Poetry

Romantic poetry

Anticipation

My beautiful maybe, my great perhaps

The heat of my imagination

Captures us, as we elapse

In restrained, delicate elation

Walls echo in your absence

Another brief sojourn

I’ll wreck myself against infinity

In re-doubled lust I slowly burn

Night after night my mind orbits

Around you, my sun, my star

Anticipation, blazing like a comet

Confined to watch you from afar

My new beginning

The one that hasn’t come

I ache over agonising details

Over you, my song unsung

My future, I believe impending

I am a thief of pleasure,

Fantasies, recklessly spending

Our delights, we have not measured

Our moonlit elopements

The ones that haven’t passed

My conspiracy of silence

I’ve committed to steadfast

My flame imperishable

You’ve rekindled all that’s earnest

And even though you burn me so

My hope in us will spring eternal

Old flames

Sometimes old flames can reignite, after constant friction

How often is she on your mind, is it an addition?

You reassure me love is gone, that now you are ‘just friends’

But the way you talk of her, feels like it didn’t end

You say it’s really over, but I don’t recognise

The sincerity of your words is missing from your eyes

Are you harbouring old hope for a continuation?

Curious if she’ll take you back, without hesitation?

Or is this about your ego, your need for validation?

And having her around so often is your affirmation?

You keep on playing with fire, a gratuitous affliction

We know old flames can reignite, after constant friction

Let me down

Don’t use me to forget her, don’t say things you don’t mean

Don’t show up here at midnight, acting out your dreams

You don’t want me, you’re just lonely, after company

Just trying to distract yourself, from your misery

I can see her in your eyes, I know she’s on your mind

You aren’t fully with me, as our fingers intertwine

It’s not fair what you’re doing, what I’m going through

Your broken heart beats just like mine, but mine beats just for you

Part time lover

Most days I feel I’m made of stone

But not when I’m with you

Your temporary touch, in time

Will break my heart in two

My part time lover, part time ghost

In us, you don’t believe

I know for you this isn’t real

But love won’t let me leave

Promises

Promise me the promises, that you intend to keep

Act out your declarations as talk is often cheap

Promise me without forgetting, or needing a reminder

If you keep your promises, I’ll keep trusting you blindly

Your words, a shield around my heart, protecting it from sorrow

Breaking your oath shall splinter it, shards glint sharp like arrows

Metal fractures into daggers, impaling naked, trusting flesh

Agony, until removed, empty words and wounds enmesh

If no remedy comes ready, your shrapnel sits in sullen fragments

Every fibre, absorbing pain, your rusting metal, in its absence

How many broken promises, can a heart still swallow?

Before the heart bleeds dry, hardens and turns hollow?

Silence

Dancing in silence, the music surrounds

Not daring to speak, or make any sounds

I don’t want to stop, and neither do you

So we keep spinning, to then start anew

I know that you’re bound, to one who’s not me

I’m bound to you, I don’t want to be free

My soul is on fire and gladly I burn

For you’ll never know how fully I yearn

I’ll keep this my secret, I’ll savour my pain

For one more chance to see you again

The dread of departure, the hope of tomorrow

In you, my happiness and all my sorrows

Heaven weights heavy on my mind’s thin ice

There isn’t a way out, I’ll just close my eyes

So play it again, our silent song

Play it again, and we’ll dance along

The Prince

Are you doing what you’re doing,

Out of love or to be loved?

Content in the joy of the feeling,

Letting all your love flow freely?

Or is there another motivation

Retaining power through obligation?

Thorns

You picked me like a rose, enchanted

I bloomed for you, I wanted to,

To bring you happiness, undaunted

You praised sweet fragrances, fine petals

But rubbed me wrong, pricked on a thorn

Your love turned furious, unsettled

One by one, picked off my spines

I bled for you, I wanted to,

Loathing thorns once mine

With wounds unbound, began to wilt

No remorse from you, no guilt

Just harsh distain, repulsion, pain

No longer I, your rose

Just a reminder, what I once was

Blaming me for being wrong

But all roses come with thorns

Perhaps it’s not a rose

You wanted, all along

Roses

Three times you tried to fan the flames

And twice, they re-ignited

I watch you walk into the room

My heart, for you, short-sighted

Love, I’m on your side

In your cocoon

Roses should bloom

However blighted

You wipe my mind of fear

Of memory and time

My treasured everlasting

You are the true sublime

The love I want is chaos

A youthful wanderlust

You touch my hand so tamely

That weak grip, I mistrust

My blood love, once a firework

You lit up my whole sky

I breathed you in and every night

With you, another high

You ask if you should stay

My eyes glance at the door

In love with love, forever

In love with you, no more

Riptide

I wonder if you ever

Wonder about me?

And if you ever wonder

Was it meant to be?

If I still love the Killers

And strawberry iced tea?

If I’m sleeping next to someone

And letting him hold me?

I wonder if you ever

Say aloud my name?

I wonder if you wonder

If I ever do the same?

Our stars were not aligned,

It wasn’t meant to be

So if you ever wonder,

Stop wondering ‘bout me

Bad habit

Each time you give me less, I just want more

Each time you pull away, I want you close

You’re my bad habit that I can’t ignore

And every day it goes from bad to worse

Your name burns up my tongue, when I call it out

You’re heavy on my mind, but I can’t go without

The certainty of your touch, I can’t help but doubt

And still you’re my bad habit, to which I’ll stay devout

Cardinal sin

Parched soil of our mutual desire

Carnal delights lead to cardinal sins

Awaiting promises expire

Think what you’ll end if this begins

Your wounded innocence you preach

With subdued violence, you continue

Unfaithful absence I impeach

Your lethal lust, the death of us

A thousand cuts

You give me your poison, I drink it with glee

You’re not supposed to want to do that to me

Don’t ask me to jump, I’ll ask you how high

All you want from my love, you know I’ll comply

Your life-size ghost is haunting me

Stockholm syndrome is taunting me

You keep me so close that we can’t grow apart

Keep cutting me down, keep on breaking my heart

You are my madness, but I need sanity

I can’t let you go, so let go of me

Different chances

What are you really holding onto, something real or just your hope?

That this time they’ll treat you better, but you know they really won’t

How many different chances will you give day after day?

Only to have them hurt you in exactly the same way

Dominoes

Broken hearts keep breaking others

Holding on to their disdain

Not thinking twice about hurting lovers

When they’re already numb to pain

Hearts

Fragile hearts, they often break

But heal with perseverance

And their pain, they soon forget

Fragile, yet resilient

Timeless

In my memory, right where I left you

You will remain, just as you were,

Perfect and shining, like the day that you left me

This way you’re with me and you’ll never blur

Poetry of loss

Love’s not the word

Love’s not the word I’m looking for

That word’s too ordinary

You deserve a word that’s more

A word that’s never arbitrary

You deserve the grandest gestures

You deserve a thousand odes

I’m sorry all I have to offer

Is just some poetry and prose

I’ll carve, for you, a hundred statues

Of all the things you once so loved

Just wait till I afford the marble

Every block, I’ll make use of

I’ll conduct dozens of strings

To sing you lullabies so sweet

It’ll make the songs of nightingales

Sound to your ears, obsolete

I’ll plant, for you, a million roses

So you can see them from above

It’s for you that I keep striving

And the things that you dreamed of

It seems so unforgiving

When a good thing comes to end

Why am I the one here living?

Why was it you, I couldn’t mend?

Now you’re the ghost in all my stories

And I miss you every day

Each night, I keep on writing for you

To keep my loneliness at bay

The things that I would give

For just a minute more with you

To worship your perfection,

All your pain I would un-do

One day, for you, I’ll find the words

To match your beauty and your grace

They will be simple, like you wanted

They’ll be your final resting place

Live on

I vividly imagine, your arms around me

Dancing, spinning with your ghost, past realities

At least we’re reunited, in my hollow dreams

Warming, worn-out memories, bursting all my seams

I wish we had more time, when we had the chance

My solemn, silent serenade, my hypnotising trance

Even if it’s futile, this, I won’t regret

You’re never fully gone, because I won’t forget

Grief

Grief is all the love, that is left unspent

When a departure, a full heart outlives,

All that resides inside becomes torment

The pain from all the love one could not give

Summer nights

Do you still keep our photos, like I do, boxed up?

Too painful to look at, too precious to give up

Does your tattoo remind you, how drunk we used to get?

Wasting summer nights, making crazy bets

You never tried to change me, just quietly adored

I just want to say thank you, I wish I’d told you more

I still think of us, when I hear our final song

We weren’t a good match, but brightly we still burned

I hope you don’t regret, a single thing we’d done

Because the truth is, I loved you, more than anyone

Andy

So you returned to New York City

Packed up your life, left me behind

You picked a fight as you were leaving

To ease our parting, ease your mind

I know you didn’t really mean it,

Word by word your smile gave way

Not me, I lost you to a city

That’s a different kind of pain

We didn’t have so long together,

But you were sublime every day

Your spark ignited fires burning,

Casting all past aches away

You were the light of my perfection,

The moment that red curtain rose,

You captured everybody’s hearts

But then you went and gave me yours

We danced in Paris to Moon River

Underneath the shimmering lights

I gave you all of my tomorrows

And you gave me your endless nights

Now I’m sleeping on my sofa

Trying to find closure and ensue

No composure, I’m hardly sober

As you dance with someone new

Curtain raised; you’ll take your stage

Glowing, blooming as you are

Just like all those nights in London

Oh Andy, Andy, you’re a star

Silver frame

Hemmed in by a silver frame, a haunted, holy relic

Tarnished now with unseen pain, no longer pure, angelic

This old photograph of us, a living reassurance

Evidence of being loved, a memory’s endurance

A momentary comfort, proof it wasn’t our pretend

Turns into remembering the slow and grieved descent

All the pain we drank for love, escapes this cornered heaven

Of slivered bliss that we once were, and everything that had been

Augusta

Sweet emotion, don’t fade yet

I’m not finished with this high

Separation, I’ll regret

It’s too soon to say goodbye

My home and my adventure

Here we stand two broken hearts

Destiny, I censure how

Even good things break apart

Fond farewell

I’m glad we had the courage

To follow our desires

To pursue with both our hearts

The love we thought worthwhile

No ill-intent, I know, beloved

We were star-crossed from the start

Our duet, a touch too arduous

Living two, three worlds apart

Fond farewell, to you, my sun

Become your constellation

Wishing you a life of love,

Without any reservation

Love gone

Put it down. Don’t rifle through a love gone.

Let it be exactly what it was

Let it rest in a vaulted pantheon

Without glum grief, nor thundering applause

Don’t rake through all the things they said

It will anchor you in memory

Nor curate, exaggerate

Them in warm, nostalgic reveries

Let it lie, untouched and out of reach

Continue being in your present

Or love gone, the past, will future breach

Like an ant, it will amber you in lament

After love

You exalt a God you don’t believe in

Faithful to a church, burned down long ago

The flame is out, you’re worshipping ashes

In hopes that your prayers will light it aglow

Spin empty words, weave your dead flowers

Once a bouquet, now a funeral wreath

Love is gone, in its shadow you cower

Knowing it’s over, but refusing to leave

Amor fati

Goodbye my lover, you were never my friend

Only love as our guide, it led to dead ends

Both taxing and wanting, what we put on the line

Right from the start, our hearts beat out of time

Seasoned with sorrows, minds heavy with loss

All good intentions, destroyed in chaos

Our only redemption, without any blame

The right thing and hard thing turned out all the same

Blame it on me

I think I’m tired. I think that’s it.

You’ve finally worn me out

It’s all too much, I can’t commit

To your life of ups and downs

Every day it’s something new

We can’t rewind to the beginning

You douse my fire until it’s blue,

And all you care about is winning

Preoccupied with gaining ground

Keeping score and turning tables,

At that table we sit, bound

And I just want to leave

Deleted scenes

Shaking and crying, a meter apart

Already forgiving, as you’re breaking my heart

I’ll do what I can to soften these blows

When you hurt, I hurt, I need you to know

I’ll accept when you say – it’s not meant to be

And I pray for your happiness, even if it’s not me

Evanescence

Evanescence of perfection

Your face evades my recollection

To summon you is proving hopeless

With time, you’re fading out of focus

Faithless

A love so sweet that soured all too quickly

You rushed to have me, then you rushed to leave

Our love’s myth, kept alive by the faithful

Fades as quickly if you cease to believe

Innocence lost and paradise wilting

Our creed is doomed with just one devotee

Our church’s haunted to me if you jilt it

Are you breaking me to simply break free?

Feeling

I had always suspected

You’re in love with a feeling

But I kept on believing

That you really loved me

Time came, I, unwilling

Gave up all my dreaming

Let you go, though it’s chilling

What you loved, who’s to see?

Tired of goodbyes

I’m so tired of these goodbyes

I’m so tired of my heart breaking

How many more times must I try,

Till lasting love ceases the aching?

Another face I must forget

Another future shatters

The pain inside me swells, and yet,

I’ll pretend like it’s no matter

I am the great performer, me

Wearing hope like it’s a crown

But life has crushed my certainties

And I’m close to breaking down

These paths turn into labyrinths

Dead ends consume my heart, my head

I cannot sleep, I cannot think,

And all my hope has turned to dread

I’m so tired of this routine

It’s getting harder to let go

Of all the things that could have been

Is this goodbye the fatal blow?

Tourist

We haven’t loved in vain,

Through my memories you’ll wander

But just a tourist you’ll remain

Nothing more thereafter

Poetry of Philosophy

Loneliness

It’s not in mere absence, when we’re most alone

It’s when coveted hands do not meet our own

Loneliness inhabits the unfulfilled ideal

Of our desired connection, becoming our ordeal

We all require others, to understand and love us

But our needs cannot be met every second that we fret

We’re doomed to be alone, at times within our lives

From our mute desperation something else must rise

In loneliness grows, whatever there one brings

Are you in bad company, without anything?

Let the absence of presence become nominal

Alone is unavoidable, loneliness is optional

Season of peaches

The fragrant fruit of summer

Once ripe, now rotting sweetly on

Confectionary skin browns over

Soft flesh slackens on the stone

Your breath last night, fresh balm of peaches

Candied over by the moon

The morning after, thick like syrup

Curdled sour by next noon

Late August, youth is oozing out

Reminds me we won’t live too long

Each alone, we ripen, perish

Let us taste before taste’s gone

Summertime

Let summer be just what it is

Let autumn come, and kill it slowly

And I will be, at peace as well

In uncertainty, as always

No need to weep, or rage at time

It’s not your friend or enemy

Whatever season it may be

Summer lives on in my memory

Bones

We’re only flesh that borrows bones

Wanting full stomachs and calm minds

Get drunk off music and each other

Let’s dance while we have time

We are at our best performing

Nameless acts of love and kindness

Remembered or forgotten

Before we slip into the timeless

Complicated

It’s not the truth that’s complicated

It’s our relationship with it

The truth is always very simple

Times we don’t want to say or hear it

We don’t want to have to act

That’s the certain aggravation

The pretty lies help us be still,

Help us indulge in our creations

We fake excuses, spin our stories

To make sure we still seem nice

But who are we protecting?

The truth might hurt, but lies hurt twice

Morning person

I am not a morning person

Each day I rise, in angst and dread

I consciously remind myself

Choices and change may lie ahead

It’s a good thing, just to be alive

In the heaven that man made hell

I’ll warm my hands before life’s fire

With my existence, I rebel

Patchwork

Am I the god that I believe in? And all the people that I loved?

Every city that I’ve been in, and the country I’m free of?

Am I the quiet conversations once echoed in my head?

The old wives’ tales I overheard and all the poets that I’ve read?

The food I ate, the beds I slept in, the games I played when I was young?

All the drowsy nights spent living, all the words that crossed my tongue?

Every doubt I kept and cradled, every question that I’ve asked?

Is this how you all see me, as a patchwork of my past?

What about the hope I harbour and the hunger that I hide?

All the highs I’ve not yet felt, all the want for them resides

What about the people, I’ve not yet the chance to love?

And the poets I’ve not read yet and the dreams that I dream of?

I don’t feel that I’m a tally, of the things I did or didn’t

I don’t live my life for measure every hour and every minute

I know why we talk of patchwork, only things now past and gone

It’s harder to forgive ourselves for the things we’ve not become

What matters

Desperate to matter in an apathetic world

Nature’s indifference reminds me if we don’t

care for one another, nothing, no one will

When we’re grasped by what we cannot grasp

When we’re flooded by the great unseen

Drowning in its depth that we cannot fully comprehend

We fight the small. We fight the small

and claim our little victories when a fortunate wind blows

so we don’t have to face the great

We can’t win over it, it did not come to fight

We only learn to live in its presence.

Your echo sounds through me – how you used to say –

‘there is no deeper meaning in your suffering’,

it merely varies from how you look at it from day to day

Among many, there is only one inevitable fate.

None of this matters, and neither do I,

when all in dust are equal made

But under a throng of stars,

that glitters and winks in the dark,

when nothing is at rest and all is becoming

I choose to live immediately

I choose to fight the small

Poetry of narcissists

Fool’s gold

You must think yourself enchanting

The way you cast your spells

Incantations you’re supplanting

Pure embellishment and bells

All your demi-truths and white lies

I see you smile and hide your ghosts

Convinced it’s such a clever guise,

You’re in the emperor’s new clothes

You must think yourself so clever

So important, so demure

But in your trivial endeavours

I’m afraid there’s no allure

All this pyrite, you’re concealing

Soon they’ll know, as I foretold

Time will strip your mask, revealing

You are nothing but fool’s gold

Glorify

You ignore me till I leave

When I’m gone you can’t believe

How much you miss me, so you beg

Forgetting all your disrespect

You had your chance, you had a hundred

You didn’t use them, why, I wonder?

Only after my goodbye

You grieve and pine and glorify

Why didn’t you care when I was yours?

You made love seem like a chore

It shouldn’t have to take me leaving

For you to see that I’m worth keeping

Fiction

You’re the source of your fiction, can’t handle the truth

Preaching lies, your addiction, your guilt they will soothe

You re-write events, save your holy depiction

But you give to yourself, the biggest restriction

You annul the sins, that could cause you pain

But rob yourself of some learning, some gain

You repeat your lies in hope they’ll come true

Fool everyone, but the main fool is you

Hunt to kill

I thought your lonely heart, was seeking company

Your lonely heart’s a hunter, killing hungrily

What kind of love have you been taught?

What kind of horrors have you seen?

You use that word just like a leash,

A noose that tightens at your whim

I’m sorry you feel incomplete

It’s not my duty to fulfil you

Find in you whatever you need

Do not use me to complete you

You are destroying half of me

So I might fit your sole half better

Without a care what you impair

In your razing, you take pleasure

The helping hand I offered you

Your mad arrogance rejected

All your anger, doubts and sadness,

You instead at me, directed

As I am, I won’t appease, your exhausting hunger

Your lonely heart remains, a lonely, wandering hunter

Inverse

You’re arrogant because you’re insecure, you try to dim their lights

So you’ll shine brighter by comparison, distorting the true sight

Your cruelty springs from weakness, you project out all you fear

You’re angry when you’re helpless, but at helping hands you sneer

Surrounded by distractions, you’re afraid to be alone

You know you’re in bad company when you are on your own

Always the first to leave, because you’re scared you’re not enough

Terrified of being vulnerable, always acting tough

You self-destruct so you won’t feel you’ve ever lost control

Stubborn against change, you are petrified of the unknown

Always hungry for attention, but never satisfied

Regardless what you get, you are empty all inside

You demonise the other, but from fear your actions stem

Afraid of others treating you how you are treating them

Irrelevant now

Thought we had so much in common

Both straining under heavy dreams

You brag you sail with passions high

While pushing paper boats downstream

Romanticising all your plans

While chasing dreams inside your head

But nothing works, unless you do

Can’t cheat yourself to get ahead

You’re not a victim, you’re not drowning,

You just can’t be arsed to swim

The only danger is your sloth,

That you keep fuelling from within

Instead of standing by my side

You tricked me into conceding

Into dimming my own light,

Feeling guilty for succeeding

You hurt me, and then complain?

You don’t get it, you don’t listen

Knocking haloes off my saints

Has always been your vile religion

I’m tired of carrying us both

I can’t do this any longer

At least carrying your dead weight

Made me a little stronger

You’ve been calling, it rings out

Without a flinch of apprehension

I’ll starve your ego with a drought

You don’t deserve any attention

Sometimes I think I might miss you

Sometimes I doubt why I left

Then I remember the bad things

You did and how awful they felt

Go ahead, fill up my voicemail

I won’t grant you one last bow

Yours fears, like my dreams, all came true

You are irrelevant now

The Anglerfish

Months ago, on the day it snowed,

You confessed your dystopia

Suspended from your happiness

Succumbed to anhedonia

Your higher calling called on me

Knew at once to guarantee

To hold your heart with both my hands

Warm it up, as best as I can

Tell me, what pain made you so cruel?

I will distill it all from you

I won’t let this infection spread

All your past aches, I’ll help you shed

Whatever poisoned you before

I will take care and I’ll adore

I’ll heal your wounds, and with great care

I’ll pour in so much love to spare

But I can’t heal you from outside

You hear me calling, hear my plight

You drink my love, like it’s your due

But banish me from seeing through

I know it’s not within my right

But I can see your losing fight

If you don’t ease your source of pain

Forever with you, it’ll remain

Regardless how much love you drink

It’ll spread there too, so please rethink

I swear I’m only trying to aid

The more I do, the more you hate

As if you savour being in pain,

Feel entitled over my strain

You seek to drain me till I’m done

Then you’ll discard me and move on

To the next one, that you will trick

And you’ll drain her, just like you did

To me, to all, as you see fit

All your cruelty, you’ll re-emit

Twenty-five

You think you’re old at twenty-five

Without hard work, somehow, you’ll thrive

The rules, to you, they don’t apply

To you, we’ll bow, without your try

The center of the universe

Around you, the rest must spin

Unconcerned by their opinions

Your wisdom comes from deep within

So comfortable in your convictions

But on second glance, your chains

If one questions their existence

Under pressure, you feel strained

Your brittle ears crumble in plight

Incapacitated by your ego

If you feel wronged, you turn to spite

Victimising yourself, your placebo

You backtrack on apologies

You don’t mean a word you say

When you know you’re ’bout to lose,

You’re too quick to run away

Being on time is such a chore

You are their king; can’t they just wait?

And when you finally turn up

How dare they point out that you’re late!

Lose your pride or lose your love

You’ve been told this all before

But you’ve descended from above

All those ‘below’ you, you ignore

Paramount for you to be right

And if she leaves, it’s her, not you

You’re just ‘so misunderstood’

Your ‘genius’ is a different hue

Your suffering is so unique

Oh, your wounds are full of salt!

No one’s felt pain as deep as yours

And it’s all somebody’s fault

Folly of youth, I sympathise

We were all once that childish bore

The only problem with you is –

You’re not twenty-five anymore

Unconditional

You push me far away, then wonder where I went

You do not treat me kindly, but kindness you expect?

You complain at me, after closing yourself off

I’m not fighting hard enough to break down all your walls

You treat me like your enemy, but expect to be my friend

You keep on breaking us, assuming us I’ll mend

It’s not my job to raise you, and manage your emotions

You cannot be malicious and still expect devotion

You seek to keep my love with actions so equivocal

Except I’m not your mother, my love’s not unconditional

Vain

You gave away the things I loved

And one of them was you

To all of those who wanted some

Regardless if it’s due

Your crowded heart and fickle mind

Charmed by validation

Overlooking your commitment

Addicted to attention

You say you’re mine, but every time

My nerves quietly fray

As you embrace the whole world while

It’s me you hide away

Your beautiful game

You never let me get too close.

Your ‘omens’ taught you otherwise

You say, in your stern voice.

You say you like these games we play

But some rules have turned it ugly

Dance if you want, sing along if you want

Don’t stand and stare so smugly

I’m tired of these eggshells

Your ‘cause and effect’

Love’s not formulaic

News to you, I suspect

And in your labyrinth

I have no birds-eye view

I loathe your instructions

Don’t preach what to do

You’re not an enigma

My puzzle to solve

Just a beautiful boy

Who wants my resolve

Anything I do

I do it all wrong

This is exhausting

And just can’t go on

Say my name

Do not mistake me for your friend

Do not believe that ‘we are good’

My mute departure and my grace

You seem to have misunderstood

I don’t have goodwill towards you

Nor can I spare you any hate

I remember what you did

There’s not a thing you can abate

I’ve found my peace, I’m happy now

It doesn’t mean there’s room for you

Do not infect me with your chaos

You’ve not changed since we were through

You think you shaped me in your image

I’ll never be like you, you’ll see

All your poison, I’ve cried out,

All the hate you poured on me

I won’t raise my voice or egress

From you, I’ll just turn away

But don’t you dare approach me,

You don’t deserve to say my name