"unshadowed" poems
I said fate plays a game without a score,
and who needs fish if you've got caviar?
The triumph of the Gothic style would come to pass
and turn you on--no need for coke, or grass.
I sit by the window. Outside, an aspen.
When I loved, I loved deeply. It wasn't often.
I said the forest's only part of a tree.
Who needs the whole girl if you've got her knee?
Sick of the dust raised by the modern era,
the Russian eye would rest on an Estonian spire.
I sit by the window. The dishes are done.
I was happy here. But I won't be again.
I wrote: The bulb looks at the flower in fear,
and love, as an act, lacks a verb; the zer-
o Euclid thought the vanishing point became
wasn't math--it was the nothingness of Time.
I sit by the window. And while I sit
my youth comes back. Sometimes I'd smile. Or spit.
I said that the leaf may destory the bud;
what's fertile falls in fallow soil--a dud;
that on the flat field, the unshadowed plain
nature spills the seeds of trees in vain.
I sit by the window. Hands lock my knees.
My heavy shadow's my squat company.
My song was out of tune, my voice was cracked,
but at least no chorus can ever sing it back.
That talk like this reaps no reward bewilders
no one--no one's legs rest on my sholders.
I sit by the window in the dark. Like an express,
the waves behind the wavelike curtain crash.
A loyal subject of these second-rate years,
I proudly admit that my finest ideas
are second-rate, and may the future take them
as trophies of my struggle against suffocation.
I sit in the dark. And it would be hard to figure out
which is worse; the dark inside, or the darkness out.
Anonymous Submission
Joseph Brodsky
Jan 24, 2013
Jan 24, 2013 at 6:56 PM UTC
in Portugal austerity is biting...
good luck everybody.
Sat around the crowded table
Wrangling chair legs and buttering
Conversations about banalities whilst
Being bathed by full cool moonlight
Is of course a fair enough sweet delight.
Yet there is smoke in the air!
Then one by one my souls depart;
Stunning my heart yet keeping me close
Causing fears to become unshadowed.
As somehow, I must open my eyes to find
There is always a child quite near.
Oh how do I keep it fed?
Mar 5, 2012
Mar 5, 2012 at 12:56 PM UTC
Right now you're only a photo, and a distant voice:
But I have your wall's pattern
Committed to long term memory;
I'm sure I will see it in my dreams sometimes.
But you are much larger than all of that;
Than tiles and towels in a bowl.
In your sphere of influence,
My little world quakes.
Under the coming of such imminence
I feel the forward air rushing up
Just ahead of the subway's arrival
On it's familiar path, to the welcoming arms of the station.
I can feel the doors as they swish open,
And a million thoughts starting to fly in and out
Like so many frantic travelers
Going anywhere on a nameless, fragrant summer's day.
Behind it all is the transfiguration
Of a pair of eyes, that I seem to know best
From the inside out, from somewhere unshadowed,
Where time does not need to count on it's fingers.
And already I know that it is not the words
That I will get the chance to say to you,
That will haunt me; but all the thousands of words
That we will never say-
So that they will hang open-mouthed,
There in the stagnant stillness, where nothing moves,
And where nothing has its being any more
When those doors have closed forever.
Mar 16, 2010
Mar 16, 2010 at 1:08 PM UTC
Collab with JP
Unshadowed trees offer me no protection
from what I am,
From what I was.
I'm blinded but still trying to see
Meanings in what's painted by the breeze
Tired branches depicting imperfection
Framing Life-drained mildew-stained leaves
Roots still bleeding way too far
Sketching something alive only in memories
In some way the shadows are returning,
I'm feeling the zephyr once again.
These leaves are almost green.
Once they were but now is what's been
I can only recreate by burning
Smelling like a soul that's spent
Only smoke and destruction seen
Gloomy canvas of a life at end
Let me close my eyes
Let me fall away, drifting.
Think all this is almost concluded.
Maybe I'm just deluded?
Let me scribble my last goodbye
And leave as part of this imaging
Where melancholy is favoured
And happiness secluded
Aug 15, 2014
Aug 15, 2014 at 11:13 AM UTC
Magic breathes life in our hearts
Destiny resides in our souls
Our path now shimmers unshadowed by the night
With one embrace partnered by a tender kiss, the bounds
of time and distance crumble through fingers like drifting
grains of sand
Dream time is the place where I am alive
Green eyes ripple into lipid pools where miracles draw me
to your heart
I am free to swim by your side until the sun sets and
rises with you again
Nov 26, 2017
Nov 26, 2017 at 8:01 PM UTC
Until no end,
where there is more unshadowed
Rest can be measurable
Of pierced veils unhallowed.
May 9, 2018
May 9, 2018 at 2:17 PM UTC
The Dead poet---lord alfred douglas
I dreamed of him last night,I saw his face
All radiant and unshadowed of distress,
And as of old, in music measureless,
Heard his golden voice and marked him trace
Under the common thing the hidden grace, a
And conjure wonder out of emptiness,
And all the world was an enchanted place.
And then methought outside a locked gate
I mourned the loss of unrecord words,
Forgotten tales and mysteries half said,
wonders that might have been articulate,
And so I woke and knew that he was dead.
Aug 30, 2015
Aug 30, 2015 at 6:24 PM UTC
the man with his hammer had sat in the theater
and gazed upon gazers whose eyes were transfixed
he hammered the heads of the headless thespians
and went to break streetlights trapped in the moonbeam
i have zeus's skin saved somewhere but i lost it,
whose eyes were gazing on moonbeams unshadowed
by nobody's thunder with water unfiltered
mineral-laden and godless surprise
i think it might be lodged behind my dresser
hooked to the outlet and sapping out lightning
the hammer of nobody's head is a streetlight
the thespians hammered their theaters full.
Jun 9, 2018
Jun 9, 2018 at 12:12 AM UTC
Ten miles of white air: mentholated space
ignited by the sun. The pea-soup fog
becomes a crystal mist, reveals earth's face
unshadowed, though the birds we catalogue
are silhouettes and we are blackened sticks
with muddy boots, like lumps of coal on snow.
Enormous soul, or tiny? Take your pick.
I had to go behind a bush you know,
and saw the winter grasses curling, gray,
like frozen fireworks waiting just for me
to witness their patterned, subtle display.
I pish a bit but no birds do I see.
I'm happy anyway. I've seen the earth
and know that every moment is its birth.
Sep 2, 2016
Sep 2, 2016 at 8:37 AM UTC
Cracked skulls lie shattered upon intact glass
Battered yet still an unshadowed attempt at life holds true
Silica outlines shine like pearls they strived to be
They'll make their best efforts to thrive unlike me
I am the dead man on a cloud of see-through lies
All my previous lives, cracked skulls
It's time to try
It's not yet time to die
Again
Apr 6, 2017
Apr 6, 2017 at 9:48 PM UTC
I'm a shard of glass
Splintered in to everyone's lives
Once I implode
Once depression swallows me whole
My mind goes blank
I feel nothing but emptiness
And acts of self harm
swarm inside my heart
When will I feel like I'm enough
When will it all cease to exist
When can I feel unshadowed
by this darkness
Words are what truly saved me
Despite all the harmful acts
I'd put upon myself
Written words became my voice
I couldn't vocalize
Words broke me down
And then recreated me
I will continue
to live and breathe words
May 1, 2017
May 1, 2017 at 10:38 AM UTC