvas
So Orion's not the problem, sir
It's a debauched attitude toward station
When I follow the stars tonight, I will tell them
Needles have no consideration
Aug 5, 2014
Aug 5, 2014 at 4:13 AM UTC
1538
Follow wise Orion
Till you waste your Eye—
Dazzlingly decamping
He is just as high—
4.9k
A star of blood you fell
from the point of the hypodermic
singing of fabulous beasts &
spitting out the *** of vowels
Your poems explode in the mouth
like torrents of ***** on a night
full of zebras & bootheels
Your ghost still cruses the river-
fronts of midnight assignations
in a world of dead sailors carrying
armfuls of flowers in search of
your unmarked grave
Your body no sanctuary for bees,
Death was your lover in a rain of
broken obelisks & rotting orchids
In the tangled rose of a single heartbeat
I offer you the shadow of a double
profile,
two heads held together at the bridge
of the nose by a nail of *****
smoke
in the long night's dreaming
& memory of water poured between
glasses
In my mailbox I find a letter from
a dead man & know that for every
shadow given
one is taken away
Yet subtraction is only a special form of
addition and implies a world of hidden
intentions below a horizon of lips
thin as your fingernail sprouting
mysteries in the earth …
The ace of spades dealt from the bottom
of the deck severs the hand which
retrieves it & the eyes of Beauty
sewn together peer over a black lace fan
in the ****** sunlight of a Spanish
morning without horses
The Belt of Orion is loosened
before you as you remove the silver
fingerstalls from your mummy hands &
kneel to plunder the nightsky in a shower of
bitter diamonds.
(Somewhere under a blanket someone weeps
for a lover.)
Peace to your soul
& to your empty shoes
in the dark closets of
kings with no feet!!!
Apr 17, 2013
Apr 17, 2013 at 4:06 PM UTC
Forget me not as I find myself
Blind to the lies, my knowledge is my own true wealth
Dreams that I lay upon Orion's belt
Your heart is ice cold, passion will make it melt
Forget me not as I walk blind
Right part of the road, wrong side of the lines
Mother nature caresses me faithfully as I feel the wrath of Father Time
I search for clarity, but I cannot find
Squashed grapes on the ground of lies told through the life's grapevine
Forget me not as my heart endures life's maze
Guide me, Lord, through this very day
Spring my faith, like the gentle flowers of May
Tomorrow isn't promised, so all we can do is pray.
Sep 22, 2013
Sep 22, 2013 at 9:38 AM UTC
You once told me that when we die,
we become another star in the night.
I never really cared about your zodiac and lunar signs,
I never paid attention to the solar action shooting by,
You'd wonder if it's magic plans or broken scrap that flew the skies,
You were psychedelic dresses, I was only wrapped in suit and tie,
It never blew my mind until I finally gave your truth a try,
I glimpsed the puzzle pieces in the time before the moon would rise,
A tapestry on galaxies, depicting myths, and human lies,
I guess you proved me wrong again, I was quick to scrutinize.
Now, I'm studying the subjects and sitting in observatories,
Thinking back to when I'd write them off before I heard the stories,
Earth is boring now you're gone, I hope you're up there yearning for me,
Every star's a soul, I'd see you but there's nothing worse than stormy
Nights and light pollution, it's a blinding kind of nuisance,
I'd be admiring your fusion but the sky has turned translucent,
But still I'm plotting charts of stars, I'm always making observations,
Waiting for the day I get to see your face in constellations.
I wanna chase you forever, whether heaven or hell, I'll go,
Can't let you float away, I'll take a world tour with my telescope,
The way I speed through hemispheres, this night will be the death of me,
But otherwise I'd only see you half the year, you're my Persephone,
I'll trek from Arctic harbors, give binoculars to polar bears,
Shiver in my igloo, hands together, say a hopeful prayer,
And no, I won't be lonely there, your soul will be a solar flare,
You'll whisper an aurora, northern lights to let me know you care.
I'll whistle Canis Major and Minor, and let Orion guide me,
I'm quite unlikely to quit, what kind of guy would I be?
To search the Seven Sisters for an eighth and get inside their psyche?
I'll question Cassiopeia, Cygnus, and Pisces nicely,
Ask if they've seen something fishy, and then I'll talk to Taurus,
An orbit tourist, I'm daunted without the gall to forfeit,
So if you're gone, then I'm glad that this was all you taught me,
I live each day for the night and just endure the morning.
Jan 31, 2019
Jan 31, 2019 at 3:50 PM UTC
you are my galaxy
you are my sun
you are the stars i use to navigate this night
you are the beautiful planets
you are my zodiac
my orion and my moon
Sep 10, 2013
Sep 10, 2013 at 4:11 PM UTC
if you look up, you will see
the bright-eyed and
the wide-mouthed—
the interesting, the casual, the adored
glistening in the warm night
peered at through microscopes and
telescopes and stethoscopes
far and far away
we are so desperate to be close
close and close and
close enough to see the blemishes
the scarring and the peeling
effaced by obvious and biased inner-commentary
they’re just not as red or sore as mine
perhaps they were formed under
a different kind of sun
what does the unfamiliar heart say?
does it sound at all like mine?
will i ever escape the sloppy grasp of dullness?
will the world swallow me whole?
if i count the days on both hands
on toes, on eyelashes—
if i only eat green things and
read tattered books and
pretend that i don’t mind—will i ever
break the mirror?
will i find seven years of good luck
between the jagged edges?
to exist as a reflection
is to not exist at all
there are lonely, dark purple heavens
waiting for you to sever your longing gaze
to stop lying to yourself
to hop onto the back of the cow
and begin living somewhere beyond the moon—
to realize, with closed eyes
you belong to the sky
Aug 28, 2018
Aug 28, 2018 at 4:36 PM UTC
Emerging from the darkness,
Your face is encircled with stars of Orion.
Fog surrounding your silhouette.
Overwhelming force field separating
My aura from yours.
Walk a fine street of plated gold,
Deploring plastic cores,
and camera stores.
Flying fast,
Screaming at the past.
Back down from the galaxy.
I scream with ecstasy;
"I am Shakespearean!
I am Freudian!"
You are Napolean,
King Henry and Led Zeppelin!"
Crash, smash, crack myself open.
Electromagnetic magnetism.
Dec 29, 2013
Dec 29, 2013 at 11:10 PM UTC
What's usually blemished considered a sin
Your accent marks on porcelain skin
Each crafted by caring clean hands
Crafted like a Persian Carpet
Each imperfection intended
So imperfectly perfect
Rich, pale, silk tapestry
Lily pads that dot a foreign river
Falls last leaves on Winters first snow
Paint splattered on white canvas
Each inch speckled
Every crevice freckled
I'll find each one you wear
The Astrology of your body
Making constellations with my finger
Your back is Gemini
Orion on your shoulder
Leo for your inner thigh
Serpens, Sextans, Ursa Minor
Late night skies for lonely eyes
Apr 5, 2013
Apr 5, 2013 at 4:09 AM UTC
"I knew this girl once,
she had long hair, so long it whispered tiny kisses along her hips and waist
she had the oddest bluest eyes i'd ever seen, the color of the sky right before it gets completely dark
her thick, long eyelashes framed those eyes, and freckles formed constellations across her cheeks
i could almost draw the big dipper and Orion's belt on her milky white face.
She didn't know i existed but i admired her from afar. I could tell she was educated- She always had some form of poetry in her hand. But of all the things i could have noticed about her i noticed her bookmarks. She would lose them all the time, i would see her chasing after the scraps of paper as they flew through the wind down the street. She'd stick anything in between those pages, wrappers of all sorts, leaves, pennies, shoelaces, once i even saw a page ripped from a different book. It became my favorite game to guess what the next bookmark would be. After awhile she stopped chasing the various bookmarks across the city and she cut all that long hair off, then awhile after that she started using unoriginal, uninspired plain old bookmarks.Then even awhile that she stopped bringing books altogether, until one day she didn't show up. Nobody knew that beautiful, mysterious, bookmark making girl was locked up inside her own mind. Nobody knew she hated her long hair and her freckles and even those baby blues. Nobody knew that she couldn't stand to live in her skin anymore so much that she swallowed a couple pills one night to ease away the pain. Even worse was she didn't know i watched her for so long and thought she was the most interesting human being i'd ever encountered. That girl committed suicide because she hated herself learn from her mistake, my mistake, everyone who ever noticed her bookmarks mistake, and don't do this, don't off yourself with a .45 before you've even had a chance to live" he's desperate now
"please please you don't have to do this" he sputters
I answer simply " I never was much of a bookmark girl, i always dog-eared my pages"
bang
Nov 6, 2013
Nov 6, 2013 at 6:35 PM UTC
A domino pile are my notebooks
and the bottom thoughts
hold my wand.
Unleashed with certain and schemes,
the past asking what ends meets means.
Walking somewhere
going through,
But be careful to slay the monster,
what a story can become.
Once the swift master,
now a slave to my dog.
The Archer and Orion,
Apollo and Venus shining.
Battle for my sake.
It is, there minds and souls
weaved from foxed cloves
the slip in space and rhyme.
Just in my skin as a stitch
and storm to sailor's plight,
"Oh my captain, Ishmael
Sank into the night!"
Leaning Tower now breaks
inside,
opened window to the sunrise.
Tap. Tap.
Went the sound of ink,
Ocean breathes me
I breathe the sea
princess and
pea
Oct 29, 2012
Oct 29, 2012 at 1:21 PM UTC
I think that I might fly away, in my hot air balloon,
And hide from worldly worries on the dark side of the moon;
There’s but one thing I need before I float into the blue:
I need a sky companion and I want it to be you.
We’ll fly beyond the storm clouds and we’ll watch from up above,
I’ll cover you in rainbows as we feel each others’ love;
You’ll shower in the stars at midnight in our special place,
I’ll dry you with a comet’s tail and kiss your beaming face.
Dreamy drifting panorama, changing every day,
Every night your loving smile will be my milky way,
The moon will wane before us, sailing there in heaven’s height,
For nothing else can challenge our love’s everlasting light.
Venus shining on us, glowing soft at our devotion,
Our daily drifting dalliance in love’s celestial ocean,
I’ll write you lovers’ poetry, and you will be my muse,
Orion and Andromeda will oversee our cruise.
We’ll sleep with clouds as pillows, maybe steal an angel’s wings,
Then fly as magic lovebirds, or slide round Saturn’s rings,
And should we tire of drifting and the stars all floating by,
We’ll hook onto a meteor and soar across the sky.
Will you consent to be my mate on our celestial ship?
I’m ready, heart all packed with love, to last us for the trip,
Take my hand and step aboard, we’re heading for the sun,
We’re flying till we find the place where our two souls are one.
Dec 6, 2011
Dec 6, 2011 at 11:36 PM UTC