Outside Staring In

I suppose all lives struggle in vain

Some days of good, some days of pain

Some years enwrapped in community

Some years outside staring inward to see

Any single warm feeling of loving good

Any relationship sharing as it should

Any hope or joy, or gain, or thrill

And failing, many resort to drug or pill

Then life inside, or life without

No longer matters there is no doubt

For life has been drugged ‘neath insulated haze

And time flows by in lethargic daze

While time does flow, life does not

Opportunity is lost, confusion is bought

As the very joy and thrill so earnestly desired

 Passes right by without love being sired

Drug fueled insulation cuts both ways

Marginalizes scary nights and joyful days

Odd though it sounds, pain actually serves us

It drives us forward with focus and purpose

If we can blunt it enough within our minds eye

We will see each opportunity as it passes by

And with opportunity seen, joy can be felt

So that we walk along with pain expelled

© Copyright 2020 Marty Vandermolen – All Rights Reserved

Dancing in Memory’s Waters

You’re dancing in the still waters of my memories,

Tickling streams and currents of color and light,

Wavelets lap at the cloudy recollections,

Washing away the hazes that have slowly cast 

O’er visions of you in the moonlight,

Glisteningly translucent as you lay bare

Skin rising heat-waves shimmer of scents 

Which buoy my lungs and sink my heart,

Drawing tears within my eyes, threatening to 

Dissolve the last view of the evaporating footprints

You left behind while discarding my life.

 ©Copyright, 2018, Marty Vandermolen, All Rights Reserved

Reverberations

My words fall and liter surrounding ground 

Booming reverberations of hollow sound

For the person I yearn to persuasively teach

Has hardened their mind, set it out of reach

So compromises that perhaps could be

Are swept away like so much debris

And lost along with my ideas it seems

Are the missed chances of now dead dreams

Leaving behind hard-cased silent wall

From which we both will most likely fall

 If every we yearn to once again try

To link together ‘neath crystal blue sky

Cracked and broken as we may be

We’ll risk far less in future to see

If doors exist, if bridges can be built

Instead we’ll salve our own true guilt

With accusations and angry feelings

Scorched earth walls, blown out ceilings

Days will come, years will flee

All we’ve done will cease to be 

Because right here, and right now

We didn’t talk, wouldn’t find out how  

© 2018, Marty Vandermolen, All Rights Reserved