Best Drowse Poems
The pungence of heartbreak swelters
in the tangled dreadlocks of love-lies-bleeding
Take me somewhere exotic
to breathe not the foul aroma
of disappointment and despair
Show me fields laced with frangipani and orchids
in colors sweet and light as daydreams
Find me seafoam fields poppied
with pomegranate and honey
opium of jasmine lilting on a leeward drowse
delicious sift of sand drifting
warm and soft between my toes
as coral breezes court flamingo scapes
with pina colada suns
and I drift in and out of hibiscus euphoria
Let a mist of cockatoos flutter
in lapis skies puffed with fat feather clouds
parrots and toucans preening
like a rainbow shimmer
Tingle my pineapple senses
through the afterglow of mango afternoons
Create visions of paradise
in the cerulean of hyacinth
and never bring me back
Categories:
drowse, color, imagery, lost love,
Form:
Free verse
Sunday Morning
I try not to wake him, though he stirs slightly
As I crawl out from the warmth of the covers.
I'm tempted to change my mind, and stay awhile longer,
But a glint of sunlight peeks through the blind and calls to me.
If I burrow down again, and drowse too long,
This glorious time of day will be gone...until it comes again tomorrow.
I tiptoe quietly and begin the morning ritual.
The splashing of water on my face, of letting the dog out,
Of brewing the dark, hot liquid that will help to
Open my eyes and recharge my reluctant brain.
The inviting aroma finally wakes my senses, and after
The first sip, I begin to feel the desire to join the world again.
I go outside, step onto the weathered porch, down the steps,
Onto the wet grass to retrieve today's bundled news.
Within it comes a page-by-page account of disasters, obituaries and comics...
I decide to forego all that gloom, and lay the paper beside the front door.
Instead, I drink in the morning air.
The new day is slowly coming alive. There's a slight chill.
This coolness will be baked away later, when the sun is high.
I pull my robe around me tightly, and sit down on the stoop.
Birds are chirping, and soon, I see that neighbors are beginning to embrace the
day.
House by house, there is evidence that awakening has occurred.
A car is cruising by our house. The occupants, wearing their
Sunday best, and on their way to an early service to praise the Lord.
While some are sitting in pews, singing Alleluia,
A man down the street is starting his lawnmower.
Not mindful that the Sabbath is a day of rest,
Or that he may wake a late sleeper.
Inside my house, I hear the sounds of water running and dishes rattling.
Then someone calling my name. In a moment he appears
Carrying two steaming mugs of black coffee, one for him, and another for me.
He's come to see what this new day has offered, and sits down beside me.
We sit together quietly, and soak up the morning sun.
It wraps its warmth around us, like the bedcovers we had abandoned.
No words are needed to enjoy this moment.
However, toast and jam, and bacon await us. So we turn and go inside.
Categories:
drowse, child, children, family, morning,
Form:
Rhyme
On Blue Ocean
Blue ocean rises
and falls with cool
serenity,
creating crests
of roving waves,
seeking yellow,
sun-bleached shores.
Aah! Behold
its engorged bosoms,
heaving and trembling,
passionately
spurting out
bubbly, champagne-like,
sparkling spumes,
that elatedly
lick and tickle
flashy red tails of
flirtatious mermaids.
On summer nights,
inhale deeply
its fresh salty scent,
which clings to the air,
like an old lover.
Then savoring the
sweet, rhythmic
undulation of
rippling, indigo
ocean, I drowse in
Poseidon’s arms and,
drift off … on a dream.
01-06-2016
Contest: Anacreontic Verse 2
Sponsor: Edward Ebbs
Placement: 3rd
Categories:
drowse, blue, ocean, sensual,
Form:
Lyric
Our dinner, boiled to death root vegetables, we swallow in silence as night closes-in on the school. The co-opted Buddhist monastery housing us empties its porcelain thrones into the walled garden’s weedy rear yard. Village women wash: the floors, the pots, the laundry from first light to deep dark. The water runs downhill. War does not stop the drudgery. Where the women sleep is unknown to us. The owners’ are small men; they rule the house with a heavy hand. They teach the techniques of shamanic healing and Thai Massage.
the Green Tara
hangs upon the room's wall:
geraniums on the ledge
The drowse of Friday evening evaporates in a burst of gunfire. Behind the high walls surrounding the school, the sounds of violence escalate. Through open, screen-less, windows sirens sound, the sky lights up and red, yellow, blue, and white prayer flags hang lifelessly from the eaves to the locked gate. Sleep hides, as I do, beneath the covers.
coiled
insecticide smolders:
temple bells sound
The monks, long gone, leave remnants of themselves on the incense coated plaster. Peace sought here was not found. Poverty necessitated the building’s sale. Here on a side street in walking distance from the American embassy, a school for westerner’s storm cellars. The desire to learn Eastern Healing techniques and a common language, English, binds us together: American, French, Spanish, and South African captures of the internet, pilgrims. We come, healers all, undaunted by the Civil War, to Kathmandu, Nepal.
Monday, the riots end on cue. Tourists, again, meander the dust clouded streets, skirting the alley’s begging children. Tea is served in the burgeoning shops. Butchers swat flies from hanging haunches of meat, rare bird vendors walk the street with baskets of exotic birds. And, brazen Westerners stride bare armed, sari-less exposed, and rude, at least until next Friday night—they own the world.
First Published by Mulberry Fork 2016
Categories:
drowse, anxiety, fear, war, ,
Form:
Haibun
Sheer lucid waves caress this oyster beach,
an aqua drowse viewed through a saffron lend,
and siren rip tides coax into a breach
as lambent grains of sand insouciant wend
the dunes of torpid eons through the bend
of hourglasses warped like new-blown glass.
In half-remembered mimes soft breezes send,
behind my eyelids as sweet lilts amass,
the plucking of a lyre string as high seagulls pass.
4/6/18
Categories:
drowse, beach, imagery,
Form:
Rhyme
Summer, and butterflies fill the air;
Summer of moonlights so rare.
Whispers of a lover's dream;
Haunting of a lover's theme.
Black hat which once was worn;
Red heart that in my dreams were born.
Velvet kisses of lost nights-
Scarlet cushions of secret delights!
Morning madness, and rose in bloom!
Giving of sweetest perfume.
Those days seemed so to drowse;
And warm winds blew in the boughs.
Music plays, and I feel you near;
Hear the words uttered sincere.
But can the melody set my heart free?
How happy we could be!
Summer, and how the days are long.
Madness, how I still hear our song.
Satin are these summer nights;
My, and how the season excites!
Categories:
drowse, butterfly, missing you, moon,
Form:
Rhyme
The sun blowtorches its way into the water,
fragments, and the bottom is an aqua sky
webbed by white-hot lightning.
Here and there, legs hang like halved mannequins
disappearing into a squiggly-bright ceiling,
through which you can make out
the slurred shape of a poolside palm tree.
The deep, guttural grooon-grooon of
the water’s stomach growling is all you hear,
dredging up a similar sound from your subconscious,
last heard while you were immersed, long ago,
in another fluid world.
The water suddenly internal-combusts
in a tangle of arms and legs,
flailing in a fizz of a million tiny bubbles,
some kid having just somersaulted into the blue.
Soon, another’s face splashes down before you,
slightly albino in the shining water,
bug-eyed with silvered goggles
like a child alien from a waterless planet
discovering buoyancy.
Then you realize it’s your own kid,
wobbling from side to side,
toothy, hair waving like smoke
as he dog-paddles away.
You come up for air, breaching the surface like a
graceless dolphin,
and clarity hits your ears,
a momentarily soundless din.
You can already feel your skin heating up
in the blast furnace above water,
confusing because there are beads
running down your face and neck, cold.
You suck a lungful of air and push yourself under again,
but not before catching a glimpse of your wife
drowse-browsing a magazine on her sun lounger,
and the two umbrellas,
the big one shading the miniature one
stuck in the snowy slush of your pina colada.
Categories:
drowse, family, happiness, light, summer,
Form:
Free verse
the lake sits glassy and smooth
songbirds of noon
have long since retired
in their place sound shrill chirp
squawk and croon
faded peach and blue,
diffuse light yet left,
spread their peaceful, off-tint hues
while mortal reds lighten and bloom;
this is a place to die.
unlike the bleach bright White
of a temporary cot and room:
this is a place to be consumed
by patchwork green,
and the ponderous weight of night
to relax the coil and tangles
of the knotted life I choose;
this is a place to die
drowse enchanted
lose my sturdy suit and tie.
I will trade for the industrial tomb
these womblike evergreens
to play nursemaid and tray-in
the last cups of clean dusk air
quietly.
Categories:
drowse, life, nature, philosophy, places,
Form:
Another day is almost past;
How fast they go and speed away,
Twilight rolls over sunset’s gold,
Like tidal waves keep beaches at bay.
Memories remembered, no new ones made,
As TV and book on a Lazy Boy left,
Caring children are paying the price,
For Mama’s comfort, though she’s bereft.
Smiling starches and SAS soft shoes
Come to roll her back to her room where
Mama may drowse in tearful query,
“How did this come, so soon, so soon. “
Categories:
drowse, age, change,
Form:
Quatrain
O' Christmas Tree, dear Christmas Tree, you've given us so much pleasure!
Again you've graced our home this Yule Season with beauty we'll ever treasure.
How we look forward every Season to awaken you again from your drowse,
And release you from that confining box to spread your welcoming boughs.
You stand so regal with the angel at your top trimmed with garlands of gold.
With limbs embellished with dainty ornaments, you're a beauty to behold!
Tiny lights gleam from every branch to guide Rudolph and the sleigh,
To leave goodies for the kinder - ah, 'tis such a joy to watch them play!
Alas, we must fold your boughs and muse upon memories ever to remember,
But Lord willing, you'll stand tall again about the first of next December!
How we dread to place you in that confounded box but we know that you'll,
Spring to life in splendor next Noel to warm our hearts with another Yule!
Robert L. Hinshaw, CMSgt, USAF, Retired
(c) 2014 All Rights Reserved
Categories:
drowse, christmas,
Form:
Ode
LOVE AND DEATH
ABAB
Love is a thing which perches in soul
and never dies for those who parts
forever and dies reluctantly for all
those who deal it with dull verve hence finally retards.
Its intensity can never be matched
by any way, any sense or any being
the loveliness of soul which initially hatches
in eyes and finally lead to an undying thing.
The iniciated feeling kisses the eye and lead
the body to shiver and form an never ending joy
joy which increases with senses and feed
the soul with luxury of peerless eyes and soothing joy.
When eyes fall on thine god, a material being
a wave travel from eyes to soul
and leave us shocked and lead us to drowse in feeling
of the cosmic one more beauteous, pretty then all.
A word from her soft coloured lips is treat
for your soul and finally try to speak
to that elf, an everlasting meet
in your brain did relive forever and make thee week.
But when you have conversed enough and all
secrets did revealed, the enthusiasm, the joy, the love
starts to retard and mighty love starts to fall
and fall all thy passions, thy deity thine happy dove.
Your drowsing in happy feeling, thine everlasting thing
decrease by degrees, you being unknown
the thing which use to shiver thine ere being
your love dwindles while thine body had grown.
But after ages when ye become pallid and calm
its assistance ye need or when you lay in despair
in this material world, it seems the only balm
which provide thee love and care.
A never ending charm an ethereal soul
which lift the mortal man from dying and and taking birth
and make life and death traveling journey for all
except those in whose nature there is love's dearth.
AKASH SANGWAN
Categories:
drowse, fear, inspirational, love,
Form:
Ode
Fallen snow will remind of me/ it is snowing ...
Slowly as in the dream/
Boy word-beads/ with signs on his spine/
He kisses fine/
Your eyelids /
And it snows ... It snows /so slow/
It does/ and you're thinking of me/
'Coz it's warm/ it's better to stay in warmth/
Waiting for summer dim/
It is snowing/ slowly like in the dream/
Flakes/ go round/ playing the music theme/
You've been looking for rescue/
You searched in wine/
But it's in me/
all the rescues are mine/
It is snowing/ the snow is fluffy and white/
If you see darkness/ I'm deaf and blind/
there's the cast of time/ on the arm/
But I discern the light/
Dreams/ upon your eyelids tips/
Prepare you for winter drowse/
And it snows/
Fallen snow/ will remind of spring /
it will crumble and crackle in vain/
It will snow / fluffy /white/ and slow/
And you'll become whole/
Categories:
drowse, beautiful, beauty, christmas, faith,
Form:
The queen in yellow and black watched from her hive castle
As the shy sun peeked through the misty mountain morning
But then the colorful congregation of perennials cheered
Waving as the wind brushed their flower heads
Kissing their neighbors with every turn
Gentle lambs stared as busy bees broke their fast
Her saccharine smile now dipped in honey
Shepherds dozed in the bed of flowers
Even the wolves tipped their furry heads to her majesty
Those daisy chain daydreams dared to drowse her eyes
She sighed and wished she were a meadow lark, to browse the skies
Categories:
drowse, nature,
Form:
Free verse
To Jules Verne
A man feeling drowse at the top of the mountain, fell asleep.
He dreamed dreams
emanating from floods of seas.
In remote droughts,
he gave his fruit of smoke
on a simple altar.
Curd quartz opened
solidifying thousands of stamens,
they glowed
like the warm reflection of the stars on the sand,
the man kept close watch of the r.e.m. hour.
life is the strife of one baptized
in the depths of all his memories,
yet he forgets before awakening.
Founding himself face to face
with another man holding a frozen fish
and a bucket,
they begun the climb down,
What do you fish when you fish,
he asked,
for a bolt of fire, said the man
as he released the fish into the ground
and rubbed his hands,
cryogenics?
no, fisherman.
Categories:
drowse, change, faith, flower, gospel,
Form:
Epyllion
The wood is piled
my emotions riled
Sweet expectations
settle in my soul
Sweat dappled brows
my emotions drowse
sudden conclusions
fill in the hole
of my heart.
The fire started in the pit
warming ourselves
in it's globe
and there we sit
like two lost elves
waiting to disrobe
Take your time,
Love
The perfect man
does exist.
rlm '09
Categories:
drowse, angst, confusion, devotion, fantasy,
Form:
Romanticism