a heartbeat pulsating as living light
free from each and every limitation
I Am that dwelling in unbound delight
the source wherefrom arises creation
I was the silence before the first breath,
the nameless spark when the waters were deep,
older than memory, untamed by death,
waking the quiet where centuries sleep.
No cage of bronze can encompass my reach,
no boundary bends the scope of my sight,
I am the ocean, the wave, and the beach,
the shadow that bends to give birth to the light.
I walk through the world, yet I am not the clay,
I am the fire that burns in the marrow,
the endless horizon breaking the day,
the flight of the bow, the space in the arrow.
Unbound and unformed, yet forever complete,
I step from the silence and step into song,
the void and the fullness where all rivers meet,
the place where the stars and the echoes belong.
When we are young, we do not know
Exactly how our lives will go.
The answers dangle out of reach,
A barrier we cannot breach.
Yet as we grow, we grasp at clues
Enticing us to avenues
Which might just lead us to unwind
The skills by which we’ll be defined.
It might be music, sports or art
To set a spark to help us start,
Or maybe books or food or math
To lure us down a certain path.
Perhaps it’s just the urge to care
For those in need that takes us where
Our nurturing can make a dent
In those whose lacks are evident.
Some gravitate to entertain
Or build or mend or drive a train,
While others search but are resigned
To leave their unformed dreams behind.
Still, there is always hope that we,
At least to just a small degree,
Will match what DNA’s supplied
To something we can own with pride.
“More Than Scribbles”
The pen does not speak—
it holds its silence in a chamber,
a reservoir where sentences
float unformed,
dark rivers stalled
before the mouth of paper.
Each droplet is a thought
waiting for gravity’s compunction,
a poem in liquid pause,
its capillary compression
held at the narrow throat of the nib.
The pipeline presses with pressure,
yet nothing escapes—
until the hand inclines,
and gravity leans through the hinge,
drawing futures downward
onto a waiting page.
There, a stained tributary
eddies downstream,
curling into margins,
its current carrying fragments
toward the widening mouth of breath.
A single line spills,
a thought becomes visible,
the poem begins to breathe.
.
To take a thought and shape a poem
Takes patience, and a clue –
The patience for the diligence
Required of a muse
The clue for clever subtleties
Engaging poets use
To form connections yet unformed
Reveal with clarity
The mysteries that men have known
Throughout the centuries
Unraveled with apparent ease
In fonts of industry –
To trace the riddle of a thought
Decrypt it as it bends
To find epistles in a phrase
And coax it from a pen
One finds a poet at his craft
Plying, with keen intent
The words with which to move the earth
And all the universe
She knew the joy of motherhood
once; for nine months:
Two hours, fourteen minutes.
she held him for his entire life
and tried to give
this tiny, unformed soul
all the love that he would need
as he moved on.
And all the hurts
they would endure together,
he and she;
falls from trees,
bruises, scratches, cuts,
broken bones,
broken hearts,
failures, confusion, anger.
She felt them
all at once
unbearable,
the weight of her grief.
I am poetry
An unheard whisper
Shadows
Conspiring
A tear
Soaked in laughter
Anger
Molded in metaphor
Humor
Wielding the axe of angst
Whispering
A farewell kiss
I am poetry
The invisible heart of language
Beating a near silent drum
A quiet vibration
Teasing the moonlight
A cool breath of air
Drawing lovers closer
A metered heartbeat
Quickened in passions petulance
I am poetry
A dream yet unformed
Stirring the ink of dreams
Weaving a wondrous web
Awaiting unsuspecting words
You see it coming through an opaque mirror,
first signs and last winks, a monstrous revealing
the marks of a construction worker with no blueprint
one who realizes that the edifice is crumbling
from within, the pearl rubbed raw shedding its
chalky dust. At last, you see a built-in purpose,
the apparent form
together with its transpiring apparition,
the grand design arriving in one revelation.
There are no monsters or angels, the brute was always
a shallow sketch of a dilapidation that had to be
drawn before your sight until you saw
hidden beneath the scaffolding of perception,
the beautiful unformed Creator
looking clearly through
your own eyes.
Midnight in my darkest hour
The radio turned to nowhere, n nothing
The night is open to static, unknown
A vice of something from silence moans
Its whispers are lost in the either of night
Cold moonlight settles on my floor
Its liquid form is translucent and unformed
I draw the air of midnight, misty cold
Feeling dead stations of Soul
Each a place of memory
My birth
My life
I have forgotten all the rest
I watch my coming death
Nothing is as I know
Midnight at my darkest hour
Knowing the dead stations of Soul
Static & unknown!
Miles apart in the gleam, I believe her,
Upright on the porch, staring at the mighty above,
Her glassy eyes shimmering with a deceptive smile,
Her loose hair flowing like ocean waves.
Must she be seeing the moon similar as mine?
Our children lie in slumber deep,
Too young to grasp the storms we face.
Here I stand, lost in whispers of the dark,
Unformed, without any foresight.
Oh, my love! How will I ever repay those emotions?
The deepest depths no longer sting,
Perhaps the Almighty is a reconsideration away.
What have I done so horrendous,
For you to endure this?
My soul feels lost in its entirety.
Where a blink's separation takes us closer to certainty,
My beloved, forgive me for this single night of parting.
In the interlude between breaths,
silence hangs like a ripe fruit,
heavy with unspoken histories.
Here, in this moment's hush,
the world writes itself anew —
each atom a calligrapher's brush.
Silence: not absence, but presence
distilled to its purest form,
a language beyond the reach of tongues.
It speaks in the spaces between stars,
in the pause before dawn breaks,
in the trembling of a leaf's shadow.
Listen — can you hear it?
The whisper of time folding in on itself,
the murmur of memories yet to be born.
In this quietude, continents drift,
galaxies spiral, and butterflies
dream of their unformed wings.
Silence: the womb of all sound,
where every possibility gestates,
where the universe composes its symphony.
It is the blank page of existence,
awaiting the ink of our being,
the canvas for our fleeting marks.
In its depths, we find ourselves —
fragments of stardust and story,
suspended in the vast unspoken.
This silence, this eloquent void,
holds more truth than all
Written: June 16, 2024
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Hope had gray hair and looked downcast,
Amid grieving and fears, hope is obscene.
At night, just a rocket and fanal were seen,
Life disappears into shrouds, leading to a blast.
Did the hurling and horrible air have a heart?
A single eye read the unformed wonder or boom.
He was the one who proved the current loom,
The quiddity draws the skies and earth apart.
Lord, my petition and argument are both fair,
What bears devils successful and me a failure?
Revolve their decay if the pair were my jailers,
Chervil-lined banks and curbs quiver with new air.
My sapient wairua creates an Elixir riddle ban,
Hoarding and ignoring nature led to a span.
But by grace do I shadow your form
from each darkened night to bright-lit morn.
You're silvery-white in my life's storm
hosting shivery thoughts yet unborn.
Would that my pen divine such meaning,
enflame fiery feelings unbidden
that stun me dumb at their convening.
My emotions revealed, unhidden.
Yet my disguise is opaque it seems.
You cross a transcendental realm –
unspoken vesper in sacral dreams
that never attains its lofty helm.
Someday, I know you will understand
my passionate affection for you -
How my heart bleeds with tender demand,
unformed entanglement to pursue!
My ink is flowing hoping to charm,
My poem an aphrodisiac.
Unwritten rhymes planning to disarm
and attract you to my love lilac.
Though you're beyond my bewitching reach,
I devote this unsung ode to us.
My dear, with unsaid words I beseech -
Let's join our hearts without further fuss.
A POET'S CRUSH - collaboration with Linda Alice Fowler
But by grace do I shadow your form
from each darkened night to bright-lit morn.
You're silvery-white in my life's storm
hosting shivery thoughts yet unborn.
Would that my pen divine such meaning,
enflame fiery feelings unbidden
that stun me dumb at their convening.
My emotions revealed, unhidden.
Yet my disguise is opaque it seems.
You cross a transcendental realm –
unspoken vesper in sacral dreams
that never attains its lofty helm.
Someday, I know you will understand
my passionate affection for you -
How my heart bleeds with tender demand,
unformed entanglement to pursue!
My ink is flowing hoping to charm,
My poem an aphrodisiac.
Unwritten rhymes planning to disarm
and attract you to my love lilac.
Though you're beyond my bewitching reach,
I devote this unsung ode to us.
My dear, with unsaid words I beseech -
Let's join our hearts without further fuss.
Ode for a Fortunate Infant
Newborn:
Smacked and
Screaming —
Hardly more than a new fact,
A statistic
Already forgetting
The crush into Becoming.
This “tabula rasa,”
Kicking and flailing,
Not yet swaddled or cradled,
Held only by Fate
In the first minutes of Destiny
(unformed and waiting)
With a heart
Needing to be embracd
By more than just touch,
But blessed to completely feel
The warmth of Acceptance
That founds a first sense
Of Identity as being a Self
Here linked with Others…
For the first lessons of Love —
Swaddled in belonging
Wrapped with thanksgiving.
(c) s.y.eslnger 5/24/2024
Thanks be to God…
The tender strokes of becoming,
Are found atop of agony and loss,
In the heart of suffering, a seed is sown,
It's the bud from which I have grown, ever blooming.
Here I stand in front of the mirror,
My reflection forward in time self so clear,
His eyes bear the stories of resistance,
He whispers, "Thank you," to the echoes of persistence.
Each sacrifice, a chisel to the soul,
Carving out a being, from the unformed whole.
Pain, the artist, shapes us in its grip,
From nothingness to purpose, on life's canvas we flip.
In him I see the man I could become,
With gratitude in his gaze, he acknowledges me,
The sacrifices made, the suffering endured,
Crafted his form into someone that’s truly free.
As the Taoists say, we're an un-carved block,
Enduring life's trials, against time's ticking clock.
We transform, reshape, and make anew,
From formless beginnings, to true virtue.
I bear the marks of suffering, the etchings of sacrifice,
I've become the cup, in which my fate rests.
I am now of use, of purpose, and might,
A testament to endurance, a beacon of strong willed protest.
Sub Categories
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