Unfinished Poem

I was recently reminded of this (true) poem that I began almost exactly a year ago. I worked on it for several months, then got stuck on how to continue or end it. It may never be finished, I suppose, as no true story ever is, but what I have here rounds out fairly well. You may notice a strict pattern when it comes to the number of syllables per line and stanza.

Two lifted eyelids revealed

Warmth from the other side of the room--

Breathing, blushing, under her halo of hair.

She was a clear oasis

That dying men desperately needed,

Causing falling to knees and weeping relief.

A bird that flies in the sky

And hopes to make an awed impression

May not be noticed by every pretty eye.

Such it was with the poor wretch;

A dying man or a flapping bird,

And indeed he got her glance, which was something.

The dreadful seize in his heart

From then on, her every appearance

Shattered him with the blunt fact that he loved her.

It was the sound of her name

The echo and trail of her footprints

That caused him to set sail into the unknown.

She saw him as a meek child

Ducking safely behind his mother.

When curious boys find bugs, their eyes are wide.

Vases are filled with water

Or with hardening cement as chains

But her vase was filled with blood and she heard him.

When vases fall to the floor,

The shattering glass is like laughter.

And so both were fooled into believing it.

Their lives were magnets that won’t

Decide if they want to pull or push

But knew if the hands let go, they would unite.

Instead they thrived in a world

That was imaginary, painted

Created by stupid dreamers in love.

When God grips hearts, he squeezes.

Fresh blood and tears roll down his forearm

But he cries too, and sweats blood. He’s waiting too.

When her vase was shattering,

He said, “God may hear you, I suppose,

“But he never has and never will hear me.”

Love was a salmon he chased.

Futile, he swims; it slides from his grip.

But now it leapt to him because of his need.

Love should not be a hotel.

It should be a house, mortgage paid off.

It was not her fault she was just a hotel.

God fills voids we least expect.

He had a void, and her void was his.

So he was empty, and she felt the same way.

The void’s memory she tried

To push out between cracks in her skull

But it whispered to her, murdered in secret.

His lived in a well, his void,

A home he could not forget was his

But he tried and failed to climb out after her.

She left, the end, why not die?

How often can one say he is loved?

Perhaps only as often as one is born.

A birth begins a new life

And then that life lives and dies somehow

And so when love had probably died, no more.

Breathe in, breathe out. Slow, slow down.

That’s what carbon monoxide will do.

Breathe in, drain. Breath in, drain. Breath in, drain. Until.

The God of Love will find you

He will scrub your lungs and pick you up

But you won’t know yet why your feet feel your weight.

He finds her panicked weeping
Because love hasn’t died, nor can it.
Prayers rise like incense till God comes in a storm.

God bless.