Showing posts with label melancholy. Show all posts
Showing posts with label melancholy. Show all posts

Tuesday, May 24, 2011

In Shades of Melancholy


As dusk-reddened spires fall into the sky-line
As silhouettes darken and vanish away
As deeper blue claims the purple horizon
Drawing a curtain o’er the remnant of day
I feel you in whispers of gray

The quiet bears the rush of a starless pavilion
It seems I can touch the rain-thickened breeze
And you; lingering just beyond my vision
Beneath the arc of gold willow trees
And a graveyard of memories

The night lays upon the air, heavy and moody
The air lays around me; motionless, blue
Wrapping me in its somnolent beauty
Holding me closer on its shoulder of dew
As a clock in the distance strikes two

Janet~

Tuesday, March 22, 2011

Ink Teardrops


Daringly arranged in whispers of ink
then splashed upon a page
to leap over an invisible brink
that some call cyber-space
Released into the great unknown
Small pieces of our hearts
These fragments no longer our own
Become a little part
Of other people’s reverie
Perhaps a secret tear
The stirring of a memory
The thought of someone dear
each with our own picture
an unfolding of a scene
of what is and what was...
... and what we wish had been........
What are these ink teardrops
but bits of poetry
that matter little or nothing at all
………my pen falls silently

J~

Thursday, March 17, 2011

Moment of Reflection.....


As petal or leaf flutters soundlessly
Into the rushing stream
So, life’s little losses fall from me
Like remnants of a dream

If I could control the quadrille of time
Then I could hold back the sun
I cannot bring back one day of my life
Or one moment, when it is gone

The wind sweeps from the hillside tonight
With a wild and lonesome moan
It tears at me somewhere deep inside
In a sorrowful undertone

Waking thoughts and agonies
Which seem to sleep by day
They come upon me suddenly
In bitter-sweet blue-gray

I weep, not for myself
But for those who cannot sleep tonight
Or hear the echo of a dream
Because of grief and fright……….

And though, 'hope springs immortal'
We cannot help but weep
And cry to God in sorrow
For the ones who cannot sleep

(thinking of Japan….)




Janet~

Monday, February 21, 2011

In My Hurry


I never treasured you
As I should have
Or even recognized you
For whom you would be
….and now you are gone
I can never have you back
You will not return
So I can hold you again
The way you should be held….
To fully touch and taste you
I remember your scent
It taunts me now
You have become
The ache in my throat
The silent bleeding in my heart
I write of you
For you haunt me
In the misty morning
Or in the quiet low-light of the day
Or when the night is the color of you……
Intangible blue
Am I in love with you?
….or simply mourning the passing of myself
You have never changed
You are
And have always been
The past………
The irretrievable, untouchable past
Tomorrow, today’s raw, relentless wind
Will join you
As soft rain begins to fall

Janet~

Never let the moment
You hold slip away
Lest, while you’re not looking
It becomes
Yesterday

J~

Friday, February 18, 2011

Too Far Away....


I wish that I’d be gifted
With the perfect words to say
I wish that I could touch you
You’re too far away
I wish that I could take back
The things that I regret
But, it seems I cannot
Nor can I walk ahead
I simply have this moment
I hold within my grip
In it I make my choices
Before they softly slip
Into the dim-lit shadows
Of silent retrospect
I hear their distant echoes
As I pause to reflect……..

Oh, I wish that I’d be gifted
With the perfect words to say
I wish that I could touch you
You’re too far away………..

Janet~

Tuesday, February 8, 2011

The Night of Winter..............


Daylight; softly falling
Like silvery echoes
Of children calling
From frozen meadows
In a muffled past
We trace the winding footprints
Through the long, blue shadows cast
As the moan of twilight glints
Against the moody flare
Of naked arms stretched darkly
Rigid, the wooded limb and bare
Its silhouette, sketched starkly
‘Gainst an inky canvas where
The sliver of a moon reclines
On the intricate fringes
Of the raven pines
And their whisper tinges
The bare walls of the sky
In an icy splinter
The tear becoming a sigh
For the night of winter
Is a drawn-out lullaby

Janet~

Sunday, January 23, 2011

Almost.........



Down the midnight lane with you
I have strolled a time or two
With no other sound at all
But our muffled foot-steps fall
And I almost feel the grip
Of your fleeting finger-tips
And I almost see your smile
Gee, but it has been awhile
And I almost hear the rain
Dashing ‘gainst my window-pane
And I almost see the light
In your green eyes burning bright
And I almost feel the flame
In the echo of your name
The sky is almost perfect blue
…..and I almost thought of you……..

Janet~

Wednesday, January 5, 2011

Hierarchy......


In dulcet tones the soft wind moans
Through dark and pine-brushed awning
The deep blue eye of yonder sky
A-thousand memories spawning
From somber lips a whisper slips
Into the midnight bower
It sirs in me a melody
Of one fair, faded hour

The sanguine lay of summer’s day
Grows faint, but not forever
The gilded kiss of August bliss
Lies just beyond the river
It seems to me that I can see
The shimmer of its splendor
In dulcet tones the soft wind moans
A love song, warm and tender

It drifts to me from distant sea
A sonnet with no pardon
Falling upon the argent lawn
And memory-gilded garden
With silvered wings its cadence rings
Across this tranquil hour
As I resign this will of mine
To its hierarchal power

Its strains portend imminent end
To winter’s frigid sorrow
The bright bloom lies in cold disguise
Beyond some near tomorrow
In dulcet tones the soft wind moans
And wraps its arms around me
A melody of reverie
I let its pain surround me

Janet~

Wednesday, December 29, 2010

Almost Tomorrow....


She sat there yesterday
beside the open trunk...
Should she look in
or walk away?
Was it equivalent to…..junk?
In spite of her hesitation
she drew a piece out,
gazed at it lovingly
held it to her heart and set it aside....
this she did
again and again
sometimes she laughed
sometimes she cried
and sometimes.....
she died....a little,
the sun fell behind the trees.
the moon rose
it was daylight again
as it fell on the snow
the wind moaned
in comfort-less song
carefully she returned
each memory
back to where it belonged
those were special times........
but they are gone
she locks the trunk
the dawn is gray......
in the end....
the past is as tangible
as the wind.....
she walks away.........
life happens today
it is almost tomorrow

Janet~

Tuesday, December 21, 2010

Of Things I Miss.....


Darkness settles, a loneness prevails
The rising and falling of silence impales
itself within my thoughts of you
and just as soundless as the dew
I feel its kiss upon my cheek.........
Of things I miss, I cannot speak

Janet~

Tuesday, December 7, 2010

Tyrant...


Ruthless tyrant
Stripping to shreds
My last dash of hope
That it’s not winter yet
You laugh in triumph
As you unleash
A shower of diamonds
Across the earth……..

……..I, a true-blue summer heart
Gaze at your dazzling shawl
And concede, cautiously, that perhaps
You’re no tyrant ….after all

Janet~

I try desperately to look at it
Through the eyes of a poet…..
‘it’ being the white stuff they call SNOW!
We made a snowman……
And snow-angels……
‘we’ being myself and the little boys
I baby-sit and I watched the one-year-old
As his blue eyes lit up in excitement.
The laughter of the four-year-old
Sparkled across a pure, dazzling expanse and
I found a little bit of poetry in the arms
Of my favorite tree………….

Friday, December 3, 2010

Black and White Night


The silence is amplified tonight
The world is a canvas of black and white
Broken here and there by a pale twinkling light
Dimmed by the falling snow
Alone is such a lonesome word
But the frosty stillness somehow stirred
And magnified that solemn word
Alone, alone, alone


Janet~

The kids will soon be home:)

Actually, after 'lively Friday'
a little bit of 'alone' is...Bliss:)

Friday, November 19, 2010

Barricade......


Trees, you beautiful trees
Swaying in the morning breeze
Flowers, bright flowers, fit for a king
How you make a sad heart sing
Grass, green carpet of wanderlust
Covering acres and acres of dust
Hills, rolling hills, above rivers so blue
Sometimes I pause to gaze at you………………

………..wretched trees, wretched flowers
Wretched fields, wretched grass
Wretched breeze blowing
Over moments that pass
Wretched hills, wretched highway
Wretched water so blue
Wretched barricade
Between me and you

Janet~

Monday, November 15, 2010

November's Song......


You toss across the earth today
A somber cloth of silent gray
No more the gleaming topaz eye
Where bluebells laugh beneath your sigh
You must make your presence known
In the color of a stone

Sing your gloomy lullaby
To the dreary passer-by
Sing your morbid sonnet, then
I know you cannot remain
You’re allotted thirty days
Before you slip into Time’s haze

Silent is November’s dawn
As she breathes across a lawn
That has become a sort of bed
Decked in russet, gold and red
Her tear slips from the barren peak
As it trickles down my cheek

Janet~

Tuesday, October 26, 2010

What Might Have Been........


Not for us to plead
For brilliant field
Or question cold and
Grievous streams
Tumbling by.......
All the fruit
That thought can yield
And all the yearning
Of vague dreams
In barren reaches lie
Does wisdom fall
To those who patiently abide
Trusting higher Hands
Life's undulating echoes call
Across the shifting tide.......
Life's shadows dance
And shimmer on time's whitewashed sands
With joy and sorrow drifting low
A transcient sheen
Not for us to clutch within our hands
The elusive glow
Of what might have been

Tuesday, September 28, 2010

Postlude......


The cold rain tolls the ending of a day
I stand alone within its weeping knell
On landscape dark in moods of silver-gray
Beneath the chiming of the lonesome bell

The absence of the lusty cricket choir
Magnifies the silence and the gloom
And in the gardens shady summer bower
No more the fragrance of its fragile bloom

Now fades the sky-line in the gathering night
Now the dark and daylight intertwine
Until the dark prevails; the only light
A glimmer on the vast horizon line

No sound at all to break this solitude
Save for the stubborn leaf with muted breath
Still clinging to the arm of somber wood
Before it yields to its imminent death

The cold rain tolls the ending of the day
Profluent melody in minor key
Within its knell the twilight slips away
In tones of comfort and sweet misery

All Rights Reserved
Janet Martin

Wednesday, September 22, 2010

Before Autumn.....


Before summer weeps her last hour away
Before she sleeps in her chamber of gray
Before her broad and glittering smile
Takes a well-deserved rest for awhile….
Before the meadows and wild-flower haunts
Become cold shadows where memory taunts
Before the evening drenched with dew
Bids her golden fronds adieu
Before she fades into the air
Just as if she never were……
Before we feel the dread desire
And yield to autumn’s kindled fire
Before sea-green flows brown again
Across a dull and dreary plain
Before the warm south breezes sleep
Before the snow returns to heap
Her cold blue wishes at my door
I must go and dance once more
Out beneath a trembling sky
That weeps today…..good-bye, good-bye

All Rights Reserved
Janet Martin

Tuesday, September 14, 2010

Harbinger of Fall.....or September


The North Star gleams like a silver stud
On your navy, velvet vest
As with deft hands you softly draw
The green leaf from her nest
Where she securely lived her days
Beneath the summer sun
And lulled the night with whispered lays
And sighed within the dawn

Then you bestow your hoarded shades
Of red and golden-bronze
Upon each limb you deck the glades
In amber under-tones
Too long the evergreen has reigned
You tease the roving eye
With hints of orange and crimson strain
In summer’s lullaby

The azure vaults of endless bliss
You mute with hints of gray
And with your soft and smoky kiss
You steal the blue away
No more the aimless wanderer
The cloud that passes by
She wears a heavy woolen shirt
And moody is her sigh

Where blossoms loitered in the dell
And grapes upon the vine
We wander where the petals fell
Dreaming of autumns wine
The sun wears a defeated smile
I call her lovely still
But I know in a little while
She’ll yield to autumn’s chill

You are a subtle traveller
And I just cannot know
Should I address you then as Sir?
Are you a friend or foe?
A tremor in the midnight air
Reveals your true intent
Your are autumns harbinger
For summer came………and went

All Rights Reserved
Janet Martin

Monday, September 6, 2010

Autumn Wind

I embrace you, taunting, wild You dash from off the ridge In carefree gambols, like a child I race beneath the bridge Then suddenly, the bittersweet Snatches away my laughter As I see the sad retreat Of summer’s ever-after You tease the hunger in my soul My cheek longs for your kisses Your wanton ardor makes me whole Yet I spurn your caresses An imposter and a thief You charm with reckless fervor Mindless of the ragged grief Within the heart of summer If I were a marionette Then oh, how you could move me I would twirl and pirouette As you seduce and love me The passion in your cobalt eye Would fill this wretched hunger But you can never satisfy A true blue heart of summer All Rights Reserved Janet Martin

Tuesday, August 24, 2010

Troubadour


August moon, you have no mercy
Troubadour of a sweet melancholy
King of all the silent hidden oceans
Casanova of a roving midnight sea

Tonight I will not fight your silver urging
Or resist each moon-kissed memory
Tonight I’ll give in to a star-lit purging
And drink the wine of tears and ecstasy

August moon, you are smooth operator
My firm resolves melt in your tranquil glow
The memories arranged in perfect order
Lay jumbled like a jig-saw in the snow

August moon, your face shows no emotion
As you tear the lining from my soul
I gaze up at the deep blue full moon ocean
Drowning in a sea out of control

All Rights Reserved
Janet Martin