"venetian" poems
When the first rays of the sun is cast on you through the venetian blinds
Your hair, a golden hue, in curls they tumble and fall on to your sides.
Your skin, a tanned wonder, Aphrodite will envy with her immortal soul
And your wild and untamed spirit, through your eyes, even Artemis will fall.
Your voice is like honey and works magic to the heart and mind
As you sit there, by the window and sing till the heavens will open and the gods descend down.
May 11, 2014
May 11, 2014 at 8:21 AM UTC
Flora and Fauna, the sisters of Season
Of Spring and of Summer
Allow now our drummer
To drum out the beat
For the feet of the sisters
To glide and to creep
Like the encroaching sleep
Which may perch on your shoulder if we cannot keep you awake
And on the edge of your seat, sir.
Now the former, sweet Flora, will finger the flute
While the other continues to glide and to slide
Like a sequined Venetian harlequin bride;
And now Fauna will mimic the movements of bird and of beast
As she graces the work of our landscape artiste
And all is completely unfeasible
Completely lacks reason
We guarantee.
Presently
In the eye of the beholder
Sweet Flora seemingly draws from the aether a lyre
And with flourishing fingers she plucks from the heavens
A song of the seasons, a pagan ode to Pan!
Behold! No aid of hoops, no strings
The vestal-virgin-harlot sisters sing
Of beautiful Persephone
And with unseen damselfly wings
Ascend from mediocrity
All melody forgotten
All the drums create cacophony
And you will find serenity in chaotic monotony
Now let this climaxing crescendo banish all your sorrowing!
No more that light; no more that sacred realm
Life’s door was dappled gloam; now all is black.
A man of wax with saintly, hollow eyes
Devoid of sin, devoid of love and light
That golden room is lost – you can’t turn back.
Now love has lost its lustre - lust lost joy
And coy eyes turn to watch the empty man
Struck by eternal beauty, and condemned
To haunt the broken world of mortal men;
And shrilling wind caresses empty hand.
Jul 2, 2012
Jul 2, 2012 at 12:01 PM UTC
I could run away to you, world.
drink in your every scent, the dust
the hurt.
backpedal through Venetian streets,
high-five Buddhist monks,
paddle softly through the Dead Sea,
eat Vietnamese fish with blind children,
pound out piles of dough in back-alley German bakeries,
kiss the single root of an aspen tree
and post it all online.
grinning like a devil, silently screaming
*my life is better than yours
my life is better than yours*
Nov 25, 2013
Nov 25, 2013 at 12:14 PM UTC
Favorite word: “nymphet”, but no!
Halcyon, a kind of drug, you know.
Searching through the pages’ mist
And imagined deeds
Of poets’ needs…
I found my favourite word,
As asked,
Neither sacred nor profane
That describes the Venetian rain
In my beloved’s eyes
And the Florentine sun upon her hair:
“Auburn, russet, mythopoeic”.
Oh, it is not fair,
To liken an object
Of my lust and love
To anything as mortal as autumn air!
Nor “October’s orchard Haze”;
She had her own
Inscrutable, premeditated ways!
Rather let me say that she was perfect,
Though her eyes, pale and myopic,
Her shuffling gait and
Graceless limbs, to them Grace lends
Fey charm, the power to mend
My suffering and
Delusions of a poet’s end
As anything but pathetic,
(Her mother’s fondness for vague emetics)
And I left softly hanging,
On a girl’s new taste,
A tang of russet apples on her face,
But no, not that, the sum
Of my love, My Lo!
Then her bleak demise, partly by my hand
That none of you brutes could understand;
The pure love,
So sadly consummated,
Between a lover
And the one she hated
Yet loved once with inexplicable delight,
On one stolen, frightened night…
In which the two of us agreed
To satisfy a simple, yet maniacal need,
And then depart…
But I could not,
You see;
She was my life,
My love, my heart.
Humbert Humbert 1950
Sharon Talbot ca. 2005
Sep 9, 2017
Sep 9, 2017 at 11:11 AM UTC
It was almost spring here,
the purple light snuck in
cutting the overcast sky
and the venetian blinds.
The last snow lay out in the yard
slowly melting there
like something sad
but also something beautiful.
My kitten crawled up under my arm,
she lay her little head in my lap,
stretching out her paws
and yawning the way cats often do.
Soon it will be dark
but for now I live in the twilight
almost spring, almost night,
almost alive and almost dead.
Feb 16, 2016
Feb 16, 2016 at 6:07 PM UTC
Meandering like its canals
Venetian streets sing underfoot.
Who wore away the stone cobbled streets?
Who walked down to the shore?
Who gazed out at the Adriatic?
Who's dreams were lost in Venice's stream of streets?
Licentious lovers loved in Venice's streets, kissed on her bridges,
Crossed under by gondola and over by foot.
Proposed at the piazza San Marco.
Kissed, while the Grand Canal wound her way down.
Down into the sea,
where the menace that is the world, Venice shuns.
Rialto, Doge, Basilica, St. Marks, pigeons!
All evoke that lagoon city of streets.
Originally refugees, incolae lacunae ("lagoon dwellers")
Venetians, gave not only a place for the dispossessed,
but a place for the world to see, feel and taste.
Art, war, politics, commerce, spice and silk.
Venice with her ribbon of streets, alleyways and bridges
saw the Renaissance, the crusades, and the Black Death.
Glassware, paintings, sculptures, religion, refugees all
synonymous with that floating city.
A city returning to the water she arose from.
Subsiding with grief as she drowns in elegant decay.
Jun 13, 2014
Jun 13, 2014 at 2:56 PM UTC
How long will our bewildered heirs
marooned in possessions not theirs
puzzle at disposing of these three
cunning feignings of hard candy in glass-
the striped little pillowlike mock-sweets,
the flared end-twists as of transparent paper?
No clue will be attached, no trace
of the sunny day of their purchase,
at a glittering shop a few doors
up from Harry's Bar, a disappointing place
for all its testaments from Hemingway.
The Grand Canal was also aglitter
while the lesser canals lay in the shade
like snakes, flicking wet tongues
and gliding to green rendezvous.
The immaculate salesgirl, in her aloof
Italian succulence, sized us up,
a middle-aged American couple,
as unserious shoppers who,
still half jet-lagged, would cling to their lire
in the face of any enchanted vase
or ethereal wineglass that might shatter
in the luggage going home.
Yet we wanted something, something small ....
This? No ... How much is ten thousand? Dizzy,
at last we decided. She wrapped
the three glass candies, the cheapest
items in the shop, with a showy care
worthy of crown jewels-tissue,
tape, and tissue again sprang up
beneath her blood-red fingernails,
plus a jack-in-the-box-shaped paper bag
adorned with harlequin lozenges, sad
though she surely was, on her feet waiting
all day for a wild rich Arab, a compulsive Japanese.
Grazie, signor ... grazie, signora ... ciao.
Nor will our thing-weary heirs decipher
the little repair, the reattached triangle
of glass from the paper-imitating end-twist,
its mending a labor of love in the cellar,
by winter light, by the man of the house,
mixing transparent epoxy and rigging
a clever small clamp as if to keep
intact the time that we, alive,
had spent in the feathery bed
at the Europa e Regina.
4.5k
On a scale of 1-10, if you could save one person,
and one person only;
who would it be?
Venetian beaches and Parisian streets,
on the other side of the world,
someone is drowning.
Literally.
Drowning.
But on the flip side,
1+1= 2;
or a window to peek outside and see that blue flamingo.
That one,
right there.
Yes, you!
You.
You're the one I would save,
scales impossible to measure the beauty of those architectural realms.
Hurry up and float to me,
you idiot,
because U+I= love.
Or is it the other way around?
Jul 17, 2014
Jul 17, 2014 at 11:29 AM UTC
dragonflies melt
into each other.
flowers meld
shaded silver
upon silver.
string whips of
cotton float by like jacks
thrown by children,
unsusceptible to
the force of gravity.
the mechanics of
heart machines
crank awake.
steel knees bend dull and
swollen.
venetian mask with
sterling tongue
skims the tops
of tiny toes
and errantly spring-ed
grasshoppers..
warm bodies
in bubbling steel
meadow—
cool in nature,
stolen like
gold
crafted and
crafted again
in heat.
Jul 31, 2017
Jul 31, 2017 at 3:04 PM UTC
375
The Angle of a Landscape—
That every time I wake—
Between my Curtain and the Wall
Upon an ample Crack—
Like a Venetian—waiting—
Accosts my open eye—
Is just a Bough of Apples—
Held slanting, in the Sky—
The Pattern of a Chimney—
The Forehead of a Hill—
Sometimes—a Vane’s Forefinger—
But that’s—Occasional—
The Seasons—shift—my Picture—
Upon my Emerald Bough,
I wake—to find no—Emeralds—
Then—Diamonds—which the Snow
From Polar Caskets—fetched me—
The Chimney—and the Hill—
And just the Steeple’s finger—
These—never stir at all—
3.1k
Valiant galley set sail
adrift through the Dardanelles.
Her masts, backs straight,
composed as Venetian dames
in familiar basse danse.
Sunset floats amongst the sea mist
silhouetting the capital's skyline.
The holy dome of the Αγία Σοφία
eclipses the light.
The Lady makes port,
at the City on the Seven Hills.
Gentle entrance to the beating heart
of the bustling district.
Jan 11, 2013
Jan 11, 2013 at 7:59 AM UTC
Shapes shifting through the sheets
of paper, in my dreams
soft pillow seams, we move like a gentle
firey breeze -
your shape consumes me.
I have never seen volcanoes, yet my
thoughts erupt in shapes.
What is it to desire a shape ?
A venetian spell of curved brushes to cheeks,
dreaming of the days and weeks I could
lay, still, yet volcanic, staring opposite your face, in embrace and tracing your skin with my finger.
Like a brush stroke,
my muse
what is it to loose the memory of a body?
Every trace and touch
each mahogany blush
within the rush of lust,
a cosmic trust between body to body
and mind, to the Hearts’ justice.
A sketch,
first love.
I cloak and glove the painting of you
moving through new shapes away from
view, yet sometimes with solemn and blue, sly Fate washes water-coloured visions and crimson hues through my mind and i’m reminded of each line, curve and shape.
Oh desire ! What a profound honour
to know a body beyond shape.
Aug 31, 2023
Aug 31, 2023 at 6:16 AM UTC
Once did She hold the gorgeous east in fee;
And was the safeguard of the west: the worth
Of Venice did not fall below her birth,
Venice, the eldest Child of Liberty.
She was a maiden City, bright and free;
No guile seduced, no force could violate;
And, when she took unto herself a Mate,
She must espouse the everlasting Sea.
And what if she had seen those glories fade,
Those titles vanish, and that strength decay;
Yet shall some tribute of regret be paid
When her long life hath reached its final day:
Men are we, and must grieve when even the Shade
Of that which once was great is passed away.
2.7k
I want to be a hippie,
join a small commune,
set up my camp
way out in the woods,
near the back forty
& the railroad tracks.
I want to swim naked
with them pretty chicks,
braid natty dreads,
go tubing on the river,
make beeswax candles
& tie dyes.
I want weave dream catchers,
paint glitter on Venetian beads,
sing happy songs,
create new stars,
eat whole wheat bread
& make Tabouili salads.
I wanna dance,
circle the blazing fire,
shout out at the moon,
splash myself in patchouli,
smell weed-smoke in the air
& indulge in tantric things.
I don’t wanna
hurt anybody,
break any laws,
just wanna spread love,
blow kisses to butterflies,
ride double-rainbows
on magic carpets
& be a hippie.
Feb 6, 2014
Feb 6, 2014 at 7:54 PM UTC
she was a bird on the water
she was clouds reflected
she was trees sighing in the wind
she was sunlight through Venetian blinds
she was dust motes circling lazily
she was Sunday morning ***
she was smiling at me in the mirror
she was bonfires under a pale moon
she was tidal waves of emotion
she was whirlpools of conviction
she was typhoons of jealousy
and I was there too
she is the silhouette of a cigarette pressed to my teeth
she is my shadow cast behind me in the setting sun
she is blue-tinged smoke silently filling the room
she is burning my eyes like chlorine in a crowded pool
she is bars of the cage where my mind is kept penned
she is electric fencing wrapped around my heart
she is buckets of tar drowning me in my dreams
she is written in cursive on the insides of my eyelids
she is slowly shriveling my liver and blackening my lungs
she is living in all the mirrors I look into
she is becoming brobdingnagian prose
maybe that's just me but,
I'm not there anymore.
So why is she still here?
Feb 28, 2015
Feb 28, 2015 at 5:22 PM UTC
"io sol uno."
-Dante, Purgatorio
There I was,
the comic-tragic star of my own motion-picture,
bold beneath the springtime Italian sun hung high
--a heavenly fixture,
illuminating the gold-leaf enframed frescoes in
kaleidoscopes of colours,
baking dry the pigeon droppings upon the flagstones
they smothered,
where I, in all my self-serving recreation,
posed proudly in a costume of my own creation,
an operatic villain clad in a billowy blouse of black,
the Campanile Tower like a sentinel behind my back,
as movie cameras panned and zoomed,
paparazzi photographers capturing me
and freezing me,
in all my wicked, medieval glory,
floating and gloating in the dank aroma of the Venetian seas,
*"I'm the shining star!
--Look at me, look at me!"*
-the super-special star I always knew I'd be,
a painted parody,
a harlequin of displaced passions
for all to laugh at and see,
before slipping silently
into the ornate basilica,
dim and dark as night,
thanking Mother Mary (for nothing) as I sparked
a votive candle's light,
not really sure or caring
where my life would lead,
just as long as the Azure Queen
shed Her Grace on me,
me,
me,
...until I fell
and fell
to the mockery of a home
I made in Hell,
hard and forever and fast,
the only fool left alone in my solo cast,
adrift with no direction,
****** and lost,
me and my frivolous theatre,
squandered an an extravagant cost.
_____________
"io sol uno" means, "I, myself, alone."
This poem is a true-life story.
__________
See the Piazza San Marco, Venice, Italy:
http://www.carfree.com/design/pix/sqlg110venice_piazza-san-marco.jpg
Sep 13, 2010
Sep 13, 2010 at 11:01 AM UTC
lazy afternoon
meandering through the canals
gondola and gondolier both a touch of the romantic
wanting to lose myself
in the belly of this beautiful city
get so lost i could never get out
bottle of vino, a couple of delicate wine glasses
eyes only for you, but my ears are Vivaldi’s
or just the trilling notes of that old Hindi tune
with some Italian verses thrown in for good measure
poetry flows here not water
the ghosts of Byron and Browning haunt them
*** time must stand still for me
as i explore this fantasy***
-Vijayalakshmi Harish
08.10.2012
Copyright © Vijayalakshmi Harish
Oct 8, 2012
Oct 8, 2012 at 12:52 PM UTC
_The light is dim, but I'm accustomed to working in the dark. Besides, it's safer this way. My eyes are not what they used to be, but it has become second nature to me - the pull of the needle, the tension in the thread.
I stitched my first collar when I was six years' old, sitting on my grandmother's knee in the parlour of the old house at Innsbruck. ‘Isaac,’ she used to say, ‘you have your father's gift. Use it well.’
Ah, Papa, if you could see me now. Such expectations you had for my talent, but I assure you that the occasion for invisible seams and fine beadwork is over. Nowadays I work with a different fabric. A cloth perforated with ****** fire and riddled with shrapnel. The wounds - forgive me - resemble red Venetian silk embedded with black pearls; the bone like the baleen strictures of a dowager's corset. And the red dye runs. God help me, how it runs.
As I work, Papa, I imagine that you are standing in the shadows, your frayed sewing tape draped around your neck. I am praised for my quick hands and my ability to embroider life into abbreviated limbs. And I pray that you are not too disappointed in what I have become._
Jun 2, 2019
Jun 2, 2019 at 8:35 PM UTC
Blue Baby Blue
Blue baby blue,
lift up your head and kiss your troubles adieu!
Blue baby blue,
be happy you grew.
Blue baby blue,
bury the dead; they were only passing through.
Eyes wide-open, view everything anew.
Blue baby blue,
spin around, and shout, "yes, I love you!"
Blue baby blue,
dance around in gold sequins on silk venetian red.
Blue baby blue,
how unique are you?!
Forget people who never knew.
Blue baby blue,
Blue baby blue,
no more singing the blues!
Jul 9, 2016
Jul 9, 2016 at 8:26 AM UTC
she asked if i knew what i wanted when i was 18
of course i ******* knew what i wanted back then
that is when i first fell in love with a soul sucker
and my life whent completely off course. what i wanted
****** me over, and now i don't know if i should give in
since then i sold my soul to the devil, just to give in
to get what ever i want, and still i don't really *******
think i need what i really ******* think i want
**** what i want. i want what i need
i need the old **** the **** that got me so high
that i didn't need to sleep for days, or i could sleep
and it wouldn't matter because you were watching
and i could ******* sleep as deep as i wanted to
and know that when i come up for air, you would be there
waiting to know that i fell asleep and made it alright
and that high became life, i stayed high off you so much
so that it doesn't really scare me that i talk to you at night
in my writing, or when I'm singing, or when i do *******
anything you stupid ***** what the **** did you slip in my drink????
im poisoned after the fact and i can't get you out of my blood
the way i see it, is not the same way my therapist sees it
so i keep going to him, just kidding i never see him, he hates me
or maybe he doesn't, either way he never tells me how he feels,
he just asks me questions and lets me sit in my feelings for seconds
**** that i sit in them all day, i don't need to pay to find the pain
i just ******* really need to stop sleeping or find a way to fall asleep
either of the two because i only live when I'm dreaming now,
its not the drugs, no i mean real ******* full blown dreams
like god ****** how it was back before we ****** and i told
your lover that i only enjoyed dreaming and not waking life
just because i could be with you, and yet he didn't take my warning
**** no! no one ever takes my warning, they are all too busy listening
to their own god **** ***** and hearts and blood pumping rust and
their own god **** thoughts and feelings, and it never ever occurs or
comes back to me in the end, always to them, so **** them, wait also
im gonna stop thinking about you in the end, because **** you too
youre not special enough to deserve two separate entities of people
waking up everyday thinking about how selfish, or pretty you are
or whatever else i do think about you, more like wonder because youre fake
imagination or maybe you are still alive and still exist and i didn't make you up
to hurt myself , maybe i only think about me now, i don't know yet
great . i just ******* think about how possessed i am that i have nothing
nice to say about you, good thing i say nothing at all to you, and i just spend
all this time, painting you into pictures, even tho I'm using my own blood
i say that now but until i
blow my brains out onto venetian blinds, just for the splatter effect
and because i hate them enough to waste my life on them
whatever will i do , but waste my life on you
Dec 28, 2013
Dec 28, 2013 at 5:06 AM UTC
Pursuing yet another parabolic
Crawl across the clear, blue, summer sky
The sun started its journey at the horizon.
Radiating— Forcing its warm, orange, light
Through venetian blinds; the glowing celestial body
Painted her naked, flawless, skin
With stripes of contrasting light as she slept.
He watched her quietly as the shadows
Manifesting between each strip of light, inched
Across her skin in unison with the suns trajectory.
Ever so slightly opening her sleep-crusted eyes
She looked up at him, yawed gently, smiled and
Rolled over to position her body against his.
Her narrow, freckled face, rested easily
In the crevice between his arm and chest.
Letting out one more yawn, her emerald, green,
Eyes fell back behind their lashed curtains of flesh;
Dozing off into the next satisfying slumber.
The ceiling fan above clicked and waved erratically
But offered no relief from the hot, humid air.
Perspiring slightly, her skin remnant of morning dew.
In those last few minutes of direct, morning, light
Right before the sun left the scope of their window
He couldn't help but think that this was it.
This was love, and he was trapped.
Mar 2, 2015
Mar 2, 2015 at 10:22 PM UTC
Nanny, I will see you on Sunday
Palm to palm, washed. Surrounded by venetian pink walls
Rose Du Barry pink sink?
Greener shabby scalloped teacups
Earl Grey
Sweet
Malty
Much too much sugar
Diminished flavor palate
Sharp mind
Bergamot
Intensely cutting flavor
Please, dance with me in Italy.
Mar 3, 2022
Mar 3, 2022 at 10:14 PM UTC
I walk through walls when I travel
To a midnight blood orange sky
Iridescent raindrops in soft motion
All discerned with my third eye
The astral world is tranquil
But not everything is as it seems
Creatures just heads are hiding
Inside articulated trees
Madly twirl to change the scenery
Watch as fish swim in venetian glass
Jump as high as painted mountain tops
Then rest on undulating grass
Weightless flights to brilliant Luna
Imagination guides the course
The realm of out of body
A thread embroidered to our source
Oct 17, 2014
Oct 17, 2014 at 10:29 PM UTC
I followed you out of the picture,
our subtle breakdowns, anti-matter,
too drunk to function, too vibrant to sleep.
The tables were numbered when we sat to eat,
uniform plates, revolving staff, doors open
to the public, red wine on tap.
I met you in the bathroom, venetian white,
***** on your sleeve, tears in your eyes,
love on your tongue – an emptied stomach.
I know I can poison you with words,
stop your taste for wine with a kiss.
I followed you to the open grounds,
pollen thick in my lungs, the wind ate sound,
removing all history: you and me, you and me.
The fountain turned copper with generosity,
faded queen, bottle-cap fraud; crowds took us
to alleyways, to your opened front door.
I met you in the kitchen, synthetic white,
heart on your sleeve, *** in your eyes,
tongue upon tongue – truth amongst lies.
I know I can save you from endless distraction,
this need for a fiction; this want for an action.
Jan 8, 2015
Jan 8, 2015 at 6:53 PM UTC
You fenced off your eyes
with a charcoal black,
then stranded in snow
and an endless depression,
you painted your death-mask
in venetian ceruse,
hoping that it would be enough
to appease your critics;
to keep away from the sun,
to slip through the seams of time,
and to a place where
the evenings do not seem so long.
You gave your sanity
to a useless drug
and kept your identity
to the picture
within his wallet.
I hope you know your bravery is noticed.
I hope that for once
you can find peace
amongst this constant state of war.
Nov 16, 2014
Nov 16, 2014 at 9:43 PM UTC