"unravelling" poems
Droplets speckled across thick green leaves,
The moon riding high almost at her peak,
The ground was soft and dewy,
While the grass entwined my feet.
There was a time when I'd feel the beat below, the steady heart of the Earth.
Breeze wing beaten to my face by the wide wings of the Sky.
My aura was alight with Fire and my Spirit was adrift like flotsam In the Ocean of my Soul.
Felt like I was stranded, salty, searing in the Sun.
Like a tree that has been petrified by lightning.
My mind a forest bowed by gale force wind.
I was raw, undone, unraveled while unravelling more with reckless abandon.
But think of the forest, think of the woods, think of creation and the nature of all things growing.
I need to remember the Moonlit Grove.
Nature so suple, divine and in spaces evergreen,
Life was a simple fragment made wholly meaningful In this moment,
I'm In awe of this complex marriage between living, growing and giving life after your own.
Where the doplets were speckled across thick green leaves,
The moon riding high - climaxingly luminous at her peak.
The ground was soft and dewy in it's rejuvenating embrace
While the grass entwined my feet and the moonlight kissed my face.
Nov 12, 2022
Nov 12, 2022 at 4:42 PM UTC
I thought I knew
the answers
believed I understood time
Time is man-made
and so are the answers
I’m allowing myself
to say I don’t know
unravelling my assumptions
I don’t wish to miss reality
Nov 7, 2014
Nov 7, 2014 at 9:01 PM UTC
you come to me unravelling from hiding spaces in moist wood
composting yourself as nature does
your head hanging low like vines
fluid as the streams running through me.
i: always convinced of my place as low hanging fruit,
see your streams and carry buckets for your leaks.
i am a fixer-upper.
Dec 7, 2015
Dec 7, 2015 at 1:54 PM UTC
The poet is a universe
In the universe
Having the universe in him
Vibrating the universe in his head
Kicking the ball in the mind field
In complex tapestry of words woven
To attain infinity in infinity.
Wonder not, the poet
In the universe knows
What others know not
By unravelling the universe
In complex poetic rhythms
From deep afflatus.
Living in the universe and
Carrying the universe on head
Are they equal?
I know the poet is a universe
Thinking the universe
Carrying the universe
In complex colors of night and day
Complicating the universe in issues
But resolving them in poetry
The poet is a universe
Growing tap root into the ocean soil
Shooting foliage to hell and heaven
Engaging the the universe in dialogue
To grow tall trees of wisdom and understanding
In the universe in which he is a universe.
The poet, a universe
Isolated in the universe
To think the universe in the plains,
Valleys and mountains of a universe
In the universe bewildering complexities
The poet is a universe!
Mar 22, 2019
Mar 22, 2019 at 6:31 AM UTC
Bending the benevolence
Into a lucid sky of white,
An indulgence of an
Evocatively colourful odyssey.
My dearest mother
Of the muse,
A whispering sea
Of beckoning delicacy.
Divulging enriching
Secrets of the tides.
Majestic sands of salty
Caramel delight,
Unravelling the enigmatic
Solitude of time.
Grains of meandering
Contemplation;
Emancipating the mind
From the burden
Of the distortive rhythm,
And into the truest dream
Of night,
Where the spirit chimes solely
In awakened starlight.
Jan 13, 2019
Jan 13, 2019 at 7:28 PM UTC
Festive morn, I crossed with thee
Embellished silk shines with whirling elegance—
Of translucent textures and fine fragrance
The royal formation— that anticipates a chance—
A romantic browse of catered acquaintance.
As I swipe to slant,— Thy arms braced my shoulders— and uplift me—
In awe of my still,
Slipped palms of thy distant longed—
In the halls of hide and seek—
Despite the fragments,— Thou aimed to break the lines,—
Chasing this harmony,
Unravelling the elflock sway;— to clutch the Orchid; Until she stays..
Jul 2, 2020
Jul 2, 2020 at 2:56 AM UTC
Gold shed upon suckling gold,
The time of the bole blackens,
Of the dark mounted through dapple,
While in the sealed apple
The seed cradled toward cold.
A gold on gold spent,
Put by from an elm in its years
Now its gilded of days,
Over turf’s dishevelment;
Where all which is green sickens,
All the fresh shall be sere.
All which is green sickens,
And it is but for a time
Those embered veinings blaze
A year’s delirium;
Or neared of other space,
Unportioned azure shall close
One of more, and which is,
One which goes.
Let the little pupils that will,
Of vision, gaze for salt
To whet their gazing, wit
In one weather is high
From burrow and lair, by
Nether providences’ default
An all’s accrued.
And apposite, beyond
Such primer beholdings, has
Its long accounting known
The beetle’s morsel thus
Was rich, and the slug’s bed on
The oak’s generations, deep
Over the lark’s bones.
In slough of Edens fast
Wit in one weather shall stand,
While millennia nibble at
The sensual apple
Toppled it net,
Plenty in the palm of the hand,
And the fallen not fallen, not lost
From out its certitude—
For our unbeggaring
Has been gross. Few and late
To cherish an immoderate
Wish, hope’s calculus,
Love’s hope; few to miss,
From natural tally ******
In the lime-girdled space
Of choice, where alone
Man can abandon what
Is only his own;
And in cold and tarrying
Their rearisers sleep:
While to the granite cheek
Light’s purples bring
Infinite their ministering,
And past our finial
And ragged crests, to keep
Time’s ambient stood,
Propose horizons from
Their shadowy quarries; while,
In an unwandered wood,
Or under the indifferent foot,
Is let fall, let fall a fruit,
Through eternal leisures down,
For but time’s unravelling.
2.9k
Muscles clench like knots on rope
prior to any wintry water droplets
dripping on my scarecrow frame.
There's a moment of cautious pause,
my mind waivers the rest of me--
uncomfortable with the atypical developments
insisting through western culture's handbook
bathing is meant to be relaxing.
I agree.
So after a thoughtful inhale
we dive in.
oo!
The siberian shock of the frigid liquid landing
on warm, pale-rose flesh
slowly erodes with an exhale...
My mercurial movements
and conscious unravelling of the constricting sinews
offer a peppermint bliss-like salvation!
The chill fades,
water wanders down,
allowing my body to interact with the clear solution,
allowing myself to be and breathe with each cold moment
of wide-eyed cool-headed serenity.
Mar 29, 2015
Mar 29, 2015 at 12:54 PM UTC
you made my blood clot,
so slowly and gently,
coagulating beneath your faint touch.
on flaxen sheets of rough cotton
I watched your plants
rolling their limbs out your open window.
they sprawled themselves, unravelling,
yearning for the gentle kiss
of the suns rays.
an almost ****** photosynthesis.
and for you I would sprawl myself out too,
and with the same eagerness
absorb every scent of yours into my flesh,
and drink desperately from your soul
like a cacti in its first summer shower
since '89.
and your final gasp,
with me, but a sponge
for your every metaphoric suppuration,
and literal secretion.
and you were transfixed there,
spurting auras of sin and love.
a final burst of ecstasy,
you soon became my anticoagulant.
you seeped into my bloodstream,
reversing this gentle coagulation.
Oct 22, 2013
Oct 22, 2013 at 7:02 AM UTC
endearing words and suggestive eyes brightened the room / accenting conversations that flowed smoother than honey / souls spun / quickly approaching and nearly colliding / unravelling like two ribbons / one maroon / one ebony / until one day / ebony suddenly curled back into itself / maroon was suspended in air for years / as if steeped in time / but dense air weighed maroon down / so maroon descended / letting go / when ebony came back in its unraveled glory / maroon curled back to itself.
Apr 4, 2022
Apr 4, 2022 at 10:18 PM UTC
the waterfall pours from my eyes
pedals fall underneath the guise
stunting growth, lethargic dope
cogs and knots, perched atop
Frozen locks, offset and lost
denial of fact, unravelling fiction
dine in solitude, reset and listen
Feb 11, 2021
Feb 11, 2021 at 6:12 PM UTC
*Once Upon a Time
There was a little Wooden Spool of Yarn
Covered in Layers of Coats
Of Soft Protective Yarn
Protecting its insides
Everyone kept telling
The special Ball of Yarn
How pretty its layers were
How its yarn was prettier than
Any other color on the shelf
And if it fell from the shelf
Its pretty coats would protect it
Except one day it fell from the shelf
Hitting other shelves along the way
And the rest of ***** of Yarn spectating
Stared in disbelief
Because the coats of the Pretty Ball of Yarn
Weren't protecting the
It like they had anticipated
In fact
It had begun unravelling
Becoming Undone
It unwound and unwound
Across the concrete Floor
Yarn stretched like
Lines of a ruined and strewn apart coat
Until all that was left of it
Was a little wooden heart
At the center
The other Yarns of Wool
Stared in disbelief
How could this Yarn of Wool
Survive without his coats of Yarn
"He's broken"
They said
But slowly
Over days
His wooden heart began to grow
So strong that he didn't need a coat
He looked up and said
"This whole time I was wrapped in Cotton Wool
Layers of protection and defense
I couldn't touch the rest of the world
And now the excess is gone
All that is left is my heart
And it might be broken
Because I Broke from the Fall
But now I realize I didn't need
The capes and coats and excess
The wool wasn't me
What is me, is what remains
And now I can touch the rest of the universe
Because
"The heart that breaks open is the heart that can contain the universe" (Melton)
The world broke me open
And it hurt
But I don't want to go back
To being sealed shut from the universe
Even if it hurts at first
Its worth breaking to rebuild
So now I my heart is big enough
To contain the universe"*
~JLH
Mar 28, 2017
Mar 28, 2017 at 12:45 PM UTC
I saw you
As you stared at me
Two deers caught in each other headlights
As brief as a flash, blinked, and you’d miss it
I am only reminded of my heaviness when you are there
Standing – Floating – Watching
As ghostly as any ghost, then
Gone – Vanished – Nothing
I am alone, again, cursed to remain here
I tried to follow in your footsteps
Untangling, unknotting, unravelling
Myself from a generation of debt and duty
These twisted roots of familiar obligations
How did you escape such a similar situation?
I wasn’t born light, like you.
I was born heavy, brother.
I will have to earn my lightness.
Sometimes on rainy days
when the weighty pain becomes unmanageable
I find myself slipping into the tangible delusion
Of ascribing meaning to everything
That maybe you think of me as much as I think of you
That you see my pain and want to help
But it’s just too much for you right now
When you’re ready, you’ll come back to me
You’ll come back.
Sometimes the little lies we tell ourselves
Can be enough to get us through this life
But not tonight.
Dec 2, 2021
Dec 2, 2021 at 8:47 PM UTC
i remember that first night
how desperately you craved
to feel my lips against yours.
how worried you were when i refrained
from surrendering to your deep inhalations.
thoughts of uncertainty clouded your confidence
while your sense of comfort waned and ebbed
as my will held like a cliffside
against the ocean of your lust.
let me calm your worried mind now darling
it was not for lack of desire
that i held my lips pursed.
it was not detachment
that held my hands shy
of a passionate embrace.
i was lost in the shear comfort
of your presence.
your warm hands on my chest
felt as though they had been there
my whole life.
the weight of your leg across my hips,
so familiar that i was left confused by
the brevity of our acquaintance compared
to the depth i could see so clearly
in your glistening eyes.
it was in adoration for this precious moment that
i held myself satiated.
it was this same feeling that held me in fear
that our first kiss would not be the
electric explosion of beginnings
that we would hope to fuel our infatuation,
but that you would feel dissatisfied by the same ease
and placidity i felt.
i kissed you
in that way i felt i had for years and
with that practiced knowing hand
i pulled your lips in close.
they sang a story so old and meaningful
that i found a joy akin to returning home.
...
and since then
every moment shared,
every touch experienced,
every kiss given and
every kiss received
is a small unravelling of a truth that
i had long since forgotten:
that home is where the heart is.
...
and you have mine
Dec 9, 2013
Dec 9, 2013 at 5:21 PM UTC
Serenade of time / unravelling
That which we don’t possess /
Steers a passage
Through adolescent grief /
I travel his unshaven smile
Contours of desire lead me here /
I stay in his delicious deceit /
Mar 1, 2012
Mar 1, 2012 at 4:11 PM UTC
(i see) two scions dance in traffic: sun and moon,
sky and stars; God’s two heirs
dancing in traffic as if they weren’t demigods but
small maya birds - transfixed
mortals, fighting to keep away from the blinding
might their status affords them.
as His children their world and its light is for their taking,
of which they can feed - or not:
they go on instead like hungry wolves, next to I, rising
(sidelined, falling) flagging down jeeps
in the thick of the Vinzons Hall jeepney stop. They bark loud
and cheerily to keep idle; from unravelling
their wax-worn strings. They are birds guided by concrete routes,
those yearning to feel its bleakness
in each syllable creeping up their gold-and-marble throats:
the soft choke of exhaust smoke
and the rosiness of their gaunt in the face of all-knowing fate:
that of snatching from death
a world not theirs. They declare: “Perseus we are not, and
Janus we choose.” They shuttlling
commuters obscure and without fuss and without end
to and fro, where they come
they spit on the universe in baggy basketball shorts
Dec 4, 2016
Dec 4, 2016 at 10:42 AM UTC
I can feel her creeping back into my blood stream
The anger, she's unravelling again
The veins in my arm are pumping flames I thought I'd put out for good
But you, you've ignited them
Flicked your selfish lighter
I'm on fire
My chest constricting with your apathy
Suffocating me
And slowly
I shrink
Deplete
Revert back into that girl
Who could not control her affect
Running on a constant adrenaline high
Dear god I'm on fire and I'm praying for someone to put me out
-lf-
Sep 7, 2013
Sep 7, 2013 at 12:16 PM UTC
When it seems as though
The human coil is unravelling
And we have peaked
Our REM of creativity
And we seem awash
In half-baked positive negativity
And the whole world seems
To be drowning in self-induced sleep
While even the watchers
Seem to have both eyes closed...
Turn this thing around
And open bloodshot eyes.
Stop your own unravelling
And delve deeper into creativity.
Strengthen the bonds
Of your own exclusive and non-exclusive spheres.
Allow your peaceful world to dawn
Even though the outside world drowns
In its own exclusive and non-exclusive pool of fears.
Jan 24, 2017
Jan 24, 2017 at 1:57 PM UTC
*White.
Female.
Middle Class.
Heterosexual.
Agnostic.
Libertarian.*
Yeah.
That's me.
That's that first layer,
thin as the paper you could
read it on.
Just a
Jane Doe,
a nameless, faceless
demographic.
But peeling back the layers,
ripping through page on page of a complicated novel,
digging
down
into
a
bottomless
hole
to
China,
unravelling
the intricate
web of
stereotypestruthsliesassumptionsprejudice
and
there you will find
me,
a colorless genderless asexual
spirit whose frame
is crafted and molded
not with how the world
chooses to see me and
who "they" deem me to be;
no.
A guy that didn't know me well
once told me that I
spoke more urban than he
expected,
and I couldn't help but wonder why
someone from an urban area
couldn't speak like they were
from a city,
like somehow what he saw in my
whitefemaleheterosexualmiddleclassagnosticlibertarian
prologue forbade me
from speaking in colloquials and
abbreviations.
Oh, I apologize,
I laughed later to my friend,
**law students are supposed to speak
with an ostentatious vocabulary and
an heir of
(superfluous) arrogance.**
I am rarely a prototype
of what it means to be
White,
of what it means to be
female;
middle-class or not,
my parents insisted at age 8
that I begin to understand
the value of a dollar;
my sexuality indicates little
about my level of attraction
to the world around me;
agnostic is really just a term
I put because I'm still trying to
figure out whether I really
believe everything I was forced to
learn at Catholic school;
and isn't Libertarian just a fancy
word for I don't want to
choose liberal or conservative?
It's insulting to
ingest how much is
insinuated about
my depth in
the shallowest of pools.
My cheeks burn hot
with frustration as I
try to balance on a beam
cracking underneath the weight of
a world that is constantly begging me
to go back in the neatly
wrapped package from which
the world would prefer I
came.
I'm not someone
you can put in a *******
box and
label;
you can't contain my
shine behind
blackout blinds;
I will burst out of your bubble
and break your glass ceilings;
I will scream at the top of
my lungs in a soundproof room
until you HEAR me.
I'm not meant to be judged
by my cover,
and neither are you.
We are meant to be read.
Mar 11, 2015
Mar 11, 2015 at 10:51 PM UTC
conceited and overconfident of knowledge, but, poorly informed and immature
embodying the definition, I lie in bed, quiet, thinking,
face down, shirtless, in a pair of cheap purple *******
breathing in a smell--cotton sheets, sweat, and coconut
I am not nothing, not miserable, but not happy
I am not frightened or bewildered by anything
I am an elder amongst the young
I'm a youngster still, to everyone.
all trash talk,
not new news.
I just sort of quietly revel in the experiences
unravelling above me in a floating memory
adding up my mistakes,
until all pressed into me
+ that doing the right thing hurts, sometimes,
+ people are going to do things that you can't
and still that's okay, but don't get discouraged
if you work hard and get nothing out, that just
means something, that if you like it, fight for it
I don't know.
I also learned this year not to trust the bad liars,
that sometimes people are bland, but even still,
it doesn't mean death, and it's really going fine.
I learned this is as smart as I'm going to get,
so maybe I should try a little harder with it.
turning on my back, I flick an imaginary cigarette,
I put on a little blush + a long-sleeved black shirt
then I did what I was supposed to, maybe for me.
May 23, 2013
May 23, 2013 at 8:44 PM UTC
soft larch needles I sniff wish thin dangling larch twigs hold
raindrops christ & pagan wrapped to tinsel autumn light
has projected Borrowdale’s matter a work crafts growth I
peer at a twig’s knuckles a needle’s green edge a tiny globe
dissolving landscape Borrowdale is a mass of details full
a vastness of minuscule high resolution beauty immense
numbers of bits of leaf-frames pebbles daddylongleg claws
for an instant I spread let a moment explode as I climb
through woods by crags every detail of me follicle bone-cell
grease shatters or slicks amongst Borrowdale’s infinite
tiny details one of my gasps stretches wetly with the beck
others entwine with white fibres of gills unravelling gravity
the calcium atoms of my teeth jumble along drystone walls
moss green-gleaming my meal of Herdwick meat passes
through my gut whilst Borrowdale’s details digest my soul
Feb 8, 2012
Feb 8, 2012 at 8:20 AM UTC
its a gas station on a long desert road apparitions of wavy heat (steam from boiling water) emanating from the pavement converging with the skyline breaking the horizon – the ramblers in the distance
they lap at the *** of disparity (the savior for now) this road this pump – invisible if not the saving grace of the traveler
clinging to the dethreading strings of hope, unravelling ball of yarn of blind faith and compassion that if the doors closed there would be an awakening within memories dreams visions – but its invisible, an aura a transparent silhouette – no marks no chips in the fabric of this world, no cause, no direction, just there.
lets be direct I’m the gas station – a seed of a dandelion swimming in a sea of concrete waiting for the hardening world to enclose me into a capsule a capsule run by cogs, I’m one of the cogs, but when the sprocket snaps, the machine goes on – an ironic metaphor a poorly written one (waiting for the sprocket to snap) to think I’m the only ironic metaphor is arrogant – lest i find the other- or the other finds me.
May 27, 2013
May 27, 2013 at 3:17 AM UTC
The Moon searches out the night
During the day sits in the background
Probably knitting a scarf of clouds
Pick one drop one, Cirrus follow by Cumulus
Allowing the Sun it’s all day brilliance
At night trumping all that coloured time
With a soft monochrome thrill
Wrapped in its unravelling grey black scarf
Bit of a night owl our Moon
Throws quite a few shapes
During it’s month
Revealing a little Edwardian anklet
And then to tantalise
Following with its full scandalous magnificence
A bit of a flirt our lovely Moon.
Our Moon has many beautiful scarfs
Holding hands and touch shoulders scarf
Or soft hand on the cheek while lips meet scarf
Hide under here together and pretend we are alone scarf
Let’s do something mad and feed the ducks at night scarf
And that warm promise don’t break my heart scarf
Bit of a romantic our lunatic moon.
Jun 6, 2017
Jun 6, 2017 at 2:30 AM UTC
A cold touch, lingering, searching
with every tiptoed meeting
A cold tongue lingers, searches
The warm caress of brown-paper packages-
After us, unravelling
The warm caress of gift giving
Breathy open mouthed kissing
In each stolen evening
Breathy, open mouthed, we finish
Dec 5, 2015
Dec 5, 2015 at 12:10 AM UTC
Me as I am
And you, in part
Become ‘we’ in this process.
A long conversation that’s intimate, yet paradoxically almost one-sided with respect to content.
But I’m not alone in it;
You are here, focussed and listening.
I wanted to write prose about this business, but its shape was a poem.
Between these lines is where the essence of the meaning lies
A space where we sense the sense of it
Our conversation is long indeed and many stories have been told
Some have been slow to unravel and are unravelling still
Some intertwine in complex patterns
And others are shaped into vivid dreams
We ride on them and ahead see fate laid out like a corpse
Unwinding the shroud we face Death
And all the while stare wide-eyed and white faced at our doom and our destiny
It’s here you whisper courage and strength into my ear.
This is the journey of a lifetime
Who leads and who follows I know not
Only the first hesitant step reveals the nature of the second, all else is obscured
Magical and mysterious, harsh yet peppered with laughter
The treasure found along the way is in the companionship of our shared experience
And in me finding the part of myself that I had thought lost
On reflection I needed to have a sense of where I’d been and where I am going
Yet I’m still here on the journey
And can’t see where it leads
As if this were ever possible!
But what I notice is that I need ask fewer questions
And perhaps that’s an answer of sorts.
Dec 10, 2012
Dec 10, 2012 at 1:17 PM UTC