Beautiful as faith!
Beautiful as hope!
Beautiful as your parents helping God bring an angel into this world.

Beautiful as brother and sister playing.
Beautiful as hearing children laughing.

Beautiful as warm sunshine though a window,
On a cold winter's day.

Beautiful as a garden of colorful roses.
Beautiful as a rainbow.

Beautiful as cotton clouds floating in a blue sky.
Beautiful when you look up to heaven with a bright smile.
Beautiful as happiness.

Beautiful when you play piano song.
Your piano song is so beautiful it makes me cry.

You are beautiful as...


(C) 2014 Ronald J Chapman All Rights Reserved.

Take this kiss upon the brow!
And, in parting from you now,
Thus much let me avow—
You are not wrong, who deem
That my days have been a dream:
Yet if hope has flown away
In a night, or in a day,
In a vision or in none,
Is it therefore the less gone?
All that we see or seem
Is but a dream within a dream.

I stand amid the roar
Of a surf-tormented shore,
And I hold within my hand
Grains of the golden sand—
How few! yet how they creep
Through my fingers to the deep
While I weep—while I weep!
O God! can I not grasp
Them with a tighter clasp?
O God! can I not save
One from the pitiless wave?
Is all that we see or seem
But a dream within a dream?

Beloved,
In what other lives or lands
Have I known your lips
Your Hands
Your Laughter brave
Irreverent.
Those sweet excesses that
I do adore.
What surety is there
That we will meet again,
On other worlds some
Future time undated.
I defy my body's haste.
Without the promise
Of one more sweet encounter
I will not deign to die.

A free bird leaps on the back
Of the wind and floats downstream
Till the current ends and dips his wing
In the orange suns rays
And dares to claim the sky.

But a BIRD that stalks down his narrow cage
Can seldom see through his bars of rage
His wings are clipped and his feet are tied
So he opens his throat to sing.

The caged bird sings with a fearful trill
Of things unknown but longed for still
And his tune is heard on the distant hill for
The caged bird sings of freedom.

The free bird thinks of another breeze
And the trade winds soft through
The sighing trees
And the fat worms waiting on a dawn-bright
Lawn and he names the sky his own.

But a caged BIRD stands on the grave of dreams
His shadow shouts on a nightmare scream
His wings are clipped and his feet are tied
So he opens his throat to sing.

The caged bird sings with
A fearful trill of things unknown
But longed for still and his
Tune is heard on the distant hill
For the caged bird sings of freedom.

Where dark and devastated loners,
Eat black painted noodles.

Sorry sad singles,
Lonely people!

Who dream of dark things, nightshade and purple;

Dressed in black,
Black nail polish,
Black accessories, black shoes.

Marking the time, but no looking back;

Drowning sorrows,
With little green bottles,
Never love a tear.
Kiss seldom, like a cold rainy holiday,

The small girl nowhere views the black dressed drunk in the mirror.

Missing love on this blackest of days...  


© 2014 Ronald J Chapman All Rights Reserved.

Sketching the life’s anecdotes
With a heavy charcoal pencil
Weight of regret trudges along
Smudging the present feelings
The lines of the palm are hidden
Behind thick darkness of charcoal
Haze of blackness colors everything
Regrets leave an indelible mark
Hard to erase the deep trail of regret