A dozen, a multitude, a score –
The paths stretch forward, back, beyond.
First steps so clear, so precise.
Too quickly, the paths turn and twist:
The steps fade, blur, and obscure,
Leaving the path’s distant end
In dark, unsettled uncertainty.
Tag Archives: free verse poem
A Dozen, a Multitude, a Score
But for Sighs
Hear the throbbing hum of the air conditioning
Trailed by a lighter, higher rattle of the fan.
Through them both, pencils scrape,
Little whispers of sound –
Now fast. Now slow. Now silent.
A rubber tip beats a drum beat
Once. Twice. A frown. It stops.
High and sibilant, paper slithers
Across a plastic desk, across other pages,
Then, loudly protests as it flips and bends.
Fingers tap, feet fidget –
But lips and mouths stay still but for sighs:
Silent people in a loud room.
Fain to Fade
Do they walk?
Why would they walk?
These faded shades of legs,
Long crumbled, hidden away.
Is it memory?
Some distant longing
For what once was –
Before it wasn’t.
Is that why they stay?
That need to see – to be?
To walk, to sing, to hold, to touch –
Are those the draw that,
All unseen, hold them
Where they cannot be
But must remain –
A dream, now dust:
Fate fain to fade.
Dream While You Can
Dream while you can
Til it fades in the dawn:
The dawn of marriage,
The dawn of kids,
The uncountable dawns
Of the life that you live –
Look! There! Can you see
Responsibilities break
Through the clouds
Of dreams left behind:
Ambiguous, undefined, hidden
In the depths of your mind –
Taken over by dreams
Taken over in kind.
Or
Accident or
Unforeseen consequence?
A difference of words
Or a difference of intent:
The truth of your awareness
Or the truth of what you meant?
Held Apart
Held apart,
It struggles to reach,
To swim through the fog.
Desperate,
It casts out its message,
Word after word flung away
As it tries, somehow, some way, to reach –
Scattered,
They fragment and fall
Some reaching but merging,
Changing the message
To unordered nonsense,
The true messages barred
By the unbending barrier.
twytte 