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To my young eyes
To my innocent heart
I remember the world was a blueprint on canvas
It was a dream undreamt
It was a song unsung
As if in a crib, I looked about me at the stars of the cities
Constellations of people hung about
Their wounds and aches, joys and laughter, were the myths
Like the Zodiacs, groups of these people
Could define a person
Yet believing myself undefined, I strode out from shelter
Fearless
Untamed, I ventured to find my purpose
A purpose that would shake the mountain
Rain down the ash of winter
Smother the pits below my dreams
Cull the nightmares that stoke my fears
I waited
I waited, I waited
I tell you the waiting became my purpose
Finally, there, in the clutch of time, I found my calling
I will tell you all of the waiting
I will tell you, don't wait...

Don't wait for the door to ring
or the latch to unlock

Do not wait for the song to play
or the band to sit

Open the door
Be the composer
Be the pilot of your dreams, be the chieftain, be the god

While waiting for what I could be
I saw everyone else become

With the zeal of their hearts
I saw them build, I saw them grow
This one built a nest
That one stitched a doll
Now the doll's a mannequin and my waiting missed the change

I waited for the waiting to end
I waited for the wanting to decide
I waited for foe or friend
I waited until
there was nothing left inside

Where is the zeal of my heart
The timbre of my soul
I lost the sight, the sound, the love
because waiting took its toll...
Ultimately, I started this poem because I wanted a poem title that started with the letter 'Z' since I didn't have one. That's important, LOL. So important I got inspired, hopped off to a grand beginning, then got lost and saved this poem in a draft. That was May 2021. I was lost then, I realize.
The "timbre of my soul" had quieted. In mourning, it was still.

Yet today, January 21st, 2022, I managed to finish this poem. I opened it up, felt the passion in the words and just went at it. I'm quite satisfied not only with this poem but with the fact I finished it. Finishing, or even starting, longer poems has been a struggle for me.
Writing has been a struggle, all in all. But I will not let the fire die.
That is the one thing I owe myself.

Keep writing. Even if I am starving, in pain, destitute, heartbroken, wrathful, sick, lonely, terrified, abused, blind, crippled, persecuted, villainized, disillusioned, cheated, imprisoned, shackled, insane, exiled, abandoned, lost, confused, desperate, paralyzed, dying, I will do it. I will keep writing.
Is it not the grave that takes them from us
It is not life’s end
Nor is it cruel fate - lost time
Nor is it God’s law - mortal frailty
It is distance that molds our memory
Light-years of joy, sacrifice, love
Painted in echoes of light
Amidst the passions of our hearts
We are tapestries woven in the womb
Adjoining the wider tapestry of family
A rope stretching back to the dawn of man
And forward to the twilight
Distance
How those echoes fade as we pass on the torch
Those who bore us are not mere fires in the dark
They are our suns
The centers of our solar families
Children, like the planets of this solar system
Revolve around each sun
Mother father, father, mother…
And when our sun fades into the endless night
Into a distance beyond our understanding
We are challenged to become the suns ourselves
To hold the worlds around us with the same
Unconditional love
Patience
Truth
Mercy
That was shown to us
A gift to light our way ahead
Into the distances we too shall cross
As we forge the light we shall leave behind.

The burden we face
When we lose the ones we love
Is one of distance
Yet we bear this weight
Not by pleasures or pain
Not by striving or seeking calm alone
We bear it by passing time with those we love
We bear it by sharing the joys vested in us
So that one day, we are the ones passing on
Leaving behind the memories of the suns that birthed us
So that they live on in all we do
We all awake
To know that there are angels among us.
We know angels by how we loved them
How they loved us
And how love unites us all,
Even in the dark
Even when there is distance all around
And the inevitability of our mortal frailty fills us with fear,
Yet, there is an irrepressible force of the human spirit
Whether it is love, creed, or purpose
We feel it when those who have gone
Are still here with us
In our hearts,
A presence in our homes,
A familiar face in our children,
Or a letter in their handwriting
They never leave us.
So that distance
Is not there at all.
It is merely a measure
Of how far we’ve come...
I wrote this poem on Thursday, May 5th, 2021.

It was written as a gift to a coworker to commemorate the death of her father.

I believe this was the second (or third time) I'd written a poem to commemorate an occasion. Both times, I did so rather quickly and on the fly, as I usually do, which fills me with a desire to write more poems to signify life events.

I felt I accomplished a consistent tone of reverence and a toeing of the line between somberness and hope, all of which serves this poem well and which the words in the poem find themselves characterized by.

My coworker was touched by this gift and I believe she read it at her father's eulogy, which, in turn, touched me.

I hope this poem touches you all, too.
I hope that, if you've lost a loved one, that they are, too, angels amongst us.

Enjoy!
DEW
no shinning light

ambulances and cop cars and nightmares
concrete and ashes 

streets too dead for dreaming

the abandon buildings
like tombstones waiting


as night edges prison walls
in the vanishing landscape

we were kings of the neon sky


and when the bars close
through puddles of lost tomorrows
running every red light
on main street

in a sun turned black as night


we were the kings of the neon sky
I searched
searched the sky for her
Don’t know where she went
but I was
losing
my friend
No other lover has her voice
the rhythm of her mind
the presence of her heart
the lyrical cadence
of her footsteps
as she disappeared from sight
Looking in my heart
I chanced upon her soul
and lo, there she was
I let her out of the darkness where she put my love
and the air was full of hope
Not a sound was heard
quiet as the sun
quiet as the moon, my love
and we never left the door open
again
again
Once or twice, I knew
our passion met the tundra
colder than my fury
colder than the rains, can you hear me?
I learned the lion’s roar
in hopes of telling you
that I was too afraid
to love and love again
love and love again
and again
and again
and again
again
Tired of this pain
knives don’t cut as deep
tears don’t ease the pain
of my every heartbreak
And still, I walk the rope
searching for the truth
that I can never breathe in
truth harsh as the sun
drying up the oceans
Never was a truth so large so hard so pure to grasp
that I am
alone, alone
alone, alone again
because the music of pain is love’s refrain
and I’d die to hear the poetry
till the end...
There's so much I could say about myself
and what I said and wish for you to know in this poem
and, as well, wish for myself to know,
but all I can think to say
is I hope you are all okay - better than okay even,
or finding yourself there
searching
like hands in the dark
or an adventurer in a forest
for a way to the light
or a way home.

I spend a lot of time thinking about myself
and perhaps that is why I am so alone.
Perhaps this is why I push others away: so I can have
more time
to think about myself.

I hope you all find a way to be free of such a nightmare.
I hope you all find love, fulfillment, family, a bright future.
I hope that when you find that future, you share it with even those
who don't matter.

Life is too short to be living in pain, missing out on the good fruits
that can be grown and picked
from planting the seeds of kindness, meaningful action, generosity
and eating of what grows from those deeds
the kind of life we can be proud of.

Please do so
not for anyone else in your life
but for yourself.

Be courageous enough to love yourself like you were
the last and the first person
to discover love.
I am a caricature of humanity
- a picture of its seething bowels.

I am its sloshing,
quivering, yet wholly earnest intestines
made manifest - I am,
the inside-out freak show
we all crave
dancing before your eyes
oh, and what a feast of eloquent gizzards you witness!

Feast your eyes, my friends!

I am what you wish you weren't
yet know you could be
as you yearn to be as free as me
all your shame and volatile desires
all your sadness and madness
all your dreamful bliss
I profess it daily
in an ode to you, my fathers and mothers,
in an ode of love for absurdity,
I am the cartoon character made free of its stage
the puppet made free of its strings
the loon, made free of his rage,
a benign insanity,
not capable of harming a germ.

Don't pass by
by all means
gawk
it's my pleasure that you do so
breathe my callousness in
shudder at the thought of being so exposed
having all your human nature bleeding there
like my crying eyes
as I tell you of all my past loves
and how I still love them
yes
even the meatloaf
still eating it
that baby towel
still snuggling it
that algebra homework?
Still completing it
and there's a missing grade somewhere
in a dusty book in a warehouse
imagine
how I'd creep in,
decades from now,
hours before my death,
open that tattered grade-book,
pen myself an A+ for my immaculately completed work
- fist pump the air!
Take that Ms. Cramsworth! I may not have beaten algebra,
but I beat you!

Die right there
in that warehouse
amongst all the other freaks.
There's Bigfoot, who slipped accidentally one day, got impaled by a branch, then called 911 - he had no health insurance, that's all she wrote. Bigfoot's just another disenfranchised-American statistic now. Bigfoot's last painful hours were spent taking selfies with holocaust deniers and people fashioning MAGA hats - some with rifles for effect - it was then Bigfoot regretted voting for Trump and only then. You were just rudely-awakened from having sympathy for Bigfoot, weren't you? Poor baby. Save our souls.
Then there are the cryogenically frozen heads of the Illuminati we're all worried about - they're trying to sleep until humanity can make them superhuman bodies.
A flying saucer that was alien in so far that it was actually a time-machine from our distant future that brought people back to warn us of an all-consuming genocidal calamity, but they spoke a language we didn't understand, had genetically surpassed us, and therefore were unrecognizable to our labs, and we took their highly-advanced babbling as acts of war when they tried to **** the Illuminati heads - killed the so-called aliens then, so tragic - ate their gizzards for research. Now we're all doomed to die... Their bodies were lain next to the Illuminati heads. Centuries later, the same couple, now janitors from the freak warehouse, see themselves, find the time-machine-saucer, and start the time-loop again... inadvertently causing the end of humanity because they messed up the timeline.

... and that's exactly why I never did my homework.
Humanity is doomed to die in some distant future caused by the doom-couple and so I refused to put a brick in the wall. I refused because all I was was a...nother brick in the wall and I hated it.

Because as fascinating as I am.
As absurd as I am.
As much of a human marvel as I am.
I don't matter. I matter the least.

And so that's why I had to die in that off-the-books warehouse,
full of priceless and unmentionable artifacts.
They wouldn't ever put me there, but I had to die with the legends.
I had to give my life meaning somehow.
If I can't live a legend, I will die one... by the way the janitors put me in the trash out back anyway.
I end up in an east-Asian landfill somewhere, kicked in the face by barefoot sweatshop kids who just so happened to make the sneakers on my very feet. Isn't that poetic justice? What a send-off!

And so isn't that all a satisfying and cathartic end,
giving closure to the most absurd poem,
with the most random details,
wasn't that fun?
Just have to bust out a mad-****** like this every once in a while.
Seems an important part of my writing process and growth, LOL.

Enjoy!
-DEW

Find me on Twitter @TheGreatWilson where I write most often these days :)
Come say hi!
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