"wraiths" poems
The line didn't move, though there were not
many people in it. In a half-hearted light
the lone agent dealt patiently, noiselessly, endlessly
with a large dazed family ranging
from twin toddlers in strollers to an old lady
in a bent wheelchair. Their baggage
was all in cardboard boxes. The plane was delayed,
the rumor went through the line. We shrugged,
in our hopeless overcoats. Aviation
had never seemed a very natural idea.
Bored children floated with faces drained of blood.
The girls in the tax-free shops stood frozen
amid promises of a beautiful life abroad.
Louis Armstrong sang in some upper corner,
a trickle of ignored joy.
Outside, in an unintelligible darkness
that stretched to include the rubies of strip malls,
winged behemoths prowled looking for the gates
where they could bury their koala-bear noses
and **** our dimming dynamos dry.
Boys in floppy sweatshirts and backward hats
slapped their feet ostentatiously
while security attendants giggled
and the voice of a misplaced angel melodiously
parroted FAA regulations. Women in saris
and kimonos dragged, as their penance, behind them
toddlers clutching Occidental teddy bears,
and chair legs screeched in the food court
while ill-paid wraiths mopped circles of night
into the motionless floor.
10.3k
Gliding along the currents,
Singing the songs of war.
Fire breathing Dragon.
Coming to settle to the score!
Wings of fiery hellsong,
Bringing light to the land.
Scales and hearts adamant.
To end the world of man.
Millions of dragons,
Flying overhead.
Wraiths of the underworld.
Tamriel is in danger,
The time is running short.
Alduin is coming.
To end the world of man...
Nov 11, 2014
Nov 11, 2014 at 10:56 AM UTC
Retail-hunter gatherers pick
clean processed bones, digging graves
with their shiny teeth, studious in
their reveries as they drone
past worlds dumped in the thresher;
the trucked-in fields of film-wrapped
gore splayed lustily before the managers
wound tight in Machiavellian design.
A shepherd herds his flock of
wreathed iron back to its pen, its
skeletal tangle lit in riotous gold by
swords flung from lambent eyes of
pre-dawn’s shunting chariots
Cages shunt and bobble like tugboats
chugging stoic up swimming pool lanes
of nondescript tile, cheered on by shouting
colours to float through archipelagos of
paper towel and chocolate blocks past
the vegemite diaspora, and the arctic
wastelands cased in sliding glass fields of
perfect steady storms as wraiths baked in halogen
ask silent questions of the silverbeet, while
Lana Del Ray’s voice falls like
nightshade—slutty and serene—coating
shelf stackers in a Piaf sadness as the
shelves reach their arms out for more.
The check out chick hatches
a sense of déjà vu as carrots
and biscuits drone towards her
mind berEFT of any twitching
sense of POSsibility that wised
up and flew this leering coop and
deep in her catalogue of grey folds
something stillborn and waxen is
perched on gleaming steel, reeling
out her guts like cassette tape with jerky
nightmare arms and laughing like a
banker watching ***** films, mornings
dull cerise an invocation through
auto-jaws as she bursts out to warble
with magpies in car park’s climbing fire.
Jul 25, 2013
Jul 25, 2013 at 9:23 PM UTC
Original English version see http://hellopoetry.com/poem/942159/dragon/
Dovah
Gliding asamit ven,
Mirodah lovaas do kein.
su'um Dovah.
Coming wah feymah wah jusktii!
Viing do yolus hellsong,
Drun kun wah himdah.
Vrii ahrk hil adamant.
Wah oblaan lein do jul.
Unon do dovah,
Bo overhead.
Wraiths do volok.
Taazokaan los ko rut,
tiid ru maltiid.
Alduin los coming.
Wah oblaan lein do jul...
Nov 26, 2014
Nov 26, 2014 at 7:44 PM UTC
Breathe not, hid Heart: cease silently,
And though thy birth-hour beckons thee,
Sleep the long sleep:
The Doomsters heap
Travails and teens around us here,
And Time-Wraiths turn our songsingings to fear.
Hark, how the peoples surge and sigh,
And laughters fail, and greetings die;
Hopes dwindle; yea,
Faiths waste away,
Affections and enthusiasms numb:
Thou canst not mend these things if thou dost come.
Had I the ear of wombed souls
Ere their terrestrial chart unrolls,
And thou wert free
To cease, or be,
Then would I tell thee all I know,
And put it to thee: Wilt thou take Life so?
Vain vow! No hint of mine may hence
To theeward fly: to thy locked sense
Explain none can
Life’s pending plan:
Thou wilt thy ignorant entry make
Though skies spout fire and blood and nations quake.
Fain would I, dear, find some shut plot
Of earth’s wide wold for thee, where not
One tear, one qualm,
Should break the calm.
But I am weak as thou and bare;
No man can change the common lot to rare.
Must come and bide. And such are we—
Unreasoning, sanguine, visionary—
That I can hope
Health, love, friends, scope
In full for thee; can dream thou’lt find
Joys seldom yet attained by humankind!
3.8k
The curtain opens, and I am lit alone.
Chagrin is my monologue.
On opera balconies, giggling wraiths shield themselves from my humorless improvisation.
Served on a platter, I am on stage, eyes squeezing out precious salt, holding my hands over my red-tipped ears as they still roast from the taunts of my imagination's cruel gossips, who sit, deliberately carving into my breast, intending to cut out my breath. Jabbering, with ***** claws clasping at tarnished silverware.
I stammer and my throat begins to hang itself with a velvet string and cat-gut noose.
I sweat, clothed by the filth of makeup, menstrual blood, and leftover food stains. Palms held up, dramatically surrendering on the condition that mercy be extended, for they have seen my miserable condition and that it is me. The cloying stench of uncertainty and greasy hair envelops me.
I cannot kneel, for the coals on which I stand,
make me suffer more from the pressure.
No water in my heels to soothe this felon.
I cannot provoke or endure, my performance is to be left early. Hume would not grant me fame.
If you have a heart, do not waste ink or time or money on me. I am a clot of blood, clogged in the sink. I will die in a ***** bed and no one will care, not even myself.
I just wish it will be swift and fleeting if it is painful.
Hoping harder, I am not remembered as a miserable girl, the way I am.
So, sing violins, and let me swing for the cannibals.
Feb 26, 2013
Feb 26, 2013 at 8:44 PM UTC
tented World of Bubbles and
critters, monkey-wild,
the slant-
off,
the fathoms of a depth,
of Worlds whose histories end
in a fraction of what nature does do.
Amola mola, designator
a bulb of light dangling down to the nauticals,
the bubble armoured polyps.
The lively cesspool of micro-seamounts, where,
once there stood strong
a sea-green zoo,
now vaguely stands a mineral vestige.
Gaia shut off the vent
everyone goes away.
visited by wraiths --
These black lampreys, hooded and veiled,
clustering, cloistering,
the successors who
they and they only
the new deepsea robbers.
now a lighter sinking feeling,
the demigod sinks hitherto like nature does do.
a giant ***** whale dies above
Casting its shadow of hope
and the wraiths appear in the umbra
pushing & shoving for a spot
food arrives with a thud;
a castle of whale bones as their home
they were never so happy.
so crazily, thoughtlessly food-driven
deepsea "things"
swish-swash swish-swash goes the weird fish circus,
and then, crazily so
upon their trophy, the mirror wraiths,
of a bubbled World
feed in frenzy.
Dec 21, 2012
Dec 21, 2012 at 11:23 PM UTC
The blue honda pulls up to the curb. A strange lingering fog is tinged purple. He steps out of the car, and looks around. His phone buzzes in his pocket, but he ignores it in a moment of awe. What meets his bleared city eyes is a sight like no other. Looming in front of him is green woods, seemingly taking shallow breaths in the mist. Then, shadowy swirls form into tentacle-like wraiths. He stood frozen for what seemed like forever. Then a shadow slowly crawled onwards him, slithering on the gravel. It tentatively touches the tip of his shoe and he scrambles back into his car and locks the door, trying to steady himself. After telling himself repeatedly that it was just his imagination. Not real. Not real. Not real. Feeling better, he picks up his phone and calls his wife back. The phone rings, and the normal sound brings him back to the present. He looks towards the woods. He quietly scoffs to himself, what an idiot he was, it was only his imagination. Something catches his eye.He doesn’t see anything. Looking towards his phone something catches his eye again. Upon a second inspection he looks and finds nothing. He looks down on his phone, why can’t his wife pick up already? Something catches his eye a third time and he looks, there is no mistaking the shadows leaking towards his car. he hangs up desperately and attempts to call again.It rings once and the shadows seem to leak into his car, it rings twice, and the shadows seep into the open window, it rings four times, and she finally picks up.
Her lone voice rings out
Hello?
…
Are you there?
…
Honey, are you ok?
...
Feb 12, 2015
Feb 12, 2015 at 3:23 PM UTC
O
O
○○
○○O
O
○
○
koi
circle
endlessly
beneath the
silver surface
and blue glass
of a lilypad pond. their
eyes bulging gills gulping
the tiny bubbles on the
the water ****
they dart under
the pink lilies
like orange
ghosts or
pale
wraiths
they go round
and round in the
pond no bigger than
a golden thimble
longing for the sea.
Oct 30, 2014
Oct 30, 2014 at 3:25 AM UTC
Maybe water runs uphill
From the ocean's bursting treasures
Of salts, silts, sands
Marshalling at the estuaries
Spawning rivers, as pioneers
Oozing into coastal plains
A brackish caravan rolling
Inland to new-found-land
Beyond the rule and will
Of the tide's spill where
Drought and dry spells
Sweep like wraiths
******** on thieving winds
Throwing heartless dusty curses
Picking off stragglers
In slacks and backwaters
Or caravanned through known channels
Paying taxes to the thick-rooted soil
For passage upstream
Past thirsting leaf and bough
Every mile hard-won
Til the watershed haven
Of bog and lochan
Corralled safely among peaks
There to farm the cloud and mist
And to see blossom, in good years
A deep harvest
Of cold, clean snow
Mar 28, 2011
Mar 28, 2011 at 11:29 AM UTC
Two years of laughter and smiles
Two years of being worth the while
Of course for David it could feel like its been two years
Worth of Lucy's tears
You are my greatest friend
My love from the beginning right to the end
Battles fiercer than those of helms deep
But love that forever is ours to keep
And although when I'm angry I may look (and act) like an Orc
I do still love you more than a lot
In truth I'm more of a hobbit
Loving and loyal
(Not so much small)
Entirely devoted
To my David and my David alone
For you are my precious
My love, my only one.
No one can have you (not even Sauron!)
I'd like to see him and his ring wraiths
Face me and my one woman fury
Two years today we started a journey
And still today we are forever learning
That you hate mushrooms and sugared tea
90210, gossip girl, and feet!
But I love you and you love me
And may this journeys end never be
For I love you more now than two years before
And I know for sure that, this love will grow
14/6/11 until the end of time
I love you baby that's just how it is
There and back again
A love tale
By David and Lucy
So do me favour and keep on laughing
Otherwise you've wasted 720 days of minecrafting!
Aug 6, 2013
Aug 6, 2013 at 10:50 AM UTC
----
The Superstition mountains
Have a mine, or so it's told
Its canyons echo riches
Many died in search of gold
Four rapacious desperados
Rode hard into its hills
In search of the Lost Dutchman
But it's said that his ghost kills...
They saw an onyx jaguar
Dark as a holocaust
It walked on ahead of them
When they found that
they were LOST
They saw Jacob's Ladder
Wraiths ascending to on high
They walked under as a good sign
But found this was a lie...
They saw a snow white owl
And asked it what to do
It stared at them with golden eyes
And simply answered, "Who?"
They found a wooden box
Carved with foreign runes
They opened It expecting gems
And found Pandora's DOOM
They heard coyotes laughing
As they closed in for the ****
Those bad men found no treasure
no one ever will
The mountains take their toll
As the outlaws will attest
The sky birthed out a Blood Moon
As they rode into the west...
SoulSurvivor
(C) 7/24/2015
Jul 24, 2015
Jul 24, 2015 at 4:49 PM UTC
I fell in love with a superstition.
She kept crystals at her bedside
to ward off wraiths and bailiffs,
selling friendship bracelets to
strangers on the internet whilst
keeping family in her prayers.
She would wander the fields
of **** and sunflower seeds,
howling at the moon without
another soul to converse with;
obsessive-compulsive murmurs
of a Hail Mary and incantations.
Potions of ayahuasca and sugar
brewed on the hob in the kitchen,
fridge magnets full of idioms and
passages from the Book of Psalms.
By the fire sat a pristine tin cauldron
with the price-tag still left on it.
Broomsticks were mounted on the wall
like lazy guitars or executed deer.
No photographs, only proud trinkets
and yoga mats; a crucifix hung over
every doorway, whilst she had learned
to cross her legs from all men and pain.
She laid me down on the bed
with a hungry sleight of hand
to show me her favourite trick;
I saw the marks on her arms
before she came alive in the dark,
and by the daylight - she had gone.
Dec 10, 2014
Dec 10, 2014 at 1:01 PM UTC
It was impossible, it seemed to me,
that twilight came so swiftly;
And with it coolness of the night,
and relief from restless drifting.
Wrapped in a towel of perspiration,
I lay on the desert's mounds of sand;
The crescent moon became my friend,
while watching it curve just like my hand.
But whispering wraiths arrived to haunt,
my vivid dreams of black and white;
Exposed to the darkness up above,
where nothing appeared quite right.
The moon dissolved in silent tears,
while shedding its silver sheen;
And with a touch of Merlin's wand,
gathered waters so clear and clean.
The desert rain fell with intent,
to wash away my mortal dread;
Dripping down from the crescent's mirror,
to reflect upon my earthly bed.
When I awoke it was eerily quiet,
the towel around me had dried;
No longer alone in a desert world,
I reached up and touched the sky.
Mar 30, 2019
Mar 30, 2019 at 8:53 PM UTC
Instead fear the spirits that now inhabitant your heart
Those whom you have betrayed in love
Tremble in trepidation of these souls
Whose sadness was birthed in deception and treachery
Grown and watered with greed in bitter soil
And whose eyes now see nothing but hate
That await dipped in anger behind a silent door
Fear not who dwells below you
Or he that dwells above
Instead, live in trepidation of ghosts that now inhabitant your life and heart
Those whom you have betrayed in love
May every strained breath be rife with regret
Every thought tainted with fear and blood
It is not who dwells above or below you should fear
Dread the wraiths you have betrayed in love
All Rights Reserved @ Tammy M. Darby June 12, 2018.
Jun 10, 2018
Jun 10, 2018 at 8:57 AM UTC
Capillaries are the river's replacements
In the basement
of these globes
are roads
life has yet to probe
pave
or scathe
wraiths roam
at gloam
with forlorn
echos etched into morning dew
Their worldly remains
lost in-between
Osiris' domain
Dec 14, 2012
Dec 14, 2012 at 11:20 AM UTC
This silent sentinel haunted by time,
Unearthly screams and violent crimes!
Abandoned; decrypted, this barren womb.
In darkling corners, a petrified tomb,
Where unbidden echoes hammer at the walls
As the wraiths creep on their hollow foot-falls.
Oct 17, 2015
Oct 17, 2015 at 1:26 AM UTC
The moon is howling
at the wolf now whole.
Inside of my
Transparent skull.
It is the hour of hunting;
Of flesh-eating packs
But what is it they are wanting?
Hare blood stains the train tracks.
Those wraiths are ravenous
They are forming inside my head
Scandalous, ominous
They gather around my bed.
She's the alpha hound
Looks me in the eye:
Showing dominance crowned
And my end is nearby.
Jun 16, 2017
Jun 16, 2017 at 8:12 AM UTC
A Ballad For A Thin Man.
Understood backwards. Lived forward. Life.
Haunted by diverging others. Us but not. Wraiths.
Ghosts of what if? Who then? What might have been?
Leave room. Turn left. Lovely house, wife, retirement.
Leave same room. Turn right. Shack, loneliness, poverty.
Theorize games. Physik quanta. Slide down strings.
Into Wonderland, Oz, Middle-Earth. Narnia.
All the places that don’t exist and matter the most.
Where doors open up to impossible possibilities.
Fight your way through every day. Pit bull of potential.
Just do your work and be kind. That is a separate peace.
We may be others in other universes, but here we are just us.
**** it up. Love your life. Do what you must. Soldier on.
Real realities can really hurt. Take it like a Man. Or Woman.
Be grateful for your trials. Trials are you. Struggle.
Mount the philosopher’s donkey backwards, advance.
Aug 1, 2016
Aug 1, 2016 at 5:16 AM UTC
Round the path these wraiths walk
paced to keep the gears turning
save for a few this is Lady Justice
her arms holding even the smallest souls
sounds of buzzing and locks clanking
dominate above the incessant chatter
backyard handshakes hidden from prying eyes
dogged deals shaping these shatter lives
and the word of the day is always "waiting"
taking one last look at the hands of time
before that dreaded voice bellows through
then its the cold slap of flash on cement
these veal on twenty three hour lockdown
spinning their tales these jailbird tailors
lying to each other for stolen smiles
each in a different stage of the same life
bathing in the omnipresent light of fireflys
dreaming of a wisp of smoke or a hand stroke
whichever waits for them on the outside
they'd believe in the patience of the buddha
if religion were on their tapered tongues
as it is there's always faces against the glass
eyes peeled to savor the brief passing drama
apathetic to the other prison dog's plight
drooling for the next passing hour
as they count them like sheep herding sleep
cleansing their conscience in the communal rainshower
everyone praying for the wings of freedom
to fly them from these sullen gates
the others still suspended in solitude
letting one man tell them when to eat and wake
their voices becoming mere whispers of wind
poets robbed of their rhymes and words
grown accustomed to breathing processed air
measuring their time in months, weeks, and years
locked away with the shadow of their fears
Nov 13, 2011
Nov 13, 2011 at 9:50 PM UTC
We have imagined the world
beyond these curtains and proven...
..."Life" is a palindrome.
Snakes are killing worms,
without knowing
victory can only be seen by two naked eyes.
Somehow, we were born to die.
The sun has been covered with heavy clouds
which define the ocean to be dark,
the wind helps our boat we sail
yet the breeze is now singing melancholy.
The rainbows are not always colorful
if we choose to walk through
these vacuous and winding roads
for each regret travels always after the dead-ends;
and these wraiths inside our heads
forbid us to notice that
the morning dew suddenly taste sour
and seconds immediately turned to hours.
Perhaps, we, humans, have never learnt
to count the time we wasted.
Nov 8, 2011
Nov 8, 2011 at 9:29 PM UTC
Couple of astral doors
Duplicate diamond cores
Lovelore progenitors
Essence of evermore
Smoldering passion wraiths
Burgeoning ashen faith
Conveying eternity's weight
Resounding mystery slate
May 18, 2016
May 18, 2016 at 10:17 AM UTC
Never ordinary
Never easy
Nothing parts the sea
Nothing moves the earth
This is a hard world
And there is no give at all
Don't press your face to the ground
It does not help
Don't shout at the sky
It does not hear
Nothing helps
And no-one hears
This is desolation
In the wavering distance
Less than light
Reality drifts eerily by
There is no need to go
No reason to stay
Grey coiling wraiths
Rise and slowly sway
They could be anything
Anyone
Distinctions have no place
Nowhere to hide
Here is where souls shudder
And shatter
By Phil Roberts
Apr 6, 2017
Apr 6, 2017 at 4:24 AM UTC
I rose up
and greeted the sun
with pieces of a smile
My brain fogged over
filled with slithering dreams
made of sap
Dust motes
filled my windows,
golden wraiths
twisting to my heartbeat
Slow-motion thoughts
could not get across
so I sped away
through the air
We met halfway
With stories
And warmth
Busily, I swept away
The lingering
Of cobwebby sleep
My mind rose,
A lazy creature
Warmed by the sun
Into wakefulness
Nov 1, 2010
Nov 1, 2010 at 2:34 PM UTC