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Tag: relationship

Out There: rime royal

Published on June 23, 2025

You cannot heal a thing by using hate.
That salve infects a wound and makes it burn,
then die and rot. Then it is far too late
to blame the medicine you chose to take
for giving you results you didn’t see.
There’s no returning from such a mistake,
no happiness can bloom from enmity.

You cannot build a lasting thing with spite.
A mortar mixed in this way will not hold,
and starts to crumble when exposed to light.
No matter the great wisdom of your plan,
or skills you may employ to shape and frame,
the end result is flawed and will not stand.
You just replace one evil with the same.

You cannot change unless you understand
the world is what it is because of you,
and is by your own doing, shifting sand.
To learn the words for healing, you must seek
beyond the edges of the map you know.
Out there, past right and wrong, past strong and weak,
is where, to find the future, we must go.

23 Jun 2025

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Nothing Left to Lose: ghazal

Published on June 2, 2025

When you first discover love, you find something to lose;
not quite yourself, a place apart that you’re afraid to lose.

But then you realize that time itself is meaningless and small,
an artificial sense of space too infinite to lose.

Inside each single moment, in that space between your breaths,
exists an entire universe where we find what we lose.

There is no separation between you and your beloved;
illusions of both time and space become just tools you lose.

And as the lines evaporate, observer and observed
become an integrated, simple thing with nothing left to lose.

02 Jun 2025

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Liquid Concentration: barzaletta

Published on April 18, 2025

Pick up that sad and ancient game;
select your poison: wealth or fame.
Thinking that we’re all the same
can make it hard to shift the blame.

No bird can fly with one wing lame;
old toothless tigers can be tamed,
but still may seek to wound or maim,
or anyway, that’s what they claim.

Look past the edges of the frame,
beyond your dying bonfire’s flame –
for in the end, the things you name
are powerless to share your shame.

19 APR 2025

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The Critic: riddle

Published on April 28, 2017

Who tears apart, but never builds;
in summer, says he prefers chills;
proclaims “I won’t” when others will;
expects to never pay the bill?

Who tends to “no”, withholding “yes”;
predicts more failure than success;
looks to curse rather than bless;
just compliments under duress?

Who finds the flaw in beauty’s whole;
un-masks delusions in each role;
runs not to praise, at best, cajole;
and celebrates his self-control?

Who gets no joy in dance or song,
unless detailing things gone wrong;
and sits aloof, above the throng
who sway and smile and sing along?

Who in the end has only words;
an empty theater of absurd;
gray stones that never turns to birds;
and empty echoes never heard?

Who condescends, too proud to bend;
see only foes, and not one friend;
from years of living to offend;
alone, unwanted in the end?

The Critic.

28 APR 2017

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She Saved Me: brag

Published on January 23, 2017

If she don’t know it, it ain’t worth knowing;
all my good ideas, she had when she was still growing;
the movie of my life, she saw the preview showing;
she was up winning my race before I started rowing.

If she ain’t there, there ain’t no sense in going;
she was swimming upstream before the current was flowing;
there was no wind in my sails until she started blowing;
and no light in my darkness before she was glowing.

If she can’t tell it, it ain’t worth hearing;
I was afraid of the dark until she cured my fearing,
and wandered lost in the woods until she made a clearing,
in the middle of nowhere until she was nearing.

If she ain’t it, then there ain’t nothing to it;
until she gave me a chance, you know I just blew it;
I had no good ideas until she said she knew it;
and without her there’s no chance I’d ever get through it.

If she don’t speak, I don’t hear nothing;
until she blesses my cards, the best I’ll do is bluffing;
without her smooth and soft, the best I’ll do is roughing;
’cause I’m an empty shell unless she adds the stuffing.

If she don’t know it, it ain’t worth thinking;
unless she’s clears it up, it’s muddy water I’m drinking;
she’s got the only key to my chains that keep clinking;
if she don’t come onboard, my ship is already sinking.

23 JAN 2017

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The Dance: balada

Published on January 12, 2017

And there upon a hardwood floor
the dancers gather, to once more
repeat the steps and spin around
betwixt mid-air and solid ground,
their minds affixed on meter’s mark,
the breath between time’s light and dark,
a march toward a last release
that once begun can hardly cease.

And how they shimmer as they twirl,
girl clutches boy, boy clutches girl,
each entertaining joy, and fear,
extending now, then drawing near
in measured movements circumscribed
by time, convention, and their tribe.
The consequences? War or peace,
that once begun can hardly cease.

And if the dance should slow or stop,
the dancers, much like spinning tops,
would falter, falling to one side,
let loose their partners, and collide,
and while the gentle music fades
forget to maintain the charade,
the vain illusion and caprice
that once begun dare not to cease.

12 JAN 2017

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The Conversationalists

Published on June 4, 2015

There is small comfort in that fragile peace
that rests uneasy when we sit and talk
around the countless things both needing said
and those much better left unshared.

Between the spider and the web of lies
that catches us like aspic still unset,
we struggle both to stir and stay unseen;
our efforts pointless, in the end.

There is a comfort in our meeting,
for a moment, brief and fleeting;
as we linger here together
shadows lengthen on that sunshine.

Let our eyes flash subtle innuendo
in the darkness that descends,
and the simple conversation
lapse into a welcomed silence.

So when the brave encounter finds its end,
we smile and fake a sorrow to depart
until the caravan slips out of sight
and finally feel allowed to laugh out loud.

4 JUN 2015

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