Forgive me if I fail to smile
At your barely-nodded greeting
My mouth is full of cotton
Wound stitched shut
With a blunt needle
And I must hide my teeth
Lest the blood pour forth
From these scars
smile
A kind parting
What summers I spend in the depths of your gaze
While the half hours tick past with a sigh
How cool is the breeze, yet how warm is this haze
As I watch my life, lonely, drift by
There I sit and I bask in the glow of your sun
In the chill of your evening mocks
And I love you with all of my heart every morn’
So I suffer your slights and your shocks
‘Tis in vain and I know it, your heart is aflame
With the gas-lit by some other spark
And I see nothing here for me but future pain
As I talk to myself in the dark
Try to speak me some sense to this dull wit of mine
I will do what I must to survive
For to keep up my status through your frosty clime
One can barely call ‘being alive’.
So my mind is made up – without heed of my heart
And the tears join my smile on the floor
I must put them both back, though it may not be smart
For I’ll not hurt my love,
My one precious love
This only true love?
As I slip out the door.
Weather the weather, whatever
Some days I am connected
To all nature on this earth
Yet others I am restless
And unsure about my worth.
Such times of inner turmoil
Can last a goodly while
Yet in the end, the sunshine
Will always make me smile.
A portrait of the artist from memory
The langorous lids, drooping softly over his twinkling, tired eyes, and that mischievous grin, wryly twisting the lips as his tongue darts out to enter the silent debate.
How did I ever stand a chance? With one plaintive eyebrow I had lost the argument, all thoughts of resistance winging their way to hardier climes.
He looks up, and I feel my heart leap into my mouth, ready to fall at his feet. What a world I find in that face, one glance and I am forever undone.
Oh how I both bless and rue the day I ever laid eyes on you.
