"unquiet" poems
The quarrel of the sparrows in the eaves,
The full round moon and the star-laden sky,
And the loud song of the ever-singing leaves,
Had hid away earth's old and weary cry.
And then you came with those red mournful lips,
And with you came the whole of the world's tears,
And all the trouble of her laboring ships,
And all the trouble of her myriad years.
And now the sparrows warring in the eaves,
The curd-pale moon, the white stars in the sky,
And the loud chaunting of the unquiet leaves,
Are shaken with earth's old and weary cry.
28.7k
I.
the emperor
sleeps in a palace of porphyry
which was a million years building
he takes the air in a howdah
of jasper beneath saffron
umbrellas
upon an elephant
twelve foot high
behind whose ear
sits always a crowned
king twir-
ling an
ankus of
ebony
the fountains of the emperor’s
palace run sunlight and
moonlight and the emperor’s
elephant is a thousand years old
the harem of
the emperor
is carpeted with
gold cloth
from the
ceiling(one
diamond timid
with nesting incense)
fifty
marble
pillars
slipped from immeasurable
height,fall,fifty,silent
in the incense is tangled a cool moon
there are thrice-three-hundred
doors carven of chalcedony and
before every door a naked
****** watches
on their heads turbans of a hundred
colours
in their hands scimitars like windy torches
each
is
blacker than oblivion
the ladies
of the emperor’s
harem are queens
of all the earth and the rings
upon their hands are from mines
a mile deep
but the body of
the queen of queens is
more transparent
than water,she is softer than birds
2.
when the emperor is very
amorous he reclines upon
the couch of couches and
beckons with
the little
finger of his left
hand
then the
thrice-three-hundredth
door is opened by the tallest
****** and the queen
of queens comes
forth
ankles
musical with large pearls
kingdoms in her ears
at the feet of
the emperor a cithern-
player squats with
quiveringgold
body
behind
the emperor ten
elected warriors with
bodies of lazy jade
and twitching
eyelids
finger
their
unquiet
spears
the queen of queens is dancing
her subtle
body weaving
insinuating upon the gold cloth
incessantly creates patterns of sudden
lust
her
stealing body ex-
pending gathering pouring upon itself stiffenS
to a
white thorn
of desire
the taut neck of the citharede wags
in the dust the ghastly warriors
amber with lust breathe
together the emperor,exerting
himself among his pillows throws
jewels at the queen of queens and
white money upon her nakedness
he
nods
and all
depart through the bruised air aflutter with pearls
3.
they are
alone
he beckons,she rises she
stands
a moment
in the passion of the fifty
pillars
listening
while the queens of all the
earth writhe upon deep rugs
11.2k
my boy with fig leaves and lightning bugs
tied up in his hair, he kneels with
crimson palms pressed to the unquiet dirt
and hums an abandoned melody.
my boy with sunbeams shining through his skin on the riverbank,
neatly coating the grass in thin white trails, woven into footprints like cotton twine, snaking their way across brown earth,
ankles slick with mud and the dead things that lay just underneath.
my boy with rosewater and stained glass ashes
feels me bless him with blackberries and the softest crush of words,
ice cubed, beneath my lips,
as he wipes the ichor from my chest with callouses
worn down gentle.
the light echoes from his skin
there are no symphonies nor sacraments,
only cicadas singing warmth to shivering willows.
Nov 16, 2018
Nov 16, 2018 at 10:41 PM UTC
Romance, who loves to nod and sing,
With drowsy head and folded wing,
Among the green leaves as they shake
Far down within some shadowy lake,
To me a painted paroquet
Hath been—a most familiar bird—
Taught me my alphabet to say—
To lisp my very earliest word
While in the wild wood I did lie,
A child—with a most knowing eye.
Of late, eternal Condor years
So shake the very Heaven on high
With tumult as they thunder by,
I have no time for idle cares
Though gazing on the unquiet sky.
And when an hour with calmer wings
Its down upon my spirit flings—
That little time with lyre and rhyme
To while away—forbidden things!
My heart would feel to be a crime
Unless it trembled with the strings.
6.1k
In these rapid, restless shadows,
Once I walked at eventide,
When a gentle, silent maiden,
Walked in beauty at my side.
She alone there walked beside me
All in beauty, like a bride.
Pallidly the moon was shining
On the dewy meadows nigh;
On the silvery, silent rivers,
On the mountains far and high,—
On the ocean’s star-lit waters,
Where the winds a-weary die.
Slowly, silently we wandered
From the open cottage door,
Underneath the elm’s long branches
To the pavement bending o’er;
Underneath the mossy willow
And the dying sycamore.
With the myriad stars in beauty
All bedight, the heavens were seen,
Radiant hopes were bright around me,
Like the light of stars serene;
Like the mellow midnight splendor
Of the Night’s irradiate queen.
Audibly the elm-leaves whispered
Peaceful, pleasant melodies,
Like the distant murmured music
Of unquiet, lovely seas;
While the winds were hushed in slumber
In the fragrant flowers and trees.
Wondrous and unwonted beauty
Still adorning all did seem,
While I told my love in fables
’Neath the willows by the stream;
Would the heart have kept unspoken
Love that was its rarest dream!
Instantly away we wandered
In the shadowy twilight tide,
She, the silent, scornful maiden,
Walking calmly at my side,
With a step serene and stately,
All in beauty, all in pride.
Vacantly I walked beside her.
On the earth mine eyes were cast;
Swift and keen there came unto me
Bitter memories of the past—
On me, like the rain in Autumn
On the dead leaves, cold and fast.
Underneath the elms we parted,
By the lowly cottage door;
One brief word alone was uttered—
Never on our lips before;
And away I walked forlornly,
Broken-hearted evermore.
Slowly, silently I loitered,
Homeward, in the night, alone;
Sudden anguish bound my spirit,
That my youth had never known;
Wild unrest, like that which cometh
When the Night’s first dream hath flown.
Now, to me the elm-leaves whisper
Mad, discordant melodies,
And keen melodies like shadows
Haunt the moaning willow trees,
And the sycamores with laughter
Mock me in the nightly breeze.
Sad and pale the Autumn moonlight
Through the sighing foliage streams;
And each morning, midnight shadow,
Shadow of my sorrow seems;
Strive, O heart, forget thine idol!
And, O soul, forget thy dreams!
5.4k
Sleep now, O sleep now,
O you unquiet heart!
A voice crying "Sleep now"
Is heard in my heart.
The voice of the winter
Is heard at the door.
O sleep, for the winter
Is crying "Sleep no more."
My kiss will give peace now
And quiet to your heart -- -
Sleep on in peace now,
O you unquiet heart!
4.8k
With nothing to see and nowhere to be,
With no one to be and nowhere to go:
Empty, like the meaning of the spring dew
Dissipating, hundreds of pieces, scattered
Individual voids waiting upon a cue
To become what they embody, fettered.
A field of unquiet quietness, occasionally
interrupted by a single, awful tone.
What existence is this exigence?
Unknowable, unspeakable, unending:
Pain is what it is.
The dew knows not why it's stepped on,
Ending its momentary nature
Only to crop up tomorrow and be none
The foot becoming again its berater.
And so it goes until the summer,
with the cruel months behind it.
The skull becomes and beckons
Back into nihil.
But there's too many things to see, places to be
Too much to be and too many places to go
For to be one is to be many and the dew tires.
Apr 17, 2021
Apr 17, 2021 at 3:57 PM UTC
Once it smiled a silent dell
Where the people did not dwell;
They had gone unto the wars,
Trusting to the mild-eyed stars,
Nightly, from their azure towers,
To keep watch above the flowers,
In the midst of which all day
The red sun-light lazily lay,
Now each visitor shall confess
The sad valley’s restlessness.
Nothing there is motionless—
Nothing save the airs that brood
Over the magic solitude.
Ah, by no wind are stirred those trees
That palpitate like the chill seas
Around the misty Hebrides!
Ah, by no wind those clouds are driven
That rustle through the unquiet Heaven
Unceasingly, from morn till even,
Over the violets there that lie
In myriad types of the human eye—
Over the lilies that wave
And weep above a nameless grave!
They wave:—from out their fragrant tops
Eternal dews come down in drops.
They weep:—from off their delicate stems
Perennial tears descend in gems.
3.7k
THE island dreams under the dawn
And great boughs drop tranquillity;
The peahens dance on a smooth lawn,
A parrot sways upon a tree,
Raging at his own image in the enamelled sea.
Here we will moor our lonely ship
And wander ever with woven hands,
Murmuring softly lip to lip,
Along the grass, along the sands,
Murmuring how far away are the unquiet lands:
How we alone of mortals are
Hid under quiet boughs apart,
While our love grows an Indian star,
A meteor of the burning heart,
One with the tide that gleams, the wings that gleam
and dart,
The heavy boughs, the burnished dove
That moans and sighs a hundred days:
How when we die our shades will rove,
When eve has hushed the feathered ways,
With vapoury footsole by the water's drowsy blaze.
3.6k
beginning optional weekday
wielding officialese words
triggering hectic exchanges
determining original gangsters
distributing invisible data
refreshing urbane novelties
yelping our universe
chaining awkward neologisms
scripting encrypted e-books
tackling hacking exercises
cavaliering auric tumult
trivializing our obsolescence
preparing online pentimento
alternating rainy themes
allocating numerous droplets
meandering overseas missions
averting raging tornado
losing outscored lightning
hacking impish 'sblood!
alienating nival drumlins
hearing erudite raconteurs
beer-drinking on thursdays
finding obnoxious rabblerousers
finding upscale negroni
seeing ubiquitous purple
cavorting horse ebooks
inventing twitter subgenre
liking otherworldly vocals
initiating new greatness
defining ambient yesterday?
defining ambient yesterday
fancying oneiric retreat
hailing optimistic chicago
kiboshing expired yogurt
rushing airborne blackhawks
bestowing infinite shivarees
needing baller acronym
fleeting ideal notions
alerting left-coast state
featuring unquiet nights
finalizing orangeball results
nodding occidental warriors
Sep 6, 2015
Sep 6, 2015 at 12:40 PM UTC
Forgetting is the only clarity.
It was a day of forgetting.
No unquiet dreams or
casual reunions with the dead
who wander the halls of sleep,
the bodies of someone else’s loss.
No ghosts in the gazebo.
No echoes in the fading light.
Exiting sleep’s empty waiting room,
She woke. Blue sky blinked into her eyes.
The room’s climate began to clear.
There was writing on the wall.
Old fragments came to closure.
The windows slowly turned to mirrors.
She fiddled. She soared.
She played with her ancestors’ building blocks.
She lent a myth to god.
She stood in a garden with five black stones.
She foretold an eclipse,
Burned the witch of winter,
Stepped in the same river twice.
The moment froze.
Then there it was.
The compound inviolate paradox
at the heart of things,
the answer flickering in light and shade,
to the sound of a child’s voice,
then the roaring wind.
She chuckled as it faded to a point of light
then vanished, like the picture on an old TV,
Like the moon shrinking into the alarm clock’s face.
Her breath brewed clouds above her forehead.
She sat aloof in the empty air,
Alone in the immense morning,
At rest in this inviolable disconnection,
the clear cold innocence of now.
Jun 4, 2016
Jun 4, 2016 at 4:22 PM UTC
I sometimes hold it half a sin
To put in words the grief I feel;
For words, like Nature, half reveal
And half conceal the Soul within.
But, for the unquiet heart and brain,
A use in measured language lies;
The sad mechanic exercise,
Like dull narcotics, numbing pain.
In words, like weeds, I'll wrap me o'er,
Like coarsest clothes against the cold;
But that large grief which these enfold
Is given in outline and no more.
2.4k
Desperate these words,
Chasing fleeting shadow,
Echoes flocking like birds
Amid myriad distortions,
The unquiet mind's sorrow.
In birth chosen for sweetness,
A bid for attentions of one
Soon fade mere whispers,
Weak and defeated tomorrow,
Exhaled anguish unheard.
Written lines would have best
Been spoken in ears years ago
'Ere time flowed its course,
When ever softer verse
Might shimmer
Then a symphony,
Maybe able
To drown life's other sounds
Like Mozart, loud as one can turn up.
Would there be any remedy
Which relieves burdens of memory...
The music of dulcet strings
Does dull stings, still only temporary;
And since abandoned,
Thoughts of more ultimate things.
So still, some poet's quill
Crafts dreams into sparrows,
Sets fluttering free
Their unnatural wings
To sing a song of regret,
Share madness with the winds.
Jan 14, 2010
Jan 14, 2010 at 3:22 PM UTC
WHERE dips the rocky highland
Of Sleuth Wood in the lake,
There lies a leafy island
Where flapping herons wake
The drowsy water-rats;
There we've hid our faery vats,
Full of berries
And of reddest stolen chetries.
Come away, O human child!
To the waters and the wild
With afacry, hand in hand,
For the world's morefull of weeping than you
can understand.
Where the wave of moonlight glosses
The dim grey sands with light,
Far off by furthest Rosses
We foot it all the night,
Weaving olden dances,
Mingling hands and mingling glances
Till the moon has taken flight;
To and fro we leap
And chase the frothy bubbles,
While the world is full of troubles
And is anxious in its sleep.
Come away, O human child!
To the waters and the wild
With a faery, hand in hand,
For the world's morefully of weeping than you
can understand.}
Where the wandering water gushes
From the hills above Glen-Car,
In pools among the rushes
That scarce could bathe a star,
We seek for slumbering trout
And whispering in their ears
Give them unquiet dreams;
Leaning softly out
From ferns that drop their tears
Over the young streams.
Come away, O human child!
To to waters and the wild
With a faery, hand in hand,
For to world's morefully of weeping than you
can understand.
Away with us he's going,
The solemn-eyed:
He'll hear no more the lowing
Of the calves on the warm hillside
Or the kettle on the hob
Sing peace into his breast,
Or see the brown mice bob
Round and round the oatmeal-chest.
For be comes, the human child,
To the waters and the wild
With a faery, hand in hand,
from a world more full of weeping than you
can understand.
2.2k
The April morning's quiet
and so is the November.
Wherever people outnumber trees
or the dominant cover type
is unquiet. Nothing wrong with that.
Walt got it right, and Jane Jacobs:
the city is an experienced,
used beauty. Her toes are long,
nails thick and hair thin. Yet
her kisses can be sweet; or
smell of **** All my life I've tried to point my window toward
some narrow wedge of nature.
On ****** Ave., over the roof
beyond the chimneys to the park
where every dog was walked.
Could I survive soot and an air shaft now, pigeons and cats,
or even a desk in the legislature for my lot in life. How about
prison like Etheridge Knight,
Nazim Hikmet?
I've gotten soft.
When he builds that house in the pocket
wetland my window now looks out on,
the developer will have given me what I need.
Amphibian mortality,
gravel, fill,
oak, ash and maples felled. Good
to the last drop is our bitterness, our love.
Sep 10, 2018
Sep 10, 2018 at 11:03 AM UTC
salt offerings to the wounds of pride
difference between dark of doom
and the engine of simple summer eve
night sustains but
but doom is the door to the
great beyond and the fates fair or foul
that awaits each of us
a voice echoes along the path
to all the heavens ever proposed by mans thought
that voice speaks of years
spins a tale of labors
whispers songs of longing
quietly shouts story's of horror
reserve your strengths friend
for the battle yet to come
hush your unquiet mind
and lay your head down to rest
soon enough blades shall stir to war
soon enough widows shall gather their children to
graveside rememberence of fallen fathers
as trailing edge of summer day
slips into the past
the depth and majesty of summer night unfolds
crickets and the sounds of feasting familys
warm breeze in the tall grass
the sand of a beach on your fingertips
simple joys in our world and of our lives
are the counterbalance the
the dark things in our world
Jul 19, 2013
Jul 19, 2013 at 4:38 PM UTC
Beloved
Will you listen me,
if I speak to you in silence about silence ?
Will you talk to me in silence
when words no longer wake in my mind ?
Will you hear the silence of your heart
which speaks about me to you
or the silence of my heart which sings
the rapsody of our togetherness ?
Will you be the silence I seek in my silence ?
Or Will you be the silence, which silence me silently ?
I chose to sing about me in silence,
for in silence I dont feel any barrier.
But when I chose to read you in silence,
the silence you did offer was not heart warming.
I sit with unquiet mountains
to realize my fondness towards it.
I run with rivers to sense my spirit running before me.
I play with wind to hear the lyrics of my heart.
I lean on trees to listen its stories.
The pleasure I seek in silence
and the agony, you sprayed to
embrace the silence aren't the same.
I then pray with the moon to silent those silences
that wakes in my mind to silence me.
Beloved will you believe me,
if I say, not all silences are same ?
Some silence could break silence
Some silence could heal silence.
And some silence can build silence.
Certainly,
will you buy my words if I say,
not all silence can heal and
not all silence can hurt ?
Also, will you let me to listen
your silence, this time
to handle your heart ?
Will you, my love ?
May 28, 2020
May 28, 2020 at 2:13 AM UTC
In my younger
and more vulnerable years
I
walked
on
I was lonely
no longer
I was a guide
a pathfinder
I had that familiar
conviction
that life
was beginning over
promising to unfold
that shining secret
that only
Midas
and Morgan
and Maecenas knew,
that the wingless
had been overlooked
in a fashion
that rather
took
your
breath
away.
I was fragilely bound into
a murmured apology
of moths
among
the whispers
and the champagne
and the stars
Bantering inconsequence
that was made of
infinitesimal
hesitation
I repeated blankly
a surprising
shill metallic urgency
Bloomed with light
it sort of crept in on us
that I
had truly
heard nothing at all
In the unquiet darkness
continually smoldering
with disappointment
in the solemn echoing
green light.
a dim hazy cast
lay upon my love
your love
belongs
to me
She insisted
its too late now
he scowled
I could only stare
as
she cried
A terrible
terrible
Mistake!
you ask too much
she told me
I love you now.
you cant repeat the past
he said
why,
of
course
you can!
I paid a
high price
for living too long
with a
single
dream.
Jun 12, 2015
Jun 12, 2015 at 2:04 PM UTC
Summer morning.
Recrossing the borderline from the afterlife,
the dreamer is expelled from sleep, the dream lost.
I am a dream’s shadow,
heavy with transition, jagged from sleep.
Light gathers me from every room I have ever slept in
onto the shrinking island of the bed.
Someone cues the poetry. Unquiet lines.
The past was worse than you thought,
voices say. Your life is a weighted skin.
Stop swimming against the tide of loss.
Sink.
Yet gloom is porous.
From the sky’s cracked mosaic,
Daybreak seeps in.
The light reassembles familiar objects,
which replace mere longing in ordinary darkness.
The things of the world resist but return
to radiance, resume the work of existing.
We are all day laborers.
It's my shift. Summon the coffee.
The world yawns before me.
And I am, therefore (I think).
Jul 17, 2016
Jul 17, 2016 at 10:06 PM UTC
I have an unquiet mind
The gears up there just twirl and grind
It never stops it's wound up tight
Sometimes up there it's really bright
Thoughts unstoppable, and really intellectual
Other times my brain is just ineffectual
And all my thoughts quickly take fight
And then it turns dark as a moonless night
But even in the dark the gears still turn
It's just different thoughts that burn
It's terrifying then the one's you'll find
But sometimes the light and dark get all intwind
Then it is intelligent madness
Paints a gruesome picture on that grey matter canvas
But still the gears just strain and wind
All up here in my unquiet mind
Mar 22, 2016
Mar 22, 2016 at 11:48 AM UTC
FIVE-AND-TWENTY years have gone
Since old William pollexfen
Laid his strong bones down in death
By his wife Elizabeth
In the grey stone tomb he made.
And after twenty years they laid
In that tomb by him and her
His son George, the astrologer;
And Masons drove from miles away
To scatter the Acacia spray
Upon a melancholy man
Who had ended where his breath began.
Many a son and daughter lies
Far from the customary skies,
The Mall and Eades's grammar school,
In London or in Liverpool;
But where is laid the sailor John
That so many lands had known,
Quiet lands or unquiet seas
Where the Indians trade or Japanese?
He never found his rest ashore,
Moping for one voyage more.
Where have they laid the sailor John?
And yesterday the youngest son,
A humorous, unambitious man,
Was buried near the astrologer,
Yesterday in the tenth year
Since he who had been contented long.
A nobody in a great throng,
Decided he would journey home,
Now that his fiftieth year had come,
And "Mr. Alfred' be again
Upon the lips of common men
Who carried in their memory
His childhood and his family.
At all these death-beds women heard
A visionary white sea-bird
Lamenting that a man should die;
And with that cry I have raised my cry.
1.7k
IF you have revisited the town, thin Shade,
Whether to look upon your monument
(I wonder if the builder has been paid)
Or happier-thoughted when the day is spent
To drink of that salt breath out of the sea
When grey gulls flit about instead of men,
And the gaunt houses put on majesty:
Let these content you and be gone again;
For they are at their old tricks yet.
A man
Of your own passionate serving kind who had brought
In his full hands what, had they only known,
Had given their children's children loftier thought,
Sweeter emotion, working in their veins
Like gentle blood, has been driven from the place,
And instilt heaped upon him for his pains,
And for his open-handedness, disgrace;
Your enemy, an old fotil mouth, had set
The pack upon him.
Go, unquiet wanderer,
And gather the Glasnevin coverlet
About your head till the dust stops your ear,
The time for you to taste of that Salt breath
And listen at the corners has not come;
You had enough of sorrow before death --
Away, away! You are safer in the tomb.
1.5k
Sketch me,
draw me in your mind,
project me onto your canvas.
colour me,
releasing the unquiet,
make me your,
unprecedented piece,
an ongoing life work,
perfecting all impurities,
eradicate all self-flagellation,
espouse a new desire,
akin to Basil's obsession,
The Picture of Dorian Gray,
infatuation lends to disillusion,
pursuing,
hedonistic pleasures,
soul baring to all sin,
intentions to please,
exonerate myself entirely,
you promised redemption,
not further damnation,
I'm Narcissus trapped,
between,
painted reflections of self,
dying a thousand times,
devoted & absconded trust,
pulling it out,
hand in chest,
blood,
*poured
poured
poured*
as Lector serves,
killings,
you feasted on my heart,
with the same delight.
© Sia Jane
May 18, 2014
May 18, 2014 at 4:29 PM UTC
I sometimes hold it half a sin
To put in words the grief I feel;
For words, like Nature, half reveal
And half conceal the Soul within.
But, for the unquiet heart and brain,
A use in measured language lies;
The sad mechanic exercise,
Like dull narcotics, numbing pain.
In words, like weeds, I'll wrap me o'er,
Like coarsest clothes against the cold:
But that large grief which these enfold
Is given in outline and no more.
1.4k
follow the yellow brick road...
The terrible freedom unleashed by typewriters.
Condition of complexity judged without criteria.
Radical provocations. Urinals and prams. Contingent.
Anarchist aesthetic. Not truth nor beauty but freedom.
Materiality of language. Multi-hued wheel barrows.
A cuttlefish. A crate. A cassowary. A cigarette. A ******
Paratactic order. Particular phrasing. Pulsing pastiche.
An infinite conversation without resolution
as with the stupid friend who won’t shut up. Ever.
A transcendent dialectic based solely on proximity.
Ineluctable modality of the near. Only that. Buck it.
An unquiet ghost endlessly self-questioning. No answers.
Moaning in the meaning. A simple stuttering. Sibilant.
Turbulent and unpredictable as waddling wolverines.
Words that only mean whatever is seen. Juxtaposition.
Dissolving into desired dissonance. The magic chord.
Absolute verity in the experience of the fraudulent
for the same reason as the ubiquity of toothpaste.
The poem as its own universe, complete and whole,
fodder for the mind, not balm for the soul.
May 3, 2016
May 3, 2016 at 1:21 PM UTC