I never recognized the costume
I never saw the mask
A clever disguise
Hidden from sight
Blinded my eyes
A false showing
A false pretense
A party
A charade
Never thinking I was part of
The masquerade
Love is like a circus
As high as a wire
As sweet as cotton candy
As innocent as a child
As moving as a parade
A carnival of romance
Until the final act ends
The performance
When the masquerade crumbled down
I became the biggest clown of all
Hold on to love
The poets say
For like running water
Love and life just drifts away
Never to return from were they came
How do you keep love from fading?
Time doesn’t heal as they say
Time only moves love further away
Leaving remnants of love’s decay
Life does cease
Thoughts do descend
To a place not known
To a place with no end
Where love dies
Only to be born again
Mortality is bitter
Life paralyzing
Where love’s not realized
It flows into eternity
There to remain
An unfulfilled memory
No longer to sustain
**********************
As long as there’s life
There’s hope
I fear the night
The darkness brings
Where demon spirits troll
To capture my very soul
I fear the waning moon
Its artificial light
It brings no warmth
On a cold bitter night
I fear for sleep
Chance I wake
The hand of death
My breath will take
I fear my dreams
For what they say
If they be true
They rule the day
I fear the dawn
The light it brings
Will it expose
Those secret things
I fear mortality
The end of days
The final hymn
The organ plays
I fear that God
In His almighty power
Will not save me from His wrath
In my final hour
Yet
We’ve been told
Do not fear
Do as I command
Walk with me
I will hold your right hand
********************************
“Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death,
I fear no evil , for You are with me.
Psalm (23-4)
What’s there to do?
When you are trapped in your thoughts
For
Thoughts are only thoughts
Never put to words
Feelings and emotions
Never heard
You struggle in silence
To basket your thoughts
You carry your feelings
That you have fought
With pen in hand
You take a stand
You write the words
That need to be heard
Thoughts that no longer roam
The birth of a poem
***********************
“Words without thoughts
Never to heaven go”
William Shakespeare
You extend all your labor
On something you’ll never catch
For the false appears real
Making life surreal
A façade of being happy
You race towards success
College
Job
Marriage
Family
Retirement
You extend all your labor
On satisfying the next thing
A little bit more
You just can’t ignore
You delude yourself into thinking
That you’re in control
Always in doubt
As to what life is all about
But
Too many get fooled
By an endless barrage
Chasing after life’s retreating mirage
*************************************
“…Mirages are things that aren’t really there
That you can see very clearly”
Norton Juster
“The Phantom Tollbooth”
Mirror mirror on the wall
Help me to recall
The images in my mind
Reflection of a likeness
Place my thoughts in rewind
Memories reflect
Thoughts that are scattered
I try to collect
But it doesn’t seem to matter
Reasoning aside
I try my best
To forget the past
To put my thoughts to rest
But
Learning to forget
Has not happened yet
So
I’ve learned at last
To live with the past
Mirror mirror on the wall
It doesn’t matter after all
Becoming introspective
I’m now self-reflective
I’m back where I started
Alone with my thoughts
How can it be
That love runs so deep?
So deeply hidden inside
Where only love can abide
Love takes control and won’t let go
You don’t ask for it
You can’t stop it
It captures your being as history has shown
It tears at the heart
It bites to the bone
It’s impossible to touch it
You can’t capture its essence
Sometimes its fleeting a wink of an eye
Sometimes it lingers leaving only a why
It causes hurt
It causes pain
Poets write of it
Love songs tell of it
Imaginations hold on to it
Embedded in the soul
A lover’s refrain
When it arrives no longer hidden
A love locked inside no longer forbidden
It reaches the heart carefully seeding
Watered with tears its growth exceeding
It blossoms
It flowers
It explodes into view
It shouts from the mountain tops
It echoes cross the valleys
One it arrives it never stops
Leaping!
Rushing!
Sudden sallies!
Words can never describe it
Do not attempt to try
For life is empty without it
Yet, no one can tell you why♥
********************************
“Who is wise in love,
Love must,
Say least”
Alfred Lord Tennyson
(1809-1892)
Are you the victim?
Of smiling hatred
Emanating from a calcified heart
For that’s where it starts
Are you tempted by smiling lust?
Lust or bust
Sex
Sports
Food
Popularity
Music
Are you a slave?
Do you crave?
Smoking
Alcohol
Drugs
Does your appetite for leisure
Mean cheap substitutes
For pleasure?
Does society?
Strap a “dead” body to your back
Are you chained to corruption
With subliminal seduction
If so ,don’t tarry
For in life
You are what you carry
***********************
“We forge the chains
We wear in life”
Charles Dickens
Call me sullen
Call me morose
Call me resentful
Call me embittered
Call me “Mara”
An empty glass
Of bitter water
A heart in tribulation
An empty state
In need of regeneration
My heart
My thoughts
I need to scour
A rose will either
Wither or flower
For
Suffering can make you either
Sweet or sour
***********************
“Let all bitterness and wrath and anger and clamor and slander
be put away from you, along with all malice.”
Ephs. 4-31
Can’t sing
What can’t be song
Can’t move
What can’t be moved
Can’t change
What can’t be changed
You question life
But life doesn’t have
All the answers
Have you already reaped
What you have sowed?
Have you reached?
The end of the fence line
The sign at the end of the road
Or
Are you still waiting?
For the doorbell to ring
For the package to arrive
Is this how you survive?
Is this the only thing that
Keeps you alive?
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
“Here we go round the prickly pear
prickly pear prickly pear.
Here we go round the prickly pear
at 5 o’clock in the morning.”
T.S. Eliot