Putting It Down To Some Impact On My Heart
Putting it down to some impact on my heart
in my sleep, this sunny afternoon edged
with cold anger like a residual hangover
from some dream I don't remember having.
Did you visit me again last night like an albino nightmare?
Was Venus in Virgo? Were we unaligned?
Was I talking through a window embedded
in heritage brick? Did I mutter things at the sky
that were indignantly unjust without meaning to?
I wonder if the stars after all these light years
they took to get to my heart, are completely happy
with an afterlife without flowers or hermit thrushes.
Who knows why anybody looks back on their past
and risks turning into a pillar of salt,
or returning to the dead by default
but did you let go of my hand again last night?
I'm sick of your absence always being the prelude
to my dismemberment. And those eyes
that always rebuke my poverty as if they'd
been bathing in jewels. Those spiked stars
you bait like red meat you leave out for polar bears.
The brittle sensibilities of a neglected ice age.
Did you break your windows again like a frozen lake
to get at the waters of life in your mindstream?
I hate it when the light goes unappreciated
but this soulless blue of a late autumn afternoon
is beginning to get on my nerves
like a Hallmark greeting card that's chewed
all the real flavour of life out of its feelings like gum
masticating its words for public consumption.
I feel I'm letting some prophecy down somewhere
as if I were misreading the tea leaves at the bottom
of the moon cup of my prophetic skull.
The gash of first crescent early this morning.
A lunar hair on the shoulder of the dawn that swears
it wasn't untrue to the sun the Luciferian morning star
is leading on as if a new fool were born every day.
No matter. By the time I was ready for sleep
I expected a lot less of you than anyone's ever delivered.
And I'll be ok in a while, and you'll hate me for it
when your heart turns into a toxic arrowhead
that didn't have any effect. Just this Clovis point
to say you'd been here once and been wiped out
with the larger mammals of North America
in the dust bowl of another sudden flash freeze.
poem by Patrick White
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Related quotes
Symphony for the night
Close your eyes
let me sing you a song of the night
When the sky is dark,
And sweet cold winds blows,
Dream it for me,
let your heart sleep,
To wander in magic,
Flying trough sea of stars that shimmering
Let the moon smiles,
Greeting you trough the sky,
Let the clouds go with you,
Let us sail trough the night!
Let them,
Let the stars, blanketing your night sleep
Let the wind, blowing for your dreams
Let the symphony in, filling your heart,
Putting you, a good sleep trough the night,
Lei it be,
Dream, oh dream it for me,
Till the dawn, let you sleep.
Obliterations Of Beauty And We Weep
Obliterations of beauty and we weep
for what cannot long abide in us
because we, not the rose, are the ones
who are passing so irrevocably away
into an abyss that doesn't
take the measure of anything.
The lake knows the time
by the wingspan of its waterbirds.
I note the location of the stars
in the rotation of the Big Dipper.
And there are crickets
that will yield the time as well.
Time, too, like human solitude
is embodied in the things of this world.
Time perishes when we do,
is born with us, matures,
and embraces our ends as its own nature.
Time sets its pace to the passage of us.
We are the muse, the motivator, the demi-urge
of its passion for shedding
the leaves and flowers and moon like skin.
And we're the ones who grow infinite
at the speed of light so that everything stops
immeasurably from there on everafter.
All things returning to the one, and the one,
returning to transcendence. Which is why
I come here this late at night when the stars
are as far from people as they can be
and yet they're still as intimate to me
as my eyes are. A mutually creative continuum.
The star makes the eye I need to see it by.
I am the fragrance of the wildflowers
and the adamantine insights of the rocks.
The singing master of the nightbirds.
The oracle in the leprous skull of the raccoon.
And my heart is one long, continuous moonrise
when I think of how the dead still animate me.
How they cling to my heart like ants to a peony
to let me know when it's time to bloom.
The dead trees house the mosquitoes and the herons.
The fallen pine cones, the seed koans of Zen masters
under their brittle eyelids waiting for the fire
to crack them deciduously open into evergreens.
I don't lament the passivity of the dead in my life
because I put them to good use in their capacity
as enlightened mentors who urge me
to live splendidly whatever I encounter in the world
for all our sakes. I can be the blossom and the fruit
on the dead branch, as easily as a red-winged blackbird
sings from the green and leafless alike.
Not a bush wolf raises its voice up to the moon
that I don't feel its distant longing in my own throat
like a sacred syllable half way to blossoming among the dead
who always hear it like an auspicious beginning
to the summons of their leave-taking in the fall,
to the deeper greeting in the meaning of farewell.
poem by Patrick White
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Your Eyes For Awhile
Your eyes for awhile
were the only eyes
I could see through
to catch a glimpse of god;
were windows into my own soul
that I could look through from the outside
without throwing the moon
through my reflection like a stone
in the hand of an angry boy.
And it was always as true
as the way your heart grew
that you could love strangers
easier than I do even now
after all these years of learning how
to talk to mirrors in their own language.
And you were not one woman
but all women forever
when I saw you once
bending down like the dusk
to touch the last of the flowers
as if you would never see them again.
As serene as the evening
there was no labour in your beauty
and I swear when I saw you that night
I felt as if I were the whole world watching
time put a finger to its lips
and pour its fountain
into the flow of your body
as if it were the sum of all passage.
And though I was your friend in all things
every evening since
the candle went out
in the lantern of a lost tomorrow
I have walked out into abandoned fields alone
and asked the saddest questions
of the most distant stars
knowing there is not enough light sometimes
even in the eyes of God
to be a companion of our sorrows.
And the questions grow longer
as the darkness deepens
the echo of my longing
in a well as dry as my skull
and closes its gates like scars.
And then those nights come
like a life or a day
or even just this moment
when I stop asking
why human suffering
is always indescribably true
and joyful as an irreproachable buffoon
sword-dancing alone with the moon
who writes me dangerous loveletters
as if she were the Lady of the Lake
receiving me back
like a funeral ship
into this mysterium of you,
I can almost believe that you know
even though the night mocks the crow
that pines for mercy
and turns its lightless face toward you
as if it could still feel
the warmth of the sun at midnight
in your eyes again
like the afterlife of light
playing with fireflies in the abyss
now that the summer constellations have gone down;
that somehow you must know
like a guitar
on the far side of a room
where someone is singing
as if they had their ear
to the womb
of your irrevocable absence
that binds me to you with every breath
I take for two
as if I had learned to live on death
to keep you alive in me
where you still flow through the seasons
on the nightstreams of my blood
like blossoms and leaves and stars
and the moon leaves no scars on the water;
must know. Or a demon’s a kinder face
to bestow on the darkness
than a black hole without eyes,
though it’s taken many, long, painful years
for the night to share the light with its jewels again
and as many schools as there are fools to fill them
that even just one
of those slightly compassionate smiles
you would send across the room
to cool the furnace of my heart
with the lightness of one snowflake,
one feather
gracing a change in the weather,
knew more about love
as a raindropp knows the sea
than all of us
who have been washed up
on this cold, lonely shore together
thinking we may have been saved
for something more
than this tidal longing
to brave the sea again
and even if doomed to drown
as I have learned
from this shale of pain
that has carbon-dated the eras
of my missing you
like a life that didn’t
flash before my eyes
as I went down for good with everything,
to thank-you, o, yes,
with nothing but love and light in my heart
and your face in the eye of my solitude
as I stand before the sea in gratitude
to thank-you
as you well knew one day I could
for the generosity of the wound
that has run like my life
down these eyes
these windows
this page
these empty mirrors
of autumn rain
that have wept for years without you
just to see you again
for one moment more
than the time I have left
to know that I never will.
poem by Patrick White
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Night And Day
I hate the moon
'Cause it covers the sun
That brightens up my day.
I hate the stars
As if they laugh at me
When I'm feeling blue.
I hate the silence in the night
'Cause this moment of time,
Seems people don't care about me.
I love the sunshine
That gives life a meaning,
A new hope and a new beginning.
I love early morn
Unleashing the sun
And wraps the stars & moon.
I love the birds at daylight
As if they sing for me
That lifts up my heart & soul.
poem by Alon Calinao Dy
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Power of the Night Star
The sun has set
The sky dusky brown
To remember you all night
I have that much right
To think about you all night
I have that much right
To worry about you
To care about you
All throughout the night
That is my right.
The sun sets down
And out goes the light
The world wears a gown
And sleeps all the night
For I also sleep, in my every heart beat
There is a dream for all that i keep
My night is prolonged
But dawn will come
Our faith love adorned
And spiritual distance not torn
At last my sun shall shine and rise
Oh all, lay down your heads
Close your tired eyes
Listen to loves lullaby
Aside your worries
Every moment happy
Sweetly sleep tonight.
In the night the moon shines light
And stars brighten up the sky
Your presence a star for me, Your smile
In this dark night we live out our life
Your guidance, You show us the right
The path on which with you we ride.
poem by Arwa Bharmal
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Every Time I Open My Eyes
Night or day
I dream of you
Dream of spending time with you too
Dream we decided to fall in love and that you'd always stay
Sometimes it makes me want to sleep all the time
What's the point of being awake
When during my dreams is when I'm happy
Because during my dreams you're here with me
I'll try to sleep for your sake
We've had the best times together these past three weeks
Even though I haven't seen you in awhile
Every night I go to sleep with a smile
But every morning, every time I wake up
I feel the depression, someone take this cup
Because every time I open my eyes I'm still alone
No matter how sweet the dream, it ends
No matter how much love my heart sends
The dreams they end and when I open my eyes I'm empty
When I open my eyes I'm still alone, I'm still me.... just me
I almost don't want to dream for fear of harsh reality
I know it's selfish of me
To want to dream all day and then not because it hurts my feelings
I wish I could just tape up my heart with sealings
And not let anyone is because all I dream of is true love
And all I can think when I wake up is: I'm completely alone
I'm unloved
I can't write poetry, and I can't rhyme
I have no skill, and I have no true love
EVERY SINGLE TIME MY EYES ARE OPEN!
I'm just alone even when I close my eyes to cry, the second they open tears
Come again, because I'm still alone...
It's gotten to the point where I can barely cry I've drowned in my emotion
I almost wish for death again, anything to end this loneliness
Why do I seek love so ardently when I have nothing left to give of me...
Maybe that's why when I open my eyes I may be a young boy
But I feel like
'An old man, filled with regrets, waiting to die alone.'
poem by David Knox
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Morning Night And Day
One time didn't do it
Two times didn't feel quite right
I didn't know where i was going
I just knew that i would be alright
I woke up in a druken haze
The sun shone to my window?
I said that i'd never do it again
What kind of fool do you think i am?
It happens
It always seems to happen
Morning night and day
I just want some action
Give me satisfaction
Send me to my?
Morning night and day
I had a good time late last night
I didn't think it would ever end
I walked home in a broad day light
Couldn't get a cab at half past five
One drink wouldn't do it
Two drinks are far too much
I didn't know what i was doing
I ate the floor and a pile of dust
It happens
It always seems to happen
Morning night and day
I just want some action
Give me satisfaction
Send me to my?
Morning night and day
So if you think that it won't get you
Well think again friend 'cause it's not true
In my case, it was not my fault
Other people made that call
One time didn't do it
Two times didn't feel quite right
It happens
It always seems to happen
No matter what i say
Morning night and day
I just want some action
Need some satisfaction
Before it gets too late
Send me to my?
Morning night and day
song performed by by New Order
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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There Was a Heart that Burnt Out: Light
There was a heart that burnt out: light
Light O god, O god light
Flower, perfume, stars, breeze: light
These are your names, no matter how we shape you
When afternoon rose on the evening's horizon
Who was it in my heart who said: light
Now there is no point in adorning the stars
The season of meeting him is gone: light
Dawn broke on a dream in which
I wrote simply by looking: light
The two curses we are trapped between:
How we live in darkness, how we imagine: light
[Translated by Nukhbah Langah and Lavinia Greenlaw]
poem by Noshi Gilani
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Unable To Sleep
didn't sleep well last night
I didn't dream last night
Losing all the battles
Losing all my fight
I didn't sleep well last night
Barely closed my eyes
tossed and turned and paced
until sunrise
I didn't dream last night
Any time I tried
I cried inside
and wanted to run and hide
I didn't sleep well last night
My world seems confused
Like a dead-end in a maze
like an ocean without a sky
All my friends are far away
the hands I hold are imagined
my life in shades of blue and grey
A life derailed and gone astray
I didn't dream last night
All my dreams feel broken
Hardly uttered or spoken
my tears have run dry
I didn't sleep at all last night
caught up in dispair
for all the things not right
not all black and white
I didn't dream last night
my heart is ablaze
with sadness and fright
No way to make things right
I didn't sleep at all last night
My ship must have sailed away
All I can do is pray
but I've forgotten why
2008 © James T. Adair
poem by James T. Adair
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Just Before Dawn Venus In Leo Between The Moon And The Beehive Nebula
Just before dawn Venus in Leo between the moon and the Beehive Nebula.
The chimney of the old shoe factory reflected
like a toppled obsidian obelisk in the Tay River.
Couldn't sleep. Now I'm heading home with the bats and the ghosts.
I've firewalked enough tonight, and the coals are beginning to dim
in the ashen light of my waning spirits.
The Perth Soap Factory still hasn't managed to imperialize
the fragrance of the last of the wildflowers crowding
the crumbling parking lots and leftover wedges of field,
but it's trying. I envy a squirrel its quick Zen energy.
And three crows think they know something about me.
Happens a lot in a small town, as I know you know,
because someone you know told me. You must think
I'm crazy talking to the air as if it were you,
but even out here, you've been inside of me all night,
and now it's time to make some space for you beside me.
I like the feline water sylphs that follow me home
like feral cats in the early morning when there's dew
on the brass heritage plaques of the lawyer's offices
with ultramarine peacock's eyes waxing in the windows.
I've been learning to play Jeremy's violin on my spinal cord all night
to see if I can get you up and dancing like a kite with no strings
in a gust of stars. But so far all I've managed in my solitude
with you as my intriguing familiar is a happy kind of hangover
from a seance just you and I attended. But I'll get better.
You'll see. I'll master this new medium of picture-music
half way between witchcraft and mystery. And beyond
if you want to walk with me that far. Or fly, if that suits you better.
Pick a star. Or the softer option of a nebula, knowing you
as I'm beginning to. Alcyone in the Pleiades, perhaps.
Or maybe an unknown destination that exceeds
the wavelengths of the speed bumps of the asphalt starmaps.
I'll go there with you. And I'm as loyal as a skull.
poem by Patrick White
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Out Here Alone
Out here alone so late at night
with all these spectacular stars
burning through the clean glass
of the freezing winter air
I can almost hear them thinking
behind the myths of the cover stories
they've told for years
dark truths about life and light
it would be madness in a man to understand.
Don't try to stuff the impersonal secret
of the universe
into your sentimental heart.
How could you ever fit its likeness
into a locket
and finger it lovingly as your own?
Out here alone so late
even if you have come
like a thief in the night
to steal from the light
when nobody's home
there are no cracks no facets no gaps
no backdoors, unlocked windows
or emergency exits,
no stairwells or entrances
in these jewels of insight
that can feel your eyes falling upon them
like rain running down a mirror
that shuts you out
like someone in the bathroom crying
for reasons that are light-years beyond you.
However deep and sincere your tears are
they're still only dry wells
in that vast ocean of awareness,
black snowflakes
on the roaring furnace of the abyss
and if you reach out with affection
hoping to make things better
by embracing it all
you're still only tendering a kiss
to the gaping jaws of your own lipless skull.
There's a silence older than space
in the bottomless heart of things
that makes intelligence seem
the unlikeliest of exaggerations
a human could ever mean
holding his mind up like a lamp to the stars
as if he could find his own way back by his own light
without the dream that themes his mindstream with creation.
But as foolish and futile as it is to surmise
or try to get a leg up on the wise
I don't think the darkness
is the negative space
around the troubled face that appeared
after all the dots were connected
like rising constellations
in a child's colouring book.
And I don't think there are gods
squatting like frogs
on the lotus of the world
making us up as they go along
like wheels and roads
to the grunts and groans
of an axial mating song
anyone could mistake for a joke.
And I don't think the stars
believe the things we say about them
or even remotely feel the mystic dread
of what it is to be a human
looking up at their shining
out of deeper darknesses within
where no direction can be given to the lost like eyes
that would never find their own way home again
were it not for the stars and fireflies that mislead us
from one illumination to the next
by giving the finger to the braille of the text
that would school a gust of stardust into us
like God gave life to Adam
and Eve gave life to God
long before there were any laws to blind them
like Satanic lightning bolts
uprooting their eyes like rain from the clouds
to put those fires out.
I look up at the stars
with the eyes of an exile
through the diaspora of my breath
and I want to think them all to death
like the people and things I've left behind me
when it was time to go my own way
anywhere into the darkness inside me
to see if I could shine a light upon myself
that didn't blind me to the fact
neither in the beginning
nor in the end
was I there to witness the act
that made a certainty as good as a doubt
to the great indifference
that wasn't trying to find me
like a needle of light in the heart of a haystack.
I look up at the stars
like a scarecrow in winter
trying to put its pants on
one leg after another
like a man
with nothing but time to burn
scattering his ashes among the stars
urn after urn
skull after skull
of the heretics and mystics
that were martyred by his scar-crossed heart
in the name of nothing real.
I don't know what they feel
but I look up at the stars
like a black rose
of blood and starmud
in the last death throes
of self-immolation
and see in my own image
what I've always had
in common with creation.
poem by Patrick White
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Last Night I Was Talking To Myself
last night i was talking to myself
asking and making answers
like the way i make a knot and
then untie them from a cemented
post at the port
so that the wooden boat
may finally be let loose
and be free to sail
to its chosen destination
the sea was so wide
like all seas that you have seen
but the night was so dark
like no other
last night i was formulating solutions
to a very common problem
like how to cure a cold
with just a glass of water
like how to appease the coldness
of a room with nothing but
a piece of a woolen blanket
and curling feet and
hiding hands in my pocket
so i can have the exact warmth
so i may finally have my much
needed sleep and
dream about the peace
between the clouds
and the stars
last night i could not sleep
and you are beside me
last night i opened the window
of our room while you
were there snoring
last night i was silently
talking about the absence of
stars the loss of the moon
and then the rain fell
heavily on the roof of this house
and then i closed the windows
and then i listened to every sound
and then i noticed a faint light coming
from a leak of these walls
i know
another morning has finally
come
it is broken they say.
poem by Ric S. Bastasa
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The Night's A Black Hole Of A Begging Bowl
The night's a black hole of a begging bowl
that doesn't know what to ask for anymore.
Shall I throw the new moon of another beginning in
like good coin of the realm, in passing,
or bite the bullet of a counterfeit eclipse
in the silver silo of the dark abundance
I'm trying to trigger into stars again
like apocalyptic insights going off in my brain?
The heavens roll like an old thirty-eight
I raise to my temple for old times' sake.
But the gate I used to close behind me
in the high starfields to keep nothing in
is hanging on like a lapwing by one rusty hinge
to the wing and the prayer it's dragging on the ground.
It's getting a little late for suicide. The timing's
overtaken the importance of the content.
And this close to the end, it would be a shame
not to see yourself out like friend in the doorway
saying farewell to yourself as you say in return
I'm glad you came to the stranger whose threshold
you crossed like a star in transit at zenith.
My pulse is still hammering swords of light out
on the anvil of my heart for me to fall upon,
but lately I've been bending them like horseshoes
to put them out of use and return them in tribute
to the water sylphs in the sacred pools of my mindstream.
Inspiration ages into crazy wisdom that still
doesn't take its own advice but never fails to sing
in a voice worthy of a wolf or hermit thrush at moonrise.
I've been firewalking my way through this
long, dark, strange, radiant dream since I first
opened my eyes and the stars began to shine
but I've never lived the same thing twice.
Though the morning star falls like Lucifer
in the false dawn of enlightenment, the abyss
cannot be bridged by anyone's trajectories
however high we ascend, how ever deep we plunge,
until we're burning like maple leaves and shooting stars
in the second innocence of our return journey back to earth.
Fletched arrowheads of the sky, even the birds
falling short of the unattainable miss the mark
and return to the green boughs of their beginnings
just like the flight of these words in the sunset
as the night overwhelms us all unspeakably
with the proto-nostratic of the stars
like a mother-tongue of light that leaves nothing unsaid
in the autumn darkness fragrant with the decaying dream grammars
of the dead slipping their shadows like secret messages
under the door of the book we're writing between us,
the beginningless prelude of the endless epilogue
of the memoir of the love life we had with Venus in Virgo
when the new moon was in the claws of sensuous Scorpio.
Big, red-hearted, archaic Antares
threshing the green wheat of Spica
as if the harvest had been achieved before the seed was planted.
Just because we die doesn't mean that life
is finished with us like the draft of a manuscript
we threw into the bonfires of the maple trees
to inspire our ashes to rise out of the open urns of our firepits
like the feathers of a dragon enflamed by the wind
so our spirits could ride their own legends a breath
higher and closer to the stars every time we open our wings
to re-read the lyrics it took a lifetime to write in scars
like thorns in defence of the mystery of the black rose
we were happy to bleed for as if our blood had no other use
than the ink in the pens of these leafless woods
dreaming of new foliage in the spring returning
like the plumage of eagles to the lonely flight feathers
of their skeletal quills. Fossil constellations
in the darkness that whisper between the lines
of the alpha and omega of the life themes that once ran
like purple passages of the mindstream
that can still shed light on our afterlives in a book of shale
long before we had eyes to read what we were writing
like loveletters to ourselves on intimate terms
with the inconceivable solitude of this distant future
we're all living now in celebration of yesterdays yet to come.
poem by Patrick White
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An Autumn Day
Floating all night on waves of clouds
Searching for what life enshrouds
Woke in the morning to the misty dew
Lost in thought of the day anew.
I gaze from the window onto the lawn
And engage my thoughts on the new dawn
The colours and signs of seasonal bliss
These are things you should not miss.
Autumn colours of red, brown and gold
The landscape before you do unfold
Trees burn bright against the sun
The afternoon is nearly done.
As the sun goes down the colours surround
Red, yellow, orange melt into the ground
Night time falls and the colours hue
Turning the sky to a deeper blue.
The moon is out in all it's glory
The stars twinkle bright and showy
As the last of the stars fade away
Comes the breaking of a new day.
poem by Hazel Connelly
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These Words Turn Homeward
These words turn homeward
toward you, my dark wood,
because of all assignations of the night
you are West, you are dream and secret
you, deeper than jewels, sweeter
than the taste of stars
in the eyes of wounded black berries.
You, longing and lucidity,
singing in the last of the shadows
of the sacred trees for the unattainable
that summons me to you.
Endless, the farewell, endless
the dusk the nightbirds follow
after the swallows
have danced for the stars
in an aerial display of their own.
You, my star field, my wildflower,
whose skin is the skin of lunar waterlilies
and the tide at the tips of my fingers.
My new moon, my despair,
my solitude, my silence, my absence
which among these thousand lonely lakes
has looked upon you and seen
as I have seen in your incomprehensible eyes
how unfathomable they are to themselves
in your depths, your death,
the fullness of your abiding evanescence.
the quiet intimacies
that have just crept up on me
over these intervening years
that have done nothing
but linger in the moment
as if you would always be there
and could be found nowhere else
but now forever in this doorway
this broken window into my heart
to let go of
over and over and over again
like the rain, this stone, that leaf,
the wraith of your breath
hovering like a thin autumn mist
always at a distance over the harvested fields.
O diminished one, subtle one, free,
how is it you can inspire me still
though your ashes were given back to the stars
like a message for their eyes only
so many years ago that time itself
has upgraded all my starmaps
and made you alone, far one, bright one,
this lonely holy road that’s walking me home
as if my final destination, like yours, like you
were everywhere in whatever direction I turn
to ask the next star, where you’ve gone,
has it seen you, has it heard
was it too soon, was it too early
is it too late, too perilous, too absurd
for the morning to return you
like a singing bird to a green bough
to the dead branch that lost the moon
like its only blossom
on the rootless tree
that it took you from
when it took you from me?
poem by Patrick White
Submitted by Poetry Lover
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The Stars So Near
The stars so near it seems the approaching morning
could wet its thumb and forefinger
and pinching their wicks like intimate candles
that have held the lovers close
and the ghosts at bay all night
put them out with a hiss.
An ancient mirror deep within me
I couldn’t bring myself to bury
with the woman who once looked into it
is beginning to flood like a river of eyes with autumn rain
and I want to cry for things
that have departed like water birds
from their circuitous reflections on the mindstream
and leave the heart knocking
like an empty lifeboat against the rocks
that no one sings from now.
I’ve stared at the moon several nights in a row
as if we drank from the same skull
and I want to elevate my tears to a higher level
as a rite of passage worthy of what I mourn
but no lights on in the lockmaster’s house
me and the moon both know
how impossible it is to raise the dead
from their watersheds
by adding a few tears to a dry seabed
out of the largesse of the living
in the wake of so many shadows.
I’m trying to align my third eye like a bubble
in the middle of a balance beam
and build on the cornerstone of the moon
a Taj Mahal of lunar coral to commemorate
the loss of so much beauty
to the things it touched like braille
as if it wasn’t enough just to light them up
but parting the depths of its fathomless veils
open their eyes as well.
I shall turn three times in the silver grass
and stretching my body out like a scar upon the earth
lay down in a deer-bed by the river
with her absence bigger than the night for awhile
and listen to the frogs and crickets
as I used to listen for her footfalls on the creaking stairs
and the moon won’t lay its sword of light on the waters
like a vow of separation to keep us apart
and I shall ask every star
down to the sixth magnitude of time and shining
what has become of her who used to weave
English ox-eyed daisies into her hair
as if she were already among the constellations
showing off the lesser luminaries of earth
as if there were nothing so small
nothing so slighted or disregarded
no moment of life so devoid of inspiration
even the fireflies that can’t stay fixed in one place
long enough to beat a path into a zodiac
and elaborate their own creation myths
into something unborn and unperishing
weren’t enlightened
by the immaculate darkness of her transience.
To suffer everything as if it were a blessing she once said.
I look up through the leafless bough of an aging maple
twisted like a burnt match stick
whose fire’s just flared out.
I look up at the stars
as if they’d built their webs between the branches
like momentary dream catchers.
And I can’t manage it.
poem by Patrick White
Submitted by Poetry Lover
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Tonights The Night
Tonights the night, tonights the night
Tonights the night, tonights the night
Tonights the night, tonights the night
Tonights the night, tonights the night.
Bruce berry was a working man
He used to load that econoline van.
A sparkle was in his eye
But his life was in his hands.
Well, late at night when the people were gone
He used to pick up my guitar
And sing a song in a shaky voice
That was real as the day was long.
Tonights the night, yes it is, tonights the night
Tonights the night, yes it is, tonights the night.
Early in the mornin at the break of day
He used to sleep until the afternoon.
If you never heard him sing
I guess you wont too soon.
cause people let me tell you
It sent a chill up and down my spine
When I picked up the telephone
And heard that hed died out on the mainline.
Tonights the night, tonights the night
Tonights the night, tonights the night.
Bruce berry was a working man
He used to load that econoline van.
Well, early in the morning at just about the break of day
He used to sleep until the afternoon.
Tonights the night, yes it is, tonights the night
Tonights the night, tonights the night
Tonights the night, tonights the night
Tonights the night, tonights the night.
song performed by by Neil Young
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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Nightbird On A Winter Branch
Nightbird on a winter branch.
Dark blossom of the new moon,
Last kiss on the eyelids of the dead
As the snow falls like apple bloom.
I see you’ve left the door ajar:
The backdoor of an eclipse
To let the first crescent of the light out.
The sacred syllable of the mistfits
Lost in the silence and the solitude
You raise like heretical mystics into songs
That only you alone can sing
So that each in their homelessness belongs
To the false dawn of the same secret
They weep over like empty lockets
That stole the moon from their windows
As they burned at the stake, rockets
Martyred in the fire of the holy books
That inspire them deeper into exile
This late at night far from anywhere
Distance is measured by the mile
And not the wingspan of the light-years
It’s taken me to write this.
Like a bird that flew out of the darkness,
That left no trace of the witness
As it blew a kiss of sudden insight.
A word in passing from the dead
About who’s behind the death mask
Of the snow that’s covering my head
Like the polar ice cap of a planet
With the prophetic wisdom of a skull.
Life in the birthmark of the new.
Death in the harvest of the moon at full.
Emptiness devoid of all light.
The first sign of renewal in the urn
Of a nightbird on a winter branch.
Diamonds of ice and insight that burn
Like coal in the eyes of a snow man
With the passion of a phoenix born
A star in the cold furnace of the sky.
Where every passage is a rite of return
That hides its brightest jewels
blossoming like enlightenment on the wing
In the dark ore of a nightbird
When a deathmask opens its mouth to sing.
poem by Patrick White
Submitted by Poetry Lover
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Because I Am
Because I am your star
life shines in the sky
night loves to sleep late
the day closes its eyes
If you want be my star
become alive on earth
become the night’s lover
be a man in the dawn
Because I am your dream
life pierces in your mind
the night gazes into your soul
the day takes its stroll
If you want be my dream
seed life in my arms
pour passion in the night
transform the days into flowers
Because I am your warmth
life swims in your blood
night overflows your heart
the day longs for the night
If you want be my warmth
allow blood to come alive
shed the night from the heart
the day caresses the night
You and I are in love
me and you in the night
If you are my dream
I become reality
You and I are in love
in the night, you and me
If I am a real women
you pass into eternity
poem by Silviu Craciunas
Submitted by Poetry Lover
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Stranger In The Leaving
Stranger in the leaving
than you were before you came.
Is it not always so
when people separate?
Lovers who knew each other intimately for years
close their gates to each other
and say each others' name
as if they weren't philosopher's stones anymore.
And the base metal outweighs the gold that comes of it.
Alone with the alone
in the abyss of the absolutes
what was vivid and vital
turns numb as glass
and what was mystically specific about the other
is no longer a shrine that holds the secret name of God.
Stranger in the leaving
than you were before you came.
You leave with some of my memes
as I leave with some of yours
and we are both no doubt slightly changed for good
by the reciprocity of the encounter
like hydrogen and oxygen make water.
Though now it's all tears frozen on the moon.
Good-bye my lovely
I shall miss your eyes and your skin
and the thrill of your dangerous heart.
I will miss your wounded mouth
I tried to heal with messianic kisses
that never walked on anything but the earth.
And there's no blame
you couldn't fit my lunar month
into your solar calendar.
We had everything in common except time
and our faults were as compatible as our virtues.
I will miss the rumours of alien life in the wavelengths of your hair.
I shall miss losing myself like a firefly
in the wishing wells of your eyes
even if now my own seem more
like impact craters in the prophetic skull of the moon
when I consider what's leaving like an atmosphere from this mindscape.
And I shall always remember
that your heart was as generous as your breasts
and whenever we made love
how the earthly was the envy of the spiritual fact.
You didn't want anyone to know you were gentle.
Not even me.
But I could see through that mask
eyebrow to eyebrow with you
as if we both were intent on showing the same face to the earth
like the crescent fangs of a Georgia moon that said
don't step on me
because we were afraid.
More than enough to have you in the nude
I wasn't a glutton for your nakedness
that demanded you take your illusions off
to prove you loved me.
It would have been an irreverence
beyond the aspirations of heresy
to witness you renewing your virginity
like the new moon bathing in a sea of shadows.
I never tried to pry the petals of the flowers open
before they were ready to bloom.
I was never the ant
that told the peony what to do.
I never tried to look under the closed eyelids of the rose
to see what it was dreaming.
Though I'm not into voodoo
I never desecrated
the bird shrines
of your involuntary taboos.
But now I look in your eyes
and see that yesterday
is less vivid than tomorrow
though neither of them has happened yet.
The new moon is all potential
The full moon all used up.
There are effigies of potential
standing like scarecrows
in late autumn cornfields
and paragons of actuality
who love to star in constellations
that make them out to be the hero.
I try to stay
and I end up going.
I try to go
and the earth moves underfoot.
The root feels the death of its flower
as the autumn stars turn into frost
and burn its petals like old loveletters
to the immensities that didn't have time to read them.
The harmonies of life
are distinguished from the harmonies of death
by a single breath
taken in
and turned out
into the vast expanses of where it came from in the first place.
And the spirit that isn't shy of its own lucidity
knows that everything it illuminates
whether by day or by night
has the lifespan of light
and light is the brainchild of the darkness.
So even when the lights go out
like people and candles
and us
the shadows go on blooming
and even when the stars
are a gust of ghosts at our heels
the dust is rich
with the memory of all the roads
that once got lost in us
trying to find their way back home
like blood and fire and spirit
as if their final destination
were always the place they started from.
And if in the lightyears ahead
you should ever wonder if I remember you
be deeply assured
I shall remember you
as if every footstep I took
were a threshold of this homelessness
I am brave enough to cross without you.
And I shall thank you for this courage
inspired by the muse of your absence
and the feel of my blood Doppler-shift toward
long meditative wavelengths of red
that stream from the intensity
of the wounded white-hot blue of a renewed beginning.
You can't teach a bird to fly in a cage
or snakes to bite other people.
But when I first met you
it was as if the serpent-fire at the base of my spinal cord
that was running to keep its thoughts aloft like kites
suddenly had wings
and all my dirt-bag myths
that crawled on the earth among the lowest
were elevated into constellations
that burned like dragons among the chandeliers.
And when the muses of life well up in me like water
as they will
and ask me back
for all the tears they've shed on the sorrow
of the way things had to be
between you and me
for them and us
to happen the way we did
I will show them the eternal flame
of the nightwaterlily
blooming in the clear fire
of its lonely lucidity
not even the rain
the dragon brings
can aspire to put out.
I will show them the sun.
I will show them the moon.
And I'll say
you see?
That's us forever.
That swan in the heart of a phoenix.
And they will be well-pleased with the beauty of the lies
I use to shadow the truth with compassionate alibis
for why the flowers fall.
Sometimes it's the bird that swims through stone
and the snake that flys
in a profusion of fire and water
shadow and form
darkness and light
intensity and death
madness and wisdom.
Sometimes you meet someone
and you realize
this fallible flesh just as it is
is the deepest longing of the spirit fulfilled
like light in a perishable garden.
That there are no flaming swords
in the hands of the angels
at the wounded gates of our exile
trying to keep anything in or out.
Stranger in the leaving
than you were before you came.
The knowledge we have of each other
might want to keep things the same
but like all living things
in this garden of creation
the only way to sustain our innocence
is change.
poem by Patrick White
Submitted by Poetry Lover
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