"plaintive" poems
The half moon shows a face of plaintive sweetness
Ready and poised to wax or wane;
A fire of pale desire in incompleteness,
Tending to pleasure or to pain:--
Lo, while we gaze she rolleth on in fleetness
To perfect loss or perfect gain.
Half bitterness we know, we know half sweetness;
This world is all on wax, on wane:
When shall completeness round time's incompleteness,
Fulfilling joy, fulfilling pain?--
Lo, while we ask, life rolleth on in fleetness
To finished loss or finished gain.
14.1k
Autumn leaves
would do
for remembrance,
Perhaps,
more than words,
or a plaintive air
Of a yellow guitar;
a rain,
a wine-dark wind
spraying last summer's
fragrance.
Ah! Your absence!
Your white,
present, absence
unshields
my metaphor!
© LazharBouazzi, December 7, 2016
Dec 7, 2016
Dec 7, 2016 at 11:40 AM UTC
listen -
hear no sound, feel
only wind on its way, ghostly
nothings, but hush to sharp wings
of ocean birds so fraying as they cut
the sky, shuttle to fairways, far aways,
in plaintive cries, i hear what they say,
sailing into the jeweled skylights, but i
am only weight of air, still on ground,
i mumble out, sidle the bone tides
that roll to land, grains of clarity,
i am mist and tear, a world
of hollow, i am that sound -
of ocean in a shell.
Sep 12, 2015
Sep 12, 2015 at 2:09 AM UTC
when a lost muse is no excuse,
when the mundane and the profane
are away on summer holiday,
and you are currently on the divine’s
'u **** - no write list'
nonetheless the itch in the private
spaces is driving you crazy,
write a poem, write a poem,
in the way a grandmother
(or a mother to a grown child)
whiny nags,
*its a nice day, go outside and play
with a strange man*,
whatcha ya gonna do, the walls are all painted,
and the good bad boys are out of town, all with the
*other bad good girls,
who got there first,*
but we will write of
nipple-rings and
other crazy songs you sing
it is not important you the reader understand every verse,
like Patton said, "it only matters that I know,"
which line is a joke,
which around your neck is
your customized yoke,
which is why:
plaintive wail to no avail,
the regret that never can be sated,
the frustration cratering inside the chest,
which is just,
(and unjust)
just enough
to make a semi-satisfactory smile
upon the lips appear
whose lips?
who cares?
as long as you don't have to hear me sing my poetry
but hear me smiling at
the power of whimsy writing
and the return of
my no longer muzzy^
Ms. Minx A. Muse-me
<£>
2:13pm
Aug 19, 2017
Aug 19, 2017 at 2:32 PM UTC
You
I waited
for a long time.
Speak,
My hope will
End.
An SMS
changes clime,
Weak.
When you will
Send?
Nothing
I asked for.
Offer
Some bliss
To me.
I desired
Not a life nor
Glamor.
You, just miss
Me.
Once,
You, become
Plaintive
And express
Heart.
Tell
Felt some
Sensitive
And confess
Part.
Let
My heart leap,
Knowing
Your aptitude,
Stance.
Let
The heart keep
Singing,
And in solitude
Dance.
S. Bharat
Apr 9, 2019
Apr 9, 2019 at 3:57 AM UTC
This yellow saree she wore
Just once in her life had wrapped
A coy twenty-year-old bride
Tentatively setting her dainty foot
Into the hesitant bridal home .
Somewhere in the backwoods
Several industrious silkworms
Had spun miles of salivary yarn
In the foliage of the mulberry tree
To make this golden yellow saree .
The rustle of her silk drowned
The wails of the boiling cocoons
The worms died that beauty would live
In their plaintive cries lay bridal hopes .
My mother, the bride of yesteryears,
Is now as non-existent as the worms
That had ceased to exist spinning
The smooth silk for her bridal finery .
Her bridal fragrance lives on among
The delicate folds of these gossamer silks
That the worms had died weaving.
Death is so fragrant , so memorable.
Nov 4, 2010
Nov 4, 2010 at 6:03 AM UTC
Alone into Rainy, twist a Dai clove, pattering rain, wind lingering foot Yuhuan, lengthy dark gray rain curtain hung plaintive, oblique rain splashes dusty track marks, those rainy season, those day's dependent, those nostalgic every night in this late spring rain, scraping completed my cold lonely, rain turned into a long and narrow alley Resentment, thwarted flows into atria, cool diffuse through the apex. Do not turn around in your mind of the day, I count, chatter thoughts of you, and for your Ai resentment, Acacia entanglement, filled Chu pain, no know what to say, but unfortunately does not help, once the owner of the rain falling, once clouds drifting sea oath, I never touched your warmth, sigh Lane is a rain: Wife - Why shallow edge. (yiwu export)
Came alone intersection, waving a monotonous right hand, held in our left vague shadow, the breakdown of the raindrops bounce dust, Red rain, your shadows, swaying like a willow in the rain erratic, like a hard rain exhibition wings flutter Ling heavy, like rain, pedestrians hurry hurry ...... once Pengguo footprints Bingqing appearance of your hands, had led a faint in the rain blessings Juyi Peng broken tile rain dream, comfort our goodbyes, we pay homage to the past. Acacia is the way the dust, whisk Yang is confusion of resentment, lost pain.
This year's rainy season to refresh my mind, I view Acacia dream dreams, the pain, resentment cut into the rain, stuck into the soil; tears into the hands of deep stone, sank; to have a bunch of rendering painful injury worry text buried in the memory, so that resentment heart of the sea to swim, let the pain out of the bone marrow, dusty track once marks, wound treatment desolate, firmly stand in Kuwata, enterprises no longer envy sea water. (yiwu export agent)
Let love and hate, love and hatred, grace and resentment, thinking and pain in the rainy season falling, drifting in the rainy season. I left alone a pool of water, the flow of soulful call. (Yiwu buying agent)
Aug 15, 2013
Aug 15, 2013 at 5:03 AM UTC
The forest of legs swayed in the moving shadows beneath the chatter over head, each threatening to block our path and crush our attempt to get to the first fallen crisps of the party season, which as yet laid undisturbed.
We weaved and advanced as fast as their legs allowed, eager to scavenge the waiting bounty before they were trampled underfoot by the oblivious adults who were intent on a seasonal ritual of their own that went on high over our heads.
We emerged unscathed at the edge of the forest and raced across the open parquet to the cover of the drapped, white topped trestle tables catching our breaths and crunching our snatched crisps planning our next move toward the plateau above.
Our scout had reported rich pickings, but when we looked around, seeking signs of our brave advance party, we could find no trace beyond a half eaten volovant and what might have been regurgitated mushroom. We shook our heads in despair at their folly. Every kid knows to stick to crisps and to processed meats, avoiding anything that might contain vegetables. We saw an open French window just beyond the trestles and heard plaintive heaves that had a distinct 6 year old strain.
We checked each other's resolve and saw on each other's faces that we believed our mission was more important than any one stomach. With a maturity that would have surprised our parents, we pushed the plight of our friend to the back of our minds and focused on the task at hand.
We each reached up with practiced stealth, taking only a second to check the food on offer and with a speed bred into us by the curse of older siblings, we each grabbed our prize.
Acknowledging the hazards of the return journey we devoured the meat at hand and with hyena grins savoured our just rewards. While our fallen friend heaved once more, we saluted one another: the season had started better than any of us could have hoped.
Sep 7, 2018
Sep 7, 2018 at 5:25 PM UTC
Behold her, single in the field,
Yon solitary Highland Lass!
Reaping and singing by herself;
Stop here, or gently pass!
Alone she cuts and binds the grain,
And sings a melancholy strain;
O listen! for the Vale profound
Is overflowing with the sound.
No Nightingale did ever chaunt
More welcome notes to weary bands
Of travellers in some shady haunt,
Among Arabian sands:
A voice so thrilling ne’er was heard
In spring-time from the Cuckoo-bird,
Breaking the silence of the seas
Among the farthest Hebrides.
Will no one tell me what she sings?—
Perhaps the plaintive numbers flow
For old, unhappy, far-off things,
And battles long ago:
Or is it some more humble lay,
Familiar matter of to-day?
Some natural sorrow, loss, or pain,
That has been, and may be again?
Whate’er the theme, the Maiden sang
As if her song could have no ending;
I saw her singing at her work,
And o’er the sickle bending;—
I listened, motionless and still;
And, as I mounted up the hill,
The music in my heart I bore,
Long after it was heard no more.
4.5k
The cuckoo, like a hawk in flight,
With narrow pointed wings
Whews o’er our heads—soon out of sight
And as she flies she sings:
And darting down the hedgerow side
She scares the little bird
Who leaves the nest it cannot hide
While plaintive notes are heard.
I’ve watched it on an old oak tree
Sing half an hour away
Until its quick eye noticed me
And then it whewed away.
Its mouth when open shone as red
As hips upon the brier,
Like stock doves seemed its winged head
But striving to get higher
It heard me rustle and above leaves
Soon did its flight pursue,
Still waking summer’s melodies
And singing as it flew.
So quick it flies from wood to wood
’Tis miles off ‘ere you think it gone;
I’ve thought when I have listening stood
Full twenty sang—when only one.
When summer from the forest starts
Its melody with silence lies,
And, like a bird from foreign parts,
It cannot sing for all it tries.
‘Cuck cuck’ it cries and mocking boys
Crie ‘Cuck’ and then it stutters more
Till quick forgot its own sweet voice
It seems to know itself no more.
4.5k
I cannot recall the precise moment of my arrival at Anhedonia
memories blindsided by a phantasmagoric comorbid collage of cant
precipitated by some newspaper reportage or holocaust story
some creepy instance that breached the precipice between simple sorrow and permanent melancholia
some fatal blow that cinched the deal
some horrid event that could not heal
some dejected disappointment that could not be resolved
some moment of unguarded clarity when integrity dissolved
nevertheless I have arrived at this mangled juncture
élan a mania not even Edison's medicine can extirpate
I was quite lighthearted before the inferno
before my brain broke
ennui now a turgid companion
feeding on gaiety, never sated, seeking famine
esurient unrelenting usurper of happiness
go away, leave me alone, relish some other soul's madness
gone is any exuberance, glee or mirth
miseries are mine, many the days since birth
better I was carried from the womb straight to the grave
a fatuous existence, clamoring and grasping in vain
it's as if I was born into a well
but these waters they burn
the bludgeoning alcohol a liquid hell
Oh florid loquacity, you are an impostor
your verse is an adversary
a foray of jagged rhythm justifying a storm
a sordid verbosity assuring no norm
a plaintive scratching guild of recriminative collaboration
some alliance of fulminating disquietude
the cost for the fare on the adventure to:
the stunning moment you too will visit Anhedonia
Feb 15, 2014
Feb 15, 2014 at 9:39 PM UTC
May 23rd, 2019
I first felt the ferrous fissures
Delivering shivering quivers
Down my spine
As each chime took the sight
Outside our present days
Then the shakes grew into tension
My naked, sobering suspension
Was left never to mention
Nor whisper what I needed to say
And when I asked you of this
You withdrew so quick
I only had time to trace the lines
Of your last escaping shadow
Holding on to tentative strings
And all the small things
You left for me to find
The same gray forests of signs
And plaintive silent ways
Designs you used to craft
And convey with clever ease
Laughter once beseeching my thoughts
Silence now haunting my dreams
These memories are now
Presently looming
Cold coniferous trees
It's not as if I can pretend
Like simply taking paper and pen
Could possibly remedy this
While I have to look down
At the ink staining my foot
Ankle and wrist
I'm convinced that I created this fate
Because in this picture frame
I'm the only one who made a mistake
*You carry the hate in your heart
like it's been privileged to you*
*My misgivings have adopted
the persona that I imbue*
*I faced the other way as we faded
when you withdrew*
*You suffered daily
and faced this struggle alone*
*Claiming everybody abandoned you
and did you wrong*
*-But you don't lose me
Like I've told you all along*
RE: August 23rd, 2021: - but now you've lost Me with the same old song
May 7, 2019
May 7, 2019 at 2:20 AM UTC
I always wanted to be that random style of writer
Writing about things which have no connection
In reality but they are connective only by the ingenuity
Of his genuflection; the circumvention of his
Circuitous routing, his plaintive perturbing petulance
Which insists on stacking things of different orders
Flying birds together of different species
If I could write something of the ticking of clocks
Not as though the ticking were of premeditated duration
Embedded in metal tracks around perimeters
Of prevaricated die-cast hours; but as though the ticking
Were only a random fixture of a theoretical day
In which random clocks ticking played a minor role
During the still life of which a poet happened along
And copied it all down dutifully, not caring if
Ticking clocks were related to pitchers of Forsythia
Or falling off of cliffs into the Aegean;
The only task of the poet to capture it all
And let the reader sort it out later
In the random tracks of his circuitous brain:
Whether the pitcher was full of sea
Or the sea was stealing into the pitcher
One blue, serendipitous drop at a time
And where no clocks were keeping time.
Mar 7, 2010
Mar 7, 2010 at 5:36 PM UTC
The rain falls softly on the sleeping city…. Cloaked in the blanket of a monsoon lull…. A few stray dogs scamper for shelter as the first storm of the season colours the dawn a deeper crimson…..
The thunder rumbles from the north east…a deep slow sonorous sound coming from the underbellies of the moisture laden atmosphere…..
The soft drizzle forms a hazy blanket of morning mist around the city…..already stirring with the first signs of life…. The resurrection of the everyday work-a-day world…….
The musical tinkling of a bell echoes around as a pushcart brimming with flowers rushes down the street, hurrying to the market…fresh, preened and ready…to be sold to the highest bidder…
The soft music of the approaching storm inspires a boatman, out on the holy river, to sing…… his voice echoes over the bass of the thunder……a plaintive pleasant humming……the nuances of the bhatiali fill up the empty cracks in the morning……
The rain deepens…………the drizzle expands into the monsoons first downpour… pitter-patter sings the rain, reverberating off a thousand tin roofs……the sky darkens……enveloping the dawn in its grey being…..
Somewhere, someone tunes a harmonium…..clears a throat…a hand draws a curtain aside…..
The peaceful reassurance of the daily azaan spreads out from the mosque…..calling the faithful to prayer…..
The flower vendor…now setting up shop, attaching an extra strip of plastic sheet to fend off the rain…. Stops a moment and bows his head as the nearby tolling of a bell and the sound of a conch shell being blown announces the beginning of a new day in god’s abode….
A woman kneels down in a pew…..praying…..the calm of the church mirrored in her peaceful face…..
The rain looks down at the city……..now, half awake…slowly stretching its limbs……..stirring from the depths of a restless rest…………awakening to the jangling of a bread earner’s faith……
The shower relents……..probably giving in to all the Monday morning groans and grumbles emanating from a city forced back into consciousness…..
Finally, all that remains is the moisture on the flower vendor’s tarpaulin and the shadow of the boatman’s song on the rippled river…….
May 4, 2013
May 4, 2013 at 11:23 AM UTC
***Stumbling on her new feet
A regular fish out of water
Wanting her brain and heart to meet
The former to talk some sense to the latter
Wistful for the melancholy seas
Nostalgic for those left behind
It is on land where uncertainty breaks free
A plaintive wail for those of her kind
Foreign land stretching afar
On pale limbs she has yet to adopt
How crashingly desolate will it be to explore
To make use of this magic she has yet to exploit
A wriggle of her toes
Jaw clenched in determination
She stands by the decision she chose
To search for the source of her affection
He's out there, she'll find him
No matter the stakes
She'll stand on her two feet
And wait as long as it takes***
May 22, 2016
May 22, 2016 at 1:38 PM UTC
A sweet plaintive song did I hear,
And I fancied that she was the singer—
May emotions as pure, as that song set a-stir
Be the worst that the future shall bring her.
2.7k
At What Cost?
This Purchase of Our Future
*a thousand answers + variegated shadings, a summation:
∑
of millions layers of our owned chosen complexities,
so many possible outcomes, it makes infinite randomness
seemingly simpler than our googolplex crazy preposterous
notational choosings, our owned decisions which though false,
cause nothing is tandomn random except for love at first sight
it’s all just ******** we conditioned from pre-birth,
the expectations subtly subsumed into the woman’s womb,
overlaid by the ***** donors whisperings that you will be a
great third baseman, or a great bass player, or both, but
“your” fate, ha!
is anything but yours…
to purchase!
if you were born to live in a home with no heat, and water was
obtainable by walking 100 yards away, you would still be a
pianist, writing notes of plaintive need, grand desires, musical
words of agonizing delight just as when
you first blushed when the brain
connected yellow rays with a word,
sunrise,
and an experience was synapticaly imprinted,
that real things could be defined by an ordering of letters and sounds
and you were tongue burnt by a need so great
to collect these pleasurable things and put them in a right order
of your
peculiar
particular
personal
inherited inputted
design
=
and
you yet debate
what is my instrument,
knowing that the multiples of your fingers
are the engine of your existence,
and on any particular day they, your well connected perma-crew,
will pick which is the chosen one,
and
no matter which,
for you had nothing or little purchase,
it was coded in your pre-history
just as you prepare a transmission list
of your own,
when you daily first touch your face,
closing the sensory sensual connection tween
the ephemeral and the physical
and
the new combinations
that you will imprint upon
someone’s flesh,
that is your right,
that is you write,
that is what you were
predestined,
to
create
but,
(what the heck)
you get
to-pick the instrument of the day…*
(
that,
is your purchase, your only cost,
everything else has been
pre-paid
)
Nov 9, 2023
Nov 9, 2023 at 8:54 AM UTC
Byron! how sweetly sad thy melody!
Attuning still the soul to tenderness,
As if soft Pity, with unusual stress,
Had touch'd her plaintive lute, and thou, being by,
Hadst caught the tones, nor suffer'd them to die.
O'ershadowing sorrow doth not make thee less
Delightful: thou thy griefs dost dress
With a bright halo, shining beamily,
As when a cloud the golden moon doth veil,
Its sides are ting'd with a resplendent glow,
Through the dark robe oft amber rays prevail,
And like fair veins in sable marble flow;
Still warble, dying swan! still tell the tale,
The enchanting tale, the tale of pleasing woe.
2.4k
Winter has a joy for me,
While the Saviour's charms I read,
Lowly, meek, from blemish free,
In the snowdrop's pensive head.
Spring returns, and brings along
Life-invigorating suns:
Hark! the turtle's plaintive song
Seems to speak His dying groans!
Summer has a thousand charms,
All expressive of His worth;
'Tis His sun that lights and warms,
His the air the cools the earth.
What! has autumn left to say
Nothing of a Saviour's grace?
Yes, the beams of milder day
Tell me of his smiling face.
Light appears with early dawn,
While the sun makes haste to rise;
See His bleeding beauties drawn
On the blushes of the skies.
Evening with a silent pace,
Slowly moving in the west,
Shews an emblem of His grace,
Points to an eternal rest.
2.4k
I'm standing close by a river of rhyme,
where words cascade, in endless pantomime,
each line is a ripple, on the rugose water's crest,
but the chaotic current seems a randomized mess.
I see waves of words riding swells of sonnet,
into concrete verse, only to crash upon it.
There are dark plaintive whirlpools of elegy
and swirling haikus kissing off sharp envoi.
This river of rhyme could wash me away,
with its desperate currents of poetic dismay.
Its sensual verses can become a toxic wine,
oh, God, don’t let me drown in the river of rhyme.
Jul 29, 2023
Jul 29, 2023 at 1:39 PM UTC
Light your cigarette, then, in this shadow,
And talk to her, your arm engaged with hers.
Heavily over your heads the eaten maple
In the dead air of August strains and stirs.
Her stone-white face, in the lamp-light, turns toward you;
Darkly, with time-dark eyes, she questions you
Whether this universe is what she thinks it--
Simple and passionate and profound and true--
Or whether, as with a sound of dim disaster,
A plaintive music brought to a huddled fall,
Some ancient treachery slides through the heart of things--
The last star falling, seen from the utmost wall...
And you--what sinister, far, reserves of laughter,
What understandings, remote, perplexed, remain
Unguessed forever by her who is your victim--
Victim, of whom you too are victim again?
...Come! let us dance once more on the ancient asphalt:
Seeing, beneath its strange and recent shape,
The eternal horror of rock, from which, for ever,
We toss our tortured hands, to no escape.
2.3k
Altered by the winds laced with a threnody tune,
life in the northern woods will never be the same without its bloom.
The deceased puppet master continues to pull the strings of the dehiscence heart,
one of this game is forced to take part.
The ears of an indecisive mind take in the plaintive sound,
which provides an ongoing reminder of how these feet are forever bound to this ground.
With the chances of escaping this monochromatic box slims,
one might begin to take a swim.
The ideal way of living becomes a compromise,
the old personality leaves only the eyes.
Shed away in a abscission fashion,
and along with that goes all the passion.
Sitting down to confabulate with a higher knowledge,
carry on the dreams of going to college.
Storybook barriers leave no saltant mood.
Being passed by society is quite rude.
A misnomer indeed,
being labeled wrong because of greed.
Hunger of such has taken a life,
of one upon a lake that was never a wife.
Letters that hold such wicked silence,
that can never be undone even with science.
This blue body surrounded by an invisible malediction,
or maybe that is all just fiction.
He has nothing left from his unmanly lies,
upon keeping secrets he thinks he is wise.
Knowing it all is never enough,
but with an abecedarian brain on might just call it a bluff.
Eventually farewells must be given without hate,
and one might hope to return as if all was in a somniferous state.
Jun 15, 2013
Jun 15, 2013 at 11:57 PM UTC
also morpheus, thou who art dusted leaves
tremulous portraits plaintive angels creaking
pinions, wasted paint clanging fatly unskinny
corpulent boughs spread deviously; rip carefully
sanity: a flagrant splendorous nymph hard arithmatic
chime softly a dull pepper in my head: mostly
cobwebs and fluff punished grinning skulls
my teeths are clean and the smooth hollow
of thoughts is a pillow budding dream
laid crinkled masterpiece and fill it morpheus
with your excellent meat
Nov 18, 2010
Nov 18, 2010 at 11:13 AM UTC
Sadness is a burden
Sadness is a weighted rope
Sadness is a black hole
Sadness is the absence of
all joy and hope
Sadness is a moth fluttering
inside the darkness of a broken heart
Sadness is a crawling centipede
its seemingly endless creeping feet
tearing your insides apart
Sadness is a leaf left
to rot upon the earth
Sad ness is a fetus never
given birth
Sadness is the absence
of softly shining light
Sadness is the need to flee
with never the chance to take flight
Sadness is the rose
with no perfume and no petals
just a broken stem of thorns
Sadness is the lonely bird
that sings a plaintive song
in the darkness of a thousand
winter dawns
Jun 11, 2021
Jun 11, 2021 at 12:21 PM UTC