"predawn" poems
i.
morning sand chills my feet
damp grains cling between my toes
a predawn morning cold
mid-August summer day
ii.
down the beach
i watch hawks circling
hunting the tree line, they
work the shore grasses
a narrow strip of tall plants
between beach and wood
circling closer and closer
coming to me
iii.
they soar a steady breeze off the lake
hunting prey which i hear
scurrying frantically among the tall grasses
the hawks circle now directly above
white bodies with dark wing feathers
iv.
in the beach house
hang two paintings by a local artist
children playing on this very beach
chasing one another and crouching in the tide-pool
shown in fine detail
especially for water color
yet, i notice, the children
have no faces, merely brown smudges
featureless
v.
that night, sitting
around a beach bonfire
sparks jump from burning logs
about me forms glow red
i see these faces too appear as
smudges,
featureless
like an infant
at it's birth
Sep 2, 2012
Sep 2, 2012 at 8:07 AM UTC
A collaboration between Elisa Maria Argiro and SG Holter.
Dear feather. You fell on my heart.
I keep you on my person now; pocket held;
An eternal companion.
As beautiful as you, I remind my
Thoughts to be.
I wake up as Buddha every day.
Peace is the corner stone of my breathing.
Dear Last Crescent Moon,
adorning Lord Shiva's brow,
smiling toward Morning Star
enjoying her sweet presence
in clearest predawn light.
She smiles too, drifting into feathery sleep.
Birdless flight, unclenched, un-
Clung to.
With this dew drop in my palm
I need no ocean to swim in.
How can Life's castle, with its wars and
Tragedies, hide within its
Towers of
Noise such quiet chambers?
Paper sails, bamboo, emerald waters.
Single feathers rest even when
Airborne.
From your outstretched palm,
sweet taste of morning touches
my tongue, oceanic dew drop
sharing itself across floating time.
An offering holding the last shining
starlight of this new morning. Drifting
now through limitless space,
finding words in our common language
on your yellow paper sails, we gaze down
from these towers of our ancient dreams,
emerald water below us waiting to catch
the falling feather.
Dear insight.
Light as the wind itself, you
Floated; fell on my heart.
Merged with heavy memories
Like paper balloons rising;
Tsunami of kamifusen
Render my whole being
Weightless.
Third-Eye-Hindsight sees me
Remembering nothing with
Bitterness.
One or a hundred lifetimes
Wandering.
Finally now,
Even waking hours feel like
Dreaming.
Dear Wisdom, Guardian Planet,
Buddha's radiance shining.
Thousand-Petaled Lotus
is now your own effulgent mind.
Smiling, eyes closed, feeling the
glowing kamifusen of magenta,
scarlet, turquoise, and yellow
floating above us,
we swim so deeply, diving down
into these warm emerald waters,
winking at the luminous fishes
dreaming all around us.
Oct 10, 2015
Oct 10, 2015 at 2:31 PM UTC
Your presence is tangible
Across the vast expanse
Yet, I hear not your voice
I feel not your longing
Mine, is the only heart I hear
Alone, for the first time in eternity
Alone, wrapped in your essence
Just a whisper of warmth
A choice all your own
To be alone
A choice that you have forgotten
Includes me
For we flow throughout each other
Still, here we are
I feel you trying not to feel me
And I close my eyes
Praying death over a life that begins here
And ends without you
'tis not a choice could I make
'tis not a life...alone
Feb 7, 2016
Feb 7, 2016 at 3:52 AM UTC
in the blue steel sky
where new northern
mornings arrive
and the stark chill
of predawn elementals
reign across the cycles
of timeless millennia
Orion stands, emblazoned
returned from a summer
season of hunting
in far off hemispheres
greeting old comrades
tied to the fixed points
of fluxing terra firma
with mighty sword
unsheathed and risen
to stalk the spare game
of a dire season
in seasons past
i too was once a
great hunter
now i thumb
the dull blade
of my ill used sword
commencing a search
of deep pockets
for a stout heart,
diligent resolve and
a sharpening stone
Philip Glass Ensemble
Orion: India
Oakland
10/25/13
Oct 25, 2013
Oct 25, 2013 at 10:02 AM UTC
In the gray hours of pending dawn,
time seems endless
Dreams meld into reality, as true desires
breathe their first breath of life
In that space, with no consequences, lies the answer
The answer to every unasked question
The answer to every possibility
Fear has yet to be awakened before the day is touched by the creeping morning sun,
whose light bears the weight of the death of dreams
The sun that brings with it the doubt that plagues humanity
For in the predawn silence, true happiness resides
Nay, thrives in the hearts and minds of all
With childlike exuberance, belief in the improbable is clutched to the breast,
as the last vestiges of slumber melt it from the tightest grasp
Yet, with this glowing hellstar, begins a brand new day
And with each new day comes a chance to snag the tiniest piece of perfection along for the ride
Mar 5, 2012
Mar 5, 2012 at 1:44 PM UTC
*She lies in a tangle of blankets,
breathing in the scent of sadness.
The sounds of desperation within the dark
Leak pain into her soul.
Burdened by the years of standing tall,
crushed by the loneliness.
She believed the strength inside
Would carry her beyond the emptiness.
Yet into the darkness the light of her soul creeps,
Moving endlessly, recklessly.
Predawn light brings her no peace,
Feeling instead the fear of facing another day.
Sighs and cries and moans of despair
Leave her lost and broken.
Dreams abandoned, choices made, time past.
She feels the regret,
That familiar ache that brings the weight of anger.
And there she weeps for all she missed
and all that could have been.
As darkness makes its way once more
She smells the scent of sadness...*
May 11, 2013
May 11, 2013 at 5:40 PM UTC
Watching smoke curl in the sky
A simmer reflection, a residue of death stealing life
The scent of sweet burning arrives
Between breaths misting predawn light
A womb collects dead children
We hear them shrink and shiver
Their limbs atrophied, their eyes wide
Every kiss is wildfire
Every yearning is weathered
Like the shedding paint on the boards outside
That needed a touchup, a lifetime ago
Every touch is parched
Every trust is dystopian
The flesh departs from neuronal collections
Untraceable to the heart inside
No daughters, no sons
No lovers, no love
No affection, connection; truth or simple trust
No daughters, no sons
No lovers, no love
No future
No hope
Feb 1, 2014
Feb 1, 2014 at 1:24 AM UTC
One slips away
followed by another,
no longer alone
but obviously lonely.
Tears slipping down...
her cheeks are wet
her eyes are red
her heart so full.
Lightening and thunder
in the predawn,
she sits in the darkness
as the rain falls outside.
She cannot count how many
have slipped away
as she wipes her cheeks dry
by the sleeve of her lovers shirt.
Her tears no longer lonely
as she smiles;
remembering the love and friendship
they'd always share.
2006
COPYRIGHT; Sabrina Denise Healey,
~Angelmom~
Jan 9, 2015
Jan 9, 2015 at 10:54 PM UTC
Uno mas,
or "one more."
One more stop until we're home
or close enough to call it so.
One more stop until we're close enough
to driving our car and picking up ***
roadside.
To grabbing a coffee
to restart the night.
To talking 'till that predawn light
that reminds us why
we fell in love
the first time.
Uno
mas.
Aug 13, 2014
Aug 13, 2014 at 11:14 PM UTC
and i trek'd through the pre-dawn cold
skating along the rail tracks,
to boulder jumping a ravine
(where were Japhy's ducks to guide?)
and into a deaden'd grass field.
tapping tip of foot to avoid watery pitfalls
while flanked by rusted railyard
and meth-addled recreational plot;
cat piss'd chemical smell wafts from as
December's north wind fights a toothless perverting force.
the macadame is barren as rainfell desert
and the animals propel by combustion
in effort to scavenge Capitalism's ****
predawn
'fore the burliest awaken with hunger.
Dec 9, 2012
Dec 9, 2012 at 3:23 PM UTC
Sleep wouldn’t come, the clock hands seemed to shrug, so I decided to walk.
It was dark, the kind of fall overcast that makes a low ceiling of the sky.
Early mornings, on campus, are always solitary - students shun sunrise like vampires avoid the sun - so I got sole custody of the university. With no traffic, squirrels, birds or humans - predawn was nonchalant.
The wind, busied itself, sweeping the leaves falling in twos and threes, first left then right and finally throwing them in the air like a carefree child.
Frost on grass looked grey, then would suddenly become silverlit by the moon.
If you measure time in steps, as seconds, and then miles become hours. Soon, dawn made night morning, dew became drops, and I searched for coffee.
Nov 19, 2021
Nov 19, 2021 at 10:00 PM UTC
It is almost five a.m.
With each thump of the echoing bass,
of the synthetic revenge and heartbreak,
angry percussion wraps me closer than your arms ever could--
tremulous and heavy,
more absolute than the sunset fictions
you contentedly let me cling to.
A venomous chorus drips from my lips,
once-swollen eyes now itchy and dry.
This is the still serenity of the predawn slumber,
the yearning of the yetsummer,
the quiet before the birds begin scavenging
through grass, trash, and recycling.
I protest--
tongue, fingers heels teeth and lungs
restless in spite of themselves.
You have chased me out of bed,
across dew-dampened grass,
over uneven pavement as treacherous as your voice.
You follow me.
Sleep is merely a forlorn memory
peering sadly from a forgotten heap of warm cotton thread,
whimpering futilely against the anxious pulsing
of overworked headphones
and overthought peculiarities.
You introduced me to this time of day.
You summoned it once with impatient chords
and a staccato keystroke melody,
casually ignoring the plaintive honesty
I willingly accompanied you with.
But the sunrise casts a strange glow, I guess--
rosy and well-intentioned,
fickle and fleeting, like your grin
or the capricious depth of the summer sky.
No one remembers that wandering blue
the same color as her eyes;
but it seeps through your pores,
curls into the caverns of your chest,
an aching in azure only because you let it.
You have bathed too long in the sun.
As the scarlet sunrise erupts across your shoulders
the sky settles into your lungs.
But don’t trust that sky,
that constant companion.
That sky is a cannibal
and it will eat you alive.
Nov 14, 2013
Nov 14, 2013 at 1:35 AM UTC
Honest moments are born
In the predawn stillness of the night
Tearful confessions whispered
Into the nook of one's neck
Smoke drifting lazily towards the ceiling
While the candle flickers in the background
Dancing and dancing all of the pain away
Feb 17, 2014
Feb 17, 2014 at 4:24 AM UTC
For many reasons, December is a dead season.
The fields are painted in purple and grey, with
blackbirds rising into the sky from distant tree-lines.
The give of summer earth is a hazy memory now,
stored somewhere deep, frozen down in the pores of the soil
where seeds have drawn themselves tightly into themselves.
Trees bend to the ground under their own naked weight.
And this is the season of the christchild?
With a wind that seeks the softest curve of your neck,
slapping your face and drawing water from your eyes,
with nights that go on with only brief intermissions of day.
Is there comfort to be found in the darkest season,
hidden away in some corner of some wood or in a
box to be torn in the rush of Christmas morning?
Open a citrus fruit and let its oils blossom into the air.
Crush a pine needle and spread its syrup on your fingers.
Watch the yolk of the sun break over the horizon through
the smoke of your breath and the breath of the frozen earth.
Get up early, stay up late when the lights come on and walk
out under them. Feel the heat from the open doors of the
department stores but don’t enter; keep this for yourself.
Once, I drove through the predawn blues on the bank of the
Mohowk River the day before Christmas. In the timid dawn
the frost was lacework, birches bowed, the blackbirds jubilated.
And somewhere ahead, a pine wreath hung on a porch for me,
a door was unlocked, a bowl of citrus fruit was being laid out.
December is a dead season, a sleeping season, but from
the darkest night of the year hangs a simple string of lights.
Nov 21, 2012
Nov 21, 2012 at 12:27 PM UTC
the night is
still
dark
quiet
there is a distinct
chill
breathe
gently steams
from my mouth
seen only in the
light of a poets tablet.
the first bird is yet to wake
i am alone in my early mornings prowl.
too cold for the little grey cat
and too early for the human companions, they all remain
abide... cozied up and asleep
as i search the dark cold
night
for meaning.
in the distance the kookaburra cackle and chuckle
dawn has come...
May 7, 2014
May 7, 2014 at 4:03 PM UTC
There's an atm in my neighborhood
That gives out singles,
Or three of them,
Or seven,
And so on.
It sits next to the drywall box
Filled with EBT dinners,
Next to the numbered gas pumps.
It glows in the predawn air,
While I sit on a cement wall
Across the street.
That hunk of junk charged me $3.75 to take out $7.
Next to me a man tells his inquisitive boy
Why the police act as they do.
"They the cops, man.
Not you."
I'm watching with rapt fascination
The ten inch screen
Of some wheelchair-bound woman's
Educational tablet,
While her hand, twisted by palsy,
Taps at a magnified qwerty pad.
She's playing hangman,
And I silently,
Secretly,
Guess along with her for almost fifteen minutes.
The bus arrives, and I'm grateful
It's the doubled kind with the hinge in the middle,
Cuz maybe I won't have to stand.
I take the empty seat next to
A Salvadoreña co-worker
I sometimes ride in to work with.
Our conversations are limited,
As are her English and my Español.
We laugh at the Georgetown gringitas
lining up with their morning runners' clubs,
And lament over the cabrones pobres
Peddling to strangers for jobs
Outside the big box hardware store
That won't hire them.
The sun rises as we cross the Key bridge,
And the wounded Washington Monument,
With its scaffolding and the floodlights leaking through,
Is a diamond-studded phallace
Shining over a town draped in a shroud of humidity.
I close my eyes and try to rest
For the eleven minutes between
Me and my desk.
Aug 4, 2013
Aug 4, 2013 at 5:52 PM UTC
through the cusp of
predawn heavy dark i woke,
one knee too cold to
feel. stars imperfectly ablaze;
radial fractions between
soft fingersplits in overlying canopy.
at ground level, spinning
slowly, i pried a small hole
out of my cocoon of moss. drew
legs to chest. felt clean air wash
up and over me. this is all that
matters. everything. acres alone,
save trapped stoat or the small
hawk in my ribcage. kea call
up at pearl flat; hours later,
i thaw. i rescind no sentiment.
and i dare not take back a
mote of motion. my
hands mend you sweetness on hazy
days the sun careens through
dust and valleys.
endless spurs
on all horizons to clamber to
you, or just to find me. endless
convection to spread wing under.
endless permutations of lovers; but,
of course, nobody else
would near suffice.
down a darkened trail, sleep
heavy on shoulders, i waltz with
torch dying in one hand. beating
heart in other. a fine
day crawls up over
peaks; i sigh, smile,
endlessly think
of you.
Jul 28, 2014
Jul 28, 2014 at 6:12 AM UTC
Prologue... Voyeurs Notes: Two lovers entwined in the blue black room of the ante meridian (a.m.).
Under a cutting ******* moon
he enters you
You took him in with Pavlovian drooling eyes. He took your innocence and you shrieked in dripping compliance:::
Only that sickle overseer in the night sky bared witness
to the end of my pleasant fiction
***Halogen orb
Halcyon days***
Left only with the abscess of the apparition
that was “us”
and a
Phantom pain for the never was
Perhaps she is
somewhere
quieted by enormity of it all
Life in fast forward, a fallow future, a vertical victim of his ***** ****
Predawn...
Coldness without catharsis on a cobblestone street
**she is again spread before him,
he’s already tired of her**, and again that ******* fading crescent
watches:::
she’s wishing for a flashback, a do over,
a dream of sanity before her teardrop salinity (it could’ve been us)
But here I stand eternal
Butchered by your lunar lunacy::: alone
Against the backdrop of a pockmarked sky
Dec 22, 2018
Dec 22, 2018 at 7:02 PM UTC
the sky lightens gradually
as if from nowhere, as if someone
in the sky is slowly rising,
blinking sleep from his eyes
and sitting lazily up onto his elbow,
casually ********* the brightness slider
on the universe as if he's done it
every day, he must have.
before the pink can hit it the checker
pattern of clouds fades away,
promising a casually clear blue
day but this one is more
personal now, his gift to me,
because on the concrete looking up
i can see the sun before it rises,
i know what it's like to wake
with the sun there on the other
side of the bed, to see her slowly
blinking the stars from her skies.
yawning, stretching, morning breath,
to see her rolling up her sleeves
and tying back her hair
and scattering her dreams of death
with a shake of her tired head.
and yet even before she is fully awake
she is so radiant.
the moon, shooting stars, even the perseids
step back to let her shine.
i feel as though when the sun
hides behind storms some days,
each day i will know why.
Aug 20, 2015
Aug 20, 2015 at 7:57 PM UTC
Furious orange wounds
rimmed in charcoal
betray last night's secret:
died, almost died,
charred in an accidental inferno
due to the lazy application
of a long-standing addiction.
Warm,
paper-burn stink clings
to the heat of an early morning
- July.
The slowly-creeping wet heat
in stark contrast
to the quickflash realization of predawn:
my bed was on fire.
The must never know,
those in the cells opposite -
surely, threats of neglectful destruction
warrant the hasty eviction
of the new tenant.
Thus I,
the wakeful sentinel of 611 Lyon
watching for mattress fire
have overturned the hopefully-cooled burns
and will sleep
to avoid dwelling on thoughts
of bonfires.
Jul 7, 2010
Jul 7, 2010 at 12:39 PM UTC
Memory flashed like strobe
lights and illuminated paths of
tangled legs; only the moon
watched us weave intricate
patterns of impassioned sighs
and scattered black lace.
Shadows settle with the
musing silence of the
immediate past: two bodies
in love with childhood naivety,
the dash of what could be.
What could be?
Predawn whispers shatter
the fragile ivory walls of
my chest, unveiling a chasm
that is yearning to feel again.
Aug 16, 2015
Aug 16, 2015 at 11:19 PM UTC
*occurring slowly, imperceptibly
efficacy being subtly reduced
no longer radiating as it once had
decaying in all that matters
life awaiting reconception
metamorphosis to wholeness
but transition is rarely painless
its passage dark and damp
anxious waking in predawn gloom
curled within the womb of familiar
under a fraying comforter of security
worn even too thin for reality veiling
cutting the cord to the past is crucial
mindfully maintaining nurturing ties
a healthy present breathes its own air
into a future released from half-life*
Sep 1, 2014
Sep 1, 2014 at 11:31 AM UTC
We've been stung so many times black bears drink our pollinated piss. I always wondered if numbness equaled toughness. You, Wrestling your whiskey den and leaving nothing but black turds through out your furry funfettie carpet. How hard working you were before the predawn sunrise of a meaningless morning. Now the blue moon cries sobriety for half a creasant . I guess it isn't easy to change a phase not when somebody already gave out the calendar. Each of us circle holidays just get drunk next to a clock.
May 12, 2015
May 12, 2015 at 12:37 AM UTC
Here you will find oncoming lights
roll against waves of red traffic.
The crimson tide is like a landslide
along side a river of white,
bereft of blue
on this morning commute.
Not a single star to dot the predawn gloom that blooms
into today's paper.
Children pantomiming parents
for the rest of their lives
while the adults bicker over the right blend of color.
Kids being new to the illusion have no experience
to reel in the meaning behind ideals
that have been rewritten and only go on to
learn the bloodlust.
A wet rag
wrung
with bodies
that soak through a toy balloon
full of hot air.
Oct 15, 2013
Oct 15, 2013 at 10:03 PM UTC