"scarcely" poems
1058
Bloom—is Result—to meet a Flower
And casually glance
Would scarcely cause one to suspect
The minor Circumstance
Assisting in the Bright Affair
So intricately done
Then offered as a Butterfly
To the Meridian—
To pack the Bud—oppose the Worm—
Obtain its right of Dew—
Adjust the Heat—elude the Wind—
Escape the prowling Bee
Great Nature not to disappoint
Awaiting Her that Day—
To be a Flower, is profound
Responsibility—
46.9k
The mother is first—
she is for all and down to earth.
She, the mother Fathima,
descended from uncharted Heaven—
that pivotal frontier
only the Prophet of all prophets has seen.
Then, there was no Adam, nor Eve, nor even Jibreel.
Every star across the seven skies
wishes to kiss that golden dust.
Not to mention the Moon at the center,
waning and waxing—openly and secretly—
unleashing its longing to rub
this non-sublunary piece against its forehead.
She knows—only then
the rough seas beneath her will calm,
bathed in the soft raining moonlight,
rubbing off upon a lucky, blossomed forehead.
Oh, if only—
scarcely could they ever see it!
The galaxies, since their inceptions,
have longed for it.
The bliss of the eyes—tucked away from the scene.
Paradise lies beneath the mother’s feet!
It finds its core, its resonant lore,
in the shadow of the original feminine—Fathima.
There, the original matter explored;
Paradise breathed beneath her—
but she touched down at the heart of the Earth
without stepping or touching on Paradise,
only to give her stake away to others.
No land she would take on her way back, indeed.
Not in her name.
Do you know where Fathima’s grave is?
Dec 28, 2017
Dec 28, 2017 at 4:01 PM UTC
What's wrong with you, with us,
what's happening to us?
Ah our love is a harsh cord
that binds us wounding us
and if we want
to leave our wound,
to separate,
it makes a new knot for us and condemns us
to drain our blood and burn together.
What's wrong with you? I look at you
and I find nothing in you but two eyes
like all eyes, a mouth
lost among a thousand mouths that I have kissed, more beautiful,
a body just like those that have slipped
beneath my body without leaving any memory.
And how empty you went through the world
like a wheat-colored jar
without air, without sound, without substance!
I vainly sought in you
depth for my arms
that dig, without cease, beneath the earth:
beneath your skin, beneath your eyes,
nothing,
beneath your double breast scarcely
raised
a current of crystalline order
that does not know why it flows singing.
Why, why, why,
my love, why?
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*Blue clouds gaze the wrapped sun
frozen kisses in my blood
travelling a thousand miles
to meet up with you.
There is none else walking
down this path where memories
wake up and dance
inside my armored heart.
I peeled off each kisses embrace
out of my parched lips.
I shook off the tree,
where your scent had blossomed.*
***Every step down this scarcely trodden path saw...
Each peel fall with helpless, damsel-like grace.
Brown leaves shone amber touched by fingers of the sun
Invasion of warmth through my greyed bony carapace.
Gentle tremors reverberate within with subtle anguish.
Sweet scented portal that took me back,
To the illusion of time where we once were...
In drunken stupor...laying under a star strewn canvas of black.
Senses that spoke of a great fantastical tale.
You are still here... In this cloying void with no one around...
Only that scent...your scent tugging on my core
Invisible tendrils berthing my feet back on ground.***
*Alone and wanting don't want to be anymore.
I want to feast my lungs on your skin once more.
I want to vibrate under your touch again,
In anguished anticipation and sweet pain.
I hurl your name to the echoing wind,
Blowing ferociously over the closed passage.
Only to find that I'm but elongating
the distance between our fading wishful stars.*
***Fading far only to find that I'm lost yet again,
Still harvesting a basket full of ripened hope.
Traversing planes with warped, slanted doorways,
Frantically seeking purchase on knobs with fevered gropes.
Heavy layered breaths inhaled too shallow...
Tracing missteps to decipher what it all meant.
When all is moot...weary, weathered and futile,
Forever I'll be bathing in the familiarity of your soothing, nectarous scent...***
Dajena M
ryn
Feb 26, 2015
Feb 26, 2015 at 11:50 PM UTC
Scarcely a street, too few houses
To merit the title; just a way between
The one tavern and the one shop
That leads nowhere and fails at the top
Of the short hill, eaten away
By long erosion of the green tide
Of grass creeping perpetually nearer
This last outpost of time past.
So little happens; the black dog
Cracking his fleas in the hot sun
Is history. Yet the girl who crosses
From door to door moves to a scale
Beyond the bland day's two dimensions.
Stay, then, village, for round you spins
On a slow axis a world as vast
And meaningful as any posed
By great Plato's solitary mind.
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Hello
A gesture perceived as formless waves in the Web
Perhaps a luring trap to be caught
or a silent cry as print Scarcely Red
Maybe you
Reddit or Won't
As text is the voice of this generation
Quote
ILY My fam is so cute
#Hashbrowns @MyBFFFFs
Last looks of a father as he leaves
with a dry cleaned suit.
The last breakfast I ate with my family
Together. Rebuked.
Now it lays archived in the mind of i
A memory fragment less intact
than the Colossus of Rhodes
What's that? Let me Google that.
What will become of the crowd
The voices, in their plight are
"Like wow, Laughing Out Loud"
Like apathy is the new trend
Can we even say there is a greater purpose
of the time we Spend.
Nov 11, 2014
Nov 11, 2014 at 6:01 PM UTC
Oh why am I still hurting
Isn't it past the hour of pain?
Hell is only temporary
Til He rids you of all shame!
I stepped into Your room
Try to relive Your relieving
To rid me of my gloom
Try to receive Your revealing
Jealous the jealous God
I seek restless for Your love
Mine eyes grow tired and weary
Jealous the jealous God
Jealous the jealous God
I drown helpless in Your flood
I thirst scarcely for Your mercy
Jealous the jealous God
Why is the world so empty
Yet weighs millions o' pounds?
Where lies pile up aplenty
To keep the lost from being found
Why is deception
Like form of education
Setting false foundations
Corrupting His creation
As lies disguise damnation
For a paper-clad salvation
Sending ill vibrations
To the youth of all the nations
I wonder how much am I missing, o God?
A wonder even the universe cannot contain
Translated and made compatible in a human's brain.
Soulless animals kiss the land
In honor of the One
Who was, who is and is to come
Who dares their doubt expand
In disbelief blot out the sun
Jealous the jealous God
Soulless animals indeed we have become
May 10, 2014
May 10, 2014 at 11:03 AM UTC
Tool of desperate confrontation
Object of pride for a grateful nation
In Baton Rouge on the mighty river
Kidd rests proudly
376' length overall, Fletcher Class destroyer
Like every ship, of oil she does smell
When I boarded her, she had something to tell
I was with a scoutmaster, my son and the boys
Concerned with their fun, and the making of noise
But late in the night, as quiet set in
Kidd started whispering, to my within
She spoke of the men who gave up their lives
Their children, their girls, the tears of their wives
Thirty-eight men, in fiery fuel
Hell's agony touched, a death so cruel
Fifty-five more, burned badly that day
Defending our country, our homage we pay
Visiting sailors will stand at attention
… and for a young Kamikaze, scarcely a mention
The big war was over, Kidd passed her test
Now to San Diego, for a permanent rest
But as men will prescribe, it didn’t last long
Kidd went back into action, near Korea’s Kaesong
When in Baton Rouge, you can visit the Kidd
If you’re bold, listen carefully, just as I did
You'll get half of the story, the rest we don't know
The men who have fallen, to Kidd's mighty blow
Let's set a new tone and have us some fun
The Kidd's crew were pirates but they didn't run ***
Those flat-tops were fancy, their flyers elite
In the galley was ice-cream, their reward and their treat
When a pilot was downed, Kidd quickly steamed
Then radioed the skipper, "your man for ice-cream"
Jul 17, 2018
Jul 17, 2018 at 5:46 PM UTC
the moon is a lesbian,
which i know because she has
kissed every inch of my body
more often than any lover
i've ever known.
i have watched the way
she kisses the ocean
and guides her gently home,
have seen her face reflected with love
in the ever-changing sparkling surface of the sea,
and i don't know any other word
to describe a love like that.
the day we smoked a joint in the woods
and then walked eight miles in the rain
to gas station coffee,
we passed two other gas stations on the way,
but you were holding my hand and
i didn't want it to stop.
you said
"you're beautiful"
and i said
~~~~
because you were the most remarkable
person i had ever seen,
leaned up against the hood of a stranger's car,
smoking a cigarette like a lesbian james dean.
you'd call yourself
"lesbian" sixteen times before breakfast
until it stopped sounding like venom
and started to sound like a prayer,
because how could i ever look at
love like this and feel anything
but holy?
my new church was the woods
by the river,
and i learned to worship
at the altar of your body.
you took me in your arms and you said,
"baby,
you're beautiful,"
and i told you i loved you
because beautiful had never
meant anything to me
except that i had something
people could take.
i heard "beautiful" from your lips and it sounded
like a blessing.
the moon is a lesbian because
she knows how to love without taking,
i have scarcely loved a man
who has learned how to love without taking,
that is not to say that no man
can love without taking,
but it is a skill that is learned
through a grief
that i have shared with every
queer woman i have ever met.
when you kissed me in the attic,
it was not the first time
i had been kissed,
but it was the first time that a touch
felt like a gift and not a punishment,
and it was the first time i understood
why people write love songs.
i wanted to write you a love song,
but after a lifetime afraid of my own voice,
all i could sing you were hymns.
not because i had made you an idol,
but because your hands on my body
made me feel clean for the first time.
the moon is a lesbian because
the night i stumbled out of
the apartment of the man
who only loved me when
he thought he could keep me,
blood on my lips and nowhere to go,
the moon kissed my fingertips
and she said,
"baby,
what took you so long?
welcome home."
Mar 27, 2017
Mar 27, 2017 at 11:25 AM UTC
The memory of you emerges from the night around me.
The river mingles its stubborn lament with the sea.
Deserted like the dwarves at dawn.
It is the hour of departure, oh deserted one!
Cold flower heads are raining over my heart.
Oh pit of debris, fierce cave of the shipwrecked.
In you the wars and the flights accumulated.
From you the wings of the song birds rose.
You swallowed everything, like distance.
Like the sea, like time. In you everything sank!
It was the happy hour of assault and the kiss.
The hour of the spell that blazed like a lighthouse.
Pilot's dread, fury of blind driver,
turbulent drunkenness of love, in you everything sank!
In the childhood of mist my soul, winged and wounded.
Lost discoverer, in you everything sank!
You girdled sorrow, you clung to desire,
sadness stunned you, in you everything sank!
I made the wall of shadow draw back,
beyond desire and act, I walked on.
Oh flesh, my own flesh, woman whom I loved and lost,
I summon you in the moist hour, I raise my song to you.
Like a jar you housed infinite tenderness.
and the infinite oblivion shattered you like a jar.
There was the black solitude of the islands,
and there, woman of love, your arms took me in.
There was thirst and hunger, and you were the fruit.
There were grief and ruins, and you were the miracle.
Ah woman, I do not know how you could contain me
in the earth of your soul, in the cross of your arms!
How terrible and brief my desire was to you!
How difficult and drunken, how tensed and avid.
Cemetery of kisses, there is still fire in your tombs,
still the fruited boughs burn, pecked at by birds.
Oh the bitten mouth, oh the kissed limbs,
oh the hungering teeth, oh the entwined bodies.
Oh the mad coupling of hope and force
in which we merged and despaired.
And the tenderness, light as water and as flour.
And the word scarcely begun on the lips.
This was my destiny and in it was my voyage of my longing,
and in it my longing fell, in you everything sank!
Oh pit of debris, everything fell into you,
what sorrow did you not express, in what sorrow are you not drowned!
From billow to billow you still called and sang.
Standing like a sailor in the prow of a vessel.
You still flowered in songs, you still brike the currents.
Oh pit of debris, open and bitter well.
Pale blind diver, luckless slinger,
lost discoverer, in you everything sank!
It is the hour of departure, the hard cold hour
which the night fastens to all the timetables.
The rustling belt of the sea girdles the shore.
Cold stars heave up, black birds migrate.
Deserted like the wharves at dawn.
Only tremulous shadow twists in my hands.
Oh farther than everything. Oh farther than everything.
It is the hour of departure. Oh abandoned one!
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i was born of rough cloth.
it cradled me from youth
it kept me scarcely warm,
and amply humble.
but i grew a longing for silk and silver—
a softer touch,
a glimmer around my neck.
my head rests against your chest—
your cashmere skin greets my weary cheek
i hear that gem beating in your jewelry box
a scarlet ruby,
plated in the pure gold of your love.
i run my fingers through your amber satin ribbons.
you laugh a music box tune and i long to dance.
your smile shines in pure ivory,
and your eyes twinkle with a clarity
the finest of diamonds envy.
i look at you,
rich with love
and i remember
my wealth.
Oct 30, 2018
Oct 30, 2018 at 7:01 PM UTC
Truth
Everyone seeks it
Yet people scarcely
Use it
It is manipulated
Distorted
Tainted
By the world we
Call
Home
s.a.m.
Jul 7, 2014
Jul 7, 2014 at 7:48 PM UTC
Find solace in solitude,
There is no shame in that.
We are unknown to ourselves
An ocean to which we delve.
Scarcely coming up for air,
Entangled in fathoms
Whirlpools of despair.
Waves of introspection
Spare us shallow reefs
Yet cast us into darkness
And the horrors of the deep.
Apr 14, 2015
Apr 14, 2015 at 6:56 PM UTC
My mother was
a first generation lesbian.
My father,
a first generation divorcee.
His father was the one child
of a public school teacher.
He found my grandmother at 18.
A farm child, one of seven.
A painter, a baker.
My mother's father
a single boy to three sisters.
His aggressive masculinity
kept the line clear and thick.
He found my mother's mother at 17.
A middle of seven Pentecostal children.
A beauty queen, an agoraphobic.
Each had five children.
The door-to-door salesmen/
homemaker and mother of boys duo
bet it all to open a hobby shop.
They were by far the poorest of the
watermelon farming siblings.
They were artists and explorers.
The high school graduate and ladies man,
was a logger before a father.
And the single mother of 25 he left
scarcely left her home at all.
Neither pair made it big.
But they made my father.
A lonely, post middle aged man.
The poorest of his brothers.
A used to be pilot,
and could have been teacher,
a want to be pioneer.
A nuclear family super fan
who never got his way.
And they made my mother.
A nervous, eccentric hippie
who doesn't know how to talk to her siblings.
A woman working her *** off to excel at lower middle class.
A builder, a fighter, a **** good mother.
Even if accidentally so.
She has plans to travel.
He has dreams to live by a lake.
And they made me.
A single girl among three boys.
A quirky, nervous tomboy.
A thinker, a gardener, a climber.
A loser and a dreamer by blood.
Nov 17, 2015
Nov 17, 2015 at 5:20 PM UTC
if learned darkness from our searched world
should wrest the rare unwisdom of thy eyes,
and if thy hands flowers of silence curled
upon a wish,to rapture should surprise
my soul slowly which on thy beauty dreams
(proud through the cold perfect night whisperless
to mark,how that asleep whitely she seems
whose lips the whole of life almost do guess)
if god should send the morning;and before
my doubting window leaves softly to stir,
of thoughtful trees whom night hath pondered o’er
—and frailties of dimension to occur
about us
and birds known, scarcely to sing
(heart,could we bear the marvel of this thing?)
9.2k
I write in the midnight corner of now and what is to come. Sifting through the ashes of the forgotten. I seek what I fail to find in a light I can scarcely see. The rain washes the sins from my skin so that the ones inside can bleed back out. My words catch the air with gentle, intense passion. I caress the broken cheek hoping to fix it and finding only myself more broken. I know not of what is to come but I can prepare myself with the ammunition of my past. The brittle autumn wind calms me with the vibrant colors of a dying world. My mind wanders into the absent recesses of my twisted imagination. The words I write copy the voices in my torn heartstrings. I lust for the cold rain fingers that embezzle my mind. My soul is painted with the bright blackness of a blackhole's laughter. There is a butterfly caged in my stomach and I'm too afraid to let it free.
- - -
When will I know that I've found rapture?
~S.C. Kelley
Sep 3, 2018
Sep 3, 2018 at 3:04 PM UTC
I sit upon an impossible throne,
The world's most comfortable chair.
It's all I'll ever wish to own
Though I forget it's even there.
My chair is ergonomical,
Conforming right to me.
Whatever I find desirable
It suits every want and need.
I feed it everything I have
But it never is enough,
Everyday my fingers bleed
Stuffing it with fluff.
I only see in front of me,
My chair it does not turn.
And as far as I can see
My chair is the whole world.
My chair is all I'll ever know
I seldom choose to leave it.
It scarcely ever lets me go
It's all I can believe in.
I don't know what I'd do without it,
Perhaps get up and get a life.
But instead I'll sit and stagnate,
Dying in my own delight.
Jan 29, 2014
Jan 29, 2014 at 12:04 AM UTC
Just Let It In
this
language,
the perplexity
of this language,
is damaging to me.
how can there possibly
exist such an impeccably
imposing combination of
words that still manage to destroy
a soul as wasted as mine? somehow
words discover these fine little cracks in
my wall, as thin as the head of a pin. words
are like water, rushing into whatever space they
can invade, occupying whatever volume they discover.
this water trickles through the fragmented spaces, traveling
all the way to my heart, transforming me in the way they seem to
alter us all. it is these words that i take with me. words reverberate in my mind,
disrupt me to my core, degrade me. your words are the ones i perpetually carry with me...
any...all of them. yours are the ones that elicit the simultaneous firing of every
single neuron in my brain. there is something about the magic of your words
flowing together...whispered into my ear. they move through me like
a stealthy, lone snake, undulating in a field, stalking its defenseless
prey; slowly...at first glance, not appearing to be a perilous threat
...then piercing me all at once with fierce strength and
determination, devouring me without appearing to
acknowledge that maybe i still...still want to be.
to be whole. and i do. my body craves
the sensation of being complete,
not torn apart by the nonsense
of your daunting words
disrupting my spirit
and making me
despise the
necessity
of language.
i wish i could
void your words
from my brain, but
my mind is helplessly
inconsistent; i can never
forget what i long to,
scarcely remember
what i must; and
my peculiar mind
*
certainly* will never
forget the sound
of your words,
just like water,
flooding me.
taking me
over.
Nov 11, 2012
Nov 11, 2012 at 2:44 AM UTC
(1)
The day she visited the dissecting room
They had four men laid out, black as burnt turkey,
Already half unstrung. A vinegary fume
Of the death vats clung to them;
The white-smocked boys started working.
The head of his cadaver had caved in,
And she could scarcely make out anything
In that rubble of skull plates and old leather.
A sallow piece of string held it together.
In their jars the snail-nosed babies moon and glow.
He hands her the cut-out heart like a cracked heirloom.
(2)
In Brueghel's panorama of smoke and slaughter
Two people only are blind to the carrion army:
He, afloat in the sea of her blue satin
Skirts, sings in the direction
Of her bare shoulder, while she bends,
Finger a leaflet of music, over him,
Both of them deaf to the fiddle in the hands
Of the death's-head shadowing their song.
These Flemish lovers flourish;not for long.
Yet desolation, stalled in paint, spares the little country
Foolish, delicate, in the lower right hand corner.
6.7k
Sometimes at night
asleep by the firelight
I dream about them
how they died
some are singing
and others saying what
they no longer see
walking fencelines
limping as if in pain
some of them handsome
and some mysterious
silent but not
for long they tell you
men scarcely know
how beautiful fire is
and old stories
they can't remember
unless you can
still look them in the eye.
Jan 25, 2017
Jan 25, 2017 at 10:28 PM UTC
Where are the songs I used to know,
Where are the notes I used to sing?
I have forgotten everything
I used to know so long ago;
Summer has followed after Spring;
Now Autumn is so shrunk and sere,
I scarcely think a sadder thing
Can be the Winter of my year.
Yet Robin sings thro' Winter's rest,
When bushes put their berries on;
While they their ruddy jewels don,
He sings out of a ruddy breast;
The hips and haws and ruddy breast
Make one spot warm where snowflakes lie,
They break and cheer the unlovely rest
Of Winter's pause--and why not I?
6.4k
Happenstance to the melancholic gives leave the sin of pride.
Inbound reconnaissance tells not the bearer of influence.
Squeamish at first: a foreshadowing of calamitous bonding.
A space between the mark of corporeal and the ethereal; a stringent hiatus
That which rattles the concrete foundation of morality is scarcely a malleable recourse.
Regret stains the unfounded soul: an enigma of ephemeral perforations.
A separation of the unmitigated humanities; misandry topples the writhing snake.
Impact; a cleansing of the maker's flaws integrated solemnly.
Complacency arrests the administration of the abhorred; unbridled is the autonomy of a guru.
Ambivalent giftedness burdens the reliant and haughty.
A flick of the tongue brings forth the cinema mortem.
Castaway: alone to wade in the sea of obscenities.
A temporal causality allows no mourning to abscond.
Negligence is not the enemy, but indulgent wrath.
Hesitant: a stroke of qualia begets the end of a maiden.
Feb 6, 2014
Feb 6, 2014 at 11:13 AM UTC
The old fable covers a doctrine ever new and sublime; that there is One Man, — present to all particular men only partially, or through one faculty; and that you must take the whole society to find the whole man. Man is not a farmer, or a professor, or an engineer, but he is all. Man is priest, and scholar, and statesman, and producer, and soldier. In the divided or social state, these functions are parcelled out to individuals, each of whom aims to do his stint of the joint work, whilst each other performs his. The fable implies, that the individual, to possess himself, must sometimes return from his own labor to embrace all the other laborers. But unfortunately, this original unit, this fountain of power, has been so distributed to multitudes, has been so minutely subdivided and peddled out, that it is spilled into drops, and cannot be gathered. The state of society is one in which the members have suffered amputation from the trunk, and strut about so many walking monsters, — a good finger, a neck, a stomach, an elbow, but never a man.
Man is thus metamorphosed into a thing, into many things. The planter, who is Man sent out into the field to gather food, is seldom cheered by any idea of the true dignity of his ministry. He sees his bushel and his cart, and nothing beyond, and sinks into the farmer, instead of Man on the farm. The tradesman scarcely ever gives an ideal worth to his work, but is ridden by the routine of his craft, and the soul is subject to dollars. The priest becomes a form; the attorney, a statute-book; the mechanic, a machine; the sailor, a rope of a ship.
Oct 8, 2014
Oct 8, 2014 at 1:16 PM UTC
The crow works its way sideways on the wire.
Nature lives at full tilt. It does not worry
That it may soon be used up. It lives in the moment
In pursuit of having a fulfilled purpose.
For the busy crow the fleeting moments pass unnoticed;
Time scarcely has consequences for the satisfied;
Down he flies for crusts of hamburger buns.
Mar 18, 2015
Mar 18, 2015 at 12:33 AM UTC
dustv eils
swi ftly
ayo uthful
lens; legions
of serra atesight
scarcely tempered
Sep 22, 2014
Sep 22, 2014 at 10:34 AM UTC