On Dreams What Could Have Been

It’s National Poetry Month! I’m no poet but it’s liberating to try . . .

Photo by Marcos Paulo Prado on Unsplash

I am definitely not a poet. I like reading things that rhyme and I hum along to song lyrics, but I was not that person looking forward to the poetry unit in eleventh grade English class. I can’t tell you the themes of any Shakespearian sonnet. But I have learned that reading and even dabbling in writing poetry is fun. I’ve needed some additional fun in my life this year (like everyone else). It’s National Poetry Month, so why not? A little creative fearlessness never hurt either.

On Dreams What Could Have Been

On Dreams What Could Have Been
Baby giraffe and awkward bearing
Love hints at it’s suppose.
Furtiveness, confusing awareness.
Overwhelming dynamite
Love: sensitive and unfathomable.

Tentative touch on chapped lips.
Flakes of skin on Lip Smackers.
Sweetness without form.
Blinding Technicolor happiness.
Existing on notes ripped from my Mead
And glances under floppy hair.

I could not place it.
Was it jasmine or gardenia or rose?
It enveloped me and rolled down hills.
Wake up to ride bikes until the street lights.

They are beautiful but they have thorns.
Everyone knows this, but do they listen?
Beauty is enticing and then the trap clamps shut.

I wanted what I wanted and
Of course did not heed the warnings.
What is youth for?
You jump.
A dog bite.
The beauty overwhelms and then leaves
You with nothing.

Bitter dreaming of the
Old days and the
Good times and the
Lost loves and the
Promises unfulfilled.

The pain is too much to bear
But I want it still.
If only to relive those kaleidoscope dreams
The halcyon days.

Rough hands the map of scars.
Each imprint in my dough.
The mirror tells no lies
I’ve paid and paid dearly.
The echoes of tattoos.

Numbness now
I feel no pain.
Absentmindedly withdraw tattered sinews
Chunks of throbbing heart.

No hurt could be enough
No agony at its end.
On dreams lost, abandoned, unfulfilled.
Oh, what could have been.

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