"sundial" poems
5am, I sit alone my mind feeling so bright
is it early morning or the middle of the night.
The wind still howls winters tune
and trees are dancing in the dale.
I yearn for sun and summers warmth
but all I get is cold and hail.
So comeback Mr Sunshine please
to keep me warm and give me ease.
The winters blues do not please,
just make me shiver, cough and sneeze.
The days start dark and keep me hidden
as if to say that it's forbidden,
to laugh and sing and have the fun
I get from walking in the sun.
So comeback Mr Sunshine please
to keep me warm and give me ease.
The winters blues do not please,
just make me shiver, cough and sneeze.
I long to see the flowers smile,
the shadows form on my sundial.
The smell of grass that's freshly mown,
the shoots from seeds so freshly sown.
So comeback Mr Sunshine please
to keep me warm and give me ease.
The winters blues do not please,
just make me shiver, cough and sneeze.
Smiling children everywhere
running around without a care.
Winter woollens stashed away
and let's forget those rainy days.
So comeback Mr Sunshine please
to keep me warm and give me ease.
The winters blues do not please,
just make me shiver, cough and sneeze.
Take away this winters cold
it only makes me feel old.
Bring the sun and bring the light
and take away this awful night.
So comeback Mr Sunshine please
to keep me warm and give me ease.
The winters blues do not please,
just make me shiver, cough and sneeze.
Early morning sun please shine,
and as I sit with glass of wine.
I'll try to not let my mind splinter
and forget all about the winter.
So comeback Mr Sunshine please
to keep me warm and give me ease.
The winters blues do not please,
just make me shiver, cough and sneeze.
So comeback Mr Sunshine please
and take away this cold disease.
Once again to see you glow
and throw your warmth through my window.
Jan 8, 2015
Jan 8, 2015 at 1:45 AM UTC
So it has come to this
insomnia at 3:15 A.M.,
the clock tolling its engine
like a frog following
a sundial yet having an electric
seizure at the quarter hour.
The business of words keeps me awake.
I am drinking cocoa,
that warm brown mama.
I would like a simple life
yet all night I am laying
poems away in a long box.
It is my immortality box,
my lay-away plan,
my coffin.
All night dark wings
flopping in my heart.
Each an ambition bird.
The bird wants to be dropped
from a high place like Tallahatchie Bridge.
He wants to light a kitchen match
and immolate himself.
He wants to fly into the hand of Michelangelo
and dome out painted on a ceiling.
He wants to pierce the hornet's nest
and come out with a long godhead.
He wants to take bread and wine
and bring forth a man happily floating in the Caribbean.
He wants to be pressed out like a key
so he can unlock the Magi.
He wants to take leave among strangers
passing out bits of his heart like hors d'oeuvres.
He wants to die changing his clothes
and bolt for the sun like a diamond.
He wants, I want.
Dear God, wouldn't it be
good enough to just drink cocoa?
I must get a new bird
and a new immortality box.
There is folly enough inside this one.
5.6k
As swarm of aggressive multi-coloured ants,
Evening traffic charms the highway,
Eerie tree shadows haunt the carriageway at three o'clock,
Shadows will reconfigure and extend as time passes through the sundial of my trip,
This burning night, on the way to smoky city,
Inflames the melting tyres, smoking as if sticky molten caramel,
Bathes highway with red hot haze,
I jump as air conditioning, kicks in,
Conning me my journey's nearly done,
In the heat of the evening sun,
Wakes me from my slumbers doze,
Traffic slows through rush hour jams,
Dances,weaving lane to lane,
Through rush hour congestion's indigestion!
By ladylivvi1
© 2013 ladylivvi1 (All rights reserved)
Jul 12, 2013
Jul 12, 2013 at 6:05 PM UTC
unsuccessful potatoes & you found a tree in the ocean
i spent the afternoon digging, digging
my fingernails into my own fear of commitment
the fear of my own reputation
now the cat's in heat & richard nixon (the dog)
is teasing her with his trump card
she takes it
& squeezes it
very gently
then rips it open madly & snarls
& it oozes and drips out of her mouth
we all pick up a thousand pieces of a minute
i cremated my sister this morning & new spirits
arrived at my doorstep before noon
they sang to me of instinct,
whinnying about the antique zenith
up in cheyenne
"gimmie some secrets" she said
so i carved them
into my arm
into a minotaur's chest
into a giant looking glass
into a wooden boat
& i set sail for the sundial,
"there is no truth"
my eyes are wax & the ocean
means nasty filth
but everything is useless now
frogs carry high powered harmonicas
& walk into the spells of Poe
& into the hexagrams of Hamlet
i do not want to carry a pitchfork across
some godforsaken desert
i do not want to feel my own evaporation
while the real artists brood in the meantime
i want to waste away on a slushy evening
i will live in my armpit
& hate you
& never wear deodorant
"your mind is small--it is limited--why must you understand?"
Jan 10, 2012
Jan 10, 2012 at 9:11 PM UTC
tattoo ourselves in electric ink memorializing calendars,
diaries of observantional digits, black on white, no gray,
birthdays, anniversaries, dates of passing, starting lines,
occasional achievements, departure dates, even glaring failures,
sundial mundane records of diurnal habitude…even
defining self by, bye, byte marks upon flesh, upon our calendar
*not my first trip-tracking, he ruefully rues, wry smiling,
many voyages of indeterminate measuring length,
leaving litter of arrays of hopeful estimations & destinations,
each unequal, any or all possibilities, each day notated,
without critique or commentary, the numbers are the
gaols (jails) of goals, target, indeterminate determination,
terrific, horrific, introspections, inverse images resolve, resolute*
a year ago, +/- a few days,, new travelogue commenced,
notated but not annotated, just numerical truths,
(sans comments for the divine nature of numbers don’t lie)
and today my calculator app informs, that I am now
19.4 % lesser, but that clarifies less than expected
naturally this provokes a natty,
spirited, self-inquiry, lessened,
lessor, for better or for worse?
have the physical alterations
accompanying this reduction
mean exactly what,
if, it should be, a greater lesser?
here is the hard part.
your have always been a mirror~poet,
laughing, bemoaning the unvarnished, unshaven
AM sightings of a human perpetual dissatisfied,
the external never denying the interior “less~than,”
a J Peterman catalogue of weathered ****** expressions,
counter-parted by multiple Venn diagram intersections,
of experiential labeled bits & pieces of emotional empirical
less than good, not even close to perfect, so now that I am
*gaunt, spare, lean, grayed, narrower, again ruefully rue,
the even more visible truth reflection eye~hidden:*
I,
am the sum of the weight of my history, my deeds,
my disbeliefs, murderous deeds, weak choices
and that hasn’t changed nary an ounce, no matter
many times examined, indeed I am forever a lesser man,
there, internal infernal
too…
Apr 9, 2023
Apr 9, 2023 at 2:12 PM UTC
At the heights of a Surrey valley
is where I stand alone.
The clouds roll in with attempted suppression,
wuthering, as one may say.
Yet they succeed and I do not.
All this vacantness on the moors,
in turn: suffocation.
All this gale of violence and madness,
not a single shiver,
but a private, intense burning sensation.
Would it set fire to the moors, the libraries,
and the red curtain theatre?
Or would it melt the defendant themselves?
I wish for the former,
yet I am already melting.
I put my hand on the gnomon-less sundial,
and still I stand alone
drunk on the all-consuming emotions
inflicted by these brick walls
or rather the crowds of unpredictability within them.
Apr 20, 2022
Apr 20, 2022 at 7:42 PM UTC
I envy the cool darkness, now we're apart
And the warmth which wrapped your body:
Cocooned by your breathing,
The secret shadows and angles
Which gradually changed every hour
Like a dark sundial recording
All your limbs tiniest convolutions.
I know there was a sort of
Kabalistic synchronicity
Some algebraic function
And if only I'd studied more;
If only I'd applied myself better
I wouldn't have gotten all the equations wrong
Lost the notes, failed the exam.
I remember those once acute angles
How they fit so perfectly my body's contours
Our seams vanished together, smooth soldered
In the same molten dream; mouth to mouth
Torso upon torso, moving wave unfurled
Water of twin oceans, mingled-
Now it's only the moonlight that burns.
Mar 25, 2010
Mar 25, 2010 at 7:56 PM UTC
in the east
a dry man stumbled through the lush panacea of a dessicated prayer
his faith moved mustard gas. gasping for clarity, he spoke a thing no god could answer.
he languished in the Eden of empirical Dodos
a succulent squab in the oasis of fables. he joined the throng. his shackles were mended.
his bonds, repaired.
in the west -
a rye bread crumbles along a path to a candy house -
to a furnace of blank stares.
it waits moonlit and rustic, alas - it's mad and verily cloaked in a thing no ' nothing ' would ask for.
it leads to a breach.
weary of " who knows ? "
a truculent husk of a drought mislabeled. an actual flood.
it rankles the vision...
it plots despair.
in the north, a gunga din fumbles through the arid Earnest of our Importance. There -
we play crude brass. Profundo. at last, we nearly...
and even though we wide spark the char of our scorched affair
we vanquish any Southland
and the warm sun
frosts a glass eye
like pyrite.
and polly wants a lacquer, dark enough to maroon...
Jun 14, 2013
Jun 14, 2013 at 10:24 AM UTC
Time rolls
its mossless stone
slowly tonight.
It is as though the
tic
has lost it's
toc.
Seconds have become
thirds, fourths, fifths.
So slowly does
the smallest hand
move upon the cracked face.
Minutes no longer tiny minute things.
But now gargantuan wedges
of pie.
So large as to feed
history's poor twice over.
Hours are unpowered,
flacid flat balloons
without breath or form
smothering all thought.
The grandfather clock
in the hallway
has embraced senility
and no longer
completes it's
pre-ordained
preambulation
around the
captured sundial.
It has now given itself
airs and graces.
Believing in heart and mind,
and cog and pendulum,
to be a jazz percussionist
banging, tapping and ringing
in an off beat tempo
somewhat lacking in
basic rhythm.
So time runs
with the scatterd
predictabality of the Tardis.
Bigger on the inside.....
Slower on the darkside
of the grandfather clock.
Mar 28, 2014
Mar 28, 2014 at 5:09 AM UTC
<!>
Four Irises tall & gallant, looking though
slighted worn out, a tad bedraggled
they are springtime survivor stragglers
of the Great Spring Weather Battle.
living in an open trench, battle conditions,
wind-whipped by constant strong breezes,
raked by intermittent machine gun rain,
familiar weapons of the “handover” season
loyal guardians of their pinpoint position,
remaining on duty, standing at attention,
dignified amidst the serene, nearly summer, now,
accepting quietude & gratitude of surround soundings
arrow-straight, in dress uniforms of royally purple,
four lead a cohort of unbloomed green fellows,
protecting their charge, an ancient marker of time,
rusted-green bronze sundial, symbol of continuity
these four, boon companions to human and animal,
shall persist long after I cease to dabble in this art,
they greet their admirers in full regalia, every year,
long, long may they live, die and be yet reborn!
here, in place, when we arrived four decades ago, a tiny forever,
changelings heading a processional of the summer season,
greeting all with a simple story of constance of change, of beauty,
leading our Summertime Commencement Exercises
May 26 ~ 27, 2023
May 27, 2023
May 27, 2023 at 4:55 PM UTC
If I have to use an hourglass to measure how long it will take for you to come back the clear crystal glass will be kept warm with a blanket of dust covering it for centuries.
I am that hourglass , going back and forth watching the grains fall hour after hour and with each hour that passes so does my hope of you returning.
I ponder on the concept of you coming back and us being what we once were , but trust and and faith are like glass once its broken picking up the pieces is as good as self harm.
An hour glass is shaped like an infinity sign but our infinity broke when you walked out.
I do love you , that is no lie , I do miss you that is the truth, but I cannot be with you as I once was and that is the sorrowful part. If our love was an hourglass I would turn back the sands and stop you , I would come after you or maybe I'd stop myself from loving you but our love is not an hourglass meant to run on forever instead its a sundial when dusk came our love ended and when dawn came a new time began for me and you -my yesterday become history.
Aug 10, 2015
Aug 10, 2015 at 8:17 AM UTC
the sundial sits on a piece of stone
telling time all alone
reads the sun has it moves round
with the shadows without a sound
it tells the time upon its face
never wrong or out of place
telling time with shadows cast
all alone as time goes past
it does not move it does not rock
a work of art thats natures clock.
Mar 5, 2010
Mar 5, 2010 at 9:27 AM UTC
~
Time disappears,
the hours, the days
Lost in the shadows,
a sundial haze
Seizing the moments
our memories trace
Drawing the curtain,
these thoughts to erase
Still I ignore
every clock on the wall
Each ticking second,
the minutes that fall
For all I see
is the beautiful view
Of every new day
I am starting with you
~
Nov 22, 2015
Nov 22, 2015 at 9:52 AM UTC
We draw hearts to say
I am in love with you
when love disappoints, we say
I am heartsick
when we fall deeply, we say
My heart did a slow somersault
when we know that the heart
is a drum, a pendulum, a clock.
On good days, it is a sundial
but it is always
just a timekeeper, the
tick
tick
tick
of minutes and seasons,
but never
forevers.
Jan 20, 2011
Jan 20, 2011 at 5:52 PM UTC
i couldn't stand the heat,
spent most of the time in the shade,
everyone made fun
of the guy standing by the pool
reading a book, pretending to
be a sundial;
i was called the whiskey-man;
one night i slept outside
and by the time i woke up my glass
of brandy disappeared;
mingled with the "auctioneers"
of a good time; boy one of those
kenyan girls was hot... oomph,
she looked like oiled coal, slimy bits
and raw ***
i know i was a tourist...
played a stupid drinking game with
two english girls, snogged one
at the end of the game, wasn't invited
back to the room for a *********
spent hours at night looking at the tide
splashing the shore, cried at the painting
so alive all the museums and galleries
became graveyards of appreciation;
it was a holiday resort, i admit,
although one bartender asked me to do
a local tour of the place, go clubbing,
supposedly a colonial ******* i was
upon first reading;
but the heat though! god almighty, couldn't
stand the temperature,
i was literally an ice-cream cone most
of the time, took to the shades,
wrote a short story for my grandfather
about an elephant dunking his trunk into
a bottle of brandy...
one day got chatting to a scottish pair
and a russian couple,
told the scottish guy about travis' 12 memories
album,
i was originally asking for a cigarette,
so we drank and chatted about mickey mouse
politics of america...
the scottish guy eventually ran off and jumped
into the kids' shallow pool veering
on blind-drunk-happy...
another time i too jumped into a pool
with my clothes on...
******* this heat...
ha, hmm, those kenyan macaques were funny
esp. on prompt of being fed on the balcony...
but boy that baboon was a menace,
a real anarchist, charged in like a donkey
with meningitis and stole food...
although one baboon had massive haemorrhoids...
and given his fat pinky *** it was even funnier to watch.
oh yeah, and this guy muhammad wanted
to take me to a crocodile sanctuary of his...
i sort of refused the invitation,
and no, i didn't go on the zoological escapade
of a safari to see the Masai tribesmen...
just gave c. g. jung's modern man in search of soul
to one of the caretakers of the resort.
Mar 26, 2016
Mar 26, 2016 at 7:43 AM UTC
Love, oh my love,
you left me defenseless;
no gods above,
no miracle on Christmas.
.
Memories of you
slip through my fingers:
they leave me too;
melancholy lingers.
The protective veil
I weaved from our past
threatens to fail,
flags at half-mast.
Transparent and frail
like a plastic bag;
a soundless wail,
a threadbare rag.
.
My anemic hope,
my castle of denial -
a thinning rope,
dusk to a sundial.
.
And there are days when I surface
- gasp for air and scour for land -
till the waves pull me in the blackness,
back to the despair I understand.
.
And you won't read this one,
this one will stay
at the bottom of an ocean,
out of your way.
.
Dec 23, 2023
Dec 23, 2023 at 10:37 AM UTC
the lovely picture window (always the same, always different)
There are painters who must,
having found the place, must,
repaint it, compelled to repeat it,
each a variant, yet always the same,
always different
I awake to a perspective that is wide,
always differentiated from the prior,
always almost similar, but never with
the same exactitude, differing attitude,
same longitude, identical latitude,
always different
horizon distanced, in all ways a view
encompassing, duality near, far distant,
harmoniously, eyes open, magnetized
to wake before 6am by the suns modesty,
first light, first clarity, a curtain risen, yet,
always different
am I so blessed or thus cursed, for the urge
to disclaim and ode, compose and thus self-
decompose, analyze, reflect, slice apart, needing
the comprehensive understanding this me/place
scripts the raw appreciation, daily differentiated
always the same
this peaceful venue seizures, chest calmly
pounding at the insistence it commands,
the price I must pay for the prize to praise,
to sing, weep, reward restful sleep with lyrics
eked out, pouring, unsustainable yet finished,
always different
a single May Iris, returns, born from a torrential,
thunder, lightning, sky mayhem, rises by a sundial
greets midst a planted clump, upright rises, lavender,
in a majestic solitary, absent but a day prior, yet mine eyes
failed to witness its discernible emerging birthing creation,
always different,
always the same
here, I am Iris too, always the same, a day aged,
but the differences minute but stolid actualized,
this overnight sensation, my body’s restoration,
what I visualize, indivisible, now visible, realized,
miracle of continuity, unchanging chained change,
always different ,
always the same
wonder, am I more blessed, or a s~lightly cursed being,
my breath restored, wet eyes full brimming, changed,
revived but always modified, a newer old man, whose
sum total always a different number, but in sequential,
compelled to confess, no understanding of this miracle,
always the same,
always different,
this daily visionary miracle
6:36 AM
Fri May 24
2024
Silver Beach,
Shelter Island
May 24, 2024
May 24, 2024 at 6:53 AM UTC
Oh Mr Ted is not in bed
I think he's run away
or its a game without a name
he's made for us to play
Oh look a note pinned to my coat
It says I am a clue
Seek out the home of Mr gnome
he waits to talk to you
So down the stairs in one's and pairs
and slip my wellies on
then out the door and read once more
the clue marked number one
There just beyond the goldfish pond
the gnome awaits me so
He points the way as if to say
that ways the way to go
I rush on past going so fast
I nearly missed clue three
So slowed my pace to find the place
the clue was sending me
it said take time to read this rhyme
as I lend you a hand
the shadows tall upon the wall
Will show you were I stand
The sundial loomed where roses bloomed
the sunlight at its back
upon its face a note was placed
a picture of a sack
Toward the shed and Mr Ted
but no he was not there
another clue tucked in a shoe
that said make me a pear
The old pear tree yes there I see
another picture clue
back to the start and search your heart
to know what next to do
Back up to bed now what was said
my heart what does that mean
of course the box once filled with chocs
we ate on Halloween
Opened with care the clue is there
it says now come find me
I'm in my seat waiting to eat
as it is time for tea.
What fun I said hugging dear Ted
your games are just the best
I've had such fun but now I've won
and how I need to rest
So sitting there beside my bear
my eyelids felt like lead
I'm tired see please come with me
it's time we were in bed
Goodnight God bless we need our rest
It's been a busy day
and Ted and me are so sleepy
from games we love to play
Nov 13, 2013
Nov 13, 2013 at 8:46 PM UTC
Re: Ancient Greece: How do you read a sundial, especially if you work on a nightshift at Acme Stonecutters, Inc.? Something for Socrates to ponder.(He was always late for work)
Mar 21, 2015
Mar 21, 2015 at 9:53 PM UTC
searching shadow made-
its way over the horizon
great sundial of the sun
swept all before and after-
sunup and sundown
sundial on the wrist
Mankind slicing to pieces
the day before the stars-
of black night take over
May 22, 2014
May 22, 2014 at 11:32 AM UTC
Thou art not but a siren,
Singing thine song.
Thou do not but lure the hearts of men,
Into thine caltrop of a jaw.
Not devouring instantly,
But instead thou bides thine time.
Thou pleasures before thou feasts.
Thou waits until the opportune shade of sundial,
When the hearts of men art trustworthy.
Thou feeds upon them as if a beast.
But dost thou have beauty?
But dost thou have charm?
But dost thou have wit?
This is why thou cannot resist.
Jul 23, 2013
Jul 23, 2013 at 10:52 AM UTC
54% of people in Iceland believe in elves.
When I was in Iceland, my phone broke.
Nobody knows how.
I guess you could say that number is now closer to 55%.
I haven't had a phone now for about a month now.
It's not as though I used it much to begin with,
but it has posed as an inconvenience,
such as not knowing the time.
I had to go out and buy a watch.
Watches always remind me of you.
You would tell me,
"Men judge other men by their watches and shoes."
I always thought this was dumb.
Then I started taking notice of people's watches and shoes.
I always liked your watches best.
My favorite one showed all of the cogs and gears.
It was much more intricate than the one I bought.
Then again, you've always had an eye for details,
Whereas I tend to trip up over the small things.
Now, whenever I check the time,
I think of you.
I may discontinue wearing this watch.
After all, time has always slipped through my fingers,
Among other things.
There's no use fighting the inevitable.
Instead, I'll simply learn to map the sky.
Invest in a sundial.
Read the moon.
Track the North star.
Watches are only good for those waiting for something to happen.
Jul 7, 2015
Jul 7, 2015 at 3:12 AM UTC
Up and down,
That’s how life flows;
Just used to its scowl,
I go what it shows.
A myriad of colors
Surround these sheer pages;
From fail to honors,
Complete throughout ages.
But time consumes to extreme,
Onto own life to pay;
Come flee as if in a dream,
So to say, seize the day.
Run like there’s no tomorrow,
For time is just narrow;
There is not a chance to waste,
So fly away, make haste.
Jul 6, 2014
Jul 6, 2014 at 9:10 PM UTC
A strum. A hum.
That’s all it takes.
To make the heart start beating.
A note. A hope.
The mind’s embrace.
Of moments oh so fleeting.
A star. A jar.
Of rusted pennies:
Change to change the sound.
A smile. Sundial.
The music makes
The lost become the found.
Jan 27, 2012
Jan 27, 2012 at 1:14 AM UTC
Here at the end
of the continent
everyday the same
sea and sky elemental
endless blue planes
interrupted only
by a wayward bird
a flash of white
like a gull
lost out in the null
as September wanes
into Autumn's moon
breaking like a spell
casting my shadow
like a sundial
measuring my footprints
away and alone
on these wind(s)wept
bare lonely dunes.
Sep 23, 2016
Sep 23, 2016 at 4:39 PM UTC