Long Half light Poems
Long Half light Poems. Below are the most popular long Half light by PoetrySoup Members. You can search for long Half light poems by poem length and keyword.
In your restless slumbers you feel me,
I know you feel me.
Always by your side like an iron rusted sword
Dull to the touch and stranded to the length of your back.
Your sudden sighs will be the ocean churning and
The waves that collapse against the shore.
Every ache you undergo will emit a moan
So loud and locked away that even the sky will mourn
And it’s rains will fall for you alone.
Each dripping drop will attempt to match your insides
From the moment the first moon beams hit your windowsill
Till the sun ascends in an incandescent dawn
That pinkens the walls of your chambers.
You look beyond a naked field to
A moon which eases with every passing moment.
Beckoning you to dreams and thoughts that lay like scars and stains.
Come, they whisper.
Come listen to the symphony of our affairs.
Come watch these green waters turn to gold.
Travel the world and reach the end
Only to find that you still want.
But here, with no one around in this volatile room,
With no eyes peering but the licks of lighted candles,
You’ll plead no to a nameless fear
As you swallow the back of your mind.
Let an open mind in,
Allow it to listen.
And as you glance over to vacancy from
Your worn and heated side,
The skies will shudder with every hope and every lie
That even Socrates cannot deny these tries.
But in the half light of my own room
I wish to be your broken record
Or the lead singers private microphone.
Kiss my finger tips and drink in the residue of fountain pens.
I will plaster each phrase to my bedroom wall
Where I live to see that the writing never flows.
That each excerpt is choppy and final.
That every quote is bold and blush.
The frayed and shredded nursery wallpaper,
Shimmering pink with sudden audacity,
Will reflect moodily and ambiguously of my shattered thoughts.
With kudos to a grandmother Mary,
I slowly lift a frozen face from underneath a pillow.
After a minute of self doubt and realization
That settles like pin pricks on the palms of my hands,
I slide the idle face back into it’s sheath
Then contemplate the curiosity of my own slumber.
While ignoring every hope of sleep,
I’ll thread two nimble fingers through an open flame,
Stare provokingly into the shadows on the ceiling,
Get bored,
Get lonely,
And think of you.
When I saw the Grim Reaper
pull out his peeper and pee on the patio,
I yelled, "Hey Jack!
Can't you use the facilities out back?
That's what normal people do, you know.
I always said I wasn't afraid of death,
till one night, Death tried to rob me of my breath.
And as I was gasping for air,
he said with a cold, penetrating stare,
"Next time they ask if you're afraid of death,
just say 'Yesth.'"
I came to this hospice to die.
I see Mister Death standing by.
He's consulting a note.
I thought he did everything by rote.
What’s with that quizzical look in his eye?
When Mister Death had me firmly in his grip,
I pleaded, "Sir, can we please make this a round trip?"
He said, "I'm sorry to say,
this trip is only one way.
But we do serve drinks, and chicken wings,
with a delectable ranch dip."
When it got to be close to seven,
we were still a half-light year away from heaven.
I said, "Mister death, one question more.
When will we get to heaven's door?"
"Oh, not till tomorrow morning, Sir,
about a quarter past eleven.
When I reach the pearly gates with the grim reaper as my guide,
I hope the question of whether I get heaven or hell is only for Jesus to decide.
Because if Peter is allowed his opinion, and then that apostle Paul,
I don't think I stand much of a chance at all.
When we got to heaven, Saint Peter said,
“Hurry in, quick, so I can shut the door ~
you were being closely followed by the Babylonian whore.
And if she were to get in,
God only knows what trouble I'd be in.
Heaven would never again be the same as before.”
To folks staring at a screen in a brightly lit room,
I said, "I have arrived in heaven, right, I presume?"
"Yes, yes," they replied, my soon-to-be heavenly friends.
“But until this gosh darn epidemic ends,
there's no other way to do heaven but by Zoom.”
Heaven is not at all what I expected.
It’s hell to be stuck in a place with the boring elected.
They do nothing but this goody-goody-two-shoe stuff!
Believe me, after half an eon, I’ve had just about enough.
Oh, where’s the escape button? I wanna be ejected.
The end
Defeat embraces the soul that has unraveled from lies, baring the pure truth.
In the library of destiny, where each heart inscribes its chronicles,
I lingered among the scrolls of loss, in the chambers of vast silence.
A single phrase echoes in my mind, a deep resonance:
"Defeat embraces the soul that has unraveled from lies, baring the pure truth."
Upon the heights of loneliness sampled in the shadow of great defeat,
The spirit strips off the ephemeral shrouds, unveiling the venerable skeleton of being.
The absurd bargain between man and cosmos crumbled, the bankruptcy of illusions gleaming like a relentless morning star.
When the mask of success falls, when all foundations erode to dust under the onslaught of fate,
Man's soul remains bare and true, a core of stars undisturbed by the crown of planets.
A man become withered by time, a faded leaf on the cold waters of destiny,
Meets another self at the crossroads, where no sign directs,
They are creations of the same executioner, inscribed in the alphabet of suffering,
Each word a wound, and every sentence a leap into the relentless abyss of truth.
In the half-light that follows the fall of the curtain of the grand show, the bare steps of initiation are heard,
In this temple, where the blind can see and the mute can sing, heart and soul revealing revelations.
Come, be witnesses to this exchange of silences, where the language of loss is the only currency accepted,
Open yourself as the sky opened on the night that birthed light,
Pure, devoid of adornments and prejudices, reduced to its raw essence by the untamed things.
On this territory of the alchemical retorts of fate, where the lead of pretension is converted into the gold of the abyss,
The self melts in the hand that transforms us, in a communion with the Universe,
In the refrain of this wintry song of defeat, in this celestial unification,
I have learned that the perfection of understanding is not the shining crown of the day,
But the eerie shimmer of the night when all earthly grounds are overturned and all certainties are but sand in the hourglass.
He entered the dark house
through the unlocked kitchen door,
his house until the separation,
found his way
down the dark hallway
to the bedroom,
hid in the closet,
the door slightly open to
a clear view of the room
in the half-light of a full moon.
Sweaty clothes piled
on the closet floor
didn’t matter;
he had other business.
He settled in
for a long wait,
almost nodding off,
staying awake
by rocking toe to heel
in his Redwing boots,
left arm cramped
from gripping his gun.
He could have laid it on the floor,
but he might not have been
able to find it in the dark,
so he held it,
and waited.
Soon enough.
there was laughter
in the kitchen,
metallic sounds of ice
dropped into glasses,
ardent whispers growing louder
as they moved to the bedroom,
dancing a bit,
arms around each other.
She turned on the bedside lamp.
Red removed her blouse;
she unbuttoned his shirt,
let it fall to the floor.
He kicked the closet door open,
stepped into the room,
raised his gun and shouted,
“It’s my turn to dance.”
Red turned...
Two bullets pierced his chest.
He fell backwards onto the bed,
rolled off to the floor,
didn’t move again.
The shooter stood quietly,
relieved and satisfied,
watching his wife
kneel beside Red’s body.
He sidestepped them,
switched off the light
at the open door,
turned to look back,
said to himself,
“That’s done...
I need a drink.”
The murder was ruled justifiable homicide.
He was set free.
That’s the law down here in Texas.
The applicable Texas law was written in 1856, and stated that, “Homicide is justifiable when committed by the husband on anyone taken in the act of adultery with the wife, provided that the killing takes place before the parties to the act of adultery have separated.” Texas law considered these murders justifiable homicide, and completely excused the killing. The law was repealed in 1973.
Paraphrased from “Law in Western United States,”
by Gordon Morris Bakken
There's a feeling of sadness
Mixed with a wistful awe
As we pick our careful way
Across a rubble strewn floor.
An eerie sort of half light,
As though hiding from the day,
Hiding our history until
It's finally thrown away.
This building still stands
Though gutted inside:
I suppose now it represents
A city's lost pride.
Graffitied walls
Fittings smashed
Not much left
Of its proud past.
I can see the lock gates.
Now sealed against the tide,
Imagine an old sidewinder
Waiting patiently inside:
Waiting to land wet fish
That valuable tasty haul
Brought safely on board
From its bulging trawl.
Imagine steel segged clogs
clacking clicking up the road,
Bobbers walking the tunnel
To handball this load.
Seen from a window the old dock
Just a sea of reeds, silted and gone
Hiding a chequered past
As time has moved on.
I sit to reflect for a while
On a broken office chair:
I can feel the past
Flowing through me there.
Such a sense of sadness
Now filling my head
Time to get up and leave,
This building is now dead.
One last walk around outside
See huge cracks in the wall.
How long before the dozers
Finally make the bricks fall.
On the White Fish Authority roof
Children have set a fire
Maybe a symbolic recognition
Of its coming funeral pyre.
The flames gutter and die
As the children run away
And the once proud building
Survives yet another sad day.
This piece of history can be saved
If we don't wait too long
Like so much of our past
Once it's gone it's gone,
Who’ll remember the sidewinders
And their Bell Bottomed Boys
In this place of eerie silence
Once so full of life and noise.
A sparrow hawk stoops
As we walk away
A sort of hopeful end
To a sad and weary day.
I was asked to do a voiceover for an independent Documentary Film Maker, and so had the privelege of entry into prohibited places. After hours of filming over many weeks the project was sadly put on hold with the arrival of Covid 19.
The tree tottered
the soil loved the tree
the soil held the turmoil
like a poem holds the lines and stanzas
brimming with the extravaganza of the spirit
The grasses won't let it go
the whistle of the world called
the train was pulling out
the tree willing to join the green procession
There was the sticky honey
and the million bees biting
in the reckless abandon
room following room
Exhume and consume
Yearning for the perpetual doom
There was the effort
Earnest effort
to come out of the savage clasp
the pulverizing grasp
How can you shun the moons
still seeking to bloom inside the nooks of the gloom
We won't let you go
We will remove the hard snow
Look at the crimson arrow
ready to move and grow
till arrived the rainbow
Said the bees
The tall guy had taken away
most of the green leaves
The dwarf one quite a few branches
The dry wood bleeds in silence
A grey compliance
The dark girl had shared the bed
hugging the hibiscus stem and plucking the flowers
as she pleased
as the serpent hissed
the kisses burnt
The tree got aroused and learnt
Time stole the green
The children removed the silken sheen
I am abandoned
Let me go
Let others sow
Me no more
Haven't you noticed the little green folds
from the caring split
Ripples of Narcissus
from the blue unconscious
through the half light half dark passage
emerging on the shivering surface
A mild pain in the cups
A few clouds seeking release through the rains
the light green spike in the vein
The ship cannot be abandoned
till it sinks
The ship loves the blue poetry in the freedom
of wild abandon
The Mediterranean
As wild
as you may lead me into
the deep flowering vacuum
No need to stop the bison
Let’s resume
our sway into the total abandon
For this forest under moonlight I shall not pass again
June 16, 2018
Abandon Poetry Contest
Sponsored by: Brenda Chiri
I bought my house for its mirrored walls
in the master bath from which you could fancy
yourself as a forties' film star, your flawless
body soaking in billowing suds, or stepping into
a glassed-in shower, large enough for a tryst
with Tarzan, be he resident of a nearby tree.
I imagined Don Perignon cooling in a basin,
and me: Maureen Sullivan, with or without an
Ape Man, poised for my swinging life, coupe
in hand. Instead, stumbling in half-light toward
morning ablutions on the quotidian blank page
of my life, mirrors conjured up not Hamlet's
perturbed, parental spirit, but a woman with my
mother's face. In her summer frock, frenzied
with flowers, prim white hat, and a crocheted bag
in the crook of her arm, she is standing on
the sidewalk outside my grandmother's white-
columned house in Georgia, where she sought
safe haven before a failed life, Jack Daniels
whiskey, and the cancer monster claimed her.
"So easy to spoil" it was said, so how is it life did
not work for her? -- "My beautiful, beautiful
daughter, wailed my grandmother like a banshee,
she, of the stiff, upper-lipped Prussian forbears,
as we drove forty solemn miles to lay her favorite
in Rebel heaven alongside a great-grandfather who
lost an arm at the battle of Cold Springs, his
grim-faced wife, bedrock beside him.
Peace was the prize my mother never won,
no treaty ever offered, pardon long in coming.
I see her poised like a dancer, sad history
surrounding her, a smile as unreadable as Mona
Lisa's under eyes like mine that have seen too
much of the sorrow of this world. "It all
comes down to this," Anne Sexton wrote, "We
ARE our mothers--that's the main thing."
I recall thinking of the response,
when you murmured asleep in the night,
the bubble whirls, set to collapse,
where words shimmer with resonance.
Like a rolling, flip-roll calendar on desk,
days shuffle forward, then scatter away,
an unforgettable roll call in the dawning.
Stars sparkle reluctant; veiled in the hush of mist.
It's just a skipping stones throw of thinking.
Each circle a widening ripple that fades.
Glinting with shimmers sailing in iridescent seas.
In short preview dreams, quivering, breaking apart.
Soothing rivers sweep me along with the rain.
Currents tilt thought into fractured light,
Dappling the surface with trembling shadows,
Reflections murmur softly through dark glass.
Waiting for blessings from the stairs.
The bubble whirls, bursting into absurd words.
Unanswered questions bleed into sleep,
with the humdrum that never quite dissolves.
The rain drafts letters on the roof.
Each drop a secret word etched and undone.
Yet the page tilts sideways, spilling,
the words back into the ocean pot of ink.
I chase a clock that swims like a fish.
Its scales like minutes, slither through my hands,
As the waters break open like swinging doors,
revealing staircases of spiraling white smoke.
In the half-light of sleep,
thoughts are like moths.
Fluttering at the edge
of a candle’s wavering glow.
This time between worlds,
full of subconscious whispers,
has truths arriving like chariots,
before scattering in the wake of dawn.
Half-light lingers still,
half-true, half-believed, half-known —
phantoms drift like mist,
their edges blur into breath,
then fold into the arms of dawn.
"Pluto’s Dark Abode"
they say you can feel her
walking through you
it only happens when
the frost and mist is about
where hidden wild things
watch but make
themselves heard
in the half light
they sum you up
they are found
in darkness
they say if you stop
to listen to the brook
speaking its beseeching
babble, you can hear
your name, as if
summoning you, so
you make your way
and kneel at the edge,
as if in solemn worship
what you see
in the glimmering
reflection, is not you,
you suspected this
all along, that what
calls you forward
into lost glades
such as this, are strange
haunted creatures
phantoms from
your abyss
seeking unwelcome
conference
and exchange
of currents
electric
not completely
foreign, this one
she smiles
in darkness
eyes like magnets
she pulls you in
they say you can feel her
walking through you
it only happens when
the mist is about
and wild things
watch but make
themselves heard
in the half light
you are found
in darkness
(LadyLabyrinth / 2022)
“A Hidden Glade” / Mindgarden Rework / Jarp Music
https://youtu.be/oKhUS4TnWG8
“High on a stag the Goddess held her seat,
And there were little hounds about her feet;
Below her feet there was a sickle moon,
Waxing it seemed, but would be waning soon.
Her statue bore a mantle of bright green,
Her hand a bow with arrows cased and keen;
Her eyes were lowered, gazing as she rode
Down to where Pluto has his dark abode.”
(Geoffrey Chaucer, The Canterbury Tales)
"Here Runneth the Path of Fairy Feet"
by Rachel Heffington
Where childhood fancy and twilight meet
Here runneth the path of fairy-feet;
On shadowed road and misty bend
Here coldsome facts of "real life" end,
And the simplest thing on earth would be
To find a dryad 'neath her tree.
She'd comb her locks like shimm'ring ferns
In that hour where the daylight turns.
And you'd never stop to blink your eyes
and say, (Because you're oh, so wise)
"Dryads aren't real--they're quite a myth"
If once you'd been in comp'ny with
A creature like her--lissom fair
With willowy limbs and leafy hair.
Where childhood fancy and twilight meet
Here runneth the path of fairy-feet.
In dusking woods at evenlong
You'll chance to hear an Elven song.
Like beads of dew on honeyed string
The notes, elusive, dip and sing.
And lamps we now call fire-flies
Can one more dazzle in our eyes.
Then we shall learn, as children do,
the things we thought we surely knew.
Fair beings that we'd long forgot
May weave with us a dreamy knot
Content, within this half-light time
To feed us with their storied rhyme.
Where childhood fancy and twilight meet
Here runneth the path of fairy feet
And those who spent the day in bed
Now tip-toe with their soft wings spread
And dance within the brilliant sheen
of moonlight and the summer's green.
The grown-up cares of life must fade
When pondered in that purple glade
Once more we change to half a child
Perfumed with scent of roses wild
And honeysuckle like a crown
That we'd been used to crushing down
Until twilight and fancy met
To tread with us this minuet.
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