"wilderness" poems
1233
Had I not seen the Sun
I could have borne the shade
But Light a newer Wilderness
My Wilderness has made—
93k
#*Can it love you like God loves you, with a love that is better than life?
Can it connect you to eternal beauty? Can it save you? Can it redeem you?
Can it lift you out of the miry pit? Can it make you clean enough to finally feel acceptable?
Can it delight your soul to the core? Can it take your breath away with its faithfulness to you? Can it paint both sunrise and sunset across the sky to beckon your attention? Can it cause the breeze to blow and gently caress your cheeks? Can it send hummingbirds and wildflowers across your path to romance your heart? Can it parade before you the starry host and call them each by name?
Can it probe you to the depths and fill you with itself?
Can it rush to your aid riding on the wings of the wind?
Can it satisfy your hunger and thirst with bountiful things?
Can it give to you feet like a deer that you might dance upon the heights?
Can it arrange every detail of your life to draw you and drive you to itself?
Can it pursue you with all the resources of the universe?
Can it know you through and through and still desire you?
Can it raise you up and seat you in the heavenly realms and bless you with every spiritual blessing? Can it supply your every need out of its glorious riches? Can its grace be sufficient for you and its mercy help you in your greatest temptation? Can it pour overflowing comfort into you through all of your troubles? Can it reach down to draw you out of deep waters? Can it set you on an unshakable foundation? Can it bound across the mountains to come to your rescue? Can it make you lie down in green pastures and lead you beside still waters?
Can it walk with you through the darkest wilderness and never leave you or forsake you? Can it carry you when you are weak or have fallen? Can it let you rest between its shoulders when you are weary or burdened?
Can it escort you to heaven’s banqueting table
and spread its banner of love over you?
Can it hide you in the shelter of its wing?
Can it be your daily portion and immerse you in the boundlessness of itself?
Can it clothe you in robes of righteousness and garments of salvation?
Can it give to you praise in exchange for mourning?
Can it bestow on you a crown of beauty for ashes?
Can it turn your wailing into dancing?
Can it flood you with peace like a river?
Can it fill your heart with joy in the worst of afflictions?
Can it know the way to lead you home?
Can it refine you in its fire and bring you forth as gold?
Can it capture you fully even as it sets you fully free?
Can it ever truly be your Everything?*#
Jul 3, 2016
Jul 3, 2016 at 12:47 PM UTC
I live in a forest of fallen sunflowers, old and wise, they speak to me of the days gone by
When the sun sets among the wilderness blaze, they tell me night is befalling, and I must make my departure
They tell of decades ago, how they’ve watched as humans lived their lives, most rotten in nature
They spoke of the one that used to tend to them, how gracious and kind, how pure and warm
For the sunflowers spoke with melancholy, for they knew that their former caretaker was well gone
So for a moment they wept their tears of seeds, and sung soft melodies of their former caretaker
They spoke to me and warned of the evils of humanity, how they were too once the victim of the evil
They asked why humans destroyed what’s beautiful around them, why they wish to sabotage what keeps them breathing
But they spoke to me and said I was a rare human, one that had good intention, and a sensitive heart
As night began to fall, I left the forest of sunflowers, carrying their tearful seeds
To spread as I walked away, to maybe rejoice and create life once more
The forest I hope will remain tomorrow, that it stands the test of time
May 16, 2015
May 16, 2015 at 2:46 PM UTC
Terrifying are the attent sleek thrushes on the lawn,
More coiled steel than living - a poised
Dark deadly eye, those delicate legs
Triggered to stirrings beyond sense - with a start, a bounce,
a stab
Overtake the instant and drag out some writhing thing.
No indolent procrastinations and no yawning states,
No sighs or head-scratchings. Nothing but bounce and stab
And a ravening second.
Is it their single-mind-sized skulls, or a trained
Body, or genius, or a nestful of brats
Gives their days this bullet and automatic
Purpose? Mozart's brain had it, and the shark's mouth
That hungers down the blood-smell even to a leak of its own
Side and devouring of itself: efficiency which
Strikes too streamlined for any doubt to pluck at it
Or obstruction deflect.
With a man it is otherwise. Heroisms on horseback,
Outstripping his desk-diary at a broad desk,
Carving at a tiny ivory ornament
For years: his act worships itself - while for him,
Though he bends to be blent in the prayer, how loud and
above what
Furious spaces of fire do the distracting devils
**** and hosannah, under what wilderness
Of black silent waters weep.
41.2k
Maybe it's for you but not for me, but who knows?
When will the time stop and give way to the paradoxical space that will shove the soul out of its life, eventually?
Tend to think that the archetypal white collar worker is what you should be before you delve into the reality?
Jumped into the ripest chord of a void song, and you found nothing but truth and perplexity?
Threw yourself into the wilderness but you are still deprived of happiness, only peace, filled with emptiness?
Crashed the mental into bi-polarizing set of uncertainty and sanity, driving everything towards the ravine of confusion and misinterpretation?
Dropped the last sweat of joy and contentment before you discover the eventuality, pessimistic value of the whole context?
Until the ultimate full stop appears, will you understand what is the whole story is all about?
Mar 31, 2018
Mar 31, 2018 at 6:56 AM UTC
Into the wonderment of your autumnal mind.
Where the skin of your grief sheds its leaves.
Is the song of your sea bound into colourful light?
The Shepherd breaches the flock of your dreams,
And the pastures breathe a sigh of relief,
As your tears of morning dew
Glisten the parched landscape.
Does your bouquet of *****
Lay wistfully in the wilderness?
The skies of blue that reside in your eyes
Serenades the coming of the tide,
Harvesting the fruit of our labour of love.
Is this a wind of smile that turns into a voyage of valiancy?
A flock of thoughts liberated with a cry of exclamation
As your fears of autumn blue
Are exiled into the rapacious wind.
Dec 17, 2016
Dec 17, 2016 at 5:40 PM UTC
Day-colored wine,
night-colored wine,
wine with purple feet
or wine with topaz blood,
wine,
starry child
of earth,
wine, smooth
as a golden sword,
soft
as lascivious velvet,
wine, spiral-seashelled
and full of wonder,
amorous,
marine;
never has one goblet contained you,
one song, one man,
you are choral, gregarious,
at the least, you must be shared.
At times
you feed on mortal
memories;
your wave carries us
from tomb to tomb,
stonecutter of icy sepulchers,
and we weep
transitory tears;
your
glorious
spring dress
is different,
blood rises through the shoots,
wind incites the day,
nothing is left
of your immutable soul.
Wine
stirs the spring, happiness
bursts through the earth like a plant,
walls crumble,
and rocky cliffs,
chasms close,
as song is born.
A jug of wine, and thou beside me
in the wilderness,
sang the ancient poet.
Let the wine pitcher
add to the kiss of love its own.
My darling, suddenly
the line of your hip
becomes the brimming curve
of the wine goblet,
your breast is the grape cluster,
your ******* are the grapes,
the gleam of spirits lights your hair,
and your navel is a chaste seal
stamped on the vessel of your belly,
your love an inexhaustible
cascade of wine,
light that illuminates my senses,
the earthly splendor of life.
But you are more than love,
the fiery kiss,
the heat of fire,
more than the wine of life;
you are
the community of man,
translucency,
chorus of discipline,
abundance of flowers.
I like on the table,
when we're speaking,
the light of a bottle
of intelligent wine.
Drink it,
and remember in every
drop of gold,
in every topaz glass,
in every purple ladle,
that autumn labored
to fill the vessel with wine;
and in the ritual of his office,
let the simple man remember
to think of the soil and of his duty,
to propagate the canticle of the wine.
27.2k
They are always with us, the thin people
Meager of dimension as the gray people
On a movie-screen. They
Are unreal, we say:
It was only in a movie, it was only
In a war making evil headlines when we
Were small that they famished and
Grew so lean and would not round
Out their stalky limbs again though peace
Plumped the bellies of the mice
Under the meanest table.
It was during the long hunger-battle
They found their talent to persevere
In thinness, to come, later,
Into our bad dreams, their menace
Not guns, not abuses,
But a thin silence.
Wrapped in flea-ridded donkey skins,
Empty of complaint, forever
Drinking vinegar from tin cups: they wore
The insufferable nimbus of the lot-drawn
Scapegoat. But so thin,
So weedy a race could not remain in dreams,
Could not remain outlandish victims
In the contracted country of the head
Any more than the old woman in her mud hut could
Keep from cutting fat meat
Out of the side of the generous moon when it
Set foot nightly in her yard
Until her knife had pared
The moon to a rind of little light.
Now the thin people do not obliterate
Themselves as the dawn
Grayness blues, reddens, and the outline
Of the world comes clear and fills with color.
They persist in the sunlit room: the wallpaper
Frieze of cabbage-roses and cornflowers pales
Under their thin-lipped smiles,
Their withering kingship.
How they prop each other up!
We own no wilderness rich and deep enough
For stronghold against their stiff
Battalions. See, how the tree boles flatten
And lose their good browns
If the thin people simply stand in the forest,
Making the world go thin as a wasp's nest
And grayer; not even moving their bones.
23.6k
✴
*in the quiet of stillness
I can hear a snowflake
gently land
upon my cheek
a flurry of gossamer
frozen lace lilts ~
peacefully
transforming
the ennui
of chilling silence
into a wilderness symphony*
✴
Nov 16, 2017
Nov 16, 2017 at 11:59 AM UTC
Now this particular girl
During a ceremonious april walk
With her latest suitor
Found herself, of a sudden, intolerably struck
By the birds' irregular babel
And the leaves' litter.
By this tumult afflicted, she
Observed her lover's gestures unbalance the air,
His gait stray uneven
Through a rank wilderness of fern and flower;
She judged petals in disarray,
The whole season, sloven.
How she longed for winter then! --
Scrupulously austere in its order
Of white and black
Ice and rock; each sentiment within border,
And heart's frosty discipline
Exact as a snowflake.
But here -- a burgeoning
Unruly enough to pitch her five queenly wits
Into ****** motley --
A treason not to be borne; let idiots
Reel giddy in bedlam spring:
She withdrew neatly.
And round her house she set
Such a barricade of barb and check
Against mutinous weather
As no mere insurgent man could hope to break
With curse, fist, threat
Or love, either.
19.1k
Now mind is clear
as a cloudless sky.
Time then to make a
home in wilderness.
What have I done but
wander with my eyes
in the trees? So I
will build: wife,
family, and seek
for neighbors.
Or I
perish of lonesomeness
or want of food or
lightning or the bear
(must tame the hart
and wear the bear).
And maybe make an image
of my wandering, a little
image—shrine by the
roadside to signify
to traveler that I live
here in the wilderness
awake and at home.
13.4k
You were a different version of the religion,
you were a ****** of the region when we met.
I had the brownest eyes. You had the greenest eyes.
chin sits perfectly in shoulder,
hand fits in hand, molded.
I had hair like a little girl's. You had hair like a little boy's.
Both half ****** my arms were as thin as yours, and toned.
You didn't own a single curve, just edges and bone.
Only your lips were soft. Only my lips were soft.
The fading light bounced off the angles of my abdomen and visible ribcage,
made your mouth water. With a shy,
curling finger,
you called me over to you.
It drove me wilder.
We undressed each other under the covers.
You giggled and I crumbled when you saw
I needed help with the clasp of your bra.
I chuckled, returned the favor when you gave up on my belt buckle.
I had the body of a little girl. You had the body of a little boy.
The sheets wound around and pressed us together,
You had the hardest hips. I had the hardest hips.
You compromised what was inside your mind;
I felt those first few moans rattle your
visible ribcage and escape through lips pursed
like a porcelain doll.
Took it all in, held on to your fragile frame
and from the moment we were free,
two children in the wilderness.
Dec 27, 2010
Dec 27, 2010 at 8:00 AM UTC
Wilderness their sight, her brown eyes contain the bright
Universe -- she is a graceful phoenix in flight;
Golems of the golden earth bow to this fire bird;
Two fiery wings spread -- she is the light of the world,
Prometheus's daughter, vanquisher of night:
Withered grass resurrect and bloom do flowers burned
Meaning rejoice! she comes with the warm dawn returned!
Apr 15, 2014
Apr 15, 2014 at 7:58 PM UTC
Healing leaves are now disrobed branches
on the edge of this wilderness.
Many tall Douglas Fir stand sentinel
over 100 foot tall amazing grace — the fleeting leaves
expose the beauty of the moss clad scaffolds
adorned with a lime-grey lichen lace
Nature is my refuge — solid ground to stand
in this harmony and peacefulness.
Jesse Stillwater — December 2018
Dec 2, 2018
Dec 2, 2018 at 12:38 PM UTC
*The wilderness is the blank space
Where the minds can roam free
A canvas for us to paint our imagination
Happy minds devoid of any anxiety
Fresh breath of life in the empty space
Where do we take refuge if destroyed?
Wilderness is the bank space to treasure
Explore and find all the answers
For the unimaginative they have no relevance
Among the wilderness we embrace life*
Aug 26, 2014
Aug 26, 2014 at 9:04 AM UTC
Missing blissful memories,
Cherished thoughts.
Memories in webs,
Tangled knots.
Binding grievances
Pave the way.
Unfettered thoughts
Have their own say.
Moments felt,
Moments understood.
Times are past,
Graveness its hood.
Calm seas rejoice
In silence.
Storms are but
Reasons to penance.
Regret hopes to
Unbind the will.
Will’s infant cry
To escape.
Bewilderment stares
With mouth agape.
Confusions unfold
In graves.
Souls depart
To hellish caves.
Brevity speaks
A thousand words.
Wilderness stands
On a million swords.
Confused and petrified.
Thoughts again
To guide.
A vicious circle
So unholy.
One committed
To every folly.
Jul 6, 2014
Jul 6, 2014 at 12:44 PM UTC
His hands are scarred,
Face is a mess,
Too long walking
Through the wilderness.
The bears are hungry
Wolves they howl,
The Levy's breaking
All will
Drowns.
Washed away by savage currents
Watching fallen suns go
Down.
Mar 16, 2015
Mar 16, 2015 at 11:54 AM UTC
Ramblers in the wilderness
We cant find what we need
Get a little restless from the searching
Get a little worn down in the swing
Like a bull chasing the matador
is a man left to his own schemes
Everbody needs someone beside 'em
shining like a lighthouse from the sea
- NEEDTOBREATHE
Jul 8, 2015
Jul 8, 2015 at 2:27 PM UTC
#
*Many days without a muse.
Whatever shall I do?
Too long away from poetry
and sans a point of view
The moon has been so beautiful.
But words just would not come.
The sunrise has been glorious
the sunsets strike me numb.
Romance is in the air tonight.
Perhaps a muse will see...
And strike a chord that gives
a voice to verses now in me.
I close my eyes and see much more
than sight can ever see.
Colors swirl behind my lids
and rainbows, vividly.
Butterflies and hummingbirds
a ship of clouds glides by
Howling wolves in the wilderness
a pink and azure sky
And so, I find I need no sight
to find my inspiration.
The mind is far more "visual"
and gives its own sensation.*
#
Apr 30, 2018
Apr 30, 2018 at 8:13 AM UTC
#(a travelogue)
He stared down through
the unbroken silence
lapping the shoreline
Water skippers dart around
the rocks and windfall driftwood
settled juxtaposed in cattail reeds
and emerging broadleaf sprouts
A petrified heartwood timber
lie fallow waiting bare barked,
hushed like a pining lover’s
timeworn love seat,
rubbed smooth as
the crystalline waters
of half-moon lake
Lingering for a while ―
like a hidden stalker,
a perched wildcat waiting
for the full moon’s
swooning spell to saturate
the thickening dusk quietude;
arousing the urgent
call of the wild —
exhaled from the held breath
of the wilderness nocturne
on half-moon lake
The stillness was scattered
with the soft downy hairs
of the sleeping cattails, and
the newly shed catkins
a spring gust bestrewed
from a tall resin birch tree
nigh the Sitka willows
He sat quietly ...
time out of mind ―
tossing his eyes up into the sky;
taking the time to read the stars ―
catching them each again
as they fell into his gentle hands,
to show him who he was
Seeing their sparkly tracers
trail-out above the cattails,
from a distance
they resembled falling stars
unable to perceive their own renaissance ―
plashing lightly upon the still-water
on half-moon lake
A lone shadow glides stealthily
near mid-tarn,.. swimming
enchantingly with the grace
of a blackswan
Appearing to glance shoreward
at the glowing low stars
rise and fall, as his eyes
twinkled skyward over
the moonlit lagoon ―
heavenward of its moonlit ballet;
the lone sleek dark shadow
slipping through
a faint circular ripple
stirring the smooth as glass waters ―
disappearing like a fleeting moment
waning deep aneath
a subtle silent wake.
When all the clear lines blurred,
he knew it had been so long ...
but hearken !
… an interceding
long drawn out wail
echoed a feral ache
across the stillness,
breaking the silence ―
as the shadow reappeared;
his tears surrendered
to the undulating call of the wild;
he felt the spirit of the sole Loon,
as black and white
as the moonlit night,
stir deeply in his wanting heart ―
lay bare the silence
in lengthy yodeled psalms
to the god of the moon
Diving down deep yet again,
keeping the light he’d been given,
vanishing into the lifespring
sanctuary of half-moon lake
harlon rivers ... May 2018
travelogue: 4 of some more
May 21, 2018
May 21, 2018 at 2:36 PM UTC
She tends her cactus garden,
beads of perspiration,
works with a maniacal absorption.
One of many visitors she receives
yet looking at each other's eyes
dawned this quick realization;
similar maniacal obsession and passion.
A tornado she was, self created,
in her swirl uprooted
many huge trees, even tombstones
by the sheer force unleashed,
with her poetic flourish.
Love of a crazy woman
with effervescent creative surge,
is a magical portion
brewed by a witch ,
in her forbidden rituals, night after dark night.
Injured by conjugal lust, unrequited
prompted to walk the garden path
holding hands of lovers, one after the other,
who took her to wilderness, deeper and deeper
and at the end to a blind alley,
life was a tribal dance,
from where return was impossible.
She never had to apologize to her mate,
who for all the world to see, remained with her
till he went behind the curtain.
Imagine a life, a walk
through a cactus garden,where sharp thorns would nip,
searing pain and bleeding has its moments of exhilaration.
Life pulsated wildly for her on such notions,
(There were many who walked with her for each adventure)
They met, poetry flowed like wine,
she had a rare warmth seen in women of such creative combinations,
she feared nothing, but her truth made many squirm.
Midnight dances of her and her friends gypsy bunch,
attained such fame.But all ended in a great betrayal,
she was deep down a naive woman,
craving for love, to immerse in it.
On occasions she would change identities
at will, she was one but many
there wasn't any one like her before or after.
They would walk through the witch's cactus patch,
somnambulists reciting poems,
when they are together, in private,
cactus spine criss- crossed his skin
her nail wrote poems on the back
of the lover of the moment,
each one bled like soldiers in combat.
One monsoon night brought
everything to an end,
the cactus garden was trampled by
big grey wolves, the journey
met with an abrupt end.
What is she, cactus herself,
vampire, witch, lover indefatigable,
with the heart of a lion?
Erotomaniacal poetic surge,
yet a fantasy in flesh and blood?
**They buried her
in a cactus garden away from town
not even ten people arrived to mourn,
not even all her lovers, had time that afternoon.
Her songs of pain, pierced hearts and they
still shed tears,
cactus garden, it was---
the metaphor perfected by her life and death.**
Jun 6, 2013
Jun 6, 2013 at 12:44 PM UTC
*
I am talking of fearlessness
"Fearlessness..."
The same fearlessness
Shown by Christ on the cross
The same fearlessness
Shown by Gandhi
For his non-violence
The same fearlessness
When Mansoor said "I am YOU"
Was lynched & cut piece by piece
The same fearlessness
Of Meera who sang for Krishna on the streets
When she was humiliated, ****** made fun off
The same fearlessness
When Radha danced for Krishna
Even after Krishna left Vrindawan for Dwarka
The same fearlessness
With which Hussaiyn Ali
Martryed his life at Karbala
While trusting someone
The same fearlessness
Of Sita when she withstood
The tests of Rama's accusations
The same fearlessness
When Bahi Taru Singh
suffered governor's brutal torture
The same fearlessness
When Mirziyaan gave his bow & arrow
To Sahibaan knowing that
The tip of his arrow may be blunted
Leading to his death
The same fearlessness
When Romeo drank the poison
And Zuliet stabbed herself with a dagger
The same fearlessness
That made Layla fall sick & died on hearing that
Her Majnun is roaming mad in wilderness;
Later on hearing about Layla's death
Majnun died near Layla's grave
The same fearlessness
When Rabia wanted to
Cease the fire of hell and
Set alight hopes of paradise
The same fearlessness
Of Rumi who guards
The divine light of LOVE
The same fearlessness
When one is compelled by
soul energy to LOVE BELOVEDz
That is the fearlessness
I am talking about
"The fearlessness of LOVE"
*
Oct 1, 2017
Oct 1, 2017 at 11:55 PM UTC
just when the dust
settles round my lust
and the thud
of despair hits bottom
just as I flail
and swim in this
blood-caked,
soulless earth
soup of the lost
abyss of unbirth
you plunge my wilderness
charred with remains
from hellfire
and we breathe
halos
our bones lighted sticks,
colors rising in
angel arcs
Your rib cage
is open
for my tremulous offering
as my lips imprint
a crimson O
upon the earthquake
of your chest
I am still down with the
earthworms
wrist **** sopped
by soil
arteries, bashed
split to the root
by verbal hurts
in a sliding psyche of oil
yet here you are
suturing wounds
with whiplash kisses
saltlick moans in my throat
You wrap me in gauze
through the imprint of your eyes
turn my cuts
into fresh brook
gaze upon my
deepest darkness
like goddess worship shrine
my **** is a funnel
for your whipped light
sacrifice ****** prayer
skinned to the core
all layers exposed
your lips slick
with the drip
of my bliss,
deep juice of
freshly-caught
jungle hum
all is bared
we stop at nothing
paint our tongues
with tears
adorn the face of death
with ripe guava
and, as you scream
my name into
a blown glass whisper
my soft fruit
falls into
the heat of
your palm
somewhere
in distance
a
moon
explodes
Mar 2, 2019
Mar 2, 2019 at 11:42 AM UTC
What can win against time, someone asked me
reminiscing the journey which started eighteen months ago
with me and him philosophizing intricacies of life
and human emotion
relishing the daily luxuries of satisfying debates
when little did I know that we would walk all along
fighting demons in our own being
surviving closed ends of fate
and loneliness
The man I got to learn of
his real, gentle and calm soul
comforted with the truth of a warm heart
eventually knocking out the dread
of long distances between us
relinquishing the storms in our minds
embracing sparkles of different weathers
Shall it really last forever
self-contained
or burst out with emotion
believing
it really is us
together
and our love fueled by faith in search of its way
which outlasts time
a shining beacon
in midst of an ocean of crowded wilderness.
Nov 21, 2016
Nov 21, 2016 at 10:25 PM UTC
*on the verge of wilderness
imminent silence*
welcome
the sun stroking
peaks aglow
the thundering falls
mist-kissed rain
the solitude
so rarely reached
too often breached
stillness loosen
untamed words
in the native tongue
before thoughts
unspoken
became yours
mine
ours
to the wild
bear these
cryptic symbols
scrawled on
my halved heart
tokens of longing
succor
for the lost
Jul 1, 2016
Jul 1, 2016 at 10:28 AM UTC