"rerum" poems
A cloudless night like this
Can set the spirit soaring:
After a tiring day
The clockwork spectacle is
Impressive in a slightly boring
Eighteenth-century way.
It soothed adolescence a lot
To meet so shameless a stare;
The things I did could not
Be so shocking as they said
If that would still be there
After the shocked were dead
Now, unready to die
Bur already at the stage
When one starts to resent the young,
I am glad those points in the sky
May also be counted among
The creatures of middle-age.
It's cosier thinking of night
As more an Old People's Home
Than a shed for a faultless machine,
That the red pre-Cambrian light
Is gone like Imperial Rome
Or myself at seventeen.
Yet however much we may like
The stoic manner in which
The classical authors wrote,
Only the young and rich
Have the nerve or the figure to strike
The lacrimae rerum note.
For the present stalks abroad
Like the past and its wronged again
Whimper and are ignored,
And the truth cannot be hid;
Somebody chose their pain,
What needn't have happened did.
Occurring this very night
By no established rule,
Some event may already have hurled
Its first little No at the right
Of the laws we accept to school
Our post-diluvian world:
But the stars burn on overhead,
Unconscious of final ends,
As I walk home to bed,
Asking what judgment waits
My person, all my friends,
And these United States.
3.9k
I have no right to feel this way.
Everything is too loud, too much.
I want to cover my ears, but it gives little relief.
I tear at my hair, and the pain gives an anchor.
My patches are hidden, small secrets.
Mors ultima linea rerum,
a constant threat,
the sword above my head.
Not death itself,
but the inability to find peace.
Sleep is similar, but it is not death.
It is similar, Tarkovsky observes,
but it is not permanent.
Sleep is universal,
but so is waking.
The fool, shepherd, wise, and king
rise with the sun.
Mors sceptra ligonibus aequat.
Mors ultima linea rerum.
Mar 4, 2016
Mar 4, 2016 at 8:22 AM UTC
Time is just a concept, a moment with a name.
Something in-which can never be evaded.
A freedom, lost in the concept,
bound to a ticking clock.
We want to forget.
Just for now.
Begone.
in
our
swirling
vortex.
Take me back to the day,
that moment with a name.
A time: where I was meant to be.
My thoughts clouded with sage.
A haze pushing me side-ways.
My black memory's.
Time is just a concept,
in-which we can never repair.
No going back-ways,
all will have to remain.
No-one to blame,
the fates will withhold.
And nothing will ever be foretold...
Jan 10, 2014
Jan 10, 2014 at 1:58 AM UTC
A few titles
A few songs
A few artists
Combine
for compound fractures
of my consciousness
For, lo, the ulcer just by nourishing
Grows to more life with deep inveteracy,
And day by day the fury swells aflame,
And the woe waxes heavier day by day—
Unless thou dost destroy even by new blows
The former wounds of love, and curest them
While yet they're fresh, by wandering freely round
After the freely-wandering Venus, or
Canst lead elsewhere the tumults of thy mind.
Yes, a swollen skin
fragmented bone
I walk
and flee her capture.
Sep 15, 2012
Sep 15, 2012 at 6:13 PM UTC
Tout est pris d'un frisson subit.
L'hiver s'enfuit et se dérobe.
L'année ôte son vieil habit ;
La terre met sa belle robe.
Tout est nouveau, tout est debout ;
L'adolescence est dans les plaines ;
La beauté du diable, partout,
Rayonne et se mire aux fontaines.
L'arbre est coquet ; parmi les fleurs
C'est à qui sera la plus belle ;
Toutes étalent leurs couleurs,
Et les plus laides ont du zèle.
Le bouquet jaillit du rocher ;
L'air baise les feuilles légères ;
Juin rit de voir s'endimancher
Le petit peuple des fougères.
C'est une fête en vérité,
Fête où vient le chardon, ce rustre ;
Dans le grand palais de l'été
Les astres allument le lustre.
On fait les foins. Bientôt les blés.
Le faucheur dort sous la cépée ;
Et tous les souffles sont mêlés
D'une senteur d'herbe coupée.
Oui chante là ? Le rossignol.
Les chrysalides sont parties.
Le ver de terre a pris son vol
Et jeté le froc aux orties ;
L'aragne sur l'eau fait des ronds ;
Ô ciel bleu ! l'ombre est sous la treille ;
Le jonc tremble, et les moucherons
Viennent vous parler à l'oreille ;
On voit rôder l'abeille à jeun,
La guêpe court, le frelon guette ;
A tous ces buveurs de parfum
Le printemps ouvre sa guinguette.
Le bourdon, aux excès enclin,
Entre en chiffonnant sa chemise ;
Un oeillet est un verre plein,
Un lys est une nappe mise.
La mouche boit le vermillon
Et l'or dans les fleurs demi-closes,
Et l'ivrogne est le papillon,
Et les cabarets sont les roses.
De joie et d'extase on s'emplit,
L'ivresse, c'est la délivrance ;
Sur aucune fleur on ne lit :
Société de tempérance.
Le faste providentiel
Partout brille, éclate et s'épanche,
Et l'unique livre, le ciel,
Est par l'aube doré sur tranche.
Enfants, dans vos yeux éclatants
Je crois voir l'empyrée éclore ;
Vous riez comme le printemps
Et vous pleurez comme l'aurore.
1.5k
O tempo é escasso e o espaço, amplo.
O prazo é laço e engancha o pampo**.
o BERRO é surdo sem algum alcance
pra que o ouvido mudo do Universo dance.
Galanteiam nebulosas em destino infante
e trazem, ao eterno, singular instante.
Cada transição traçada a que avance
é passo dado em falso a fortuito lance.
Aferir feridas de um pleno plano
levará o homem a estado insano:
a narcose de saber um objeto nulo.
Na movimentação estática do engano,
toda teoria traz na cura um dano
entoado na garganta que, portanto, engulo.
* bestia cupidissima rerum novarum - animal ansiosíssimo por coisas novas.
**Pampo - rebento tardio de cana de açucar: pampos de cana caiana (Dicionário UNESP do Português contemporâneo)
Sep 8, 2010
Sep 8, 2010 at 5:05 AM UTC
I remember how you’d say
We should spend time not money
But I spent my money on time
And not even my gold encrusted piece
Could freeze the moment you were mine
I can’t tell the difference,
Is it my watch ticking,
Heart beating or the metronome?
Is it the smoke or the pheromones?
You can’t remember the moans
But you remember how the liquor tricked you,
Made her loose
Made you lick her
And you found the gold mine at the meeting of her thighs,
It wasn’t only on her wrist and in her eyes
I’m not one to pray
But my knees got ******
From worshiping a Sunday kind of love
In the name of father time,
You - the sun
And my holy spirit
And I guess it’s true what they say
That nothing good happens after 2 AM
Then again, there was you
And then those 2 PM Monday blues
And it’s ironic how time heals all wounds,
but no drug, god or serum can save us from
tempus edax rerum
Jun 8, 2017
Jun 8, 2017 at 12:11 PM UTC
I. Aprilis
You wished the summer for no one
moments of white wilderness
stars in the blood
sepaled bees scatter
drown each day as all lights
unmade pollen blossoming among
fistfuls of paper tasks
busied thought scrolls with the Seen
afternoon feathers multiply
white honey of Aries
II. Julius
Months as paper pass flitting
through the screens that
separate outdoors from in where
light pools on an ancient carpet and
summer lay broken in pieces
on the floor like
so much shattered vinyl
what happens to the trapped light then, as
it ages, it thickens
curdles in the stale drapes
staunches awareness of
time the moon
is slowly
drifting away
from Earth
III. Octus
Apples fall on the rotten dusty ground we
threw them, trapped in the speckled atmosphere of decades
that never rinses clean you swore
we could see Venus if
the clouds would sit right
Aphrodite in blue jeans a ladder
in darkness is still
a ladder
IV. Januarius
Color dissolves and
hibernates underground grey winds
stampede through the Roman Year
like the ghosts of unchained thoroughbreds
all the bees have drowned their honey
spread thin across the blackened sky when
everything is upside down
stars become seeds
Mar 12, 2010
Mar 12, 2010 at 7:21 PM UTC
I avoid utilizing any real skill.
The person,
the human,
that I am is wasting away.
We can find ourselves inspired in the midst of tragedy.
We take the pain of others,
their mistakes,
graft them into our own lives to relate.
Am I still whole?
Am I still mine?
In my heart,
at the core of my animal
*** is vital.
I want to write about it,
how it makes me feel.
but it is the me that sits alone in her floor that needs to empassioned.
I sit with all the tools at my fingertips.
Volumes of empty books to fill.
I'm not who I want to be.
Simpler obsessions fill the void that they used to exploit.
Fits of writing about how I cannot write.
Dig
Disect
Nothing replies.
Stare into the void.
Load my pipe again & again.
I don't feel myself.
The one who could pour her heart & mind into pages.
I am just like everyone else.
Boring & monotonous.
I am in a cycle of comfortable survival.
I do not create.
I do not expand.
I do not contribute.
I only consume.
I dug myself out of a hole only to become planted there.
Foreign to this reality.
I don't want to waste away.
Constantly entertained.
I want to find madness.
Lost in the worlds inside my head made real on paper.
The pleasure in staring at the emotions painted on a canvas.
Breed the life force of every morsel I intake.
Burn for the next physical limit to be broken.
Speak languages that make me weak.
God beneath the tree tops.
In love with all the life that came before me,
full of the things I love so dearly.
Where is Satan
while fighting this war of doubt & inaction.
This stagnant misery should be ammunition enough
to break down Heaven's gate
& turn the tide against the luxury I've entombed myself in.
But I must claw,
enraged,
& labor to bring life into this wraith.
Great demons be my muse.
Ancient disease doth stir & demand nourishment
from control & fear.
Abandon my world of weakness to become
of new things.
Dec 31, 2014
Dec 31, 2014 at 5:51 PM UTC
To be allowed to drive forever, through the burns
Of August, pregnant with a dreaming,
Set upon another life.
To drive and not climb from the car, with every
Window wound back into its shell, to not
Think ever of heaven, and never to tell
Pedestrians of the driving.
To be in transit: to be a wing, awake
In smaller shelves of air; to live
As though each moment were its own movie
Screen
And never to regret the faces standing still,
The roadside eyes, the strangers fleeting;
Each foretells a story.
To touch potential that reminds
And shout "Never mind!" as one drives.
To bring beneath the hot blue
A mode of being mindful
Of the lachrimae rerum, and to feel
The sorrow and the thrill of speed.
To never feel the need of feet,
And to watch
Clouds through tinted glass and country turn to run
As you blink against the sun and throw
Your glasses from the car.
To find a country lane, and race
So close to bracken that the dew
Can wash your face, and then slow,
By the heated science fiction of a petrol station
In the grip of yellow weather.
To press the horn and be at last born
Into the endlessness of sky.
To cherish evening as time when seeing nothing
Dies;
To exceed day and to say
"Hello," to women at the roadside.
To see the world as something flying,
Something outshining the hazy study walking
Teaches.
To know you drive beyond the reaches
And to give it everything you've got
As you lean into the wheel and feel
A sainthood in your suntan,
A miracle in the mileage.
To ignore maps, and head for places
Beyond the slightest traces of your former life,
Abandoning self in the process of speed
And accept adventures and sudden brakes
Because you feel the car
outwaiting patience by the road,
And you are owed some living, **** it!
To never check the rear-view mirror
and to slow down as the sun collapses
Worn out on the hills,
Because you never will exhaust
The depths and wonders of this prayer.
To never care about direction, and to drive
Into the night
With headlights blessing every pebble;
To smell the fuel and feel the wheel and
Drive throughout forever.
Sep 24, 2015
Sep 24, 2015 at 9:02 AM UTC
If I say out loud
that I love you,
do our names
and beings change
or do our names
and beings define,
in the first place,
the simple phrase,
I love you?
What can we be
without each other?
Breath without lungs,
kisses without lips,
fingers without touch.
To name it is to be it;
to say it is to birth it
in the world of flesh.
Less than that,
only silence;
less than that,
nothing at all.
- mce
Jul 1, 2015
Jul 1, 2015 at 8:35 PM UTC
is it a second chance or the twelfth?
the stars around my heart are fighting again,
sparking up the little adolescent muscle in my chest
because the danger in metaphors caught up
with me and they convince me I'm not living
in the real world, I bite my lip
I walk alone
but when I think of you
my heartbeat-
you take it away
these faulty stars know ways to go and stop
and start again
but they are still only juveniles
the twelfth chance spins into the thirteenth
so I let go of my lip and slow down or
run ahead to meet you
and my heartbeat becomes me
-c.j.
Mar 13, 2017
Mar 13, 2017 at 11:24 PM UTC
some poems are not poetic
some lovers are not romantic
some lives are not dramatic
TRUE DEVOTEES ARE NOT FANATIC
May 6, 2025
May 6, 2025 at 1:50 AM UTC
Sobre la triste tumba que abandona
El vano deudo que por necio brillo
La ornó ayer con espléndida corona,
Crece el clavel silvestre y amarillo.
Y sobre ese clavel que de áureo manto
Viste la tumba que olvidó el impío,
Sólo viene a llorar al campo-santo
El alba que lo empapa con rocío.
Se rompe al fin la tumba y nadie advierte
Lo que guardaba en su mansión oscura,
Porque ya en polvo lo cambió la muerte
Y el viento esparció el polvo en la llanura
Y en aquel sitio en que ninguna mano
Enciende cirios ni cultiva flores
Libre y feliz el mísero gusano
Se torna en mariposa de colores.
No hay tumba sin adorno en su tristeza.
¡Como que en ella están los ojos fijos
De la que nunca olvida en su grandezal
¡De la madre inmortal Naturaleza
Que vela eternamente por sus hijos!
404
The solitary fingertip
stroking gently
her left cheek
becoming a dam
for the tears
that overwhelm
the trembling finger
the overflowing tears
glistening upon his nail
he kisses
her tears
they taste of salt
and love
her dying
May 4, 2015
May 4, 2015 at 6:58 PM UTC
Free from assumptions,
from the endless “why?”
the burning need for a unique sign.
I move just one small step back
to protect my lands not taken.
Sometimes enough feels quite soft
like a rotten tree trunk covered in moss.
I can sit and rest for a while,
diving deeply into the forest of tangled thoughts.
This time, I would like to be gentle and tender
to my inner world, to my tired soul.
I let it be calm, I allow this time
to give myself kindness.
Apr 3, 2025
Apr 3, 2025 at 6:15 PM UTC