"sullenly" poems
You are the sky
While I'm of dirt and earth
Sharing the universe in separate realms
Conflicting factions, diverse births
I would forever look up
Rest my gaze on the tide of the air
And dream for our eyes to meet
Temporary eternity that we would share
I've cried many a teardrop
But you can never know
Because to you they never could reach
For into my core they'd only flow
But when you stare down sullenly
Your tears would fall, soaking my plane
I'd drink the drops voraciously
Those gifts of love from heaven's rain
Your tears would nurture the seeds I've planted
They'd take root and flourish in the sun
Resolve in my soil held firmly in place
Thinking our journey forth would've then begun
Roots would give birth to stem
Which in turn, would branch out into leaves
Plantling will eventually grow up high
To give back the love, it constantly receives
Such misfortune little sprout
You can only grow so tall
You can never reach that far
You and I can only kiss the drops that fall
So... My beautiful sky of azure
I am but dust on fate's heavy feet
We can only look to the faraway horizon
Only there could heaven and earth truly meet
Dec 31, 2014
Dec 31, 2014 at 10:27 AM UTC
lines cut heavy
on a button stretched brow
thick rubber shoes
and dragon canes
fill out the closet floor
gospel sounds
and narratives (drowned)
apparitions set sullenly
amid voices from the past
finger pins
and crosswords
find the favor list
point men and preachers
tip up their tuscany caps
twitching and sign gazing
with spectacles held firm
recurring evening news
and beadledom views
clappers and caregivers
raise a crooked foot
grips and rockers
settle in on the front porch
gertrude grimaces
at an untimely turn
as the gooseberry pie
(with a smidgen of cloves)
chills by the night watch
Feb 11, 2018
Feb 11, 2018 at 12:07 PM UTC
Her orchards I often dream,
buries of my eye,
lost in my fairy book
of beaten pages,
of sunken tears and of mind.
I kept turning the pages, racing,
racing,
looking for her,
between the lines,
now gone,
gone ... are those
lovely high hanging trees,
elegant and so berried,
swaying and smiling,
her,
her saintly smile,
haunting,
yet shadowing me forever
in my mind.
Each page turned, a sad tear falls
deep and deeper,
for the pages are blank.
Her absence ferreting out
blackness,
skeletons and silhouettes,
the pages turning,
weeping ...
my heart pains
for the book of love
unwritten and unfinished.
The wishing well of ink unspent.
Her essence forever corked
from my heart ...
I now lay arrest,
peas in a pod,
aberration and distortion,
for
lovely those high hanging trees,
elegant and so berried,
gone.
Sullenly the music plays
to a different song.
Indelible was happenstance,
our chance encounter,
a special one at that,
puzzlement lays a longer shadow
... of why she walked,
without any words.
Logan Robertson
11/09/17
Nov 9, 2017
Nov 9, 2017 at 7:35 PM UTC
Fountain of youth runs in his veins,
The man who lives in Sycamore Keep.
His circadian clock had come to a halt,
Rather than rejoice, he sullenly weeps.
You would think that immortality is
The pinnacle of human existence,
All the time in the world and not a
Single malady to be of any resistance.
Yet there he sulks, the ageless man,
Cauterized by the turn of each century,
As loved ones breathe their last and
Become a parcel of his fractured memory.
But that is just the shell of his woes,
For even with all knowledge amassed,
He’s utterly aghast with the state of the
World unwilling to learn from the past.
Every crook and cranny explored,
Every experience well savored,
Now monotony for millennia to come,
His longing to live has ebbed and wavered.
I was told by the man of Sycamore Keep
That immortality is a curse so alluring.
Indeed, a hundred cultivated years is
Much better than hollow eons securing.
But sir, think of all the riches you’ve accrued
And mastery of all science and philosophies.
Who wouldn’t want to have the time to mark
The world and purge it from all its atrocities.
Say no more, interrupted the ageless man,
I applaud your idealism and optimistic delusion,
But you’re missing one essential element --
Even as immortals, we’d still be only human.
And to be human, is to be fallible. Let’s just say
That immortal fallibility will engender no good.
It'd be best to truncate our lifespan for the
Sake of our survival, yes truncate we should.
And that’s all I heard from the man of Sycamore Keep,
Who went on his way to his millennial weep.
Mar 20, 2016
Mar 20, 2016 at 9:40 AM UTC
The battle rent a cobweb diamond-strung
And cut a flower beside a ground bird’s nest
Before it stained a single human breast.
The stricken flower bent double and so hung.
And still the bird revisited her young.
A butterfly its fall had dispossessed
A moment sought in air his flower of rest,
Then lightly stooped to it and fluttering clung.
On the bare upland pasture there had spread
O’ernight ‘twixt mullein stalks a wheel of thread
And straining cables wet with silver dew.
A sudden passing bullet shook it dry.
The indwelling spider ran to greet the fly,
But finding nothing, sullenly withdrew.
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my eyes open, sullenly.
not a movement from
my body,
but that of my left arm,
reaching out for
that awful device
that forces me
to comprehend
a drab reality.
tap to snooze
waking up from a dream
where every day isn’t
the same monotony,
and every class isn’t
the same anesthesia,
and every moment
isn’t enveloped
in the pain
of missing you.
tap to snooze
i lay here hoping
begging, even,
that this burden
of waking life will cease,
and that one day
i will cross over
to the sleep realm
and never again
will i need to
tap to snooze
Feb 10, 2015
Feb 10, 2015 at 1:46 PM UTC
Merry Christmas, the voice greets me
humbug I mutter under breath
greed hatred jealousy
only things you live with.
Keep to yourself your mirth
I sullenly brood
such lies are too heavy for this earth
done this place no good.
Relations under cloud of doubt
each soul bears a grievous injury
merriment had long gone out
the greet is just empty.
It's a pity you still find it merry
with all the injustice inequity
men classified quartered
children for food bartered.
Merry doesn't the word stink
while some choose what to drink
fuss about the flavor to savor
many reach it by miles' labor.
Merry can't hide away the glum
of human habitats in dingy slums
strewn on pavements under open sky
breathing refuses left to die.
Still, Merry Christmas to you, says the voice
the time is to give and rejoice
the world though truly is what you say
haven’t You, I, We, made it that way?
Dec 24, 2015
Dec 24, 2015 at 9:45 AM UTC
The grey gulls drift across the bay
Softly and still as flakes of snow
Against the thinning fog. All day
I sat and watched them come and go;
And now at last the sun was set,
Filling the waves with colored fire
Till each seemed like a jewelled spire
****** up from some drowned city. Soon
From peak and cliff and minaret
The city's lights began to wink,
Each like a friendly word. The moon
Began to broaden out her shield,
Spurting with silver. Straight before
The brown hills lay like quiet beasts
Stretched out beside a well-loved door,
And filling earth and sky and field
With the calm heaving of their *******
Nothing was gone, nothing was changed,
The smallest wave was unestranged
By all the long ache of the years
Since last I saw them, blind with tears.
Their welcome like the hills stood fast:
And I, I had come home at last.
So I laughed out with them aloud
To think that now the sun was broad,
And climbing up the iron sky,
Where the raw streets stretched sullenly
About another room I knew,
In a mean house -- and soon there, too,
The smith would burst the flimsy door
And find me lying on the floor.
Just where I fell the other night,
After that breaking wave of pain. --
How they will storm and rage and fight,
Servants and mistress, one and all,
"No money for the funeral!"
I broke my life there. Let it stand
At that.
The waters are a plain,
Heaving and bright on either hand,
A tremulous and lustral peace
Which shall endure though all things cease,
Filling my heart as water fills
A cup. There stand the quiet hills.
So, waiting for my wings to grow,
I watch the gulls sail to and fro,
Rising and falling, soft and swift,
Drifting along as bubbles drift.
And, though I see the face of God
Hereafter -- this day have I trod
Nearer to Him than I shall tread
Ever again. The night is dead.
And there's the dawn, poured out like wine
Along the dim horizon-line.
And from the city comes the chimes --
We have our heaven on earth -- sometimes!
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The eagle searches, circling, senses strum like spider silk.
Sorrow’s scent slides up on a sea breeze.
A solitary slave spits sullenly into the spray.
Silently, suddenly, the sentinel streaks down.
Beak breaks skin, breaches bone, crimson blots the ocean’s foam.
Defenceless, relentless, the bird blurs in a barrage of blood.
Banished, betrayed, the ravaged titan sways -
between the rocks that form his cage.
His foe retreats; a closing caw as crooked claws cleave meat.
Head bowed in defeat, our hero strains as chains bind
hands and feet.
Enduring bonds cut deep and bleed him bittersweet.
Cast against the crags,
this castaway’s castigated cries call out
to no-one.
Chastised, he squints with hollow eyes
towards a lifetime of the bird’s reprise.
Furious. Fists flex,
thrashing against his fortress.
Face furrowed into a frown he flings forward
and for once finds his foot…
unfettered.
Bindings broken, his bonds bite terra firma,
as first a foot and then a hand finds favour.
Boundless, he bellows at the sky
as the flotsam of his freedom floats on by.
Reprieved. Aggrieved. He is restless in release.
An errant righteous line repeats.
Relentless in its beat, it rings out like raw steel on teeth.
A ricochet that disturbs his sleep
“Is this victory, or defeat?”
Racked by reminiscence,
his reality and responsibility remain.
Warped roots rammed down
with rock-filled boots.
Resistance seems obtuse against such reoccuring fruit.
Reluctant, resigned, he rattles out a sigh -
the last gasp of this transitory high.
Reaching for the rope and tack he re-binds the knots
that hold him back.
With one last glance towards the past
he hoists his soul upon the mast.
Ceaselessly.
Senselessly.
The
sentinel
streaks
down.
Aug 30, 2018
Aug 30, 2018 at 2:20 AM UTC
Fecklessly eremitical
Scholars of sorcery wizened
As a thousand dew drops
Sullenly fall like tears
From furtive circean eyes,
Gnarling pious pyrognomic malevolance
Within the nebulous netherworlds
Salamandrous sanctity
Summonsing the heliacally
Resurgant vaticide from
The pheonixs flames
Newly baptised;
Immutably the darkest
Light that ever shone
Upon halcyon times.
ELEETE J MUIR
Jan 13, 2012
Jan 13, 2012 at 9:26 AM UTC
Help me, before I fall apart,
I need you to stay okay,
So I don't jump this moving train,
The clock ticks, and I lose myself,
Beats drop, and I sullenly fall,
If you hit the ground,
It feels that I'll hit beneath it,
Oh you've got me, painting the walls with blood,
It's like the crows keep leaving my head,
As if it's a simple corpse left to rot,
One, two, three four. Despair.
It's a little little melody, seeping through the cracks.
Do you leave the lost and dead behind,
Will you leave me here, screaming with desperate pleas,
I beg you, don't leave me behind, but if you do,
Take my breaths away, they are too much,
I am afraid, afraid that these lungs,
These lungs are filled with all the breath they want,
They sigh, and ask for no more, linger the last quick breaths,
Swallow this pride, and swallow these goodbyes,
Let go of these hands, grasping empty air,
Hello, did you have anything you wanted to say,
I am this nothing, swimming under the currents,
Or maybe I'm just drifting, without breath,
Turning this water into red,
Break these ribs, one by one, and see what's behind them,
This cage holds little, I am no delicacy,
A simple question, if you'll let me be,
A shovel and a box, and a stone left above me.
Oct 20, 2012
Oct 20, 2012 at 5:54 PM UTC
Snow falls. The sky is grey, and sullenly glares
With purple lights in the canyoned street.
The fiery sign on the dark tower wreathes and flares . . .
The trodden grass in the park is covered with white,
The streets grow silent beneath our feet . . .
The city dreams, it forgets its past to-night.
And one, from his high bright window looking down
Over the enchanted whiteness of the town,
Seeing through whirls of white the vague grey towers,
Desires like this to forget what will not pass,
The littered papers, the dust, the tarnished grass,
Grey death, stale ugliness, and sodden hours.
Deep in his heart old bells are beaten again,
Slurred bells of grief and pain,
Dull echoes of hideous times and poisonous places.
He desires to drown in a cold white peace of snow.
He desires to forget a million faces . . .
In one room breathes a woman who dies of hunger.
The clock ticks slowly and stops. And no one winds it.
In one room fade grey violets in a vase.
Snow flakes faintly hiss and melt on the window.
In one room, minute by minute, the flutist plays
The lamplit page of music, the tireless scales.
His hands are trembling, his short breath fails.
In one room, silently, lover looks upon lover,
And thinks the air is fire.
The drunkard swears and touches the harlot's heartstrings
With the sudden hand of desire.
And one goes late in the streets, and thinks of ******
And one lies staring, and thinks of death.
And one, who has suffered, clenches her hands despairing,
And holds her breath . . .
Who are all these, who flow in the veins of the city,
Coil and revolve and dream,
Vanish or gleam?
Some mount up to the brain and flower in fire.
Some are destroyed; some die; some slowly stream.
And the new are born who desire to destroy the old;
And fires are kindled and quenched; and dreams are broken,
And walls flung down . . .
And the slow night whirls in snow over towers of dreamers,
And whiteness hushes the town.
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From across the hall, I watched her double
over Coleridge, sympathizing as she looked
up to the thin curtain filtering the street-light
universe past the pane held in hot glue.
The click-heels, car barks, ceaseless L-Train
turnstiles, tipsy choirs in cracked-door taverns,
hinges, keys on carabiners, bus hydraulics,
the wall clock, and her fingers caressing the page.
She loved a soft wind carrying birdsong
through screen doors and dowel chimes.
She used to leave her shoes lace-tangled
by the key rack until she saw glass pollen
sparkling in a caged tulip blossom.
She raised the book and sullenly whispered
the last stanza of Frost at Midnight
into the spine, wondering how anyone
could live away from impressionist-dandelion
forests, children's plastic toys in the front yard,
and church bells at every hour.
I wondered the same thing.
May 11, 2015
May 11, 2015 at 4:01 PM UTC
O with what heavy heart
And steaded blissfulness
Doth I burdened start
Dodge the dreaded crinkles.
My soul is aching,
Much to my chagrin
As she stands there alone,
Sullenly basking.
How I Wish to be freed
From this forsaken place
Allowed to wander by steed
At a vagabond's thorough pace.
Yearn for adventure
I shall
Through the bitter years that follow,
For I myself a lady
Stall not the humble morrow.
Sep 13, 2018
Sep 13, 2018 at 7:51 AM UTC
It is the June of no summer
misty margins shift
gray to white-blind
the view is winter
the aftertaste bitter
in a perfumed sea
this shrine
both lovely
and disconnected
serenely denies
the fog’s lies
all is quiet
the Western front
sullenly submits
to relentless
willful weather
I listen only
to the birds
conjure storms
of wisdom
await the lightening
of oppressive skies
Jul 6, 2017
Jul 6, 2017 at 8:48 AM UTC
Cut the wire words tethered to my tongue,
A resemblance of a schizophrenic’s,
If Death walked sullenly, could we run
Scream and scatter, cleave off limbs to lockets
The burdens and blood plump things that slow us,
What’s of organs to living always,
Ever existing to face away from
Shadow and sun, cut way the instruments
Of muscles congealed among movement
Fatty slabs and raw bones weighing our hold,
Just fleeing, blood draining to keep moving
Just a few more strides to flee unholy
Death near lingering ever encroaching,
Lop off all just to stray, till left is the
Soul on shoulders, welcoming judgment day
Aug 28, 2011
Aug 28, 2011 at 12:28 AM UTC
Merry Christmas, the voice greets me
humbug I mutter under breath
greed hatred jealousy
only things you live with.
Keep to yourself your mirth
I sullenly brood
*such lies are too heavy for this earth
done this place no good.*
Relations under cloud of doubt
each soul bears a grievous injury
merriment had long gone out
the greet is just empty.
It's a pity you still find it merry
with all the injustice inequity
man classified quartered
children for food bartered.
Merry doesn't the word stink
while some choose what to drink
fuss about the flavor to savor
many reach it by thirsty miles' labor.
Merry can't hide away the glum
of human habitats in dingy slums
strewn on pavements under open sky
breathing refuses left to rot and die.
Still, Merry Christmas to you, says the voice
*the time is to give and rejoice
the world though is truly what you say
You, I, We, have made it that way.*
Dec 24, 2013
Dec 24, 2013 at 5:38 AM UTC
*
The plains-stretched sky soars sullenly,
Graceless sans hills, lonely less trees.
Starkly exposed tending swept-grass streams,
With naught but sparse clouds to mask modesty.
Let me glimpse the sky peaking playfully behind arboreal eaves,
Branches breaking blue monotony with autumn-bright leaves.
Show me a valley mid-winter-doze, cozy between mountains steep,
Sleepy shadows shifting on snow as the sun climbs for her peek.
*
May 27, 2021
May 27, 2021 at 6:43 PM UTC
Kept in front of me is a rough handmade paper
Its furrows are similar to my unsettled life
The thick graphite pencil I hold up to sketch
My anecdotes that has made an impact on me
As soon I start sketching, the graphite smudges
Leaving dark and ugly patches on the paper
And an indelible mark between my fingers
Depicting the dark shadow that has followed me
Everything I hope for, is daubed by overcast setting
When I take up the erasers to wipe off the mishaps
The friction creates a colossal mess on the dreams
I realize that I have distorted the sketch I started
But the deep lines of graphite stare at me sullenly
Such indelible sketches hover in my mind
Not even the best of erasers can wipe them off
I tried in vain, only to be left with abrasions
I have given up on drawing up any dreams
No longer, the handmade paper allures me to sketch
For I have used up all the graphite, drawing, failures
So many failures already etched in my memory
Left with nothing but the memories of defeat
Like the dark smudges of graphite, hovering my mind
Jul 18, 2014
Jul 18, 2014 at 7:50 AM UTC
When the sun rises,
the moon has no say but to leave the morning sky without a glance
Albeit sullenly, albeit unwillingly, he leaves the dark to turn into day again.
When the cold breeze turns
stronger, fiercer,
and the temperature starts falling,
autumn slips away imperceptibly,
in the dawn of winter.
Leaving behind dead leaves,
dead trees and death death death,
the sky will weep snowflakes.
When her tiger cubs mastered the art of hunting,
the tigress has to forsake her offsprings.
She abandons them in the dead of the night,
as they make their second ****
There will be nothing but
indifference in those cold,
steely eyes.
Like the seasons, like nature itself, was it that natural for you to leave me? Were you the moon, autumn or tiger?
Sep 20, 2014
Sep 20, 2014 at 6:55 AM UTC
i followed, until the follower button broke and suddenly
sullenly you're verified hanging out with other pretty things
amenity people, furniture unwrapped from foreign places
making flirty faces with the next boy and the next ones after that
i followed until my patience broke and the pride flooded in
rejection swiftly came within the bucket my heart was found within
just because it feels so good, you knowing my secrets
and stalking my social media like my biggest fan
it doesn't mean a thing if i don't know you at all like i used to
enter stage left: the regret part nine hundred and seven
maybe we're too young to feel something real between us
bottles of liquor on your mini fridge, messing around
with each other's bodies all this reddened afternoon, forgetting
the crisis seems so averted when the asymptotic answer
is just forgetting it exists and you can do way better than
hanging out with me but here we are
i swear i can make it worth something for you to remember
well i'll be the one you'll take home tonight or tomorrow
in that red convertible like a weird chainsmoker song
and i'll forget it's 2017 just for the whole ride.
Jun 16, 2017
Jun 16, 2017 at 6:26 AM UTC
Eyes were sunken, weary to cry
Why, his heart grew sullenly dry
For years, I tilled and toiled the land
Even if what I got were cuts and wounds on my hand
Sowed the seed yet rain did not come
He knew I watered it with tears and did all that I can
I had waited like a farmer for the seed to sprout
I had been steadfast in hope in a midst of drought
Never did I see him shed a sweat
What he did is to insult me and hurt
When he intentionally let the weeds grow
And watered it instead
How then can love grow and blossom in a barren land?
All my hardships were wasted and buried beneath the ground
The farmer suffered under the heat of the sun
And is rewarded with his crops after all he had done
But me, I suffered the loss of everything in myself
And after I wrought for love to bloom, I reaped none but grief
I had shed my every drop of love
To an unworthy person, who loves me not
Now hatred ploughed and rooted in my heart
I know, in due season, he shall reap his part
Aug 15, 2015
Aug 15, 2015 at 6:58 PM UTC
They never should have let me out of the box,
these harnesses are coddled in rust and will never do,
I nearly have an arm free now.
Tis the bloodlust,
the ever recurring,
I cauterize so sickly raptured and recoiled,
vile animal reveling beneath fang and flesh.
Tis the beast wrought beneath this parchment bearing,
what is left of mortal means
as the morals feast upon the limbs and lungs of one another.
Ever screaming,
my memories wrench and tear,
torn in ribbons splayed from lung to tissue.
My demon slaughters the remnants packed and hid way
in corner and shadow,
ideals and sockets of life scratch and rip
across the flesh of the air as their lungs flood so violently,
doused in creamy blood liquid.
I die so sullenly,
so intrepidly,
dripped in god’s sunlight beams,
bathed in crackling spine and broken butterfly wings.
I writhe not in brain fractured grenade shrapnel,
not felted amongst iron clad bomb shards,
I lie so serenely,
stomach basking in sun beam,
I bite and suckle upon such succulent fruits of flesh,
human meat and such soft hips of lustful imps,
so untouched and littered in my most precise of bite marks.
I stake claim to the everest of fiendish hues,
chains so kin to my sins,
mind so ravaged in demonish,
all thought is mother to acts so sickly in hellish cravings,
I seek no retribution for ideals so crimped and carved through my bones.
All is relative to one’s fiendish benevolences.
I take care to ratify my most ancient of antiquities,
the very blood line that so racks this mortal sense of the human reality.
This evil is ever bearing and eternal lasting,
nor it’s will softened.
Shackles crease and crinkle
so fondly with every sickly furnished breath.
Dec 24, 2011
Dec 24, 2011 at 4:56 AM UTC
I was a teacher once.
My students seemed
like glittering
fantastical birds.
The girls flew and flashed
in their keen new beauty,
the boys perched sullenly
and stiff as boys seem
always wont to do.
I was a teacher observing
the flittering
ephemera of youth,
that one thing
we all remember
always
though it only
stays a little
before it is driven
by worry and the world
into memory
and flies away
into forever.
Jan 9, 2017
Jan 9, 2017 at 7:48 AM UTC