Ten –
I loved you much
Nine –
As not anyone before.
Eight –
I forgave you a lot of
Seven –
Falsehood and lots more.
Six –
I threw into whirlpool.
Five –
I suffered meanness.
Four –
When it was cold,
Three –
I gave up proudness.
Two –
I waited for love in return,
One –
But I didn’t wait.
While I was waiting for your love,
My love got lost for late.

when you left
you took the color with you,
and now the world
is like an old television set,
with muffled sound
that grates the ears,
and a picture
that cuts in and out,
filled with static,
in brilliant black and white,
that's made more of shades of gray.
did your world get more vibrant,
when you de-saturated mine?
or did the color
disappear entirely;
slipping out of your fingers
to be consumed
by the void
where my heart
once lived

Contributed by @the.poetic.gatsby
On Instagram, Threads and TikTok

Words poised on my tongue,
courage blinks, then vanishes
silence takes its place.

i could stare at your very photogenic (albeit invisible) countenance all day, all week, the entire month, this remaining year, at least one additional decade, boot no more than a century21!

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Looking for a best friend, or...a wurst (liver) re: enemy.

brief bio Matthew Scott Harris doth briefly sketch
almost two win a half score years since me being:
Born January 13th, 1959

I shake my shaggy hirsute hair
in utter disbelief, when the cocked arrow
begat thine conception,
when meal ate mum and octogenarian papa

begat their second offspring and only son,
what now seems to be a stepped-up pace,
where father time doth affix another candle to blow
where the passage of life measured

in swiftly tailored decades
denoting another birthday,
when with the blink of an eye,
I vividly recall crow

wing like a Lil whippersnapper of a boy
leisurely playing monopoly
for make-believe dough...
--------------------------------------------
nothing ranks as the greatest gift
since being a father twenty-one years ago
then bearing witness to grow
increasing autonomy

of my two precious daughters
whereby each will become master
of their domain, and meet a loving beau
(actually thy eldest dates
a delightful young man
from Puerto Re Coe),

whom intuition discerns would be
a near perfect match –
and this papa intuits dough
nuts to dollars – that such an
em man hint gentle, humble,

intelligent lad – doth ***
pa fully become the future groom
of said firstborn, (which outcome I know
wing couched in a couple of poems

sent his way, and no doubt his smarts lo'
and behold revealed the slightly obscure wish),
where love doth most obviously abound mo'
then prevailed between myself and bride o'

mine these last deuce score
plus (21+) years, but now this Poe
whit aspires to recognize the worthiness of she,
whose chose thyself as a lifetime
groom cuz peaceful status quo

avoiding animosity –
as thyself and spouse gently row
merrily...merrily...merrily
our quiet quite rickety craft
which oft times in the past needed a tow
off the craggy shoals of constant woe.