"pathless" poems
Idly stationed in the bucolic hills,
sits a stone well; unknown when abandoned.
Though her people foregone, water yet fills
as much as you can want for. In tandem,
are high trees less old than she; occluding
the view from pathless and naive strangers.
As their wish in well is to keep obtuse,
those that siren would otherwise capture.
Her drink, one thinks they'll constantly receive.
In reality, they'll only be taken.
Youth will fade as the heart minutely bleeds.
Their hollow, dried corpse will be forsaken.
And though her hole but a tall dark crevice,
I see my reflection on the surface.
Jul 12, 2018
Jul 12, 2018 at 4:16 PM UTC
her milk is him
her eyes are full of good tidings,
washing my body with lavender soap cake,
all the dirt crumbs of a hard life drained
into a circle of holes that carry away carings,
to places where their squeaking can’t be heard
her hands, pillows for a head so sorrow-weighty,
her body, her hips, a bed upon to rest,
and he wonders,
how did he exist before she become his nest,
her hair of grass, now, a coverlet for twigs and strings,
when then he laid his body down for disturbed sleep
her milk is him, a restorative that refreshes his content,
how did, once upon a time, he let existence subtract
his time on earth without any relativity, time unrecognizable,
he was in no one place, pathless, subsidizing nothing,
unable to distinguish tween the straight and the curved
her milk in him, whitens his soul, she calls out,
“*you are my shepherd, my king, my David,
my white marble sculpture of our current existence,
when you drink the white of me, it is I who is fulfilled,
when you write of me, your milk is me*”
May 26, 2019
May 26, 2019 at 4:39 PM UTC
Taking Flight
Soar Off The Ground
And We Were Lost To Be Found
Fly Above Commotion
Fueled By Emotion
Transition To The Ocean
An Abyss
Of Bliss
Because The Sky I Kissed
Let Me Drowned
There Was No Sound
Just A Geometric Playground
Dissipate Now
To Euphoric Dust
Empathy
And LSD
Ritually
Taken So Compassionately
Passionately
Lucid
Confused By This
Cosmic Dream
Tore From The Seams
Pathless
But I Let Go Of This
Let Go
Just To Flow
To Melodic Assumptions
Melody Had Me Elated
The Light Sensation
Liquid Creations
Creating Aquatic
Sounds Of The Sonic
Vibrations
Vibrating
Dilating
Pupils Dilated
And It Reflects Back To Me
Reflect The Patterns To My Moves
And I Move With The Motion
Loved And Infinite.
Oct 16, 2014
Oct 16, 2014 at 2:41 AM UTC
The Seashore Gathering
by Rabindranath Tagore
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch
On the seashores of endless worlds, earth's children converge.
The infinite sky is motionless, the restless waters boisterous.
On the seashores of endless worlds earth's children gather to dance with joyous cries and pirouettes.
They build sand castles and play with hollow shells.
They weave boats out of withered leaves and laughingly float them out over the vast deep.
Earth's children play gaily on the seashores of endless worlds.
They do not know, yet, how to cast nets or swim.
Divers fish for pearls and merchants sail their ships, while earth's children skip, gather pebbles and scatter them again.
They are unaware of hidden treasures, nor do they know how to cast nets, yet.
The sea surges with laughter, smiling palely on the seashore.
Death-dealing waves sing the children meaningless songs, like a mother lullabying her baby's cradle.
The sea plays with the children, smiling palely on the seashore.
On the seashores of endless worlds earth's children meet.
Tempests roam pathless skies, ships lie wrecked in uncharted waters, death wanders abroad, and still the children play.
On the seashores of endless worlds there is a great gathering of earth's children.
Originally published by The Chained Muse. My translation is based on an untitled text in Bangla (Bengali) first published in 1912 and known as "60" due to its numerical placement. Tagore made history by becoming the first Asian to win the Nobel Prize for Literature the following year. Keywords/Tags: seashore, gathering, children, sky, sea, water, dance, sand castles, shells, boats, play, nets, swim, fish, pearls, ships, waves, songs, mother, lullaby, baby, cradle, tempests, death
Mar 30, 2020
Mar 30, 2020 at 11:03 PM UTC
Through the eyes of mine
that glitter and shine
into the fog of nothing
I see arcane paths and a frantic heart
I run away to feel safe and sound
Still the tail follows me around
Frenetic efforts and sleepless nights
Go into the fog of nothing…
When I look around
I see a imperfect past that surround
A flickering that guides
Into the fog of nothing
The pathless woods are eerie
This chanciness so weary
Yet the flickering star would guide
Through the fog of nothing…
Apr 4, 2022
Apr 4, 2022 at 5:26 AM UTC
High-mindedness, a jealousy for good,
A loving-kindness for the great man's fame,
Dwells here and there with people of no name,
In noisome alley, and in pathless wood:
And where we think the truth least understood,
Oft may be found a "singleness of aim,"
That ought to frighten into hooded shame
A money-mongering, pitiable brood.
How glorious this affection for the cause
Of steadfast genius, toiling gallantly!
What when a stout unbending champion awes
Envy and malice to their native sty?
Unnumbered souls breathe out a still applause,
Proud to behold him in his country's eye.
2.6k
Whither, midst falling dew,
While glow the heavens with the last steps of day,
Far, through their rosy depths, dost thou pursue
Thy solitary way?
Vainly the fowler's eye
Might mark thy distant flight to do thee wrong,
As, darkly seen against the crimson sky,
Thy figure floats along.
Seek'st thou the plashy brink
Of weedy lake, or marge of river wide,
Or where the rocking billows rise and sink
On the chafed ocean-side?
There is a Power whose care
Teaches thy way along that pathless coast--
The desert and illimitable air--
Lone wandering, but not lost.
All day thy wings have fanned,
At that far height, the cold, thin atmosphere,
Yet stoop not, weary, to the welcome land,
Though the dark night is near.
And soon that toil shall end;
Soon shalt thou find a summer home, and rest,
And scream among thy fellows; reeds shall bend,
Soon, o'er thy sheltered nest.
Thou 'rt gone, the abyss of heaven
Hath swallowed up thy form; yet, on my heart
Deeply hath sunk the lesson thou hast given,
And shall not soon depart.
He who, from zone to zone,
Guides through the boundless sky thy certain flight,
In the long way that I must tread alone,
Will lead my steps aright.
2.3k
Lament our random tuesday
– I can't see today the sunny day
of our last spring leaves again
in a treeless pathless meadow
that spring day of silver tounges tarnished.
Dessicated earth is seeping in the blue glass,
the dry cracked plain rising above the sun,
the suns clarity as it is in reality,
and where we have been – I will always remember.
There are no oasis' on my equator.
The Wendigo subdued with pale skill.....
Whose corpse can fail to compare with my soul,
if despair and courage aren't in my heart! -
And if your scent, a mundane beast,
tears at my knees everyday,
and the suns dull golden light,
chilled by a slow approaching wave
for all of our words?
Jul 3, 2012
Jul 3, 2012 at 4:45 PM UTC
Complexion of free-flowing colors; multitudes one moment; shining formations the next.
Bright the sunlight of high-noon.
Water, how universally eclectic.
And it was thus,
on this laden breeze,
I was brought to the lightest of ease.
What need is there to seek,
When it is all prevalent, here, under the blue of this waterfall.
Streaming pristine mosaics of iridescent green.
Right here, I wish to lay in mirror-glass cure complexions.
Mingling fingers among the pebbles, I marvel.
This quarry of my mind.
Nature at best and mostly green, I guess.
Of this I wish to bring to you,
Or you to it.
Whomever it is that you might be.
A land, however far away.
Happiness, the ultimate goal.
I surely need no intervention, for
The pathless trail lies clear, suitably
Ahead of me.
Bringing power to those obscure;
The life of this beauty –
What isn’t there to love?
Nov 28, 2011
Nov 28, 2011 at 10:37 PM UTC
I hear guitars a’ calling in the gloaming’s final fling
when sinking suns subdue their flames and fairies take to wing
as day departs, a yawning ash, beneath a dusky haze
igniting one by one the jewels of midnight’s diamond blaze.
I hear guitars a’ calling in the clouds within the skies,
with tunes which trill like welling tears from somber misting eyes
of misplaced muted homeless souls who drift alone in grief
beneath the silence of the stars that offers no relief.
I hear guitars a’ calling in the beat beneath her breast;
their murmur throbs with passion’s pulse and sensuous unrest
that rumbles deep in worried woods before impending storms
and splits the air in morning meadows, ere the sunrise warms.
I hear guitars a’ calling in the pitter-patter rain
which summons with a soothing sound upon my window pane
evoking bygone childhood dreams within a vagrant breeze
engulfing me in gusty swirls down misty vortices.
I hear guitars a’ calling in the waves on distant shores;
they’re crashing out a monody upon the mystic oars
of phantom ships within the dawn, like speckled caravels
a’ sail on seas of raven wings to moonlit citadels.
I hear guitars a’ calling in the morning’s reveilles;
they’re pouring fires in the skies and burning up the seas,
while waking flowers in the fields and setting trees ablaze,
and closing one by one the eyes of midnight’s starry gaze.
I hear guitars a’ calling in the deserts of my mind;
they’re nullifying hollow realms that time has left behind,
where pathless sands are blazing hot, the sun is set to die
and weary hounds are panting faint’, their tongues hung long and dry.
Jul 23, 2013
Jul 23, 2013 at 5:44 AM UTC
'Don't drive me away,
But hear what I say:
Bad men want the gold;
They will steal it to-night,
And you must take flight;
So be quiet and busy and bold.'
'Slip away with me,
And you will see
What a wise little thing am I;
For the road I show
No man can know,
Since it's up in the pathless sky.'
1.6k
All the night in woe,
Lyca’s parents go:
Over vallies deep.
While the desarts weep.
Tired and woe-begone.
Hoarse with making moan:
Arm in arm seven days.
They trac’d the desert ways.
Seven nights they sleep.
Among shadows deep:
And dream they see their child
Starvdd in desart wild.
Pale thro’ pathless ways
The fancied image strays.
Famish’d, weeping, weak
With hollow piteous shriek
Rising from unrest,
The trembling woman prest,
With feet of weary woe;
She could no further go.
In his arms he bore.
Her arm’d with sorrow sore:
Till before their way
A couching lion lay.
Turning back was vain,
Soon his heavy mane.
Bore them to the ground;
Then he stalk’d around.
Smelling to his prey,
But their fears allay,
When he licks their hands:
And silent by them stands.
They look upon his eyes
Fill’d with deep surprise:
And wondering behold.
A spirit arm’d in gold.
On his head a crown
On his shoulders down,
Flow’d his golden hair.
Gone was all their care.
Follow me he said,
Weep not for the maid;
In my palace deep.
Lyca lies asleep.
Then they followed,
Where the vision led;
And saw their sleeping child,
Among tygers wild.
To this day they dwell
In a lonely dell
Nor fear the wolvish howl,
Nor the lion’s growl.
1.6k
Sitting in silent bliss,
absorbed in the Absolute,
that perfect smile
so at home
on your beautiful,
radiant face.
Regal as a queen, laughter
busts out of you
suddenly
like tropical rain.
A colorful flower opening
in time-lapse magic.
Hands of finest delicacy,
refined by teaching
the pathless path
to infinity.
A mind as clear and wise
as the heart is kind,
strong and loyal.
Infinite tenderness is
the Unity within you.
One early morning,
first of your birthdays
I was to celebrate,
watermelon juice whirred
to completion while I cut
two huge banana leaves
on which to place my gifts
before your door.
In the yogic flying hall,
just a little later,
there you were, transformed.
A Balinese angel wearing jade
green wings sat amongst us.
Soft dark hair swept up into a
sanyasi's top knot, and that
same eternal smile of bliss.
You were wearing the love I had
given you, making those giant leaves
into wings that would carry us into
decades of friendship, through
passages of loved ones, and
life's hardest challenges.
Unfathomably,
wherever we are on
Mother Earth,
we are always we,
even as you are you,
and I am always me.
Oct 18, 2015
Oct 18, 2015 at 6:05 PM UTC
Our band is few, but true and tried,
Our leader frank and bold;
The British soldier trembles
When Marion's name is told.
Our fortress is the good greenwood,
Our tent the cypress-tree;
We know the forest round us,
As ****** know the sea.
We know its walls of thorny vines,
Its glades of reedy grass,
Its safe and silent islands
Within the dark morass.
Wo to the English soldiery
That little dread us near!
On them shall light at midnight
A strange and sudden fear:
When waking to their tents on fire
They grasp their arms in vain,
And they who stand to face us
Are beat to earth again;
And they who fly in terror deem
A mighty host behind,
And hear the ***** of thousands
Upon the hollow wind.
Then sweet the hour that brings release
From danger and from toil:
We talk the battle over,
And share the battle's spoil.
The woodland rings with laugh and shout,
As if a hunt were up,
And woodland flowers are gathered
To crown the soldier's cup.
With merry songs we mock the wind
That in the pine-top grieves,
And slumber long and sweetly
On beds of oaken leaves.
Well knows the fair and friendly moon
The band that Marion leads--
The glitter of their rifles,
The scampering of their steeds.
'Tis life to guide the fiery barb
Across the moonlight plain;
'Tis life to feel the night-wind
That lifts his tossing mane.
A moment in the British camp--
A moment--and away
Back to the pathless forest,
Before the peep of day.
Grave men there are by broad Santee,
Grave men with hoary hairs,
Their hearts are all with Marion,
For Marion are their prayers.
And lovely ladies greet our band
With kindliest welcoming,
With smiles like those of summer,
And tears like those of spring.
For them we wear these trusty arms,
And lay them down no more
Till we have driven the Briton,
For ever, from our shore.
1.4k
The way of a man with a maid,
Solomon said,
Too much for him to understand
Too much.
A snake crawling on a rock,
A ship moving across the waves
The motionless soaring of an eagle
Too much to understand.
I have come to grips with a snake's scaly progress,
undulating,
cupping,
twisting,
hugging,
movement upon a rock.
I can nearly sense a ship's purposeful meanderings
on pathless seas,
driven by compass-aimed sails
and the science of sextants and stars.
I have accepted the Bernoulli Principle:
air currents rushing under and
meandering over
curved and feathered wings
producing lift,
defying gravity.
But still I cannot grasp
the way of a man with a maid.
Though I have studied
oxytocin,
endorphins,
hormonal urges,
a man and a maid
who walk through life
past beauty and prime,
surviving the vagaries of time,
seeing in each other
their youth long spent,
still straight and tall in the other's mind,
though old and bent...
must always bring me wondering, to a stop.
Such things, the Wise One said,
Are far too wonderful for me.
Long live love.
Nov 29, 2011
Nov 29, 2011 at 7:53 AM UTC
Falling back to the blank slate
dark night of the soul rising
Supersonic winds are whirling
Megastorms with shattering glass flying
Ooh I feel the acid rain pouring
I see the dust devils dancing
hurricane thunder's wrecking in
Wild Neptune tides are rising
Back and forth rising
Crushing drowning and burning
Neptune tides
Neptune tides
This is a tidal war
It's an etheric war in the pathless land
A battle of the titans
Loosing to the big black hole
The open walls are closing in
But I see the oasis on the horizon
Beconing for my unbegotten soul
My spirit rises with rage
I slay the beasts and chain the demons
Take back my wings of freedom
And set my spirit free
© Sonia Ettyang
2019
May 24, 2019
May 24, 2019 at 1:54 PM UTC
Poetry exceeds me and my wildest dreams.
Ink and tree meet, but my mind missed the means:
Fantasy traps my heart;
Conviction steers the same
Leaving its direction pathless as a gale-less helm.
Sensibility's fervor is strict,
And Leniency's apathy is an empty promise.
What have I done?!
Why would I have listened to this flesh?
Only to destroy it.
I must wait.
May 16, 2012
May 16, 2012 at 1:54 PM UTC
the horse racing to greet dawn
coated in sweat cold winter night
chases his riders desperation into the pathless night
chases his kindred's dream
to fly across the trackless predawn light
to be swifter than the wind
to be as effortless as the burning sun
to be as fast as dreams
pushing himself
he knows his rider must flee
knows the men with knives give chase
know he will perish with this rider
if he does not reach the dawn before them
if he does not ****** destiny from them that chase
pushing harder and harder
mile and another mile, another mile
his thoughts are for the lazy pasture
that he calls home
for the dance of sun and hooves
the cool cool water on a hot day
the sweet taste of fresh oat and meal
his mare beside him
the colt they had borne
his warm home so many miles behind
now he races along the
breaking edge of dawn
each stride his weariness ties to master him
yet his riders desperation pushes him onward
now he races against his mortal endurance
now he races against his dying breath
the men with knives seem immortal
they draw ever closer
the danger of them grasps at his every stride
the horror of them breaths on his tail
now he races against his mortal endurance
beyond any thought but to flee
as the dawn breaks, he slips into darkness
stumbling he fights his way forward
fighting to take another stride
rider and fear forgotten now
as he falls to the cold earth
but his spirit runs faster than wind
but his spirt swifter than dreams
his spirit free now
to a forever pasture of peace and sun
Oct 7, 2017
Oct 7, 2017 at 10:06 AM UTC
To where now?
It's not like I'm at a fork.
More of a spoon in the road.
Collecting stagnant fluid.
Rotting.
Plotting events hidden behind unseen horizons.
Skylines I'll never see.
I keep squinted eye poised on pathless route.
I fumble with maps drawn in crayon.
I keep ear to wind in earnest hope.
Hope of hints.
Hope of tracks in morass moss.
Some indication of somewhere to be.
Some plod, or plot, or spot.
Carved in my image.
Calling me home.
Dec 19, 2011
Dec 19, 2011 at 12:19 PM UTC
I wish I could write poems of distraction. I sit all day in rooms and there are times I am outside and it feels unnatural. I am curious to the state of my insides. Sleep is not reliable. Dreams are not patient.
It is night and it is cold, and as I look up to stare at stars and planets I see car crashes. Orion totalled by a Chevy Cobalt. A pickup dislodging each dipper and sending them reeling to infinity, smacking empty space.
Cold nights are cleansing. I need more time to think. There is so much to be thought, isn't there, so much potential just floating around, pathless, empty. The season will not change for a while. I must build a fire and warm myself.
Dec 5, 2014
Dec 5, 2014 at 10:37 AM UTC
Love
Is a word
With too many definitions
Too many implications
Too little imperfections
What is there to say
But love without words
Like strings without end
Or rain without clouds
This
Without you
Without me
Without love
This is also love
In truth
This
Time and space
Filled with being
Of the wordless word
The loveless love
The dreamless dream
The pathless path
God
is within
Love
Is...
Jun 22, 2022
Jun 22, 2022 at 1:12 PM UTC
I am waiting for the sun to peak through the trees
while I sit on these broken down beams
Motionless I stare into the abyss
wondering what will come from this
I watch the birds swiftly sway from tree to tree as they play
slowly hoping that everything will be okay
People always ask me what I will do
but I can't seem to find anything to say
Silently wishing they would all drift away
so I can just sail somewhere and live astray
I want to get away and not have all these people to pay
I find it weird we have to pay to live on a planet we were born on
Although; these are just things we all have to face
so instead of fighting with the whole human race
I will live here in the pathless woods
for this is my place
Mar 30, 2015
Mar 30, 2015 at 12:22 PM UTC
Destination to my
Heart
Pathless path
Scary
No map
No guides
No crowds
No rules
It’s full of bushes
Of fears and doubts
I am
Just alone
❤️
One commits
To accompany
Yet scared
In my pathless path
Journey to my heart
This journey
full of
Adventures
Discovering the self
Here
I am journeying
In this solitude
Accepting
Embracing
Enjoying and
Loving the self
Cherishing
This loneliness
To my own heart
Pathless path
To journey
To my heart
©️Sobbingsoul
May 24, 2019
May 24, 2019 at 11:07 AM UTC
I
Possesion/extension
Nightly woman instinct,
lend your guiding scent
to fierce winds/
combining
into poison,
deliver down
my mercy to the great shining
(seduction poetics,
unrestrained and visible like a crown
of death hanging proud
by my bedside, eager
to martyr oneself for fertility)
Cosmogonic dawn/blinking fire-wheels,
shallow, holy waters
receding as silken tides, awoke from idleness
Discarded silver haloes, thrown into the hallowed dirt to drench in mortal youth
Monarch eyes/careful
heart, sealed/felt lucidly
worried/cavernous and hidden/wild kingdom dancer
A proclaimed Fool.
Imitator, mutilator
clay creator/for pathless ambition
I sink further in sand
which lacks definition, it is careless
like myself
(take a trip to Angel river, where one longs to be freed from skeleton grins
& pagan bathtubs, pollinating one
with wivesblood)
II
Out of the fog to a
marriagebed & lambs head
mounted, awkwardly
backdropped to an altar of Furze &
disorientation-theatres draped in Neon
& excess
(where even the walls are unaware of their own Earthly position)
If I am the stone,
you are the water, carving
me closer to your desired
shape
to become an Outer, a cloud-catcher, liplurker, destined to Saturn worship
III
My zeal is an impatient grave & you assume the feral mother
whose flashflood voice draws me to rest
..Yet, I am willing. Carry my body
to your domain, feast kindly, until
paradise is all that remains of us both
Mar 8, 2018
Mar 8, 2018 at 4:41 AM UTC