There is a heartbeat under my heartbeat,
the one that was already going
before I had a body to carry it in.
I have called it wrong names.
Anxiety, when it was only aliveness.
Loneliness, when it was only spaciousness
with no one to explain itself to.
It never needed permission.
It didn't wait for me to become someone
before it started shining,
the way a window doesn't wait
for the house to be finished
to let in light.
I have spent so long trying to be smaller,
easier to hold,
and this whole time
there was something in me
that was already free
of every wall I built to contain it.
If I am honest, on my most tired night,
what I want isn't answers.
It's this, to feel that I am not separate
from the thing that made the stars
and also made the way light
moves through a glass of water at 2 a.m.
I don't think delight has to be earned.
I think it's underneath me
the way the ground is underneath me,
holding me up whether I notice it or not.
I did not arrive from nowhere.
Something is still arriving through me,
right now, as this breath, this pulse,
this quiet, stubborn light
that was never asking my permission to exist.
My words won’t come
the silence reigns
I didn’t write
I couldn’t say
My page is blank
my pen is dry
The muse has gone
— my voice denied
(Dreamsleep: July, 2026)
A perfect suit and a well-trimmed beard,
All decent he was, but only with no shoes.
All I could think about was, why’s he so weird?
A few streets away,
A rugged man walked with a pair he didn’t choose.
In an elegant and sophisticated restaurant
Was a clumsy man with more than a word to fail,
Oh! He shouldn’t be let in when he’s so arrogant,
What can he do, when he spent the last 25 years in jail.
A dusky evening and in a very dusty street,
Begging for food, was a young boy with a scar.
Uhh! Education would have made him decent and neat,
Little did they know that he was a remnant of the War.
So many Lives,
So many Stories,
So many People,
So many Judgments...
Don’t cast the first Stone, don’t look out for flaws.
Try to be that Rolling Stone, that gathers no Moss.
JD, A Stone now, but trying to Roll...
Wolves are said to work in packs
For apex they are
They plan and hack
Giving a group's scar
There exists wolves
Who work alone
Are called lone
And always hone
In the snow they meet a raven
Not a wolf but a new family
The presence later feels like heaven
Quite different but have a simile
They eat together
Never think to harm
They live separately
But together believe in calm
They are inseparable
They trust each other
The bond is not blood
But they thrive forever
They bond and hunt
And do it together
The forest fears them
And it passes to generations, dear
I met her in a dream at a washing station in Bangladesh
I might have tried to hold her hand by the thread she held
Which passed through the interior of a manicured shrub
Severely cut into the form of a dense sunless topiary ball
So tightly was it manicured to create a studied appearance
Of formal stability and calm that no air or sunlight reached its interior
And you could smell the rot from inside at a distance
And hear the screams of a six-year-old child from inside as well
Calling out desperately from the rot for attention and care
That I might follow the thread and see into the plant I dare not go
For there were broken off rotten limbs of its trunk lying by its side
From those who tried to reach the centre of the shrub before
So, I held back my desire to reach the centre and stopped out the noise.
I sat in the sunlight of what was once northern India and wondered at life’s destruction
Where none of Shiva’s many arms could penetrate into planned obstruction for aid
And the course of fate finds its way into unexpected dreams on night pillows rest.
One more pill,
One more self-denial of internal strength,
One more unhealthy decision,
One more drink to ease the tension,
One more fruitless thrill,
One more wasted skill,
One more temperament becoming ill,
One more day by the windowsill of life,
Looking out,
Wondering,
Crying, “Why?”
Then comes the light.
Habit,
Fear,
Addicts still cheer,
***** as it seems,
Passing on by go some dreams,
Screams occur,
Many things blur,
One thing for sure,
Are the things that were the cure,
No larger are,
That is ALL I know so far.
It is FUBAR!!!
Tell it to the five year old
Whose home was blown away
And since the hurricane passed,
Has no home in which to stay.
Tell it to the grieving mother
With tears upon her face
Who now sets the table
With one less dinner place
Tell it to the jobless man
Whose family must be fed
For business needs of his former job
Doesn’t care if they’ll be dead.
Tell it to the elderly
Whose prescriptions won’t be filled
While drug companies only care
If their greed is being billed
Tell it to your neighbor
In the driveway as you pass
You parked your car forever
Due to outrageous price of gas
Avarice and Greed became
The new laws of our land
Corporations buy officials
To advance their corporate brand.
A dragon lived high on a hill
Drinking his greatest skill
Not dreaming of raiding
Or eating young maidens
He would rather lay back and chill.
There once was a burly young knight
Sent out for a dragon to fight
Thought killing was cruel
He would rather duel
He hoped the dragons had left in the night
On coming upon the drinking dragon
He happily accepted a flagon
He lay down his sword
A drink was poured
They were last seen in an old wagon
I love your non-existence
Love you, I love you, time is a shadow in our lives
Shadow, your soul, cover my life, I have no sun
– No, just a cold world, dead existence, frozen
Yeah, what is life? Without you. The only star
You are the last light in my life. But not a touch
– No, you can’t be, never the last night. Sad love
I needed her love. Hmm. Hoped. Blackhole
For me, purity, virgin land, I imagined it as my love
– No. Just for saving my life. I have so many dreams
Followers, lovers
I have a mistake
Love
Naivety
Hmm
Suffering
Unfindable
Love
Non
Existence
Buongiorno
Vorrei... - ICanto la canzone più bella mai scritta.
Di amore e felicità...
La dolcezza dei suoi baci.
Il suo sorriso bellissimo e rassicurante
Canto la canzone più bella mai scritta
Io canto di Te
Kisuwosuru kara, mewotojite.
Sozo-ryoku o zonbun ni habataka seyou
A, ano taiyo to, jonetsu-tekina soyokaze
Kokochiyoku odayakana hareta hi
Mewotojite. Mata kisue mo i?
Ima, wataachi no jonetsu wa wakai suru
Che bello!
Che bello
che bello
che bello
così felice di esserlo
che bello
che bello
così felice di stare con te
che bello
che bello
sei il mio tut
To hold is to lay open the chest to cold air
two heartbeats learning their names without language.
Before the first word, a body read another.
The dance was always the hold.
Two spines disagree gently, without letting go.
Arms know what hands don't.
The angle of your shoulder: a measurement I carry.
Distance is not safety,
only loneliness given a cold name.
Winter morning, frost on glass:
I trace where your hand once was.
Grief, an embrace with nowhere left to open.
Gravity is want.
Mass draws all other mass near
not compulsion, but the oldest fact of things:
that to have weight is to matter to the world.
The moon tends toward the tide.
This is different from having no choice.
Some bodies have learned to be afraid of opening.
This does not make the opening wrong.
It makes the learning necessary first.
Your shoulder, at last
not a sound that can be named,
all the weight, set down
in the one place that knows how to hold it.
The arms don't say it.
They do it again.
This is the oldest language
the one that was already speaking
before we knew we had begun.
Self-Infliction 1
To show
not tell
the essence
of verse
Narrative
wording
the image
reversed
A rainbow
unseen
is folly
described
Each moment
explained
a feeling
— contrived
**
Self-Infliction 2
Poetry done right
“is not a hobby”
Filling the hours
with time undone
Poetry from the heart
“is not descriptive”
Where words die orphaned
— and words die young
(Dreamsleep: April, 2026)
of your being
and the shapes of leaves
in a clearing
and realize
that life
and looking up
at taller beings
and trees
is worth
the stillness
of being.
How creeps the dark where life was brightly lit
when he who once mighty is idly damned -
to watch destroyed an energy and wit
makes concealed and sad a life long and grand.
Where the acquisitions of yesteryear
become a puzzle piece and not a whole,
where atrophy on each new day impair
the bravest heart! The old sense! The lost soul!
I have seen the inconsolable grace
and pride which inherit the living haze -
that robs all memory without a trace
kept more sedentary in mortal malaise.
When my time draws nigh I pray of the twain
that body and mind this soul still remain.
Written: April 2005
In the city of clocks where the seconds bleed blue,
Walks the man who is surely not from Timbuktu.
He carries a suitcase of unspoken rain,
And a compass that points to the center of pain.
His hat is a nebula, tilted just so,
While his shadow’s melting in lambent-lit snow.
He drinks from a cup filled with yesterday’s noise,
And trades his reflection for the clockwork of toys.
He wasn’t born by a map or a dust-covered street,
With the roots of the stars tangled under his feet.
He asks for the way to a place with no name,
While his pockets spill over with fresh frozen flame.
Don’t look for his passport in the shifting sand,
He’s a ghost with a sunflower held in his hand.
A traveler whose born from a glitch in the sky,
With a thousand years tucked in the hub of his eye.
Sub Categories
Looking for the formal definition, structure, and history of this poetry form? Visit the Poetry Dictionary entry below. Then return to explore how PoetrySoup members bring the form to life through their own poems.