Recently, I came across Stories of my Soul, poetry by L.J. Lenehan. I highly suggest you visit her Facebook and author pages if your heart and soul need an infusion of poetry.
Poets are amazing at coloring each word they link together with palpable emotion, and Ms. Lenehan titled her page appropriately.
Poetry comes from the deepest confines of the soul; where joy lives, where past wounds still bleed, where dreams take flight.
I always thought a poem had to rhyme, and in most cases, I'm not exactly wrong, but I'm not altogether right either. Poetry is the literary work in which special intensity is given to the expression of feelings and ideas, it's a quality of beauty and emotion. In other words Poetry is alive.
When I wrote THE GAZE, I had this one central idea based on a piece of writing born of pain and regret. I never considered it poetry, and I still don't. Not when I compare it to something like Lenehan's A Better Tomorrow or Side of the Road. I don't believe I wrote anything like Jo King VonBargen's poems like The Unspeakable, Glow or To My Child Far Away. I can feel every lash, every giggle, every comforting touch.
I can't compose poetry, but I wonder if this piece qualifies.
Although THE GAZE turned into a maelstrom of emotions, I may be biased in my opinion but this is at its core, the most emotional piece within its pages.
It was written in a diner, near midnight, on the back of a diner placemat...
I miss you, please forgive me…. I love you…
A man laughs heartily with a couple sitting at a booth. No doubt he has known them for years. His baritone voice echoes throughout the diner, but fades in my mind as the older couple looks on, placid smiles upon faces lined with laughter, their hands entwined…
Not so long ago I dared to believe that her hand would hold mine. That my face would crease with laughter at the sweet sound of her voice, enriched with life and love, a love that I denied myself… in the absurd quest for revenge…
The petals of her rose have grown brittle. Its delicate perfume more memory than anything real and my heart breaks with the knowledge that other than her blue eyes, I see little in my mind of her face.
Gwen, beautiful Gwen…
No more can I feel the soft warmth of her kiss than its its absence becomes me in the form of a living death.
Who am I to be now that I don’t see that reflection of myself upon those blue eyes? That reflection that showed a better man I’ll never be without her…
An empty shell is all that I am, yet she is not even aware of all that I left behind, with her, in her, forever.
I’ll be no more than a transient thought in her mind, a small measure of time. Insignificant. Nothing more than a faintly familiar set of notes to a song seldom remembered…
The very essence of her name is an endless symphony that sets my soul on fire that consumes me with the crushing need to see her… to hold her… to kiss her…
I grit my teeth as a scream in my mind rips through my insides. The trembling grows less disabling as I list the reasons why I shouldn’t drive those eight hours and knock on her door, my face down in shame, and heavy with the terrible, wonderful knowledge, that I was made for her alone; that my existence is forever entwined with hers…
This ache in my heart, though painful, is bound to grow comforting each day. The comfort lies in the fact that the pain, this horrid, ceaseless clawing burning through my insides, reminds me that love was within my grasp.
She is somewhere out there, unknowingly carrying all that I am or will ever be while I live as a hollow stomp…
Another night brings in its dark wings the fluttering memories of when all was right and of the place where I rightfully belong. It will allow the light to come and find me still awake living this nightmarish loneliness and another day will start…
Without her…
I miss you, please forgive me…. I love you…
visit:
L.J. Lenehan at ljlnehan.com and StoriesOfMySoul
Jo VonBargen at TheTwo-Bit Bard and her Facebook page
More touching and soulful poetry I have never read...
ReplyDeleteThank you. But that's a one a lifetime. I don't know how you compose verses the way you do. You must have a million poems!
DeleteFabulous Javier... Thank you so much for your comments on my poetry - I am absolutely touched!! 'Poetry is the literary work in which special intensity is given to the expression of feelings and ideas, it's a quality of beauty and emotion. In other words Poetry is alive.' - I love that description... L.J. Lenehan
ReplyDeleteOut of the hundreds of different definitions I came across, I loved that one the best and touched it up. Glad you liked the post. My dad is a poet at heart. I've watched him recite his poems since I was a kid, in complete awe of the emotion dripping from every word. You poets, rock!
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