"unlighted" poems
We live in the unlighted state of America
Where what happens when we turn the lights off
Is dealt with darkness
And matters of delicate touch
Are treated with sharpness
When our only language
Is to inflict anguish
We cut connections in the bedroom
To clear our cynical head room
For contempt and judgement
People looking for a feeling to fall into
Or a reason to live
Must face frigid climates
When the public invades privacy
And ill fated ****** exploits
Pervade salacious tabloids
Our ****** regrets
Cut the deepest
Society reaps them
Sowing us together with resentment
We provide each other with relief
But not the relief we're looking for
We give each other hours of relief
Until those useless hours become days
And those fruitless days become years
That engender endless tears
As it remains warm in our car
But the winter outside freezes anything that breaks the plane
And our air conditioning only helps so much
When the spinning wheels are in our faces
There is a national coverage in the media
That presents a bleak picture of the ****** health of America
I feel I sit somewhere in between
*** offenders and a disgusted public
When I observe the observers
Who are too scared shitless to ever face their own emotions
Judge those for overindulging in their emotions
They lived their life in fear and safety
So they could be the righteous ones
To admonish the risk takers and mistake makers
Yet they are of the least value to humanity
They're the people who grade all your answers as incorrect
Without providing their perfect alternatives
While trying to erase the context
Because of what the context has to say about society
People feeling that they can never be emotionally vulnerable
Until they experience sheer desperation
And no dollar contract
Can replace human contact
Yet we give men so much money and power
And ask them to feel fine in our cold shower
Until we are soiled by their intention
A nation committed to selling Stella Artois
A nation full of Blanche DuBois
Humanity folds in on itself
When we attack with ***
Humanity does itself a disservice
By not trying to understand these attacks honestly
We forsake forgiveness
And embrace desperation
Until we become unbearably desperate
For attention
For approval
For ****** contact
For money
For validation
And sometimes our desperate desires become tangled
I'd like to think of that as love
And not a meeting between two practical rapists
That conjoin in the middle
Yet somehow come out distorted on the other side
Nov 26, 2017
Nov 26, 2017 at 4:55 AM UTC
I. LONELINESS
Her Word
One ought not to have to care
So much as you and I
Care when the birds come round the house
To seem to say good-bye;
Or care so much when they come back
With whatever it is they sing;
The truth being we are as much
Too glad for the one thing
As we are too sad for the other here—
With birds that fill their *******
But with each other and themselves
And their built or driven nests.
II. HOUSE FEAR
Always—I tell you this they learned—
Always at night when they returned
To the lonely house from far away
To lamps unlighted and fire gone gray,
They learned to rattle the lock and key
To give whatever might chance to be
Warning and time to be off in flight:
And preferring the out- to the in-door night,
They. learned to leave the house-door wide
Until they had lit the lamp inside.
III. THE SMILE
Her Word
I didn’t like the way he went away.
That smile! It never came of being gay.
Still he smiled—did you see him?—I was sure!
Perhaps because we gave him only bread
And the wretch knew from that that we were poor.
Perhaps because he let us give instead
Of seizing from us as he might have seized.
Perhaps he mocked at us for being wed,
Or being very young (and he was pleased
To have a vision of us old and dead).
I wonder how far down the road he’s got.
He’s watching from the woods as like as not.
IV. THE OFT-REPEATED DREAM
She had no saying dark enough
For the dark pine that kept
Forever trying the window-latch
Of the room where they slept.
The tireless but ineffectual hands
That with every futile pass
Made the great tree seem as a little bird
Before the mystery of glass!
It never had been inside the room,
And only one of the two
Was afraid in an oft-repeated dream
Of what the tree might do.
V. THE IMPULSE
It was too lonely for her there,
And too wild,
And since there were but two of them,
And no child,
And work was little in the house,
She was free,
And followed where he furrowed field,
Or felled tree.
She rested on a log and tossed
The fresh chips,
With a song only to herself
On her lips.
And once she went to break a bough
Of black alder.
She strayed so far she scarcely heard.
When he called her—
And didn’t answer— didn’t speak—
Or return.
She stood, and then she ran and hid
In the fern.
He never found her, though he looked
Everywhere,
And he asked at her mother’s house
Was she there.
Sudden and swift and light as that
The ties gave,
And he learned of finalities
Besides the grave.
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Not from the sands or cloven rocks,
Thou rapid Arve! thy waters flow;
Nor earth, within her ***** locks
Thy dark unfathomed wells below.
Thy springs are in the cloud, thy stream
Begins to move and murmur first
Where ice-peaks feel the noonday beam,
Or rain-storms on the glacier burst.
Born where the thunder and the blast,
And morning's earliest light are born,
Thou rushest swoln, and loud, and fast,
By these low homes, as if in scorn:
Yet humbler springs yield purer waves;
And brighter, glassier streams than thine,
Sent up from earth's unlighted caves,
With heaven's own beam and image shine.
Yet stay; for here are flowers and trees;
Warm rays on cottage roofs are here,
And laugh of girls, and hum of bees--
Here linger till thy waves are clear.
Thou heedest not--thou hastest on;
From steep to steep thy torrent falls,
Till, mingling with the mighty Rhone,
It rests beneath Geneva's walls.
Rush on--but were there one with me
That loved me, I would light my hearth
Here, where with God's own majesty
Are touched the features of the earth.
By these old peaks, white, high, and vast,
Still rising as the tempests beat,
Here would I dwell, and sleep, at last,
Among the blossoms at their feet.
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An endeavour to grasp the ardent;
trying to sooth the seething, the fervent-
-ly glimmering stars cleaved and concised,
misgiven and juvenile; yet far hind-tarded:
"The fool burned trying; and the starlet free."
And here I recon; I concede-
readily and consequently,
in admiration; in recede:
captivated, inadvertently.
Smitten and bewitched; I'd stay,
expedient and unruly:
"My sight I have bargained; all for one seething spectacle."
With this I stray, unlighted and aphonic;
I leave my sentiment in silence.
Mar 18, 2018
Mar 18, 2018 at 9:21 PM UTC
When eyes locked he fell
And time set a new fever
Upon the world. It did not
Help that her voice touched
And moved and tore into
His stone as if water carved
A million years of buried lime
Or that the spheres that sang
Were now sounding discordant,
Confounded as he was, fallen,
Empty as the universe, slight
As the lonely, lost, and unlighted
Seas of the moon.
And her hair,
It was not fair, that the endless,
Playful stars could fire even brighter
Below the forgotten heavens.
Sep 28, 2012
Sep 28, 2012 at 12:43 PM UTC
.
When eyes locked he fell
And time set a new fever
Upon the world. It did not
Help that her voice touched
And moved and tore into
His stone as if water carved
A million years of buried lime
Or that the spheres that sang
Were now sounding discordant,
Confounded as he was, fallen,
Empty as the universe, slight
As the lonely, lost, and unlighted
Seas of the moon.
And her hair,
It was not fair, that the endless,
Playful stars could fire even brighter
Below the forgotten heavens.
Nov 5, 2016
Nov 5, 2016 at 5:11 PM UTC
When eyes locked he fell
And time set a new fever
Upon the world. It did not
Help that her voice touched
And moved and tore into
His stone as if water carved
A million years of buried lime
Or that the spheres that sang
Were now sounding discordant,
Confounded as he was, fallen,
Empty as the universe, slight
As the lonely, lost, and unlighted
Seas of the moon.
And her hair,
It was not fair, that the endless,
Playful stars could fire even brighter
Below the forgotten heavens.
Jun 4, 2012
Jun 4, 2012 at 5:48 PM UTC
When eyes locked he fell
And time set a new fever
Upon the world. It did not
Help that her voice touched
And moved and tore into
His stone as if water carved
A million years of buried lime
Or that the spheres that sang
Were now sounding discordant,
Confounded as he was, fallen,
Empty as the universe, slight
As the lonely, lost, and unlighted
Seas of the moon.
And her hair,
It was not fair, that the endless,
Playful stars could fire even brighter
Below the forgotten heavens.
Jan 24, 2013
Jan 24, 2013 at 12:34 PM UTC
When eyes locked he fell
And time set a new fever
Upon the world. It did not
Help that her voice touched
And moved and tore into
His stone as if water carved
A million years of buried lime
Or that the spheres that sang
Were now sounding discordant,
Confounded as he was, fallen,
Empty as the universe, slight
As the lonely, lost, and unlighted
Seas of the moon.
And her hair,
It was not fair, that the endless,
Playful stars could fire even brighter
Below the forgotten heavens.
Jan 1, 2014
Jan 1, 2014 at 7:00 PM UTC
When eyes locked he fell
And time set a new fever
Upon the world. It did not
Help that her voice touched
And moved and tore into
His stone as if water carved
A million years of buried lime
Or that the spheres that sang
Were now sounding discordant,
Confounded as he was, fallen,
Empty as the universe, slight
As the lonely, lost, and unlighted
Seas of the moon.
And her hair,
It was not fair, that the endless,
Playful stars could fire even brighter
Below the forgotten heavens.
Oct 25, 2013
Oct 25, 2013 at 2:26 PM UTC
When eyes locked he fell
And time set a new fever
Upon the world. It did not
Help that her voice touched
And moved and tore into
His stone as if water carved
A million years of buried lime
Or that the spheres that sang
Were now sounding discordant,
Confounded as he was, fallen,
Empty as the universe, slight
As the lonely, lost, and unlighted
Seas of the moon.
And her hair,
It was not fair, that the endless,
Playful stars could fire even brighter
Below the forgotten heavens.
Sep 12, 2012
Sep 12, 2012 at 12:56 PM UTC
When eyes locked he fell
And time set a new fever
Upon the world. It did not
Help that her voice touched
And moved and tore into
His stone as if water carved
A million years of buried lime
Or that the spheres that sang
Were now sounding discordant,
Confounded as he was, fallen,
Empty as the universe, slight
As the lonely, lost and unlighted
Seas of the moon.
And her hair,
It was not fair, that the endless,
Playful stars could fire even brighter
Below the forgotten heavens.
Jul 17, 2015
Jul 17, 2015 at 12:13 PM UTC
my night is unlighted
tho painted with a celestial body
in a blanket of colossal lights
your absence i embody
once a perfect jewel
where you beamed with brilliance
night was a paradise in heaven
blinded by your radiance
but your light expanded
until it ruptured like dynamite
night is now a shadowed hell
without you there's no stars in sight
Mar 10, 2021
Mar 10, 2021 at 8:57 AM UTC
When eyes locked he fell
And time set a new fever
Upon the world. It did not
Help that her voice touched
And moved and tore into
His stone as if water carved
A million years of buried lime
Or that the spheres that sang
Were now sounding discordant,
Confounded as he was, fallen,
Empty as the universe, slight
As the lonely, lost, and unlighted
Seas of the moon.
And her hair,
It was not fair, that the endless,
Playful stars could fire even brighter
Below the forgotten heavens.
Nov 17, 2014
Nov 17, 2014 at 2:48 PM UTC
When eyes locked he fell
And time set a new fever
Upon the world. It did not
Help that her voice touched
And moved and tore into
His stone as if water carved
A million years of buried lime
Or that the spheres that sang
Were now sounding discordant,
Confounded as he was, fallen,
Empty as the universe, slight
As the lonely, lost, and unlighted
Seas of the moon.
And her hair,
It was not fair, that the endless,
Playful stars could fire even brighter
Below the forgotten heavens.
Jun 28, 2013
Jun 28, 2013 at 12:18 PM UTC
A dark sentiment
in my empty soul
gives me unlighted conceptions
Standing in a crowd of people
is my heart sitting shady
I wonder why
and in the cold comfortable night
is where is feel home
Alone
and I smile.
Apr 17, 2019
Apr 17, 2019 at 11:48 AM UTC
pitch-black
eyes
and unlighted
flesh
brings
the
whiskey smile of
death
Apr 14, 2015
Apr 14, 2015 at 1:33 AM UTC
Alters laid broken on trodden roads
as if breadcrumbs left for nothing
unreconcilable yesterdays parted
and the unreachable roads recharged
breaking all the chains that bond
but there were others that stayed
itching, screeching and reaching
for hope that never shook hands
for faith that embraced and decayed
and their entry points hallowed
swallowing their souls in an abyss
inside the dark zones, unlighted ozone
deep in the waters where fish swam
as they licked with fins undisguised
those alone inside a cage under the waters
strayed in the depths, left for decay
Mar 27, 2018
Mar 27, 2018 at 7:38 AM UTC