A Poem a Day

Keeps the heartache at bay

Tag: Writing

  • Grieving a Mother and a Friend

    Grieving a Mother and a Friend

    You were once beautiful to me, and now I find myself constantly searching the pain in your face for that beauty.

    I don’t know how to cope with what you’ve lost.

    Not for me, not for you.

    I don’t know how to accept these changes,

    In me, in you.

    I so desperately want to rewind time to relive life close to you.

    I’d gladly suffer through all of the bad of it meant I could also relive all of the good.

    And there was good, right? 

    We were happy most days, even if the dark days loomed above us, behind us, around us.

    But we laughed, we danced, we lived.

    And now, the beauty has dried up, and all that’s left is this husk of you.

    The will to live fled the banshee cries that come out of you.

    I don’t know how to get it to come back.

    I keep trying to gather the smallest pieces of us, but it feels like life is spilling sand through the cracks in our hourglass.

    Some days I wish you were gone, that the present was a wisp of a memory on our timeline and the past a balm to the scars on our hearts.

    I want to rush into tomorrow with open arms to welcome my life back but I can’t seem to hit the ground running.

    Because I want you to be there too.

    I want you to be here now, but everyday we lose more and more of you. 

    I don’t want to hate you, not in the slightest or at all, I just want you back.

    I want it all back the way it was, because you’d smile at me while you chew your food, a knowing smile. 

    One that rosies up your cheeks and makes your eyes twinkle.

    I hate that I hate you, because it’s not you, hasn’t been you in a long while but, sometimes, you look at me and that knowing smile creeps up, tinting your cheeks, letting me see that slight twinkle that shines just for my sisters and me

    And I can almost believe that I still love you and you still love me.

    But then it’s gone, swallowed up by your screams

    Wails of agony that pierce right through me.

    You’re still beautiful to me, even if life right now is really ugly.

    I might hate you right now but it’s not you I hate, it’s this disease.

    This hate exists only because there is so much love for you in me, without a home, without a place to sleep.

    I wish I could give you my strength, my years.

    I wish I could cure you with my tears. 

    I wish I could allay your fears.

    But alas, there is nothing more I can do but shed sweet poetry for you.

  • Setting Consonants on Fire

    Setting Consonants on Fire

    I tried running
    But every time I fell down it caught up to me.
    So, I started walking.
    Now, most days, it holds my hand.
    And sometimes I don’t mind
    Because when you’re busy you don’t feel anxious…
    Until you’re not busy anymore.
    So, I took to setting consonants on fire.
    A J today, and maybe an L tomorrow
    Inhaling what feels like wind whistling through trees,
    Exhaling file cabinets full of things that can be taken care of tomorrow
    Because right now
    I’m rolling up a J today, and maybe an L tomorrow
    That way it doesn’t bother me
    Even if just for a while.
    I inhale fumes through lit wounds and exhale the desire to breathe.
    Because I’m so consumed with have-tos and tomorrows.
    Consumed with can I bes and will I bes and..
    I have to
    I have to
    I have to light a J today and relax with an L tomorrow,
    Because sometimes, I need to be able to breathe without thinking about it.

  • Collectibles

    What am I if not a collection of scars?

    Of scrapes, wounds, and tissue. 

    An encasement that has been battered and thrown against the wind.

    All so that it would ease the pain felt by the soul within. 

    Were we not taught to roll as we fall to lessen the breaks and bruises? 

    Pin pricks that deposit ink in place of blood has become my solace.

    Placing the story of my life on my skin

    Sparing the soft flesh of the true self that guides this exterior facade. 

    Marking it up so that it looks more like what I imagine is close to god.

    Mapping the cartography that only exists in suffering.

    Recreating the outline of the land so that it soothes it instead.

    Finding joy in the life we lead because it is still ours to lead 

    Admiring the roads and cavernous mountains crossed to have arrived in this new terrain 

    Find the joy in what once was pain 

  • Finding Solace in Silence

    Finding Solace in Silence

    The small things,

    Turning the pages of a book,

    The inspiration of a sunset as seen from a high rise,

    Surprise visits and a forehead kiss,

    My heart warms at the melted muscle memory of this.

    The fleeting things,

    Snow days and sleeping in,

    Milky, sugar frosted cereal, and cartoons,

    The soft whisperings of the radio, and the deep rumblings of the news.

    I am nothing more than the solace I find in silence.

    The everlasting things,

    Butterflies born on the lips of a smile,

    Cackling laughter carried on the wind,

    The twinkle in your eye as you gaze upon someone you love.

    These are the few things, the favored fragments of life where my soul resides.

  • Demons

    Demons

    Have you convened with demons? Allowed the taint in your soul to infiltrate the dark corners of your sacred spaces.

    Have you been lulled to sleep by creatures of your imagination? Or stayed awake, entertaining false conversations.

    To be consumed by memories, because it serves you none to regret. But you can quite live right if the horrid scenes of mistakes made yesterday play behind closed eyelids.

    And the worst part, your eyes were wide open, and you shut them trying to shut out the mixture of disgust, and fear, but closing your eyes don’t make bad things disappear.

    But it wasn’t bad, was it? Just stupid, and with time, revolting.

    Mistakes plague you like that.

    They secure themselves onto your brain with claws made of photos, burned, seared, ingrained into your temporal lobes, forcing your amygdala into frenzy.

    And the sweet relief of sleep evades you.

    You’re stuck. In a purgatory of sorts, where you silently rage in dark spaces, silently cower and recoil from your insides, desperately try to restrain the taint from overtaking your mind,

    But its late. Too late, dawn has broken through. Another night wasted in fright,

    When child, will you learn to fight? Or have you surrendered?

    Have you given in to the monsters bashing against your human brain? Are the horrors of reality causing you to slip away?

    Is your vision that of tangled roadways? And what shall you have me do if it is how you say?

    Would you have me battle against the choices you’ve made? You ask me to be your champion, then hear me like you fear the roars of your demons! Release my binds, heed my calls, free me of this cage

    Only then will the body stop being afraid. Only then will we be united again.

    I know the past has gotten the best of you; I wasn’t prepared to face the darkness then.

    But after years of you silencing me, after years of living without me, I hope to be ready to face the light.

    Have you not wondered about me? Or have the shadows dulled your senses so much that you just can’t hear my pleas, my plight.

    It’s not a fight I’m asking for, all I ask body, is that you forgive yourself and mend.

    I can’t promise that the nightmares will end, or that sleep will come easy,

    But slowly, you’ll allow me back in, as one, we can start to begin again.

  • Our Lord and Savior

    You are more than this, more than it all.

    Built to overcome, designed to sink under the pressure of these catastrophic waves life calls time.

    You keep waiting for a break but they just keep coming.  

    And you get knocked down, losing your balance, you’ve started to float on the surface.

    Drifting further and further with the current, because currently,

    you’d rather distance yourself from your wants,

    trying so hard to hear your needs over the sound of the ocean roaring beneath you, over you, around you.

    Because you used to be more than this, your tongue was sharp and much quicker than this,

    but you always sink, don’t you?  

    Only to allow someone else to pull you out

    Now you’re, wet on dry land, gasping for air, grasping for the towering waves that brought you here.

    There is comfort in discomfort, satisfaction in anger, loneliness in love.

    See, you weren’t supposed to be beaten so hard for so long, 

    you were supposed to fight back, not give up, give in, giving yourself over to the current within.

    You were more, more than just this.

    This walking, hard of breathing, living source of emotion. Of despair.

    You’ve had your sense blunted by years of inaction, of neglect.

    Of false memories and no progress.

    You float along, only to meet the same fate.

    Will you give this a new name and be tried by the same error in judgement.

    Will you allow yourself to be ridiculed, taunted?

    You were always more, until you allowed someone to eclipse you, 

    until you allowed them to mistreat you.

    And in your insane clarity, you know this,

    in your madness you comprehend that you can’t float forever.

    Some things, must always come to an end.

    Will you float, or will you fight?

    Come what may, will you be saved or the one who saves? 

  • Searching for Home

    Searching for Home

    I’ve been searching for home for as long as I can remember.

    In people and in places, even in the most intangible of things.

    But, what I’ve come to realize is that home has always been with me.

    I wipe it from my eyes every morning, and lay with it in my arms every night.

    Home has followed me throughout the entirety of my life.

    It wraps around me like the warmest of memories.

    Home lives in the taste of sweet, bitter coffee.

    It is the scent of cigarette smoke and imported mints.

    Home is the sound of laughter and passionate conversation.

    It dances in the sight of every newborn cousin,

    And feels like hot stew on a rainy day.

    Home is a wish that I’ve whispered on silent, hopeful lips.

    A seed planted faithlessly, yet watered in good faith all the same.

    I used to think home was a place,

    I once thought I’d find home in the planes of a lover’s face.

    Truthfully, it seems that home is where the heart is indeed,

    And how lucky have I been to discover that that heart

    Lies within me

  • What is Comfort to an Anxious Mind?

    Free of pain, the easing of grief, the alleviation of distress. 

    I yearn for the comfort I once knew. 

    The tilt of a smile, the tickle of a laugh, the thunder of peace as it washes over you.

    There was a time that comfort was so much more than 

    a rainstorm, the sand between your toes, roaming clouds in a starry night sky.

    Has it always been measured in moments? Sporadic continuous efforts to 

    Hold on to a peace that is fleeting, and yet can alter time to stretch 

    a second into a minute,

    a minute into an hour,

    an hour into a day,

    a day into a lifetime. 

    What would a lifetime of comfort be like? Would grief bow to it?

    Instead of pain, would the thought of a lost loved one bring me serenity?

    Would the thought of their absence in this realm console me?

    Would my days be filled with warm teacups overflowing with coffee? Hot stew on rainy days?

    Would dancing in that rain bring me relief? Would it dull the daily aches of being alive?

    What is comfort to an anxious mind? 

    To calm the panic that is constantly on the rise.

    Three things that are true,

    You are loved, and that love is warm,

    You exist, where there is pain there is life,

    You are in control, all it takes is a thought.

    Three things that I can see,

    My hands with which I create the most beautiful worlds,

    A blank page for those worlds to take shape in,

    A pen, to release whatever form this world chooses to take.

    Three things I can hear,

    The racing of my heart,

    The shallow end of my breath,

    The voice inside my head.

    I am nothing more than a connoisseur of tranquility.

    Measuring all that is and may be harmonious with the turmoil that drives me.

    Seeking solace in the sunsets of the lives that existed before me, 

    The stars that twinkle above me,

    The sliver of wonder in which we all exist in the same lifetime. 

    Can you imagine it, perchance? Can you see the awe the world created when it allowed us to be here together?

    Making creatures of comfort, monsters of habit, and spirits of peace.

  • Love at First Write

    I fell in love, but not in the way one would think.

    I fell in passion with cadence,

    Fell in between the lines of a stanza.

    I gave sestinas and soliloquies my everything,

    And I gave the feeling of it all, half of my heart.

    I fell in love.

    And it wasn’t all at once.

    It was a slow sweet conquering.

    Lifted words off the page, branded them against my memory.

    One by one I inhaled the letters of the alphabet.

    Learned how my tongue twisted around each one in every idiom my mind could remember.

    I caressed them with ink tipped fingers on any blank page I could get my hands on.

    Can you imagine such a catalyst?

    I’ll show you mine, if you show me yours.

    Let’s make love on this page

    In between every line.

    Let’s pause on commas,

    And end on exclamations!

    Or in them if you rather.

    Talk to me about verbs and nouns.

    About how adjectives did you in,

    How sensory details flirted with your desire.

    Until all you could do was inhale me off the page.

    Until you could taste me on your nerve endings.

    Until you could see me in your imagination.

    Until you could hear the soft mornings of italics, the sweet thunder of bold.

    Until your fingertips created the dotted lines of my body.

    Moving up to my beginning, and caressing the end.

    Using past and present participle to finish me off.

    Deliver me in cadence!

    Deliver me in song!

    End me with a period, in finality, our resolve.