Submit your work, meet writers and drop the ads. Become a member
 
The fourth floor window reveals nothing
Save for a jagged row of apartment buildings,
The mist that precedes the rain,
And, of course, a blank slate sky
Obscured by the built-up layers of dust
And debris that cake the window,
Spreading like mold from the cracks
And blooming in the corners
As the world falls to pieces
In the pouring rain that cannot hope
To wash away the sins I have committed
In this place.
You can find more of my poetry at caitlincacciatore.wordpress.com
He calls himself a runaway,
A bandit, a thief, a liar,
But I have seen a sacred place
Trapped inside of him,
And he is just as human
As he claims not to be.

He wanders the backroads at twilight,
Whistling, wondering, waiting,
Watching for a double rainbow;
He’s seen six, and is living for the seventh,
“Another sin,” he’ll say,
And maybe he’ll never find it,
Or perhaps he’ll be released, somehow.
Poem based on the prompt: Write a poem using the words and phrases "runaway," "double rainbow," "another sin," "somehow released," and "runaway."

You can find more of my poetry at caitlincacciatore.wordpress.com
You’ve never seen that side of me,
And you never will, if I have my way,
But there is a part of me,
Buried deep,
That is the storm
And the fire and the ice
And the wind and the rage
And the pestilence and the plague
And the bearer of death itself.
What’s broken here,
I think,
Is not my poetry
Nor my prose,
Not honesty
But rather courage and cowardice,
And the fine lines we draw
In the sand between them,
Nightly as the tide comes to wash away our work,
Yet daily we are left
Standing in the wrong –
Too far to the left,
Too much to the right,
Sometimes missing the mark entirely –
Me and my broken English,
You and your broken heart,
And both of us left here wondering,
Out of all the words
In all the languages
In all the world,
Why is it so hard to find the ones to say:
“I love you?”
You can find more of my poetry at caitlincacciatore.wordpress.com
Well,
Such is life,
C’est la vie,
They tell me,
But I rebel
Against the very notion
And I just want you to know
Deep down inside
And then deeper still
That I do not accept your broken French
Because you don’t know ‘life’
Until you’ve made the decision it’s over,
And changed your mind.
You can find more of my poetry at caitlincacciatore.wordpress.com
True courage
Is not the winning of wars,
But rather the dignity
Of a graceful defeat
From which one moves on
Swiftly, like the last of the morning stars
Bleeding from the sky.
You can find more of my poetry at caitlincacciatore.wordpress.com
I crave you;
I savor the perfume
That fills the air when your legs part,
I cherish the brush of my fingertips
Against your thighs,
I adore your tiny little moan
As I enter your sacred space,
I worship at your altar,
Caressing every inch of you
As our bodies move together,
Yours arching to meet mine,
Toes curling and fingers scrambling
For purchase against the silk sheets,
I treasure the way you whimper
When I whisper in your ear,
“Mine,” and your answer is simple –
“Yours."
You can find more of my poetry at caitlincacciatore.wordpress.com
Inside of me lies
A graveyard of dreams derailed,
Mangled hopes,
Broken homes,
Half finished poems
That no one dares to complete,
And all the while,
While these things lie sleeping
Under their stones,
A flower grows where the children
Don’t dare to go,
But I am skilled in the art of savagery,
So I go down by the graveyard
Every few moons,
Settle down where one day
My bones will find their final rest,
I look at the sky,
And I think –
“How great it must be,
To be alive.”
You can find more of my poetry at caitlincacciatore.wordpress.com
Flowers killed by first frost,
Lovers lost to a language barrier,
Late-night trains carrying no passengers,
The bittersweet dregs from the cup we call life;
These are things sorrowful beyond compare,
Things that sing of emptiness,
And brutality, and, as always,
The space between us –
Yawning and gaping like the interstellar void;
Yet these are the things that draw us together,
That make us one;
These are the things we share,
Despite the dismal reality
That even the atoms within us,
Cluttered so close, yet so far,
Are mostly just
Empty space
(    .    )
You can find more of my poetry at caitlincacciatore.wordpress.com
“I will bury you,”
Should only be said
By the Earth below us,
And the Sky above;
“I shall outlast you,”
Should be spoken only
By the birds and the bees,
And perhaps the leaves on the trees,
For all that remains of a man
When he is long-gone
Is the whisper of his memory
Along the cosmic wings of time,
And, of course, the planet
That became his tomb,
Busy growing and changing,
Too vast and ancient
To see his life as greatness,
Yet too resilient
To mourn him.
You can find more of my poetry at caitlincacciatore.wordpress.com
It was the end of May and
My love was in full bloom,
Lush and vibrant and full
Of musical moments of merriment,
Soft and comfortable and
Shining like the Northern Lights,
Beautiful and brash and
Everything I’d ever wanted.

June was taking a bow as
The curtain came to a close,
And my love grew gentler and
Sweeter, lovelier,
If you will,
But the roses wither, the music dies,
Light fades, and
My love was no more.
You can find more of my poetry at caitlincacciatore.wordpress.com
Last night’s clothes
Still smell like the ghost of you,
Burnt amber and a hint of allspice,
Just enough to leave me
Haunted.
You can find more of my poetry at caitlincacciatore.wordpress.com
I believe in humanity.
I worship at the altar of peace.
I pray for salvation from within.

I have no faith in human gods;
Just the minds
That dreamt them up from nothing.

Yet I falter, and I doubt
And even if it’s just for tonight,
I admit my gods are as false as any other.

I am a heathen.
You can find more of my poetry at caitlincacciatore.wordpress.com
I am a hurricane,
Bottled,
All roaring, blind rage
And swirling, soaring highs.
I destroy,
I make the waters rise up
Like Noah’s Flood,
And I won’t tell you
Not to be scared.

I am the genie,
Freed,
And I promise
Never to take an oath I won’t break.
I lie,
And play games
You don’t know the rules to,
And I’m the one who’ll tell you –
Be unafraid.

Come;
Let me show you my world,
Let yourself get swept away.
You wished for me;
Here I am.
You can find more of my poetry at caitlincacciatore.wordpress.com
The ******* the train is nothing more
Than an illusion, or perhaps a delusion;
What is she, if not the bitter, bitter dregs,
The last of the burnt coffee, gone cold,
The watered down scrapings off the bottom
Of the cup we call life?
You can find more of my poetry at caitlincacciatore.wordpress.com
I set out to be a better man,
And though the path is littered
With the remains of those
Who faltered at the gate,
Those who failed further on,
And every poor soul who’s still crawling by,
Battered and embittered
By the trials of the trail,
It’s these little victories
That keep me going,
Choosing love over hatred,
Kindness over cruelty,
Calm over that brutal impulse
Deep within each of us,
Sight over blindness,
Speech over silence.
You can find more of my poetry at caitlincacciatore.wordpress.com
I wanted to write you into a love poem,
But all I can conjure
Is a picture of a girl crying off her mascara
On a stoop in the south of Chicago,
Smeared burgundy lips wrapped around
One
Thin cigarette,
And the man she used to love
Entering the scene upon his exit
From the doorway with it’s crumbling yellow paint,
Pale, now, in the rising moonlight,
Faded from
Two
Decades of wind and rain,
And the gun he’s hiding behind his back –
“Come in,” he says to her –
Voice shaking in the cold December night,
And she says
Three
Words in return,
Breath rising like a halo around her lips,
But it’s lost to the wicked wind,
And he raises his hand and puts
Four
Slim, flattening bullets
Into her, and the
Five
Children they had together
Come running
Just as the church bells ring,
Announcing the arrival of the hour
Six.


You can find more of my poetry at caitlincacciatore.wordpress.com
It was June, the month of broken promises and hopeless dreams.
I was further gone than I’d been before, perhaps a bit recklessly,
But we were young and restless and the night was aging fast.

So we went to war, all guns and roses and bloodless violence;
The guns weren’t loaded, and the roses had wilted last month,
But we needed to see who’d be victorious, so we fought.

The battle raged on and on past the midnight hour, and I?
I prayed for my salvation, and that I’d die younger than the others
Because we couldn’t stop until there was but one man left standing.

It was June, the land of broken dreams and hopeless promises.
I was young, perhaps younger than I’d been before the war,
But the night was dying, and in the light of dawn I saw.

Morning was breaking, and I was too, but I’d be going home first
Because at my feet were the bloodied bodies of my allies,
Scattered amongst the wilted roses and the now hollow guns

I closed the eyes of the one I’d loved above all the others,
But it was cold as stone and the roses were quickly overtaking him,
Because as hard as I’d prayed that night, death had kept me waiting.

It was June, the realm of love lost and something called grief.
I lay me down to rest amongst the young roses, and, bitter, bitter, bitter,
I celebrated the century with a single deadly bullet called deliverance.
You can find more of my poetry at caitlincacciatore.wordpress.com
Last Chance Lane
Is where we all end up at some point
Or another,
Where we pause at the doorway,
Thinking –
“This is it,”
Mourning the end of an era,
Grieving the death of a way of living,
Sorrowfully wishing, wondering,
Whispering into the autumn breezes –
“Why?”
For the past is irrevocably over,
And the present brutally flashing before our eyes,
But here, now, cruising down Last Chance Lane,
Doing ninety on ’80,
You can see the most fleeting of glimpses into the future,
You may peek into a world
Where you know the mistake you’re about to make,
But you go right ahead
And make it anyway.
You can find more of my poetry at caitlincacciatore.wordpress.com
“Walk on water, it’ll be all right,”*
She says to me,
And I know I’ve found either God
Or His adversary,
Fifty-fifty shot either way,
And the odds are my favour,
Fifty one-forty nine,
Perhaps,
And here, now,
In the open ocean,
On the edge of the raft,
Standing spread-armed and close-eyed
On the ledge of some great precipice,
I take a leap
Of faith.
You can find more of my poetry at caitlincacciatore.wordpress.com
Everything is defined
As something I let slip through my fingers,
Like sand in an hourglass,
Because the moment a dream comes true
The clock is ticking,
The race is on,
And I’m running after you
Like some strange lost girl
Chasing the stars in your eyes,
But there comes a time
When everything is written in the dictionary
As ‘too good to be true’
And the stars in your eyes fade
To nothingness
While you reveal yourself
As the beast hidden in his pretense of beauty,
And I realize I’ve been tricked yet again
Only to look down
To find my hands empty
Of the dream I always knew
Was going to fly away
No matter how tight I held on.
You can find more of my poetry at caitlincacciatore.wordpress.com
What I heard
And what you said
Subtlety clash,
Like that split second
Between reaching out
And realizing
That the person in the mirror
Is not reaching back.
You can find more of my poetry at caitlincacciatore.wordpress.com
The room is still spinning,
And so is she,
Twirling as she dances,
Skirts lifting high,
Arms outstretched,
Heart ****** forward,
An offering to herself;
Maybe later I will
Drink from that holy chalice
As well,
But for now
I stumble
Across the dance floor,
Never as graceful
Or as elegant as she,
Never as beautiful
Or as resplendent,
Never anything like the shining star
I rose to catch
On a bitter winter day
Yet beloved by that angel
That fell from the Heavens
Into my arms.

And into my arms
She falls again,
And rises on her tippy-toes
To kiss me,
Gentle and slow,
Before spinning once more.
Dizzy
And drunk in love,
We both fall
Into each other,
Onto the floor,
And I soar to new highs
With once glance into her eyes,
Sparkling with mischief.
I part my lips to speak her name,
But she silences me
With one slim flinger,
And it is left unspoken.
You can find more of my poetry at caitlincacciatore.wordpress.com
Twilight
And dawn,
Rendered into one, the promise of morning
Against the timeless, ancient values of night,
Eclipsed by the brutal reality of day,
Seen in the sky like distant stars,
Orbiting but separate and never the twain shall meet,
Save for when they do,
For all those times a baby’s cry sounds to ring in
His mother’s last breath,
Or he, stillborn, does not speak at all,
Destined to be silenced in the cosmic noir,
Mute, but not forgotten,
Or when, at our final appointment in Samara,
We hazard to ask,
“O Glorious Death, what is next?”
You can find more of my poetry at caitlincacciatore.wordpress.com
I drew a line in the sand
Between you and me,
And said, “Thou shalt
Not crosseth this line.”
Well, the waters of time
Rise and they fall, and
The trench I’d dug
Flooded with the truth,
Spilling unbidden from
These lips and I, frozen
In shame and something
Like fear demanded,
“Thou shalt not crosseth
These waters.” And you,
Faithful and tangled in
My web of lies, did not
Cross. But, like Jesus
On the Cross, we bled,
And the rivers of blood
Knew no borders, so
I fled, further up the
Mountain, until there
Was an ocean between
Us. And I commanded,
“Thou shalt not crosseth
This sea.” But, having
Drawn my line in the sand,
I’d forgotten for a moment
The world was round,
And I found myself back
On a beach in Normandy
With you.
You can find more of my poetry at caitlincacciatore.wordpress.com
I ain’t nothin’ but a low life,
Nothin’ but wasted time
And broken dreams
Nailed together
To a crooked cross;
I ain’t nothin’ when it all falls away,
Nothin’ at all when the curtain parts,
When the stage clears,
When the spot light is on me,
When the audience of the ghosts of loves past
Rises in harmony,
Floating heavenward
To serenade my swan song
The only way they know how –
Leavin’ me with nothin’ but my low life.
You can find more of my poetry at caitlincacciatore.wordpress.com
The greatest resistance you can offer
Is knowing you will one day die,
Yet choosing to live anyway.
You can find more of my poetry at caitlincacciatore.wordpress.com
Reach for the stars;
They can be had,
But only the long way ‘round,
Through time or trials,
And in the early morning,
When the last of them were fading,
I reached out,
And fell just short;
There was no Heavenly hand
To cushion my Fall,
Just the same dream of impact
That Lucifer himself
Must have invented
When someone,
More subtle
Than the other beasts
Of the Garden called Paradise
Whispered to him –
“Reach for the stars;
They can be had.”
You can find more of my poetry at caitlincacciatore.wordpress.com
I once set out to write a tale
Of woe and wonder,
Fame and fortune,
Pride and prejudice,
If you will.

Little did I know
That on the other side of my pen,
Lie a deity, a god of sorts,
A creator of things,
A writer of words,
And scare had I perceived him
When his voice thundered from the Heavens,
That I was not a hero by any measure,
Not the protagonist, nor her ally,
Not even a passer-by was I.

No,
I was summarily told that I was the enemy,
Or rather – The Adversary,
That ancient foe Lucifer,
Cast down,
Cursed
To pen tales of Paradise Lost
And write in my Devil’s Notebook,
For if I wanted knowledge,
Said he,
I would have to earn it,
And yearn for it,
And burn
Here
In hell for it.
You can find more of my poetry at caitlincacciatore.wordpress.com
The kaleidoscope patterns of our footprints in the sand
And those of the seagulls that litter the beach
Like black and white winged pebbles
Are slowly being washed away by the rising water line,
Time and the encroaching tide welcoming us
Into the sea, with the Dolphins and the mermaids
Swimming and lounging on little mountains of rock
Close to the shore, beckoning us into their world.

Our world lies further back, behind the tide line,
The umbrellas and sunscreen and such
To shield us from the blazing sun
That sustains all life in their realm and ours,
And is, perhaps, the first and strongest connection we share
In this blinding world of sand and sunshine,
Where we and them become us.

We wade into the sea, all tentative, coltish legs
And shivers as the waves crash over us.
Everything turns magical as we dive in,
The underwater world blinding us with
It's salty, sandy currents and steams,
But through the rose tint borne
Of our foreignness in this place,
All I can see are dreams coming true.

A lady of the sea paddles up to us,
Offering us her treasures if we'll come
Live in her coral home and breathe the same salt water,
And I, lost in her world, found in her beauty,
Reach out to take her pale hand in mine,
And become as she says,
"I am yours, forever now, as you are forever mine."
You can find more of my poetry at caitlincacciatore.wordpress.com
The days blend seamlessly into one another,
Like dusk til dawn exists
In the blink of some cosmic eye,
Dazed but not blinded
By the dapple pattern of the stars
Against the interstellar void.

The days fly endlessly by,
Like leaves being blown away
On some strange autumn wind,
Destined to go
Places where I’m not.

The days never end,
Until they do,
Like some starcraft distant
In both space and time,
Finding the edge of the universe
And falling over it.
You can find more of my poetry at caitlincacciatore.wordpress.com
Summer fling,
Don’t mean a thing;
I was made in the ‘hood,
Reborn and resurrected
In the parts they like to call Hell.

One night stands
Drunken regrets;
When you wake up I’ll be gone
And in my place
Will be a note sealed with a kiss
And a promise broken before it was made.
You can find more of my poetry at caitlincacciatore.wordpress.com
The night was pale and poised on the precipice of perfection;
There was no darkness to speak of,
Just the colors and creations of some wayward artist,
The broad brushstroke of the galaxy
Silhouetted and speckled with distant stars,
Each one a story,
And every one untold.
You can find more of my poetry at caitlincacciatore.wordpress.com
It was Sunday, the day of madness, and I alone knew that.

Awakened in the midnight hours by another magnificent work

By the artist himself;




I’d spent the evening studying another of his masterpieces,

And I suppose that the indelible ochre ink he preferred

Stained my dreams;




I carried his ink and quill with me as I lay me down to sleep,

And, with great care, placed them on the night table

Nearest the door;




I laid down on his canvas, and covered myself in his melodies,

As the clock rang to announce the coming of midnight

And the silence grew louder still;




It had been Saturday, a day of merriment, a day of rejoicing,

But Saturday was no more, and the artist was indeed inspired

By its absence;




And in the darkness, he handed me a light - a painting,

A self portrait carved into a shard of the mirror I’d broken earlier,

Entitled - The Art of Loneliness.
You can find more of my poetry at caitlincacciatore.wordpress.com
Tell me
If I’m wrong,
But haven’t we been here before?
We reach this same fork in the road
No matter where we turn,
No matter the distance,
No matter the time.
Tell me,
How many times
Will I have to make this choice
Between those two old foes,
Light and Dark,
Good and Evil,
The Better Man and the Fool?
Tell me,
How many times
Will I have to make the decision
To take the harder road,
The steeper path,
The journey more strewn with danger,
The straight and the narrow?
And tell me,
If I dare ask,
How many times
Will I fail?
You can find more of my poetry at caitlincacciatore.wordpress.com
“Love is like a reckless twin; I’m giving in.”
Scandipop on the radio,
The scent of marijuana hanging heavy in the air;
The fruits of my love lie wasted,
Rotting away,
Overripe and burdensome,
And I drink deeply from the sweet pools of wine
That gather where the fruits were bruised,
Either by their lesser fall,
Or their greater failure,
Having been inspected by most,
And rejected by all.
Inspired by Mads Langer's 'Lonely Street.'

Marked explicit just in case.

You can find more of my poetry at caitlincacciatore.wordpress.com
Someone please show me
Where the ‘good’ in goodbye
Comes in;
Is it through the side door,
Or does it break in
Like a thief in the night?

Someone please tell me
When the ‘good’ in goodbye
Shows up,
Because it’s been late coming
And my patience
Is wearing thin.

Someone please answer me
Why the ‘good’ in goodbye
Never arrives,
Not through the side,
Nor through the window,
Not late, not ever.

Someone please teach me
How the ‘good’ in goodbye
Came to be;
Or is it just some forlorn, desperate hope
That the ‘good’ in goodbye
Can drown out the thundering sorrows of our farewells?
You can find more of my poetry at caitlincacciatore.wordpress.com
The road to hell is paved with good intentions,
But the only way out is a ****** backroad
That is unpaved save for the jagged remains
Of the souls that didn’t quite make it.
You can find more of my poetry at caitlincacciatore.wordpress.com
We were drawn together
Not by magnetism,
Though that would come later,
As we fell into orbit
Like a planet
And its satellite
Spinning helplessly
Around their star.

No,
It began much more humanly,
Though not humanely,
As we, thrown together
Through chance,
Negotiated
The rules
Of a game
Neither of us ever learnt
To play.

The name of the game
Was left unspoken,
Lost in translation -
Stolen
By the language of fear,
And the many tongues of that ancient serpent
Called hatred.

So shine I did,
Perhaps a bit too brightly,
And she,
Never having learned
Not to stare into the sun
Got caught up in the flames
As I burned
And burned
And burned
Out.
You can find more of my poetry at caitlincacciatore.wordpress.com
The vast emptiness of space,
And the passage of time,
The void between an atom’s nucleus
And her orbiting particles,
The fact that we are made of elements
Forged in dying stars,
And, not to be forgotten,
The perplexing reality
That we are little more than empty space
Floating on a green and blue island
That somehow beat trillion-to-one odds
In a lifeless, desert void
Where the shadow-signals of our loneliness
Carve brave new trails through the darkness,
Only to fizzle out
And die like a match struck
In a lightless room,
There one second;
Gone the next.
I read somewhere that radio signals sent out into space degrade in a couple of dozen lightyears.

You can find more of my poetry at caitlincacciatore.wordpress.com
They called me Pluto from afar, and I,
Nameless and void, embraced the title
With the force of a thousand burning suns,
Each one like the star I loved ever so dearly,
An immense sphere of fire which had me
Helplessly, hopelessly bound by its gravity,
Caught in its orbit from the beginning of time.

They called me Pluto still from further still,
Speaking my name as the orbit of myself
And their water world drove us apart,
And I gladly, worshipfully rejoiced –
I had a name; I was no longer void.
I was distant still, but they called me Pluto,
And I wore my name like regalia,
A crown upon my lifeless skin.

They called me Pluto still as they
Waded further from the cosmic shore
That was their home, sending probes
That touched the regolith of Mars –
There was life, and light, spreading out from Planet Earth,
So I waited, hoping they’d come for me
Sooner rather than later, tomorrow and not two centuries from now.

They called me Pluto even as they stripped me of my name –
I was ‘planet’ no longer,
And I grew colder and bitterer as I spun,
Because I knew things they did not,
Things about the rise and fall of civilizations.
They did not see what I had seen,
They had not been watching
Since the dawn-time.

They called me Pluto,
And they cried my name
As I watched them burn,
The light of the flickering candle in the dark
That had once been humankind
Flaring, more luminous than the sun for one bright, shining moment,
Then fading.

They called me Pluto in the aftermath,
As if I were the God of the underworld,
Guarding their lost souls from my far-off perch,
Shepherding that which could not be led,
But I was not their God, even if I’d once fathomed them as mine.
So here I wait, patient, eternal, void and barren,
For them to leave me lonely when they no longer
Dare to speak my name from the realm
I am the supposed guardian of;
They called me Pluto.
You can find more of my poetry at caitlincacciatore.wordpress.com

Edited August 2017
Are trees late turning
Autumnal disappointments,
Failing to burn with the colors of fall,
Or are they the victors,
Standing sentinel in their shades of summer
Just a second longer?
You can find more of my poetry at caitlincacciatore.wordpress.com
First light,
And another long day,
Young gods slowly growing older;

Moonrise,
And the death of another day,
Old gods slowly fading back to black.
You can find more of my poetry at caitlincacciatore.wordpress.com
I look at her,
All graceless, shameless beauty,
And I am again
Amazed that us two should
Have come together in the way we did,
Astounded that we swim in the same waters,
Awed that I get to walk in her world,
I, who started from the bottom up;
She, who started at the top, and,
Like Lucifer cast from Heaven,
f
e
l
l

Paradise Lost and Losing My Religion
Are sacred to her,
As am I,
But I don’t tell her
About the scars I count like stars
And call by name,
Nor do I mention the blood on her hands,
Mostly her own, mingled with that
Of us unlucky few.

She dances in the sun,
And I wish I could join her,
But fear stills my tongue
And I am silent still;
Silent, and silently suffering,
Tending to her wounds
But never to mine,
And wondering, as always,
When she will flit, fairy-like,
Into the arms
Of someone better than I.
You can find more of my poetry at caitlincacciatore.wordpress.com
I must confess
That the sun went West,
For it is in its nature
To do so,
Just as it is in mine
To follow its path,
A wanderer wandering,
A rouge retreating
Forever into the sunset,
Always seeking,
Never finding,
Always looking,
Never seeing.
You can find more of my poetry at caitlincacciatore.wordpress.com
The ghost of you dances
Within me,
Just as you used to dance
Without me
On the veranda like no one
Was watching,
When the dance floor was
Yours for miles.
You can find more of my poetry at caitlincacciatore.wordpress.com

— The End —