Rest Ache

The ice-stars rise to the surface of my heart and crack
Slowly, slavishly, crackling, they break and leave
Rivulets of tears in their place.
There are peeps of yellow blooms through my eyelids.
Golden-orange sun on blowing rivers of green.
This, my heartache. This, my symphony of rest.
Heartache. Rest ache.
Heart rise. Hope rise.
Chest fall. Rest falls.
Restful.
Let it be, as you called forth the blossoms,
Snowy on the mat of green and grey you built.
You built. So let it be
Eyes open all way, always
Upon the open field of
Eternal Spring.
Lord, I call out and
cry out and
sigh out, to
let it be.

and Soon.

Darkness Marching & Lullaby for Lovers

Hi, friends. Well, my poems this week are not great, but I said I would post them, so here they are!

The first one I scratched out while I was listening to The Hobbit soundtrack. You're allowed to laugh at it.

Darkness Marching

Blood-pulse steps --
Thump
Thump
Dark pocks above the parapets --
Stains upon the sky --
Thump
Here we come to die.


Okay, okay. I know. Catch your breath. This one you may also laugh at, though it's less funny. I find myself at a loss for how to write about real love. I was fine at writing saccharine verse about unrequited crushes (as I mentioned in the last post), but now that I'm married and it's twenty million times deeper than anything I've experienced before, the words don't want to flow as easily. So laugh with pity, at least.

Lullaby for Lovers

Sleep, my lord, a gentle sleep,
A silence deep where you can rest
Apart from churlish cares of day
Crouching, rock-like, on your breast

And I, beside you, heart awake
By edge of Dreamland, vigil hold
To ruin what weapons I bear -
My sins that slay with edges cold

In hopes that when the dawn peeps in
I will not further break what’s broke-
And be only a balm to you,
As worthy as my vow bespoke.

If in our sleep, love, I can kill
The things that make ring false this line -
“I love you most” - you know I will.
Until then, rest, by God’s design.

Poetry x4

Greeting, friends!

I've always loved writing poetry, and as part of my weekly time out, I've taken up composing verse again for the good of my soul. And it has been good for me. The main difference between my poetry now versus what I wrote in middle and high school is the breadth of content - where my old work consisted mainly of maudlin love poetry, my new work embraces the freedom of topic that is necessarily a part of writing. I'll post the last four weeks of poems here for your consumption, and try to update my blog with the weekly verse from here on out.

Also - Whoever can figure out what "Two-Faced Am I" is about wins a gold star and a smiley face.

Enjoy!


Distance

Odes to beauty are reserved for lovers.
And why must this be? For a beautiful heart
Is most bright to behold. And for beauty, I die.
The heart of my friend ‘cross a grey expanse.
Words I grasp for with eyes, but misty they are
Sans breath and sans form. And for beauty, I die.
What things life paints on the endless canvas.
Colors infinite! But the shades of my soul
Are too far to dip my brush in. And for beauty, for beauty,
I die.


Two-Faced Am I

Two-faced am I, wherefore I know well -
My true heart estranged, I shiver sickly inside
And exhale with ugly rattle, a pebble in a shell
Composing words while understanding I elide.

Devious I am - I, deviant, divisive, devise
Ways to exalt myselfishness, selflessness mime
Mud-blind with my defectiveness, let ailments arise
And call them harmless, as if ’twill buy me time.

Penitent am I, cowering ‘neath black cowl of sin -
Loving, brightening (trying) the corners of a little heart
My failing heart you can’t hear dully thumping here within,
Thereby mirroring hope I cherish, end to start.


The Writing Excuse

The curse of fatigue
Is the atrophy of art
Says wife and mother


Sonnet of Ink

Upon meandering, brimful brooks of light
And rampant tempests breaking at the seams
And hov’ring over mellow shades of night -
The mediocre, sick for morning’s beams -

Scrolls outward, line of black for beauty’s birth
And inward, gentle curve for linguist’s life
And skyward, transcendental in its worth
Into the depths of hell for dormant strife

Some souls it scratches out with patient nod
And some it outlines, present but unknown
And some it grabs with passion of a bawd
To claim the lusty fare for it alone

The latter one am I, ne’er to be free
Perhaps you saw ink-colored blood in me?