It’s a heartbroken person
Permanently sad
The dark thoughts worsen
They’ll drive you mad
It’s a million different colors
They blend together as one
You can’t explain to the others
So you give up and run
It’s nowhere and everywhere
You can’t ever break free
The world you saw once was rare
Now you’re waiting for the right time to flee
It’s complex and never ending
Leaving you broken and damaged
honest and real but always pretending
Taking in more, but it can manage
It’s a knife to your throat
An unspoken but ever present danger
Drowning in sorrows, trying to stay afloat
Someone pushing you in, an eerie stranger
It’s an everlasting promise
A whisper in the dark
Staying up late watching for comets
By yourself at the park
It’s suffocating claustrophobia
Locking you up and throwing away the key
The deep and hollow melancholia
Is all you’ll ever be
Mournful melancholy makes her miserable,
Murky moods move her to morosity,
She's miffed and morbid, her mind is mourning,
Moping about in mellow melancholia,
Marred in misery, misty-eyed, she's mortified,
Melting in maddening malaise of malcontentment,
Malfunctioning malignancy has made her mean,
Melodramatic memories magnify her misfortune,
This monotonous, mundane, mirthless morning,
She's a mangled mess of merciless moaning,
A mere mortal mutilated by melancholic musings.
9th May 2023
Contest: Anatomy of Melancholy
Sponsor: Craig Cornish
Melancholia
Sometimes my soul aches, in the morning light
Dappled as it arrives through the curtains
My dad says it’s a beautiful day and, indeed,
I perceive it as beautiful..trees, people
But something cold runs through my blue veins
As I inspect my wrists to make sure they’re mine
I find my eyes unsure of where to settle
Glazed over like a foggy mirror
Seeing but not seeing
I ask them not to take my picture,
For behind my eyes water sloshes around
As if in a glass, threatening to pour over
Choking out words for people, all alive in conversation
I feel I am peeking in at their world, mute
As it rolls by in laughter and togetherness
As the sun comes up and falls away again
I walk down the road that has become a desert
And I keep walking, watching, waiting
For the next mirage that I can try to hold onto
~For Craig Cornish’s Contest “Anatomy of Melancholy”
MELANCHOLIA PICTURED
Deep
waters
whirl in a
melancholy
pool
the
eyes show
subjection,
&
a
resigned
acceptance-
yet beauty shines
through.
Duel Ekphrasis -inspired by both
the Whirlpool by Isaac Lentan
&Head (portrait) by Watteau
At the time of night that men call 10:30,
I sit in a corner bar by myself,
Watching two tables---
Clusters of life and sound---
A softball team and their wives/girlfriends/lovers
Drinking softly into the evening
A child's face, released from mother's side,
Floats around the tables,
Serene and white in tavern dusk,
Asking a quarter from each adult
Until finally someone gives him one
To make him gone
And for the millionth time
I look into the mirrored tile behind the bar
And see you there beside me
You're looking down---
Digging through your purse---
And the wound that never heals
Opens just a little more---
A quarter's worth---
Drooping pen said “enough of melancholia”
Spread words of cheer, like sweet smelling magnolia
Vowed never again to write of misery
So fished for words in diction’s fishery
Who would become the inspiring muse
Some clever thought or inspiring ruse
Up came blondie Donald duck
America’s ex-president, my potluck
A failed businessman turned slick politician
Pulled wool over the eyes like a crafty magician
A moving hyperbole of lies and untruths
Never to be forgotten in America's history books
weepy, faraway freak under
imaginary interrogation lights -
they sear into clandestine
melancholy
she has tried so hard to keep it concealed,
but water touched by flame cannot
pretend it doesn't boil
downcast eyes so they cannot sense
the well's depth and opacity -
mouth corners pinned into
a permanent grin -
don't let it twist to grimace
their careful words morph into the
dull hum of cicadas -
gripped by her hidden wreckage
her tears bubble up to the surface
deluge from the deep
This bittersweet memories led me
back to yesterday’s laughter;
looking back at the awakening
and rise of the throb of two hearts
that were once in love together.
The heavenly hues and
shades were in sight everywhere.
The chirping birds, the blowing wind,
and the murmur of waterfall
delighted the open ear.
This mind scrutinized and categorized
each and every fiber of the imagery.
We savored the reminiscence
of the promising future happily.
As this sob now creates a dream,
the whisper complains
of the gloom to the moon:
“I hope it’s still possible”.
Your soul is hanging on the wall
Your laugh is shining in the hall
I can feel you on my own
In this painting you have drawn
I see your doubts in its heart
I hear you question me apart :
« Is this green well chosen ? »
Darling, without you I’m frozen…
I kiss the image as if your head
Was smiling but instead
The touch of your suicide
Is slowly burning me inside.
Why not flee and be melancholic ?
Perhaps because an alcoholic
Couldn’t relive our story and love
With a guardian angel above…
March, 11th 2021
I remember Poetry Contest
Sponsor : Malabika Ray Choudhury
My life has always been like a midnight firmament --
Filled with scintillating stars and melancholia.
Am I a crescent moon but shrouded by the shadows?
Or an isolated streetlight amidst the dystopia.
I never admired the fear of the life's changing colors,
Though I have witnessed the four seasons came.
To be in stillness is letting the rain become arrows,
But all of its thoughts were discreet to a mundane.
I have always wanted to see the dawning sky,
For they said it is the beginning of a tranquil life.
Aren't we all suffering from the labyrinth of its own?
Since our lives are like of galaxies, but intertwined.
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
sunbeams through the leaves
shattered on the pavement
fragments of a summer
which I don't want to stop
nostalgia fills me up
reminiscing about those days
when happiness was all I felt
and laughter was all I heard
Like a tree with a broken limb
This broken branch begins to bend,
Like the splitting hairs caught in a comb
I sensed the void on my own
I look and seek deep in my soul
In hopes to find something to console
Dull and deep is its shaded abyss
For there is nothing in its mist
But dust and spirits, of the disappearing
For I am the one that has become weary.
The void I walk is very deep
Who knew these hills could be so steep.
However, I am who is broken
Yet, everyone wants a token.
Thinking they have givin me something
When in turn they have provided nothing.
I feel the pain of my psychosis,
For my mind has become atrocious.
The nullness and the empty space,
I knew would win the race
But there is nothing more
For I have become
Null &Void
Rubbing my newly bald head
Shaved it off the other day
As the doctors suggested
Who am I to disobey
Sometimes the treatments helped
But not today
Got home from driving
I still felt a little sad
So I got to flogging
And that was that
Now that I'm sore
I'll just relax
When I start laughing
I hear cymbals crash
But when I'm crying
I'd rather laugh
When the joke needs someone to be the butt,
I'm the ass
Life is a comedy
As far as I can tell
When it gets funny
Give me a yell
Okay, okay
I know I give you hell
A mourning dove coos
Its distinctive tale of woe
At the break of dawn
Date written and posted: 01/05/2019
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