Summer’s here, and I’ve been doing a lot of sleeping in lately — which leaves me time to stay up late, pushing through the night to write. Today, I bring to you two of my favorite peaceful, late night music playlists to write to. Soft and simple, calm and lulling; I hope that these mixes bring you solace and creativity at all hours of the day.
Happy writing! 🙂
The night mocks me. Do you
see it turning? Stars moving
across the sky, the moon at
the lead, all racing to hide
behind the horizon. They can
escape this when it’s done,
and then start anew.
A puff of air escapes my teeth.
They seem like a cowardly lot.
Always chasing the end
of the day or night, never
facing each other. I can’t
imagine why anyone
would pray to them.
They’re so inconstant.
A squinting voice. But they always
come back. Some people
might find comfort in that.
A palm cups my mouth. I
speak through fingers.
Stupid sky, stupid stars.
They watch us shrivel
into dust, thinking they’re
eternal. But I’ve seen stars
fall from the night, breaking
apart before they can ever
touch us. They’re not eternal.
And they die for nothing,
just like us.
A shadow closes my eyes.
I am not some people. See how
the night mocks me.
A squinting voice. Yes.
© 2016 Stellular Scribe
the room sulks in sheer shades of blue and gray
and you talk through curtains of shadows
these sheets feel like paper between my fingertips
but I listen as your voice lays low under your chin
you’re closer now and I don’t know where to look
your lips, your eyes — everywhere adds inertia to the top
that spins within my mind
your forehead, your ears, your nose — no
it only magnifies the shimmery something that quivers within me
your hands, they undo me
my tongue tangles words and you laugh as I squirm
your lips sell me on silence
but then you pull away and I don’t like it
the feeling of you not being there, the empty space I cannot bear
the firelight kisses your face
and that simply isn’t fair
my dreams this night are beautifully blank
my arms this night are beautifully full
and I wake beautifully blissful
© 2016 Stellular Scribe
Shadows march across our cheeks,
stygian soldiers in an army of specters,
wielding their fists of smoke ‘cross our eyes
as we sit by the flames of their birth.
In that moment, we’re smaller than anything,
nothing but spots on the skin of the earth,
and the night is so heavy and the moon taunting-
as if the smallest shift in the air or the skies
would pull us to pieces, without any worth.
A small smile pricks your lips,
and you command my gaze away from the bleak-
away from the endless black above
that could swallow me whole in a breath’s streak.
“It’s not so bad”- your words milk the starlight,
and I think maybe it isn’t.
No, I know, we’ll be alright.
You stitch the stars with
brittle fingers that tremble
as the night expands.
A seamstress of dusk,
you paint the sky in coral
when the sun descends.
You breathe life where there’s
dark, your children of the night
wake at your sweet hands.
Oh, Mother of Murk,
bend the black in swelling shades-
govern the night lands.
This is one of my first attempts at a haiku quartet. Somehow the last syllable of each stanza ended up in cadence- but maybe that’s just my innate desire to make everything rhyme!
Stellular Scribe 