"unlovely" poems
All things that pass
Are woman's looking-glass;
They show her how her bloom must fade,
And she herself be laid
With withered roses in the shade;
With withered roses and the fallen peach,
Unlovely, out of reach
Of summer joy that was.
All things that pass
Are woman's tiring-glass;
The faded lavender is sweet,
Sweet the dead violet
Culled and laid by and cared for yet;
The dried-up violets and dried lavender
Still sweet, may comfort her,
Nor need she cry Alas!
All things that pass
Are wisdom's looking-glass;
Being full of hope and fear, and still
Brimful of good or ill,
According to our work and will;
For there is nothing new beneath the sun;
Our doings have been done,
And that which shall be was.
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Wintry boughs against a wintry sky;
Yet the sky is partly blue
And the clouds are partly bright:--
Who can tell but sap is mounting high
Out of sight,
Ready to burst through?
Winter is the mother-nurse of Spring,
Lovely for her daughter's sake,
Not unlovely for her own :
For a future buds in everything;
Grown, or blown,
Or about to break.
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Where are the songs I used to know,
Where are the notes I used to sing?
I have forgotten everything
I used to know so long ago;
Summer has followed after Spring;
Now Autumn is so shrunk and sere,
I scarcely think a sadder thing
Can be the Winter of my year.
Yet Robin sings thro' Winter's rest,
When bushes put their berries on;
While they their ruddy jewels don,
He sings out of a ruddy breast;
The hips and haws and ruddy breast
Make one spot warm where snowflakes lie,
They break and cheer the unlovely rest
Of Winter's pause--and why not I?
6.4k
I'm not Cinderella, who came to the party and met the prince because I didn't have those glass shoes
or being Ariel, exchanging the beautiful tail with feet for a man from another world
Aurora fell asleep long enough, then love came from a prince with a kiss, could it be?
then, should I become Snow White who was poisoned by an apple then fell asleep and the prince came just to be able to see me every day. No
could I have to meet an unlovely and cursed prince like Belle, and love him sincerely?
but I can't like Elsa that freezes the human heart
because I am still need love like Jasmine from Aladdin, but I don't want to be a present
I might have to venture out across the vast ocean to find the lost, yes it's Moana
so I have to be brave and tough like Mulan about anything that will happen in reaching the dreams and love that might not be easy
Nov 29, 2018
Nov 29, 2018 at 9:41 AM UTC
horns squawk
rainforest avenues
exoskeleton
of cars
arteries clogged
with unlovely taxi cabs
fat green fruit
for sale
five languages
merge into a knot
hisses kiss vowels
kiwis apples pears
black guys basketball
debt rises like blood pressure
stocks tumble
but we walk
brogues clop on concrete
count brick after brick
sun cascades
over roof slates
mind cracks in slabs
(you say
Monroe stood here)
heat quivers
men are dominoes
suits for the office
a funeral
designer sneakers
daddy paid for
pigtails cheap thrills
violet octagons
on a stranger’s neck
(behind the closed doors)
today
I drink purple water
aubergine lips
remind me
of a Tuscany Superb
list the names
Houston Charlton
Leroy Sullivan
Perry Cornelia
Dominick and Jane
(ladders lead
away from me
close to
you)
and back again
Jun 21, 2014
Jun 21, 2014 at 12:24 PM UTC
To smile at the unlovely
To duet with undue harmony
To run when a walk would do
To lift the face of the broken
To put aside the important
To concentrate completely
To take interest in the dull
To laugh with the miserable
To see past the tough exterior
To crawl with those that crawl
To walk with the unrighteous
To sprint for those that cannot stop
To stop
To listen
To keep silent
To hold
To do all this
And not ask, or boast, or criticise
Aug 27, 2010
Aug 27, 2010 at 7:34 AM UTC
Unloved I live an
Unlovely life, treated
Unloving by people I'm
Unable to love
Unlovable I am treating people
Unlovingly myself
Unlovable in the literal sense:
the impossibility of being loved
Nov 6, 2014
Nov 6, 2014 at 8:55 AM UTC
oh the perverse desire
to tear off my skin
to slice my tender flesh
to carve and chop
oh to feel the cool air against my bones
to be fully exposed
to be grotesque and unlovely
oh to rip my chest open
to be
unrestrained by ****** borders and
finally free
oh sweet freedom!
see me as i am;
vile and dying, in constant pain
a broken slice of hell
amen.
May 19, 2018
May 19, 2018 at 9:08 PM UTC
Dark house, by which once more I stand
Here in the long unlovely street,
Doors, where my heart was used to beat
So quickly, waiting for a hand,
A hand that can be clasp'd no more--
Behold me, for I cannot sleep,
And like a guilty thing I creep
At earliest morning to the door.
He is not here; but far away
The noise of life begins again,
And ghastly thro' the drizzling rain
On the bald street breaks the blank day.
2.4k
“How important it is to walk along, not in haste but slowly,
looking at everything and calling out
Yes! No!”
–Mary Oliver, “Yes! No!”
1.
The coils of this labyrinth remind me of the small intestine. This vexes me. Walking the labyrinth is supposed to be a spiritual experience, isn’t it? Neither time nor place for unlovely images of the body. The truth is that I dislike the labyrinth. I find it too constraining, too tedious—all these looping, repetitive coils. The truth is that I hate the labyrinth because it is pale and remote, and silently indifferent to me. If I am going to engage with something, I’d like for it to talk back, please. I have questions, you know. I have some concerns. And perhaps just one or two small issues with control, and delayed gratification.
2.
“I think serenity is not something you just find in the world, like a plum tree,
holding up its white petals” (Mary Oliver, “Yes! No!”).
3.
“Watch how we encounter each other,” you say, and we walk, slowly, separately. Around one turn we meet, and you kiss me, and your tongue is muscular and wet. Around another turn you say, over your shoulder, “Hello,” and continue walking. It is hard for me to keep my balance even though the path is smooth and flat. I feel like we are in a Magritte painting. Your white shirt glows softly somewhere to the left of my awareness. A voice not connected to your body says, “Do you like my hat?” We are walking. We are together. We are not together.
4.
“Imagination is better than a sharp instrument. To pay attention, this is our endless
and proper work” (Mary Oliver, “Yes! No!”).
5.
So now:
Quiet, quiet—the darkness is full.
Your skin is listening
to the night air.
In the center of the labyrinth, someone has placed a gift.
Quiet, quiet—someone is telling you a story.
The oldest story in the world, and his body hums and pulses
under your fingers.
In the center, there is a gift.
Quiet, quiet—this is not walking.
This is surrendering to the path, your body long and outstretched
against the stones.
In the center, someone has placed a gift.
Feb 15, 2010
Feb 15, 2010 at 12:02 PM UTC
Cinnamon-Raisin French Toast.
Maple syrple, microwaved hot.
Secret ingredient,
Secret no more!
A splash of vanilla in the batter.
We chat about this n' that.
About the play,
She didn't love it.
About the daughter-in-law's cleaning skills,
A good housekeeping award, she ain't gonna win.
Her grandma from Austria,
Seeing ugly would call it
Unlovely.
I am thinking,
Your genetic humanity, betrayed.
What a great poem that would make....
She is thinking, boy,
You needs haircut bad.
But she don't nag,
As my hair has drifted to one side,
Instead she just calls me
Gumby....
There is always a way.
There is always a way,
To say it softer,
Say it easy on the ears,
When you can't say nothing.
It takes practice.
It takes into account,
Nobody at this here breakfast table is
Perfect exceptin' for the
Cinnamon-Raisin French Toast,
Which has left the table.
It takes a splash of vanilla in your
humanity,
To say it right,
When sometimes, what needs saying is the
Unlovely.
Sep 29, 2013
Sep 29, 2013 at 10:27 AM UTC
Until tonight they were separate specialties,
different stories, the best of their own worst.
Riding my warm cabin home, I remember Betsy's
laughter; she laughed as you did, Rose, at the first
story. Someday, I promised her, I'll be someone
going somewhere and we plotted it in the humdrum
school for proper girls. The next April the plane
bucked me like a horse, my elevators turned
and fear blew down my throat, that last profane
gauge of a stomach coming up. And then returned
to land, as unlovely as any seasick sailor,
sincerely eighteen; my first story, my funny failure.
Maybe Rose, there is always another story,
better unsaid, grim or flat or predatory.
Half a mile down the lights of the in-between cities
turn up their eyes at me. And I remember Betsy's
story, the April night of the civilian air crash
and her sudden name misspelled in the evening paper,
the interior of shock and the paper gone in the trash
ten years now. She used the return ticket I gave her.
This was the rude **** of her; two planes cracking
in mid-air over Washington, like blind birds.
And the picking up afterwards, the morticians tracking
bodies in the Potomac and piecing them like boards
to make a leg or a face. There is only her miniature
photograph left, too long now for fear to remember.
Special tonight because I made her into a story
that I grew to know and savor.
A reason to worry,
Rose, when you fix an old death like that,
and outliving the impact, to find you've pretended.
We bank over Boston. I am safe. I put on my hat.
I am almost someone going home. The story has ended.
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somewhere along the way
I convinced myself that I
am a one time thing, because
all of my exes date wispy blondes
with blunt bangs and blue
eyes, who probably listen
to a lot of She & Him or
Neutral Milk Hotel and
I am the Frida Kahlo of
their past, not to say that
Frida was bad but I guess
you get what I mean.
Jan 15, 2014
Jan 15, 2014 at 10:12 PM UTC
Not that I love thy children, whose dull eyes
See nothing save their own unlovely woe,
Whose minds know nothing, nothing care to know,—
But that the roar of thy Democracies,
Thy reigns of Terror, thy great Anarchies,
Mirror my wildest passions like the sea
And give my rage a brother—! Liberty!
For this sake only do thy dissonant cries
Delight my discreet soul, else might all kings
By ****** knout or treacherous cannonades
Rob nations of their rights inviolate
And I remain unmoved—and yet, and yet,
These Christs that die upon the barricades,
God knows it I am with them, in some things.
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Dark house, by which once more I stand
Here in the long unlovely street,
Doors, where my heart was used to beat
So quickly, waiting for a hand,
A hand that can be clasp'd no more--
Behold me, for I cannot sleep,
And like a guilty thing I creep
At earliest morning to the door.
He is not here; but far away
The noise of life begins again,
And ghastly thro' the drizzling rain
On the bald street breaks the blank day.
1.3k
for Oscar Wilde
If only love came easy.
Once exposed to its removal, its terror, the heart grows queasy.
How hard it can be
To know loving's unlovely
Side: The caught breath once the curtain falls,
Deadened sanctity when recent calls
Turn against self-esteem.
"Was it just a dream?";
"Was it a rue,
Temporary?"; "Was it true?"
Questions amount to nothing.
Answers only seem like bluffing.
I want to love you,
But I know the drill: Two,
Then one. One's pain is expectation,
One's guilt is association.
"Life is short—let them care";
I wait...I dream...I stare...
Apr 10, 2015
Apr 10, 2015 at 1:04 PM UTC
Your moon is waxing, you dwell in radiance,
as a vibrant woman in my sight.
What remains, partake of it, gorge your senses.
To you, my righteous bounty.
This delectable day .
Leave a window open for me,
That ethereal lovers may join in the essencially linked calm, forevermore.
"Lover, I enfold you."
---You know who calls,
Yes, my voice, it penetrates your walls:
Commencement of laughter, for you heard me,
My call of certainty and comfort.
None are unlovely,
None forsake you: even if they do, what are they?
These words...you must heed
My serene satisfaction,
Thirst quenched, fulfilled need,
You must breathe in this panacea laden air.
"Lover, your hands heal me.
I enfold you in my arms."
You close your eyes, trouble flees, wailing.
You come, from my healing touch,
You rise to the summit, and pen me in your arms.
"It is everything to me
Embracing, I feel you lying in my mind.
Merging, as you and I become we.
Everyday you remain
Your body, and your spiritual emanation.
If you could see me, as I see you.
Enfolding you.
You would never question ,
If you are adored and accepted."
Aug 15, 2012
Aug 15, 2012 at 8:29 AM UTC
In this society, the beautiful is more loved
Accepted,
Cherished,
Adored,
Held so dearly.
Oh how difficult it is to hide
The unlovely
and ill favored sight.
Dec 2, 2019
Dec 2, 2019 at 4:51 AM UTC
She's awake, eyes wide,
Gazing at everything that surrounds her.
Ugly? Someone apprised her no.
Loving is the cue to everything beautiful.
Skin deep is nothing. They are just words.
Magnificent is nothing,
And nothing is unlovely,
When you see the world in gray,
You fail to remeber,
There's an other side.
From sad to happy,
He made her, unknowingly.
He showed her,
People can be inimical,
She said she is aware.
Then what was that he did,
To make her all so beaming?
I guess we'll never know.
It's a tale of two seeds,
Who were growing into trees.
When one was about to die,
The angel came to relief.
Feb 6, 2014
Feb 6, 2014 at 2:47 AM UTC
i've a pale carnivore,
slaying passively the night
in my cotton ember
and with velvet detergent she sprays me
***** loose hinges cravenly and pink
and disheveled lips
i split
unmutable vast minute vines
snare exactly my naked burning crust
an shuck absolutely
the dull sheathe of my so
unlovely
****
Nov 19, 2010
Nov 19, 2010 at 1:53 PM UTC
im unliving. unloving. unlovely, within.
my skin buzzes under
moonlit nights. my fingers dig in.
i ruin myself, over and over.
i peel away
what makes me imperfect,
only to find
that
my sins
always grow back.
i am barely living.
the night peels back
these layers of tentative
satisfaction.
i find my mind naked
underneath the blackness. i lack
the ability to hide.
my barriers are meaningless,
factless,
as they really are.
where do i go to hide from the truth
while under this moonlight?
will i ever be perfect?
will i ever be great?
will i even be good enough?
i know the answer. i know the answer.
and there's nowhere to burrow away from it,
but my fingers find a way.
into my scalp, into my lips,
into my face,
and blood blooms.
i can still feel that.
i can still love that
sharp, stinging, pain.
Jan 2, 2019
Jan 2, 2019 at 7:17 AM UTC
I am lustration, and the sea is mine!
I wash the sands and headlands with my tide;
My brow is crowned with branches of the pine;
Before my chariot-wheels the fishes glide.
By me all things unclean are purified,
By me the souls of men washed white again;
E’en the unlovely tombs of those who died
Without a dirge, I cleanse from every stain.
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the jaded bird took his perch
in branches thick with voice
his song a croak, his beak quite broke
a lovely sight, though unlovely noise
a plumed up bird, dressed in furs
cut into his space
she sang quite sweet, high and neat
sang right into his face
the jaded bird, of course, was hurt
by that most spiteful act
he moaned in pain, never sang again
until a finger tapped his back
a timely toad, brown and slowed
eyes blinking with slime
opened his mouth, north to south
and took his merry time
he sang a sound that squelched around
his throat before release
then he bellowed loud, and sore and proud
and the bird fell to his knees
the toad taught the bird, who listened, who heard
who was patient, feathers bristling
they sang together, sung for forever
and never cared about who was listening
Nov 27, 2015
Nov 27, 2015 at 11:02 AM UTC
My feet are in pain
From holding my ground
But still I remain
Enduring the sound
Of the enemy’s gain
On my position now found
The offensive!
The mud and dust
Swirling about, pining
For my dedication to rust
Or me to find my cause unjust
Though I waver not
My feet planted a must
I cannot say
If it is my
Head or my
Heart that keeps
Them in place
Refusing to start
The process of retreat
My resolve won’t be beat
Though I am unsure
If I am avoiding or
Embracing defeat
I must soon make
Distinction between
Perseverance and deceit
As I know eventually
My Maker I will meet
Am I holding His line
Or withholding Him
His proper seat?
All I know for certain
As I endure the wind and sleet
Is the acute awareness of the
Other. The
Same. With
True love replete.
He loved the lovable
And the unlovely
What of the pious man’s
Calm sleep?
The twisted man’s
Desperate plea?
Though not yet fully forged
I know my identity
Has garnered
The Good Judge’s mercy
And though I can’t fathom
Why He bows before me complete
And I know not the glory or
Depravity of my life’s feat
I am stilled as a child
Before the patience of a creek
There are plenty of reasons
To wash these feet.
Aug 23, 2015
Aug 23, 2015 at 9:18 PM UTC
this is the end of all things,
where i’m picking my teeth for traces of you
and the light goes out in the middle of the night.
here is an alternate history:
your hands, but with
“the end of the world”
written on them.
because this was the real apocalypse,
your bruises implanted in my skin
the way they spelled “goodbye.”
take care, take care
you won’t be seeing me again.
but we were just swollen children,
you’re thinking,
we were just playing with blood like every child does.
and you’re right.
i was a human canvas and you were
painting my childhood onto me.
you never did anything any other boy wouldn’t do.
so bring me my ending world
in hands split and shaking.
so tell me i’m unlovely one last time.
you know i’ll believe each word you say.
tell me something.
what colour were my lips by the time we were through?
how deep a hole did you choose for me
that i could finally fit into once i was all carved up?
what kind of child was i?
tell me something.
what was so wrong with me
that you had to keep me?
Mar 25, 2015
Mar 25, 2015 at 7:58 AM UTC