"quickening" poems
Ecstatic bird songs pound
the hollow vastness of the sky
with metallic clinkings—
beating color up into it
at a far edge,—beating it, beating it
with rising, triumphant ardor,—
stirring it into warmth,
quickening in it a spreading change,—
bursting wildly against it as
dividing the horizon, a heavy sun
lifts himself—is lifted—
bit by bit above the edge
of things,—runs free at last
out into the open—!lumbering
glorified in full release upward—
songs cease.
19.5k
running
not for or from
not to or fro
just one foot in front of the other.
not really counting
not steps
not miles
not minutes, seconds, or calories
just a rhythm
pounding
pacing
pulse quickening
breathing deeply
settling steadily to the sound of my footfalls
the mindless carrying on of my legs
a welcome counter to the emptying of my head
Oct 6, 2014
Oct 6, 2014 at 3:07 PM UTC
“An ill of greed has befallen the land,”
“A quickening sickness which seeks to prey…”
“Where wealth accumulates and men decay.”
Jun 9, 2016
Jun 9, 2016 at 10:41 PM UTC
'Kilig (Tagalog) – Kilig is similar to forelsket (Norwegian)…it’s the “weak in the knees, spontaneous blushing and quickening pulse, butterflies in the stomach” sensation you get when you see the person you’re in love with.' (c) Thought Catalog
Nov 12, 2014
Nov 12, 2014 at 10:58 AM UTC
To hear the priceless sounds,
No medicine competes.
In the rhythms, I am bound
In success or in defeat.
through the tolling of the time-
With those quickening beats,
The sound invokes with clever rhyme
both privilege and a treat:
Light and easy, peaceful and bright,
Or Insidious, sinister, audio plight.
Sorrow, hatred; loss and gain
Drugs and *** and love and pain.
From Intro to Chorus, to Verse-Refrain
melodies tattooed deep in the brain;
Act as the sun, when it does rain
And as both dirt and soap, when life does stain.
Jun 20, 2017
Jun 20, 2017 at 12:09 AM UTC
I really am an excellent liar
But I can't seem to convince myself
That I'm no longer interested
In your quickening heartbeat
Or the taste of your tongue
Or how your mind works
When you're trying to fall asleep
At night.
I can't decide
If you're careless
Or clueless
But it drives me insane
Knowing that you're laying down
All alone.
Aug 4, 2014
Aug 4, 2014 at 7:08 PM UTC
Hungry.
In the silence,
of this afternoon,
they arrive, ready
to feed children who wait
in nest high above.
Their high whistle dancing,
pierces the soundscape
These mejiros--yellow with sharp white eyes,
Comb through hibiscus bush
Finding a meal
Hidden within
Like parrotfish
Munching through coral reef,
I sit under tree listening,
Abruptly
The seashells to my mind
Fill with shrill sounds
Of mothers scolding monsters,
A quickening--
Their white eyes dart like fearful
squid flying through
brushy undercurrents.
Underneath,
The small lion cat
Stalks the
Hungry sounds
In the bush
the Hungry looking for Hungry
Apr 26, 2019
Apr 26, 2019 at 9:22 PM UTC
Hearing the endless, silent train,
Looking back, seeing myself hop aboard.
Looking back, he, in turn,
Nodding, like brothers, goodbye for now,
Quickening, out of sight forever,
Sharing only the sound of the silent train.
Oct 9, 2016
Oct 9, 2016 at 11:14 PM UTC
She comes to me with
seductive expectation
in her alluring grey eyes,
Bewitchingly she crawls
onto my lap, my chest.
Our mutual desire for closeness
quickening the mood
She puts her arms around my neck,
Our eyes locked in an intimate dance.
I take her beautiful face in my hands
stroking it's soft contours, as she
closes her eyes pleasurably succumbing
to the gentleness of my touch.
She begins to softly purr.
We both understand these brief
loving moments can never last,
owing to my damnable allergy to cats,
Thus, soon back outside she must ****
Jan 28, 2017
Jan 28, 2017 at 3:04 PM UTC
What I need and where to get it?
What I want and when to act?
Wheres the answer and who gives it?
When is payday and how do I collect?
When to quit and what is my excuse?
Why I cry and where are the tears?
How do I change and will it be painful?
Can I succeed and in what context?
Where is the enlightenment and will I understand?
Why is the clock quickening and how do I stop it?
Did I miss my opening and will there be another?
Are the colors the same and will I be blinded?
What is the reason and is it good enough?
How does it work and why do we try?
Why do we try?
Apr 6, 2010
Apr 6, 2010 at 7:33 PM UTC
In the dark I can find your lips
I know exactly where you are in space
You're breathing is quickening
And I'm breathing you in
I just need you everywhere
Skin on skin yet not close enough
Can you feel my heart beating for you?
I can't focus on anything except you
The way you keep looking at me
Makes me feel invincible
Can you taste the desire on my lips?
The pain in my heart
Please don't ever stop
Nov 9, 2014
Nov 9, 2014 at 3:08 AM UTC
I
This is the night mail crossing the Border,
Bringing the cheque and the postal order,
Letters for the rich, letters for the poor,
The shop at the corner, the girl next door.
Pulling up Beattock, a steady climb:
The gradient's against her, but she's on time.
Past cotton-grass and moorland boulder
Shovelling white steam over her shoulder,
Snorting noisily as she passes
Silent miles of wind-bent grasses.
Birds turn their heads as she approaches,
Stare from bushes at her blank-faced coaches.
Sheep-dogs cannot turn her course;
They slumber on with paws across.
In the farm she passes no one wakes,
But a jug in a bedroom gently shakes.
II
Dawn freshens, Her climb is done.
Down towards Glasgow she descends,
Towards the steam tugs yelping down a glade of cranes
Towards the fields of apparatus, the furnaces
Set on the dark plain like gigantic chessmen.
All Scotland waits for her:
In dark glens, beside pale-green lochs
Men long for news.
III
Letters of thanks, letters from banks,
Letters of joy from girl and boy,
Receipted bills and invitations
To inspect new stock or to visit relations,
And applications for situations,
And timid lovers' declarations,
And gossip, gossip from all the nations,
News circumstantial, news financial,
Letters with holiday snaps to enlarge in,
Letters with faces scrawled on the margin,
Letters from uncles, cousins, and aunts,
Letters to Scotland from the South of France,
Letters of condolence to Highlands and Lowlands
Written on paper of every hue,
The pink, the violet, the white and the blue,
The chatty, the catty, the boring, the adoring,
The cold and official and the heart's outpouring,
Clever, stupid, short and long,
The typed and the printed and the spelt all wrong.
IV
Thousands are still asleep,
Dreaming of terrifying monsters
Or of friendly tea beside the band in Cranston's or Crawford's:
Asleep in working Glasgow, asleep in well-set Edinburgh,
Asleep in granite Aberdeen,
They continue their dreams,
But shall wake soon and hope for letters,
And none will hear the postman's knock
Without a quickening of the heart,
For who can bear to feel himself forgotten?
4.7k
It is over. What is over?
Nay, how much is over truly!--
Harvest days we toiled to sow for;
Now the sheaves are gathered newly,
Now the wheat is garnered duly.
It is finished. What is finished?
Much is finished known or unknown:
Lives are finished; time diminished;
Was the fallow field left unsown?
Will these buds be always unblown?
It suffices. What suffices?
All suffices reckoned rightly:
Spring shall bloom where now the ice is,
Roses make the bramble sightly,
And the quickening sun shine brightly,
And the latter wind blow lightly,
And my garden teem with spices.
4.3k
******
A symbol of denial, congeniality, and assurance of love;
the fate of maternity, motherhood, that is witnessed
and cherished from afar.
From a sacred little haven;
from a struggle of motherly defense.
O ******
Temptations are to you never a bother,
in the tempests of lush dreams,
the draining of purity,
and veritable sensations.
Steadiness is your notion;
it barely leaves your mind
you may be deeply hurt
but never hurt,
you may be a stranger
but your grace is your power.
Truth that is unpardonable,
veraciousness at my simplest words,
clarity that is gleaming in your eye,
a token of pleasure but indestructible affection;
adorable as you are,
serenity is beyond question;
dreams are but inseparable from your docile life.
O ****** the sweetness and gentleness of thy eyes
are my irreplaceable silence,
my appraised soul,
and my most resolute
and irrepressible invocation.
O ****** one that is so rare a rose
Many as in the May-day dance are tainted;
marks of annoyance, omens of indulgence.
With hunger for nothing but moans;
unsober groans, and quickening breaths in paces of outward satisfaction;
intoxicated desires but unloving movements;
on the grounds for endless dancing;
there is the thirst for grips, the grossest of stateliness!
Voluptuous romance, perfidious touches, and
false-hearted toys!
In the wakeful dreams of which
I long for you, a handful of thy chastest kisses!
I pray for your hands, so delicate
as mine, how they shall fit into each other!
I long for your lips, your spotless, uncorrupted cheeks,
My demand is for your hands;
for sanity, and sincerest cordiality
Despite of my guilt and former unconsciousness
I shall amend my grief for you,
for you only,
for oureth perfect, unconquerable happiness,
and the union of our souls
in a day of holy matrimony.
Dec 19, 2012
Dec 19, 2012 at 7:35 AM UTC
I plunge into the cold water on that warm July day
no goggles, only the loose-fitting swimming trunks
I swim through the blur of chlorine
pushing through the water
when a familiar tune I heard hours earlier traps itself in my brain
and I suddenly become weightless, a plane high above in the air
The water is pure blue sky, below me the clouds
And at the bottom the city in ruins
I take my plane and dive down below the clouds
past the blur, until the city is in view just below me
I level the bomber and let it soar low above the ground
Over the pale white shells of buildings
I remember the museum exhibit that inspires this flight
I walk through, studying the pictures and the uniforms and the weapons on display
when in the distance of the room beyond I hear the familiar tune:
Brian Eno's "Ascent (An Ending)". It brings me closer, and I move past the exhibits
at a quickening pace, past the slow browsers
glancing only briefly to read, to catch a glimpse of an object, a photo, a map
I keep going, "Ascent" on a loop, its minimalist beauty entrancing me
until I find a large television in a small corner.
A few people are gathered around, solemn,
the television entrancing them, the music washing over the room.
First the white words centered against the black screen: "The Bomb".
The come the white-and-black photos and footage of the mushroom clouds hovering above Hiroshima, then Nagasaki,
standing tall like ungainly trees in an empty field.
The soundtrack to the short video before me is "Ascent",
or rather an excerpt, a piece of it, stirring strange emotions
Familiar ones that I give attribution to when I listen to it on my own.
Yet it feels different coming from this;
on the screen a few photographs of corpses and burnt victims flash by.
And then the screen fades to black, a moment of silence
before it all starts again
I hear this loop and see these images before me as I fly above
the imagined city in ruins
And for a brief moment I am the Enola Gay;
I will only know it at the bottom of a hotel pool
Mar 9, 2015
Mar 9, 2015 at 4:23 AM UTC
We met in back alleys
Trailer trash, slum lords
We laid in the gutter
We crawled on life's floor
I traveled the world
In slumber and sloth
I bled the world dry
And nearly fell off
Treading grey matter
Until the quickening set in
I survived the world
Now a new one begins...
May 12, 2015
May 12, 2015 at 10:23 AM UTC
Deckchairs
on a pebble beach,
hands almost touching,
fingers brushing.
Deckchairs
on a pebble beach,
excited laughter,
quickening breath.
Deckchairs
on a pebble beach,
sun setting,
night time creeping.
Deckchairs
on a pebble beach,
the child who collected
shells on the shore,
a child no more.
Deckchairs
on a pebble beach,
sandcastle hearts
and tidal wave tears.
Deckchairs
on a pebble beach,
the seaside
will never
be
the same.
Aug 1, 2014
Aug 1, 2014 at 1:04 PM UTC
I head outside for cold air and quiet, escaping too-loud laughter and the filth of drunkenness. As the porch door closes behind me the silence explodes, cacophonous, both ears simultaneously bursting with the high pitched squeal of the sudden nothingness. It surrounds me, vibrating my bones, frothing the marrow within, pressing my temples, heart quickening to steady the body against the assault of the stillness, the stagnation of the world around me. I don't know who I am. I am not -- not anyone. I am alone. I am what they want me to be. Seated cross-legged on cold concrete, the alcohol plays the stars across my eyes like a projector: they move this way and that across my field of vision, swaying, dancing. I feel myself floating, getting lost in my own mind again. I hate that feeling.
I put a cigarette out on my hand, pressing orange embers into soft flesh. I grit my teeth as the world rushes back. The voices bring me down. The clink of glass bottles brings me down. The searing smell of my skin brings me down. I light it again, pull a few deep drags, then stub it out again, this time inside my forearm. My eyes squeezed shut, I feel myself fall back into reality, like a soft bed, like my skin loosens just enough to let me breathe again. I land on both feet, quietly, softly. I stand up, bush myself off, and walk back inside.
I'll burn the whole pack tonight.
I kissed him on the cheek, secretly hoping he'd wake from his stupor and keep my company, but he was too far gone, lost hours ago to two or three too many shots taken in bad faith, but with good intentions. I left him on his couch. He'd be safe there. He needed his sleep.
Why couldn't I get as drunk as them, drunk enough to numb away the emotions, the longing? I was disappointed, but I wasn't surprised. I curled up on the couch alone, pulling my sleeves down to cover the blisters, already rising. If I could just sleep, I could forget. Everyone slept but me. I went out for another cigarette.
Nov 5, 2012
Nov 5, 2012 at 11:13 AM UTC
feathered shadows
ripple like the water
in the wind
on which they're cast
miniscule
molten metal
droplet beetles
dive beneath
the shimmering water
bathed in
metamorphic waves
of bending light
inobservably tiny legs
quickening
in a graceful fury
sliding through the world
like slow-motion lightning
or a brilliant spark
unnoticeably extricated
from its source
Aug 6, 2014
Aug 6, 2014 at 11:54 PM UTC
It is so measured that rising arpeggio, only to fall and rise again in quicker values, through the dominant seventh to the heartache moment of that minor ninth, a very apogee of dissonance. Then it goes higher still to the fifth, holding to that Phrygian harmony before returning to the tonic minor and a measured fall in the bass. This is a deliberate descent to the sub-mediant, and Bach’s touch of magic, the equivalence with the dominant minor ninth. But then he gives us hope: an extended and joyful play through sequences that rise and fall within each bar, to rest finally on the mediant’s echo of that opening, that measured rise and the quickening fall. We have hardly smiled with relief when Bach pulls us back into the insecurity of the dominant of the subdominant, that V of IV acting like a bridge to a long, long discourse in the dominant, a pedal E holding firmly to itself whilst rising arpeggios and falling decorations and sequences pull and pull through innocently related keys. Longer and longer play the rising passages until short motives of imitation interrupt, treble to bass, tenor to alto, until: a first inversion arpeggio of the dominant seventh measures out the opening rhythm. This happens twice in short succession, as though holding the progress of the music to account. A questioning perhaps before a four-fold sequence asserts the dominant and a chorded caesura. There is a pregnant, though faintly resonant silence as Bach spins the dice of tonality and chooses the subdominant to bring the music towards a waiting Allemande. The music moves through a play of subdominant to dominant, minor to major, the mix of flattened fifth and flattened ninth. It is those intervals that determine Bach as the father of ambiguity in the 20C school of jazz harmony, Arpeggio then a falling scale, and repeat and repeat again, but moving ever higher by sequence. At last five chords – merely a shorthand for closure via the expectation of a right display of the performer’s improvisatory prowess. They prepare us reverently for the tonic minor before the stately Allemande leads the music into the elegant steps of its walking dance.
Jan 5, 2013
Jan 5, 2013 at 3:13 AM UTC
The seed-at-zero shall not storm
That town of ghosts, the trodden womb,
With her rampart to his tapping,
No god-in-hero tumble down
Like a tower on the town
Dumbly and divinely stumbling
Over the manwaging line.
The seed-at-zero shall not storm
That town of ghosts, the manwaged tomb
With her rampart to his tapping,
No god-in-hero tumble down
Like a tower on the town
Dumbly and divinely leaping
Over the warbearing line.
Through the rampart of the sky
Shall the star-flanked seed be riddled,
Manna for the rumbling ground,
Quickening for the riddled sea;
Settled on a ****** stronghold
He shall grapple with the guard
And the keeper of the key.
May a humble village labour
And a continent deny?
A hemisphere may scold him
And a green inch be his bearer;
Let the hero seed find harbour,
Seaports by a drunken shore
Have their thirsty sailors hide him.
May be a humble planet labour
And a continent deny?
A village green may scold him
And a high sphere be his bearer;
Let the hero seed find harbour,
Seaports by a thirsty shore
Have their drunken sailors hide him.
Man-in-seed, in seed-at-zero,
From the foreign fields of space,
Shall not thunder on the town
With a star-flanked garrison,
Nor the cannons of his kingdom
Shall the hero-in-tomorrow
Range on the sky-scraping place.
Man-in-seed, in seed-at-zero,
From the star-flanked fields of space,
Thunders on the foreign town
With a sand-bagged garrison,
Nor the cannons of his kingdom
Shall the hero-in-to-morrow
Range from the grave-groping place.
3.4k
XI • VI • MMXXIV
︻デ┳═ー
blood drips.
i can feel it on my fingertips,
i can taste it on your lips.
how did we get here?
i am drowning in fear.
there's no escape plan near.
they keep taking.
a nightmare waking.
we keep breaking.
the air is thickening,
gunshots quickening,
this is all so sickening.
blood pools.
genocide fuels.
american jewels.
Nov 6, 2024
Nov 6, 2024 at 10:04 PM UTC
his hands are full of stories
he may never get to tell
and wandering the streets today
he must've thought they fell
the memories are staggered
shorter, closer, weaker
s t i l l
together their depiction
was a life he had until
he sat upon the stones
and let the cold into his head
erased the only thoughts
that reassured he wasn't dead
but now the days are passing
with a quickening delay
and everything he hadn't said
is chasing him away
so if you see him running
tell him time is running too
that if he can't outrun it
there is nothing he can do
Nov 21, 2014
Nov 21, 2014 at 2:20 PM UTC