Category: Poems

I search for a love I cannot find,
I’m silly and childish;
I should have ceased dreaming, used my mind:
What’s a hope, what’s a wish?

I must learn quick the way the world works:
Its functions and its tears;
At every corner a heartache lurks,
Amid practical fears.

The ways of love are varied I suppose;
A flower is still a flower:
What if it’s a tulip or a rose?
(All fade, hour upon hour.)

I can’t hold beauty longer to woo
Love’s eyes to look on mine;
I lose faith without much ado…
I bow and give in to time.

No questions now on the power of love,
Or self worth or courage,
No questions for any God above,
No dream, no peace, no rage.

All I am left with is the present:
A persistent and remindful ache,
Caused by the moon in her crescent,
And at home a quiet, soft heartbreak.

If I’m calm it’s not because I am so
(Do deeper waters not remain more still?)
Sharp thoughts seem to demand of me to know
When will I ever seem to have my fill –

Inward I rage with the strength of thought
And outward I smile and gloze polite –
At what bitter cost is that smile bought,
You may never hope to even guess right.

I rage with the force of a hurricane,
Against the interiors of my skull,
Like the iceberg that tore, in disdain,
An unsinkable ship’s mighty hull.

I smile, and smile and I smile and I smile
And thoughts converge in swirling tornadoes;
And my heart, all this anxious while,
Begins its illegitimate throes.

And quickly it picks up the rantings
That the skull had to shed downward,
For the mind hurled superfluous pantings,
Which now the heart has loyally incurred.

My lips yet smile and I appear calm;
And I smile I smile and do it again
Speaking of nary a single life harm,
Initiating mind screams or heart pain.