"stilly" poems
--To W. H.
With a ripple of leaves and a ****** of streams
The full world rolls in a rhythm of praise,
And the winds are one with the clouds and beams--
Midsummer days! Midsummer days!
The dusk grows vast; in a purple haze,
While the West from a rapture of sunset rights,
Faint stars their exquisite lamps upraise--
Midsummer nights! O midsummer nights!
The wood's green heart is a nest of dreams,
The lush grass thickens and springs and sways,
The rathe wheat rustles, the landscape gleams--
Midsummer days! Midsummer days!
In the stilly fields, in the stilly ways,
All secret shadows and mystic lights,
Late lovers murmur and linger and gaze--
Midsummer nights! O midsummer nights!
There's a music of bells from the trampling teams,
Wild skylarks hover, the gorses blaze,
The rich, ripe rose as with incense steams--
Midsummer days! Midsummer days!
A soul from the honeysuckle strays,
And the nightingale as from prophet heights
Sings to the Earth of her million Mays--
Midsummer nights! O midsummer nights!
Envoy
And it's O, for my dear and the charm that stays--
Midsummer days! Midsummer days!
It's O, for my Love and the dark that plights--
Midsummer nights! O midsummer nights!
2.8k
Water to wine and wine to precious blood
The Lord transfigures; taken at the flood,
The dregs of outrageous fortune, once imbibed,
Will be like compost to a growing bud.
So, drink and happy be, for all is well
In Paradise, where living waters swell
The stilly stream by quiet pastures green,
And sheep in peace and pleasant weather dwell.
Aug 26, 2022
Aug 26, 2022 at 6:15 PM UTC
(Lines on the loss of the “Titanic”)
I
In a solitude of the sea
Deep from human vanity,
And the Pride of Life that planned her, stilly couches she.
II
Steel chambers, late the pyres
Of her salamandrine fires,
Cold currents thrid, and turn to rhythmic tidal lyres.
III
Over the mirrors meant
To glass the opulent
The sea-worm crawls—grotesque, slimed, dumb, indifferent.
IV
Jewels in joy designed
To ravish the sensuous mind
Lie lightless, all their sparkles bleared and black and blind.
V
Dim moon-eyed fishes near
Gaze at the gilded gear
And query: “What does this vaingloriousness down here?”. . .
VI
Well: while was fashioning
This creature of cleaving wing,
The Immanent Will that stirs and urges everything
VII
Prepared a sinister mate
For her—so gaily great—
A Shape of Ice, for the time fat and dissociate.
VIII
And as the smart ship grew
In stature, grace, and hue
In shadowy silent distance grew the Iceberg too.
IX
Alien they seemed to be:
No mortal eye could see
The intimate welding of their later history.
X
Or sign that they were bent
By paths coincident
On being anon twin halves of one august event,
XI
Till the Spinner of the Years
Said “Now!” And each one hears,
And consummation comes, and jars two hemispheres.
2.7k
did you, even now, hope
to shut your eyes to so huge a crime,
my treacherous one, to think you could
stilly withdraw from my kingdom?
did our love not once hold you?
our ardent vows? or even I, Dido,
preparing to succumb barbaric death?
how could you, callous you!,
take wing to prepare your fleet in winter
—i’m sure to run aground—
when Boreas thrashes against the heavens?
but, if you weren’t pursuing unfamiliar soil
or incited to father a distant nation,
if ancient Ilium sturdily grimed through the war,
would you keep piercing the
wave-washed oceans in your armada?
why do you elude me; is it
because i have acceded irreality?
am i worthless, now?—i implore you!
by these tears, and your troth,
by our wedding vows, and this oath
before ***** we began:
if i deserve anything good from you,
or if you think, i was good enough
for you; pity this household
decaying before us! it was once yours, too.
and if my prayers are still yours,
gut them from my mind!
for now the Libyans and Numidians
hate me! dear Tyre is virulent!
as my honour and once-righteous
stature has vanished, just as i was
about to touch my constellated infamy.
for what destiny, my foreign one,
do you set me aside; ever-knowing
my imminent death?
seeing that only your name endures
from this union, why do i bother to keep living?
am i waiting for my brother, Pygmalion,
to destroy my Carthage’s walls, or a
Gætulian Iarbus to make me his concubine?
if only you gave me a son,
a little Æneas to play in my courts,
a boy to remind me of you;
only then, perhaps,
would i not be so utterly
violated, and
consumed.
Nov 7, 2014
Nov 7, 2014 at 1:06 PM UTC
Things you could have been:
We could have built our houses in the shade of the sun’s eclipse
And taught our children to build their lives in the turn of the light
Because, silly geese, ultraviolet radiation pours out of its eye
And into yours all the same,
So it's still the day.
You could have waited more stilly, more patiently, more kindly
For the full moon’s pull of your blood’s tide and realized from the
Cracks and cliffs cut out of the shores of your defense that my face
Is the face you can’t remember
When you wake.
But it’s dark outside and still not night, and the moon is full
But your blood is fine, so we keep building houses,
And I keep talking to
Other people’s children.
Aug 8, 2017
Aug 8, 2017 at 8:21 AM UTC
All I ever wanted left me,
So I took it all.
All my lovers betrayed me,
So I ruined thee.
All I've ever known was subjective,
So I really knew nothing.
All my advice was selfish,
So I grinned right throughly.
I'm a wonderful caricature,
of what it means to be human.
Clowned up, and distorted,
that is the vision of me.
But worry not, fair sweet.
I'll be here as you worry and rot.
And I will feed.
I am all six circles of hell,
I am every demon.
I am the lie in the truth,
That glints so eagerly,
In the soft blue eyes of mine,
That can almost... make you feel mine.
Almost, but just out of a trance,
nay nothing ever was, just a circle,
That has never closed, just a cycle that,
has no history, impotent, yet
all consuming, I can't find the truth,
So I'll live in the lies, and they shall be,
The ties that I bind,
myself and others, delicately,
deliciously enjoying the feast,
I provide, alone, in the dark,
talking to those who live,
far far away in here, so that in my hell,
I can reside as king, and feel in control,
or an owner of something.
Yet still I awake,
stilly, I create,
These little poems on my own,
That you'll read on your own.
And you'll think, something but,
It'll be gone abruptly, as if you almost held a star,
but it twinkled unlucky.
Feb 6, 2015
Feb 6, 2015 at 2:15 AM UTC
Limericks I - Relatives and Relativity
The Cosmological Constant
by Michael R. Burch
Einstein, the frizzy-haired,
said E equals MC squared.
Thus all mass decreases
as activity ceases?
Not my mass, my *** declared!
###
Ass-tronomical
by Michael R. Burch
Relativity, the theorists’ creed,
says mass increases with speed.
My (m)ass grows when I sit it.
Mr. Einstein, get with it;
equate its deflation, I plead!
###
Relative to Whom?
by Michael R. Burch
Einstein’s theory, incredibly silly,
says a relative grows willy-nilly
at speeds close to light.
Well, his relatives might,
but mine grow their (m)asses more stilly!
###
Time Out!
by Michael R. Burch
Hawking’s "Brief History of Time"
is such a relief! How sublime
that time, in reverse,
may un-write this verse
and un-spend my last thin dime!
###
Time Back In!
by Michael R. Burch
Hawking, who makes my head spin,
says time may flow backward. I grin,
imagining the surprise
in my mother's eyes
when I head for the womb once again!
###
Keywords/Tags: limerick, nonsense, light verse, humor, science, theoretical, physics, relativity, relatives, family, time, space
Apr 7, 2020
Apr 7, 2020 at 12:30 AM UTC
i, night, hung about thy cheeks more splendored
beams crisper and wholly brisk with wind
than even winter could. i stroked about the
penultimate hour of your face the little and
stranger carelessly perfect lips of my face
and drinking so stilly the sky is abrupt
with normally clothed stars; **** and playfully
abundant. i lay my heart with thee and i am
increased. i lay hands with thee and i am
between the velour of your not-covered thighs
making, with you, an errant child like Demeter
and Poseidon (who hangs his restless skin upon
the nape of the coiled neon streets. hinted
at his edges just; the circlet of the bay, i wander
in thee night.)
Feb 24, 2012
Feb 24, 2012 at 1:35 AM UTC
1.
My father sits in the corner of his
living room with his mouth curled
and ****** hair drooping like a ******
up angel. His body is just like mine.
I have never hated him more than
I do now, with his gut hanging over
his knees like hot solid fur.
2.
I sit in the passenger seat of a green
Subaru Forrester. Father drives. I am
trying to sleep and he won’t stop
talking and I realize in his voice that
the two of us are the same: we have
the same throats, like two blue
bibles.
3.
Father in his rocking chair sleeps
stilly like paved whispering. I picture
him with a snake in his lap and it is only
then that I am willing to cover him
in the plaid blanket that drapes the living
room couch. I leave him with my shoulders
bent like rusty metal, my mouth shaped
like guilt or a glass of milk.
4.
My father dies in 2006 in between
line of highway and line of trees. Subaru
Forrester beaten against the side of the road.
His spine bends his waist twists as though
he has just slept with the devil.
Oct 26, 2014
Oct 26, 2014 at 3:32 PM UTC
still hours in
still company
still sitting-- waiting
stilly
how long until
we break this
monotony--
are these the hoursminutesseconds we regret?
is this where it all went when say- 80 and dying
you recall and all you have around you is
a familiar stillness
still it can’t all be that bad--
you were alive you were breathing you were still-
digesting and growing and learning and
you heart all the while was beating
you were never still at all
just a vessel for the motion of life
80 years of it
and then it’s all just a return to the good earth
to nurture the movement of life through
a blade of grass a dandelion an acorn
the beauty of your existence was how
you carried the torch of life so brilliantly
cradling it in your breast for so long
even as your youth crept away and your blood slowed down
and the memories faded and the thoughts all but stopped
but here we are
still here
Jul 31, 2014
Jul 31, 2014 at 12:42 AM UTC
Oft in the stilly night,
E're slumber's chain has bound me,
Fond Memory brings the light,
Of another day around me;
The smiles, the tears,
Of boyhood years,
The words o love then spoken;
The eyes that shone
Now dimmed and gone,
The cheerful hearts now broken.
When I remember all
The friends so linked together,
I see around me fall,
Like leaves in wintry weather,
I feel like one
Who treads alone
Some banquet hall deserted,
Whose lights are fled,
And all but me departed.
Whose garlands dead,
Thus in the stilly night,
E're slumbers chain has bound me,
Sad Memory brings the light
Of other days around me.
Thomas Moore
Jun 11, 2013
Jun 11, 2013 at 11:26 AM UTC
In the amber of a late October,
altered by illness
and a mauling from friends, we have
come again to London, and come
one to the other,
in truth, it seems
for the first time
in twenty-something years.
These are our days.
Above us, white lines from Heathrow
streak across the sky and a silver
airplane flashes in the tawny sun,
its underwing turned gold.
Ahead is Christmas. Outside
the bang-blast of fireworks, and
the tread of traffic dancing
to the drum of what must be done.
Not us, not now.
In here, our clothes removed, our skin
cells open, one to the other,
once a day, we practice: love.
And the stillness
of the season holds us, bathed
in something more than kindness.
It was you who led, as male
desire is wont to do, ***** unyielding,
it cut to our truth. And I who thought of practice:
that Buddhist word, that way
to be, to being
in the place that one is in.
So now we meet each evening to meld
the passing and the coming life
suspended
clothes off, upon a cushioned floor,
each time (it seems) anew,
each stroke the first, again,
in hours that know just what they hold
in this, our stilly autumn
in these, our golden days.
Feb 18, 2010
Feb 18, 2010 at 12:44 AM UTC
The very end of August
Brings a stillness in the night,
When the many trills of midsummer
Are silenced and the fireflies gone out!
Lying stilly and listening, I hear
A solemn drone, like an old contralto,
Trying to warble but instead
Radiating an insistent hum
That thrums athwart the arid air,
Long fingers scraping a humming tanpura.
Even the full moon is dry,
Gazing down, matter-of-fact,
Through the dust-like mist.
Summer has given up,
Letting leaves and vines dry up,
Tinged with red and shriveled bronze.
I could walk in the garden now,
And not worry about slugs on
The dried stalks of lilies.
The robust asters offer little
Temptation to garden pests
And strapping thistles seem to stand guard.
Is the balance between my will
Over the garden and its desire
To overflow and bloom beyond me,
Now achieved yet unwanted?
Yes…I prefer the lushness that comes
After the rains, with an untamed riot
Of color and green, the celebration
That happens on its own, heedless
Of my wishes; yet I revel in it
Every time it wins
And will wait a year
For this to emerge again.
Sep 3, 2018
Sep 3, 2018 at 3:23 PM UTC
If you asked me before,
I'd swear that love was
not for me
that a feeling
so soft did
not exist within
me
and that holding a gaze
was only for show
I've read a lot of books now,
and I've had a lot of
lovers-
and I've asked fortune
tellers for my
feelings I don't know,
sleeping so stilly within me
-would not wake
to the slightest or the sharpest
touch of a hand, and I've had
both-
I've had
10,000 miles and
too much coffee.
Pursuing and
withdrawing.
And after all this time
in the self's purgatory
I find you
and you dig into
my skin and pull
the tenderness out
of me like picking flowers
from the quietest
of meadows
I've seen a lot of things
and dreamed a lot of dreams
and finally after seeking,
you pluck and uncover me.
Nov 28, 2015
Nov 28, 2015 at 9:27 PM UTC
The reasons I know I had loved you
well and fully
are by the pages and words it took
for me to find and fill
as I forgot and missed you stilly.
Oct 18, 2019
Oct 18, 2019 at 9:43 AM UTC
i lay in grass stilly
departing myself
into heavens exquisite face
whose boundless leaping freckles shimmer
most gracious and profoundly
consuming the frail last light
into its infinite chaste *******
(only to bud it out again
in little ****** o' glimmering)
Dec 2, 2011
Dec 2, 2011 at 5:46 AM UTC
Isn’t it silly, ***** Nilly?
You made the stallion,
you made the filly,
and now they sleep
in the dark earth, stilly.
Isn’t it silly, ***** Nilly?
Isn’t it silly, ***** Nilly?
You forced them to run
all their days uphilly.
They ran till they dropped—
life’s a pickle, dilly.
Isn’t it silly, ***** Nilly?
Isn’t it silly, ***** Nilly?
They say I should worship you!
Oh, really!
They say I should pray
so you’ll not act illy.
Isn’t it silly, ***** Nilly?
Published by The New Formalist, Poet’s Corner, The Road Not Taken, Charlie Hedbo Poetry
We now know there never was a perfect Garden of Eden, because trillions of animals suffered and died before human beings existed. Thus Adam and Eve cannot be responsible for suffering and death. That leaves the Creator, if such a being exists. If not, perhaps it was just the bad luck of the draw.
Keywords/Tags: Creator, Creationism, God, Demiurge, Yahweh, Jehovah, worship, religion, pray, prayer, evil, suffering, death, Jesus, Christ, Christian, Christianity, garden, Eden, Adam, Eve, animals, creatures, stallion, filly, pretty pickle, silly, nonsense
Mar 2, 2020
Mar 2, 2020 at 12:44 AM UTC
As of above the twilight reel flicks past oneself
To get to the books lined with dust upon our shelves
Backwards so forwards noddin Her head again
Stay sane my sister for it is just a jig in the game
Name the fame that brought you back to your home
Flipping page of book scraps relating oneself a map
Drink spilt apostrophe's with lined' red jewels
What a worry we thought we were what fools
Though the goods now are bending themselves forever
And underneath the spotted white sky
You at times still decide to stilly lie
In a bed that was made for you and I only
Brick upon stony leaking grey brick
Pushed us fast further and longer until upset sick
Foes till the bitter baited end
No letter will come, no, no letter will be sent
May 25, 2011
May 25, 2011 at 9:12 PM UTC
#The child always thought mom didn’t treat her fair
Never one good word for her labor not one kind gesture
She got only her rebuke and never once her care
In his mind all these were when she started having an affair.
How would a child know about a girl’s love affair
Other than from the winds catching elders whisper
Mom was telling dad *such are the maids you choose
Girls without trace of shame wicked morals loose.*
From the day it was known grew strong mom’s doubt
The maid was barred an exit wasn’t permitted to go out
The brunt of mom’s ire was more frequent and sharper
And the child was left wondering what’s wrong with an affair.
That May was melting tar heat not yielding even at night
Days were leaving blazing trails nights brought no respite
The child wasn’t getting a wink of sleep tossed on bed restless
Staring out at the window moon the vain clouds upon her face.
One such night as he got up with eyes in sleepless gloom
They fell on the empty bed spread in the kitchen room
Where was she this stilly hour and as such thoughts him flocked
Caught his sight a slit of dark through the stairs’ door unlocked.
He caught a glimpse of two shadows hugging the moonlit street
Of them one seemed familiar the child’s eyes had often met
For a moment the sight froze him in a wild and unknown fear
Was it the maid his mom disliked for having an affair!
He tiptoed back in furtive feet worrying on his bed
What if mom found her out drove her out unpaid
How good this affair was the child was baffled in head
Was it worth all the trouble taken on her by the maid!
You can call it the end of story having guessed her fate
Though the child never spoke a word held onto the secret
Mom told dad *enough of it from now maids I’ll choose
And be sure won’t find a girl with morals like her loose.*#
Jun 13, 2014
Jun 13, 2014 at 6:53 AM UTC
I'm scared of the ocean but I love getting wet,
I love the beach but I hate the sand.
And if we could, I would bet,
Our love making would make the waves stilly stand.
Entwined like seaweed,
Smooth as shells.
We both plead and then we're freed,
Muted by the seagull's yell.
May 11, 2014
May 11, 2014 at 5:31 PM UTC
In the shadow of shrubs on the marigold dew
You will not be there but I'll smell of you.
In the stilly evening on the moon kissed tree
I will think of you in melancholy.
When the day end shows the evening star
I'll look up and wonder how far you are.
As the sky paints the water with bluish hue
I'll know life won't be same without you.
On nights forlorn bereft you so grim
I'll pine to see you once in my dream.
Jun 7, 2013
Jun 7, 2013 at 2:17 AM UTC
At twilight, past a glistening day
he is going back home
slowly shattering behind
the steep crests of the mountain,
his scorching blaze
piercing through the woods
leached out moisture
till the very last drop,
breaking through the mists
and fogs and clouds
he made a new way
through no one’s allowed,
now past his swing
from the east to the west
he’s shuffling back stilly
to let the moon annex,
underneath the dark
Is he gaining strength?
to rise up with the Aurora
or is he all drained?
the time he was down
few posited, he resigned
from the arduous courage
he always had shone,
but, without a word
he is back to the blue
to let the horizons meet
to let it be a new dawn,
he is the covert ardor
of every dark night….
he is the ace of spheres
“the brightest star”
Feb 10, 2018
Feb 10, 2018 at 12:15 PM UTC
Drip drop drip spoke heavens sweet scented rain
Falling towards her canvas of pain
Stilly invigorated and bare she lay
Displaying only her scars that will remain
Dec 24, 2013
Dec 24, 2013 at 10:17 AM UTC
Why I am not enough the first time around?
A black shadow in a colorful room.
Pink and purple splattered on the walls.
Yet my darkness drips stilly, a momentum so tranquil.
The thought of this wraps around me tightly.
Can love not seem to hug me? Even as I hold it close?
I guess love washes over those in the mix pink and purple.
What a collision, a lovely magenta.
But what about me?
Within my darkness, there is infinite depth.
Within my darkness, there is grounded beauty.
But it seems as though magenta is the brightest of all, where my shadow just lays in it's shining.
Erasing me from all of eternity, an almost invisible silhouette.
Apr 19, 2020
Apr 19, 2020 at 8:53 PM UTC
Love you stilly,
whispers
the quiet winds
that bend
through morrow
hollow woods
that secret
sounding send
off we go
awning so
tell me where and when
Oct 18, 2019
Oct 18, 2019 at 10:26 AM UTC