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Jonathan Surname Aug 2018
Her eyes shake in her sleep.
Is she awake or is she dreaming?
Dare I ask her and bother to interrupt?
No, I'll wait for her to naturally wake up.

It's so loud in the nighttime. The silence is deafening.
The hums of the refrigerator,
air conditioner,
the small city rurality.
Crickets chirp like frog croaks,
dogs bark at bicycle spokes.

She murmurs in her dreams, words that make no sense.
Completely static expressions leave me in wanting suspense.

I wonder where she is now.
Blurry confines of pianoforte,
soft & loud,
like our bed sheets and pillow tops.
Comfort without a sound.

Sleep for her is an ease within which she slips carefully.
She wakes with dreams and stories, descriptions bare
vividly her soul for me to sip.
She happily spends a third of her life having the plaque
of her mind scraped fresh and waking anew.
From the autumn dusk to the spring dawn,
the drying evening to the morning dew.
I sit here awake planning out a future based on days long past.
Watching as dust lingers in the first reminders of sunshafts.

Have you ever watched a loved one wake up from a gentle kiss?
Feeling guilt in the hope of having her wake with your wish?
Seeing the smile split her lips wide and her eyes linger longer
as if she had been worried in her sleep that you had forgot her.

I was always here in the nighttime making sure you were safe.
I'm sorry I fell asleep on you while you were still awake.
But I saw your eyes and they were thriving in their shake.
I assumed you were dreaming, my darling.
Now I'm left with guilt and shame.
one more month and another year lived

Summertime series
Jonathan Surname Aug 2018
Another whimsy, a flimsy summer.
A ******, another loaned heart.
The heat is beaming, the lake is teeming.
With a thousand tiny fireflies,
lighting up the world and dreaming.

A scatter of mattering, a tatter
of matted mating. Cheery cherubs
bathing; in the teem off shore,
a bore, a long lost dream lost
in the hills of your lore.

A fistful of live, a heartfelt of pound.
Woke in a fritz of too-loud sound,
a smitten bit lip bleeding and sending
off to the predators around the way,
an approximated coordinate.

Cordon off the crime scene.
The air thick with iron,
though she was anemic.
I breathed in what made her veins thick.
I shook in my hands,
my fingertips amiss.

For a while I wondered, where the **** was I?
Surely this is still a dream, lakeside,
and lit now were not fireflies,
but cortisol levels and adrenaline eyes.
Pulsed and bugged out, wide.
You never were to see my surprise.

You beat me to it.
Part 1 of my Summertime series.
Jonathan Surname Aug 2018
What a rash of time we've wasted.
Drunken, displaced it all.
The hiking trails up solemn, summer
ridge lines. Jagged arrowheads lifted
out toward the sky and we feel gifted.

A crack in the rock a millennia old.
The dangers of going it alone;
the spy who came in from the cold.

Two open throated eulogies and scatter her ash.
Two years of time spent together, now memorized pash.

Sifting through sight lines of our mediocre city streets.
Sweating up the summertime together-alone,
and getting twisted as we jam to louder growing beats.

We took our hands and divined a place on the timeline.
Steady rocking for two revolutions until
she set over the horizon beyond the sunshine.
Look for her and see her in every which place.
It's never her figure and never her face, but
shower curtain blurs and the curls in hair of other girls.
She exists as every brunette that I'll never forget.
Not that I'd want it.

They say, "She loved you. That much is clear."
What a romantic gesture to abandon me here.

If you can read this from your heavenly repose. My heart has grown fonder and still it grows. I'm sure you can see me,
the struggle of having to be anything at all.
Your number is somebody else's now. There's nobody to call.
Summertime gives way to Autumn,
I'm sorry if you hurt having to see what I do now.
The glyphs in my mountain roots.
My rotting bark and lost spark.
My constant stops and false starts.
My swelling, my welts, the harm I cause.
You're not to be blamed, darling.
Not a single word from my tongue nor do I entertain
the thought of others who wish you disdain.
I've lost a bit of myself in the guilt and the shame.
Truth be told, I'm not sure I'll recover and be the same.
A jilt is one thing, a turn down is fine.
But I lost who told me she was mine.
I should've doted more and been more attentive.
You fell in love with me because I was romantic.
So where did I fail you and how can I improve?
I just want to make you happy,
I just want to show you.
There was no need to quit the way that you did.
We could have taken a break,
you could have hibernated, hid.
But it's fine you chose the way you did.
Now you're the punchline of my dark jokes.
"Oh, I'm sorry, no, I only kid."
Repeating myself like I've forgotten what I even said.
Loving is hard when you've never felt it.
But it's harder than that when you feel it and lost it like I did.
Do you think you can forgive me?
I don't know if promises will be kept forever.
poorly written poem about an anniversary i hate to be alive for and the two years before where my life peaked

six years is much too many,
but still i'm here
sadly
Jonathan Surname Aug 2018
The son's eyes set low as green felt feigns grass stains.
The son does not cry at the father's funeral. The son
holds them in.
He, the son, is now a rung higher
and lower. Simultaneous promotions and
disappearances. He is the last line.

The son does all the planning. For the day of,
the week next.
The month's end, and the bills due.
The son does all the fathering that the father
has now left behind.
He is now a caretaker. A husband to two wives,
his,
and his.
The son and the father
were not strong in their love.
Not a single day.

The son will find humility where once was cruelty.
Where once was impulse he finds patience.
Where once a sinner comes anew virtue.

The son is now a house where once was a home.
The son is now alone.
watching a friend mourn a sudden loss, perhaps paying too close of attention

Be well those of you suffering in the summertime
HTR Stevens Jun 2018
It is raining in my heart,
‘Cos you are going away.
Will we always be apart?
My world has gone sad and grey.

Will you be back when I lite
Your little candle for you?
My soul will always burn bright,
When I am expecting you.

All the happy times we shared,
Will we always remember?
Everything we feared and dared,
January to December?

Will you be back by and by?
To our memories I cling.
I am sad, I want to cry;
To me you are everything.

Why are the stars still shining,
When it’s time to say ‘good-bye’?
Inside my heart is crying,
Even tho’ my eyes are dry.

Hope I have not let you down,
In ways that I do not know.
Time slipped by without a sound;
Now it’s time for you to go.

Will we be back together,
As this journey of mine ends?
Hearts as light as a feather,
We who are closer than friends?

Will we meet on the rainbow,
Hanging our tears out to dry?
With our faces all aglow,
And from our ******* not a sigh?

On earth we come together,
And from earth we then depart;
Storms and hardships we weather;
Enemies tear us apart.

Those with whom we wine and dine,
When enemies they become,
Is it the end of the line?
Should we not ourselves disarm?

They who know us just too well
Targeting our weaker link;
We must have a way to tell,
How in quicksand not to sink.

Good-bye, now, my precious friend;
We’ll meet on the other side...
This is not really the end;
Some things fate cannot decide.
R Grimshaw May 2018
The urn now empty,
She dances, light as the air,
It’s colder here now.
Imelda Dickinson May 2018
A Spirit Visited

Sad, dark paths sorrow leads

Where sorrow was not known

As death’s angel veiled takes away

A son, your very own

Years twenty given both of you

As parents this youth tender

Memories left now fill vaulted void


Cherish them. Remember.

Though sands of life were few

His prints are left behind

Upon your night and morning

Still seasons in your mind

Let grief not overwhelm you

God’s comfort brings to earth

Gentle benediction

Balm in burden’s girth

Heaven’s gate opens paradise

To a lad God forgave

Transformed a bud flowering

Fragrance sweet he gave

Voice scented says "Weep not Mother

Father, grieve no more

Such gardens never seen by me

Grace this eternal shore

My spirit waits when you will be

As me new immortality

Where time stands still around me

When God calls you as He did me

A bouquet perfumed on display"
Poem by Imelda Dickinson for niece Sharon and husband when an accident took the life of their son.
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