* * *
Moving on
Is like finally being able to breathe
And dear God
Is the fresh air nice
Poems on the topic: breath
Poems on the topic “breath” on Poets.by.
Death
Black
Black looks like a life leaving a man’s eyes
Black sounds like the last whisper of breath
Black smells like death is coming
Black taste like decaying flesh
Black is the feeling you get at the end of it all
s t o p
Please, stop.
Please, please, please, let me breath.
Stop making me feel so unsafe,
Stop, please.
I'm sorry, just stop.
The Aim Was Song
Before man came to blow it right
The wind once blew itself untaught,
And did its loudest day and night
In any rough place where it caught.
Man came to tell it what was wrong:
It hadn’t found the place to blow;
It blew too hard--the aim was song.
And listen--how it ought to go!
He took a little in his mouth,
And held it long enough for north
To be converted into south,
And then by measure blew it forth.
By measure. It was word and note,
The wind the wind had meant to be--
A little through the lips and throat.
The aim was song--the wind could see.
It Felt Like Death
It felt like death,
dressed for a night out.
I still can’t breathe.
Three Deep Breaths
Three deep breaths, palms together,
Here in her room, or elsewhere, she may
Rise and take. A habit she has formed,
Even as most of her ideas, ideals,
Even her so cherished findings, hard found,
Deducted, inducted, reasoned, debated, polished,
Even those most like faith, as taught her,
Even those most like science, measured, observed,
Peeled one by one: a human desert, she.
By three deep breaths, she centers somehow: how?
Reality itself a question she's no longer asking,
Eating and sleeping themselves provisional.
All she bothers to call caring is now to listen
To breath, room sounds, outside sounds, to
Her friends, their worries unpacked, their voices
Spending both hope and pain. She bows.
How and Why
In a former life,
I was a fish,
eyes wide,
gulping
meaning.
Now I wait,
empty,
a pinpoint
of breath,
a sliver
of infinity.
Mnemosyne
Men dream into flesh
between long nights,
weaving their breath
into memory,
and believing
that memory
mirrors the world,
as if men's names
were not just water
singing softly
to be heard.
Debtor
So long as my spirit still
Is glad of breath
And lifts its plumes of pride
In the dark face of death;
While I am curious still
Of love and fame,
Keeping my heart too high
For the years to tame,
How can I quarrel with fate
Since I can see
I am a debtor to life,
Not life to me?
The Unseen
Death went up the hall
Unseen by every one,
Trailing twilight robes
Past the nurse and the nun.
He paused at every door
And listened to the breath
Of those who did not know
How near they were to Death.
Death went up the hall
Unseen by nurse and nun;
He passed by many a door--
But he entered one.
Songs to Break the Tedium of Riding a Bicycle, Seeing One's Friends, or Heartbreak IV
Between the mighty legs of Death
We play the schoolboy pranks of breath ;
Scrawl challenge on his sodden boots.
The while he coils his cypress-roots.
* * *
Pythoness body--arching
Over the night like an ecstasy--
I feel your coils tightening...
And the world's lessening breath.
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