Her body, tired.
Her limbs, overworked.
Her baby, forever wailing.

Laying bricks around,
That's who she is.
The little lady,
Who puts houses together
But couldn't build her own life.
That's who she is,
Forced to survive,
Forced to be something
That she was never born to become.

She goes to sleep after washing off the dust,
That she knows will collect in the same places tomorrow
And the day after that,
And the day after that,
And the lifetime after that.

Laying down the concrete,
That's who she is.
The old young lady,
Who mixes cement for a living
But couldn't glue her life back together.

And so one day we pass.
Our suffering joy departs at last,
We drool, we mutter,
Our eyelids shutter,
We gasp, we moan,
We kneel alone,
We beg, one final plea-
To whomever, please come for me.
Our fingers slip,
We ease our grip,
Thin lipped and frail,
One sharp inhale,
A heart beat fails,
And we let go.
How bad can it be?
A quick dunk in an icy lake,
A needle *****,
A fiery scorch,
Why fear so much, our lives shaped so,
By this simple passing of a single torch.

Writer’s block is the misplaced brick in one’s conceptual “university”.

© Matthew Harlovic

Walls I'd
Carefully erected
Deconstructed in
A few moments of
Brutal honesty and
Embraced doubt
You'll run
You'll reject
Never forgive
Heaven forbid you forget

Those doubts, crushed
When the pressure couldn't
Be handled and
I combusted
Wall deconstructed
Those bricks held in place by
Mortar mixed with my lies
Set carefully by insecurity,
Crumbling in the explosion
Telling me
To just be

But now, not
Too long later,
I'm scrambling
To pick up the pieces
Gathering bricks and ashes
Remixing my mortar of lies
Trying to reconstruct
My walls

I know
That it isn't good, but
It sure as hell feels easier
Stack brick, on brick
Hide away,
All hide and no seek
I know it's no good
But it sure feels easier

I know
Out of ashes can
Come a beautiful new creation
Redeemed and restored
Because
Lighting and sand make
Glass in a storm
Combine enough
Pressure and heat and
You get a diamond

I know beauty comes
From ashes and
I'm a rough cut diamond crafted
By Greater Hands

But I still want to
Scrape up the ashes
Mix my mortar,
Build my wall
Because it may not be good,
But it sure as hell feels easier

Help me believe
Your diamonds are
Better than
My bricks
Don't let me reconstruct
My walls of
Insecurity and
Self-sufficiency
Deconstructing all
You've built in me

I have
To love You more

I often wonder how people write decent love poems
For my attempts I’d classify as
mediocre.
How do write about your eyes?
The way they avert my face
And sparkle in another’s direction
That particular pain is hard to express
But for somebody as rejected as I am,
It should be simple
To moan about hands I will never hold
And if I manage
To ***** those lines out in ink
There will always be someone
To reassure me that love is out there
But how can I believe that
When I have taken myself apart
Brick by boring brick
Just to recreate myself as somebody even worse?
Now tell me,
How does one write about that?