You know you're a poet
When you have walked the tightropes
Of being placed into a confined label
And still look up to a brighter sky of hope.

You know you're a poet
When you hear echoes of voices
That resonate within your mind
From all the mistakes and bad choices.

You know you're a poet
When you can see shades of colour
Within a black and white film
And see value beyond the dollar.

You know you're a poet
When the winter comes you cheer
For all the new found imagery
Like the sight of snow that is white clear.

You know you're a poet
When spring has arrived
You think of a spring in a step
and how a pen-spring is alive.

You know you're a poet
When heartbreak is motivation
For a chance to write sullen words
And heart ache becomes a wonderful creation.

You set fire to my heart my dear,
A fire that cannot be put out by water,
One that cannot be contained
Never to be stomped out
Or reduced to warm embers
And so this wildfire rages,
through my entire body
Engulfing anything in its path
As it searches for you among the ashes

Before you help me,
you better help yourself first
because they tell me it’s unhealthy
for you to be my nurse.

© Matthew Harlovic

In visions of the dark night
  I have dreamed of joy departed—
But a waking dream of life and light
  Hath left me broken-hearted.

Ah! what is not a dream by day
  To him whose eyes are cast
On things around him with a ray
  Turned back upon the past?

That holy dream—that holy dream,
  While all the world were chiding,
Hath cheered me as a lovely beam,
  A lonely spirit guiding.

What though that light, thro’ storm and night,
  So trembled from afar—
What could there be more purely bright
  In Truth’s day star?

Loving you...
Was an out of body experience
Like I was looking through a window,
I watched as we fell in love with each day that passed
The strings distancing our hearts shortening with every kiss
And I watched as I tore it all apart,
fragment by fragment
As if I had no control over it
On this other side of the window
I scream to myself to stop
I can't help but watch in horror
And I can't comprehend
Why I would destroy the best thing I've ever known,
Why I would turn away on the one constant,
The one real, out of this world, crazy, chaotic, beautiful love that I want, that I need
Waiting,
I pray my body and soul join each other once more
So that this nightmare may end
And even though it's surely too late,
I could love you, full force, soul intact
Not from behind this window,
But with my hands resting in yours

Loving you is the best-worst thing I've ever done,
It's the most right, wrong thing I've ever had
It's tore me to shreds,
then stitched me back together,
Without patches, without seams
Even better than before..
Loving you may be chaos,
but it's the chaos that keeps my weary heart beating

If my heart were a ship... It would have just sank to the bottom of the ocean