Lugubrious Poems | Examples

Lava Lamp

vessel captivates
warm waxing finesse waning                                
more color less stress
glowing going with flowing
lugubrious globular!

vibrant pink guava
incandescent liquid groove~
pahoehoe lava

Funeral

She left at the yawn of dawn
Between fog-densed waking hour
And rain-soused grey morning.
Veiled, her image was laced in silhouette.
She stood behind the fog-rain, a dark
Painting, sketched in black crayons of
Languor.
Her breath, one streak of ink
Of a satanic fresco on a dingy subway.
And the breath of the rain was heavy,
Brewed in hauteur -
So was the world between us two,
Lame and proscribed.
She wandered through flighty directions.
Grouches filled her lugubrious lungs,
Blotches on the sludged track, echoing
Her slouch.
She was one mass of trembling grief.
I was one hulk of ruinous pain.
Between us, the funeral of love.
Threnodies held court on the once soft
Yolk of hugs that sensitized an ageing
Romance.
Dawn darkened with the pulse of grief
Rain pelted the senses held by solemn
Consternations, recreating a fruitless
Void of hollow trepidations.
She lurched and sidled towards the
Crag-lined route, towards earth’s drooling
Beck... and I knew the funeral
Was over.

Who's Next?

Shudder not, for it’s the language of Death.
Who’s next? —it asks
Going from house to house,
Both of marble and mud
It cares not
Nor fears man, rich or poor,
Warrior or coward,
Whose nest it visits,
His cold arms ready for embrace,
Ready to snatch
Life is just but one lugubrious journey
On sea or on land or on air,
Which must end with the sound of
A school bell signalling the end of a recess.
So rejoice not when one, friend or foe, drops from the line,
For you could be next
And your kinsman next after you.
One after the other,
We drop
Like one old, battered leaf after another, in the
Spell of autumn.

Intrusive Thoughts

There’s a monster menagerie inside my mind
these beasts are not cute, cuddly, or kind
they enjoy torturing my thoughts at night and all day
I’ll introduce you and tell you how each one behaves

First we have the notorious, "Nadine- NooneLikesYou”,
Then “Walter- You’reWorthless” is in my mind too
Here is “Rita Repeater” who never lets me forget
“Lala” likes words like Limacine, Lugubrious illiterate.

Meet “Tutoo”, who says “too fat, too old, too dumb to think
and "Christopher Critic" who says this poem stinks
If you know my monsters, I really feel for you...
This makes them seem funny but we know that’s not true.

Dance with Delusions

Dancing with delusions, sparks of hellfire
Course through my lugubrious quill pen.
Distorted words igniting fear,
Anxiety fills crevices,
Encircling, silencing,
Asphyxiating.
Walls closing in,
Compressing.
Hope fades,
Doom.
Dread
Runs cold.
Veins poisoned,
Sanity slips
Unmercifully.
The angels are mimicked.
Light dimming, darkness descends
As demons mingle with the dead.
Apocalyptic skies crack open
To wash away all that you held sacred.

Raindrops 2

Lugubrious blue mood skies funereal  and morose shed raindrops,
they unleash tableau vivant torrent’s wet tranche,
blessing,  bane or boon from vault of heaven,
damp pearl blob  bewitching moisture mellow morph form, 
the stuff of less than benign grumpy weather grouch,
whose plight infuses yen for sun-drenched bliss,
haven of the ultra-violet swathe enthusiast,
for others raindrops are  a liquid gem relish firmament bequeathed,
to whet voracious craving of nascent pastures,
whose gaunt green blade emaciating stillborn,
that aqueous honey to hue-blazed floral  garden in situ bloomers,
who swallow cloudburst drizzle meed in muted slurps, 
droplet streak and spiral bubble patten on top hung awning window,
empyrean tear beads that roof top tap dance ritual,
so tantalising to the awestruck spellbound eardrum,
or impromptu downward dribbles on romantic saunterers,
prompting boisterous laughter as they flaunt their dome transparent chromium truss umbrella,
those enraptured red-blooded refugees beneath tilting gust spun bumbershoot,
as mud splatter cherry cheek urchins shriek,
amid the spray and splash globules at agile finger tips

Grey Angel

In the woods lurks the grey angel;
Wingless and disillusioned, he awaits
The onset of diarrhoea,
Bismarck’s jocular displeasure
And the seagull’s lugubrious weightlessness –
Later than previously, he erects
A flag made of wormwood
Brought all the way
From the ceiling of an underground café in East Berlin -
He sighs….and it is like someone playing
A musical saw: it expresses harmoniously
His perpendicular musical soul –
Expecting nothing, he is perpetually disappointed
By the visitations of crones desirous of petty miracles,
Of repentant tax-gatherers requesting absolution,
On New-Age moongazers seeking enlightenment,
Of people who desire certainty, answers,
Of people who pursue truth and self-righteousness,
Of people who just want to see what an angel,
Any angel looks like. Only these curious rubbernecks
Touch his bland and ironic soul with a faint luminosity –
Their enthusiasm for life, if crass and tawdry,
At least provides the salt which otherwise
Has lost its flavour….a pity
That it just rubs salt into his wounds.

When Doves Cry

Why do they cry, daddy?

Soldiers march – a lugubrious lullaby of detonation as their melodic grim reaper

Why can’t you hear them? 

A myriad of white swoops through the blast wave, hidden between smoke particles like mere flecks of dust.
The wails a clear message from above, silenced by the rolling murmur of combat,
As soviet tanks stalk over the border.

Are you not listening?

Circling the battleground in anguish
Tumbling
Falling on deaf ears
Weeping in white.
Can no one hear the coo of the dove, as it mourns man’s innocence?

Peace. A deserted bride – betrayed by hubris.
Each gunshot wounding the flock,
Their cries a pitch only children can hear.
A dove plumets into the welcoming arms of a child, its wings punctured by man’s artillery 
Weeping… In sorrowful red

Why can’t you see how he bleeds, daddy?

When doves cry, man chooses not to listen.

In Dublin Gaol

‘Tis lucky me father lies in the grave,
Than t’see the havoc I have wreaked
In the name of actin’ bold and brave,
My misadventures dastardly peaked.

In this musky gaol I am wasting away
While me life passes before me eyes
Chaplains teaching me how to pray,
Give up with their lugubrious sighs.

Long since I no longer wish for home
Before the blazin’ fires of the hearth,
Cedar sizzles and marshmallows foam
My children giggle at songs of mirth.

And me here so cold behind these walls
I no longer dream of freedom’s will,
While me sentence spurts and stalls
I swallow punishment’s bitter swill. 

SEVENTH PLACE WINNER
Written October 17, 2022
Submitted to "2022 Poetry Marathon Mile 18" Poetry Contest
Sponsored by Mark Toney

How the Human Mind Ponders

I find it fascinating how the human mind ponders
the origin and shape of ideas 
and how everyone 
wanders. 

I wonder why I 
can’t help but think 
in terms of rhythm and rhyme   
when oftentimes others
prefer a more subtle approach 
to how their thoughts are imperceptibly 
dreamed, derived, or discovered.

They say everyone's chemistry is a mixed bag
of good and bad, sour, sweet, sad, mad and 
lugubrious to laughably glad.

And I confess I don't know much
about psychology, psychiatry, or the brain
but this I know like the moon that glows:
the mind is a wondrous, thunderous thing.

So, if you're anything like me and 
hope to see 
the intricacies and mysteries 
of the human mind, 
better  
take a step back 
as a matter of fact, finding 
answers may be lying 
still,
undefined.

Muddy Thoughts On a Rainy Sunday

The day is industrial olive oil.
Mudfish thrash on the shores of thought.
I grin a lot with my eyes,
grinners return my eyes to me -
no one wants them.

The morning's dull certainty
haunts me like a lugubrious condor,
wet ropes of laden gravity
drag me around.

Nothing irritates me
more than nothingness.

Ghost-talk filters through
a sluggish ennui
even the ghosts are boring.

The mudfish have had enough,
they are heading back to the ocean.
They know it’s a rainy Sunday.

My sludgy shores are full of killer shrimp
waiting for the squelch
of something fresh to arrive.

Embers

Intuition flares,
prancing in ostentatious circles,
feather-tip proud.
Lugubrious grey wigs 
speckle gregariously
bedecked by flamboyant gems:
they flicker frustratingly
in stifled Regency ballrooms.

Our embers, in contrast,
are quiet. Shushed. 
They wallow in dark corners, 
hidden from prying eyes.
Predators.
Our collective eyelid
flutters closed:
too shy, subduing to privacy.
A silent tear streaks 
our collectively cold face.

Science ensnares our senses,
making ordinary life dim - 
blindingly darkened;
teetering on Boredom’s knife edge –
we long to carve it free;
infuse new scarlet veins
into its unthinking, meaty flesh,
stoking a smothered fire,
rekindling its earthy, 
endearing embers.

Melancholia

MELANCHOLIA

     Had he left putting me
     in reverie of melancholia?
   Rather I left him
    and since then peace had left me forever
   while I am whirling in rue of turbulent tornedo.

    Wearing charcoal mask appearing dusty dusk.
      Pricking pain of buried passion piercing my mind.
      In morose fading twilight 
         birds are chirruping in glissando.

       I am sinking in fathomless abyss in grief of ocean,
        Where pearl of dolor is taking shape
         from tears of amour
        oozing from chasm of broken heart
         cascading opulent on inflow of ambedo.

       I am drowning down on cosmic illusion
        in this lugubrious night.
        I am floating to descry: 
          My love once lively lovely like Full Moon
         now lamenting in lean crescendo.

   11/04/20
                                                    Second Place

   'Ambedo'  Contest by Silent  One

Viral Verbosity

Deliberately debating a debilitating disease,
Excruciates and exacerbates existential ease.
Loquaciously lugubrious her lacrimonious wailing,
Instilled in me an ignominy of incongruous assailing.
Galling in its gargantuan, garrulous gainsaying,
Hypocritical hyperbole it goes without saying.
Tormenting me with tales of her tinnitus tintinnabulation,
Forced me to fulminate with ferocity and damnation.
Until, unambiguously, I uttered my interdiction,
Life's too short and your lassitude would test a Saints benediction.

Falls

FALLS

Lugubrious countenance of midnight.
Scream of water cutting the inner ear.
At edge of Anna Ruby, gripped by fear,
Night-wanderer awakes to stormy height.

8/7/2020
Be Inspired Poetry Contest
Sponsor: Regina McIntosh

• Short Lugubrious Poems
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• Lugubrious Quotes