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Jun 6, 2026Poems
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🦋 🔄 🌱
Transformation & Change🤔 💭 🧠
Philosophical & Intellectual❤️ 💕 🌹
Love & Romance💔 😢 🥀
Heartbreak & Loss🌅 ☀️ 🕊️
Hope & Optimism😔 💔 🌧️
Sadness & Melancholy✨ 🌸 🎨
Beauty & Aesthetics🎭 😭 ⚖️
Drama & Tragedy⏳ 🕰️ 🌅
Time & Nostalgia💪 🌟 🚀
Inspiration & Motivation👨👩👧👦 💞 🏡
Family & Relationships😊 🎉 🌈
Happiness & Joy💀 ☠️ 🪦
Death & Mortality😂 🤡 😏
Humor & Satire🌲 🌊 🦋
Nature & Environment🏙️ 🚕 🌆
Political & Social😡 ⚡ 💥
Anger & Conflict😱 🩸 👹
Dark & Scary💋 🔥 🖤
Sexy & Sensual🧙♂️ ✨ 🧚♀️
Fantasy & Magical🔮 👻 🕯️
Mystery & Supernatural⚔️ 🛡️ 🎖️
War & Heroism✈️ 🌍 🧳
World & Travel🏛️ 📜 🏺
Historical & AncientMy father says
the peppers need more sun.
This is somehow
about my mother.
The balcony smelled like soil and cigarettes.
He kept looking at the plants
instead of me.
Men from our part of the world
treat eye contact
like a border crossing.
Later, at home,
I cut red peppers slowly
for a salad I wasn’t hungry for.
Outside, rain.
Of course.
Everything important in my family
eventually becomes weather.
I suddenly remembered my mother
standing barefoot in the kitchen
telling me not to refrigerate tomatoes.
As if love could survive
through small correct instructions.
The knife,
the cutting board,
the quiet apartment.
I understood my father completely then.
Not verbally.
Worse.
#118
Shadow is not my name, though
I went through the path. Just
Yesterday a raven perched upon
The window to my unfeeling stillness
Asking for something I did not have
But look, my dear, the sun has risen
I remember you on the days before
Looking around at the falling flakes
I whispered to you, in some other
Reality, we would be forevermore
Our frozen trails covered by the soft
Blanket I laid in my words
As we stood under the soft sky
As we are but a grain of sand in the river
Of time. The lights lit the balcony, as you
Stood down below, covered by the charcoal
Night, in the shadow of the mockingbird.
Unseen again, something lost that had never
Truly began, always in shadow
Shadow is not my name
Yet my name is surrounded by shadow.
#118
The morning after you left me
I lingered too long
in love's haze.
A beautiful lavender shade
spilled across the windows.
I wandered empty spaces
still carrying your outline.
The house remembered you.
The mirrors remembered you.
Even silence
seemed to speak your name.
By nightfall
there were no traces of us left.
Only lavender light
and the strange feeling
that someone had survived
what someone else had lost.
The morning after
you loved me.
#317
I saw her.
She saw me.
A look - something rare,
A flicker in the air.
The depth in her eyes
Pulled me into silence,
Like a secret
Neither of us could say.
16
Flowin
Showin
Growin
Get
Them
Hearts
Uh
Flowin
Replies
and
Comments
Showin
Keep
Them
Numbers
Growin
Come
ooooooooonnn!
Yeehaw!
🤠
16
Sometimes I just want to run behind my dreams,
Forget everything… just feel free.
But then I see my mom and dad’s eyes—
Their dreams… maybe I should make them mine.
Sometimes I just want a life that’s easy,
No pressure, no plans, just peace and a smile.
But then I think… to be truly happy
Don’t I need to work hard for a while?
Sometimes I think about money too,
How I’ll survive, what I really need to do.
Dreams can wait, love can pause…
But hunger doesn’t break its laws.
And sometimes I wish—just once—
I could pick one way, one path, one truth.
But life isn’t one straight road.
It’s a mess… and I’m walking through it.
13
No, I don't devour them often
Once a month to the bakery for one
Eating as I walk
No, not ladylike, but not the point
As a child, we just could not afford it
Was afraid to ask my parents
My dad would have bought one for me
That is no longer an issue
Hope he is smiling down from Heaven
It a treat for the walker
Walking 25 miles weekly for the ASPCA
I write in my head while I walk
Hurry home to jot down what came to mind
Almond Danish was shared with a squirrel on the way
11
i don't really know
what happens biologically
in the give of skin and nerves and flesh
against blade
i know the chorus in my head-
the cuts- bright, blinding slicing
i could draw the lines over and over
until it doesn't hurt anymore
until i quiet the voice by the name of selfishness
and a thousand other titles; pain
hatred
guilt
i know the difference
between a slit that can leave a scar
and one that will disappear
i know the pattern of the lines on my skin
and the diluted red
down the drain
11
A poet writes
of the yellow brick Road to the Wizard of Oz
I’m grasping at straws
Poetry of substance Worthy of a cause
I’m Grasping at straws
I read poetry without flaws
I’m grasping at straws
Poetry so deep in content, I am in awe
I’m grasping at straws
Poetry so reflective I have to take a pause
Yet still I’m grasping at straws
This is more than writer’s block
My Acadian clock stopped
My brother passed away
I can’t find anything to say
Can’t breathe I cry and pray
Words betray my heart
Numb my brother and I apart
My Tears will stop life will be OK
I hope today would be a better day
I read poetry to fill the hole
Until grief, depression loss lets me go
Living moment, by moment is all I know
A rebel without a cause
I’m grasping at straws
Inspired song
Take this pain
By Jake Banfield 2022
9
Thinking about it feels like watching an episode.
Your shoes, sit by the doorway.
Slammed shut, the only way through is in.
Spaced out at the windowpane,
seeing your face in the textures of the wall.
I thought about what could have been.
I think about everything that's happened.
Haunted by the time we spent.
My eyes, my face, the words that melted at your fingertips.
It's permanent.
I'll keep moving.
You'll be stuck.
Scrubbing the stains until scars spell out my name.
8
I've dreamt and felt alive
but never in this life,
skin's so full of hives
and ever since you died,
I realized,
living before was not reality
but another dream
of feel-good fantasies
I could get lost in.
Unresolved is the conflict
since I first left Eden.
The fog builds up
on the car's windows
& the aircon
is so unsettling.
Wires are crossed lines
I hear on the radio
and promises me freedom.
My first ever client today
as a support worker
has it worse,
and her hopes are little budgies
that are kept in the yard
and in a cage
which she's captivated by
when she goes out for a cigarette
and decides to light up three.
8
Down here by the Murray River,
where life swims all around;
above and beneath the surface,
in this heat, everything flows —
Beers, BBQs, budgie smugglers and babes in bikinis,
memories bobbing above ground
capturing freedom; post-pandemic and pre-celebrations.
Down by the Murray River,
watching things flow safely and soundly,
birthing new possibilities:
boyfriends, babies, businesses and brews?!
Endless possibilities abound,
prophecies realised; salvation.
Down by the Murray River,
with nature, our souls sing loudly,
simplicity is possible,
trusting and enjoying,
everything is allowed.
7
Your love is like a mystery
Always misleading and unfair
Whenever I think I am close
I haven’t gotten anywhere
You always shut me out
Whenever I open my heart
You’d rather be somewhere else
So very far apart
I want to give you my all
And show you just how much I care
But, I can never seem to reach you
Darling, you’re never there
Trying to touch your heart
Is like trying to touch a star
No matter how hard I try
I’m always so very far
I want to get to know you
I want you to know me
I want to hold you in my arms
But, you would rather be alone and free
I don’t know what to do
I want to win your heart
I’ve tried everything that I can
But, I always end up with a broken heart
I guess that we’re not meant to be
Maybe I should just let you go
But, for some reason deep down inside
I am dying to know
Why it is you are the way that you are?
Why do you push me away?
How can I prove to you how much I love you?
Just tell me what I need to do and say
These questions burn within my heart
Like a fire in the night
If only there was a way to change you
But, I know that wouldn’t be right
I know I need to let you go
I have to set you free
I don’t want to waste my time
On someone who doesn’t care about me
However, there is one thing
That I do want you to know
Even after all we’ve been through
I’ll always love you so
5
I smile too much on my own
whenever i remind you
and for a second, the empty space
feels less like absence
and more like a promise.
3
I wish I could kiss you... right now.
Oh, I'm such a good kisser, don’t you know it!
Imagine me standing oh so close to you,
looking down at you, gazing into your eyes...
What were we talking about?
Both falling silent as a knowing look is felt between us,
and as if compelled by some unseen force.
You find yourself being pulled against me.
You feel my arms wrap around you
like your favourite quilt.
The sensation is one of
overwhelming complete relief
simultaneously mixed
with electrified excitement.
We take a moment to enjoy one another's face
from such close proximity.
Neither of us feels an ounce of reservation.
It's as if it was always meant to be,
and there is no shame in that.
Finding your eyes once I again,
I let you observe my gaze trail down
to your delicious looking lips
as I lightly bite my own.
Then my mouth is upon yours.
We kiss so sweetly,
as we both spread out on couch.
What a kiss is that!
Yes, I think you can easily identify it...
Whether literal or figurative, the imagery is the same.
Fantasy and impossible dreams melding together,
constructing an even more impossible reality
which is by its own definition a fallacy.
Somehow, the few instances of intensity
override the mundane and routine.
It is the logically-minded individual’s
worst nightmare.
Could be Saturn... or maybe Pluto.
It is the "something" that changes everything.
It is the element that was missing,
yet always in wait.
Hinting at its very existence
while denying it, simultaneously.
The ultimate self-delusion.
Neptunian dissolution.
3
A hermit in the woods they say
Where life meets death
Where the wind meets the trees
Perhaps I'll have a small cottage
Buried in a corner
Unbeknownst to humankind
And I'll write
Day after day.
Perhaps I'll sit on a tree trunk
Where I'll dangle my legs
Or on the ground
Legs crossed
Or on top of a hill
As if I'm on top of the world
Somewhere
Where my words
Would eventually become
A part of this forest
3
calculations: tribulations
love to divide my time
unknown to the public
fearing cynical clinical trials
alchemic breath; the future
I'm chemically castrated
by laws of men and those
with lesser skills demonstrated
heaving shovelful overhead
grasping pressed pine hiding my prize
immoral beggar to the dead
continuing to refine secrets of a mind
no good deed unpunished
as they continuously pelt me
with sticks and stones
and heretic revelry
unknown to them the angelic goal
of taking pieces to make them whole
thoughts and dreams and sewn skin seams
to hold inside his mighty soul
in my final moments I did slip
to disrespect this next of kin
for the first words from my lips
I said it instead of him
If a man has passed the pearly gates
shown his manner and earned his fate
be it sin or unnatural crime
to pry him back from the other side?
cracking skies supplied by Zeus
will further loosen this earthly noose
godly ambitions achieved,
of course, the gods relish my muse
For power over life itself
will have me standing par
with beings crowding clouded skies
fearing man has come so far
1