Sonnet 116

I will not be a rock in the path of streams
Flowing to a river. A love is not whole
Which lives only in foolish dreams
Or wades through storms for nought.
No, it is a stubborn child
Clinging to its mother in a watery grave
A father watching the night
Hope's faithful slave
That cannot be numbered in longing's worth
Time has no hand upon love, though the image wanes
And the warping of age comes too soon
Love clings at the depths of the ocean heart,
Bearing out even to the edge of doom.
If love proves to be less than all these
Then I am a fool, and should be drowned for it.

Car Crash Hearts

So here we are now
Walking past the roads of silk and oil
Buildings growing where trees
Once threw their roots into the soil
And the night is so cold
And this scene is so old
Have we ever been anything but lonely?

The cars speed by
The automatic fireflies
Cutting through what stands between us
We have ever been here before
We have ever waited
We have ever wanted so much more
We are never sated

What is the sound
Of the engine of our souls
Metal breaking metal
Destroying what we can't control
Wanting what we'll never have
Never feeling whole
And this is where we belong
In the streets
With an embrace coiled between us

We are racing,standing still.
With our eyes, with our words,
We collide.
We are fighting to the finish line
So that something new can start.
If it’s worse, if it’s better,
If it’s the same...
It doesn’t matter.

Human Stain

Fighting wildly against our fates,
Spiralling through life, and love, and dreams
Falling through everything it seems

Shattered halos rain full down
We watch and weep; what we have been
And our hopes are scattered into the earth
Feeding the monsters we gave birth

So if there's a loving hand above
Why weren't we caught and given love
Why insist we fall so far
What are we all doing in the same bar?
Is there a holy light shining through the beer
Is there any light...
Sorry, no miracles here

With our fragile hands and breakable wings
Shouldn't we be doing greater things.

Ray Serene

The curfew tolls the knell of parting day,
The lowing herd winds slowly o'er the lea,
The ploughman homeward plods his weary way,
And leaves the world to darkness and to me.

Full many a gem of purest ray serene

The dark unfathom'd caves of ocean bear:

Full many a flower is born to blush unseen,

And waste its sweetness on the desert air.

Far from the madding crowd's ignoble strife,
Their sober wishes never learn'd to stray;
Along the cool sequester'd vale of life
They kept the noiseless tenour of their way.

Thomas Gray

Elegy Written in a Country Church-Yard

Who Says You Can't Go Home

Walking across foreign lands
Among foreign eyes, and alien sand
The air is different, you fall in
Hearts are different in every within
And you begin

Who are you, and where are you now
What will you do with your dreams?
They seem so strange now and somehow
You’ve forgotten your old gods

You painted someone else’s canvas
You’re wearing a strange perfume
In a house of strange jewel glass
On a stage, in a strange room

Are you reading lines the people want to hear?
Have you forgotten why you are here?
Are you an actor now, instead
Of the figure in your dreams,
Or is she dead?

Mourn her, bring her back
Or is she only hiding behind her veil
Of heavy cloth and dusty gold
Of promises, of secrets, of hopes untold

There is a time when you must leave
She will return, and you might grieve
But the strange…it’s for strangers
You know where you belong.

Mesti

Bolehkah aku berlari selamanya
Tanpa berpusing kembali
Melintas setiap gelap
Kabur dalam mimpi
Menginginkan sesuatu
...
Kau mungkin ada pilihan
Tapi aku mesti

Sea Path

How far now to unfathomable?
How far now to the darkness beneath?
If I can't read you, then I can't understand you
It's getting deep and it's hard to breathe

I am riding on the back of a serpent
As she slides through the sea
Her fragile scales crushed under my grip
As her poison holds me

Where is the end of this journey?
In blue waters of tragedy?
In dark caverns of forgotten love
That stain a soul eternally

How long more do I venture
To what I do not know
You are not here, you may not be there
But Ocean tells me, go

The swirling waters, the endless night
Is this where I will find you?
Yet ghost fishes wearing the souls of old wishes
Wander through and through and through

I am no god, and I will end soon
And you will go on as lost as before
So tell me, where is your unfathomable
Tell me, how far more?

I may find you, or I may seek the moon
Or am I now seeking her fallen reflection
Twisted by the waves, eaten by the creatures
Where did you go to not return?
Let me wait for you.

People Alphabet

I'll wash my hair and feel a little better
Than holding on, holding on to nothing
I'll wake up and have the whole day
Brought to me by the letter, the letter
The letter A
A for Awesome

Hey little bones holding up my head
You're a lot stronger than you believe
And this heart and this blood,
And this warmth and this need
I hold myself within a circle and I am
Stronger than I believe

I'll write this down, and it will live forever
I'll die, but I'm alive right here
And when I'm sad, I know how to feel better
I just have to find that letter
A

Mysteries

Have I been searching for a strange love,
That happens in pale moonlight
And have I been searching for a real love
On the wrong side of the night?
I think I see you, but it's not you,
Just a grinning shadow or antlered wings,
Just the angels of the dark, the ghostly things

Have I been trying to divine
The nature of a monster,
Am I seeking demons I need not face,
Am I writing love songs whose words will waste
Away and I am left sobbing
By the stream of my own fears
And you are gone, a mist of ribbons
That cut through the night and disappear

I have been chasing stardust
That shone across my skin
I thought it illuminated within
But it was as empty as every light
That shines the brightest
And I give up on your hollow star
That's not where you are
That's not where you'll ever be
You do not know my name
But you have hurt me all the same.

Her

If you could pull my heart
From this stormy ocean
Into the frigid arms of life
I will go back again and find her
My whole life to lie beside her
And what follows there behind her
Is just a darker dying side of her


I love her as night loves death
Anger loves fire
As hate loves breath
The ice and rage, another stage
Of our passions, another page
In this book of ruined words
Choking at the back of our throats
As birds fall from the sky


And when they ask me
Why I love her
I have to tell them
It’s the translucence of her skin
It’s the horror of the ghost within
All the lies that stain me told
In the pattern of her hair they unfold


Forgive me, I have need of her
And if death may part us
I will see her
And if my frozen lips do part to tell
The terrors of her unearthly charm
There is no harm
For there is no better hell
Than in her arms.

The Lovely April

I have finished my exams.
I have taken my last paper, ever, as an undergraduate.
Wow. I now officially have no purpose in life for the next few months.
Therefore I take it upon myself, to enlighten you, dear reader, on some Stuff.
The first Stuff will be poetry. Before you die of boredom from the sheer mention of it, hear me out.
Or don't, if you don't want to, it's not like I'm going to stop writing for you anyway.
Ha ha ha. In yo face.

Now, poetry can be repetitive. Most of it, like songs, are about the eternal soppiness of love. I have no interest in that. Maybe because I am not in love, but most probably because there are more interesting things than that.
For example, women.
Most poets are men. Most famous poets anyway. Therefore, they write about women. Even Byron and Wilde didn't poetise men. That I know of. Although Wilde did write Dorian Gray.

I am not a poetry expert. I just like these poems. And I think they deserve to be appreciated.

1. Sonnet III by Shakespeare

This sonnet rocks because it's about growing old and losing time. Okay, that's not why it rocks. It rocks because everytime I read these lines,

Thou art thy mother's glass and she in thee
Calls back the lovely April of her prime.

I am reminded that I do look like my Mum when she was my age, and I get a warm fuzzy feeling. Except my Mum was hotter, but I just normally don't think about that part. But imagine that; looking at something you created, a child, and seeing you in it, knowing that in some way you are going to live forever.

Look in thy glass and tell the face thou viewest
Now is the time that face should form another.

2. Faustine by Swinburne

After reading this, I decided to name my daughter Faustine. Anne Faustine, or Faustine Rose or something equally innocent. And then when she's old enough to appreciate literary references, I will unveil to her her own Crowning Moment of Awesome by revealing her namesake.

I know what queen at first you were,
As though I had seen
Red gold and black imperious hair
Twice crown Faustine.

Some children may flip when they understand the connotations, but my kid will be cool about it. She'll probably also wear lots of black. And resemble Wednesday Addams.
The point is, she will not hate me for the rest of her life for naming her after what is essentially Lilith in this almost frightening poem that veers between condemning the title character, sympathising with her fate, and longing for her cruel beauty.

You have the face that suits a woman
For her soul’s screen—
The sort of beauty that’s called human
In hell, Faustine.

3. Requiescat by Oscar Wilde

All her bright golden hair
Tarnished with rust,
She that was young and fair
Fallen to dust.

Dear blonde dead sister.
I miss you.

Peace, peace, she cannot hear
Lyre or sonnet,
All my life's buried here,
Heap earth upon it.


4. Keats' Le Belle Dame Sans Merci

I met a lady in the meads,
Full beautiful—a faery's child.

Similar to Faustine. Kind of. The titular Lady Without Mercy is actually a fairy, and it refers to old legends when fairies used to bewitch men to follow them to fairyland, and either stay there until a gazillion years have past and all they knew is gone, or escape but forever long for the fairy touch.
I suspect the fairy ploy has something to do with mushrooms though.
Magic mushrooms.

And sure in language strange she said,
'I love thee true.'

5. The Lady of Shalott by Tennyson

Out flew the web and floated wide;
The mirror crack'd from side to side;
"The curse is come upon me," cried
The Lady of Shalott.

Tennyson rocks. Try reading it out loud. When you're alone, duh, you don't want people thinking you're a complete lunatic.
Basically Shalott (nothing to do with garlic) has a perfectly normal life locked in her tower room, cursed to spin thread all day and spy on young lovers from her window, until jengjengjeng guess who shows up?...LANCELOT.
The man is EVERYWHERE.
So he screws up yet another woman's life.

But Lancelot mused a little space
He said, "She has a lovely face;
God in his mercy lend her grace,
The Lady of Shalott."

Yeah, asshole. You freakin' murdered her with your charisma. You'd better say something nice.

You Can Be My Byron

Let me be your Augusta Leigh
Your Mary Godwin Shelley
I will drag you down into the darkness
I will eat you in its belly
Come my beautiful lover-child
All innocence, into this Wilde.

In the case of angels
I would call on Lilith's hand
She who was made fallen
Tess would understand
That all men are heaven-sent,
And demon-marred
But it is I who will know you
For what you are

So in the midnight profanity
Will you listen to me?
Or will you fall to the vivid siren
Or the faithless harpy?
I will guide you through the coffins of Whitman
And the tombstones of October
Only don't forget me
As we lay on the marble floor

You will not know of what I speak
And it is not love
You cannot see what it is I seek
In the raven's wings,
The mourning of the dove
And when you have fallen
As I have fallen
Into this endless menagerie of souls
It will be better
But it will also be cold
I can comfort you
with my scarlet letter
Or even with lies
Many times retold.

Fake is the New Real

I killed the bluejay

Who sang the sweetest song

I didn't mean to, but I did

And the blue skies turned to grey

And the forests are filling me with guilt

As I bury my soul within myself

Hiding in the house that Jack built

Salvaging what of me is left

I killed him, I killed him

He was so very cold

Rejoicing in his preening form,

You found him beautiful

Now skeletal hands will grope his breast

And tattered worms will love him

Yet he alone will have true rest

Beneath this changeling moon

I was the one who stole his breath

And I will join him soon.

Dear God, It's Me, Your Daughter

‘The death of God
Reveals the truth’
Have we fallen
Or did we never try
And did Nietzsche cry
As he wrote those words
I told you
I told you, to hold the hurt
As Nietzsche wept
And little angels crept
Into our souls and died there.
You never listen
Can you even hear
The ones you made in your image
Who cry your handmade tears
I called for you,
I called
And called
Where are you when I need you?
Have I given up my right to see you?
Am I crying as I write these words
To you
Have I fallen
Or did I never try.

The Self-Pitier (Or, Baudelaire's Spoof)

When the scent of you has become dust
The scent, once intertwined, once yours and mine
And someone else has replaced the lust
And someone else has replaced the trust
Long before that
I have been forgotten

And so I want to ask you, why
When the love was warm, when the love was good
Couldn’t you have at least tried
All of the times I was by your side
The moment I was away
I was forgotten

When the thought of you has fallen
Into the abyss, into nothing, when you are lost to me
Your memories will be eaten by the cold
And all that’s left of you in me is cold,
When I look into his face
I will remember
How easy it is to forget me.

This is Chuck Bass

The Self-Tormentor by Charles Baudelaire (It also has some Frenchy name that I can't remember and can't be bothered to spell)

This isn't the real poem (duh. give Baudelaire some credit. He may have been a cheap drunk and a leeching son, but he was a pretty good poet). It's just my interpretation of other people's interpretation (since the original is in French some of the translations just make hell with the actual meaning anyway).

I want to hurt you, without anger,without hate;
I want to taste your love and lust;
your fear as you face
a cruel and taunting master

Will you cry for me
and relieve my empty wasteland,
feed my barren desires
with the salt waters of your heart.

I will cherish each forced drop,
until my self is drowning
to the sound of your cries.
I cannot release you.

Am I not a freak,
an uncanny being.
Pity me, hold me, love me,
I am the victim of God's irony.

I hear his Fury, shrill in my ear,
poison in my dancing blood.
The mirror speaks to me
with the face of forgotten mistakes.

I am the knife that carvesmy flesh,
The beautiful death, and decay within,
I am the torturer who feels the pain,
I am the victim and the sin.

I am the vampire of my own heart,
I stand outside of humanity.
Without joy, without hope,
damned to eternal laughter.