"ungraspable" poems
The world is too uncertain for us to be sure of anything. Personally I don't think there is an absolute truth. There I said it. Take me away Nietzsche, I'm with you on this one. We are all so different, all so set apart in our unique, frail and wicked mortality. To have one single frame of existence is debilitating. If this difference is so telling of our humanity then why the hell do we have truth? To what purpose? To contain and unite us despite our individuality? Suppose the truth is given this way: A newborn and a goat are expected to survive with just a small patch of grass. Which of the two gets more chance of survival and existential fulfillment? How can that be when those two are apples and oranges? Their circumstances are so opposite. How is life supposed to be fair to the newborn? I am not saying that life is fair because hell it is far from it. But do we accept that unfair principle or make our lives a little better? Will his happiness be on that grass as well? Of course not. So he looks for new ways to be happy. He has his own truth.
To this end, I have questioned everything from my faith, to myself, to people, to science even. Life grows along with time and so are our realities. This is why these past few months I've been contradicting myself to the point of thinking I've gone mad. But the fact is I've grown from these experiences of letting my two polar opposites meet. It is honestly scary when these inner voices start jabbing at you like pointed needles.I am a walking contradiction and my mind is a maze of paradoxes and questions with no answers. Eventually, I got used to this mentally exhausting activity. When something entirely different from what I believe be it an opinion, an idea, or a controversy) speaks up in my face I've learned to accept them not as the truth but as possibilities that could very well be right or wrong. I will never be always right.
People are so used to the concept of certainty that we have altogether ignored the existence of possibility. Or the gray area to which simply no one end exists. I realized that we are all predisposed to find answers, to hang on to some sort of explanation to a world so phenomenally ungraspable. It is to the detriment of our open mindedness enough for us to fabricate truths which may very well be coverups for the all too universal fear of the unknown. We are afraid of floating in the ambiguous nature of our lives that we'd rather correct this with assumptions.
Oct 15, 2015
Oct 15, 2015 at 6:29 AM UTC
I know my standards should be raised from someone who hardly acknowledges my being a person, but every day of every week of every month the smallest recollection of you cause an overwhelming sensation of euphoria, not even happiness but euphoria.
I ponder the smallest conversation, the faintest touch; every piece of you gives my being more reason to go on. And you don't even know it. But still I say: euphoria.
When given the chance my mind runs races of just what we could be. All far fetched-- all ungraspable fantasies, but the thought of us as one keeps me afloat. Euphoria.
I force myself to stop, to grasp the truth instead, I loathe these sensational battles with what will never be. But I always pray to feel it again:
Euphoria.
May 6, 2016
May 6, 2016 at 1:42 PM UTC
her poems
pierce us
to our core..
we must surrender
to her choice
of words..
a wrong word
she despairs
to malaria compares..
perhaps a way inside
enter her two doors..
watch these
switch and intertwine..
heaven/hell
soul/society
light/slant
morning/night..
find ourselves on the /
still..
as we wrestle
are we grasping for an
Emily Ungraspable..?
Dec 8, 2012
Dec 8, 2012 at 12:06 PM UTC
I'm talking to pine trees
teetering on a brush fire--
they do not speak English,
needle whispers are of a foreign tongue.
Feet varnished by sap
clodden with traces and feel no pain,
You will not forget.
(It only rubs off with extra-virgin olive oil,
a pumice stone,
boiling water;
I had none.)
Later
toes slick and raw,
hands fleshy red in heat,
the ungraspable fresh veneer.
I let my fingernails grow out.
The forest burnt down in my eyes.
Jun 11, 2014
Jun 11, 2014 at 11:45 AM UTC
Today Feelings are dense
Seperable? yes, but by no average surf
The air is quiet. All noise comes from within.
Plenty of noise it is though.
Excitement is present, it is quite busy.
For fear needs to be fought off repeatedly.
No one feeling is dominant in this marsh of inner thoughts.
Nothing gets done, for focus is ungraspable.
These thoughts would be dangerous to follow
If one could see clear enough to do so
For it has not yet been determined,
Upon what side most thoughts lay.
Feb 1, 2010
Feb 1, 2010 at 11:55 AM UTC
You know this boy for a minute. And still you kiss like long lost friends.
He doesn’t sing. He is beneath the landslide, maybe in a champagne sky.
You miss him. In that moment he is there and he is not.
And softly he pulls you in, but is he not ungraspable memory? A woman-made construct like time. Like love.
Sep 2, 2022
Sep 2, 2022 at 10:52 AM UTC
A slow death, in eons of unremembered moments,
Like a dark star, she collapses into herself every day,
Fragments of her past memories intrude sometimes,
Incomprehensible now, like they are all in Russian.
This existence she hates more than life itself,
Flowing like an unending river, towards a sea,
Days of sleep, interrupted by family strangers,
Wearing her precious necklace and others’ clothes.
At times I am "Who?", until her son is introduced,
Which produces a "Happy to see you" smile, and
Complaints that no one ever comes to visit now,
She is living in a nightmare of empty spaces.
Her now ungraspable tranquillity, her living hell,
Punished for imagined sin, she now doubts God,
But wants to go home to Him, to ask "Why?”.
She believed the childhood promise of heaven.
Jan 21, 2012
Jan 21, 2012 at 11:23 AM UTC
ALL THE IMPORTANT POETS
One day I found all the important poets -
Shakespeare, Bukowski, Dickinson and Rilke
partying in the park drinking Coronas,
feeding pigeons on the green.
Astonished I queried,
"You are all my thought heroes, and yet you laze about.
"Shouldn’t you be writing something famous?"
And they erupted in a literate cacophony of guffaws,
their eyes tearing,
their cheeks shining red with mirth.
Shakespeare turned to me and said,
"Forget it kid !
Meter, metaphor, rhythm and rhyme -
it’s all just groundlessness.
All the adjectives in the world divined just so
only lead to a place in your heart
you’ll never really understand anyway.
It’s simply a mystery, ineffable."
Bukowski tried to ask Rilke about the letters
he'd written to that frustrated young poet,
but he was so drunk on cooking sherry
he could only mumble, gesticulate and grin.
And then sweet Emily said,
"Yes. William is right.
Rainer Marie tried to explain it.
Charles tried to drink into it,
yet it remains the glass bead game -
ungraspable by dearest turn of phrase.
So we have decided to put down our pens
and take a breather."
She quietly handed me the bag of crumbs,
suggesting I toss a few here and there
for the pigeon's lollygagging by.......
"They're hungry, the simple little dears," she said.
Jan 4, 2012
Jan 4, 2012 at 11:19 PM UTC
nothing bothers me more than people who say they have found god.
no one has found god.
life is not about finding god.
"GOD" is intangible and not something we can grasp,
but we pretend to.
people put quotes around his words
and then put those words in his mouth
they string ideas of her into beads and crosses -
what exactly are you clinging to?
people don't know.
we are too small
and we are not wise enough.
god is the whole universe.
god is nothing.
god is a tree, a bird, a thought.
god is a little boy with a piece of candy stuck in his hair,
an artist in a garret,
a dog on a cushion,
a girl in an alley.
i don't believe that god has abandoned the church.
i believe that the church has abandoned god.
i don't believe in my catholic roots.
i don't believe in christianity.
i don't believe in buddhism.
i don't believe in islam.
i don't believe the bible.
i don't believe the priests, the shamans, the medicine men.
i don't believe the trappings we place around god
(our weak ideas of her,
our sorry attempts to define him).
i believe that god is people
god is rain, god is the sun
god is the night air
god is the words on paper
god is the paint on canvas
god is creating, god is being, god is gone.
god is here, now, and everywhere
and i only call her god because i lack another name for him.
it has no name.
i understand this
or i think i do.
god knows me intrinsically
or not at all.
god loves infinitely and sees to the depths of humanity
or else god is old, decrepit, and alone
curled in a corner of the world
trying to shut out the mayhem of his earth
(what have i done?).
god cringes at our killings
rejoices in our births,
or is vengeful, red, and full of war and death.
god is spring, summer, and fall.
he is the snow in winter, she is the birdsong
at my window.
she is multitudes and she is one
wildly insignificant
and all-knowing being.
she is the creator, the destroyer, the lover.
she is nature, she is earth,
she is people,
she is the industry, the tapestry, the travesty.
she is love, she is me.
she is loss, she is you.
she is life, she is them.
and i love her,
as anyone loves her -
if you can love an energy,
an idea,
the ungraspable concept that a grain of sand
is the same as the greatest mountain in the world.
but i don't presume
to know her.
Dec 22, 2011
Dec 22, 2011 at 10:21 AM UTC
My thoughts
whirl about
like a sudden
gust.
You are
to me,
as the restless wind
is to the
petals of a flower;
fleeting,
out of reach,
ungraspable.
Jul 29, 2021
Jul 29, 2021 at 12:58 AM UTC
And then,
the fury boils in my blood,
because I can hear cellos and violins on the silence;
when I think of you.
I turn my self into an extint quetzal,
and the rainforest cries,
because I don't have you,
since nothing of this is real,
and I'm still thinking of you,
then I look trough the window,
to the sky,
and I see clouds,
then I imagine that we are making love,
and we fall asleep,
and we dream of I don't know what random things;
suddenly I come back to reality,
when I see two hummingbirds trough the same window,
and everything turns out to be stridentist,
like a rattle of my heart when your tongue relish my right earlobe,
and I think of you,
and my hands are the color of your voice,
so deep...
And nothing matters now,
because, fiercely, you endure, ungraspable
like an aria in the opus of my mind,
and now, you have become real...
Jan 19, 2014
Jan 19, 2014 at 5:33 PM UTC
We count, calculate, compare
If greater, thanks aloud in joy
If lesser, work, fight, beg
A life measured in numbers
Negative, minute, millions
But life begins at infinity
Not a number not a count
Of mind more real than numbers
Ungraspable, priceless, gifted
The work and joy is to know
The fight is to diminish to empty
For the less I am the more I am
Aug 11, 2024
Aug 11, 2024 at 11:02 PM UTC
Matter is a reflection of the nameless void.
Our physical bodies are reflections of our selves.
Just as we are products of our environment,
our environment is a product of our minds.
Ungraspable, yet useable.
Invisible, yet all we see.
Matter is the surface of the nameless.
The nameless transcends space and time
and connects all things;
the isolation of separate particular things
is like islands in the ocean;
apparently different, yet linked by what lies far out of sight.
Art is the language of Spirit.
Spirit is the pilot of Matter.
Matter is the vessel of the Namelessness.
Words fall short.
Experience cannot be conveyed.
Words are like signs along the path
but they are not the path itself.
(Ergo you must chose to heed the signs and follow your path)
Jul 17, 2012
Jul 17, 2012 at 12:24 PM UTC
Vanished
no traces of "me" can be found
silence in its simplicity
echoes beyond a starless night
stillness with its depths
fills all movement in daylight
and I cannot find myself separate to it
I am no where
and everywhere I can and cannot see
here, now
always this moment
I am outside of time and time itself
I am empty space and all that seems to fill it
and yet,
I remain ungraspable
Dec 23, 2021
Dec 23, 2021 at 10:51 AM UTC
shattered hands, ribboned skin
blood-soaked, sliding down
the unforgiving edges
of ungraspable beauty
keep on reaching, kid...
that's what heaven's for
Mar 11, 2011
Mar 11, 2011 at 5:43 PM UTC
Being sad all the time
Creates decay within your mind
Tearing apart you seals
That separates your reality from your fears
The deadly poison of this pain
Seeps into the very core of your brain
It oozes slowly into your thoughts
Tainting them with its trembling veins
The poison soaks into your soul
pulling it from the unknown
It pours out and bleeds away
Leaving you staring into the fray
Slowly moving weeping you become deformed
A hollow mask of endless turmoil
Sleep becomes a dream that can't be reached
Hopelessly tossing and turning in constant turmoil
Moving endlessly through the motions
Haunting you endlessly with its lies
Peace is ungraspable hiding withing constant lies
Life seems pointless and you try to die
But you know deep down inside that you were a victim of love and its lies
Churning and tearing away your insides
How long does it take to end all the crying
Slowly but surely you'll no longer be sane
Mar 20, 2013
Mar 20, 2013 at 3:20 AM UTC
when they have become
all but non-existent
flaky leather fastly flaking
into ungraspable dust
one day you might
notice on a path or
piece of land how an
errant playful wind
is whirling some dust
round and round
now imagine a jovial tune
hands clapping in accompaniment
as your feet cut a step to
the whirling whirling whirling
of the lonely dust dancing
O dancing dust!
O dancing shoes
In whirling dust incarnate!
Jul 10, 2015
Jul 10, 2015 at 9:17 PM UTC
Ten thousand screams, seething with rage,
Ten thousand cries, trembling with pain,
Merging into one, a relentless wave,
Years of feeling, fractured and fleeting,
Rushing through the corridors of my mind.
A violent melody, endless and raw,
A symphony stretching across eternity,
Then everything dissolved into silence,
I sank to my knees, drowning in emotion,
What was this feeling, unnameable, ungraspable?
It was everything at once, yet nothing at all,
Tremors rippled, inside and out,
Echoing through the fragile shell of my world,
The walls I built, brick by careful brick,
Collapsed in seconds, a symphony of ruin.
What was that feeling? They called it panic.
I thought I was fine, thought I was okay,
But was my well-being a masterful illusion,
A play I directed to soothe my mind,
To fabricate solace for my existence?
That feeling—everywhere, yet nowhere at all—
The tight, suffocating pain, piercing through,
Everywhere, yet nowhere, a phantom ache,
My world crumbling, and truth dawning:
I was doing too much, yet not enough.
It was cold, unrelenting, this truth—
Nothing is enough, not even everything.
I wanted to cry, not just inside,
But to pour out the ache that hollowed my chest,
Yet Death hovered, its blade aimed at my heart.
Cold, numbing, but somehow awakening,
I had to stop pretending, stop the facade,
To find the strength to truly be fine,
Not in illusion, but in truth’s embrace,
To seek the help that heals the soul.
Everywhere, yet nowhere at all—
The pain, the guilt, the resentment,
Aimed at everything, yet nothing at all.
And in that moment, I gave myself permission,
To not be okay— and that was enough.
-fir.m
Nov 28, 2024
Nov 28, 2024 at 1:44 PM UTC
I became accustomed to the simple life. To the way that boys liked it when I ran my fingers through their hair and toyed with their belts. The way that coffee tasted dull without sugar, and the way that the newspaper was always delivered at three minutes past seven. Doorbells all had the same melody and I was required to tip the waiter seventeen percent of the bill.
And that's why you scared me. Because complexity followed you like the smoky tail of a cigarette, always near and entirely ungraspable. I couldn't see you as simple, and I was frightened yet intrigued by the way that you reminded me of the ocean; swallowing both the moon and the sun in the same day.
Dec 10, 2013
Dec 10, 2013 at 8:41 PM UTC
Are these dreams self inflicted?
Am I addicted to exhaustion?
Are these dreams coincidences?
Am I doomed on the instances that the universe hand picks?
These dreams are a manifestation of my worries, my fears
My tears are a 3D dictionary- a physical translation of horrors every sundown
These dreams drive me to ******* insanity
While vanity and shallow diseases plague those around me
Screaming, crying, shaking
They're breaking down my walls, painting bags under my eyes and a scowl on my face
I'm desperate for alleviation
In a nation so obsessed with pills, somewhere there's a capsule in a haystack
Like an unsolvable math question
A lesson ungraspable, darkness clouds my mind and feeds on my light
The darkness behind my eyes swirling with unfamiliarity
A rarity that I wake up not undead
I'm screaming for help in a sound-proof room
A bloom of skulls instead of flowers
My sheets are painted blood red
My bed never a place of solace
I'm forever drowning in a sea of unrest
Forces doing their best to keep me under
I'm spluttering, hyperventilating
My thoughts always contemplating whether to pull all nighters for the rest of my nights
I'm eating myself alive and no one seems to mind
As this kind of infliction is only in my head.
Jul 27, 2015
Jul 27, 2015 at 2:30 PM UTC
In the most unusual manic-panic creep,
Wildly lurking behind every corner,
The Shadow was about to recover some ungraspable but always constantly desired idea..
A fantasy, a darker shade of fantasy: a fun fetish.
Or, perhaps, could it be foolish fanciful notions?
This fully torked delusion can be a haunting mirage.
A make believe vintage slogan ghost from generations past.
That worn out American Dream. That Life.
THE LIFE:
-Free from the routine confusion and disorder-
Dreamed by all but known only by creatures who dream of other more sophisticated things.
Silenced but still flailing at grasping the point or any and all major traffic signs,
the Shadow returned all the acquired mixed-matched pieces and useless information slowly..
I remember because it was a autumn night.
Leaves were falling and there were trees white with moonlight.
It was a cool night overflowing with mysterious excitement that unforgettably changed the mellow quite in all bright lights.
Suddenly there was a new bustle among the stars as the speed of light left a stirring in the darkness.
-A secret above trees carried on the wings of winds-
This covert paradox of milky way wonder experienced when he kissed this girl-was a vivid spectacle of unutterable visions never mentioned but still loudly exuding a slinky lust.
This was a soul cleansing need,
a physical miracle,
***** deeds done dirt cheap overdosing religious experience with every swelling ******
These are the divine musings of the Creator, my Creator.
These are the ideas of any other brave soul who decide to capture their essence in moments.
For a moment at one point in time, these sacred thoughts belonged to God.
Nov 29, 2015
Nov 29, 2015 at 2:19 AM UTC
I let go this moment
A bird lets go a branch to fly
No fear or need to cling
Despite free-falling through the sky
I stop having birthdays
Giving birth to something broader
Falling through my fingers
As ungraspable as water
I let go gravity
An astronaut bounce on the moon
A cosmic letting go
Meditate to Pachabel’s tune
I release attachments
To savor the moment sweetly
I get out of my way
Casting my shadow completely
I let go everything
When I let go my mother’s hand
Feeling new connections
With strangers in strange lands
I release resistance
From things I once just ran
Bucking up with courage
Acting as if I really can
I let go the future
No fear of how I have to die
Breathing in this moment
Tick tock, time flies past in reply
Jan 9, 2018
Jan 9, 2018 at 12:29 PM UTC
Intoxicated from the weight of euphoria,
Silence drips viscously into the soul
Until drowning is no longer a fear,
But an option.
Feet wet from nostalgia
Of ungraspable motions,
Time rests heavily on dewed eyelids...
The soul buries itself further.
Nov 19, 2017
Nov 19, 2017 at 8:57 PM UTC
Where are the saints?
Where are the Holy men?
Where are the ones without wanting?
So filled with the unceasing Love of God
They have both His feast and festival
All the time?
Forehead kissing the ground In humble surrender to that which could never be claimed as “mine” or “yours”
but Lives in the land of Beyond
in Graces eternal belonging.
Who forfeit it all
to the ungraspable, unstoppable, uncontrollable Roaring of the
Absolute Unborn Cosmic Form of Love,
that so desires your salvation He destroys you completely so that you may Know Him in Truth and not imagination.
Where are the ones,
Who knocked at the door of their own Heart, and who don’t know whether they were let in, or He was Let out
the ones who have been captured by the Keeper of All Love
who have heard Him whisper inside of them, softly, in the stillness of their Lotus Heart - singing
- I am yours and you are mine -
Leaving behind the question “who’s voice was that? And surrendering their mind and all Brahmas creation at His feet
Finally to roll down the hill laughing as the spark of eternity within dances to a tune that comes from everywhere all at once
Where are the ones so filled with divine rapture, they have entered the Placeless Place of no return and emerged - now - completely submerged - can think of nothing but Him!
The ones who know that we are fed by the sweet Doer of all in our Fasting and when He offers us Dessert! Never taking credit for the Love he offers through us.
The ones who live without shame and let their heart go naked into the Radiant river of love
Where are the ones who’s minds surrendered and hearts thoroughly emptied and plowed
have left the land of desire unmet,
of tug of war with pleasure and pain,
who know the grace of receiving an answer to the defiant longing for the Lord that will take NOTHING less than Him, who have cried the tears that touch Gods heart, and in anguish sung out for MotherFather a sound that echoed so deep within they felt the Holy waking....
who know - through Grace -
the Love that is Divine.
Aug 16, 2018
Aug 16, 2018 at 4:36 PM UTC
Once reclothed and restored,
Outward appearance still concealed truth,
Her heart was elsewhere not here,
Someplace between hate and fear,
A space of ungraspable power and agony,
Few fear for few would ever near its core,
Willingly, still,
More and more initiates wormed their way towards,
That vacuous chamber,
It's mine she said,
It's mine!
Mar 22, 2014
Mar 22, 2014 at 6:39 PM UTC