You hold a note in curled and dirty fingertips
And it remains ever creased and unread.
Ever creased and unread so we can only guess
At the words inscribed on it's yellowed leaf.
Your skin lies aged as it's creases are filled with dark
And your eyes seem ringed with kohl and deep red.
With kohl and deep red as red as your blood-flecked nose
Split open by the feet of better friends.
What story does that scrap tell me of who you are,
Held so preciously to your beating heart
Your beating heart that beats in flagging time with mine,
A shared suffering. A tragic, mutual loss.
Everything. All we have. Is it her name you guard
Or some secret shame in a shaded past.
A shaded past where your shackles lay much looser
And joy was found in the arms of lost love gone.
Posted for One Shot Wednesday at http://www.onestoppoetry.com
Tuesday, 31 May 2011
Monday, 30 May 2011
Cage, an Ottava Rima style poem by Adam White, poet written for Form Monday on http://www.onestoppoetry.com
Snap these sturdy boughs of wood already;
Tired and trapped, I'm bored of such containment.
This drifting feeling goes on slow and steady;
How I wish the monotony would relent.
This mix of sea air strong, invasive, heady;
My fingers pull at varnished oak unbent.
My broad cot greets me with a knowing smile,
Content that I'll be staying here a while.
Follow me on Twitter http://twitter.com/#!/AdamWhitePoet
Tired and trapped, I'm bored of such containment.
This drifting feeling goes on slow and steady;
How I wish the monotony would relent.
This mix of sea air strong, invasive, heady;
My fingers pull at varnished oak unbent.
My broad cot greets me with a knowing smile,
Content that I'll be staying here a while.
Follow me on Twitter http://twitter.com/#!/AdamWhitePoet
Sunday, 29 May 2011
The City a poem by Adam White, poet based on a Scott Wyden photograph for the One Shoot Sunday Photography Challenge
Consumed in it's own ocean,
Resting in countless acrid tears.
Joy, shame, disappointment;
Every emotion adds to the pot,
The collection of fulfilled hopes,
Of untempered fears.
The city has streets of stone;
No gold paves the roads here.
Each plodding soul knows this fact
Among the sad others.
Their feet stepping here are fleeting.
The grey, the cold, the harsh concrete
Lies forever intact.
The city has her own eyes;
Glass windows, mirrors. She's rapt,
Obsessive with human action,
And fleeting human life
Like a child watching a working ant,
Go out, carry your food home,
Eat, die and be done.
Follow me on Twitter http://twitter.com/#!/AdamWhitePoet
Thursday, 26 May 2011
4 Haiku for Spring
A cloudless sky, yet,
I do not know how to dress,
Should the grey flood in.
***
My fingertips glow.
I know the hour has arrived.
I don't want to go.
***
Ashes on your lips
From where you kiss the long dead.
You mourn eternal.
***
The beauty of rain
Drenching the branches and leaves
That sprout from your form.
Follow me on Twitter http://twitter.com/#!/AdamWhitePoet
I do not know how to dress,
Should the grey flood in.
***
My fingertips glow.
I know the hour has arrived.
I don't want to go.
***
Ashes on your lips
From where you kiss the long dead.
You mourn eternal.
***
The beauty of rain
Drenching the branches and leaves
That sprout from your form.
Follow me on Twitter http://twitter.com/#!/AdamWhitePoet
Past Poems : MLDY BTY a poem by Adam White, poet
The sun has gone out.
I run as the city sleeps.
I run in silence.
Fast, shrouded, alone,
Cobbled stones tell no story.
My passing unmarked
But for skittering,
As the rats, my kin of sorts
Scatter before me.
I wear a beast's skin.
This is my story
And I wish you to hear it,
You alone, my love,
You, so beautiful.
So sweet and caring. So kind.
I'm so unworthy.
You should know the cost.
The cost of your meeting me.
The cost that I paid.
I heard you singing.
You don't hear it, love,
But your melody is all.
It is light and joy.
And I could not turn
My ear from it's nascent strength,
As it grew that night.
I was a servant,
A street-cleaner and a thief,
All in some measure.
I was nobody.
I, wand'ring, heard you,
That rich and loveliest sound,
And I was made rapt.
Entranced I followed.
I followed this siren's call
And it lead me here,
To this gray tower,
With it's glass and it's glory
And here, I saw you.
Here, at this window.
Sad. Alone and sad,
Your lamenting dirge brought pain
To my lowly heart
And I cried, my love.
I cried for you and for I,
And I begged and called,
Pleaded to the sky
To the earth and to the dark,
And, love, something heard.
Something had listened.
I heard it inside.
In my mind, in my belly,
Heard it in my blood.
It spoke silken words
All full of tender promise.
The strength to reach you.
It pledged me power,
It offered the hungry night.
It promised me you.
And, love, I said yes.
But it was a lie.
My skin became thick and dark.
My hands, hands no more.
Just look at me love.
Now I've scaled these high walls
Do you feel I'm good?
My teeth long and sharp,
And my eyes are red and cruel.
I wear a beast's skin.
And it's beautiful.
You don't understand.
My slow songs were sung for you.
My heart, yours to have.
You followed my voice
And it called to you alone
Of all the blessed night.
I'm not alone now
My life was utter darkness,
And you are the light.
You're no beast within.
I run as the city sleeps.
I run in silence.
Fast, shrouded, alone,
Cobbled stones tell no story.
My passing unmarked
But for skittering,
As the rats, my kin of sorts
Scatter before me.
I wear a beast's skin.
This is my story
And I wish you to hear it,
You alone, my love,
You, so beautiful.
So sweet and caring. So kind.
I'm so unworthy.
You should know the cost.
The cost of your meeting me.
The cost that I paid.
I heard you singing.
You don't hear it, love,
But your melody is all.
It is light and joy.
And I could not turn
My ear from it's nascent strength,
As it grew that night.
I was a servant,
A street-cleaner and a thief,
All in some measure.
I was nobody.
I, wand'ring, heard you,
That rich and loveliest sound,
And I was made rapt.
Entranced I followed.
I followed this siren's call
And it lead me here,
To this gray tower,
With it's glass and it's glory
And here, I saw you.
Here, at this window.
Sad. Alone and sad,
Your lamenting dirge brought pain
To my lowly heart
And I cried, my love.
I cried for you and for I,
And I begged and called,
Pleaded to the sky
To the earth and to the dark,
And, love, something heard.
Something had listened.
I heard it inside.
In my mind, in my belly,
Heard it in my blood.
It spoke silken words
All full of tender promise.
The strength to reach you.
It pledged me power,
It offered the hungry night.
It promised me you.
And, love, I said yes.
But it was a lie.
My skin became thick and dark.
My hands, hands no more.
Just look at me love.
Now I've scaled these high walls
Do you feel I'm good?
My teeth long and sharp,
And my eyes are red and cruel.
I wear a beast's skin.
And it's beautiful.
You don't understand.
My slow songs were sung for you.
My heart, yours to have.
You followed my voice
And it called to you alone
Of all the blessed night.
I'm not alone now
My life was utter darkness,
And you are the light.
You're no beast within.
Tuesday, 24 May 2011
Past Poems : Daemonette II, a poem by Adam White, poet
My eyes are open,
Though I wallow lazily in half sleep,
And you, all scent and sound, are just a shape;
A shape in the dark lying at my feet,
Dragging you nettle lips over my thighs.
Perhaps you're torture,
Some collective and blissful memory
That man cannot so easily forget;
A silhouette, scorpion like and lithe,
With seeing orbs weaved of black midnight glass,
That see far too much;
Seeing me too well.
Your succubus slaves dance around us now,
Draining deep glasses of vitality,
Holding your arms down at your supple sides;
Each ending with a brutal, rending claw.
Could he not succumb?
Your smile a promise of virginity,
You would and could never see fair to keep,
Beacause you are inviolate and pale,
Inhuman and feline to one and all;
Bright sanity perverted.
Such silence follows,
As, unmoving, you beckon me to rise,
And like the sun over shadow I do.
Different. No longer your God, I am changed.
See me as roaring and unchained cruelty
Yet still your barbs would win.
Your violent tail does rise at each offence
To your delicate, porcelain flesh.
Like death, sudden is it's strike at me
Leaving behind a sore but welcome sting
I will never forget.
Reposted for One Shot Wednesday at http://www.onestoppoetry.com
Though I wallow lazily in half sleep,
And you, all scent and sound, are just a shape;
A shape in the dark lying at my feet,
Dragging you nettle lips over my thighs.
Perhaps you're torture,
Some collective and blissful memory
That man cannot so easily forget;
A silhouette, scorpion like and lithe,
With seeing orbs weaved of black midnight glass,
That see far too much;
Seeing me too well.
Your succubus slaves dance around us now,
Draining deep glasses of vitality,
Holding your arms down at your supple sides;
Each ending with a brutal, rending claw.
Could he not succumb?
Your smile a promise of virginity,
You would and could never see fair to keep,
Beacause you are inviolate and pale,
Inhuman and feline to one and all;
Bright sanity perverted.
Such silence follows,
As, unmoving, you beckon me to rise,
And like the sun over shadow I do.
Different. No longer your God, I am changed.
See me as roaring and unchained cruelty
Yet still your barbs would win.
Your violent tail does rise at each offence
To your delicate, porcelain flesh.
Like death, sudden is it's strike at me
Leaving behind a sore but welcome sting
I will never forget.
Reposted for One Shot Wednesday at http://www.onestoppoetry.com
Saturday, 21 May 2011
You Play a Long Game, a poem by Adam White, poet
I'm looking at you and the nights we spent
Wrapped in each other, entangled, dying,
Me wishing your stubborn ways would relent
But once again left bent, broken, crying.
You're a bitch, a parasite I can not shake
And every touch of you stings like poison
Etched in my blood that my heart might one day break,
So you can prove that we'll never be done.
I long to scrub you from beneath my skin,
But wire wool could not make me clean enough.
You reside inside, the failure within,
Bloody and beautiful; rugged and rough.
What would I be without your teasing voice?
I am defined by each little defeat;
With your wandering fingers so callous
Or your grim, bellicose nature so sweet.
I was just four years old when we first met,
We scared our stupid teachers together;
You by being invisible to them,
Me by being honest, evil, clever.
My parents were called to clean up the mess,
They never saw me quite the same again.
Reputation steeped in some small madness,
Later, I chemically confused my brain.
Yet nothing avails me of you, my love,
My hate never deeper for you than now,
Stealing faces, Pretending to be good,
While you ever remind me exactly how
I am more capable than even you
Of twisting a person's numerous blades
In aid of me making them want to do
All of the numerous things that I say.
Follow me on Twitter http://twitter.com/#!/AdamWhitePoet
Wrapped in each other, entangled, dying,
Me wishing your stubborn ways would relent
But once again left bent, broken, crying.
You're a bitch, a parasite I can not shake
And every touch of you stings like poison
Etched in my blood that my heart might one day break,
So you can prove that we'll never be done.
I long to scrub you from beneath my skin,
But wire wool could not make me clean enough.
You reside inside, the failure within,
Bloody and beautiful; rugged and rough.
What would I be without your teasing voice?
I am defined by each little defeat;
With your wandering fingers so callous
Or your grim, bellicose nature so sweet.
I was just four years old when we first met,
We scared our stupid teachers together;
You by being invisible to them,
Me by being honest, evil, clever.
My parents were called to clean up the mess,
They never saw me quite the same again.
Reputation steeped in some small madness,
Later, I chemically confused my brain.
Yet nothing avails me of you, my love,
My hate never deeper for you than now,
Stealing faces, Pretending to be good,
While you ever remind me exactly how
I am more capable than even you
Of twisting a person's numerous blades
In aid of me making them want to do
All of the numerous things that I say.
Follow me on Twitter http://twitter.com/#!/AdamWhitePoet
Tuesday, 10 May 2011
Past Poem - Torpor (revisited) by Adam White, poet, posted for One Shot Wednesday at http://www.onestoppoetry.com
My heart lays here unraisable,
Feeling filled with heavy lead
Or chained to a dank, prison floor,
Where it burns and it bucks, lurches,
Left where it dropped, bruised and bloody raw.
I lay low, lifeless beside it,
Trying hard to make eye contact,
While it ignores me some more.
There's been more than a month of this...
And it still won't answer my call.
I snap, roll to my skinless knees.
and yank at the chains and the bolts,
As if I never have before.
In such wild futility I rage,
Yet no change; no small difference at all.
Such collapse. The day means nothing.
My night does not bring soft sleep.
I live a state of endless torpor,
Where no levity can lift me
And I stay stretched and empty to the core.
Such stark anxiety pervasive;
Such constant scraping of a soul
And such a picking at my humour
That I feel so much more old.
Should such brilliance burn my vision,
That I should know what this hurt is for,
I could stand to live this suffering
For four more days or more.
Feeling filled with heavy lead
Or chained to a dank, prison floor,
Where it burns and it bucks, lurches,
Left where it dropped, bruised and bloody raw.
I lay low, lifeless beside it,
Trying hard to make eye contact,
While it ignores me some more.
There's been more than a month of this...
And it still won't answer my call.
I snap, roll to my skinless knees.
and yank at the chains and the bolts,
As if I never have before.
In such wild futility I rage,
Yet no change; no small difference at all.
Such collapse. The day means nothing.
My night does not bring soft sleep.
I live a state of endless torpor,
Where no levity can lift me
And I stay stretched and empty to the core.
Such stark anxiety pervasive;
Such constant scraping of a soul
And such a picking at my humour
That I feel so much more old.
Should such brilliance burn my vision,
That I should know what this hurt is for,
I could stand to live this suffering
For four more days or more.
Monday, 2 May 2011
Blood of Gods, a poem by Adam White, poet. Posted for One Shot Wednesday on http://www.onestoppoetry.com
With your merry fingers hooked in honest hearts and mealy minds,
You would dare to call yourselves good kings of brave and better men.
Such failure's betrayed by all the time you, flaking, spend
On "diplomatic" falsehoods perpetuated to your ends.
Gods. Blood of Gods dried on your blessed, dirty, cash-stained hands,
So trapped in vices, your own vice of self-motivated law.
Your merry fingers hooked in honest heart and mealy minds,
And each mealy mind forgetting what their weapon hand is for.
The martyr falls like a fist on a school desk. Each of us hears,
Each of us sees and laughs and cries at the bullet through an eye,
Another death, another blow for and against freedom,
Forgotten are the recent truths, the brightened dark so full of lies.
Suspicious eyes look west at the timely show of pre-election strength.
The age of kings traffics fear and glory in our murdered foes.
We parade the cartoon through star-laden streets and everyone believes,
Showing further dirtied stripes to wrap around a nation's woes.
Follow me on Twitter http://twitter.com/#!/AdamWhitePoet
You would dare to call yourselves good kings of brave and better men.
Such failure's betrayed by all the time you, flaking, spend
On "diplomatic" falsehoods perpetuated to your ends.
Gods. Blood of Gods dried on your blessed, dirty, cash-stained hands,
So trapped in vices, your own vice of self-motivated law.
Your merry fingers hooked in honest heart and mealy minds,
And each mealy mind forgetting what their weapon hand is for.
The martyr falls like a fist on a school desk. Each of us hears,
Each of us sees and laughs and cries at the bullet through an eye,
Another death, another blow for and against freedom,
Forgotten are the recent truths, the brightened dark so full of lies.
Suspicious eyes look west at the timely show of pre-election strength.
The age of kings traffics fear and glory in our murdered foes.
We parade the cartoon through star-laden streets and everyone believes,
Showing further dirtied stripes to wrap around a nation's woes.
Follow me on Twitter http://twitter.com/#!/AdamWhitePoet
May 2011 - A Two Week Break
Hey guys.
I'm taking a two week break from writing as I will have a friend visiting and we'll be doing all kinds of things that don't involve me sitting down to scratch away with my pen (yes, I still write in pen, like a caveman.)
Do not despair though. There are 200-ish poems on my blog and it's very unlikely you've read them all. As such, to make it easy on you, I'm creating this handy index post and a guide to some of my own favourites or most commented on poems for you to have a plod through if you're interested in reading my work.
September 2010
My blog was just starting out in September. There are a few poems and a few words on why I write and what I think poetry should be all about. I personally like the poem Torpor best.
October 2010
There are lots of posts in October. I was really going for it I guess. There's also a terrible short story called the dark. Give it a look.
November 2010
I wrote a poem every day in November. My favourite ones are The Sea and The Dollmaker.
December 2010
I felt a lot more optimistic about life in December. I wrote 25 poems and celebrated having 4,000 views (over 10,000 now and counting!)
January 2011
Again, lots of posts as I planned and prepared for my move to Canada. Personally I enjoy Mad Butcher and Walking in Oblivion most.
February 2011
Once again, a month filled with poetry. I didn't write anything on the 27th or 28th but I made over 30 entires overall, so that's ok :D
March 2011
March, contains a nice 6 sonnet cycle of poems dedicated to my girlfriend Tara and how she puts up with such a great volume of my personal flaws, among other poems. Give them a look.
April 2011
The poems of this month were all dedicated to the works and worlds of H. P. Lovecraft, a wonderful writers who's work I have admired for a long time.
Once my 2 week break is over, we'll be back to normal posting with lots of new poems for you all to read. Until then, have a good time and some good reading.
Follow me on Twitter http://twitter.com/#!/AdamWhitePoet
I'm taking a two week break from writing as I will have a friend visiting and we'll be doing all kinds of things that don't involve me sitting down to scratch away with my pen (yes, I still write in pen, like a caveman.)
Do not despair though. There are 200-ish poems on my blog and it's very unlikely you've read them all. As such, to make it easy on you, I'm creating this handy index post and a guide to some of my own favourites or most commented on poems for you to have a plod through if you're interested in reading my work.
September 2010
My blog was just starting out in September. There are a few poems and a few words on why I write and what I think poetry should be all about. I personally like the poem Torpor best.
October 2010
There are lots of posts in October. I was really going for it I guess. There's also a terrible short story called the dark. Give it a look.
November 2010
I wrote a poem every day in November. My favourite ones are The Sea and The Dollmaker.
December 2010
I felt a lot more optimistic about life in December. I wrote 25 poems and celebrated having 4,000 views (over 10,000 now and counting!)
January 2011
Again, lots of posts as I planned and prepared for my move to Canada. Personally I enjoy Mad Butcher and Walking in Oblivion most.
February 2011
Once again, a month filled with poetry. I didn't write anything on the 27th or 28th but I made over 30 entires overall, so that's ok :D
March 2011
March, contains a nice 6 sonnet cycle of poems dedicated to my girlfriend Tara and how she puts up with such a great volume of my personal flaws, among other poems. Give them a look.
April 2011
The poems of this month were all dedicated to the works and worlds of H. P. Lovecraft, a wonderful writers who's work I have admired for a long time.
Once my 2 week break is over, we'll be back to normal posting with lots of new poems for you all to read. Until then, have a good time and some good reading.
Follow me on Twitter http://twitter.com/#!/AdamWhitePoet
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