"unreturned" poems
drenched in a sea of waveforms,
dancing on the ebb of a digital ocean
its crests crowned with sound
pitched upon amplitude tides
their volume compressed;
reverberating through glass speakers
mere dots in the sands
i hear cadence...
within the music of your speech
how can it be,
such a many word
written,
yet forgotten,
indelibly on your beach?
if we could interpret the oceans
what stories would its sea speak?
of its corruption?
treasures unreturned
to lost and found?
or of its time to give up the dead,
or of the angels that fell to its ground?
© Qwey.ku
Aug 25, 2018
Aug 25, 2018 at 5:42 AM UTC
she was like
a wilting flower
drained of all things
that kept the others upright
he was like
a rushing brook
who saw her crumpled and tired,
crowded by overgrown weeds,
and wanted nothing more
than to clear the earth around her
and see her bloom again
so he took all he had
and poured it into her
and when finally the pinkness
had returned to her cheeks
she looked back at him
and saw that
he was now like
a withering shrub
frail and planted in dry clay
and despite the deep conviction
she had in her heart to restore him
like he had restored her
all of her best efforts
left her with with exposed roots
and dirt beneath her fingernails
he wouldn’t let her stay
to continue to try
to quench his thirst
so she left him with a watering can
and promised he’d soon find relief
May 22, 2013
May 22, 2013 at 4:09 PM UTC
Rejection
There is a tightness in my chest,
because repeatedly I've been put to the same test.
Torturing me over and over again,
I'm longing now for emissary vein.
How much longer should I maintain optimism,
it just wants to carry on to pessimism.
It's a wound that won't stop bleeding,
but still showing gratitude and I'm still breathing,
for how longer should I except defeating.
I've been tested to love, but she won't love me back.
I've been tested to be shoved,
but thereafter I can't remain in place for walking upright on that track.
I've been tested counting down the list of all Woman whose affection
was unreturned.
But this list is yet far from having a cut to be undeterred.
Thereof I'm asking myself again"
Does true love really exist ?
Today I still would say yes, cause I've been able norishing my list.
Jul 19, 2015
Jul 19, 2015 at 8:15 PM UTC
What does it take
To have a joyful cheer?
What is it at stake
To smile; that's unclear.
When our gaze meets,
And a smile, it is spread,
And I announce myself a greet,
It is unreturned instead.
For this reason, I am unsold,
I need your reasons why.
A smile unreturned is cold.
Don't say I didn't try.
Jul 5, 2014
Jul 5, 2014 at 10:27 PM UTC
we long for what we can't give. (title for now) I long to converse with you without our words turning to anger, but still we find ourselves standing at opposite ends of a verbal battle. I long to spend time with you, without it turning into a confrontation, but we still stand at opposite ends of the chessboard. I have longed to hold you, even close, but you kept me at arms length; both physically and mentally. I try to do right by you but I always seem to fail, like a child blindfolded in a dark room who was asked to distinguish between colors. You ask for passion, almost like that of two star crossed lovers who have stolen a single night for themselves. But the many times I've tried to express it, the passion was unreturned like a lover waiting under the stars for a soul that seems will never arrive. I've waited for the happiness that is supposed to come from two hearts joined as one, and yet I'm filled with a sadness that comes from a pain of a solitary beating vessel. I have asked you for affection, that of a caring mate that says "I love you" without words, and here I find myself unknowing of a speechless love, for when I'm in pain I can't feel you there holding me. I hope for a strong open mind, one that can not only stand up for her beliefs, but also admit to the mistakes that befall all human beings. Yet, for you to see your errors would mean for you to admit your faults and imperfections, which your pride may never accept. I simply ask for a companion that would take the time to understand me and love me for my imperfections; for I know I carry many with me. However that effort and understanding has not been received from you. And even though I've had all these obstacles in the way, I've tried to love you with every drop of blood that pumps through my veins, but no longer can I shed tears for your sorrows, or bleed for your pain, for it is as if my heart has pumped its last drop of my pain.
Nov 9, 2012
Nov 9, 2012 at 9:19 PM UTC
You held me between barbed wire teeth
With hitler's tongue
You knew I couldn't leave
To the collected dust that was my former being
You told me so each day
When my eyes seemed to wander to the person I could've been
Could be?
Unreturned calls of friends
Forgotten faces
Lost and found you
Radio static numbness
I am yours
Forever
May 1, 2014
May 1, 2014 at 12:54 PM UTC
I sit on a droopy windowsill and gaze out
at the stars above me in the stately sky of coal.
I let the smoke fill me, pollute my corrupted lungs,
‘til it plugs me, completely consumes my sticky soul,
and midnight sorrow blanket hugs the heart in my hole.
I sit and I consider the sky
with its million-and-one jewels
that adorn the vast carpet of night
and its one, lone cloud that slowly drools
fat, drippy drops of deep fed'ral blues.
The ashy, burnt taste is still in my throat;
it lingers- a dull, cloying candy cane.
The muted flavour chokes and jabs and pecks
persistently, in the back of my brain
and leaves a steel blue/gray trailing stain.
Vague memories of fourth-grade English lessons
take me with a deep sigh to forgotten thoughts
of Roger McGough and unrequited love-
dazed recollections of school poetry taught
in obscure slate-blue classrooms, littered with blots.
It seems feeling unreturned affection
isn't quite as great as I’d thought after all.
I must've been wrong, all those hazed years ago,
when I yearned to feel unrequited love’s fall,
convinced it would be a wondrous, dazzling ball
Instead, I'm just ******* in the pale-ing sky
that seems to be growing into lighter hues-
the navy’s turned to electric, to powder,
matching the sapphire in my soul of glue.
I'm suppose I'm feeling somewhat, slightly blue.
.
Jul 14, 2014
Jul 14, 2014 at 11:21 AM UTC
i loved you, right
a love unreturned,
unrequited
but alas, still
stoked by little miners with
hearts of brass their
iron faces grimacing at the task,
little beads of lots of sweat
dripping down their
taut frowns.
so what i meant to say is that
i love you, right,
and it’s a love that still
burns, bright, enough
to bring the boys home but
let’s be honest
it wouldn’t best the sun, but
**** it’s a terrible light,
it throws everything into a soft relief
where pretty, soft voiced sheep say
pretty, soft voiced things like
‘it’s okay to feel this way’
‘i want you to be happy’
‘she sounds amazing’
and other things that normal people
tell me mean that either
i don’t love you
or i’m moving on.
they don’t understand though,
i mean,
i love you, right,
though all that sheep **** makes it
sound as if
i’m waving you off,
smashing the celebratory champagne on your bow,
waving you off into the distance with a lacy hanky,
joyful tears cascading down my powdered cheekbones,
i’m greedy
maybe even,
needy,
a disgusting word and
even if i make pacts with myself
to the order of
‘he can do so much better’
‘i am damaged goods’
and other associated half truths
i’d be a liar if i said that
i would kick you out of bed
or even rebuke the slightest of
advances, no i’d take my chances
and i cannot bear it, really
i’d touch you and whatever wholeness
whatever someone else would
parse as clean or pure or holy
wouldn’t disintegrate, no
wouldn’t tarnish, no
would most probably just implode
under the combined pressure
of emotionally-mentally-fucked-in-the-head-doe
(where the **** do you think the miners got all that coal)
so, yes… wait. no?
i love you, right
but just ignore it
enjoy the lights
please remember them
tell your friends and
cherish them until
they are taken by
death, drink, dementia
but i’m sure your mum,
teacher,
or television
long ago informed you that
bright lights are detrimental to vision
so think of your future and
forget now
if you’re tempted by how i look at you
remember how
sunburn seems innocuous
until you see your skin
and sunscreen pretty useless
‘til you learn the sun will win
and the best way to avoid
dainty melanoma
is
to
go
inside
and
lock
your
door
and act like you don’t know her.
Oct 9, 2012
Oct 9, 2012 at 11:51 PM UTC
You were mine, just for awhile,
although you never knew it;
you could always make me smile,
but somehow, we didn't fit.
A one-sided love was all it was,
you didn't know just how I felt;
a brief encounter, a short-lived buzz,
you never saw the way my heart did melt.
I could have loved you, if you let me,
but you had someone else in mind;
you never realized, you let me be,
somebody you would never find.
But love unreturned, is no love at all,
and so I went, my unhurried way;
you weren't around to see me fall,
I just slowly vanished from your day.
You were mine, for just a little while,
although you never spoke a word to me;
funny, how you always made me smile,
and never knew the day you set me free.
Sep 4, 2015
Sep 4, 2015 at 6:16 PM UTC
There is no love that hurts so much,
As one that goes unknown,
Despite bereft of nurturing,
Immensely it has grown.
There is no love as hurts so much,
As one that's unreturned,
A passion so intense, confined,
It's owner simply burned.
Mar 29, 2010
Mar 29, 2010 at 9:23 AM UTC
I either care too much
Or I don't care enough
It's like I'm playing a never ending
Tug of war against myself
Too much pushing and pulling
Wondering and waiting
Is it worth the time
Or am I going insane yet?
And even after taking steps back
To see things more clearly
My perspective remains the same
And the image is blurry
I can't decide what's right
And I'm running out of time
To finally make up
My ever changing mind
Drop the mask and façade
I need to see the truth
What is actually there?
What is actually you?
And what have you done
To try to make me stay
Even when it seems
Like I'm pushing you away
I miss the way it used to be
When you actually tried
Now I'm falling for you harder
And I'm scarring my pride
But what is actually hurt
Isn't the fact that you're fading
But the fact that I was wrong
When I thought I could change it
And maybe after this
I'll finally learn
How to point out the liars
Before I get hurt
But mistakes are inevitable
Even for me
I'm not the perfect person
I wish I could be
But I'll remember the past
When I'm living every day
I won't let people trick me
Won't listen when they say
That they can give me the world
But they have their fingers crossed
Because I can't lose my head
Or ever get lost
For the fear of unreturned love
Is something to hate
Because it's bound to happen sometime
Despite your effort to delay it
And well the seasons change
And memories fade
But the lesson will always
Remain the same
You'll have to face lies
Disappointment and heartbreak
But hold onto yourself
It's the only thing you'll take
Because most everything eventually
Crumbles and falls
But if you're still there
Standing up tall
You'll be able to start over
Get a fresh start
To reopen the wounds
You've sealed on your heart
Feb 3, 2014
Feb 3, 2014 at 7:01 PM UTC
What song did the sirens sing, Ulysses?
What tune could break your will,
cause you to lose your way?
Were you strung by the sound of a harpy's harp?
Lured by the lies of hideous creatures
singing songs of fabled falsehoods?
Like empty eggshells holding none
of the nutrients they promised.
Was their melody flooded with the bitter truth of love unreturned?
Did they sing of release?
Release from the turmoil the journey was and would continue to bring?
Were the dissonant harmonics of a watery end,
the chance to be one with the sea
what made you beg for your bindings to be cut?
Perhaps the sirens sang the greatest songs of all.
Perchance they sung
of passion sweeter than nectar,
of love stronger than ambrosia,
waiting to be given to the sailor
that could traverse
death itself
and make his way to them.
Feb 10, 2015
Feb 10, 2015 at 9:59 AM UTC
my misery
doesn't particularly like company
but sometimes it likes tequila
tequila makes me sleepy
at least then i can take a break
from thinking
what i want
no one will give me
i need someone else to acknowledge
the reality and horror of this construction
i found a cure
for unrelenting
and unreturned
desire
and friendship
it is misery and hopelessness.
i used to be self-righteous and holy
until i knew better
i listened and heard silence
i'm on my own
where i was hesitant
i want to be bold
self-conscious
i want to be free
but i'm hot
my ankle is chained
i'm rejected
i'm miserable
and i just want to lay on the floor
for a year or two
with a thimbleful of tequila
and straighten things out.
May 22, 2013
May 22, 2013 at 11:46 PM UTC
I borrowed the book you have been yearning to read, for you, on your birthday. I never returned it in the end, just to give it to you, that you may read it forever.
I bet you have been wanting to hear the lines of that famous book being said to you out loud, by the person you love.
Little did you know that everything in that same book, are the ones which I wanted to read out and say to you.
Aug 12, 2016
Aug 12, 2016 at 4:01 AM UTC
I'm talking fast
Breathing slow
Exiled from life
Why you left do not know
Your absence stabs like a knife
Because too much time on my hands
Don't go to church or the bar
Stare at the wall trying to understand
How I have made it this far
It bugs me you are fine on your own
I am only half getting burned
Tell me to hit you up on your phone
My messages go unreturned
My tongue itches with irritation
Sentences I dare not say
Can't blame you for infuriation
I kissed you back that day
I suspected you'd never ring my cell
I'm wrapped around your finger
You put my heart through hell
Lasting loyalty lingers
Supportive of you no matter what
Liberated or in chains
Too deep down in this rut
To evict from my brain
All I know
I am tired
Yearning to rise above
Adoration has expired
Why can't my love?
Aug 17, 2021
Aug 17, 2021 at 11:17 PM UTC
I puzzle you as I try to avoid stepping on the cracks of the
cobble stone streets of Paris and raise my camera to my eye to
frame a picture of the Pont de l’Archevêché and catch
lovers eating each other’s faces out in the left third of my shot.
-
Can you say “très dégoûtant”?
-
I harass my family for days about how we need to purchase a lock
from the vendors of Paris and eternally inscribe our family love onto it
with a black Sharpie from America, that would mean the world to me
and they shook their heads, not understanding why I was so enthralled with this
notion of love.
-
They didn’t know I was falling out of love in the city of love and locking my
nineteen-year-old heart’s impressions onto a bridge, but with our family name on it like a mask to cover up the unreturned love that burned in my chest each day
for two months while I wrote poems to forget him.
-
It is not until my parents leave my brother and I to wander about the Musée d’Orsay
on our own tick tock desire and dollar, where we take in the sun set and clock frame
I can recognize from a black and white photograph my mother took when she came
and I almost trip over the rope that protects a Monet—
-
“Excusez-moi!” I almost scream—
-
that I instigate a scheme to leave my mark upon Paris.
By the second to last day of our trip here, I find myself
finally sure that lover’s pain is all too real but
family blood is the only thing that escapes that scrape.
I want our name on the locks of this city, where people write
the dates that they have placed their love on the bridge
and occasionally admit a second date onto the lock
when they come back with their continued lovers.
And it is the most wonderful, lovely secret ever shared with me,
I think, as I peruse the sea of locks on either side of me, later that night,
my brother and I take the lock and key purchased for three Euros and write
our names and date on one side, leaving room for my mother and father and
other brother to find themselves and their love and put it on the lock too one day.
-
Then, we threw our key into the River Seine and I walked away
with my mark left on Paris.
Sep 27, 2013
Sep 27, 2013 at 4:37 PM UTC
“-----, I can’t do this anymore. I can’t keep pretending. I love you and I care about you and even though I’m trying to play it cool and act like I don’t care, you are everything to me. And the worst part is, I think you know that. I think you know that you can change my mood in one sentence, in one unreturned call. Yet you still don’t give a **** And you know what, ----- I deserve more. I deserve more than spending my nights in a puddle of blood on the bathroom floor because you hurt me so much I had to hurt myself for my body to understand it. And I used to know that I deserve more, but somewhere between you being a stranger and you being my all, I forgot that I deserve better.
I know I told you I could handle it. I know you think I can be okay with always being your second choice. And I know you think I’m cynical and that I don’t believe in white horses and princes and fairytale endings. But I do, -----, I do. I know you think because of all the **** I’ve been through I’ve learned that nothing ever turns out okay, there is never a happy ending. But I haven’t, -----, I haven’t given up. I still have hope and I know it’s naïve and I know it’s stupid, but I still have hope that maybe, just maybe, someday you will choose me and you will keep choosing me for the rest of our lives.”
-the drunken, “just saying hi,” message left on the answering machine at 2am
Feb 22, 2015
Feb 22, 2015 at 3:54 AM UTC
I am your product,
But not your likeness.
I borrowed from you,
You borrowed me.
There is an evenness to our bargain
As long as it stops now.
You laid the cards and instilled my empathy.
To never say no because I couldn't, you needed me.
To listen to your explanations of family,
But you stopped protecting me.
Always saying it wasn't enough.
That you worked hard,
That you worked long,
That I had no excuses,
Because It's true, I didn't.
I had facts of my reality;
Fact of otherness,
Fact of alone.
Of ostracism,
Of wondering if a crowd would bring me companionship.
Of thinking a man was the only way to happiness,
Because you seemed to think so.
Of cursing your talk of family when you left to find your missing pieces in another's bed.
You needing me to be strong because we were all we had;
Shutting my mouth,
Pressing words back into feelings.
That you used me just like they claimed you'd done to them.
Baring their children, not caring for their say, not asking for more.
But you wanted more from me
You told me often and over.
Leaving me to be the milk-less maid.
The child mother to her mothers children,
Your sweet little children;
The ones I fiercely love,
The ones I fear you'll let break,
Like you have broken me.
My sweet little sisters.
You were my first love,
My first true hate.
The woman who bore me,
The woman who cast me out.
The wisdom in my head,
And the fool before my eyes.
My mother, the bringer, the borrower.
The one person I thought would never betray my trust;
The deserter in my time of need.
You may have borrowed my childhood;
Forever unreturned.
You may have taught me kindness in your selfishness,
You may have been my hero,
I thought you were one...
Someone to aspire to be...
But it's so simple and straight who you are now,
Now that you aren't seen through the rosy cast of my child love.
I play my hand, laying them down
Forthright and coming.
To let you know that I am no longer yours,
No longer yours to borrow.
I am my own,
You can no longer claim me.
Apr 2, 2013
Apr 2, 2013 at 3:01 AM UTC
Nipping on earbuds
Frosty crackling intimacy
Voicemails unreturned
Mar 11, 2019
Mar 11, 2019 at 11:11 AM UTC
Can we please have a moment of silence? shhh! That is for shame
The consciousness of impropriety and dishonour, a soul eating emotion, an inner burning flame.
Disembarked and render anaemic by a queen dark and evil, for with her, shame is non-existence
Blame her not, her wicked soul is the caprice of affinity with being an outcast and unlove
For before her heart became embroiled with dark powers and all the ingenious gore that accompany an unrepentant soul,
She had the lassitude of the perfect woman, a languid ease, the obeisance, lovable heart and knew nothing foul
But deep inside her aching heart, all that she suffered silently, she could enlighten no one, from her devastated childhood,
the sheer indescribable horror of neglect, unreturned love, the treachery, the villainy, melancholy motherhood
And castigation made her seek power even into the maelstrom of the blackest tempest of the darkest part of hell.
Her hunger for power and macabre mode of it acquisition, renders the thought of her been shameful, lilliputian
As she journeyed towards the castle, her conscience wasn't pricked by volatile outbursts of her sins from the angry crowd
she knew what she wanted, she sold her soul for this, she knew this was what she has to go through to get it.
A rite of passage stolen by lucifer from the Saviour of the world
Let them strip, beat, and mock you.Let them make you walk through there crowd disgraced,
but be rest assured that when all is done, you'll be the ruler of all
For too many a time, the story has been told,
be you good or evil, fortune only favours the bold.
The castle was her own Golgotha, the throne was her own cross
beyond that castle wall lies all that she needs to rule and have dominion
for there in that castle live the old man and others waiting to make her there queen
I was swift to condemn her for all, but after a retrospective thinking, my judgement became ambivalent.
wasn't it judgements and condemnations that made her felt sequestered, separated, segregated and all other equivalent?
To be continued......
Sep 24, 2016
Sep 24, 2016 at 3:11 PM UTC
Do you know,
Every time i go on facebook,
Im looking for traces of you?
Every time i go on instagram,
Im looking for a picture,
that shows your life.
Im looking ,
Searching for evidence.
I know i will see you tomorrow,
But tomorrow can never come slower.
Its like getting homesick,
An emptiness,
A void i need to fill.
And i feel that sometimes
i don't know what i should do.
Should i look for you to fill me,
Or stitch myself up?
Because its never certain,
I feel like im always guessing.
Did i say the right thing?
Did i look okay?
Did i scare him off yet?
Because so many have already left,
But they weren't even mine.
So instead of embarrassing myself,
Humiliated,
By the unreturned feelings,
I will remain in the corner.
I will stay in the safety of silence.
Not the sound of silence,
Because i talk a lot,
But the feeling.
Words with no meaning behind them.
A present,
wrapped in pretty pink paper,
And when you open it,
It's empty.
Even though you may try to pull me out,
You may try to give me that gift,
I may never try to open it.
Not because i didn't want to.
Its because i didn't know it was there.
And i see the other girls.
They swoon to you.
Its like when you feed pidgins in a park,
And your holding the seed.
I don't know why your still here.
I don't know why,
you chose the one pidgin,
Who cant fly.
So thats why i hide.
Thats why i stare at screens,
Instead of into your eyes.
Im scared.
Im scared you will find some flaw,
Find one of my many imperfections.
Yet you treat me,
With the sweetest of words.
And don't know how to react.
And those words fill me.
Yet the satisfaction leaves.
It runs scared,
just like i imagine you will,
Because of my reaction.
My stupid blurted out response.
It doesn't compare.
You are a much kinder,
Gentler,
Beautiful,
Creature.
Inside and out.
I paint on my beauty.
My response,
doesn't reflect my affection towards you,
I want to show it.
Desperately.
But i have put up this armor for so long,
Its hard for me to break it down.
But i want to.
Desperately.
And one day,
I hope i will.
May 14, 2014
May 14, 2014 at 8:28 PM UTC
It's a rain cocktail on a grey beach
and not a bikini as far as the eye can see.
A lone surfer paddles into a breaker fifty yards away
never acknowledging my presence.
In my diluted rum-banana daiquiri, a cherry floats
wishing she would show to tie it's stem with her tongue;
a talent she once was so fond of showing off.
Gone are the silly days we'd spend here in the sun,
laughing for hours that passed too fast, digging moats
for our castles in the sand.
I guess she'd grown up with the coming of autumn.
My calls went unreturned but
I thought she'd meet me at least one last time.
Now I sit alone on this towel wishing I'd brought an umbrella
as water pelts my shoulders and head like wet bullets.
In a land of perpetual summer,
a day in Malibu never seemed so long.
Nov 6, 2013
Nov 6, 2013 at 7:46 PM UTC
it's the car crash that nobody was around to see, nobody to call for help
it's the drop from the precipice that never ended
that sensation in your gut of sickening weightlessness
forever in perpetuity
it's this daily unanswered call
an echo unreturned
it's this constant hesitation
this wavering sensation of incompletion
a melody with no conclusion, unresolv-
Dec 26, 2016
Dec 26, 2016 at 1:55 PM UTC
I thought I loved you
while you barely thought of me at all
Sep 5, 2013
Sep 5, 2013 at 6:30 PM UTC