I had words; words were my all
From opening cap to closing dot
Whether frivolous or thickened plot
Words that captured one leaf’s fall
Or held a fidget much in thrall
Now, I slowly lose all that I’ve got
I had words
Words from days past I can’t recall
Feeling my brain’s descent to pot
I’ve learned to make do with my lot
As from my mind words start to fall
I had words
====================
I choose the rooms that I live in with care,
the windows are small and the walls almost bare,
there’s only one bed and there’s only one prayer;
I listen all night for your step on the stair
Tonight Will Be Fine – Leonard Cohen
This room has seen many a thing
All the joy, the pain that a life can bring
The secrets invisibly etched into each wall
That only a select few can claim to recall
And there’s not too many of them left at all
As over time some secrets have come to air
And for each secret in which I took delight
Others I wait hoping they come to light
But that’s on another’s shoulders to bear
I choose the rooms that I live in with care
Decorating has been tried, a different vision
Very few things in this world I find lacking derision
Fresh paint never gave this room much cheer
Too much has simply happened I fear
I don’t pretend laughter is ever found here
Some have asked why, but most no longer dare
To look, you wouldn’t think there’d be much to say
And to be honest, I kind of like it that way
Dimly lit, my room lacks any savior faire
The windows are small and the walls almost bare
My sprees were tidal like the moon and the waves
I farm emotions just enough to seek what I crave
Only my bloody goals to orient
As every life I’ve touched – went
Once their value to me was spent
This life was one always destined for the chair
As my life like these wall crumble within
I know there’s a deep circle for my sin
It’s the bed I’ve made, and it’s too late to care
There’s only one bed and there’s only one prayer
Long ago your malaise took root in my soul
But I never even tried to keep it in control
The news inform folks of my lesser glory
But most things I’ve done are so gory
That only you know the complete story
My hide’s destined only for you to wear
Here in this room I sit each day awaiting fate
Knowing even then hate won’t alleviate
Pray for heaven? We know I’m not going there
I listen all night for your step on the stair
====================
Hear my words that I might teach you
Take my arms that I might reach you
But my words, like silent raindrops fell
And echoed in the wells, of silence
Simon and Garfunkel – Sounds of Silence
The days versus the nights it’s all the same
The players may change, but it’s still game
Chances blown, nothing’s mistaken
Waiting for my soul to be taken
I had that chance, but now it’s through
Still, I‘d like, just one last reach to you
But how can I tell if there’s a chance
When I’m met with your echoes of silence
Are mere words enough to breach through?
Hear my words that I might teach you
How to build the impenetrable wall
One if you don’t climb, then you don’t fall
I learned much too late, by making it my skin
I kept nothing out, but trapped myself within
Marking my soul with each sin’s imbrue
Forced now to pay the devil’s due
For all you learned from my hateful spite
I’ve but one last chance to make it right
A gentle task that I beseech, I do
Take my arms that I might reach you
When your heart opened, I never saw
Now I open mine and you withdraw
Your retreating steps sounding hallow
In the rasping sobs of which I wallow
Architect of my own personal hell
Turning your kind soul into shrapnel
A weapon against that which I most fear
That to my heart, you might grow near
And there’s so much I’ve got left to tell
But my words, like silent raindrops fell
Against the hushed echoes of your voice
Cruel eyes reminding me, this was my choice
So I never learned where love was bound
As you walked away without a sound
Now my heartbeat carries no cadence
Its walls are too filled with your absence
Like moments of time that’s slipped away
Last chances gone and forever gone they’ll stay
All lost within the heart’s distance
And echoed in the wells, of silence
<>==========<>==========<>
Yes, another Glosa.
dVerse Poets Pub| OpenLinkNight – Week 49
Do you know what happens when I think of you?
The lessons I’ve managed to learn in this life
On whom I can depend for all that I want
All the rest of the things I have come to know
How they effect the what and who I am now
And what hath thou wrought, Daddy? Thou hath wrought – this
I was my father’s daughter, thou hath wrought – this
Every ounce of hate I learned, first came from you
It’s a bell I strive to un-ring even now
Fully believed when you said ‘this ain’t worth life’
Of course learning ‘this’ meant me, took time to know
Freedom to roam, the only thing you did want
Know what I wished for? What I truly did want?
To be fatherless child, thou hath wrought – this
Circles of your first, back of your palms I know
For it was the most I’d ever see of you
Getting worse as I got to know some of life
Innocence not a card that I could play now
Come sixteen praying – I’m too used for you now
But I was wrong, you still did just what you want
As you had been doing for all my young life
On my knees for more than prayer, thou hath wrought – this
But the boys loved the lessons first learned from you
Just who I learned it from, they never did know
But I found something I never thought to know
A something gallant within, even now
Nearly buried forever from hate of you
Something you thought that I would never stand to want
Faith that somewhere love exists, thou hath wrought – this
And by having such, a renewed urge for life
You can’t jam hate into a soul filled with life
I’m strong in the love that came so late to know
A phoenix from hate’s ashes, thou hath wrought – this
But I am Janus, the reverse of you now
Doing opposite of all you taught to want
For in spite of your grip, I can release you
And there’s a peace to know, there’s worth to my life
I love and am loved, this I’d want to you know
I think of you now, glad thou hath wrought – this
<>==========<>==========<>
A hard form this time: Sestina
A Sestina is a poem consisting of six six-line stanzas and a three-line envoy, where the words ending the lines of the first stanza are repeated in a different order at the end of lines in each of the subsequent five stanzas and, two to a line, in the middle and at the end of the three lines in the closing envoy. The patterns of word-repetitions are as follows:
1 2 3 4 5 6
6 1 5 2 4 3
3 6 4 1 2 5
5 3 2 6 1 4
4 5 1 3 6 2
2 4 6 5 3 1
(6 2) (1 4) (5 3)
There is no set meter or rhyme scheme although traditionally most were written in iambic pentameter. The closing envoy also has several variations some of which are:
(2 5)(4 3)(6 1),
(1 2)(3 4)(5 6) or
(1 4)(2 5)(3 6).
Dawn first deigns to call me
into the depths of yet another day
before I am ready to do so
I glance at the alarm clock animation
cheerfully chiming me into the day
but I shut it off with surliness
The coffee maker is already at work
as the second sentry to my rising
sending its call via olfactory orifice
My television, next in line of pretense
to claim its place in my morning
makes its presence known
Knowing the coffee will turn itself off
I reach and remotely silence the banalities
of the morning news broadcast
I lay there for moments more wondering,
how did my ancestors rise without the assistance
of such mundane mechanics
Surely more than the cock’s crow
or the edicts of early to bed, early to rise
were needed for timely awakenings.
Would they laugh most loudly at me,
the latest devotee of the daily grind,
unable do the same even with such help?
I wanted to rise, really, I wanted to,
but somehow the Blackberry magically
sends out a mental health day message
Perhaps tomorrow morning
will find me ready to rattle and roll
but no, not this morning
As clouds roll in to dull the dawn
it is the bed that beckons loudest
for good old-fashioned slumber
<>==========<>==========<>
She rides bareback upon the mare,
The sun makes nimbus of her hair,
The glow adds to her beauty fair.
All loudly gasp as they take air,
There’s naught that they can do but stare.
Her men walk with her as she rides
They move as one, in perfect stride
Surrounding her from every side.
She ignores the pleas and chides
Beauty like hers, this she must hide.
As word spreads, more do convene
To spy a sight for from routine
This woman valued as a queen
Has not the vanity to preen,
Just holds her head, high to be seen.
With shock and awe her lord reacts
To her fair skin and hair of flax
And all the garments that she lacks!
But he cannot ignore the facts
He could have stopped this in its tracks
Had he just lowered the damned tax!
Lady Godiva
<>==========<>==========<>
In a silly mood
.
.
I saw this little sprout one day
A sprout like none I’ve seen before
Unique
Rising between a concrete crack
From time to time I would notice
The growth
Against the forces deigned to halt,
Something so delicate and free
It thrived
From spindly bud to luscious bloom
One day it caught my eye and held
Me there
I knew then any further growth
Would need the help of one who cared
Like me
For I then young but determined
Had learned sometimes even the tough
Need help
That I needed this bloom as much
Was revelation in itself
Welcomed
The bloom that grew to be my wife
That watched me grow from boy to man
To hers
====================
Today’s form: Synchronicity
“Synchronicity” (The state or fact of being synchronous or simultaneous; synchronism. coincidence of events that seem to be meaningfully related.). This form consists of eight three-line stanzas in a syllable pattern of 8/8/2. This poetry type has no rhyme and is written in the first person with a twist. The twist is to be revealed within the last two stanzas.
Tick…………………………
Part dreading, part anticipating.
I sit here in the final moments waiting.
Tick………………
So much time has passed, and yet not enough.
Did I do all I could? Am I now up to snuff?
Part dreading, part anticipating.
Tick……………
Jam packed to the gills, hardly slacking.
For all I’ve done in this time, I still feel a lacking.
I sit here in the final moments waiting.
Tick………
The time before this moment once seemed so vast.
Felt I had forever before this would come to past.
Part dreading, part anticipating.
Tick…
What pays the bills is not how I stay alive.
This globe-trotting heart of mine and this job don’t jibe.
First day back to work after a nice vacation.
I sigh and face the day with trepidation.
I sit here in the final moments waiting.
Tock!
<>==========<>==========<>
Because I go back to work in the morning…
Your lover’s touch moving
soft through my hair
An artist’s touch that feels so real I sigh
The summer breeze teases I tell myself
Sultry memory
of your being there
I’m floored,
emotions come without a care
Succumb to your ghost seduction of me
My head lolls with invitation for more
Your lover’s touch moving
soft through my hair
And then it’s gone,
heart left exposed and bare
And I reach out, a plea for more, please more
Your absence bane after the ghostly kiss
Sultry memory
of your being there
Your lover’s touch moving
soft through my hair
I cry as the wind mocks your touch of me
Sultry memory
of your being there
====================
dVerse Poets Pub | FormForAll: On Free Verse
Using a villonnet as the source form to break into free verse.
Lying in your arms, feeling the dawn slowly
mark it way across our bodies
My head says time to get up
My heart differs
Gentle stroking, up and down
my spine
touch of gossamer
there… not there
Warm
Stirring
Is it real or do I sleep still?
Too real to be a dream, slowly bringing me
from the depths of sleep
Smooth
Slow
Sensual…
As though a sudden move
would cause me to shatter
I wake easily,
Knowing the warmth I feel
is more than the rising sun
I turn to you.
My eyes are closed,
but I can see your smile,
feel you surround me.
Your lips upon mine.
Asking a silent question.
Receiving a silent answer.
Love me…?
Yes…
Oh yes…
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Raivenne-lations 