You promise to create a balance,
More or less,
But what if I desire someone similar
To my madness?

© JL Smith

It electrifies my veins
Blood charges through my body
When I gaze into your eyes
And view my soul reflected vibrantly

© JL Smith

I take my time
Stand behind the others
Listen before I speak
Then confront what they run from

You can tell me what to do,
But I'll learn my own way
I'm as hard-headed as they come
Whatever's forced turns me away

I won't duplicate the norm
I create what others can't
My ideas are abnormally structured,
But come alive through my two hands

Too many think the same
And so the world continues to circle
Yet, I question if it can change
As I dedicate my existence to its reversal

© JL Smith

Sometimes, somedays, I wonder
Just what you have been up to
Even though it's been so long

Our love was like an orange flame
Beautiful and incandescent
But through the winds of time
Slowly put out

I type a fair weathered greeting
But can't get myself to send it
My hand starts to shake
And my heart starts to pound

What if
You respond with indifference?
What if
You don't respond at all?

So I close out the message
And just wonder to myself
What you have been up to
Because it's been so long

When you hear the voice of "can't"
Know that it was never really yours
You've been preprogrammed to believe
The doors of opportunity are closed

Remember--
Our language's vocabulary is vast
For every contradiction of "You can't"
There is always an "I can"

© JL Smith

I sincerely miss
Giving the top of your head
A kiss
When you appear in my dreams
On nights like this

© JL Smith

Stop, dear girl
Savor this moment
The world spins fast enough
Don't forget the present
Before it's stolen

© JL Smith

I must have erased this
A hundred times
The truth is
I feared loneliness
As it peaked at bedtime

Someone once spent a fortune
Of time on me
Implanting ideas
I'd amount to nothing
"Just wait and see"
I wasn't worthy of love
Something out of my reach
I worked myself to the bone
To earn nothing
Of what was promised or preached
And one day Someone left,
But I've managed to survive
While those poisonous thoughts
Continued to eat me alive

Time does pass
As wounds heal slowly
My loved ones remind me to laugh
And look after me closely
I'm grateful for them
And for guidance from Above
I can fall asleep peacefully
Knowing I am loved

I'm confident
Someone wouldn't recognize me now
I'm stronger, wiser, less lonely
But I don't question how

For you see, the answer's obvious
Granting me tenacity of a fighter
All along, my strength's been within
Loving myself through words on a typewriter

© JL Smith

It's not that
I'm playing
Hard to get
I just wasn't made
To be kept

© JL Smith

I don't know
Which is uglier
Your jealousy or pride
I grew too closely
Then you changed
Like the seasons
And I drifted
With the tide

© JL Smith