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552 · Jan 2021
Being
Jon Jan 2021
When I was young
It was all for me

The ideas of my friends
And the thoughts of the old
The things that brought me to my knees
And finally the one that built me up

The love of the perfect
And sooner
And for longer
Their desperate absence

I took on the words of the weak
As they flexed their muscle
And I drank with friends
And talked about this

Now as my eyes do not see as well as I remember
I know what is right
But far better
What is good
229 · Mar 2022
Mother's Loss
Jon Mar 2022
It is not tonight
But one night
The phone will ring
Her voice tired and low
To tell of her loss of love
My mother
Alone
214 · Aug 2022
Memory
Jon Aug 2022
Today was a beautiful day and I took no photos of it so that I could remember it well
185 · May 2019
She's Eternal
Jon May 2019
She embraced the absurdly impossible moment of her life
And she stretched out her arms and soaked in the star that brought her to life
She looked down upon the rest
The narrow-minded
The small eyes
The old knowledge
The ancient fear

She soared above them and the wind filled her
179 · Jul 2022
Time
Jon Jul 2022
And I don’t know what I was expecting from it
But I figured if I stayed alive long enough
I’d find what I was looking for
152 · Oct 2022
Memory
Jon Oct 2022
Memory and its wicked ways
Leaves too much behind for us to find
But with great mercy it withholds
Some of what would drive us mad

Its walls are weak and its defense is thin
But if we promise to lay still and not fight
The peace of perfect finds us at night
Until the walls come down
121 · Mar 2019
Her
Jon Mar 2019
Her
I saw her the first time when I was young
And I did not know if it was a dream
Or the brief memory of one

And in that dream my legs gave way
When you do not know the strength to run
Or the strength to walk

I do not remember what she wore but I knew her then
The shape rolling from her eyes to her lips
Made every good and true feeling I had towards love

And she looked at me through the eternal population…

Then I knew no time
I did not know its passing or its changing
And I did not know its destruction

And when I am asleep so that I may see her again
And when she comes to me when my eyes close
She touches her cheek to mine and whispers

"Good night and sleep then
Let us now know love while we can
Here where time stops for us
Where there is no memory and where there is no fear
And here where I will always love you
Until I wake you in the morning"
118 · Apr 2022
Dreamless
Jon Apr 2022
A week apart brings love and warmth
Loss brings desire and focus
A dream of years apart
And loss in distance
Brings strength and love for them
But today
I woke from a dreamless sleep
Groaned and got out of bed
105 · Nov 2020
Desire
Jon Nov 2020
Desire is just desire
Lust is only the wanting
And having is for stories
And for those who’ve wanted less
99 · Mar 2019
Our Giants
Jon Mar 2019
In the winter our giants would come
In our end they would walk by our side
And with reason they spoke us to being
A perfection no chance could conceive
Through them we march on forever
And it is us only that they love

They turn our fear into evil which all men must hate
And what we love they make good for all to obtain
Our confusion is their path
And we breath life from their lungs
And without them our breath
Would be pushed out a last time

It is then that we need them
And towards that which all men must face
Some face it alone
And some face it too quickly
And others without any thought
But we will face it with our giants

And when it is upon us and we wait for them
We will look up and see for the first time
Past the place our giants stood
And into our creator’s eyes
The beautiful dust from which we came
And into which we will find our peace
95 · Oct 2022
I live in the past…
Jon Oct 2022
The photos move me
And the memories are grand
I visit what has been
And what was lovely then
Now lovelier still
For I’m no longer there

The greatness of the past
Grows, the further from it I am
The more wonderful it becomes
My mind, you good and gentle thing
Hold only on to what is worth knowing

And remember this vision through the hidden lens of nostalgia
Haunting the scene
90 · Aug 2022
The Love During
Jon Aug 2022
Who do we call on when we die
Let it be the ones and the life we loved
And if then we ask a question
Let it be only am I loved and did I love

Loss is everywhere and when it’s ours
Let it be that the overwhelming beauty of life brought us to love more
So that the cold empty bed is filled not with regret
But with the good sadness of love and memory

While we have them sounds and sights are ours
The screams and laughs flow through us
The good and the bad are ours to love
And the realness of life is in our mind

Happiness comes not from what we see
And hear and feel
And smell and taste and think
But how we meet them all

In the deepest well of our hearts
Where meaning is born

Let life overwhelm us
Without panic
81 · Mar 2021
The Wonder
Jon Mar 2021
Through my survival eyes
I see the part of the world that keeps me safe
And the part of the world that hurts
And I do not see and I cannot understand where my heart bleeds
And the heart that bleeds on me
The heart that bleeds through me

I let go of my name and I let go of my soul
To be closer to that which is without us
And to be closer to what does not need us
To be closer to what does not want to be understood
To see clearly the beauty that lies not within the answers
But within the wonder of the questions
75 · Oct 2022
Dreams
Jon Oct 2022
Where do dreams go
       Once you are old
75 · Jul 2020
Forevermore
Jon Jul 2020
I dreamt I lived forever
And that age and wrinkle never came
I dreamt that the world was better
And that peace grew evermore

Her love towered over me
And my heart was still
Her spirit flowed through her body around my own
And grasped the depths that wallowed low

I asked her what my time meant
To live towards no end
To be and to not fear
That we are all here by chance
And to love the odds from our gods
That the moment was taken
And across a billion years and countless specks of stars…

We are here
And forevermore
Our love goes on
72 · Mar 2020
Of Men and Women
Jon Mar 2020
He spoke them into the world
And below they ran in circles

The women looked for freedom
And the men took the throne of the creator

To be worshipped

But in the end
There were only fathers left with the dead girls who sold them there
71 · Apr 2022
I Am
Jon Apr 2022
If there is no one to see me
And no one to hold me and bring me close
I am
If there is no one on the other side
More than the mirror staring into my soul
I am more
If I yell and scream and all that meets it is the echo of the noise
I am monumental
If I sing and the only applause is the ringing in my ear
I am the creator
If the only reader of my words is the writer
I am forever
If my tears wet only my cheeks
I am real
And if there is no one except the dust that I was
Weeping for me
I am eternal
70 · Aug 2022
Again
Jon Aug 2022
The living
Go on
Like me
Doing again
What’s been done
A million times
And by others
Just like them
And no wondering
Of tricks
Or words
Will see a new day.
The same
Will be
On and on
For me
And you
And

It’s ok
67 · Jul 2020
Never Made
Jon Jul 2020
Her eyes were never-ending
And her heart the same
She pulled the life out of me
And she brought me back home

The years were bliss
While the world was on fire
She used her strength
To find mine too

We lived to be old
And our hearts were one
And at the very end
I awoke
And

She was never made
67 · Mar 2020
The Great Space
Jon Mar 2020
When the great unfulfillment hits you, you can only stare back at it and wonder what could be so wonderful to beat this thing and what could be enough to feel something greater than the emptiness sitting in your gut. You reach for what it might be and you scratch and claw your way to something, anything that has the capability of filling space. You scream at the sky and at the clouds if they will listen. You scream in your chest and your lungs fill with kinetic anger and it echoes in the space and pushes the emptiness further. You don’t want to work or create because that will make you face the truth about the quality of what you do and the truth about how good you are. You’ve spent your whole life feeling unique, only to find at every point on the path, that you are not and that the thing you feel is only coming to you from someone else who already felt it and expressed it before and better. You can regurgitate it and sometimes it comes out pleasant enough, and every other time it comes out smelling and stinking. And even in the pleasant moments, it still comes down to it being born from something else… every ******* time. So you stop looking and you stop working and you stop creating and you stop making anything and all bottled up potential remains stagnant and unfulfilled which leaves you the same. And thus the emptiness lives on and grows and thrives at the expense of your sanity, and thoughts of being something other than what everybody else is. Because in truth you hate them. You hate the ones that are like others and when they move and when they act you can’t help but feel contempt for the whole lot of them. And the contempt grows even stronger once you realize you are mixed in there right next to them. But you never really had a chance. And the ones that did only had it because they had louder and more obnoxious voices. All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy and I am that dull boy.
I know it isn't a poem in form, but it felt like one in tone so thanks for bearing with me!
65 · Oct 2022
Unknown
Jon Oct 2022
All of humanity look on
For the words that come from me now
They may be seen and also not
Whatever fate’s choice becomes
Will leave us only in more want

More for me
To be seen and known
More for them
To feel

Or more for them
To feel again
And for me to be known
And it not be enough
62 · Feb 2022
The Walk
Jon Feb 2022
How do we go
Scurrying our way
Mumbling and groaning
On the walk

Hating and loathing
What we see
How do we go
This same old way

Not just today
But every day
With no end in sight
And no change on the way

How do we go
When the light we see
And impossibilities
Are why we’re here

Mumbling and complaining
Repeating and waiting
Waiting for something
When its already here

Love is around us
And not from them
But from it
It, the dirt you were born in

Embracing us wholly
Wholly embracing
Until it does again
After the walk
61 · Sep 2022
Question in a Eulogy
Jon Sep 2022
After the relic and remains are spread
And when my mind’s whole thought removed
After my memory and fear are gone . . . .

Was all the time then lost to me worth what was spent?

Ask me not but to instead
The one who follows now
Them walking in the rain
60 · Apr 2022
The Artist
Jon Apr 2022
It’s being when you are young
Young and in love but not with anyone
But with life
The life in your song
The life in the air
And the life in your hands
To make
To give
And it gives as all else takes and takes
And takes
And then you see them
And to them it all turns
And through that glory of
They absorb the desire and gift
And when they are gone
In your solitude it has not left you
It hurries to heal
In the dark corner it finds you
In humility it is love
And the love lost is found in the beauty of the light in the dark

And only when you are older and after all
The work was done, then not
Friends communed, then not
Lovers were loved.
Then not

And all the while the gift of light and love
That was told the others brought
Stayed in you
To feed you
To hold you
And to heal you
And you drank up when you were thirsty
And now
Now when you are past her
Or him
And it
And them
And her
You see the heart of life
And of breath and blood
You feel the love inside
The one that burned for it all
That gave you all
The only hurt was the not knowing
Of the source

To feel is to love
And never is the feeling lost

As we hold the memories of the life that bore us
We see what has been
And still is
We know who we were
And who we are
57 · Jul 2020
The Wine of Life
Jon Jul 2020
We rush to the wrong
And we speak quickly for evil
Yet the silence that brings
The wine of words
And music and paint
And dance and love
And all that we have
For the world beyond ourselves
Is left behind
55 · Mar 2022
Love’s Heights
Jon Mar 2022
Love enters
And love leaves
Its frail time allotted
Is not ours to decide

It grants us peace
And in its absence we need
Not just from it
But from the ones we pushed away

Love is around us
As we say
But not always within
Still a reach away

And in the dark where lovers ignite
Though it burns bright
The empty space it was
Defeats us

No more I say shall I live
Under its spell of kiss or quarrel
But then the blessing of its light
Carries me to dangerous heights
54 · Apr 2022
Flying
Jon Apr 2022
When you dream of flying
Do you look up at the sky
Or down to earth
Do you dream of what you’ve only begun to reach
Or of what you’ve left below
52 · Mar 2022
Life During
Jon Mar 2022
You who celebrate life after life
And the life before life
Where is your celebration for the life during
For the now and the happening around us
For the scent in your nose and the vista in your eyes
For the love in your heart and the moment in your grasp
Where are the cheering and the dancing for the life in your heart now

You who look only over the next ridge
You stumble on the beauty under your feet
Jon Jul 2020
The darkness fell upon us
And the world bore our weight
We gathered for births
And we gathered for deaths
And all the while in between
We were left alone with escape in our dreams

And deep below in the dark well of life
Where all we see is the sun in the moon
We birthed and created worlds into our own
We saw past and through from where we came
To the end and the beginning
And the moonlight through the cracks
42 · Jul 2020
To be
Jon Jul 2020
I don’t want to be anything
I don’t want to achieve anything
I don’t want to work and fail
I don’t want to strive to be good
I don’t want to feel bad about being bad
I don’t want to be tired all of the time
I don’t want to be awake when I want to sleep
And I don’t want to try for anything

I just want to be

I want to be asleep
I want to eat
I want to be amused
I want to ****
I want to make love
I want to kiss
I want to slap
I want to raise the hell inside my soul
30 · Jan 30
Sins
Jon Jan 30
From where did the sins of man come
Were they born by god
Or did we find them in the dark
Waiting where our deepest desires live
Did we feel their wrath?
And blame it on the gods we imagined below
Or did we simpy feel wrong
For the hurting we bore

— The End —