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There will come a day
When all of the colors fade
to grey
When all of the flowers
In the garden start to wilt
When everyday is cloudy.
The headlines hold names
Of kids you grew up playing kickball with
Being killed by people who thought
That one more drink wouldn’t do any harm.
People who thought that a party
Was more important than
Everyone else on the road.

Now,
We have a four year old boy whose mama
Won’t see him graduate preschool
We have an eighteen year old girl whose daddy
Won’t see her graduate high school.
We have teachers
Who don’t know how to educate
To a classroom full of students
Who have so many questions.

But the legal limit isn’t taught in textbooks.

This isn’t whether or not you feel
That the law applies to you.
This is life or death.
This is Russian Roulette with a bottle.
This is driving blindfolded
With the music on too loud.
This is a four year old boy
Who still doesn’t understand
What Heaven is.
This is an eighteen year old girl
Who’s wearing her graduation dress
To her father’s funeral.
The dress that her father helped her pick out.
He said,
“You know, sweetheart, I always loved you in black.”


This is crying for someone
You never met.
This is military homecomings or
Babies smiling for the first time.

Except in reverse.

This is military homecomings in a box.
This is babies crying for a mother
Who cannot comfort them.
This is empty spaces in a poem
Where words should be.
This is “I just saw them yesterday.”
This is “I’m sorry for your loss.”
This is...
not knowing what the right thing to say is.
She still had clothes in the washing machine.
He had a T-Time for next Thursday.
We had a dinner reservation next Friday.
This is knowing that he will never have a birthday again.
This was not something I was expecting
I mean, who would?
Photographs can’t capture a lifetime.
They may be worth a thousand words,
But you my dear are worth so much more.
Q Aug 2016
It is almost refreshing to sink into what I once was
To feel myself stagnate and lose interest
It's somehow relieving to meet my old feelings again
To feel both exhausted and restless

I am not doing enough yet, have not achieved
I am not trying hard enough, haven't put in my all
I am not reaching far enough, am not throwing my weight
I am not enough to climb over this wall

A wall between myself and motivation
Between creativity and creative endeavors
Between myself and my dreams and wants and hopes
A wall between stagnation and corrective measures

It feels like coming home to a house I never intended to buy
Like opening the door to dust and checks to pay off bills I forgot to write
Like finding my bed a collection of moths and holes
Like seeing where I was and intended to be until I was old

However

It is also like entering an old home never put up for sale
A space that I know but a space I dislike and won't return to as well
Like feeling the nostalgia from a bitter memory in some bastardization of regret
But moving on because you have moved on and don't plan on turning back yet
Oh my god a poem what
marie Aug 2013
hands fly everywhere
loud rock music blasting through the speakers
clothes messy and tousled all around
some guy's lips on mine
bodies entangled on the couch

i hope that it's my prince chariming
the one i'm dreaming of
at seven years old

attending concerts wearing an extra ear piercing
few chain bracelets on my bony wrists
screaming in a mosh pit
with a guy who swore he'd stay by me forever
singing at the top of our lungs
in a moment i wish would last forever

silently, i wish the concerts we'd attend
are the concerts i wanted to see
when i was fourteen

tumbling in heels i wish i'd wear
when i finally get into that dress
that dress, pristine white
flowing and trailing behind me
with a silver ring on my ring finger
given by you
and walking to the altar
to have you slip another ring onto me
this time
a golden one
to symbolize our eternity

i wish it'd be the same kind
of wedding that
i wished for
when i were twelve

helping carry huge loads of water on my shoulders
forcing my dad to "sit the hell down and take a rest"
and doing his work for him
while my mom catches up with him on the years they've lost
as they both enjoy their retirement years
and maybe or not thinking of getting a new job
to still keep this family standing

i hope that my family would never
break again
like what happened when i was eleven

alumni homecomings
my friends and i would go back to our second home
the home that kept us awake at night
with endless cramming
and strong lectures
we'd stroll along the hallways
hug old teachers
throw chairs and peel off their dull colors
and write under blackboards
like we're students again

but for me, i'd interact with the students
checking the covered courts and the field's grandstand
seeing people with their eyes closed
hands outstretched forward
sweat rolling down their faces
as their seniors shout at them
i would smile to myself then
when the closed eyelids flutter open and the arms set down
and the students are instructed to stand up

the seniors of that time give out a command
and they, along with the others who were sweating profusely
would face me,
the one leaning over the metal bars
smiling and waving with nostalgia

a sign
that i have accomplished my dream
at sixteen

i'd go back
and find you as well
in the same building
interacting with your old crush
who grew prettier with time
she'd wave at me
you would too
i'd feel my ribs squeeze against my heart
and i'd wave back

again, that jealousy comes back
that same jealousy i felt when you
asked me to prom
at fifteen

but i trust you
and you trust me too
so i carried on
because i knew that later
you'd come back to my house
and we'd have a movie marathon
or we'd play call of duty again
then we'd cuddle and sleep together
and fall out of the couch the next morning

i believe, i believe
i do, i really do

but i knew it was hard
with all the scars i have to prove it
i knew it was hard to stay positive
when i knew disaster was just there
with us
with me

at last, i'd experience the harsh reality again
the moment i fall out of those equally pristine white heels
when i realize that i'd never wear those shoes or that gown
because by then, you'd be gone
you'd come to realize how much of a failure i am
and how worthless i really am
how much prettier she was than me
how she's much more worth it than me
and how she could make you happier
than i can

all my fears at fourteen
came true at nineteen

but then i'd wake up and i'd realize
i'm still fourteen
it was all a dream
which i don't have the heart to call a nightmare
and instead
i'd call it a premonition
of the years to come
just like the scars i never thought i'd have
when i were four
or when i were ten

the scars
they tell me how much i've failed
and will fail

so i think back on my dream
and smile a little at the ending
of nineteen me
living the last of my teenage years

for your own good,
it was probably better you left too

cause y'know
i'd leave me too
at fourteen
Sofia Paderes Feb 2014
Every time I look you in the eye, I see thunderclouds. Yes, your laugh is silver bells on a spring day and your smile could have caused Mona Lisa to grin all the way in, but they’re right. Your eyes are the behind the scenes and your body is a movie. I don’t enjoy watching movies.

2. I can’t keep up with the storyline. Chapters fifteen and sixteen were about homecomings, and now the main character’s digging his own grave again. You never explained to me how he went from dancing in the moonlight to rubbing ash on his head, just when I thought we were getting already to the ******.

3. The wounds are reopening. I thought you knew better than to pick at the stitches.

4. Your heart must be handcuffed to mine. I feel it every time you hurt, every time you pull, every time you cry out and ask God, “Why?” The only difference is that every inch you move away is a sucker punch in my gut. I’ve never had a high tolerance for pain.

5. Do you know how many poems I’ve written about you? Try walking outside at night and count every street lamp from here to the opposite side of the sea. My words burn too, but they never seem to be bright enough for you to see. You’re still tripping in broad daylight.

6. I’m tired of standing behind you.

7. Hope is an anchor, but I’m starting to drown.

8. Sometimes I scream in frustration because the seeds are taking too long to grow. It’s so easy to forget that they will. It’s even easier to forget that I’m not the savior. But I try to be, so I’m putting down this yoke, little by little.

9. Seeds do grow and their trees make enough rings to tell stories to last generations.

10. I heard in a song that love alone is worth the fight. Maybe I’ll continue this battle long enough for you to see that we’ve already won this war, so that the next time I look at you in the eye, I’ll see the northern lights.
We are Hosea's wife; we are squandering this life, using people like ladders and words like knives. - Hosea's Wife, Brooke Fraser
I am a ******.
That is a powerful word
a putrid, painful word
a psychotic thing to say
out loud
to know
about myself
to admit
to You.
This is the worst thing I know
about myself
that I ***** a girl once
without even realizing what I was doing.
I don't know why I'm saying this now.
I know a lot of people will hate me
for saying this
for admitting this horrible thing I did
for displaying this
repulsive
repugnant
piece of my personal history
like picking up a piece of my ****
and showing it to You.
I don't know why I'm saying this.
I don't know why I'm telling this.
I guess because
after all these years
more than half my life later
I still haven't forgotten
I can't forget
I still regret
so I guess it simply
needs to be said.
So call it a confession.
And now the bargaining begins.
The inevitable qualifications.
Because while it is true
I am a ******
that powerful, putrid, painful, psychotic word
calls forth to mind an image
of violence and brutality
that is not me
and is not what I am trying to say
and is not what happened that night.

We were very young
not even twenty
and stupid
clearly stupid
and we'd been "going out" for years
Homecomings and Junior Proms
we'd taken each others' virginity
many years before
this was not our first dance.
And we were drunk.
Blind drunk.
It's not an excuse
but it's a fact
and it's relevant
and it needs to be said.
We had rented a hotel room
away from our parents
alone
free
and we were *******
joyously
terrificially.
Young
Free
Drunk
*******.
It was a glorious night.

At some point
she said,
"Wait, stop."
I don't know why.
To this day, I have no idea
what happened
what was wrong
why she wanted me to stop.
But I remember
what I said.
I'll never forget
never be able to forget
what I said
what I did.
She said, "Wait, stop."
And I said,

"No,
I'm almost done."

There is no apologizing
for that
no accepting it
no getting over it.
Not for her
or for me.
Some things just become
a part of you
forever
and you can't hide them
no matter how much you want to
or how hard you try.
Some words weigh on you like Marley's chains
and you carry them for the rest of your life.
And you should.
I'm not seeking sympathy
or solace
I deserve neither
and I wouldn't want them
even if I did.
I want to carry this chain.
I have to.
Because it is the only way
I can attempt to
balance out the equation
and even have a hope
of trying
to begin
to make up
for what I did
to her.
I guess I just needed to
acknowledge the chain
admit it
make it real
so that I could keep carrying it
a little longer.
I really wasn't sure whether to post this one or not.  I knew it could make some people feel some very negative things, and quite probably at me.  But it's real, it's honest, it's from the heart, and it is likely to make people feel something, and as that's all I'm aiming for, I felt that I had to call it art, and put it out there.  Art shouldn't be about only expressing what is safe, or acceptable, or what is likely to only make people feel positive things.  It is often controversial, or provocative, and that's as it should be.

Another concern I had, was whether I was right to use the word "****" in this way.  As I tried to express in the poem, that word conjures up images of violent, brutal ****** assault that is not even close to what I did.  I was a stupid, drunk teenager, having *** with my girlfriend of several years, and when I was just about to come, she said "stop," and I didn't.  It was absolutely wrong, and I have regretted it ever since, but that is, literally, as technical as **** can get and still be considered ****.  So, am I doing a disservice to victims of actual violent ****** assaults, by using that term, by equating what I did with the horrible trauma they had to endure?  Am I just taking a mildly traumatic event from my youth and blowing it up for maximum drama and artistic gain?  I honestly don't even know anymore.

All I know, is that for my entire life since that night, every once in awhile, the first line of this poem has flashed through my brain.  It happened again this morning.  I was lying on the couch, trying to catch a few more minutes of dozing before I had to get up and go to work, and a story came on the news about a ****** assault in my area.  There was something about the story that resonated with me in some way, and the thought "I am a ******" flashed through my brain again, and that whole night came flooding back to me.  And at that moment, I knew I had to get it out, and onto paper.
Latiaaa Feb 2014
It’s not easy being a girl.
Guys walk around thinking life’s a bowl of lemons for girls.
It’s not.
We girls have to do our makeup perfectly.
Have the trouble of running with ***** bouncing all the time.
Careful not to let our nail polish chip,
We worry about wearing shirts that show too much.
Have to make sure our bra straps don’t show.
Dreading what to wear every time,
We dread wearing the same pair of pants too often.
Always braiding, curling, and straitening our hair.
We have to shave our legs and armpits.
Always tweezing our ****** hair daily,
We’re always insecure.
We have to buy dresses for proms and homecomings.
We become sad when our guys don’t text us back.
Always on our periods,
Massive cramps.
Getting our first kiss is a big deal.
Missing your ex,
Breaking up or fighting with your boyfriend.
We wonder what we did wrong.
Hate being lied to.
We go through fighting and losing best friends.
Being cheated on,
We’re always misunderstood.
Wanting different hair color or eyes,
We go through liking a favorite shirt but it’s never in our size.
Never feeling good enough,
Being called a ***** when you’re a ******,
We suffer secrets getting out.
Being dumped,
Making mistakes,
We have people letting us not forget our mistakes.
Bad hair days,
Swearing too much,
Always smelling good.
And the hard part of being a girl,
Is that we have to go through this for the rest of our lives.
Wk kortas Mar 2017
She has maintained a steadfast and prudent distance
From places she would have to fabricate answers to tiresome inquiries:
The ageless Rexall pharmacy, the gas pumps at the Kwik-Fill,
The scruffy, three-checkout Market Basket,
(Though that entails driving to Bradford or Dubois for groceries,
Inconvenient at the best of times,
Outright hazardous when February shows its teeth)
But her resolve can be a fleeting thing,
So oftentimes she will yield
To the siren song of the produce aisle,
Where she will, with what forbearance she can bear,
Submit to the interrogative small talk
Lobbed her way like so many verbal mortar shells
By squinting, smirking long-time acquaintances,
All variations upon the inquiry Why’d you come back?

All homecomings are secondary to some departure,
Mostly the mad flight of one marooned by birth,
Deciding, through some alchemy of grit and desperation,
That they cannot face a life of a spot on the line at the mill,
A haphazard and half-hearted marriage with the requisite offspring,
To be finished up with an unremarkable stone on Bootjack Hill.
Her farewell was not such a notion, not in the least;
She was beautiful, not small-town pretty
In the lead-in-the-senior-musical sense,
But breathtakingly so, the kind of radiance
Which held up to the forty-foot screen of the drive-in in St. Mary’s.
There was no question that she would go, must go,
As if the notion of her staying was absurd, even obscene;
So she went, to New York for a brief spell
(She found it gray and cold in every sense of the word)
Then later to Southern California,
Which she found, if nothing else, somewhat more comfortable.
She did not fail (to be fair, her beauty was of a type
Which transcended mundane concerns such as locality)
Securing bit parts on screen here, the odd photo shoot there,
Not well-off, perhaps, but living well enough,
Free from the endless cast-iron skies and ***** slush of January,
The pointless yet sacrosanct internecine struggles
Which rolled unheedingly across the generations,
The stifling intramurality of the tiny lives in tiny mill towns.

And yet she came back, with neither warning nor fanfare,
Greeted by a cacophony of mute and uncomprehending stares,
As if she were some spectre, lovely and yet unwelcome,
Dredging up emotions best forgotten,
Half-truths not bearing the weight of re-examination,
Any number of errors of commission and omission best left buried.
She will, on occasion, make her way to a barstool at the Kinzua House
Where she receives drinks and further ministrations
From out-of-town hunters or younger townsmen
For whom she is not an icon or grail,
And if she is asked what brought her back to the cold cow country
She would say, a bit acerbically but melancholy as well,
At some point, you get tired of being a commodity,
Just something to weighed and assayed,
Your face worth this, your *** worth that,

But, if she was deep enough into the evening’s proceedings,
She would murmur snippets of odd things:
How the falls would pour like the cheers of thousands
Over the spillways of the dormant mills,
The spectacle of the sand swallows returning
(Brown, chunky, unremarkable things
Skimming the disintegrating chain-link
Which surrounded the abandoned middle school)
To the abandoned gravel pit just below the cemetery,
The herds of elk, reintroduced by the state conservation boys
In a futile and wholly romantic gesture,
Which have not only survived
But prospered on the hillsides out of town,
And if those who knew her when overheard her,
They would whisper among themselves
As to how she was clearly on the run from something,
And how everyone knows that the unrelenting SoCal sunshine
Can lead someone from a place like this to madness.
Brian Gallagher Jun 2010
The pressures are rising but also falling on my chest
I can’t get out from under the tide, I need a rest
Mistrust, miscommunications, misconstrued words send me over the top
The anger continues to build inside of me until it feels like my heads going to pop
Working it out through weights, sometimes that can help
I am losing control of everything, how do I deal with something I never felt
Money issues, past actions, future homecomings, it’s all a part of this course
Lost at sea, feeling like I am drowning, I am struggling back and forth
Can I keep my head afloat until help has arrived?
Can I retrain myself and my brain? How am I to survive?
I used to be so happy, the joker in all cases
Now there is nothing to smile about, all I see are ******* arab faces
I can’t stand these people and we are put here and cannot do anything about it
They can bomb us on the road or shoot mortars to our chu’s and we can’t do ****
I’d rather be judged by 12 then carried by 6 is something I think of everyday
But all the red tape ******* we go through, these terrorists lead the way
If you are going to send me to war, let me do my job
Come out into the sunlight and get away from the fog
You tell me to give another year of my life away to you and wear the uniform proud
I can’t even look you in the face, you’re a fake and ******* is all you allow
You send me out on missions every day and you sit there comfortable behind your desk
You come with us when there is a photo op so that you can get medals pinned on your chest
You won’t tell us when we are going home; it’s this big secret you like to hide
Think about the well being of the soldier and family, take a look down deep inside
Maybe you will find some integrity, some actions that match what you say
Maybe you can remember what it’s like to live the code of a soldier, now get out my ******* way.
Frank DeRose Apr 2015
Airports.
They reek.
Of goodbyes and departures.
However,
They're also filled with love,
And beautiful homecomings.
Hellos and goodbyes,
Complete opposites,
Yet so similar.
Jointly accompanied,
With hugs and tears,
Smiles and kisses.
The future is the only difference.
One devoid of presence,
And one full of it.
I much prefer hellos.
There's no feeling quite like the one
Of running to a loved one's open arms.
There is no greater feeling,
Than to feel the love.
Than to give it,
And receive it.
Of course,
Goodbyes are filled with love too.
But it's not the same.
Goodbyes are sad,
Sorry affairs.
No,
I much prefer hellos.
Title credit: the Beatles
Hayleigh Mar 2015
ii
Your arms are the most beautiful of homecomings.
Gillian May 2014
returning is bittersweet, full of that madness of longing and relief...some homecomings are indulgent and pacifying...you really can't ever go home again...mumbling among the ruins of a childhood you are reluctant to belong to...pouring over the pieces of life that you once owned...culling the crowd in search of that one face that you need to see...and it is enough because it is all that's left you...
A man for seasons
Vivaldi played this tune
Neil Armstrong looked down
As he walked along the moon
Noah was very clever
When he sailed around in his Ark
Spielberg scared us witless
When we saw his man eating shark
Roswell holds a lot of secrets
When aliens crashed under the sun
Cleese and all his pythons
Gave us laughter and tremendous fun
Pinter wrote dark little plays
About homecomings and a dumb waiter
Van Gogh put paint onto his canvas
I guess it's sad what happened later
The Beatles destroyed America
As they rode the musical jackpot
And finally one Adolf ******
Sadly remembered for be a crackpot
Lawrence Hall Jan 2022
Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com  
https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

                                 When the Ambulance Arrived

When the ambulance arrived the medics
Pushing and pulling the gurney in and out
Knocked the latch from the jamb, which no one noticed
But later someone else found the door open

I walked across the road with a bag of tools
And fixed the latch with a couple of screws
Easily enough, a wooden door that opened
To Christmases and homecomings and life

The door is now secure, but I don’t think
The owner will ever walk through it again
A poem is itself.
Hope White Feb 2020
I was raised on The Beatles and
The Rolling Stones and all the Oldies
serenading me through the speakers
on long trips to Gram’s house,
And on dixie cups half-full of beer t
hat I sneaked downstairs
During the late-night news
during your nightly rituals.
I was raised on stockpiling
the pillow mints you saved me
From your many hotel nights
when you’ve been gone on fires
For what felt to me to be
several years at a time.
I lived for your homecomings,
with the smell of deep smoke
Still clinging to your work clothes
when you finally came home to us.
I lived for even your shortcomings,
which always feel to me to be
imperceptibly small.
I was raised on fishing trips
by the lakeshore
where you would
Let me reel in your fish so
that I could always get all the credit.
I was raised on Star Wars
and Star Trek and all the
Friday night Sci-fi movies that we could finally
watch weekly after you retired.
I was raised on our solitary Quincy trips
Where I saw you take better care of your mother
Than anyone else could.
I was raised on the trips you took
That you probably would have never taken
To Arizona and SoCal and Philly
and to a cafe on the side of the road outside of Redding,
after my car crashed into twisted mounds of
metal after I was ran off the road,
the day you thought I might have died.
Because you always knew when I need you.
You still always know when I need you,
Because I always do.

— The End —