Many of these have no names/titles
1.
And that’s the difference between one day and the next
the Sun rises and the Sun sets
and I am small
a leaf carried,
rocked back and forth on an autumn breeze
every day fading, fading to gray
in the cooling distant sunlight
Ice and rain and cold nights
leech away ’til I am rice paper thin
translucent and ephemeral
as moth-eaten lace
decayed
And from this perspective decay is natural
the gradual fading from life a process
of absolution
heavy binding minerals drawn down first
salt and metal, run through by cold
Water
that cracks stone and cement faded gray
near-white
while autumn breezes blow dust
in leafy spiraling gusts
off these fleshy, talking bones that bear my name
more or less in Love with dying
from one day to the next.
2.
Water runs through these fingers
roots
Burrowing, wriggling in sand
She takes my fear
the First Mother
here where land meets sea
She takes my fear
to cradle in her vast womb
whose walls are sand and stone
and soil
Soil and Sand, Air and Water
Wind and Sun and Rain
that is all there is…..
Her mantra runs through me as Truth.
Wind and Sun and Soil and Sand
and the Great Sea before me
They speak comfort, and I am silent
My words lose meaning in the slow long song
of the Ocean
Her tides ebb and flow: a single word might hold me
in Time, or place me beside myself
Here I choose silence
Fingers like roots run down to the water
and fear trickles down, down
and away with the tide.
3.
of negating is and is-not:
and does not know the Sunset
the terror of those infinite spaces
long before the time or need has arisen….
is but one, tiny, singular
19 comments
These are really excellent, Foxglove.
🙂 actual smiles may be larger than shown in this emoji.
These were from:
#1 and #2 three months ago
#3 about a year and a half ago
Hey, I need to step away for a while, but I wanted to tell you I glanced through the poems (which are so deep for my peabrain to comprehend on first glance) and they seem amazing !
I promise to return later today and give them a proper reading and comment.
Thanks for posting !
*too deep for my peabrain
🙂 i appreciate the feedback. It’s nice to be appreciated. Sometimes I can see that a person respects my facility with words, but they are obviously uncomfortable with death, and my poems cover that theme frequently, from one angle or another.
I love the first one. They’re all three amazing but the first one really hits me on a deeper level. 🙂
I love the abstractness of the final one, I love the beauty of the first and second but I especially like how though separate and different they seem to connect or flow into one another. I wonder if this was coincidental or intentional? either way its beautiful.
I was referring to the first two in context of fluidity
yes. there is a connection. The first two were written a short time apart, on either side of an experience that was profoundly painful, though very beautiful. The first came shortly before, and the second came shortly after that experience.
These are good
thx! I like your name. Done some fan-staring in my day. yep. never can be sure it’s not rotating just to stare at me from every angle. 😮
Ok, wow ! You have a way with words, alright.
I read them as thoroughly as I could. It seems like the first one is obviously about death. The second one is beautiful too, I just couldn’t understand the deeper meaning between the lines. The third one is about the roller coaster of emotions/life ?
Am I even close ?
In any case, beautiful arrangements of words. I’m just curious to know the meaning between the lines.
I always defer to whatever meaning the reader draws or feels in provoked within them. Where they originated for me was:
#1 The first is about my appreciation/fascination of death, like you say. A bleak kind of beauty.
#2 Is from the way I felt broken and mentally fragmented after a recent NDE that involved hallucinations and a very real experience of my own death(in a sort of immersive vision). I was afraid I could not be who I was before(I’m not quite) and also that I could not possibly know what’s real, or if I am. An existential time. So I went to the Ocean an put my fingers in the cold autumn water.
#3 Is last year’s roller coaster of life. Also the point where questioning the value/nature of life and existence became a huge mindfuck, and so I laughed with kind of hysterical and hopeless ecstasy about how I might go on in circles for eternity, loving and hating and fearing and showing courage, and how all that might still mean nothing more than something to do for a wandering soul.
And anything you feel or put onto it is yours, and you are welcome to do that.
oh yeah. #3 is also a spoken word with slightly off-tempo beat, til the end where it becomes more quiet/lyrical. At least when I read or speak it.
Fantastic, that’s how I read it in my head, spoken word style. Where as the others I read as more traditional and romantic. I can’t write for shite but I admire those that can and I love to read so please continue with these. 🙂
they are mostly spontaneous, some of the best were spoken to the aethers and never saw paper or pen. I think I’m a Victorian Era Death Poet/Sufi in the year 2017.
Case in point: (this one is not mine)
Death of an Infant
Death found strange beauty on that cherub brow,
And dash’d it out. There was a tint of rose
On cheek and lip;–he touch’d the veins with ice,
And the rose faded.–Forth from those blue eyes
There spoke a wishful tenderness,–a doubt
Whether to grieve or sleep, which Innocence
Alone can wear. With ruthless haste he bound
The silken fringes of the curtaining lids
For ever. There had been a murmuring sound
With which the babe would claim its mother’s ear,
Charming her even to tears. The spoiler set
His seal of silence. But there beam’d a smile
So fix’d and holy from that marble brow,–
Death gazed and left it there;–he dared not steal
The signet-ring of Heaven.
Lydia H. Sigourney (1791-1865)
Even more incredible that they came spontaneously.. My brain is mush its like I cannot function properly any more how I would like it to either through years of switching off or sheer lack of motivation. I love the Victorian era it is so dark and romantic. Its also part of my favourite art movement- Pre-Raphaelites. Penis Rather Better aka the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood.
Awesome pnemonic. lol
There was a similar kind of tragedy in Victorian living conditions. People were being dragged into mass production/industrial lifestyle. Maimed by machines and put out of work. Massive financial disparity and the attitudes that come with it.