"wistful" poems
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
"O ye, all ye that walk in Willowwood."
D.G. Rossetti
Two gazed into a pool, he gazed and she,
Not hand in hand, yet heart in heart, I think,
Pale and reluctant on the water's brink,
As on the brink of parting which must be.
Each eyed the other's aspect, she and he,
Each felt one hungering heart leap up and sink,
Each tasted bitterness which both must drink,
There on the brink of life's dividing sea.
Lilies upon the surface, deep below
Two wistful faces craving each for each,
Resolute and reluctant without speech:--
A sudden ripple made the faces flow
One moment joined, to vanish out of reach:
So those hearts joined, and ah! were parted so.
21.1k
You sat on the other end of the table
Glistening, shining, and taunting me
Rosy cheeks with spurts of Yellow and Green
Silently teasing
A juicy, little Apple.
Hopefully no one would see me, no one would pay any attention
As I grabbed the treat and the knife
And began to dangerously peel.
I knew I was doing it wrong
My hands shaking while my cheeks began to flush
Embarrassed by my ignorant inadequacy.
Are you left-handed? she asked from my left.
Humiliation filled the corners of my eyes, wet and distraught.
No, I mumbled. My cheeks reflecting Mose's Red Sea.
I was beginning to drown.
Your thumb needs to move, You make me nervous,
and she sounded nervous indeed.
Put it down here. Help yourself control it. Guide it.
Everyone was staring now, the whole table awed
My ignorance showing, like a medallion at my chest
My shameful Apple as pathetic proof.
You're doing it wrong.
Non così. Basta, faccio io.
Let me do it.
You're about to graduate, and you can't peel an apple.
I began choking, drowning in tears of Humiliation.
No, let her do it the small Voice on my left said.
She is finding her way. Let me watch her.
I finished peeling the Apple
Suffocating my tears as I ate.
You remind me of Daisy, she said soon after
From The Great Gatsby.
I choked and laughed, more ashamed than ever.
I'm not sure that is a compliment.
I could barely muster a mumble.
She couldn't do anything by herself.
She looked at me, gentle and forgiving.
I think it is, she replied
Wistful and Wise.
Daisy was vital to the story, you know.
And I believe that given the chance, she could have done anything that she wanted
On her own.
May 5, 2014
May 5, 2014 at 6:27 PM UTC
"While I sit at the door
Sick to gaze within
Mine eye weepeth sore
For sorrow and sin:
As a tree my sin stands
To darken all lands;
Death is the fruit it bore.
"How have Eden bowers grown
Without Adam to bend them!
How have Eden flowers blown
Squandering their sweet breath
Without me to tend them!
The Tree of Life was ours,
Tree twelvefold-fruited,
Most lofty tree that flowers,
Most deeply rooted:
I chose the tree of death.
"Hadst thou but said me nay,
Adam, my brother,
I might have pined away;
I, but none other:
God might have let thee stay
Safe in our garden,
By putting me away
Beyond all pardon.
"I, Eve, sad mother
Of all who must live,
I, not another,
Plucked bitterest fruit to give
My friend, husband, lover;--
O wanton eyes, run over;
Who but I should grieve?--
Cain hath slain his brother:
Of all who must die mother,
Miserable Eve!"
Thus she sat weeping,
Thus Eve our mother,
Where one lay sleeping
Slain by his brother.
Greatest and least
Each piteous beast
To hear her voice
Forgot his joys
And set aside his feast.
The mouse paused in his walk
And dropped his wheaten stalk;
Grave cattle wagged their heads
In rumination;
The eagle gave a cry
From his cloud station;
Larks on thyme beds
Forbore to mount or sing;
Bees drooped upon the wing;
The raven perched on high
Forgot his ration;
The conies in their rock,
A feeble nation,
Quaked sympathetical;
The mocking-bird left off to mock;
Huge camels knelt as if
In deprecation;
The kind hart's tears were falling;
Chattered the wistful stork;
Dove-voices with a dying fall
Cooed desolation
Answering grief by grief.
Only the serpent in the dust
Wriggling and crawling,
Grinned an evil grin and ******
His tongue out with its fork.
13.4k
The sunrise wakes the lark to sing,
The moonrise wakes the nightingale.
Come darkness, moonrise, every thing
That is so silent, sweet, and pale:
Come, so ye wake the nightingale.
Make haste to mount, thou wistful moon,
Make haste to wake the nightingale:
Let silence set the world in tune
To hearken to that wordless tale
Which warbles from the nightingale
O herald skylark, stay thy flight
One moment, for a nightingale
Floods us with sorrow and delight.
To-morrow thou shalt hoist the sail;
Leave us to-night the nightingale.
11.8k
My my, what a special little snowflake.
Why did you choose to be this way?
You chose to be different, you chose to rebel.
No binary for me!
You chose the grief, the pain.
You chose this abuse, bruised by
the verbal ferociousness, forged by physical fallacies
To be thrown out of bathrooms
because doing your business in the bathroom is abysmal.
You chose to be derided by decisive discrimination.
You chose to be murdered by misconceptions,
***** by ridiculous requirements.
You chose to be beaten, assaulted.
You chose the words I weave to weaken your will.
You chose the sacred sermons I spit at you.
You chose to be
What I find disgusting, despicable
because you chose to be what you aren't,
but I realize what I really regard you to be.
My my, what a special little bigot.
You think I chose to be this way?
You think
I chose the injuring, injustice,
the jester, the joke
the target, tortured,
This pain, my poison,
the prey, praying,
the sinner of sins so bittersweet,
So I could be "special"?
Special isn't a sacrifice of physical self
Nor the gunshots and gruesome grief
Nor even the crass comfort of a half-assed comrade.
You think I CHOSE this,
and you didn't choose
to spit and spew your sour speeches
to disperse your disgust in discrimination
to integrate your ignorance into my existence.
Or did you not choose
to deal the abuse
by your hand
yourself?
My special little bigot,
You live as you are.
So be it, if I am so "special", the special little snowflake.
Yes, we are the little snowflakes that your palm's presence melts away,
And you're that burning persistence of life
Blocking with your own self our slow, wistful descent,
As if it were futility and not of your own will.
If I am the snowflake, you are the fire.
May 26, 2015
May 26, 2015 at 8:42 PM UTC
We’ll meet again some day, once again as strangers.
We might talk for a bit,
maybe even pretend like we don’t remember what happened.
Maybe we’ll run into each other in a coffee shop,
you with your new love and me with mine.
We’ll act like old friends should,
but your familiar face won't carry familiar feelings.
To know I've been replaced is disheartening.
To think about what we once were makes me wistful.
It’s even more sombering to think of what we are now, strangers.
How is it that someone who once meant so much can become nothing more than a stranger?
Emotions are now rendered into nothing but memories.
Memories are now distorted from hopeful wishes.
Hopeful wishes are now abandoned like a coin into a wishing well.
Yet even after everything that happened,
I can’t help but hope that somewhere, somehow,
We’ll meet again some day, once again as strangers.
Dec 25, 2014
Dec 25, 2014 at 1:13 AM UTC
What do you see
When the flower meets your eye,
What beauty must hide
In visceral Versailles,
In cherry tree reality...
Does it mystify?
The variegated countryside
Does the chorus nullify
The diversified into harmony
What melodic elegance underlies
That subjective divide
Wistful of waves you fly
What do you see in the cherry tree sky
Apr 9, 2016
Apr 9, 2016 at 9:57 AM UTC
I never saw a man who looked
with such a wistful eye
upon that little tent of blue
which prisoners called the sky,
and at every drifting cloud that went
with sails of sliver by.
I walked, with other souls in pain,
within another ring,
and was wondering if the man had done
a great or a little thing,
when a voice behind me said,
"The man's got to swing"
For he did not wear scarlet
nor did he speak of it,
for blood and wine were red
and so was the color on his bed.
He looked upon the garish day
with such a wistful eye;
the man had killed the thing he loved,
and so he had to die.
May 13, 2018
May 13, 2018 at 4:55 AM UTC
The trouble with Hello Poetry
Is that I fall in love daily
Held under so many captivating spells
moulded and crafted by all walks of life
I find myself longing for all of you
the broken, the fallen, the bruised
the saints, the sinners
the righteous, the dispossessed
the holy, the unholy
all meet here
to speak of life
as they feel it
as only we know it.
Onwards, upwards
Downward spirals
kindness, cruelty
crashing through boundaries
bounding across oceans
carried on wistful sighs and broken dreams
The trouble with Hello Poetry
Is that it breaks my heart
Then brings me back to love again
All within an hour.
Jun 3, 2014
Jun 3, 2014 at 4:30 AM UTC
old hunger makes us sick
forget who we are and
where we're going
how to see thru fog
how to pierce the sky
where's the truth in all this
mustard gas and lies
translucent silken shadows of people
wishy washy wistful thinking like
'o look at big sophisticated words dribbling across page - verbal *****
great philosopher all expression and
thought purge speaking in a vacuum'
petulant little lines for liar's lurid heart
petty little fines growing large from the start
what is this point you speak of and how do we get there
if it is really about the journey and not the destination
then can i get off right now
or
can i be seal eye headlight hi beams
is there trust enough left between us two
to go on down this road together
or part ways at lightning fork in path
no
i go into petrified forest bog
to hide and melt and decompose
bucolic rot under stalwart stoic onlooking trees
you go to riches, glory, ******* and now sprouting planted seeds
misgivings all forgotten like
irreverent, irrelevant childish deeds
and
i grow bitter and ferment
starving gut absinthe
filled with frozen wormwood lies
like Poe and de Quincy and all the rest
Sep 26, 2014
Sep 26, 2014 at 10:35 AM UTC
Wistful lust and melancholy mangoes
Succulent decadence and still I am morose
A plum for pining, a kiwi for whining
Pineapple dreams are the clouds’ only lining
For in the resting realm the reality is nigh
Alas cruel consciousness eradicates the high
And thrown am I back into awareness
That life and love are not games of fairness
Oct 31, 2011
Oct 31, 2011 at 4:01 PM UTC
Music
Passion, wistful
Devouring, seizing, engulfing
Mellifluous voice of the soul
Fluid
Jun 21, 2014
Jun 21, 2014 at 7:05 AM UTC
I remember that placid night...
Sitting in my room alone.
Something inside me was filled with fright,
Knowing that there was no one to phone.
And I suddenly hungered, ached, desired—
That animalistic feeling,
That urge left unhindered—
That lustful tingling.
A lust I lusted after,
But to no avail.
My lonely heart started beating faster,
But all I could do was wait and wail.
I felt choked up,
Stifled beyond belief.
I felt like I had dealt with enough,
And I needed to help my soul breathe.
A lust I had lusted after,
Longing for that forgotten feeling.
But my hopes were useless chatter,
No one could hear my silent pleading.
I felt so very hopeful—
Hopeful and excited.
But I was left feeling wistful,
With my lust uninvited.
Jun 1, 2019
Jun 1, 2019 at 11:39 PM UTC
awakening with the gradual rise
of the subdued heather hued sun
a palpable spectral silence permeated the air
the anticipation of celebration intercepted
by an enveloping phantom black malaise
hiding in obscure shadows
the terror of the twin towers final doom
elucidated quivers of melancholic nuances
rippling through the greying vicinity
my birthday september 11th a tuesday
my night to sing at abravanel hall
with the utah symphony
unable to serenade death
our voices remained indubitably silenced
in hushed wistful reverence
ensuing 9/11s channel somber sentiments
cloaked with annihilation while
dark visions occupy smudged iphone screens
this anniversary i will dissipate despair
transmuting dark despondency
splashing all with lucent petals of delight
i’ll live this day with passionate intensity
and those subsequent with equal ardor
ferociously painting back the light
i will raise my voice with effervescence
and sing in wild abandon
for my precious brothers that were lost
demonstrating devotion through a refusal
to be silenced by fear bestowing honor
with a conspicuous message that love wins
©2016janetaylor
Sep 11, 2016
Sep 11, 2016 at 6:22 PM UTC
.
**............
o| |o
o| |o
o|........|o
||||
||||
||||
||||
||||
||||
||||
||||
||||
||||
||||**
•play me a
tune of sweet serenade
•sing me a song of wistful
melody•recite me the words
you would have said•
now whisper me your sighs
tenderly•paint me the
colours of night and day•write
me the poem of your heart•send me
your love on which I lay•make me the
end to all your starts•strum me the chord
of hopeful bliss•compose me a ballad that
sets my innermost free•so play me your
tune, the one that I would always miss
•and keep singing of us in a song,
so we'd be immortalised in
eternity•
.
Mar 2, 2015
Mar 2, 2015 at 9:28 AM UTC
You make me feel wistful
With your tight bellies, limpid eyes and endless manes of hair,
You make me feel afraid.
Dainty Angels,
I can't...Quite...Remember...
You make me feel jealous
With your waiflike allure, sad vulnerability, delicate beauty,
You make me feel inadequate.
Fairy Foundlings,
I won't...ever...be....
You make me feel ancient
Outside, dated and decrepit.
How do you feel? What do you need?
Why are you all so sad?
My dreams are your nightmares.
I tasted raindrops once, too
I almost have it, almost understand.
Jun 25, 2014
Jun 25, 2014 at 3:05 AM UTC
*Oh, beautiful flower,
How wistful in woe,
Paint peace in your petals
And peace in foe.*
Jan 7, 2014
Jan 7, 2014 at 2:40 AM UTC
In lonely moments
I stroll the waning memories
when love pure smiled blissfully
deep within a fawning heart
a wistful melody arises untainted
like a steaming enslaved passion
breathlessly released
unrestrained,..
evident
as the pressed and dried flowers
cuddled between life's ardent petaled pages,
bookmarks of the heart
traces of the wild bouquets
that often soothingly caress’d
the energizing tingles
inflaming a tantalizing touch
the yearning empty voids
feverishly undressed,
traced in the hidden sands
of unexplored oceans..
though time and distance
make the bereft heart grow helplessly fonder,
memories fade softly as the summer breeze befalls,
as gentle feather’d touch
the evanescent sunset afterglow
where the earth and sky align
the dimming of the day
loving can heal
the poet’s bleeding words,
loving can mend your soul ―
the perennial dawning of an
unpromised new day
will someday come again
bequeathed like the bluebird’s mirthful song
to bring forth nascent wild flowers’ blossoming petals
flourishing in the meadow of my heart
Someone you used to know
Mar 1, 2017
Mar 1, 2017 at 7:48 PM UTC
you took my hand
and my heart in yours
your lips danced across mine
and your thumbs grazed my cheeks
you led me into your life
and made me whole
i know it was just a dream
but i can still feel your fingertips on my skin
Nov 22, 2014
Nov 22, 2014 at 7:39 PM UTC
A woman drew herself up from wrecked wood at the bottom of the ocean;
whispered sea-songs into the wistful ear of a long lost love;
shook her locks 'til his heart beat faster;
looked longer than she should into the deep pools of his pleading eyes.
"I will call you when I want to;
I will call you when I want."
Cooled his temples;
breathed her watery breath
as silvered beads streamed down his shocked skin.
.......
Rumors rock an empty drifting boat;
a glazed shell faced with priceless pearl
broken from its moorings,
strangled by a knotted rope.
"You have not chosen me, but I have chosen you"
Hold fast the bestowed gift,
your Quinquireme of stowed treasure.
Protect its precious structure.
"Who are you, the one who stripped my soul?
Who is the third who stole yours?"
.........
Broken from netting I lie
a beached starfish on burning sand,
wishing the waves to wash me
back through Time's receding current
to find the silence that once was;
to turn away before the sacrifice,
before the Eye of the storm.
copyright © Caroline Grace 2010
May 20, 2010
May 20, 2010 at 2:05 AM UTC
A twitch
A tingle
A feeling in the water
A ladies moment
A naughty emotion
A thrill of a thought
A thrill at the thought
A wistful proclavity
A moment of disorder
A body confused
A blip in the day
A welcome diversion
A moment to saver
Feb 22, 2013
Feb 22, 2013 at 10:17 AM UTC
The exalt is ephemeral, sure to fade
Wistful stares dance past tainted shades
Rose colored lenses seep into red eyes
Chest filled with knots but can't form the ties
Nebulous mirror is all that is seen
Want to break through but don't want to bleed
Certainty fueled solely by liquid coal
Envy consumes and tears into the soul
Tell me I'm beautiful, loosen my chains
Assent the lies and then turn off my brain
Choked from the view by a chemical wall,
Lust for that side but don't want it at all
Desist the leers of superior ones,
Desire escape and somewhere to run
Pray that there is no re-occurrence,
Return to me addictive reassurance.
Apr 22, 2015
Apr 22, 2015 at 9:09 AM UTC