"vacillating" poems
Moored to the same ring:
The hour, the darkness and I,
Our compasses hooded like falcons.
Now the memory of you comes aching in
With a wash of broken bits which never left port
In which once we planned voyages,
They come knocking like hearts asking:
What departures on this tide?
Breath of land, warm breath,
You tighten the cold around the navel,
Though all shores but the first have been foreign,
And the first was not home until left behind.
Our choice is ours but we have not made it,
Containing as it does, our destination
Circled with loss as with coral, and
A destination only until attained.
I have left you my hope to remember me by,
Though now there is little resemblance.
At this moment I could believe in no change,
The mast perpetually
Vacillating between the same constellations,
The night never withdrawing its dark virtue
>From the harbor shaped as a heart,
The sea pulsing as a heart,
The sky vaulted as a heart,
Where I know the light will shatter like a cry
Above a discovery:
"Emptiness.
Emptiness! Look!"
Look. This is the morning.
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1599
Though the great Waters sleep,
That they are still the Deep,
We cannot doubt—
No vacillating God
Ignited this Abode
To put it out—
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915
Faith—is the Pierless Bridge
Supporting what We see
Unto the Scene that We do not—
Too slender for the eye
It bears the Soul as bold
As it were rocked in Steel
With Arms of Steel at either side—
It joins—behind the Veil
To what, could We presume
The Bridge would cease to be
To Our far, vacillating Feet
A first Necessity.
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Defying the consensus of complacency,
And the enantiomorphic political practicality,
Candidates embrace their vacillating indexicality.
Spouting thrift store self reliance sapientiality,
Telling lores of cultural compatibility.
Hope filled promises of economic suitability,
Aligned with institutional feasibility.
Packaged in over-inclusive catchall empty signifiers
Strewn across all media screens, communal utilitarian plan flyers.
Requesting no need for responsiveness,
For a vote no longer dictates precedence,
In the age of social media endemic presence relevance.
PFL
Jul 3, 2016
Jul 3, 2016 at 3:40 AM UTC
One, two, three, two, five, seven
Rhythmless feet clad in branded shoes
Adventurous, brazen fingers strolling on wide, voluptuous stalks
Towering sunflowers with wide, voluptuous stalks
Pristine dandelions enticing pairs of hands
Pristine dandelions enticing my pair of hands
And I give in, and I willingly give in
Summer petals weaken the gullible heart
The summer petals abandon the gullible heart
One, two, three, two, five, seven
Rhythmless feet now bare
Adventurous, brazen fingers now dormant
One, two, four, six, eight, ten
Rhythmless feet clad in cheap shoes
Curious fingers strolling on wide, voluptuous stalks
Towering white daisies with wide, voluptuous stalks
Pristine dandelions spring once more
Pristine dandelions enticing my pair of hands
And I give in, yet again I give in
Winter petals capture the derelict heart
The winter petals emulate mirrors after caressing the ramshackle heart
One, two, four, six, eight, ten
Rhythmless feet once again bare, now calloused
Curious fingers now cautious
One, two, two, two, two, two
Rhythmless feet hesitating to be covered
Vacillating fingers mapping the wide, voluptuous stalks
Pristine dandelions surface once more
Pristine dandelions displaying subtle coquetry
And I stall, for heaven's sake, I stall
Fall petals demonstrate its desire to the heart
The fall petals fall but the bitter heart hangs on a silk thread
One, two, two, two, two, two
Rhythmless feet discovers a rhythm
A rhythm so unpleasant, so abhorrent
Vacillating fingers now curl
Curl into the palm in resistance
May 24, 2016
May 24, 2016 at 11:39 AM UTC
stand(ing) here alone in the dark
like a head of tack pirouetting away
to no music - only acrid scruple
of this being with and not being with,
one is always alone.
space occupies the potteries in
the garden as a steady arm of light
stills in its mouth, a flowering dark.
it is only 3 o'clock in the morning
and the heat clambers the wall of
the vacuously atrabilious moment
of just plainly existing. the slender
harlequin of moon, like an old lover
having its own way with me, a child's
yelp coming home — the hermetic
air crushing the light, slivering it
revealing all the ensconced phantasms
too commonplace like a fork in the road
that i know, or the wayward metropolitan
that teems with a concatenation of roads
and gutters bilious with the squall of day.
a figure moves entering a warm miasma,
receiving the star of aloneness,
vacillating between
place and placelessness
telling this originary of repossessing
the moon with a hand in my hand,
pressing a question of where
have you been all the raging while.
Oct 8, 2015
Oct 8, 2015 at 3:52 PM UTC
I don't know why I write poetry
all I know is that writing poetry makes me rich
enjoying -- not possessing
the ever-expanding universe
without fear of inflation
in the sky --
white clouds
singing larks
whispering wind
the tender moon and twinkling stars
on the ground--
mountains hills plains gullies
lush green red brown yellow
oceans streams lakes ponds
splashing gurgling burbling
the blooming flowers
the vacillating leaves
children's innocent laughter
cats dogs chickens ducks birds
jumping chasing croaking singing
all are parts of my life's fortune
of course, there too are
ferocious dark clouds
harrying eagles
howling storms
withering flowers
roaring guns
and piercing screams
the shadows that lend dimension
to poetry and life
In fact, I don't write poetry
poetry writes me
Jun 17, 2017
Jun 17, 2017 at 3:51 PM UTC
I want to be a sparrow
Not a worry in the world
Just a song to sing
A song of vacillating notes
That comes as natural to me
As breathing
I want to be a sparrow
But instead I'm a crow
Cawing calling to the night
Not a beautiful song with stacatto notes
No music for the soul
But a warning
I am a crow
I am not beautiful
I am not lovely
I am not something lovers write about
Only mythology
A stigma surrounding
A mystery
When I long to be understood
I want to be a sparrow
Because people understand them
A dove, a pigeon
A bird of paradise
An eagle, a hawk
A falcon
But I'm a crow
Misunderstood
Feb 27, 2016
Feb 27, 2016 at 1:42 AM UTC
One-sidedly decided arrows,
vacillating ellipses;
equilaterally considered triangles,
biased Isosceles;
worlds, whorls, rectangled
squares, afflicted rhombuses;
A self-destructing nova.
The night opens up,
a book of wonders across the sky,
shining in the stars; broken moon;
Wading across ancient expanse.
Flashes of illumination:
lighted mountain bush,
cross rising on the eastern sky;
One look at the visage,
blooming out of this figure
wrapped creeper-like around faint
sight, flower emerging in silver light
out of the shadows: bubbles,
rolling, nonagular, collapsing;
Oh pointless ratiocination!
Nov 5, 2013
Nov 5, 2013 at 1:34 PM UTC
There she is
reflected in this tiny droplet,
I see her laughter her pain
Her struggles and joy
Crisp and flawless like her love.
I am in there as well
The dreams dashed
The dreams unfulfilled
The future waiting to unfurl.
A teardrop is a marvelous thing
Like a bird’s eye
The future and the past
In clear view
Nothing obscured
Nothing hidden to protect the innocent
Or the sensitive
Or those trying to forget.
Sharply I see her good
Embracing her imperfections.
What is the formula one employs
To solve the mystery of love?
My rational mind is left wanting
Wavering and vacillating between
Apples and oranges
But in this teardrop
All is made clear
The fog and fissures
Are wiped clean and caulked,
Respectively.
The world I need and the world
My heart desires
Reflects with blinding light
With precise clarity.
From this crystal half dome
My blurred doubts are brought
Into focus
My entire world resides there
In that one tear of joy.
Aug 10, 2014
Aug 10, 2014 at 2:54 PM UTC
~
the language of love,
it has no equivalence,
we speak what we hope,
we seek what we love;
vacillating? perhaps,
but there is no ambivalence.
lovers whisper, lovers shout;
alternating between holding it in,
or getting the words out.
whether sweet words of friendship,
or letting the heart go,
each tells a tale, a heartbeat,
one the spirit only knows.
is it the “shemomedjamo” of Georgia,
the “overindulgence that
cannot stop this appetite;”
or “lagom” of the Swedes,
who speak of moderation?
where what i have and what i see,
is perfect, just right!
the words, “koi no yokan,”
from the culture of the east,
Japanese speak of the instant of knowing
a love that’s “meant to be.”
there is “mamihlapinatapai,”
used by those at the tip,
of Tierra del Fuego’s windswept cliffs,
a lover’s wish they can’t set free;
further north Brazilians speak,
of “cafune,” the sweet tugging
at her long and flowing hair;
a love that reaches,
strokes, so tenderly.
the Thai use “greng-jai,”
for love that defers...
and to sacrifice refers;
the French have “retrouvailles,”
a love that sparks rediscovery,
where distance knows no separation;
“onsra,” is a love
soon to be a thing of the past;
used in Burma and India when spoken of
a love that cannot last.
the “saudade,” of the Portuguese,
of love that can no longer be,
though it may have been consuming,
is now but bittersweet.
and then... there is Arabic’s “tuqburni,”
a love that says so gently
“without you i am dying!”
each, it has no English equivalent
yet somehow we manage...
we find our true love,
in relationships, in marriage,
for love is a catholic language;
even when there are no words,
where touch, where tender looks,
translations of the unheard thoughts;
where pillows hold the notes of longing,
empty bars and stanzas filled;
oh love, oh boundless one,
under steeples pledge your troth,
to death’s door you take your oath,
to forever sing your universal song!
May 8, 2014
May 8, 2014 at 1:28 AM UTC
Unseen and scene,
Of both composed;
these aery heavens,
this solid globe.
Will roused my Sire’s
ghost from the grave.
Will would, for
that’s the part
he played.
What is Will’s will
I next should say?
Will I best Laertes
with my foil today?
Will the villain, Claudius,
be undone
by his victim’s
vacillating son?
What is Will’s will
regarding Mum?
Unseen and scene,
Of both composed;
these Aery heavens
this solid globe.
Now I lay dying,
and Fortenbras comes.
Let my tale be told
in every tongue.
“The rest is silence”-
Thy will be done.
Jun 4, 2012
Jun 4, 2012 at 7:27 AM UTC
I yearned for peace,
To silence the chaos of my mind.
Craved a quiet solace
Sought to close my heart
Until Fate wove
Our bonded twine.
Two wayward souls
On separate paths—
“Coincidentally” align.
This perfect pairing,
Our missing piece
A testament to
Divine Design.
We navigate this expanse
Unknown
For which only the boldest
Are inclined,
Of life’s tumultuous spectrum—
Erratic fluctuations, vacillating
From arduous to Sublime.
It takes an acute endurance,
Coupled with two spirits
In their prime
To overcome insurmountable
Obstacles
Which so often bend
The Strongest
Of
Stalwart
Spines.
And yet our love
Transcends all trials
And to you Alone,
I resign…
To the man who mends
My heart
I am yours, and you
Are Mine.
I vow to cherish you
Until my last breath,
Until the fabric of
Time
Unwinds.
To my Saving Grace,
My Singular Proclivity—
My
Everlasting
Valentine.
Feb 17, 2022
Feb 17, 2022 at 3:44 AM UTC
Many are prisoners
Of their own contradictions
Vacillating between
The real and unreal
Finally the masks
Wear off
Thus revealing
The real heart
Sitting on
The pinnacle
Of ego
Smiling
Yet, frowning within
Through the lens
Of faulty perspectives
Life becomes
A nightmare
May 8, 2015
May 8, 2015 at 9:10 AM UTC
she was hopping hopscotch with the children in the sunset lawn,
At the dusk her pellucid eyes would glare the intense orange..
She was hopping from one rectangle to another as he was peering love through his eyes,
The sunset veils her shadow:
Her hair vacillating on her chin and his eyes blink on her subtle smile,
She sprawled her legs at the end of the box that is drawn on the land,
She sees the rested stone through the space of her legs,
And her immediate turnabout titillated him,
horripilations tickled his flesh,
Sprawling,spanning and love placating:
Thus Susurrus smile spake to him,
She Shouted a few flying syllables as she picks the stone in the celestial joy,
Subtle zephyr billowing on her confluenced lips,
The evening zephyr as cold as her breath,
He saw her only once,but he remembers every subtle detail infinitesimally..
He only saw her once,but he couldn't forget the voice of her eyes forever...
Oct 19, 2014
Oct 19, 2014 at 1:00 PM UTC
The country just outside the city, a good place for me to hide
Swallowing Xanax with 40oz's, swallowing my pride
To all those people taking it in stride
How bitterly I loathe thee
Your adjunct faith sickens me
In abject jealousy
Truly yours
Here I sit crushed like the cans underneath me
Smashed like the empty bottles I threw from 10th floor windows
If you throw it hard enough you can hear it crash into the river below
The sound of settling, sinking cement laden feet
Food for fish to grow
To be cast over so easily, as these glass encased temporary lies
Were it that I was not such a coward
All shallow cuts and shallow gestures
Washing down empty overdoses in vain vacillating hope
For a new death
Aug 8, 2014
Aug 8, 2014 at 4:28 PM UTC
Holding out hope
Like a hand reaching through time
Holding space
Providing the arrows that pierce my heart
Thinking of you
Longing for you
Vacillating
Unable to ever truly close the door on our connection
I guess I did it to myself
Giving love to someone who never deserved me
Trusting what I felt instead of what I saw
Allowing you to occupy the space without ever filling it
Choosing to respect what felt stronger than anything I’ve ever known
I guess I did it to myself
Fooling
Blinding
Reaching
You left the room
Without so much as an "I’m grateful that you’re here"
Without so much as an "I love you too"
Without so much as a thread of hope
I guess I did it to myself
Provided the bow and quiver
Placed it steadfastly and aimed it straight for the heart
I guess I did it to myself, opened myself up for disappointment
You left the conversation without so much as a "Seeing you sent my heart soaring and my mind racing"
All of the timelines between us collapsed and there we were face to face
She standing in her truth and he still stuck in a lie
Fearful that if his heart ever stood for itself, the facade would crumble and shatter at his feet
And he would find himself naked with only one truth they know: love
I guess I did it to myself, allowing love to pass through me for you
Living in parallel universes with you
Because you asked me to
I guess I did it to myself, showing up in the now and wanting you to hold me the way I hold you
I’m exhausted
Saddened by you and for what could be
I kick boulders not rocks
Boulders
Boulders
Boulders
Boulders into pebbles until I find peace with you and skip trace them across the frequencies until they lay at your feet, constant reminders of the path you choose between us
Pebbles of love, sun, wine, hammocks, song, black and white, solitude together, heartbreak, silence, grey check marks, music, promises unkept, Irish goodbyes and outright lies
I will find peace with you in the love of another man’s arms until there is no peace because he is not you
Why did we ever have to meet?
What wrong thing in my existence did I ever do to deserve you?
I guess I did it to myself, believing in you, in love, in siempre
Pierced with the fiercest of arrows
I kick boulders not rocks
Boulders
Boulders
Boulders
Boulders into pebbles until I find peace with you and skip trace them across the frequencies until they lay at your feet, constant reminders of the path you choose between us
I’m sick of seeing the green guy, something needs to change. Show me love.
Oct 30, 2023
Oct 30, 2023 at 9:43 AM UTC
I have sticky skin
it's too humid outside and
looking through the bathroom mirror
into myself I think my
veins are sticky too
and maybe the blood in them
is too
I'm not sure
does moving blood make
your heart rate faster
all you people
u r losing it mummies frick the mummies
spinning in circles in Beatles boots
C I
S R
E L C
of throbbing pulses
brand new birthmarks on
necks of people
why so empty
vacillating back and forth like miniature
seconds seconds of time
time like
breath marks in a piece of music
BREATHE beFore YoU dIe and it is over
the 'it' has yet to find a definition
this is a rhetorical question
why did you leave?
for lacy clothes under cotton
pants bought somewhere on the beach
in MuMbAi covering
a gentle sloping navel
u ppl
feeling nothing
like a rubber band snapped
on a leg covered in jeans
snapping a rubber band against my wrist
until it is red
feeling things
lips are stained with coffee
and my teeth taste sour
of caffeine
this is the song of the
Lost oNe
my arteries burn less now and
breathing without
laying backwards on the carpet
comes easily
lOsT OnE hasn't changed
but I
have
Sep 1, 2015
Sep 1, 2015 at 11:09 PM UTC
Charcoal, arbiter:
its equivocal
moral rectitude etches
the tableau off the dawn,
Swans too smudge the landscape.
The muses long gone ,
ghosts sit in red houses
once resplendent,
contemplate in whispers yet,
forever decisive in vacillation
their hands delineate,
the autumnal canopy
a symphony of coming despair.
Jun 23, 2012
Jun 23, 2012 at 2:14 PM UTC
Hope doesn't always float.
Sometimes it drowns you instead.
I feel like ****
The fuck-I-woke-up-again kind of **** feeling.
I despise people who throw these kinds of feelings
around like they are nothing.
I grew up in where my feelings never mattered.
It ******
Feelings were twisted to achieve what he wanted.
And all that really ******
So I don't write these things without carefully
considering how I really feel.
But with all that being said,
because I know how bad it hurts
to remain on the living end,
I feel stuck with no options.
And little hope.
What if this is all there is for me?
This vacillating between flat and the place I'm in now.
It hurts almost as deeply as the **** done to me
that got me here in the first place.
When I wake up and it's disappointing
I know I'm not on the right track.
But when I wake up, I go through the motions
while thinking the whole time
how everyone would be better off without me
that's when I know there is no faking my way out of this pit.
This morning I woke up a mess and as the day progressed so did the mess
I didn't feel safe alone and that scared the **** out of me.
All of my typical reasons for not hurting myself were not working
and that's when I knew I had to say something.
I called DT and made the other appropriate phone calls.
I promised to be safe.
And because I keep my promises I will do just that
be safe.
But what will "safe" cost me? More disappointment... even more pain... devastated hope... an ever deepening loathe of my brokenness?
Or the worst; revealing just how weak I really am?
I hate this and how unjust it feels.
If someone lives through abuse isn't that enough?
That is the cruelest joke.
I'm so scared that this is as good as it gets. I can tell myself to keep going. To keep fighting. To hope. But I also have this nagging feeling that the joke is ultimately on me and I suddenly find myself very, very tired. Sometimes all the self pep talks in the world
aren't enough to make this spinning descent stop.
Just a huge joke that stupid, miserable people
hold on to in an attempt to feel better.
What if that's all hope is?
What then?
Aug 11, 2014
Aug 11, 2014 at 6:20 PM UTC
Alone in a cottage a family are trembling,
Shaking and vacillating in fear,
They hear the heavy footsteps marching,
And the gunshots ring in their ears,
They peer through the curtains to view,
The hooded white robes setting their stomachs churning,
And the fires of hell flicker even closer,
How fearsome it is when the crosses are burning.
Aug 31, 2012
Aug 31, 2012 at 7:52 PM UTC
I drank my poison quietly in the recesses of reality
Spinning ever spiritedly
Into
The solemn silence of my sanctuary
We spent the night dissolved in words: the hours were only rain drops
Pounding ever persistently
Against
The rip tide of the clock’s cruel countdown
I braved the path of honesty and the road of mischief in my turn
Vacillating ever vividly
Between
The intersection of fragile concepts defining good and evil
Jan 24, 2013
Jan 24, 2013 at 9:46 PM UTC
A weak and vacillating man,
one vain and narcissistic ,
once drew a line upon the sand
with consequences cataclysmic.
Now some will say
the line’s been crossed,
while others say not yet.
Intervening in a civil war
won’t end without regret.
Relentlessly his minions beat
the drums and call for war.
Propagandists lionize
Their would be king once more.
In Austria, Franz Ferdinand
is stirring in his crypt.
Entangling alliances-
It seems I’ve read this script.
Now if the lights go out again
as they have dimmed before
We will not see them lit again
If we blunder into war.
Aug 31, 2013
Aug 31, 2013 at 9:16 AM UTC
A retrospect fit
Modern dilemma
Unanswered questions
A disconnect
With yesterday and today
In between life happens
Vacillating mind
Heart’s left behind
Trying to gather
All the memories
Do not answer the puzzle
Scattered pieces
Unfulfilled spaces
A retrospect life
Soul lives for today
With many questions
Hovering in the mind
May 23, 2015
May 23, 2015 at 8:07 AM UTC