"slowness" poems
He awoke.
His eyes opened slowly with a purposeful slowness; an action that for most people is the beginning of their life was, for him, a procrastination.
He arose.
The floor felt cold, unwelcoming as he stumbled reluctantly to the sink. The bristles rasped against his teeth, gums bleeding out of spite.
He entered.
Breakfast—a lonely egg, boring toast—entered his body; each bite was scooped with the utilitarian vigor of one who is no longer enchanted by food, yet the relationship must continue: a compulsory marriage without option for divorce. This discomfort washed down with lemon-water.
He contemplated.
Thoughts, those musings that are feared, condemned by most and yet became the greatest of comforts for him, reminded him that one day it all would end and he would be free.
He wasted.
He stretched out his hands, offering up his life force in the daily sacrifice to the eager god that, in return, lit up with the brightness of a thousand stars that blinded him from all that he wished not to see.
He showered.
Cold water ran down his soul, icing the most superficial inflammations while taunting the deepest wounds; no matter how long he remained behind the curtain, there would be no true respite.
He returned.
The blackness beckoned. He entered willingly, surrendering himself to the dark embrace of that demonic respite, his beloved above all others.
He died, once again.
Dec 28, 2018
Dec 28, 2018 at 3:28 AM UTC
1142
The Props assist the House
Until the House is built
And then the Props withdraw
And adequate, *****
The House support itself
And cease to recollect
The Auger and the Carpenter—
Just such a retrospect
Hath the perfected Life—
A past of Plank and Nail
And slowness—then the Scaffolds drop
Affirming it a Soul.
5.1k
I just want to go 200 on the interstate
and see if the world still wants me
My skill is wasted on slowness
Underappreciated and mistaken for arrogance
Behind the wheel I am confirmed
Decisions here are not the customs of monotony
But a nuanced puzzle of physics
I am a navigator in an ocean of outcomes
The engine is roaring with me
We were made for exploding
Aug 24, 2014
Aug 24, 2014 at 10:43 PM UTC
Ah, yes they sit and wait waste their life away. By the time they find food they have perished to something called slowness and starvation. Now its body lays and decays. They say it bakes in the sun but theres no way, only until it can find its fate.
Oct 14, 2014
Oct 14, 2014 at 1:05 PM UTC
It might not be the thing
You’ve come to associate me with
This elegant display
As I steadily move forward
Do not mistake my slowness
For laziness or worse
I take my time for things I like
As I enjoy the things that slowly pass by
Life’s too short and too fast alike
And I’m just a helpless little pawn
But do not mistake my slowness
For laziness or worse
As you come to see me
As someone who values life
And takes things as they come
Slowly and gently
Like the turtle’s steps
Nov 10, 2015
Nov 10, 2015 at 12:36 PM UTC
Sitting in this dusty old attic
listening to the shingles flapping in the wind
I flip through a dog-eared book from my childhood.
As I skip through the pages,
I look up and notice the fine inlaid
carpentry work of an old chest.
Going over, leaving prints on the dusty floor,
I lift the lid. With reptilian slowness
a lazy fat spider edges away.
Inside this trove of ancient treasure,
magnificent finds of days gone by.
Mementos of a honeymoon, a parachute jump.
Gramma's best biscuit recipe. A photo of
Sam the hound with spittle running down his jowls.
A picture of a babe at his mother's ******
A permutation of these tucked away articles
give meaning to a life well and truly lived.
Closing the pages of these treasures I
wander away to watch my grandchildren
make memories of their own.
Sep 20, 2011
Sep 20, 2011 at 8:49 PM UTC
“and have the richest fluency not only in its words but in the silent lines of its lips and face and between the lashes of your eyes and in every motion and joint of your body.”
Walt Whitman
<>
having recently been on standby for a permanent-entry residency visa
to over & just beyond death’s door, Walt’s prescient prescription strikes my broken breastbone even harder much, than the persistent
periodic pains confirming the breaking and the healing
of this man’s mending of the human centric poetic *****
for this warped heart mine, now rejoicingly rejiggered with some threads and wires to deliver a new but fresh bloodied wisdom,
begs me, eggs me to torrent word streams, but Whitman’s wisdom cautions a new slowness, the wisdom of mortality’s hot breath urges careful consideration of every letter that my second chance, consignment shop flesh, eagerly embraces, to both prescribe and proscribe inside-insights tween the deafening sounds of eyelashes beating synchronized to the revived heart rates rapid renewal and
last second-chances….
torn tween minute torso sensations and the running silence of
a new battery’s internal rapid intervals, the silent timing gaps tween beats leaves-just-enough-space to ask over and over again,
from whence will come my richest fluency? (1)
at 300am, I lay carefully caressing and chewing well each transitory
thought, absent the former energetic ability to just spill,
though highly desired,
now requires, like me,
steady re-piecing together
the steady drumbeat of now-nearer-my-god-than-thee Titanic reflections
demands a slowing rapidity
this I thought before and now ken, even and ever better, that our primary endeavor shall always be the giving, the disbursement of the act of love…for therein lies the healing of each, and wet eyes,
make necessarily concluding this poem about nothing and everything
and I comprehend Walt’s dictum:
my very flesh is a poem,
every sensation a lyric,
every breath taken and returned to the atmosphere
so unconsciously
are my oldest
and newest
3:00 AM poetry companions
Aug 18, 2023
Aug 18, 2023 at 4:41 PM UTC
They all seem discursive and scattered,
Why would these curses ever matter?
Who will command stillness to wickedness so desolate and dead?
Partly I lay feeble in the head.
I am leisurely in limbo and moderately consoled.
I'm uncalled for and ribald ,but accounted.
Everything fit in place!
Ethical with a little slowness ,and a touch of corruption.
What was happiness is now a presumption,
Evolving and clawing threw this crushed creation.
Living is somber with a fatal fixation,
With all these things taken into consideration...
I am completely unchallenged with this sad situation.
Jul 2, 2013
Jul 2, 2013 at 6:40 AM UTC
They said that heartbreak is only emotional pain,
but I saw the symptoms of shock in the mirror,
lips so pale as to blend in with my skin colour.
I felt dizzy, nauseous, could feel both the thunder of my heart and it's slowness.
Yes, heartbreak is real, as real as the strength of one's heart.
Or do I mean soul?
But what is broken may always be mended,
and I'm feeling a lot better now,
and I hope you are too.
Jul 21, 2014
Jul 21, 2014 at 12:58 PM UTC
I can feel the slow throbbing of my heartbeat
When I press my thumb to my accidental wound
That stopped me from inflicting pain upon my skin
It is steady, without a missing thump
A loyal metronome that reminds me
Of how powerless I am after all of this
I remember the first morning I noticed
The slowness of my heart
I was at the kitchen table the morning
After I was informed of them taking her away
I couldn't breathe and my hand clutched
At my chest, beating it to bring normality back
But it wouldn't bring back the extra beat
Everyone knows heartbeats are not
Completely consistant in keeping time
But I would like to believe she made me
Steady, rhythmic, mechanic, robotic
When they took her away
"Hey, why do you always look so sad?"
I gave the answer my brain spit out
I remember thinking it was a bad thing to say
But it came out despite all judgement
"Because I'm going crazy right now."
It wasn't a lie and it still isn't
My heartbeat is still slow and lethargic
As it pumps through my veins like iron
So, yes, I'm a little bit crazy
But that's okay, given the circumstance
Crazy beats dead, which I'm not
Even with my dying heartbeat
Out of my control.
May 28, 2014
May 28, 2014 at 8:47 PM UTC
fill a tub with rose petals
as the faucet cries
no time to mourn anyone
now
guitar hums with a slowness
i don't seem to remember
a lonely pain underwater
emotionless motionless
water mends
neck deep
when will the violin scream
when it does
promise me
you can't hear it either
from way down here
Mar 22, 2015
Mar 22, 2015 at 8:39 PM UTC
the feeling
the rush
of your hot red blood
moving swiftly
pounding
inside of me
is not what i'm used to.
I'm not used to fingernails scratching
teeth biting flesh
deep hard fast pounding
pounding
pounding
on
in my head
I'm used to the sweet slowness
of **********
with soft caresses
and kissing
of eyelids
I'm sorry
I couldn't tell you
when you were still
in my bed
Aug 16, 2011
Aug 16, 2011 at 11:30 PM UTC
In January I am weak,
Late at night when everyone is asleep,
The cold makes my heart jump a beat.
Every February hearts roam the air,
Why am I so weak,
my heart is barely there?
March is full of three leaf clovers,
but my high wont leave,
I am drunk and cannot remember the last time I was sober.
I play the fool every single day of April,
clearly the world can see,
that I have never been stable.
In May the flowers are rising,
but my flower died,
I am only feeding water to the roots inside me.
No June has passed without me over-thinking,
every beginning of summer my head is over heating.
I see myself in the mirror every time it hits July,
the clouds move slower,
just like every lie,
I ever told you!
August is your birthday,
I am here about to throw myself,
into a bay.
September is like my refugee,
I torture myself,
by putting my hand on several bumblebee's.
On every pumpkin I carve a mad face in October,
These rhymes are driving me crazy,
put me to sleep,
I want to be sober.
November the month of my Scorpio,
Virgo, Leo, Cancer Xanax is the cause of my slowness,.
The end is finally here,
the month of December,
three hundred and sixty five days has passed,
Hopefully next year,
your name I wont remember.
Dec 26, 2013
Dec 26, 2013 at 8:08 PM UTC
Two eyes appeared from under a broadrimmed hat.
They looked around with astonishment.
In a schoolroom, far off in the distance, a boy was
Busy making a wooden bowl.
The teacher unaccustomed to such slowness
Requested a completion date.
“I am not slow thought the boy, just working
Away until I get it right.”
He met the teacher’s gaze with an expression
Of opacity and a sense of bewilderment.
On another day, at a later date, this same boy
Was found in his metalwork class applying
Cylinders of gases to his small creation, quietly,
Hoping for a connection before he was blown
To smithereans. Two blue eyes concentrated as
The jets of flames hissed into space.
Too long the gases flowed.
The master rose, the boy shook and his eyes
Widened.
In a playground, sometime earlier,
A small boy could be seen playing without a coat.
Gossiping women spoke of this unnatural act,
This exception to the fold. The boy stared back
Hearing their words with his eyes.
Decades later when his hair had turned from
Brown to grey but his eyes were still blue
And wide apart, he painted a little ***
Sitting on a pale surface, gazing into nothingness.
This painting took him a long time.
He had to get it right, the tones , the lines,
The connections.
After he finished ‘Little *** he sat down
And stared into the two blue blobs set wide
Apart on its surface and he thought, “this is
Me, the boy, the man, the painter, of wide
Apart, unnameable moments.”
The Beginning.
Love Mary ***
Jun 9, 2018
Jun 9, 2018 at 10:42 AM UTC
As we begin at the starting line we know who's going to win
There's the white rabbit
Obnoxious,Cocky,A *****
Fueled by red bulls an monsters
He can barley be contained
Fur coat at attention
Like there's electricity in the air
But we're drawn to things with a flair
In our eyes his white coat nothing could compare
It's special
Then there's the turtle
Passive,majestic,shy,common
The underdog
We only like them when there's a chance they might win
It takes each step gracefully
Carefully, trying not to impress
It's been counted out shunned for its slowness
As the race begins the rabbit dashes away
Down the trail reaching its peak on the straight away
Not looking back
His speed unforgiven
Giving it the illusion of hovering off the ground
Not a sound heard as it flies by
The turtle still at the starting line
It's progress unhealthily
It to makes no sound
It's footsteps stealthy
But it stills marches on
The rabbit far ahead
Looses his sights that this is a race
He knows the turtle pace
He begins to dash around trees
Running in circles
His momentum makes the ground begins to give
making a donut effect
So detracted he begins to chase leafs
Caught in the wind
So burned out he crashes
Falls into a trance like slumber
As the turtle still moseying along
Moving at a records pace two steps per minute
Begins to catch up
Soon enough it passes the rabbit
Flabbergasted hes asleep
Quietly it sneaks away down the trail
Pace still two steps per minuet
As the race progresses the turtle has the finish line in sight
Thinking this is its moment
To shock the world
But it ain't over yet
The sleeping rabbit awakes
Yawning an switches its nose
Starts running again
He sees the turtle in his sights
Confused how this happened
There's no way he's going to lose
But fate was not on his side
As he widens it stride
Trying to catch up the turtle just near the finish line
One step and it's all over
And just as the rabbit catches up
It's too late
Jan 14, 2015
Jan 14, 2015 at 3:44 AM UTC
I think I finally understand what people mean when they compare their love to a burning candle.
I thought I had already known years ago, but I could never have been more wrong.
You were talking about those butterflies you get when you're around me.
As we danced and swayed together that night, after you carried me out into the backyard to the perfect spot in the wet grass,
We held each other in subtle motion together, with arms drawn close around our bodies, as one.
And it was then, amid the misty nightfall, that you told me about those butterflies.
I smiled and delicately ran my hand across your chest, feeling your heart beat with such profound pace and purpose.
I swear, your heart was beating so powerfully that I could feel your thick pulse hurtling throughout your entire body.
We stood there, swaying, and that's when it hit me.
I probably get those butterflies too, when I'm with you.
But I get them more at the thought of you when we're apart.
And at first it worried me, because it felt as if my brain wasn't synchronized with what my heart was feeling.
I knew I loved you, but I didn't know how I loved you.
It's not as if I don't feel that excitement, or that rush of getting worked up over you, because I most certainly do.
But the main thing that I feel when I'm around you is this wholesome peace and calm atmosphere,
As if the Earth stopped spinning and time is slow.
You make me feel so utterly relaxed that I don't ever notice any other feeling when you're around.
The air feels thick and comforting, sweet and pure, as it surrounds me in everything that you are.
Nothing about this love I have feels rushed, out of control, or over-powering.
It feels like a slow burning of pure passion, delicately taking its time to pass on by.
Its slowness is not to be confused with "boring" or "dull", oh no.
It's something that is slow and careful, but so bright and powerful and...calm.
That night, it hit me, and that night, I knew
just how it was that I loved you.
I finally understand what they mean when they compare their love to a burning candle, and it's not what most think.
For a candle is not fast to burn, nor does it vary in how bright its flame flickers.
Once it has been lit, there's no stopping it, not for anything in the world.
Its steady candlelight glows with ease, with hues of a radiant spectrum of heat.
My love for you is beyond measure, beyond pace, far beyond description, and it feels as old as this dry August sun.
A candle, burning lazily, flickering in a vibrant display,
just as it will be tomorrow, and as it was yesterday.
Aug 12, 2015
Aug 12, 2015 at 3:03 AM UTC
another construction friday:
smash, lift, grunt, clean, sweep, collect, empty . . . (grind)
lift up (hup!) doors, hang 'em, nail 'em in.
rap up the stairs, feet heavy in big old boots
thighs aflame --- heavy--fuck
clomp
clomp--stomp. swish.
stop for lunch: sandwich/grapes/arizona
sandwich only cheese so not satisfied full..
dusts in the mouth
(and nostrils) so i sneeze & sneeze
raw-nosed in the attic cleaning
---brooms and dust dust dust.
good view to the bay up second level tho:
autumn vistas and panoramas and waves on white shorelines
giant's tomb in the deep, breast heaving
big wide windows w/wasps buzzing eternal
buzz
whack each with rolled window installation guide
grind with the heel
grsch
each one dead is replaced with one more
crawling from odd upstairs nest
---from rest.
feel guilty & awful killing them but
so aggressive in their slowness (compensating) this time of year that
moving material presents good risk of sting.
---zing.
hope they will forgive me.
Oct 7, 2011
Oct 7, 2011 at 5:54 PM UTC
Today I did not miss the ghost parade
Which always comes without warning
And leaves the way your glasses do
Dusting its tracks before placing itself
On the counter in the bathroom
I think of the pain that comes with growing wings
And understanding the difference between
Beauty and utility
I am too big to fly
We need to grow simpler things from our backs
Starting with patience
But I am just being silly
Patience should grow from your lungs
The ghost parade is a quiet thing
Always manages to pass through you
With the slowness of a carriage ride
Through some well lit park in the evening
And just like all ghosts
They remind you of something you've lost
Or will never have
And takes it with them when they leave
The parade marched off with my wings
Silver feathers erupting like confetti
I heard the hunters load their rifles
And assumed this was a good thing
Dec 20, 2014
Dec 20, 2014 at 5:24 PM UTC
The flesh may still be fine...
One must just pare bruised
And bad spots away,
As a razor once excised mine.
A blurred mind mused
At the slowness of life
When it oozed,
Crimson's contrast
On pale skin,
Like paint
Escaped my palette,
Or red roses on canvas,
Mute shouts of color
Wasted in slick puddles
On the floor.
Red too soon fades sepia;
Wounds become scars,
Their hardness protects,
Forever reminds.
Though grown timid
Of assaults from steel,
Old psyche still yields
To lancet's probing,
Words released fall,
Now as drops to paper.
Feb 13, 2010
Feb 13, 2010 at 3:59 PM UTC
i hope you revel in the normalcy
when you feel the sunrise on your skin
walking down a brick path
i hope you breathe in the morning
hold the ordinary close to you
like a life that almost didn’t happen
because for some of us
it didn’t happen
i have never felt the blissful repetition
in being surrounded by what is expected
standing in seasons and looking at skylines
that your mothers and fathers
have stood in and looked at
mothers and fathers who do your laundry
when you come home to a home
that has smelled the same
for the past twenty years
so i hope that you laugh and drink
a little too much
and kiss people who make you feel seen
i hope you listen to bad music
and hug your friends too tightly
and skip your eight a.m. just because
you need slowness and stillness
and a coffee from the corner
and a breath of fresh air
in the morning
on a brick path
with the midday sun
on your skin
Oct 22, 2018
Oct 22, 2018 at 9:35 AM UTC
Dancing
Intoxication
Blurring of emotions
Head’s pounding
Strangers falling in and out of unrealistic love.
Caught your eye.
The stench of cologne
The rush of everything
The slowness of you looking at me
Our eyes meet as you slowly make your way towards me
Shaking hands, goofy smiles
Music flooding our thoughts
Making it easier to confess to you
How much I want you
But I can’t
The music drowns out everything
Leaving it with just you and me
Holding you close but keeping my distance.
© Regan
Mar 16, 2018
Mar 16, 2018 at 10:27 PM UTC
For my mate Ernest W who cared....
Invisible in silky strands, a gossamer of lethal thought,
Drifting through the nether regions, touching on my mind.
Complication’s vagaries encroaching on the circumspect
Magnifying well beyond solutions I can find.
Nervous in the groundswell now, I feel it all inflating,
Inflating to a curtaining beyond my self control,
Waves of peristalsis in a shrill persistant keening,
Locking out the sanity in holding logic’s goal.
Waves of peristalsis in a bath of perspiration
Panic in a rupture at the coccyx of my spine,
Ravenously eating at the fabric of all reason
Ravenously gnawing at this rationale of mine.
***** in a puddle on the floor beside my footwear
Cloying is the stench of the ***** in my drawers,
Lost are the vestiges of any thought of decency
Gone is the differentiation in my flaws.
Clenching of hands in a bind of blue confusion
Catatonic slowness in arresting the decline,
Vaccilating eyeballs are rolling for the camera
And utter desolation is a flavour on my mind.
Why be concerned with the shaming of tomorrow?
Why come to terms with the maunderings of late?
Why face the music of the mirth and derision
When there’s a more practical direction to take?
Glide to the realm of the smooth overflowing
Slide in the slipstream oblivion makes,
Slip the bonds of your sad mortal tenure’s
Awful array of destructive mistakes.
Glide to the realm of serene independence
Glide far away from the troubled and hard,
Gone to the gossamer web of the ether
Gone to the nether world’s silky facade.
*...........: But what's the guts Courageous,
You happy with your deed?
Are your friends all overjoyed
To see your suicide succeed?
Is your family unaffected
By the loss and guilt remorse,
Your sudden grand departure
leaving kids without recourse?
Did you think about the aftermath?
The chaos and the pain
And the long term implications
Of your shattered families' shame?
The guilt within your partners heart,
The kids who are confused
And the ****** dissapointment
Of your mates.. who feel abused?
The mess you left behind you
And the tangled web you wove
And the bruising of good memories
For which, you once,...had strove.
Your painless, quick demise, you thought,
Released you from all this.....
But the sadness in the silent eyes
Condemns you as remiss.*
Marshalg
In an effort to understand why?
....And explain why not !
9 December 2010
Read more: http://hellopoetry.com/poem/suicide-12/#ixzz17kzvfsTk
Dec 10, 2010
Dec 10, 2010 at 2:09 PM UTC
A land only nature has touched
A lion to its prey, clutched
Before that though
The Lion crept up real slow
Crouched down real low
He puts on a good show
Creeping and crawling
Absolutely stalking
His ***** orange coloring
Unseen by a prey so alluring
His big tufted paws are like a quiet breeze
Unheard by a prey totally at ease
His eyes focus, like a morning lotus
Finding the sun with such slowness
Silently stalking towards prey, not yet ferocious
A gleaming meaty meal ready to devour
Just another moment and little prey will cower
First a pounce with claws drawn out
Then a bite and a shake, making the prey shout
Now a *****
Chewing prey up before its deceased
Drug across the land only nature has touched
A lion has won it’s hunt, quiet now, be hushed
Can you hear nature sing, the way she does
With violence and beauty no matter if lion or cheetahs
Now humans are different! Or is it really so?
The desire the same as a beasts hunt, reaping what we sow
A need to ***** and overpower
A craving to devour
Jan 18, 2019
Jan 18, 2019 at 2:28 PM UTC
Static, the stage was set
slowness had conquered
Furious fast pleaded mercy
but the sluggery had won
Dry was the sun
No wind did turn
trees were sleeping
chaos had out run
Dawdling present was lived
hurry was boxed in coffin
complaisance recovered
as again the slowness had won
Manisha
Oct 7, 2015
Oct 7, 2015 at 11:44 AM UTC
Il dio è il miei testimone e guida, Sister Maria, the refectorian, had said, Sister Teresa remembered walking passed the refectory, touching the wall with her fingers. God is my witness and guide, she translated, feeling the rough brick beneath her fingers. She stood; turned to look at the cloister garth. Sunlight played on the grass. Flowers added colour to borders and eyes, she thought, letting go of Maria's words as if they were balloons. Ache in limbs; a slowness in her movements. Age, she muttered inaudibly. The war had taken her cousin's sons in death. Two of them. Peter and Paul. Burma and D-day. Three years or more since. She brought hands together beneath the black serge of her habit. Flesh on flesh. Sister Clare had touched. Not over much, not over much. Papa would lift her high in his arms as a child, she mused, her memory jogged by the sunlight on the flowers. Higher and higher. Poor Papa. The spidery writing unreadable in the end. She sniffed the air. Bell rang from church tower. Sext. She looked at the clock on the cloister-tower wall. Lowered her eyes to the grass. So many greens. Jude had lain with her once or was it more? She mused, turning away from cloister wall and the sight of grass and flowers. Thirty years since he died. Blown to pieces Papa had written. Black ink on white paper sheet. Flesh on flesh; kiss to lip and lip. She paused by church door; allowed younger nuns to pass; so young these days, she thought, bowing, nodding her head. Placing her stiff fingers in the stoup, she made cross from breast to breast. Smell of incense; scent of wood; bodies close; age and time. She walked to her place in the choir stall, bowed to Crucified tabernacled. Kneeled. Closed eyes. Murmured prayer. Heard the rustle of habits; clicking of rosaries; breathing close. Opened eyes. Sister Clare across the way. A nod and a smile, almost indiscernible to others, she thought, returning the same. Mother Abbess tapped wood on wood; chant began; fingers moved; sign of cross; mumbled words. Forty years of prayer and chant; same such of fingered rosaries; hard beds; dark night of soul and such. She sensed Papa lifting her high in thought at least; Mama's touch on cheek and head. Jude's kiss. Embrace of limbs and face. Il dio è il miei testimone e guida, she recalled: God my witness and guide. Closed eyes. Sighed. Sister Clare had cried; had whispered; witness and guide; witness this and guide, she murmured between chant, prayer, and the scent of incense on the air.
Nov 26, 2013
Nov 26, 2013 at 1:23 PM UTC