"wakefulness" poems
I think I'm homesick for you;
For your body and it's warmth,
For the arms that hold me tight at night
And caress me into the twilit slumber.
The comfort.
You possess this hold on me,
You hold a part of me; inside you.
And I'm homesick for your embrace;
The way you taste.
I miss the breathing of us in sync,
And the sweet way your eyelids flicker as you fall asleep;
The light as feather touch of your fingertips as they lose the weight of wakefulness.
The quiet peace I see in your smooth features as you drift away in dreams I'll never know.
I'm homesick for you.
Oct 9, 2013
Oct 9, 2013 at 12:26 AM UTC
Can't sleep, it's always the same.
I get to my room, exhausted, lie in my bed,
Close my eyes and the Sleepless Fairy
decides to take the reins of the situation.
Maybe if I go to my computer and surf for a while
I could doze off. Maybe I'll go out and have a cigarette
to calm the Fairy. No, this insomnia is different. I can't fix it
with simple solutions.
This wakefulness is not due to the anxiety of an exam,
or the diffidence I have for that one girl I can't get out
of my head. This insomnia is that small sparkle of
uncertainty that has abounded my mind for a long time.
That feeling of vagueness, of yearning. Yearning of what?
I don't know.
It is simply that feeling that I'm missing something,
whatever it is. I go around the whole day in my mind,
what am I missing? What am I forgetting?
During the day I'm acquiescent, lucid, happy.
But come night... time to go to bed.
Time to perform the daily check for recent events.
Catalog the occurrences with different feelings,
accommodated to their respective memories.
But there's something missing.
I curse the Fairy and its 1001 tricks that keep me
awake and conscious about that which is in the
subconscious.
Will the day come when the Fairy shows up no more?
As long as that feeling is housed in me, like a parasite
clogged on its new victim, the Fairy will keep visiting.
Mar 29, 2013
Mar 29, 2013 at 9:19 PM UTC
Who owns those scrawny little feet? Death.
Who owns this bristly scorched-looking face? Death.
Who owns these still-working lungs? Death.
Who owns this utility coat of muscles? Death.
Who owns these unspeakable guts? Death.
Who owns these questionable brains? Death.
All this messy blood? Death.
These minimum-efficiency eyes? Death.
This wicked little tongue? Death.
This occasional wakefulness? Death.
Given, stolen, or held pending trial?
Held.
Who owns the whole rainy, stony earth? Death.
Who owns all of space? Death.
Who is stronger than hope? Death.
Who is stronger than the will? Death.
Stronger than love? Death.
Stronger than life? Death.
But who is stronger than Death?
Me, evidently.
Pass, Crow.
7k
This poem casts a line from insomnia to morning
On the wind of a prayer that whatever bites, holds on.
See I have counted eleven score and ten,
with rainbow like curves of my neck -
contemptuous beasts leaping in formation
each bleating out a preach of vague platitudes;
A narrative for the night sky.
My hands clamour at keys for escape
until I tumble headfirst into a web so vast
it has ensnared the whole world wide -
millennials are living in-ter-net over in-the-world;
a new ultraviolence against humanity.
I beat my words into the screen until it breaks;
shattering scarlet emoticons like confetti
pouring over language as if it were a compliment.
My mind massages shapeless polypous thoughts
like tight constricted muscles aching for release.
3am casts these philosophies into horses,
whipping them into shape and speed
before the eyes of this statuesque ******
This anxious wakefulness begs my manic self to dance;
suggestively ********* tickets to ride like cleavage.
Sleep is fast becoming a neglected former engagement;
as my mind trips over fallen heroes
wades through my favourite mistakes
in a wonderland unfolding faster than I can fall
while the world beyond my window remains dark.
Apr 6, 2014
Apr 6, 2014 at 10:52 PM UTC
The world pours in.
I wake to my morning coffee.
The cream of that idle Tuesday,
The wakefulness of regret.
Flashbacks to appointments I would have missed,
had it not been for this stupor.
Mulling over what activity to engage in,
the clock strikes never-mind.
So I fall back into my sheets,
stomach churning from hunger I can't quail
and work I can't get.
Mar 2, 2011
Mar 2, 2011 at 5:08 PM UTC
Though life should come
With all its marshalled honours, trump and drum,
To proffer you the captaincy of some
Resounding exploit, that shall fill
Man’s pulses with commemorative thrill,
And be a banner to far battle days
For truths unrisen upon untrod ways,
What would your answer be,
O heart once brave?
Seek otherwhere; for me,
I watch beside a grave.
Though to some shining festival of thought
The sages call you from steep citadel
Of bastioned argument, whose rampart gained
Yields the pure vision passionately sought,
In dreams known well,
But never yet in wakefulness attained,
How should you answer to their summons, save:
I watch beside a grave?
Though Beauty, from her fane within the soul
Of fire-tongued seers descending,
Or from the dream-lit temples of the past
With feet immortal wending,
Illuminate grief’s antre swart and vast
With half-veiled face that promises the whole
To him who holds her fast,
What answer could you give?
Sight of one face I crave,
One only while I live;
Woo elsewhere; for I watch beside a grave.
Though love of the one heart that loves you best,
A storm-tossed messenger,
Should beat its wings for shelter in your breast,
Where clung its last year’s nest,
The nest you built together and made fast
Lest envious winds should stir,
And winged each delicate thought to minister
With sweetness far-amassed
To the young dreams within—
What answer could it win?
The nest was whelmed in sorrow’s rising wave,
Nor could I reach one drowning dream to save;
I watch beside a grave.
3.8k
Images extracted from
the tapestry of my dreams.
Sewn intricate...
Into a patchwork.
A quilt,
embroidered with lavish sequins and ornate beads.
Bringing forth fantastical motifs...
A dazzling display
upon the backdrop of my dreamscape.
Yet...
This mosaic of dreams
does not warm me so.
It never lasts.
They fall away like autumn leaves
come the dawning sun.
They get washed out and pulled into the tide,
as the waves beat upon the shore of wakefulness.
They fade into fragmented memories
that make no sense...
Incoherent and disjointed.
Eventually, they disappear...
For they do not belong
in a world of worldly things
and ticking clocks.
Their intangible and mismatched nature
render them inconsequential...
Naturally...
They get misplaced.
But I am stubborn.
I will fashion such a blanket.
One that skirts the boundary
of this realm and the other.
I will tailor it so...
So that...
I will sleep tonight,
swaddled tight and cocooned within its
glorious seams.
Tucked within the safety and warmth of
this blanket...
Woven immaculate...
Out of
worldly things and breathtaking dreams.
Sep 30, 2016
Sep 30, 2016 at 10:14 AM UTC
Willow herb floating
on silent certainty
ashes of sighs
not fleeting,
unvapoured on the
blossom of the rain,
I am too light to
pull or push
the swing of delight
through this land.
The rain left me for a
while
sun unshielding
-a thousand widows
more unyielding than the depths . .
Once shadowed whisperers
of delight,gossamer
sparkling , descending
their chains
of necromantic hope.
Lilith is no night owl
she is mother, eve
and my becoming:
sweet earth spun
at once ,
exhaling her .
The see saw
bumped gently
on my chin
it is a most gentle
form of awakening.
The silence bore no whispers
till sinking through the quicksand
-or was it quicksilver?
-in any case I could smell little
in my amniotic amnesia.
I made ten thousand friends,till their soap
made this place clean.
Is this a seed or a dying
hopefulness
-is my sallow sowing
beyond all shores of
reproduction;
a reflection of the child
they dared not bear?
Is my last breath like this
a forgotton yielding
will they catch me
as I fall ?
-(sweet earth)-
This moth of my ending,
a shallow recantation,
my fears-
their memories, mere
testubes of
stylish hope .
I breathe the elegant stare
you have forgotten .
Once more free
from such
rememberance
I need not ,
remained not ,
your imploded ,
wakefulness .
A thousand pardons
exhaled like silk
entwining
an unfinished race
spider of a thousand eyes .
One may say
I was
stared
to death
but surrogate air
mocks childish pity.
Taut refelexions
bear salt echoes
in silk convulsions
fresh water
a veneered hope .
Easier in death than life
is a child's sorrowed
partings ,
the illusion of
bouyancy
rippled tides
unfelt.
The oceans have not enough salt
for such shrunken sorrow.
if we could but once
have shared
unbreathed aspersion .
The room has come and gone
the pillow quite undry
unforgotten
unremembered.
A web untouched
Sep 27, 2010
Sep 27, 2010 at 7:46 AM UTC
I find myself on uncertain ground,
Straddling an impossible horizon.
On one side is day, where my consciousness thrives
On the other is night, where fatigue claims its prize.
For years, it seems, I have longed for sleep,
For a reprieve from wakefulness, and the sun’s piercing light,
But now, as I stand astride this unlikely fission,
I fear what awaits within night’s unyielding prison.
The darkness has beckoned, calling me forth
Even now, its sweet siren reigns down on my soul,
Oh, how easy, to just close my eyes and let my thoughts be consumed,
The promise of nothingness nearly impossible to refuse.
But my silhouette on the ground reminds me of light,
And I owe it to myself, past and future alike
To reconsider day and all it provides,
Before I make a choice, here, where two opposites collide.
I can remember hope, and the anticipation of greatness,
But also despair and nights spent alone.
Laughter and desire, pitted against resentment,
An ever-tipping balance between dissatisfaction and contentment.
No, it’s just not enough for me to fully commit,
I’d much prefer blackness and its long-awaited calm,
Yes...I will forget about day and its promise of grief,
Instead, I’ll take night and its selfless offer of relief.
Just one step forward and I'll be forever engulfed in silence,
But first I’ll rest here for just one second longer-
I need to say goodbye to day and pay respects to light,
Then I'll go forth, and forget this place where day leads unto night.
Nov 10, 2015
Nov 10, 2015 at 3:05 PM UTC
If you are having sleepless nights, blame it on calcium deficiency as a key calcium channel has been identified as responsible for deep sleep, says new study.
The study also gives us a clue to understanding both normal and abnormal waking brain functions.
"It is the same brain, same neurons and similar requirements for oxygen and so on. So what is the difference between these two states?" asked Rodolfo Llinas, a professor of neuroscience at New York University School of Medicine and a Whitman Center Investigator at the Marine Biological Laboratory (MBL) in Woods Hole.
To tackle the broad question of sleep, Llinas and his colleagues focused on one crucial part of the puzzle in mice, Marine Biological Laboratory.
Calcium channels, selective gates in neuron walls, are integral in neuron firing, ensuring that all parts of the brain keep talking to one other. But during sleep, calcium channel activity is increased, keeping a slow rhythm that is different from patterns found during wakefulness.
Based on this clue, the scientists removed one type of calcium channel, Cav3.1, and looked at how the absence of that channel's activity affected mouse brain function.
This calcium channel turns out to be a key player in normal sleep. The mice without working Cav3.1 calcium channels took longer to fall asleep than normal mice, and stayed asleep for much shorter periods.
Their brain activity was also abnormal, more like normal wakefulness than sleep. Most importantly, these mice never reached deep, slow-wave sleep.
"This means that we have discovered that Cav3.1 is the channel that ultimately supports deep sleep," Llinas said.
Because these mice completely lack the ability to sleep deeply, they eventually express a syndrome similar to psychiatric disorders in humans.Read more here:www.marieaustralia.com/green-formal-dresses | www.marieaustralia.com/yellow-formal-dresses
Jul 1, 2015
Jul 1, 2015 at 12:46 AM UTC
Slumber is sliding slowly away as wakefulness creeps in
Few hours remain before morning breaks, and I feel his arms around me pulling me back to rest
I feel the warmth of his body and the smell of his skin long before my eyes open to meet the day
I can hear his heart beating its soft steady lullaby against my face on his chest
This amazing man, so loving, so gentle, so kind, yet fiercely protective and loyal; a mixture of perfection
This is what I want, I think to myself, as I start trailing my fingers across his chest
He lets out a low growl in his sleep, his body responding to my touch even in its unconscious state
Does he feel my presence with the same strength that I feel his
Does it permeate his resting mind and infiltrate his dreams
His nakedness next to me is so primal and natural, everything about this feels so right
I study his face, the long eyelashes resting on his cheeks, the cut of his jawline, his lips not long removed from my own
I listen to his soft snoring and smile at its familiar cadence, a sound I couldn't imagine being without now
I wonder if he knows; does he know what he is to me
He is air, he is water, he is food, he is sunlight; nourishing my every need
I worry that I am not enough to fulfill all those needs in him, but I will live my life trying
This is what I want, this moment, this peace, laying on his chest, his arms keeping me safe, our bodies lazily intertwined
This is how I want every day of the rest of my life to begin
He starts to stir and his eyes sleepily open taking me in, he pulls me even deeper into his embrace
I melt into him; happy, peaceful, and content in this moment that I never want to end
Yes this is what I want; this man, right now and always
Good morning my love
Jul 20, 2018
Jul 20, 2018 at 9:58 AM UTC
"...Tell me, for Love's sake, what is that flame which burns in my heart and devours my strength and dissolves my will? What are those hidden soft and rough hands that grasp any soul; what is that wine mixed of bitter joy and sweet pain that suffuses my heart? What are those wings that hover over my pillow in the silence of Night, and keep me awake,watching no one knows what? What is the invisible thing I stare at, the incomprehensible thing that I ponder, the feeling that cannot be sensed? In my sights is a grief more beautiful than the echo of laughter and more rapturous than joy. Why do I surrender myself to an unknown power that slays me and revives me until Dawn rises and fills my chamber with its light? Phantoms of wakefulness tremble between my seared eyelids, and shadows of dreams hover over my stony bed. What is that which we call Love? Tell me, what is that secret hidden within the ages yet which permeates all consciousness? What is this consciousness that is at once origin and result of everything? What is this vigil that fashions from Life and Death a dream, stranger than Life and deeper than Death? Tell me, friends, is there one among you who would not awake from the slumber of Life if love touched his soul with its fingertip?"
Sep 2, 2017
Sep 2, 2017 at 4:37 PM UTC
I am the food but not mere taste,
I am the air but not mere breathe,
I am the odour but not mere smell,
I am the feeling but not mere touch,
I am the love but not mere emotion,
I am the destroyer of time but not mere time,
I am non-consequential but not unattainable,
light is just a happening of me but I am not the light,
I am darkness.
I am all-pervaded but utter stillness,
I am playful but utterly serious,
I am in absolute sleep or in utter wakefulness,
Universe is just a happening of me and I am nothingness.
Feb 18, 2015
Feb 18, 2015 at 1:54 PM UTC
Here, passing lonely down this quiet lane,
Before a mud-splashed window long I pause
To gaze and gaze, while through my active brain
Still thoughts are stirred to wakefulness; because
Long, long ago in a dim unknown land,
A massive forest-tree, ax-felled, adze-hewn,
Was deftly done by cunning mortal hand
Into a symbol of the tender moon.
Why does it thrill more than the handsome boat
That bore me o'er the wild Atlantic ways,
And fill me with rare sense of things remote
From this harsh land of fretful nights and days?
I cannot answer but, whate'er it be,
An old wine has intoxicated me.
2.8k
Monsoon Rhapsody by Nishu Mathur
I am rain on a summer day
Drenching drowsy, lifeless buds
Stirring them to a dancing wakefulness
Washing leaves dull and dry with dust
Dousing fire in a desert ringed inferno
I am the drizzle on a pale moon night
Easing into the heart with music
The melange of water humming with the wind
The splash of puddles in fields of barley
Gently filling thirsty river beds craving for a flow
I am showers before monsoons
Impregnating the air with soothing droplets
The hint of life in an oasis of colours
Breathing moist on a farmer's bronzed skin
Tingling the world with shimmering emerald
I am sawan, the monsoons
Winding my way through a chorus of clouds
Thundering my presence into the sea of renewal
Cascading on sandy shores that glisten with light
Whisking away waves of gold with jubilant darkness
I drape the land in arrays of greens
Scent the soil in my fragrance
Dance with the rhapsodic dance of the peacock
Wreathe petals into flowers that vine
And curve in the soil of growth.
Jun 30, 2016
Jun 30, 2016 at 7:47 AM UTC
Silver Beach: Always the Sole First
familiar white fishing boat, up with early light,
seeking sustenance and pleasure in = measure,
anchored ‘bout quarter mile east of my under-the-coverlet,
(of course! as the crow, raven or scavenging osprey flies),
it’s precise location amazingly exact, but alas, soon daily
familiarity breeds no secrecy, and now joined by a
farther out, smaller version, a compatriot in spotitude,
of the best spots for harvesting the early running
brackish bay water favorites, striped or black sea bass
what persistent fortitude these fisher-peoples display,
early to rise, first to depart, when others crowd its “spot,”
(amazed by its knowing precision the exactitude of “spot”)
this ship, always the sole-first, invokes a first poem of the day,
always a soul-first, an unburdening of deepest gratitude that
one more day granted me to imbibe this vista, awake to its
soothing silent heavenly serenity, absent machine or
electronic interference with my delicate sleepy wakefulness,
when newly minted words come into my mind, my
secret spot
Sat AM June 3
Jun 3, 2023
Jun 3, 2023 at 8:46 AM UTC
You always carried me home with your gaze
In your laughter I could float freely with all my fears left to drown in the sea of your reassurances
I slept in my dreams clutching the threads of my tears
So that in my wakefulness,
I can embroider them onto the fabric of a forgotten past
To keep the memory of your name within reach
So that when I whisper it into the sea breeze
Everything once cultivated grows inside of me
And a garden scape of indescribable ease
Is complete with streams of water that run
from your heart to my shaking hands
Jun 27, 2022
Jun 27, 2022 at 5:35 PM UTC
Let us awake from the decay of strategic costumes where the incestuous fragrance of madness permeates golden dreams of eclectic strokes.
Bureaucratic self-enhancement nurtures docile manufacturers of laborious compliance, whilst social conscience plummets to depths of callous and entrepreneurial versatility.
Enduring imitations of an unsatisfactory kind is like pairing mint fondant with rich and savoury gravy which is acquired with strategic dishonesty.
Oh, negligent wakefulness – will we ever arise and discern those lobotomised representatives in this legislative brothel of excessive absurdity?
Shake me at one minute to midnight in the House of Lords.
Nov 25, 2013
Nov 25, 2013 at 10:44 PM UTC
During moments I yearned for forests grown for me alone,
Caressing them in a dream,
I could sense the throbbing of the heart
Hidden beneath my ribs to bless my journey.
Summoning me with a pulse that he recognizes in me.
I heard the noise of abandoned smoke from a moment of care
Join with me,
Forcefully traversing desires to the hidden-most one.
My spirit swung toward him,
Creating a tingling
On lips that devour breaths alive.
I felt ashamed,
But the eye,
In moments—I scarcely know what to call them—that took me on another route
Toward the television, saw warplanes . . . spray death on them.
At that moment,
The fire of machine guns raked all the bodies,
And another fire raked my body when I trained my eye on him
Hesitantly inclining his head
Toward a shoulder unaccustomed to the secret of the stars of war
Or to insomnia.
Oh . . . . I leaned on it!
And when he caressed a dumbfounded person
I felt his fingers like coiling embers inside me.
Bashfulness seized the excuse this caress gave . . . and vanished,
Eliminating distance till the two of us were one.
And the eye—he moaned: May love not forgive her the eye—repeated another evasion
Toward a drizzle of men flung about in the air by just the rustling of a pilot penetrating a building
To fall on screens as the debris of breaking news.
But his breaths . . . shattering the still down of the cheek,
And turning their picture into mist as
Eddies of the screen’s corpses . . . varieties of death that they brought them.
The spirit that became a body,
The body that was sold for the sake of a touch,
The eye that was concealed in his image
And that approached the firebrand of conflagrations.
Everyone drawing close to everyone,
Everyone,
Everyone,
Everyone.
But the thunder of their machine guns splintered them:
Corpses piled on corpses,
I mean on me,
The eyes of those in it were extinguished.
They slept in a trench of silence.
My eyes’ lids parted in a wakefulness obsessed with them.
I rose … and embraced the chill
That the screens brought me in commemoration of Stalingrad.
………………………………
Translated by William Hutchins
Apr 6, 2016
Apr 6, 2016 at 10:38 PM UTC
This things are made for idling
transparent in their quotidian splendor:
A Buddha statue at the receptionist desk
golden skin, red robes
welcoming all yogis with its gaze
eyelids closed
The candle, a guardian of an aim
an intention that moves within a flame
over the palms of the wooden hands
Incense smoke dance softly around the entrance
like a dream seen from wakefulness
immersive enhancer of the humor
filling the place with soft calmness
Nag champa smell
and serious air
The bamboo doors
from Monday to Sunday
open the way to Indian sounds
and the voices of blooming teachers
guide the way
until shavasana
when practitioners become gently moving statues
and glowing air goes
breathing in and breathing out
daily efforts and daily hopes.
Nov 21, 2013
Nov 21, 2013 at 12:17 PM UTC
A sharp bark wakes me.
Tears begin to fall.
Distant growls ring,
tinged with pain and laced with loss,
reminiscent of an all-too-distant past.
It roars and bellows anew
as though intent to bind me to this wakefulness
so I might be a witness to this spectacle of grief.
A fine stage night makes,
for in deepest darkness
the enunciations of anguish are all the more potent.
I lay and listen to the falling tears,
the rhythmic backdrop to this soundscape of sadness.
The fury ebbs as the night deepens,
but tears continue to water the earth
long after the thunderous voice has resigned itself to silence.
Aug 26, 2011
Aug 26, 2011 at 12:55 AM UTC
In your palms, a lingering remnant of moonlight
traces your fingerprints,
And it illuminates shards of evening rain that have landed on your skin as droplets of hope.
Together a nebula is painted on your hands,
And you find tranquility in evening wakefulness.
Oct 20, 2020
Oct 20, 2020 at 6:09 PM UTC
i always wanted to
try listening to the
debut album of
a british goddess
while ironically
killing my own
pair at sunrise --
but as plans often go
south for mice and
men equally, so do
my own;
languid
wakefulness ran
down my gullet
like seconds on
a smooth cocktail
seasons too late,
and moreover,
my addled brain
forgot the catalyst
the night before
last when i was
trudging along
in the dark and
some saviors in
a cheap white
chariot pulled
into the parking
space beside me,
telling me to
get in --
like they knew
or i knew, or we
all had some odd
mutual feeling of
positive vibrations;
like reminiscing
about early in
last august when
a mysterious scarf-
clad traveler with
sacred arabic
etched into his
hands slipped
me an equally
sacred slip of
paper with
nothing more
to give it purpose,
reason, definition,
or validation, than
that single glorious
and grammatically
incorrect pairing
of expressive
awareness.
i don't plan to meet
the pilgrim again,
regardless of our
unfinished affairs,
but sitting on that
little square of cloth
on top of manicured
lawn in cosmic harmony
with strangers, new friends,
serenaded by sigur ros
and kept company by
grouplove, i've never felt
more enlightened,
more awestruck,
more tuned into
those frequencies
above human
perception,
broadcasting
the only message
we deny ourselves
indefinitely --
happiness.
Dec 5, 2012
Dec 5, 2012 at 3:42 PM UTC
Consider the coffee cup in the bitter early morning
clutched by the weary, in the hands of the sleepwalker.
A Styrofoam chimney that warms bodies to the bones.
Like a silo of potential energy that awakens and inspires.
A companion of the cigarette soft pack, as long as both are full
When empty, a ruffian of a house abandoned
or a vacant playground, a soul void of vivacity.
Sleepy fingers trace the serpentine trail of steam
escaping via vent in the lid; gateway to wakefulness
Perched in a nest of hands guarding the sanctuary for the alert
This storehouse of caffeine must be rationed.
It’s contents dark, rich, bold, spilling
scolding and fierce and alive.
Consider the coffee cup a comrade, a loyalist
Companion of the diligent, the learning, the weary.
Aug 23, 2011
Aug 23, 2011 at 3:46 AM UTC
All along my unconscious
has been consumed by your
beauty which is below
the threshold of my wakefulness
Yet I crave it
You're not of classical beauty
but such a timeless white Lily
whose pureness grasps the mind
And remind me that I'm alive
For its adoration, essence is not
in form but in the method
Your quirkiness captures
my infinite imagination
You keenly read the mapping
of my unrestrained tears
Your pureness lies in innocence
Mine in experience
A kind of beauty
Mar 13, 2018
Mar 13, 2018 at 1:48 PM UTC