"suddenness" poems
KISSING MR. CHELIDON GOODBYE
Ho...ho. . .oh!
I don't know
if I should be
telling you this.
I was just sweet
as in 16 &
never been kissed
and my *******
hadn't yet arrived
though I prayed and prayed
to a God who did not
heed my girlish plea.
All the girls in my year
had already budded.
******* to the right of me!
Breast to the left of me!
Into the valley of despair
I rode my Raleigh
alas alas
breast-less!
I practiced kissing
by kissing
the you know
inside of
( the whatchamacallit? )
my elbow the
chelidon so called
by an old falling-apart
medical dictionary.
I clipped some hair
from our Yorkshire terrier
stuck it on the crick of
my right elbow
so that it became
my first moustache'd kiss.
And so, was born
my Mr. Chelidon.
Pathetic...yes...I know
but the year after
my bosoms arrived
with a suddenness
that took my breath
away.
I breasting the waves
like a ship's figurehead
as I dived into the sea
a Venus for boys to see.
I was my *******
and my ******* were me.
Somehow I could then not
stopped being kissed.
And once kissed
grew addicted to it.
The bliss of the kiss.
I was my own drug.
I gave Mr. Chelidon
the elbow.
Discovered the joy of boys
inventing various uses
for them
as they
discovered
me.
May 8, 2018
May 8, 2018 at 5:41 AM UTC
You, you only, exist.
We pass away, till at last,
our passing is so immense
that you arise: beautiful moment,
in all your suddenness,
arising in love, or enchanted
in the contraction of work.
To you I belong, however time may
wear me away. From you to you
I go commanded. In between
the garland is hanging in chance; but if you
take it up and up and up: look:
all becomes festival!
______
Translated by Stephen Mitchell
4.2k
Now as the train bears west,
Its rhythm rocks the earth,
And from my Pullman berth
I stare into the night
While others take their rest.
Bridges of iron lace,
A suddenness of trees,
A lap of mountain mist
All cross my line of sight,
Then a bleak wasted place,
And a lake below my knees.
Full on my neck I feel
The straining at a curve;
My muscles move with steel,
I wake in every nerve.
I watch a beacon swing
From dark to blazing bright;
We thunder through ravines
And gullies washed with light.
Beyond the mountain pass
Mist deepens on the pane;
We rush into a rain
That rattles double glass.
Wheels shake the roadbed stone,
The pistons **** and shove,
I stay up half the night
To see the land I love.
3.1k
I seek greatness,
Not perfection but
Something more.
I want jagged edges,
And symmetry long broken.
I want rhythm and beat,
rhyming galore, but flowing,
so fleet, off the tongue of my keyboard,
into your minds, drilled bore
never to be filled but left void,
never to be lit up or explored
save by my depravity, the
wanton insanity that is my quest
for eternality, for remembrance
for the suddenness by which
a heart attack do prance
tip toeing around your soul,
twisting it in, and lithely
make you beg for the encore,
even still won't be satisfied,
I'll become who I am,
The best version of myself,
Ravenous, more, than any lion,
Tiger, or engorged man,
Nay, even if I look down upon highest perch,
like The Raven itself,
Even if Poe himself, were to raise up again,
Weeping, claiming oh, John, your poetry,
Nay, your beating, has me breathing,
Still will I deny that drum,
Even then will I be empty,
and so this emotion that I am releasing,
Will self servedly do nothing,
You can not destroy that which is not living,
Only close your eyes, and forget quickly,
For if you let my greatness roam,
Oh upon your shoulders I will loan,
my delicious insanity upon the world,
And the toll my greatness,
shall collect,
will be worth more than all the gold.
And I'll simply just,
waste it away,
In search of some greatness,
greater still!
Some vision, some sign,
that is meaningless except,
like happiness,
In the pursuit, never to be found.
Jan 16, 2015
Jan 16, 2015 at 3:42 AM UTC
974
The Soul’s distinct connection
With immortality
Is best disclosed by Danger
Or quick Calamity—
As Lightning on a Landscape
Exhibits Sheets of Place—
Not yet suspected—but for Flash—
And Click—and Suddenness.
2.6k
Eons of water dripping on a stone
Altered and absorbed into creation--
But I need suddenness of something known
From Epiphany and Revelation.
Realization's not slow and steady,
Rather spontaneous elevation.
My need to learn demands I stay ready
For Epiphany and Revelation.
Show me no small lessons that life presents,
But insight with dramatic sensation!
Life unfolds in a series of events
Of Epiphany and Revelation.
Even silence is thunderous rapture
Triggering profound imagination.
Knowledge springs from the wisdom I capture
With Epiphany and Revelation.
Who I am today is a product of
Awe in my moments of education.
It's these times in life that I've learned to love--
My Epiphany and Revelation.
Aug 8, 2018
Aug 8, 2018 at 1:58 PM UTC
1465
Before you thought of Spring
Except as a Surmise
You see—God bless his suddenness—
A Fellow in the Skies
Of independent Hues
A little weather worn
Inspiriting habiliments
Of Indigo and Brown—
With specimens of Song
As if for you to choose—
Discretion in the interval
With gay delays he goes
To some superior Tree
Without a single Leaf
And shouts for joy to Nobody
But his seraphic self—
2.3k
Winters nascent white falls
on the boughs of orchard branches
and carpets the earth outside my window;
The coating has a strength in it's gentle glow
softening and subduing the landscape
in a pale light, diffused by cloud,
Lifting with the purity of a doves wings
And drifting with a melancholy like ashes,
Settling, like the baseness of bones,
Something bare and beautiful
is reflected outside
in the raw winds of transition,
Out of the dark belly of solstice,
In all the suddenness and subtlety of being
snow flakes are inchoate and bristling.
Jan 11, 2015
Jan 11, 2015 at 8:46 PM UTC
I remember her
in old
photographs
she'd been
daydreaming
all her life
in her under-age
world
spinning
like a top
eternity
in her head
but recklessness
on her tongue
crusading for
******* summers
in Europe
and all that comes
splendidly hither
when laid down
by the embers
in the groves
close to
the congenial sea
I rightly recall
before the page
turning
electric particles
shooting off
as fireworks
in each of her
copper eyes
and how destiny's
curtain fell
with such
suddenness
that morning of
the thin blue line
Mar 16, 2021
Mar 16, 2021 at 9:22 AM UTC
Dead heads stare from the wall
one can't tell if their glassy eyes
hold the relics of past life
or the sadness of having lost it
to the fires of royal pastime
tiger eyes look pathetically pleading
for re-stitching the stripes on the bones
leopard head growls only in anguish
of his spots being soft spot for target
the open jaws of the croc
can't still swallow the stuck bullet
awed eyes of deer is yet to sense
the muzzle that ruptured its innocence
the jackals, birds, langurs, civets
all frozen in the suddenness of the ***** out.
The hunter's head peeps from a dusty frame
having got his place of pride
among his game.
Jun 27, 2016
Jun 27, 2016 at 3:10 AM UTC
snaking through a modal-jazz fine-tuned evening
this soft huddle of sweat and tender bodies
it was purely girls strobed, fired upon by the oncoming *****
of a maddened hand;
slowly becoming inured to this droning of the blameful balm
of evening, always when ennui starts
to wane I will start the car
and take myself to the edge of everything
and all the suddenness becomes inept
and I myself
a shot in the total dark
making it final
somewhere in Quezon City
given a levitation and you
are somewhat veined to my wall of disgust
the same as
finding an old, forgotten thing
you
have no use for.
Apr 2, 2016
Apr 2, 2016 at 1:05 AM UTC
You know why time flies?
Because it never slows to stop.
When time hits you, it does so with a crash.
It hurtles into you with violent awareness.
Time doesn’t crawl.
It doesn’t walk. Or even run.
Time doesn’t unfold methodically, or slowly.
Time is an event. And another.
The arrow of time is a broken spear.
It’s not straight and not constant.
The present announces itself, out of nowhere.
Time is a measure of suddenness.
Time is revelation.
It is darkness speckled with epiphany.
Time passes only when change happens.
There are no small changes in life.
Mar 28, 2019
Mar 28, 2019 at 8:10 AM UTC
**Path #1
Forgiveness is the sinking
head into heart..
The head dwelling in separation
concedes logic's demands
but confronting questions
time after time:
Why? and What?
Surrendering at last
to the sinking..
dissolving..
becoming..
the Heart...
Path #2
Forgiveness is downloading
of new software..
Our old software
employs the ego rampant
rendering forgiveness
a difficult dream
searching in forlorn places
finding only traces..
New software finds it all
Here and Now...!
Path #3
Real forgiveness is Now
not in time..
Events in the past
seeming in need of
forgiveness
are only known
Now..
and what of the Now..?
it's other name
our true identity:
Forgiveness...
Path #4
Chaos
is an iteration
of Forgiveness..
a shading and
concealment of
formulated light..
Our awaking brings
the repentance
the return
the feedback
to never absent
Forgiveness...
Path #5
A shock it is
to learn that
Forgiveness is not personal..
It is a realization
of a substance common
to all concerned
transparent and eternal
the real Self..
With that realization
duality of conflict
dissolves in the
Light...
Path #6
Quantum forgiveness
is the only
forgiveness..
A leap into
infinite non-locality..
The suddenness arrives
within painful progress
or perhaps
strangely enough
out of the blue...!
Path #7
Forgiveness
an experience of sealing
our separate brokenness..
It is mandatory..
Yet the sealing
can be accomplished
only by those who see
there is no need
for the sealing...
Path # 8
Immersed
in a separated
dualistic reality
seeking forgiveness
in thought and time
is not satisfying..
The lingering pain
from a fruitless search
for forgiveness in
all the wrong places...
Path #9
Forgiveness
is a restoration of
peace and happiness
with new clarity:
The Awareness of
peace and happiness
was never in need of
restoration...
Path #10
We need to see clearly
that all relationships
take place in
infinite Awareness..
But wait..
not in .. but as..
All those hurts
are constrictions
of Awareness
crying out their
illusory separation...**
Jun 16, 2015
Jun 16, 2015 at 12:04 AM UTC
I lean back on my swivel chair,
determined to not swivel around,
because you’re just behind me,
to the right,
but for now pride’s got the upper hand,
and temptation bids its time.
So with eyes shut
and ears wide open,
I resolve to lose myself,
In the clickety-clack
of your keyboard.
Instead,
I hear your chair slide back,
and you stand up,
as if my thoughts had offended you.
You walk away swiftly,
splashing your familiar fragrance
with the suddenness of your movements,
giving me something to hold on to,
in the hopelessness left in your wake.
I wish I had spent more time in gardens,
so that I could assign your scent a name.
Mar 17, 2014
Mar 17, 2014 at 6:30 PM UTC
For sport my Julia threw a lace
Of silk and silver at my face:
Watchet the silk was, and did make
A show, as if’t ‘ad been a snake:
The suddenness did me afright;
But though it scar’d, it did not bite.
1.5k
I missed you today.
With a suddenness, a bereft slap across my skin.
When that familiar hair ahead of me on the sidewalk
turned.
And it wasn't you.
I missed you in the hollow of the moment of the stranger who wasn't you.
And with resounding howl
Like a grieving mother
I missed you.
I remember in the sheets we'd tangle,
I smelled them. I smelled summer air and my perfume
I smelled your soap and your musk in that minute second on the street.
I stopped and I breathed in deep. Inhale, Inhale.
Before you turned and it was not you.
Like a sailor's wife on the shore
I watched as the stranger who wasn't you turned back down the street
Growing smaller and smaller in the distance.
And a thousand piercing stinging blinding pins of light forced themselves.
They stabbed at me and took my breath.
Took your scent and the bed we lay.
On the street, on the street
as you walked away, the stranger.
Paralyzing me with your nearness only to be someone so very much not you.
I missed you and i stood in the street and gravity gave up its pull to laugh at my foolishness
and my eyes filled with tears to celebrate their perfect deception.
and my bones forgot how to hold on for dear life
and I slid to the ground
to the ground
because
I saw you today on the street. The stranger that wasn't you.
I have learned the art of hiccuping you inside.
Memory, hiccup. There you are now tucked away inside.
Kisses on the soft hairs at the nape. Hiccup that away too.
And all of the hiccups came out in a swallow of your name...
A hundred swallows, truth.
They flew wickedly around my head gleeful in my faux pas.
And ten hungry vultures came to take the remains of my hope.
Pick away greedily at my anticipation.
Satiated on the last of my blind faith and now they are too fat to fly.
And I am too weak to run.
Because I saw you on the street today,
The stranger that wasn't you. My beloved. My adored.
Such a peculiar street.
I will not pass this way again.
sahn
04/09/2014
Apr 9, 2014
Apr 9, 2014 at 10:37 PM UTC
I decree all to my wistful ways opinionated nature to my son,
My daughter owns my intellectual curiosity as well as my talking hands.
I freely give my physical verve to my boy. He is pure suddenness
a surging charge running with a Tesla-like crackle a dancing light.
No concept of impact surging where he wills.
My daughter will negotiate,convince or wait with the patience of
a possum still and disinterested.
will they find me in the strands.
Maybe.
I will echo non the less my existence will hold a place.
my blood will flow and claim.My sinews will carry
til they mix or marry another feature int the rope. To mingle.
who will I become then. will I lead or follow.
every one from son to son from daughter to daughter.
from time to time I will speak but not with this voice.
Evolution.
Creation
Some sort of intervention. Some science
Nov 2, 2012
Nov 2, 2012 at 9:52 PM UTC
Paradise lost
I wonder sometimes
What sin really is
If it is
Or if it is simply the only way
To explain the unexplainable.
Our humanity courses through veins that sing questions
That bleed questions
That pound questions into our temples when we try to sleep at night
*Why?
Why?
Why?
Why?*
And eventually
We find our answers
Or we die.
But is sin?
Is it?
Or did somebody just need
A reason
For the cruelty
Of a lover?
Here is my
Religion
Here is my
Self medication
Here
Is the apology I will never get
And so eventually
I apologize
Just
So that somebody has:
Paradise lost
And somebody
Needs to be sorry
Right?
See,
Those of us who love
Like we're at prayer
Those of us who lie with
Angels
Who reach up with our mortal fingers
And trace the features
Of sculpted, velvet faces
Those of us who covet
Gods
And who are thrown from
Heaven
Ours is not to question their reasons.
They have no reasons.
Gods need none.
Humans need excuses, need why's and rationalizations
Gods
Do what they please
And they do not have reasons.
When you love a god
Your task is to survive her choices
Not question them.
I have learned-
Gods do not explain.
Gods do not listen.
Gods decide
Blindly
Permanently
Instantly
And offer no justification.
Gods decide
Alone.
And gods
Are never wrong.
I have learned
It is not for us
To challenge choices
That torture us with their suddenness.
It is not for us
To yearn for paradise
Just because we cannot understand
Why it is over.
It is not for us
To ask
Why did you leave?
Of a god who says
She never lies
Who says she loves you
And casts you out
As if the two can both
Be truths.
You can tear the universe to shreds
Trying to make sense of the truths they whisper
And shout.
The words they build you up
And demolish you with.
I could rip a hole
In all of reality
And still the love and hatred of
My own personal
Broken god
Would not fit into
One world.
You can drive yourself mad
Trying to divine the reasons
Of deities.
But
Having gained and lost paradise
So many times
I have finally learned that
The end game is this:
They are gods
Because we love them.
They are gods
Because we worship
And
They can do
Whatever they want.
There is no wrong
There is no right
There is only
Them
And they
Make both
And they change both
With the direction of the wind.
If you love someone
In a sacred way
In a pure way
In a transcendent way
What it means is that
They own you
They control your reality
And you
Must live in whatever world
They decide you deserve.
And they will
Decide.
And you will
Kneel.
It is not pretty.
It is not fair.
It leaves little room for pride
But
That
Is how it goes
When you love
A god.
And whether it seems wrong or right
The hard truth is
If you spend your life
Asking why...
*That life will not continue
For very much longer.*
Jun 6, 2014
Jun 6, 2014 at 11:14 PM UTC
I love your supposed fraility
it appeals to me,
in your smile theres
a beckoning hint of marigolds,
your eyes are demure
yet they catapult
waterfalls of Lisianthuses.
Your rivulet urges a suddenness
to speak your name
as though you have drawn me
I truly wonder who is lost.
Apr 30, 2012
Apr 30, 2012 at 4:20 PM UTC
I look back on minutes that
drag on- and yet months
have seemed to escape.
Clawing hands of time, I beg
for those moments
back in mine.
I have searched for every last
bit of warmth I could find,
groping the bed for some
tangible piece of this
disaster you left.
Every breath of cold stings just
to remind me that I am alive.
The sun warms my face
the cold splits my skin into
shards that fall to the ground
and effortlessly blend in
with the glinting snow that
has been wintry blanket over
the nuances of my soul.
There isn't a single word to
be said- the silent struggle will never
be heard by deaf, unappreciative ears.
Every passionate heat I’ve ever known,
killed by ice you left coursing through my organs.
If you’d even look my way-
you could watch my vibrant blue veins
running up and down my skin coated skeleton.
Time lingers on and
words are always left unsaid.
I distract myself with
the coming of seasons,
but I cannot part with warm
memories of our time.
My muscles once swam so graceful under
my skin, but now they are rigid and
stiff with the winter’s freeze.
I haven’t closed my eyes to you just yet.
I could still see all of the things
that I should have said floating to
the ground between us. Silent flurries
of words built up behind my eyelids,
I refused to let them melt and
well out as tears.
I couldn't let you get to me like that.
Feb 19, 2014
Feb 19, 2014 at 1:19 PM UTC
smoke drifted across the thick silence hanging in the air
writhing in serpentine patterns toward the ceiling before lazily bursting apart.
"what do you see in me?" you asked.
i had to take a moment to think, shocked by the suddenness of your question.
there were a million answers that could be given.
"i see someone who strives to be above perfect."
someone who broke apart the glass barrier of adversity closed around him,
and who is still picking glass out of his arms and knuckles.
he fights every day to be something more than what he is.
he embodies perfection without realizing it.
"i see someone who wants love but is afraid of it."
it's like looking into a mirror, sometimes.
maybe inside, you're just as shredded as i am.
you only give a little, to the misery of my aching heart.
but the feather light touches of your fingertips
granted in sweet morning light, when we both have yet to wake up,
well, it speaks volumes.
so many more answers i could have given, but you invoke a series of complex emotions.
some of them aren't worth naming.
you stared at me, and i marveled at the exquisite angular artistry writ in your visage.
i can't look at you without noticing how **** handsome you are.
but the next words cut like ice,
"that's not good enough."
Jun 6, 2013
Jun 6, 2013 at 7:09 PM UTC
Gazing through the looking glass, and attempting to reminisce, he lets go, relieves, and perceives.Colossi of raindrops subtly fall through sky’s shadows , violently battling the grey in great amounts, failing to come anywhere near the threshold of one’s most sensitive ear. Nature’s children appear to tremble as dark forebodings of a dreary future pervade the air. The danger and annoyances of such rarities is always given priority and significance. He misunderstands it; he believes in its false infinity.
Unable to stabilize, unable to achieve a desired normality. From every pitter, he regrets; from every patter he forgets. Forcefully drudging through the thick swamp of his mind, struggling to understand what and why, diminishing his hopes of any change, any desire. Suddenly, several elements collide against his one-way mirror in his cell and revitalize his consciousness. Looking through the droplet, his face pressed against, his mentality momentarily produces quick successions of thoughts and random impulses of recovering memory.
Every snowflake understands its place as sui generis; every raindrop understands its place as trite. The beauty of a snowflake with death, the dullness of rain with life. It’s uniformity and strict nature are necessary to sustain life, but somehow it places a bittersweet piece of an unusual feeling inside him. Its unexplainable transparency, disguising itself as invisible, but not untouchable, stimulates a sense of deep nostalgic hopelessness within him. As he discovers the profound pulchritude, and simultaneous incomprehensibility, of the paradoxical elements of natural and artificial state cooperating to achieve more of the same, he realizes more in this moment. The monotonous, repetitive beat of rain seems to harmonize in an odd manner with some contrasting presence.
A new rhythm to this sound, a new color to this sight. A particular emotion of gradually diminishing despair comes about as he observes little rain boots composing a sort of rhythmic song with the catchy beat of the rain’s clashing, the continuous flow of the tree’s trembling, the back-up percussion of the thunder’s loud suddenness, the sight of lightning's exciting flash, and the cheerful singing from their voices.Upon this feat, he accepts the shadow’s tears; no longer must he endure the pain of the past’s ********** of the future, now he begins to savor the varied colors of newfound harmony.
Jan 24, 2017
Jan 24, 2017 at 5:50 AM UTC
Nightfall at the bay...
humid air cut cool,
body contracting.
Sending suddenness
searching through
ruffled ripples.
The clouds like the
inside of a torn drum.
The size of sound in
absence...my latest
version of dissolution
vibrates with approval.
Jun 11, 2016
Jun 11, 2016 at 11:56 PM UTC
The suddenness of her lips on his left him momentarily stunned as he fought to steady himself once again
Swiftly recovering his senses, returning her kiss feveroisly.
Tongues intertwined softly, breathing heavy and labored.
A powerful electricity buzzed between them
The energy from the vastly starry night sky radiating down upon them, casting everything within a ravishing glow.
His dimpled, beautiful smile; powerful enough to render any woman incapacitated.
Her eyes shone brightly as the stars above.
Below them, the lake water called out, beconing.
An inviting sonnet, lapping against the rocky coastline with a steady rhythm like their two hearts beating.
Enveloping them completely, becoming lost within each other and falling victim to the impossibly beautiful mid-July night.
Jul 21, 2015
Jul 21, 2015 at 2:16 AM UTC
The hardest part of your death
Was not the muchness you took away
Rather,
How easily life went on
The sun still rose sharp at 4 like always
The trains rattling away on time
The birds singing the same old songs like yesterday
Strange isn’t it?
Nothing has changed.
Nothing paled now that you’re gone
Life, my life, kept moving forward
It’s steady pace terrifyingly normal
Just a shadow of you seemed to remain
Locked deep within the lost sea of my soul
Your memories, that stupid smile, Forgotten
The world moved on.
Unchanged by the suddenness of your passing
Unphased by the hole you left behind
In my shockingly unstable soul
A place you once called home
A home now dusty and empty
In an endless eternity of waiting
Waiting…
Forever waiting….
Apr 24, 2017
Apr 24, 2017 at 11:50 PM UTC