"solitudes" poems
This salt
in the saltcellar
I once saw in the salt mines.
I know
you won't
believe me,
but
it sings,
salt sings, the skin
of the salt mines
sings
with a mouth smothered
by the earth.
I shivered in those solitudes
when I heard
the voice of
the salt
in the desert.
Near Antofagasta
the nitrous
pampa
resounds:
a broken
voice,
a mournful
song.
In its caves
the salt moans, mountain
of buried light,
translucent cathedral,
crystal of the sea, oblivion
of the waves.
And then on every table
in the world,
salt,
we see your piquant
powder
sprinkling
vital light
upon
our food. Preserver
of the ancient
holds of ships,
discoverer
on
the high seas,
earliest
sailor
of the unknown, shifting
byways of the foam.
Dust of the sea, in you
the tongue receives a kiss
from ocean night:
taste imparts to every seasoned
dish your ocean essence;
the smallest,
miniature
wave from the saltcellar
reveals to us
more than domestic whiteness;
in it, we taste infinitude.
12.3k
Consider the sea’s listless chime:
Time’s self it is, made audible,—
The murmur of the earth’s own shell.
Secret continuance sublime
Is the sea’s end: our sight may pass
No furlong further. Since time was,
This sound hath told the lapse of time.
No quiet, which is death’s,—it hath
The mournfulness of ancient life,
Enduring always at dull strife.
As the world’s heart of rest and wrath,
Its painful pulse is in the sands.
Last utterly, the whole sky stands,
Gray and not known, along its path.
Listen alone beside the sea,
Listen alone among the woods;
Those voices of twin solitudes
Shall have one sound alike to thee:
Hark where the murmurs of thronged men
Surge and sink back and surge again,—
Still the one voice of wave and tree.
Gather a shell from the strown beach
And listen at its lips: they sigh
The same desire and mystery,
The echo of the whole sea’s speech.
And all mankind is thus at heart
Not anything but what thou art:
And Earth, Sea, Man, are all in each.
7k
America, from a grain
of maize you grew
to crown
with spacious lands
the ocean foam.
A grain of maize was your geography.
From the grain
a green lance rose,
was covered with gold,
to grace the heights
of Peru with its yellow tassels.
But, poet, let
history rest in its shroud;
praise with your lyre
the grain in its granaries:
sing to the simple maize in the kitchen.
First, a fine beard
fluttered in the field
above the tender teeth
of the young ear.
Then the husks parted
and fruitfulness burst its veils
of pale papyrus
that grains of laughter
might fall upon the earth.
To the stone,
in your journey,
you returned.
Not to the terrible stone,
the ******
triangle of Mexican death,
but to the grinding stone,
sacred
stone of your kitchens.
There, milk and matter,
strength-giving, nutritious
cornmeal pulp,
you were worked and patted
by the wondrous hands
of dark-skinned women.
Wherever you fall, maize,
whether into the
splendid *** of partridge, or among
country beans, you light up
the meal and lend it
your virginal flavor.
Oh, to bite into
the steaming ear beside the sea
of distant song and deepest waltz.
To boil you
as your aroma
spreads through
blue sierras.
But is there
no end
to your treasure?
In chalky, barren lands
bordered
by the sea, along
the rocky Chilean coast,
at times
only your radiance
reaches the empty
table of the miner.
Your light, your cornmeal, your hope
pervades America's solitudes,
and to hunger
your lances
are enemy legions.
Within your husks,
like gentle kernels,
our sober provincial
children's hearts were nurtured,
until life began
to shuck us from the ear.
5.1k
Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy!
Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy!
The world is holy! The soul is holy! The skin is holy!
The nose is holy! The tongue and **** and hand
and ******* holy!
Everything is holy! everybody's holy! everywhere is
holy! everyday is in eternity! Everyman's an
angel!
The bum's as holy as the seraphim! the madman is
holy as you my soul are holy!
The typewriter is holy the poem is holy the voice is
holy the hearers are holy the ecstasy is holy!
Holy Peter holy Allen holy Solomon holy Lucien holy
Kerouac holy Huncke holy Burroughs holy Cas-
sady holy the unknown buggered and suffering
beggars holy the hideous human angels!
Holy my mother in the insane asylum! Holy the *****
of the grandfathers of Kansas!
Holy the groaning saxophone! Holy the bop
apocalypse! Holy the jazzbands marijuana
hipsters peace & junk & drums!
Holy the solitudes of skyscrapers and pavements! Holy
the cafeterias filled with the millions! Holy the
mysterious rivers of tears under the streets!
Holy the lone juggernaut! Holy the vast lamb of the
middle class! Holy the crazy shepherds of rebell-
ion! Who digs Los Angeles IS Los Angeles!
Holy New York Holy San Francisco Holy Peoria &
Seattle Holy Paris Holy Tangiers Holy Moscow
Holy Istanbul!
Holy time in eternity holy eternity in time holy the
clocks in space holy the fourth dimension holy
the fifth International holy the Angel in Moloch!
Holy the sea holy the desert holy the railroad holy the
locomotive holy the visions holy the hallucina-
tions holy the miracles holy the eyeball holy the
abyss!
Holy forgiveness! mercy! charity! faith! Holy! Ours!
bodies! suffering! magnanimity!
Holy the supernatural extra brilliant intelligent
kindness of the soul!
Berkeley 1955
4.3k
Oh fairest of the rural maids!
Thy birth was in the forest shades;
Green boughs, and glimpses of the sky,
Were all that met thy infant eye.
Thy sports, thy wanderings, when a child,
Were ever in the sylvan wild;
And all the beauty of the place
Is in thy heart and on thy face.
The twilight of the trees and rocks
Is in the light shade of thy locks;
Thy step is as the wind, that weaves
Its playful way among the leaves.
Thine eyes are springs, in whose serene
And silent waters heaven is seen;
Their lashes are the herbs that look
On their young figures in the brook.
The forest depths, by foot unpressed,
Are not more sinless than thy breast;
The holy peace, that fills the air
Of those calm solitudes, is there.
3.9k
The sea awoke at midnight from its sleep,
And round the pebbly beaches far and wide
I heard the first wave of the rising tide
Rush onward with uninterrupted sweep;
A voice out of the silence of the deep,
A sound mysteriously multiplied
As of a cataract from the mountain’s side,
Or roar of winds upon a wooded steep.
So comes to us at times, from the unknown
And inaccessible solitudes of being,
The rushing of the sea-tides of the soul;
And inspirations, that we deem our own,
Are some divine foreshadowing and foreseeing
Of things beyond our reason or control.
3.7k
Warm Burrow
I seek to snuggle,
curl up and not come out!
Dark Warmth,
freedom in solitudes-
dancing with silhouettes
Sep 16, 2014
Sep 16, 2014 at 8:26 AM UTC
we bang it
we break it
i'm talking of this lust
that we splash..
twisting to our finger tips
as they make way on our skins
killing the shame
and feasting to our uncover
if it's me and you
this true we love
..this is how we are
cold mornings of intolerance
to each others solitudes
so we sneak into physical intimacy
chasing the fabric away
we can't breathe like this
..but we live like that
..pleasure pillows
Apr 10, 2015
Apr 10, 2015 at 2:13 AM UTC
Warm Burrow
I seek to snuggle,
curl up and not come out!
Dark Warmth,
freedom in solitudes-
dancing with silhouettes
Sep 16, 2014
Sep 16, 2014 at 8:28 AM UTC
The horizons ring me like *******
Tilted and disparate, and always unstable.
Touched by a match, they might warm me,
And their fine lines singe
The air to orange
Before the distances they pin evaporate,
Weighting the pale sky with a soldier color.
But they only dissolve and dissolve
Like a series of promises, as I step forward.
There is no life higher than the grasstops
Or the hearts of sheep, and the wind
Pours by like destiny, bending
Everything in one direction.
I can feel it trying
To funnel my heat away.
If I pay the roots of the heather
Too close attention, they will invite me
To whiten my bones among them.
The sheep know where they are,
Browsing in their ***** wool-clouds,
Gray as the weather.
The black slots of their pupils take me in.
It is like being mailed into space,
A thin, silly message.
They stand about in grandmotherly disguise,
All wig curls and yellow teeth
And hard, marbly baas.
I come to wheel ruts, and water
Limpid as the solitudes
That flee through my fingers.
Hollow doorsteps go from grass to grass;
Lintel and sill have unhinged themselves.
Of people and the air only
Remembers a few odd syllables.
It rehearses them moaningly:
Black stone, black stone.
The sky leans on me, me, the one upright
Among all horizontals.
The grass is beating its head distractedly.
It is too delicate
For a life in such company;
Darkness terrifies it.
Now, in valleys narrow
And black as purses, the house lights
Gleam like small change.
3.3k
High up above the open, welcoming door
It hangs, a piece of wood with colours dim.
Once, long ago, it was a waving tree
And knew the sun and shadow through the leaves
Of forest trees, in a thick eastern wood.
The winter snows had bent its branches down,
The spring had swelled its buds with coming flowers,
Summer had run like fire through its veins,
While autumn pelted it with chestnut burrs,
And strewed the leafy ground with acorn cups.
Dark midnight storms had roared and crashed among
Its branches, breaking here and there a limb;
But every now and then broad sunlit days
Lovingly lingered, caught among the leaves.
Yes, it had known all this, and yet to us
It does not speak of mossy forest ways,
Of whispering pine trees or the shimmering birch;
But of quick winds, and the salt, stinging sea!
An artist once, with patient, careful knife,
Had fashioned it like to the untamed sea.
Here waves uprear themselves, their tops blown back
By the gay, sunny wind, which whips the blue
And breaks it into gleams and sparks of light.
Among the flashing waves are two white birds
Which swoop, and soar, and scream for very joy
At the wild sport. Now diving quickly in,
Questing some glistening fish. Now flying up,
Their dripping feathers shining in the sun,
While the wet drops like little glints of light,
Fall pattering backward to the parent sea.
Gliding along the green and foam-flecked hollows,
Or skimming some white crest about to break,
The spirits of the sky deigning to stoop
And play with ocean in a summer mood.
Hanging above the high, wide open door,
It brings to us in quiet, firelit room,
The freedom of the earth's vast solitudes,
Where heaping, sunny waves tumble and roll,
And seabirds scream in wanton happiness.
2.8k
The horizons ring me like *******
Tilted and disparate, and always unstable.
Touched by a match, they might warm me,
And their fine lines singe
The air to orange
Before the distances they pin evaporate,
Weighting the pale sky with a soldier color.
But they only dissolve and dissolve
Like a series of promises, as I step forward.
There is no life higher than the grasstops
Or the hearts of sheep, and the wind
Pours by like destiny, bending
Everything in one direction.
I can feel it trying
To funnel my heat away.
If I pay the roots of the heather
Too close attention, they will invite me
To whiten my bones among them.
The sheep know where they are,
Browsing in their ***** wool-clouds,
Gray as the weather.
The black slots of their pupils take me in.
It is like being mailed into space,
A thin, silly message.
They stand about in grandmotherly disguise,
All wig curls and yellow teeth
And hard, marbly baas.
I come to wheel ruts, and water
Limpid as the solitudes
That flee through my fingers.
Hollow doorsteps go from grass to grass;
Lintel and sill have unhinged themselves.
Of people and the air only
Remembers a few odd syllables.
It rehearses them moaningly:
Black stone, black stone.
The sky leans on me, me, the one upright
Among all horizontals.
The grass is beating its head distractedly.
It is too delicate
For a life in such company;
Darkness terrifies it.
Now, in valleys narrow
And black as purses, the house lights
Gleam like small change.
2.9k
On being asked, Whence is the flower?
In May, when sea-winds pierced our solitudes,
I found the fresh Rhodora in the woods,
Spreading its leafless blooms in a damp nook,
To please the desert and the sluggish brook.
The purple petals, fallen in the pool,
Made the black water with their beauty gay;
Here might the red-bird come his plumes to cool,
And court the flower that cheapens his array.
Rhodora! if the sages ask thee why
This charm is wasted on the earth and sky,
Tell them, dear, that if eyes were made for seeing,
Then Beauty is its own excuse for being:
Why thou wert there, O rival of the rose!
I never thought to ask, I never knew:
But, in my simple ignorance, suppose
The self-same Power that brought me there brought you.
2.5k
the burnt throat, sour as strawberries
*maple leafs gathered up into punnets,
syrups into leaks of old milk bottles,
with red strawberries, they read sonnets;
in stillness and grace, among daylighted face.
Some wayfarers' time, tedious, delight and gradual,
meretricious and surreal, like whimsical moon's moral;
yet so gentle and fine, ruther foul, alike of snow.
the smells of red berries with angel cakes coalesced,
a gallery of yarn meadows unhang, collapsed.*
Jan 3, 2014
Jan 3, 2014 at 10:13 AM UTC
There were not many at that lonely place,
Where two scourged hills met in a little plain.
The wind cried loud in gusts, then low again.
Three pines strained darkly, runners in a race
Unseen by any. Toward the further woods
A dim harsh noise of voices rose and ceased.
--We were most silent in those solitudes--
Then, sudden as a flame, the black-robed priest,
The clotted earth piled roughly up about
The hacked red oblong of the new-made thing,
Short words in swordlike Latin--and a rout
Of dreams most impotent, unwearying.
Then, like a blind door shut on a carouse,
The terrible bareness of the soul's last house.
2.4k
I'm a collection of solitudes
A silence derived from
the summation of all languages
Feb 19, 2018
Feb 19, 2018 at 9:28 AM UTC
I love to close my eyes
& find a stillness –
in the turning world.
My imagination wanders,
to you.
My memories make
Pleasure.
~ Ephemeral bliss ~
Peaking in the swells gentle set.
Mid-solitudes of the vast Pacific.
Young honey lip lovers
Warmth in wintertide;
a wild iteration of summer.
Mio Amore
My sunshine in the shadow.
Nov 23, 2018
Nov 23, 2018 at 7:48 PM UTC
Stop! Stand there in that yellow line
That line, yes, painted in yellow
Extending relentlessly in horizontals
Dividing our world and will keep me away from you
Now I can see you, and so do you
You are just 10 steps away from me
But 1 more step and you'll break that line, which is yellow
No, not the yellow line, your shoes should not touch its edges
Oh my poor yellow line
Just an old habit, intoxicating myself in the wonders,
Now I wonder, wondering if once you stepped in that yellow line
You might see the oddities of my world revolving in solitudes
Plain gray celestial bodies and dull stars
It's simply really boring there you know..(while shoulders shrugging)
My way of stopping you is such an abomination! Diabolicaly unacceptable!
Causing this whole fiasco to be more catastrophic, you can rebuke me if you please
How could I? Forgiveness should not be given right?
Its too much to be deserved by the person behind those yellow lines which is not you
Now you are walking away
I'm just there gazing at your back then back to my precious yellow line
I just noticed now, why does the flute i'm playing produces no sound?
It looses its voice, must be broken for the first time
No, not in the melancholic blues again
I've been too much indulged there
Maybe I should paint my moon green?
A touch of blue in my sun,
Then a little red in my stars
Orange in the asteroids then
Rainbows in the planets
Of course, yellow in my whole universe
Now it's so bizzare and confusing but I love it
But nope not to call him back
Nor the other shoes to step on that yellow line
No shoes should touch my yellow line
Now, there i'm sleepy but before that I just realized,
Monsters inside you simply be awaken and unleashed through playing with poetries
And again, the line which is painted in yellow
May 22, 2015
May 22, 2015 at 10:34 AM UTC
Energy radiates and traces my body with celestial tones
I am more alive than I’ve ever been
when surrendering to awe and wonder
the same way my younger self fearlessly did
something about that glimmer hasn’t left yet, may never leave
memories still have flavors to me
mornings with a lake of flakes in my bowl
or years and years later when a fried hangover cure restores me
each month and its esculent flashbacks are a part of me
a cell in the skin
a beaten feather in the wing
something about the glimmer hasn’t left yet
the Earth is still new
and discoveries never expire:
new scenery
new explorations
new chronicles in the cinema
new kindred spirits
new waves of audio
new therapeutic solitudes
all balancing out the
new captivities
new mistakes
new mediocrity
new unhealthy solitudes
and more
until the body is a home base of homeostasis
commensalism at its finest
but something about the glimmer hasn’t left yet, may never leave
I outgrew shadows who doubted their expiration dates
I don’t rubricate the sky in a rage
anymore
don’t let the heartbreak pause a pulse
anymore
don’t let misanthropy obscure who I see
anymore
don’t let uncertainty’s web catch me in a paralysis
anymore
or at least I try
something tells me I’ll never “age out”
of my hunger to live fully
I know deep down you're similar
your craving will not fade into cinders
oh what a feelin!
To be trippin on nostalgia.
Dec 29, 2022
Dec 29, 2022 at 2:17 PM UTC
An Ocean
Everyone is held by your sway
Calming everyone walking in your space
Joy and mixed feelings while watching your waves
Not easy
But at least you came
White, blue, and a touch of brown and beige
Theses are the colors of the ocean and what near it
Did I mentioned the color red my dearest?
Cause its the color of your being
And the excitement you make
For me and every human being you meet I swear
Like the ocean and the depth of it
Glimmering, vast, deep as hell
Beneath your own layer of blue
A magnificent fragments/colors but not for everyone to perceive
Cause it would make them fall and you don’t want them to bleed
Blest of solitudes
Purity like the water you always need
This a simple poem for you my jay
&My dear.
Feb 20, 2021
Feb 20, 2021 at 3:58 PM UTC
(To Eleonora Duse)
We are anhungered after solitude,
Deep stillness pure of any speech or sound,
Soft quiet hovering over pools profound,
The silences that on the desert brood,
Above a windless hush of empty seas,
The broad unfurling banners of the dawn,
A faery forest where there sleeps a Faun;
Our souls are fain of solitudes like these.
O woman who divined our weariness,
And set the crown of silence on your art,
From what undreamed-of depth within your heart
Have you sent forth the hush that makes us free
To hear an instant, high above earth’s stress,
The silent music of infinity?
1.7k
your gaze rests upon my shoulder
like a black hole
sinking me into an oblivion
where only our two heartbeats
will be heard
I fear to look up
please, stay.
while I keep my heart at distance.
the nuclear energy flashing
in your eyes,
the places on my neck
that rate on fire
where your lips could ravish,
the edge-of-combustion feeling
inside of me when I see you…
this contagion of desire
that sinks into the skin above my heart
is a garden I don’t dare stroll into
for fear I might find I desperately need
a life filled with only our laughter
I don’t want you to live inside
of me like a secret wind
with all the loneliness of a leaf
in the forest
who is denied love through the dark green spaces
that it forever remains
where sunlight has forgotten it
and its unreachable happiness is
a sadness that moans and
pushes its solitudes
deeply into the root of its tree
and where loneliness is a desperate cry
after it has been torn from its anchor
love is a dying hope where
my heart can lie restless
like the leaf farthest from the stars
so, please not too close
your nuclear eyes
are a bargaining chip I can’t afford
as they stir my soul into
an endless dance
of wanting and hope
the source of possible pain
where I could find myself offering
my soul in wholeness
a death for life
simply to light a fire
on my shoulders from your mouth
where my skin turns into
a newborn star
a flash of radiance that
awakens the universe
your touch could, quite possibly,
be a never ending
creation of universe within universe
a collision of existence
like life itself blown apart
where the end of the universe is
where two dormant hearts awaken
and cause life to recreate itself
distance…
my black night that asks
the moon for her light
you make me want to love,
or die, or leave
and this confusion stirs
in the pit of my stomach
like a stone in the darkest place
of the ocean
so I break away
from your gaze
and fade back into the shadows
where my heart talks to the stars once again
to dream of a nuclear kiss
that I may never have the courage to accept
for my heart cannot afford
another death
Nov 9, 2011
Nov 9, 2011 at 10:02 PM UTC
The shadow of Dawn;
Stillness and stars and over-mastering dreams
Of Life and Death and Sleep;
Heard over gleaming flats, the old, unchanging sound
Of the old, unchanging Sea.
My soul and yours--
O, hand in hand let us fare forth, two ghosts,
Into the ghostliness,
The infinite and abounding solitudes,
Beyond--O, beyond!--beyond . . .
Here in the porch
Upon the multitudinous silences
Of the kingdoms of the grave,
We twain are you and I--two ghosts Omnipotence
Can touch no more . . . no more!
1.4k
Something is dead . . .
The grace of sunset solitudes, the march
Of the solitary moon, the pomp and power
Of round on round of shining soldier-stars
Patrolling space, the bounties of the sun--
Sovran, tremendous, unimaginable--
The multitudinous friendliness of the sea,
Possess no more--no more.
Something is dead . . .
The Autumn rain-rot deeper and wider soaks
And spreads, the burden of Winter heavier weighs,
His melancholy close and closer yet
Cleaves, and those incantations of the Spring
That made the heart a centre of miracles
Grow formal, and the wonder-working bours
Arise no more--no more.
Something is dead . . .
'Tis time to creep in close about the fire
And tell grey tales of what we were, and dream
Old dreams and faded, and as we may rejoice
In the young life that round us leaps and laughs,
A fountain in the sunshine, in the pride
Of God's best gift that to us twain returns,
Dear Heart, no more--no more.
1.4k
Liquid evening when the rains
Whisper to the lovers and soften
Their lips to comfort one another.
Drenched mornings when not even
Noah's dove can be spotted,
The solitudes as one makes the journey;
The thunder crackles tirelessly
On the windshield.
Liquid days when the earth is a fog,
When I admit I get lost at times,
Because the mist forms tears on
My face, and somewhere just above
The light shows how that it is half
There, such wet pessimism.
Rain like a sudden death
That invites grey days known as
Tears from Heaven,
A fitting farewell for the missing
Or gone.
Rain, liquid like old blood
That sits by a fire,
Cup in hand and reminiscing
On old storms as supplication
For the tired bones that once ran
To the lover, that once made love
In a slow drizzle,
Awaiting a final lightning.
Rain,
When my soul hits bottom
I take a walk,
I feel the wet earth at my feet,
The drops on my face,
The thunder that makes me
Know I am small,
The lightning that shines the way,
And in the distance,
A ray of sun that escapes,
And I know this too shall pass.
May 24, 2016
May 24, 2016 at 10:29 AM UTC