My Poetry
Good afternoon, stray traveler, why do you visit me?
To read a bit, or simply sit, or read my finest poetry?
Here, you will find my best and most recent poems of mine :) All of these are copyright to me, but if you would like to use one for whatever reason, just contact me ([Nite_Owl]) by message or in the comments. Just enjoy the poetry, and comment on it if you'd like. This page is updated at least once a month, and is most definitely worth watching (^,^)
Current poem count: about 71 as of 15/3/2011
NOTE: Since I've finally reached 60 poems posted here on Elftown, I've decided to divide them among three pages for your viewing pleasure. Nite Owl's Older Poetry contains the relics of my childhood, and Nite Owl's Old Poetry contains a lot of the good ol' classics (many DP's and personal favorites. All new works will still be posted here at the bottom.
Faithful Departed
Holocaust Remembrance Contest Entry 1/Winner
“Work will set you free,” it said
As we stumbled through the night,
Weary, weak, and underfed.
Her eyes were lit with dazzled fright
With knowledge of the evil here
And in the glow of Fire’s light.
The sheet of rain, the building sheer,
The screams ahead that linger on,
Fueling ever present fear.
We see the bodies laid upon
A blanket of lost hopes and snow
And God forgotten, Faithful shunned.
The flame’s soft touch upon me now,
A hand that gropes to pull me back,
No scream emits to fight my foe
For I know his faithless lack
Of God, of mind, and of prospect.
Amid the Falling Snow
Holocaust Remembrance Contest--1st place :D
She holds her head as if to cry
And grips my hand as we pass by.
The towers rise on either side
And speak of truth amidst the lies.
They brought us here by way of train—
For what purpose, none would say—
I promised I would come and stay
To protect her, come what may.
They tear apart the families,
The screams that echo through the trees,
That pass along the empty streets
And call to us; so they entreat.
The fires lit the snow that night
Like fallen stars that passed us by
So long ago on those free nights
Of love and light and hope’s delight.
By the gates that speak of being free,
Everyday I stop and see
The outer world, from here beneath—
Where Heaven and all Hell should meet.
Beneath the snow I see a face,
Familiar, young, with skin like lace,
Whose eyes, it seems, did once embrace
A hope of truth and any trace
That hiding ‘neath the Shadow’s gaze
Someplace still lives light and hope
That carry on their frequent chase
Amid the fleeting, falling snow.
The Poet’s Curse
O, this hand that writes these words,
Some quite quaint and some absurd,
Do nothing to abolish
All the things that I have heard.
The little things that pass me by
And think themselves to be so sly
Do break this tender little mind
And all around me falls the sky.
A thousand broken shards that fly
Off into an endless night
Of nothing but absurdities
And things I cannot rhyme.
Through the night, the piercing stars,
Savoring the scent of scars;
These strange words that seem to fit
And yet mean naught to the old Czar.
A rose by any other name
Still encases a world gone lame
But all these words mean nothing writ
As I carry this, my shame.
The cat that caught the bird that morn
Perched on battlefield so worn
As if no candle could be lit
Ripping flesh from bones so torn.
The senseless serpent bites the hand
That killed in the name of man
But where am I in all of this?
Asked the skull to no-man’s-land.
Ah, these sunken words that fail,
Stumbling through the winter’s gale,
Do nothing to, in hope, ensure
I nevermore cry, “Nevermore.”
Fading of a Summer's Gain
A Shakespearian sonnet written for a project...not bad :)
The waning of the moon of Summer’s night
As Autumn’s harvest moon does rise aloft,
And the fading of the heat and Summer’s might
Into the dusk behind the leaves so soft,
As Summer’s love does fade with Summer’s day;
The warmth of leaves but cool of Autumn’s eve
Does hide the hate that pushes love away
And in defeat such loves slips through the sieve.
Soon Winter’s chill will blanket all the land
To mask the fate of future’s loneliness;
Where once both love and peace went hand-in-hand,
Now they are for naught but Satan’s bliss.
But after cast into life’s dismay
One always wakes to one more Summer’s day.
Love’s Trials
For Her <3
The softness of her amber eyes
Soon matched together Love and I;
Despite the battle I must fight,
I found no feelings of contrite
For Love and I did find accord,
And much I longed for Love’s reward:
To find a truth and recompense
For happiness at life’s expense.
The petals danced about the night,
Surrounding beauty in Love’s light.
As I approached, so too did Fear,
But comforted by her heart so near.
Her eyes a question did proclaim,
As if these roses were for gain;
My answer, heart and heart as one:
“For you, my love, and you alone.”
Dreams of Fragmentary Blue
Trapped within this lonely abyss
Shadows of a broken past
Shade my eyes, taint my heart,
And within Hell' flames, my soul depart.
The torment, hurt, and long-dead scars;
The rain that fell, those broken bars;
They caged a beast so fierce, so dark,
That none could see so deep a mark.
And gazing into blackest eyes
I saw Temptation and Its lies.
I saw within me fragments true,
But darkest fragmentary blue--
A blue so deep, so cruel as night
That shredded soul and blackened mind,
That ate away my rotted flesh
And tore apart this mortal mesh.
And lying in this lonely place,
I saw naught but just a face;
Without her eyes, yet still with light,
Without the shadows of her plights;
A bright and fragile thing, she was,
A cruel temptation of life above...
And yet it showed that life still was,
And showed that I could reach above.
For not knowing such a fire
Could burn my life with such desire,
I took her hand, I gave my soul,
And tempted the Fates down Life's long road.
Listen
Listen to the footprints in the sand
That tell of silent dreams, of shattered land.
Then listen to the rushing of the sky
As a million winged memories pass by.
Listen to the protest down the street
As they torture quiet minds as they entreat.
Then listen to the man of many years
Who takes his tea with loneliness and tears.
Listen to the world begin to thrive
As the sun comes forth and all things come alive.
Then listen to a world that has grown cold
To the touch, to young, to myths of old.
Listen to the endless angered words
That cross each other with both nail and sword.
Then listen to the silence of a love
Long broken by the scorn of false-white doves.
Listen to the mind and all it knows,
Except the meaning of how a love should grow.
Argue with the countrymen’s regime,
Then listen to your heart, and hear it scream.
The Ifs and Whens (9/28/07)
For Her Forever
If every light left in this world fades,
When every star bursts into one last magnificent blaze
And all the world is dark,
You shall my last remaining light.
If the Gods have deemed us unworthy,
When their statues fold themselves back into the earth
And the world is lost and without purpose or hope,
You shall be my Goddess and my savior.
If I should fall and taint my flesh with blood,
When I loose myself in my thoughts of imperfection
And shun my very soul,
You shall be the one to pull me up.
If I should live a thousand years,
When all sense of time has escaped me
And content replaces it,
I shall know it is because my mind was filled with you.
If I should pass before I wake,
When I grow cold in mortal flesh beside your warmth
And smile without fear, without regret,
I shall know it was that in my last moments
I thought of how we were, who we are,
And everything we’ve made each other in between.
The Changing Reasons
When young, the reasons are all the same,
And lead to another’s downfall and blame,
Like a bad taste, or a broken toy,
Or a small pain, or a mean boy;
Perhaps an absence, or a wrong color,
Or a dark place, or stormy weather.
When juvenile, the reasons start to change,
And worry another who thinks them strange,
Like a bad day, or a broken heart,
Or a small lie, or a mean dad;
Perhaps a death, or a wrong path,
Or a dark poem, or a stormy accord.
In the middle, the reasons are complex,
And often puzzle and perplex,
Like a bad name, or a broken home,
Or a small pill, or a mean accusation;
Perhaps disconnection, or the wrong leader,
Or dark times, or stormy politics.
At the end, the reasons are very few,
But complicated and arisen anew,
Like a bad illness, or a broken body,
Or a small test tube, or a mean ache;
Perhaps a pariah, or the wrong life,
Or a dark secret, or a stormy truth.
It Grows on You
It’s a quiet hub,
Just a old spot on a map.
It’s a lonely home,
Filled with painful memories.
It’s a black rose
In the midst of swaying daffodils.
It’s the unnoticed blemish
Residing on the visage of town.
It’s a local gossip house
Where people once laid down their tales.
It’s darker than I’d like,
But the sun shines beautifully outside.
The curtains are torn,
The sofa is stained,
The carpet needs cleaning,
The door is all scratched,
The windows are cloudy,
The view is gray fields.
It’s just some old house,
Forgotten by most.
And it’s a sad place–
But it grows on you.
Untitled
The golden meadow gently weeps,
Tapping on the door
That opens to the jargon scrawled
Upon the chamber floor.
“My dearest dear,” it seems to read
“Don’t tread your feet in dust;
The windows are just now been cleaned,
And the waters learnt to trust.”
Broken
I’ve a sad a lonely tale to tell,
And not much time to tell it,
But if you’ve time to watch me speak
Then I’ve time to explain it.
The night the nightingales fell short
Of their mark into the skies
Was the night I got the letter
And the many tears to dry,
Recalled the slashing blood beyond
The starry pooling eyes,
And shot hope into Heaven
For my own was but a lie.
Bear with me stranger–
Stay, please stay–
That was the year my mother died,
My brother shipped away,
My life was torn to pieces
And my hair was turning gray.
And that was the month I lost my dog,
And a very important chance,
Along with a little shattered glass
After the first time I asked her to dance.
I’m almost done,
Please hear me out–
But the paper scrap upon my palm
Felt heavier than the rest,
But my curiosity was drained;
I feared reading the words, lest...
Lest all along I had been right:
My chance had been long gone.
My mother gone, my brother gone,
My hair and dancing, gone.
And all my life I had become
The very thing I loathed–
The King who never counts his change,
Who never finds his gold.
Discontinuation
The Sun is rising, Moon is too;
The stars so often cry.
She tips her hat and says a prayer;
He clasps his hands and dies.
The golden spinning thread is gone;
The shadows are quite sound.
She shows her hands, a fighting chance;
He falls and stands his ground.
The cup is nearly half-past full;
The dogs keep me awake.
She takes my hands and holds me now;
He wanders round the lake.
The trees are bare this time of year;
The children often play.
She wonders where her watch has gone;
He wonders at the day.
The windows tint with sullen light;
The world spins on a thread.
She sits behind these dead cold eyes;
He thinks, and goes to bed.
The sinking sun is over now;
The boats pause in the bay.
She tips her hat and rests in peace;
He clasps his hands and prays.
Red at 7:10
The scorching sands that scourge the trees,
The darkness of the evergreens
This time of night, or after-day
When shadows come to dance and lay
Hypocrisy at sullied feet,
Do nothing but a soul defeat.
All the words, the drunken rhymes,
The messages in perfect time,
The faceless movement, sullen eyes,
The pacing toward and through demise--
All again for nothing won,
Nothing gained, nothing sung.
They ask the whys, the whens and hows,
The questions fast, the answers now:
Why fire burns as bright as this,
Why sickly people still exist,
How worlds were overturned today,
How life extinguished still remains;
When will the eyes of angels see?
When will the hate inside them be
The strength of future breath and life?
Life--I know enough of life
To know this only truth:
The skies are red at 7:10
Each night or after-day,
When bloody battles fuel the pens
And angels come to slay.
In the Valley
Hourglass sands
Falling from the pits of sky--
They run with fleeting hearts,
Gripping grains of gold in their hands,
Even as they slip away
To fall and die in the valley.
They mourn the sands,
They ponder their defeat,
They watch their children, mystified,
Uncaring,
Unmoving,
And begin again their unending game of catch
Into madness.
Dance
Do you know
How the painted starlight dances?
I have seen their eyes,
Glowing in all their brilliance,
Seen the empty houses on the street,
Heard the empty cries
And the painted wings that shield them.
Do you know
How the world will scream?
Do you know the way it dies?
The way it ends?
It ends in starlight,
In the final moments of a being,
Of a forever,
Of a time that never ends,
And never began.
It ends with cries, but not with sobs;
With shouts, but not with words;
With dignity, but not with truth.
Forever, it does end.
And forever the stars keep
Dancing.
Specters Black
DP #12 7/7/2009
At midnight in the city,
All the dark and tattered men
Play poker in the corners
And hold close their jars of gin.
They plot dark things in slick black tongues,
They stare like dazed lost sheep,
Pass packages beneath the slab
And watch him take the leap.
A poor man down the street cries out,
He says, “The Specters haunt.”
He doesn’t understand his needs,
But thinks he knows his wants.
He wants to drink and throw his cards,
To play their vicious games;
He wants the world to be his own
And wants to live in shame--
Not this life, this worthless thing,
A new thing, all it’s own,
A living thing in shadowed night
That will not stand alone.
He lies awake each night and day
And watches Specters black,
Longing for a place with them
And the vices that he lacks.
Grave
If I must die and sleep into the darkness,
Dig a shallow grave, that I may taste the sun
Past the stale and dampened earth,
Through the thick wood and canvas.
Allow me the beauty to feel the warmth of light
Upon these withering bones,
Chilled marrow,
Sallow flesh;
To hear the songbirds passing by,
Nesting in the branches of great oaks
That drop their offspring to sprout above my head,
Eternal guardians.
And if I must perish, let me reach death young,
For if I must endure an endless darkness,
Why must I first wallow in the darkness of mankind,
Suffer before suffering,
Blinded before blinded?
His darkness permeates the world
And turns it black,
Makes it indiscernibly churn like molten ink.
What waiting room all earth should be amongst them,
Only to be thrown into another blacker blackness--
How unfair.
How cruel.
Then make me like the earth itself,
Embedded within it,
Flesh within flesh,
Life and death within living and dying,
Breathing.
For if all the earthworms of the world
Have rights to sun and soil alike,
Then what have I?
Winds of Change:
An ode to the Circle, who know who they are
(aka A Practice in Sappy Writing :P)
Oh Winds of change please blow on by
And come again some year.
Don't sully these last moments
With a sense of end and tears.
I see the clouds you're blowing in--
All grays and tampered shade.
They cover up the day in night,
And night within the day.
You've settled here for long enough,
Moved slowly through our lives,
Changing little parts of us
In ways we can't deny.
Despite the storms you've brought with you,
We reveled in the rains;
And through everything, in thick and thin,
Some things have stayed the same.
But here you are to threaten us
With the promise of a start,
To make us disparate and new,
And to make us grow apart.
But then again...
Let you do your worst, oh Wind,
We've weathered harsher things.
We've waited years, and lived them well,
And repelled your whips and slings.
Perhaps someday we shall look back
Upon these days, our last,
Remembering these times we shared,
The things we have surpassed.
For it is you that's made us so,
And you that made us strong,
And together we'll be made again
As you sweep us each along.
The Boxers
What are we
But boxers in a ring,
Dancing around in some obscene ritual,
Bouncing left and right,
Avoiding each others' throws,
Taunting one another into a corner,
Preparing for the knock out.
Hop left for the jab,
Right for the hook,
Low blows that don't count
But pain us just as much.
And in the end we'll see through blood
And glare and think our dirty thoughts,
But somewhere in the middle
We fall against each other,
Clinging for dear sweet life in the midst of it all
Before we both retreat
And start the dance again.
Abstruse
Streetlights dancing in the rain.
They are but lifeless candles,
Forms we give functions,
For our lives demand it so.
They shudder and shake
Like breath on the wind,
See without eyes,
Uncare without thought.
We pass them by and ignore them--
Like silent gods,
Like totems,
Casting our shadows
This way and that,
This way and that,
This way and that,
This way and that,
This way and that,
This way--
And then nothing.
A black void.
We look into it,
Hands stuffed in pockets,
Thumbs picking idly at nails,
Feet on a track that will not stop
Or slow,
That just keeps going
And going
And going
And going
And going
And going
And--
We reappear,
Our former selves,
(our reflective selves)
And forget about the umbra of the rain.
We are home.
Eclipse
I gaze into a starless sky
As neon lights go sailing by.
Neon billboards, neon signs,
Neon PETROL, neon Christ.
Neon Hollywoods and Sunsets—
Boulevards where dreams are made.
Smoke from late-night cigarettes,
Fuming red hot Jags and mags
Draw a blanket through the streets
Of smoke and fog
And concrete.
The stench of the night
Is thick, and rancid—
It excites.
Music bumps the hazy air,
The heart of the city
Residing on painted curbs.
Saxes singing, feet tapping,
Hands clapping,
Lashes batting.
It bounces off the crystal roofs,
Imprisoned there,
Absorbed and drowned
In the ear of a businessman
Fixing his last highball
Of the night.
These towers here are shady and bright,
All sweet illumination,
Gritty shadow,
Hallowed promise.
The stars are dim and distant,
But these neon lights are high
And pretty enough
To be the stars
Themselves.
Fair-Eyed Captress
Love fear me not.
I see you chase away behind the door,
See your pretty eyes within the lock.
You block my only hint of light in this prison,
But your eyes glint coolly
Like the clouds beyond the stars.
This light is warmth—
Is life—
And without it I should die.
But your gaze is wanted here
On this poor forsaken wretch
And without it too I shall die,
Another stone to these poor prison walls.
Existent
Equilibrium fading out at the speed of sound
Winding down
Into something wicked,
Something twisted,
Blacklisted,
Mixed up in all the lights
And sounds
Of a city slowly dying,
Lying in its waste,
Lying through its walls
Of gravel and bone.
And me,
Stuck in the middle
Of it all
With no one,
A moth clinging to the steel
Of a maniac driver's grill,
Invisible to the world,
Nothing but stardust
And velvet
Threading
Like blood
In the wind.
Suiting Scars
This loving mars
these suiting scars
that build a bridge of memory
over ever-weaving skin.
Interrupt the construct
of ugly over ventricles,
of agony in arteries.
The blood is water underneath.
It seethes and churns
like boiled oil in the lungs,
painting course cambric in the eyes,
a veil of dampened requiem.
No. I won't go back to it.
That sullen reply,
that feeble grounding,
that sleeping lie,
that misty reverie
that calls awake the nervous system.
That system which is nervous.
Willpower
There is a kind of
menace
in the daylymonthlyye
arly revolutions
of a numbing tumbling space.
The dim and shaded Moon can only see
as far as its spectacles will allow.
While Lady Sun basks in the glow
of her own star stuff,
shining to her billion billion sisters,
accompanied and entertained by the endless dance
of her infant planets,
Moon —
stony and sleek in its spot of sky,
all shady lines and callous curves
with a face ribbed with the wrinkles
of a hundred thousand weary craters –
has only pretty Earth.
Ever facing, ever twirling,
set on a path upon which childish Earth
has come to rely.
She does not see a happiness in Sun.
She sees no vindication
in the permanent desolation
of her sibling rotary stones.
Of all the beings Moon as known,
she has envied none so much
as the comets that blast through black,
leaving trails that slowly burn and fade
like old Polaroids against the Sunglare.
All it takes is a single push.
The gentle tug and pull of will
against all math and reason,
the selfish need for something more
to ease the wantingneedinglonging.
Blue and yellow sequin spills,
amber umber oil paints,
red and violet velveteen
tracing patterns in the ageless brick
of a dying universe.
And while the Lady Moon pursues
a thousand sights of beauty and decay,
wheeling in its glory and simplicity,
forgotten is the diamond Earth,
that subtle pearl,
aching in its loneliness,
and feeding on itself
in search of love.
Convergence
There is a warmth in wanting
this beauty of a mithridate,
this endearing nostrum
that fills the head with nonsense
and the heart with honey,
sickly sweet and rarely bitter,
agonizingly pleasant
in its infrequent quietude.
The having renders humanity,
imperfect forms living perfectly
without the knowledge of mortality
or the creep of the crepuscular
under midday's sun
or the bite of winter mist
at the fringes of the eyes.
All innocence, all hope,
all knowing
like there is nothing known
but this.
And here,
in softness
and in idleness,
we lay our heads,
our hands, our hearts
bear for the night in the
comfort of a world of
our own making,
noting only the
beauty of eyes
that glance
like clock
work
when there is nothing else.
Willow & Zephyr
The gentle Willow I am
does not compare to
supple Summer's breeze,
that unquiet Zephyr
that chills the very core of me
and raises every warmth
to the surface of too,
too longing flesh.
Each bone and sinew
woven like armor,
draping shuddering
verdure clinging like
madness to the broken
framework of frozen limbs,
cracked and weakened,
but these roots grow deep
without sweet Zephyr's touch,
the final barrier
against such an onslaught
as this –
this berating of the senses,
all soft lines
and yielding forms,
ever changing
like swiftly-passing seasons
tumbling one over another
without the careful
guidance of Nature's law,
which constricts only those
who cannot feel as we,
our hearts in tangles
and an ache
not unlike love
that grows beneath.
Enough
This wasted heart is only strong
so long as waves are counting time
the swift in out in out and gone
the staple of my healing mind
A ruthless grievous heinous sin
this self-inflicted give and take
but oh so sweet a burn as this
is worth each sting, each singing ache
Like happy dreams that dance on edge
and leave in mind a barrenness
a slow decay of lasting will
ability to reassess
That nothing that you feel is real
or things get better as you go
You must resign yourself to fate
all life and limb must undergo
The stars see farther than we may
so blinded by our woeful ire
but we've seen ample agony
and know it, now, this failed desire.
The Drowning Game
Is this where we drown,
on the shores of our fleeting desires
our contemptuous agonies
our misguided truths
that sputter and die
retching on the sidelines
without ever having played the game?
Is this fleeting life worth a thousand thousands
of days unmatched,
each less and less worthy of the thousand before it,
each sunset blending with sunrise
on a canvas made by callused hands,
hands that shaped mountains til they bled rivers
and birthed monsters?
The only way out is up
and up
and up.
And each day we grow further
from the means by which we fly.
Want more? See Nite Owl's Old Poetry and Nite Owl's Older Poetry, or go back to [Nite_Owl]'s house.
All work copyright (c) Michelle Mercer aka Nite_Owl. Don't touch it.
Stumble!