"tunelessly" poems
Unrhymed, unrhythmical, the chatter goes:
Yet no one hears his own remarks as prose.
Beneath each topic tunelessly discussed
The ground-bass is reciprocal mistrust.
The names in fashion shuttling to and fro
Yield, when deciphered, messages of woe.
You cannot read me like an open book.
I'm more myself than you will ever look.
Will no one listen to my little song?
Perhaps I shan't be with you very long.
A howl for recognition, shrill with fear,
Shakes the jam-packed apartment, but each ear
Is listening to its hearing, so none hear.
5k
Insomnia serves me coffee
in a cracked china mug...
leaving water marks
on the patina of my soul
as morning passers me by
upon the hostess trolly,
it's one wobbly wheel
squeaking tunelessly
mocking my
pain.
Feb 25, 2012
Feb 25, 2012 at 4:29 AM UTC
the vivisectionist comes to call
when I am separated from you
his palsied incautious hands
removing the hours from my body
one
at
a
time
dragging his dull rusted scalpel
across my psyche
in his leaden deliberate pace
whistling
tunelessly
monotonously
in my ear
he will have no truck
with anesthetic
I am bathed
in the sanguine gore
of his butchery
which others mistake
for sadness
Apr 14, 2019
Apr 14, 2019 at 7:37 PM UTC
I love the way I wear Timberlands and Docs like I'm an original, and I think that they make me seem edgy.
I love the way I hum tunelessly on the bus and mouth lyrics instead of singing them because I can't sing.
I love how free I feel when it's cold, and how I run down the centre of my road when it's dark and spin around with my arms out like angel wings.
I love the way I notice my own little habits and wish that someone would notice them too, then give me a cup tea and let me snuggle whilst wearing a big jumper.
I love the way I think that love can fix people, even though I know it breaks us.
I love the way I refuse to talk about feelings, and yet they are always there, churning on the tip of my tongue in a molten chaos.
I love the way I hate myself 80% of the time and love myself for the other 20%
And I love the way I find loopholes and beauty and wish for everyone else because I want people to be happy more than I want to be.
I love how I'm not perfect or skinny or pretty and I love how I'll never be loved, but I love so, so much how, even though I've had so many impediments, I've kept going, and I love how, still, through all this; I can learn to love myself.
Nov 17, 2013
Nov 17, 2013 at 2:17 PM UTC
a lonely nightingale
laments tunelessly at midnight,
a stiff tone echoing in this empty shop.
the metal resonates with sympathy.
outraged by her clamouring:
bribed her food pellets for silence.
she croons less unbearably now,
but with the same wistful eyes.
she beckons with her broken beak,
she longs for life beyond a cage,
watches my relenting eyes,
the sympathy residing in me.
to free or not to free this child?
i think her life deserves much more.
with a tinge of hesitance and of worry:
a lonely nightingale i free
she bustles in the shop with freedom,
her wings still unaccustomed to air.
her croon has sprouted into an anthem,
she circles the cage and bids goodbye
until she reached the window ,
and is re-greeted by cold metal grilles:
reminded of endless entrapment…
she finds herself still contained.
the way i see it,
she will never be free
until she lies
in the arms of death.
sympathetic human i am,
i picked a nearby tool of freedom,
plunged it into her heart,
and freed her eternally.
Dec 27, 2011
Dec 27, 2011 at 7:10 AM UTC
Forever in a heartbeat, beat, beat;
a thousand heartbeats; a thousand forevers.
Somewhere the sunbeams catch your hair
alighting gently like sparrows at the tips,
turning each fly-away in turn a subdued golden hue
which radiates softly from your eyes.
Quiet sighs echo through the sheets;
Good morning, my love.
Unhurried, unworried;
Let's spend the day here.
Fading in and out, in and out of consciousness
to the sound of you breathing beside me;
waking up to feel your arms loosely pulling me back.
It's still too early yet;
though the sun has long since turned dark.
A crooked smile—the most beautiful thing I have ever seen—
and your voice telling me to
Dream sweetly. We'll eat in the morning.
Morning comes to rain; rain falls to autumn.
Beside me a yellow slip on the pillowcase reads
I don't love you.
I smile and listen for the sound of your footsteps.
I hear you, whistling tunelessly, and you call to me;
Have you woken yet?
As I meet you in the kitchen I find your eyes
and silently shake my head.
I suppose one more day couldn't hurt.
Sep 7, 2010
Sep 7, 2010 at 4:53 PM UTC
i sit and strum my guitar tunelessly
listening as each of the chords
strike a dissonant
exclamation in my mind.
i play without intent,
letting my fingers
guide a symphony
of sorrow over
the frets.
it's not the kind of music
you listen to as you cry.
it's the kind of music you
make when you
can't feel.
it's not the kind of music
you listen to for pleasure.
it's the kind of music
you hear in your pain.
it's not the sound of the
oceans driving home
sense,
it's the sound of the desert
inside you drying
your soul to
a shell.
atonal
noise.
Aug 11, 2011
Aug 11, 2011 at 8:17 PM UTC
I can't talk, so I can't work.
The higher register of my voice
is just a squeak. A dramatic dog call.
A whistle on the inhale.
I thought it was tobacco,
but my friends caught the heavy head
and burning skin. So I'll go back
to inhaling slow suicide soon.
Do you think it's **** The yellow
teeth and hands. The putrid smell.
Signing over your geriatric lungs
to a devil that lets you breathe for a moment.
The chef whistles tunelessly, infuriating
and constant. An asthmatic making music.
I think the rumours are making me ill.
None of it's true and nobody cares.
Today is grey.
It's raining in August and nobody is here.
I'd bake a cake but I can't make cake,
I'd take a drink but that would be silly.
Aug 4, 2015
Aug 4, 2015 at 2:30 PM UTC
She is draped over the chair like an expensive rug
Her fingers dangle gracefully over the edge
The sun has finally returned
And announced itself as only a sun can;
Brightly and warmly
The weight of its rays press her down into her seat
She should get up, she has so much to do
But summer tends to bleed the urgency out of you
So she stays, humming tunelessly,
Until the light sleeps.
May 11, 2017
May 11, 2017 at 2:37 PM UTC
She sits on empty train station platforms at night,
her dreams drifting away in the chilling night breeze,
her legs dangling over the side of the platform.
She plays her music, soft and slow, in the tree-tops at night,
humming along tunelessly with her eyes to the moon,
her hair lashing her rosy, red cheeks in the breeze.
She lies on a bench by a soft-sung lake at night,
her sparkling eyes gazing into the dark-night skies,
the water gently lapping against it's bank.
She walks through empty village streets at night,
her footsteps echoing into silence of darkness,
her arms hugging her shoulders from the crisp night air.
She sits on grey-brick walls with knees pulled up tight,
watching people push into each other, swearing loudly, thinking;
'things are so much quieter at night'
Aug 25, 2017
Aug 25, 2017 at 1:59 PM UTC