Short Insubstantial Poems

Dark, insubstantial
wisp stalks me at every turn;
bonded forever....

Read More

Wrapped in a cloak of inconsequence
I hid my raw, bleeding visage from
Your insubstantial glance...

Read More

Form trembles my mind
all matter fads to decay
Empty sense objects
void, hollow, insubstantial
breathes mental impermanence...

Read More

You’re my cotton candy treat: insubstantial but....oh....so sticky and sweet!

Eileen Manassian Ghali

Sticky...as in you stick to my soul....people! Get a grip!...

Read More

Endless White, billowed dreams of squatting men,
I stretch out to grasp an insubstantial floating sky,
A fluffy purgatory, a Grayscale cycle revolves again
Forever out of reach, I extend arms, choosing to fly....

Read More

Insubstantial insanity
Instantaneously realized
Absurd fantasies I’ve devised.
All deeds i do, all words I say
Gods of iron, feet of clay
All, in time, will fade away
Leaving not even an "Ozymandias" trace
To signify ever I was in this place
Every remnant time will erase;
Both of my pride and my disgrace....

Read More

Windsome Lover
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
A gossamer wisp of insubstantial bliss 
Awakens my heart
There she sits upon her moonlight throne
Surreal beauty awash in my soul
I sate desire stillborn and bright
And together we run as the feral wild
Strangers in love
With the coming of dawn
She leaves on the birdsong
With no embrace...

Read More

Why is pleasure measured in moments,
while work is measured in weeks or years?

Pleasures are like insubstantial fictions, sweet treats gone
in the tasting or perhaps flowers, that once cut, wither.
So don't be enthralled by fickle snippets of passion.

Work and service have the weight of reward,
by labor's honest toil, we fashion, forge and provide....

Read More

I was dazzled - in
a summer spell - did we both
name it as special?

Was it the summer
freedom - the sparkling lake
that summoned magic?

The constant sun sent
a subliminal message
with its rise and fall.

It won’t last, it said,
there's an expiration
date approaching fast.

The short-lived summer
proved a brief, insubstantial
memory making....

Read More

spirit hunter,
you stalk the shadow moon
neck straining to uncoil upon diaphanous night

what whisper have you heard
above the creak of batten board
the shiver of a window pane

arched and graceful  is your silhouette
cat eyed guardian
moonlight prowler 
paw prancer

settle the unsettled ones from
fear and in insubstantial light
protect with tooth
and claw your Mother’s
night...

Read More

without support
silent echoes and rumours
'did i hear that?'
tracing invisible paths 
through insubstantial material
no kindness
no direction

fatally incorrigible 
from fear 
walking is sitting
running is lying down
the passage of time ceases
i drift
like carbon monoxide

slow burning 
self-destructive
to one
to zero
without matter
without life;

without you.

r.thom'10...

Read More

I grope through forest misted by my pain
Unearthly feel of gloom enshrouding me
Like wispy ghosts the memories a bane
Their hazy fingers keep from breaking free
Beclouded are my thoughts with foggy stain
Obscured is reason; gone is sanity
Unclear my way, for mist is laden thick
Your insubstantial love has left me sick

Eileen Manassian
For Nette’s Through the Mist Contest
August 24, 2014...

Read More

A life is a story told in the arc of time.
Time is fluid, white as light,
And glittering with flecks of brilliance,
Liquid moments leaking away over the years.
Sometimes I feel as if I am inside a mirror
Watching my life leaking away.
The world outside seems insubstantial,
As if the present is a dream,
And only my memories are solid,
And alive, and now,
The only clear instants in the fluid of time...

Read More

The vagaries are flying today.
Those gossima-winged insubstantial escapees
related by birth to thoughts as yet unformed.
I sense them circling, see their flights
they glitter and dim as fireflies do.
To capture a few I must let go of them,
let them crash land in the mire of mind.
coated in just a little weight
that they might be seen and named,
coerced to speak
as if they belonged to this earth....

Read More

There are the substantial and the oft insubstantial.
Must we all be the same way, the same differential?

There are mountains of atoms, there are eon's of space time.
Yet, the importance, what matters depends on the climb.

Does matter, matter? Are atoms are all of the rage!
If we can't see a one, as it dances on this page!

So do, believe as you will, and dream on as you must
Just stop claiming you're the only right as you fuss....

Read More

Sanguine blush, outreaching its origin,
Roses bloom across the painting.
The sky extends its insubstantial limb,
Spreading its fingers- in gesture towards you.
A great fan, coral but crimson,
Shifting,  yet still- tumbling across eternity.
The horizon appears, in a flash of pink rainbow,
Love, of the universe, of humanity,
Of life, appears… and evaporates; a gradual decline, 
of colour; but so sudden too,
And we are left once more,
In solitude....

Read More

The bough that cracks in midnight sleeping,
split from tree and hurled toward the stony earth,
struck by lightning, forked and sweeping,
burned to ashes, stripped of worth.

The rock that dreams in ocean hollows,
by salt abrasive water broken to a grain of sand,
a microcosmic state which follows
insubstantial of dry land.

My love is stoic, never shifting,
unlike the sand or degraded bark of tree,
it is yours alone, resolute and uplifting,
gloriously given...effortlessly....

Read More