Tuesday, January 3, 2012

THE HUNGER

When it’s over,
what remains is the hunger:
a strange nostalgia,
not for what was but
for what I was going to have…
someday.

What to do
when even the price of
happily-ever-after is
tears, black bands of grief, and
the grave?

End love before it ends?

Capture it like a photograph:

Confine it in frames
of fantasy and memory;
loss redeemed in protective coverings
stronger than wood and glass

Place it before me,
never accessible but
always there

perfect

unchanging

forever?


OpenLinkNight http://dversepoets.com/

Tuesday, September 13, 2011

NIGHT

after the world fell down

it left a weighty weaving darkness

full of fury but no sound

so quiet

we could not hear our own voices


*I wrote this poem on September 11, 2011 to commemorate the 10th anniversary of the 9/11 tragedy.  OpenLinkNight http://dversepoets.com/

Tuesday, August 23, 2011

DISPATCH FROM A FUNERAL


Death is an unnatural thing.

It is a soul mate
wrapped in a shroud of
disquiet and tears.

It is a fickle friend
who chastens life with non existence while declaring,
“You are my best and most enduring part.”

-OpenLinkNight http://dversepoets.com/

Tuesday, July 26, 2011

INTERVENTION


I am an heir to a jagged edged apprehension:
no one and no thing will claim me
and,
by claiming,
teach me to claim myself.

As I race toward the grave
mainlining self-doubt,
snorting regret,
confusing mere stimulation for feeling and
pulse for life;

My repreve comes in
the echo of a soul writ large,
a voice laced with crystal sugar and
dichotomy;
singing of joyful misery without the
oft obligatory shame.

It is a voice that
repeats a vow I had only heard before
in dreams;
a promise
to cry my tears when I can't.

*Written in tribute to Amy Winehouse.  I wanted to express what her music has meant to me. Artists have the power to transform the consciousness of others, but they can pay a heavy price for that power.  I hope that Amy has the peace in death that she could not find in life.

-For OpenLinkNight at http://dversepoets.com/

Tuesday, July 12, 2011

YOUTH

You are my gift…I am your affliction.
You help me claim the parts of myself that I fear most.
With you, I can endure and build my life anew.
But
My survival constantly compels your destruction.
Yet
You live.

-For “One Shot Wednesday” at http://onestoppoetry.com/

Tuesday, July 5, 2011

DILEMMA


You made a choice which allowed you to keep
the world you knew.

The world beyond was a child’s fantasy-
to you
even in its very real appeal.

You chose what you valued, but
to your surprise
that fact did not make what you got a treasure.

Once, you only needed your prize for love.
Now, you need it to make up for all
you believe you have lost.

Instead of a victor
you feel like a human sacrifice to ideology
to a wish of the mind that destroyed hope and
faith.

And what of your discarded love?
Like a prodigal
you now see it as the gem it could
never have been before.

But is this impulse Truth, or
is it the desire of an ego to keep itself safe and fed?

Regret makes us bolder, but
it does not always make us wise.

Which option should you have chosen?

What price could you afford to pay?



-For “One Shot Wednesday” at http://onestoppoetry.com/

Tuesday, June 21, 2011

TOGETHER

“Tag, you’re it,” I said
dramatizing my own feelings
unwilling to see the you that lay
beyond my hopes and intentions.

I double dared you to confirm
what I had come to believe:
you would be just another memory-
possibly-
another regret.

My problem was not confusion
but the weight of my truth.

But

You were the brave one
who said, “If we love, let’s love!”

You gave me
a new beginning
that has the taste
of the purest childhood.

Together
we go to another country where
we can pretend
and
what we pretend to be
we are.

In this place
you are water
and
I am sand.

-For “One Shot Wednesday” at http://onestoppoetry.com/