lyndal-doherty
I found a love for poetry back in middle school, but didn't really dig my roots in until 4 years ago when I realized all those crazy thoughts I wrote down in notebook upon notebook could be synthesized into poems. Poetry helps me organize my thoughts and understand my life more easily in a more personal way and sure, sometimes I write in more of a spoken word style, but hey, poetry is poetry and it comes from the heart no matter what form.
*Your eyes are too wide.
You wonder too much, my dear.
Conformity is best.*
Why not break the mold?
I will live outside the box:
A force of new things!
*No, my child, no...
Voice low and your mind silent.
Then they will like you.*
Apr 6, 2015
Apr 6, 2015 at 10:52 PM UTC
We keep using the phrase
later on in life
A vague band-aid for the now.
But how do you define it?
When does it come?
There are no numbers.
There is no time.
People don't have time to be human
because they are waiting
for a tomorrow that won't come.
All that is certain is that later is promised.
It will come.
Whether it be a day, a week, or 22 years.
Even the seconds ticking by now
is your later coming true.
You will make it to your later.
I promise.
Apr 2, 2015
Apr 2, 2015 at 11:55 PM UTC
The deluge came without warning,
too fast for it to seep underground.
So, they broke the soil for a taste of rain
and openly met the flood.
They cinched towards exposed surfaces
only asking for more.
So quickly, it was as if
their bloated bodies were ripped from the soil
and thrown to the sidewalk.
They littered the pathways.
A mass suicide in pink.
Apr 2, 2015
Apr 2, 2015 at 12:12 AM UTC
Somewhere, there is a poem written for you.
Maybe I’m not the one who wrote it,
but somewhere,
someone saw the beauty of your movements
and thought the only way to capture it was with words.
So they put pen to paper,
ink to lines,
and wrote down all your curves and angles.
They toiled,
line by line, letter by letter, and word by word
and when the words united
they made a sentence,
and that sentence made
an arm, a leg, a mind, a person.
Your life wrote poem upon poem
until you had an anthology so thick you had to move on.
And you walked out of that book
with a crooked smile and a determined look
right into the world of the unknown.
But that’s ok because you liked it that way.
The more unfamiliar the better.
It left you room to fill your pages
with your side of the story instead of someone else’s.
You are like some eclectic collector,
storing parts of your life for later,
or in a worse case, a rainy day.
And you don’t collect stories or poetry.
You collect words.
And people would dare try to erase you!
I tried to erase you…
But you never left.
As I looked from a different angle,
seeing if it made any difference then.
But no, you were still there,
broken and bent at your odd angle,
permanent and black on the page.
Sep 18, 2014
Sep 18, 2014 at 2:21 PM UTC
I sat and watched the sky line.
Just below the horizon street lamps flicked on in response to a early morning commuter.
The sky was just blushing pink and orange.
How the colors could seamlessly fade from the ink of night to the fire of the morning never ceased to amaze me.
It was then that I thought of home.
The sun comes up in the east everyday
without fail.
And I know that the same sun that I saw had risen for you exactly 16 minutes earlier.
A four hour drive and the sun could cover it in mere minutes.
I sat and thought that maybe,
just maybe,
if I could cover an hour of distance in 4 minutes maybe,
just maybe,
I could watch that same old sun rise.
Twice in one day.
Two new beginnings.
One extra sunrise in my life.
All in the span of 16 minutes.
Could you get anymore beautiful than that?
Mar 17, 2014
Mar 17, 2014 at 12:38 AM UTC
We fell in love over a game of war.
With others the game could have lasted for hours,
but with you I scored because I won in only a few moves.
What I didn't know
was at the same time I was winning your affection.
You saw me at my worst
and yet I faced no rejection
of me being tired, crazy, and probably cranky
but you still liked me like the best you could see.
I wish I had known then that I would fall for you.
I wish I had known all about you.
But I'm getting there.
Slowly.
And people who don't know you say I could do better.
And I laugh, smile, and play along,
but no.
Maybe I could, but I wouldn't want to.
Better is not always best,
but you are the best you can be
and you may not be perfect
but you're perfect for me.
And that's love.
You’re the last thing on my mind before I go to sleep
and you are my first thought when I wake
and I'm longing to keep
these memories of you close,
because quite frankly long distance *****
and you and I both agree
but when our four year stretch is finally up
you and I will be free
to have and to hold to love and to cherish
until we are old and when we finally perish
people will know us,
not me,
not you,
but both of us together
and I know the real truth
that love can sneak up like in a game of cards
when the two people playing accidentally play only with hearts.
Dec 2, 2013
Dec 2, 2013 at 8:35 PM UTC
I grew up between the pages of a book
with invisible friends that could only be seen
through the mind’s eye.
I could envision what wasn’t there
and I was free to write my own adventure.
Maybe that is why I became an actor.
Because I wasn’t quite ready to give up
on the game of make-believe.
And I knew a man who wasn’t quite ready to give up
on learning.
When he read books, he fell in love with every word.
It was a new romance with each turn of the page.
His heart would lie on
page 85,
Or 50,
Or 123,
depending on whether or not he enjoyed a character that day.
Throwing books was always acceptable,
And he could demand excellence by simply peeking over his crooked glasses.
He was content to exist in perfect silence
and asked the same of us.
But when those moments of silence were broken
beautiful choruses erupted
because he believed that poetry was like a song without a tune;
Even the most tone deaf could croon
to the sweet melody of simple phrases
that even inexperienced tongues could move to.
Music was everywhere in the room.
In the scribbling of pencils,
The cracking of a book’s spine,
The laugh of a student,
Or in the mind of a great teacher.
He was the kind of man I could have believed
had placed the moon in the sky with only his words.
And we were blessed to be his diaries of flesh
and with every hushed story he told
and every beautiful word he spoke
he became an open book.
And by the end, we only wanted more,
but he simply stated,
“You know all my stories. We read them all.”
And with that, he pushed us from the nest
and he expected us to fly,
and so much more.
I was amazed by him because he taught me to soar.
There are some amazing individuals out there
that we are blessed to know
and with them, minds blossom so,
a teacher of language and beauty is not soon forgotten.
Oct 14, 2013
Oct 14, 2013 at 11:24 AM UTC
The average American teenage girl,
when in love,
will lose and average of two hours of sleep a night
talking to that special someone.
On average,
they also might experience a mild case
of internal befuddlement.
No worries though,
it only feels as if your stomach imploded
and your heart is in your throat.
Plus, the elevated levels of dopamine in your system
can only mean one thing:
Delusions of grandeur.
Stay calm!
These will only further explain the feeling
you are experiencing,
and that my friend is
infatuation,
adoration,
fascination,
or in other words,
Love.
When it comes to love,
I broke terminal velocity when I fell for you.
But, you know,
terminal velocity is just an average.
Sep 17, 2013
Sep 17, 2013 at 1:52 PM UTC
Rainy Day To-Do List
Perch high in your favorite
tree on the perfect branch
Observe the receding lightning’s
final flashes.
Eavesdrop on a robin’s conversation.
Clap Along with the thunder
Go ahead and leave a few bare
footprints in the soft earth.
Ponder the low hanging clouds.
Sing with the birds.
And then…
Disappear inside with the first
rays of sunshine.
Sunny Day To-Do List
Take a moment
and listen in on a yellow grasshopper’s gossip
through the towering blades of grass.
Let the sun kiss your cheeks
till they are pink
and let the warm breeze gently soothe
your rouged face.
Wonder what the ants are up to.
Watch while a leaf falls down.
Compare the sky to a
calm,
blue
ocean
And dare not disturb it with a sound.
Sep 17, 2013
Sep 17, 2013 at 1:42 PM UTC
When I was small,
I had the idea that I wanted a fairy tale love story
with a brave prince to save me,
take me in his arms and ask me to be his,
but I don’t want that anymore.
I want the imperfections,
the awkwardness.
I don’t want you to be my prince charming.
I want you as you are.
I want my awkward white boy from the Midwest
who likes video games, sports, and sings like an angel.
So sing to me,
because if eyes are the windows to the soul
then your voice is a door flung wide open.
And when I thought all my doors where closed
you invited me in for Chick Fil A and lemonade.
It just wasn’t going through my thick head.
You were dropping hints harder than boulders
and it took me awhile,
but I finally cracked on a Pokémon poem,
which you didn’t write,
but the words were just as sweet as ones of your own.
I was oblivious to your advances,
but they say love is blind.
So I want to be lost
like Helen Keller in an Ikea.
And while I am there,
I will pick out a bookshelf for him to build
and we will share stories by the glow of the fire.
The essence of your presence is like smoke
and as fleeting as a dream on the precipice of sleep.
You are like the ‘Q’ words in Scrabble.
You don’t come around often,
but when you do, it’s pretty rewarding.
I wanted to learn every combination of your letters,
but I was careful of my spelling
because I knew your grammatical ways.
Show me chivalry is not dead.
Prove the world wrong, stare it in the face,
turn the other way and take me in your arms.
Instead of a superman in tights,
you will be my savior in gym shorts
because that is much more real
than a dragon slaying demigod.
Aug 18, 2013
Aug 18, 2013 at 12:10 AM UTC