We scattered whispers
like the falling of leaves
in October – truths on
top of truths on top of
lies, like oranges on reds
on yellows. We were the
voices carried in the wind,
left to fall on eager ears as
we swooped and swayed,
picking up dirt and debris,
slowly growing louder
past the season, until our
whispers began to howl
obscenities in the winter,
with only the promise of
a christened white slate
of snow, scattered among
our words to hide them.
I think about the sparrows
still falling from the sky,
from that poem I once read
but couldn’t quite understand;
something about loneliness,
tugging mercifully at the old
heart strings like a good vinyl
playing in the background of
a coffee shop while it rains.
Or maybe it’s only projection;
self-acceptance of a battered
lonely heart unable to write,
unable to sing and fly, like
those broken fallen sparrows,
crushed beneath the weight
of sorrow and a writer’s pen.
You had one question,
wrapped around the idea
of one little verse, a slight
symphony of the heart, in
which you and I had once
been dancers, gracefully
swaying to the tempos of
love – you had asked, and
I said yes, with the rapid
beating of our hearts as we
took our final bow as mere
lovers, moving on into the
world as fiancés; forever
dancers, in this life of love.
Nebraska, hold me close
like all those summers ago,
when the warmth of the sun’s
rays bled through the open
windows, casting light onto
our hearts as we lay tangled
in bed after many days apart.
Hold me close like the early
days, when love was always
on our minds as we sprawled
out on blankets counting the
spaces between the stars and
filling them with our dreams.
Nebraska, embrace my heart,
like all those summers ago,
as waking up next to you was
the most beautiful sight I had
seen, when you became love,
basking in the summer heat.
Hold me Nebraska; hold my
heart and kiss my dreams.
As the stars shoot past
lone survivors making
wishes beyond longing
for a dream, I recall the
gentleness of the lonely,
when solitude was more
than just a single number,
curled up in satisfaction
of something more, with
possibilities of the infinite
bound inside the realities
of one plus one equaling
more than just you and me,
where all the mathematics
blended into nothingness
until the stars shooting past
carried more than just wishes
of a change in the numbers.
As the lines I had to write
took a new twist of the pen,
my words became mangled
together in thoughts and lost
actions, where my truths had
spilt over and were now left
a harbored mess on the page.
My unwritten verses sought
revenge against my untamed
writers mind – I had deceived
the voice I once followed by
moonlight, left to scrounge on
the scraps of ink and dreams.
I became filled with wild and
impossible thoughts, crushing
the landscape of paper and pen,
ready to burn the bridges of the
written word and set the world
on fire with tongue and verse –
poetry is not dead, it is rising.
I fear the depths of the
memories I’m not allowed
to wade in, watching as the
waves crash the cityscapes
against the life that you and
I have built together, where
our toes should be wading
along the trails of memories
in the making, not haunted
by the thoughts of those we
have tried to bury deep in
the sands – I fear the ocean
as I fear my own mind, lost
in the aftermath of what can
wash upon the shores with
any given change of the tide.
We were more than lightning
flashing against the open night,
with splinters of stars scattered
between our hearts and hands
we took a stand as the thunder
rolled, booming and crashing,
we laughed along in songs as
the rain loomed on – you and I
were always more than sparks
falling in the backdrop of night,
we were the illumination of the
storm, and the hero and the end;
tempted by the hands of fate, we
kept our sins to wash them away.
I saw clarity in your eyes
when you looked towards
me with love; an unspoken
sonnet laced between two
hearts, filtered with the last
breath of a poet and longing,
with you as my canvas and
love as my words. I am the
poet, and you are my poem,
delicate in transition and full
of a lovers gaze – where we
set our sights on one another
in secret longing, and in full
ambition; we are ink kissing
the page, bound inside love.
I touched my own lips
in an attempt to remember
yours, where once had been
a gentle graze between two
hell bent lovers was a lonely
desperation- the days pass
in a slow haze, filled with a
longing since your absence,
rooted by the chains of half
memories playing on repeat.
I can do nothing but feel the
slow creep of numbness as I
count the tears that are falling,
making a wish with each drop,
for the redemption of our love
neither of us willing to lose.
Storylines in Verse 