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gabcos23 · 4 years

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Dancing With Myself

I’ve always struggled with the fine line between beauty and pain

How something like a love song can turn my body backward

Throwing my senses out of orchestra and into chaos

It was that song

The type of song that washes you away

Harvest Moon by Neil Young

So delicate on the ears

So heavy on the eyes

Tugging my heart in opposite directions

Stealing my breath and giving it back

My imagination gets the better of me

Placing me into the dream world of Harvest Moon

Slow dancing with Neil Young

Existing in that place of peace

The kind that comes from knowing with all your being

That you are loved, truly and completely

And that’s the beauty

But then I remember that for many people

It’s not just a dream world

It’s a place so very familiar

A place that can only be visited by invitation

The extended hand of a life partner

And that only leaves me to wonder

If there ever is, or ever was a place like that

For the ones who walk alone

Or if we are destined to spend the rest of our nights

Dreaming of slow dancing under the harvest moon

But never seeing it come to reality

And that’s the pain of it

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gabcos23 · 4 years

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Low Battery

Sam had a life defined by beginnings

The type of person who always made a great first impression

She could turn a stranger into a best friend

And a boy into a hopeless admirer

All in one single night

She impressed at all of her job interviews

And had enough passion and commitment to start an empire

She possessed so much potential

So many doors begging to be opened

Universes waiting to be explored

That is of course, in the beginning

Unfortunately, it never lasted

Sam only ever had enough magic for moments at a time

Throwing all of her soul and all of her spirit into the task in front of her

Always forgetting to save some for later

She was a wonder to behold

Until she wasn’t

Until she was home again, drained of her sparkle

A mere shadow of herself blending into the night

Waiting for her spirit to refill

For her magic to recharge

And it was in these times

When Sam was utterly alone, left to stew in her own darkness

That she neglected all of those wonderful beginnings

All of those threads tied to new journeys

Just asking to be tugged on

All of the things she had set into motion

Making a best friend

Finding her soulmate

Getting her dream job

Leaving a legacy

No longer seemed a possibility

Because Sam no longer had the energy for any of it

She herself had become an absence of light

And she was in constant fear

That until the end of her days

Never would she have enough spirit to follow through

To finish what she had started

Doomed to spend the rest of her life

Watching her dreams begin to unfold

But never seeing them come true

And my goodness, you must understand this

That is the greatest tragedy there is

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gabcos23 · 4 years

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It Comes at Night

Hurricanes, tornadoes, tsunamis, earthquakes

Cancer, Ebola, malaria, HIV

Terrorists, serial killers, pedophiles, politicians

Lions, tigers, and bears

Oh my!

So many things in this world of ours to fear

And yet the things with the greatest power to destroy me

Are not the nightmares of my reality

But the reality of my nightmares

How troubling that the most devastating force of all

Is my own imagination

By day I have convinced myself I am whole

All of my cracks and shatters repaired with gold

Touched by the Japanese art of kintsukuroi

But it is by the fall of night

In the safety of my own bed in my locked house

When we are said to be safe from the worst of our fears

That is when the nightmares descend

Disguising themselves as my dreams come true

That is when you hold my hand again

When you look at me as though I am made entirely of gold

And we exist once more, in each other

Each time, I pinch myself in the dream

Just to be sure that this in fact real

And I always believe it

How dangerously powerful the mind is

Perhaps the most cunning liar there ever was

And then I awake

Peeling my eyes open to my gray reality

Alone again

And in harmony my heart aches and my temper flares

Red anger at my own mind for betraying me

Yet I seem to have absolutely no control

I am a helpless victim to this thing inside of me

Night after night after night

My spirit crushed in ways my bones cannot be

Forever doomed to wait for the day when I pinch myself

And finally, finally!

I never wake up

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gabcos23 · 6 years

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Cerulean

It was never intense in either direction

Hate or love

I liked you and you liked me

I had my doubts and you had yours

Sometimes when we were together

I would look at your eyes and imagine their shade as a crayon

Or you would just exist in a way that I was drawn to

And I would get this desperate feeling

This breathless need for you to stay by my side

And I would imagine forever with you

It was in those moments that I was most afraid

Because suddenly I realized I had something very valuable

Something I could lose at any second

A crystal vase precariously balanced on a ledge

But then it would sort of fade

And all my old questions would come back

My feelings once again in a logical arrangement

But when you left and the crystal vase finally dropped

Shattering into hundreds of fragments

The crush of it was a physical pain

A throbbing toothache of an emotion

The fact that I can feel so deeply for such a shallow relationship

Terrifies me like nothing else

Because what happens when I meet someone new?

And we actually let our guards down

I see into his soul and he sees into mine

And it’s thrilling and maddening and intense

And for the first time I am convinced in the possibility of happiness

What happens when the crystal vase drops again?

This time shattering into thousands of fragments

How long will it take me to clean up the pieces?

Will it feel more like having the teeth ripped out of my mouth?

Will the pain just swallow me whole?

It’s these questions that make me wonder

Exactly how many times a heart can break

Before the glue keeping it whole completely dries out

And the thing I find most disturbing

Is the possibility that mine already has

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gabcos23 · 6 years

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Alex the Human Being

Alex felt sick

Dread like a bitter poison rushing her veins

Suddenly her soup no longer seemed appetizing

Stupid, stupid, stupid!

Hating herself yet again, she got up and left the restaurant

Alex felt sick again and again

At the grocery store when she saw a man with bright blue eyes

At the movies when his favorite actress came on screen

At the bus stop when she saw his post on Facebook

At her cousin’s wedding when the groom read a poem

And always, without fail, in those quiet moments before sleep

Stupid, stupid, stupid!

It seemed to Alex that the humiliation would never end

And she would be paying for her mistake

In more ways than one

The details of her indiscretion aren’t important

You can fill in the blanks

The point of the matter is that Alex can’t let it go

That one decision had cost her everything

So she thought

But the reality was that it was only she who still remembered

Endlessly torturing herself for one bad choice

A choice long forgotten and faded

If you have never found yourself in Alex’s position

Then I congratulate you

You are either a perfect human being

Or a robot

For the other 99.9% of us

I say just forgive yourself

It’s not that big of a deal

Eat your soup

Buy some chips

Laugh at the movie

Stop checking his Facebook

Dance at your cousin’s wedding

And get your beauty rest

Learn from the past and grow for the future

You’re not stupid

You’re human

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gabcos23 · 6 years

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Alternate Ending

There’s this notebook

I keep it under my pillow every night

Lest someone be tempted to peek

And written inside are the words from the deep down

The things I hadn’t known I was feeling until pen hit paper

At the beginning of you and me

My honest words were punctuated with doodles

Hearts and flowers and such

An overflow of joy contained in every letter

Like when you’re so excited you can’t catch your breath

But then slowly as a leaky faucet

Drip drip

The joy leeks out of the letters

And you see straight into my chest cavity

Your hand holds my bleeding heart

And you feel my tears on your face

Because the leaky faucet all at once explodes

Releasing a devastating rush

Pages stuck together from the sweat of my fingers

The anxiety in my soul secreting through my extremities

Words crossed out and underlined with abandon

I detail every reason why he made me feel unworthy

My desperate confusion as to what changed

Why he abandoned his promises

And just stopped seeing me as special

A mere 3 pages after he said he wanted forever

It all turned upside down

And yet

Months later here I am still writing stories about him

Because it’s those first few pages I recite by memory

Each night they transition me into dreams

Where my subconscious plays them out in black and white

And in my yearning for those days of excitement

When I couldn’t even catch my breath

I seem to forget all about the last pages

When the ink, along with my spirit, started to fade

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gabcos23 · 6 years

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Pears and Pairs

“Pairs and Pears”

To be alone is a rare thing after all

It seems as though the entire world is in pairs

I stand on the edge of the crowds and I observe

Hands finding each other

Eyes alight with recognition

Laughs given and taken

And it makes me wonder what all these stories are about

All these cries of loneliness

Painted into stories and songs and poetry

I’m wondering how so many are in existence

When it appears as though I am the only one alone

Are you all hiding?

Are you recording your desperation in the shadows?

Are you just out of my vision?

And yet I know that to be false

Because I have searched the darkest corners

I have looked at you

And I see no signs of the desolation in your eyes

The isolation in your hearts

Or the deprivation in your bodies

You are tired and weary

But you do not walk alone

You will express your wails to your sisters and mothers

To your teachers and friends

To your wives and your coworkers

Whoa is me! For I have no one!

Not a soul to care if I am dead or alive!

Your cries of melancholy do not in fact go unnoticed

And that is the stark difference

Between loneliness and being alone

For a lonely man speaks to be heard

But a man alone speaks only to the wind

Yes indeed I must conclude

Despite many testimonies to the contrary

That to be alone is a rare thing after all

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gabcos23 · 6 years

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Four Letter Word

Life is a crossword puzzle

A series of paths

Each one affected by the other

Each one a mystery

Blank spaces asking to be filled

With only hints to guide the way

How frustrating it is

When you believe you’re almost done

When you’re convinced in the rightness of it all

That everything is exactly as it should be

That there cannot possibly be another solution

And you’re down to your very last path

Only to find out

That there will be no satisfying conclusion

No matter how much you try, that last word just won’t fit

It’s a crushing of the spirit

To discover that you must have made a mistake

But there’s no definite way of knowing exactly where it was made

Which path was filled out wrong

So you must start all over again

And keep doing so until you finally get it all right

At first with fever and motive

Eventually with despair and abandon

For those among us who have achieved it

Completing the illusive crossword puzzle of life

I say congratulations

For the rest

I say keep trying

And for myself

I say how unfair it is

That I am expected to excel on a grand scale

That which I cannot even finish on the smallest of scales

Because the thing is

I’ve never been very good at crossword puzzles

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gabcos23 · 6 years

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The Un-Tragedy of Second Grace

Grace lays atop her bed

Wrapped in the ink of the dead of night

Heart heavy, and mind weary

Wondering how it could possibly get better

A glimpse of what could be

Hours pass before sleep snatches her away

And she awakens from its grip with a new resolve

There will never again be a night like the prior

She will make sure of it

Because Grace has control over only one thing

But it is a very substantial thing indeed

And she intends to exert her power once and for all

Today will be Grace’s last day

In another world, another shade of the universe

Grace has just awoken from the grip of sleep

But with a starkly different resolve

She’s decided to give life one more shot

To keep her mind wide open to possibilities

Even just for one more day

And what follows does not disappoint

Second Grace is having the best day of her life

She received news of her brothers imminent return

Her boss finally recognized her potential

Her mothers cancer has fallen to remission

An old friend invited her to dinner

And she has met a very lovely boy

Tonight, sleep does not snatch her away

It tucks her in and whispers goodnight

Grace’s story is one of a peculiar irony

If only the first Grace had waited a single day longer

She would have lived to see the brilliance of second Grace’s fate

To live it herself

So here is a message from your omniscient narrator

There is no beauty in tragedy

There is no poetry in giving up

Aspire to the tale of Second Grace

Because there truly is no way to know for sure

What is written in the book of your future

I leave you with this bright thought

A light to see past the ink of the dead of night

Tomorrow could be the someday you’ve been waiting for

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gabcos23 · 6 years

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Twinkle, Twinkle

You lay on the grass scanning through your constellations

Eyes always searching for the light that shines the brightest

Always waiting for the glitz and the shimmer

A flashiness that I simply don’t have

I am just another star in your sky

One of the infinite possibilities

A speck in a legion of opulent clones

I burn so brightly for you

I perform a spectacle of all my power

But it’s never enough

You just can’t see me

I petition you to peer into your telescope

Look more closely

Admire the flecks of gold in my irises

Search my brain and see it’s calculations

Search my heart and behold it’s volume

Appreciate my bodacious imagination

Applaud my goals and aspirations

Recognize my talents and creations

Explore the person I am

Discover the treasures I contain

I set my pride aside, and I beg you

Just look at me

Find me in the vast sea of luminaries

Before I burn out and explode in a supernova

What a display of irony that would be

Because a supernova can become so bright

It outshines all the other stars in the galaxy

So maybe when I’ve used up all my energy

When you’ve drained away my sparkle

When I collapse and disappear

That’s when you’ll notice my radiance

That’s when you’ll finally pay attention

And what a galactic tragedy it is

That it will be far too late

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gabcos23 · 6 years

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“Daisy”

The young woman bites her nails

She is late this morning and stuck behind a slow driver

An elderly woman in a rusty red Cadillac

Face flushed crimson

Sweat beads on her brow

Eyes checking the clock

Slow, measured breaths

The stress strains every inch of her body

Her heart is a hummingbird flapping its wings

Her head is a mess, calculating the consequences

The young woman is stressed

She rides the old woman’s tail until her eyes spot the handicap sign

She slows down and puts space between their cars

They merge onto the highway, and her chance comes to switch lanes

The young woman passes by the rusty red Cadillac

She turns her head, making contact with two cloudy blue eyes

She raises her hand and waves

The old woman waves back a brown spotted hand

They continue on to their destinations

The old woman is smiling

Her name is Daisy

The man slams his horn

He is late this morning, and stuck behind a slow driver

An elderly woman in a rusty red Cadillac

Blood pounding

Fists clenched

Jaw tight

Muscles tensed

The fury strains every inch of his body

His heart is a bird throwing itself at its cage

His head spins, brain dizzy and overstimulated

The man is angry

He honks his horn three more times

Spews expletives out his window

Rides the old woman’s tail

And then suddenly her car veers off the road

The old woman has had a heart attack

Her name was Daisy.

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gabcos23 · 6 years

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Thunderstruck

There’s a moment before the thunder clap

A stillness so consuming, it swallows all sound

Suddenly, a flash

A cracking scythe of energy ripping through the atmosphere

Tendrils of pure light spread across the sky

And it’s beautiful in a certain way

Breathtaking and yet terrifying

And then as quickly as it came, it disappears

Everything melts back to shadows

One Mississippi, two Mississippi

And then the sky itself roars

A brazen rumble so powerful, it shakes your very bones

Love is a lightning bolt

Breathtaking and yet terrifying

Brightening our darkest parts

It has the power to paralyze us

We being so captivated by its beauty

That we forget to protect ourselves

Because surely, nothing so beautiful could be dangerous, right?

It’s in those ominous seconds after the light disappears

After the love disappears

That we brace ourselves for the inevitable

Heartbreak is a thunderclap

A brazen rumble so powerful, it shakes our very bones

The thing about thunder is there’s no danger in it

It may feel like such a mighty force, capable of obliterating us

But in reality, the toxic flame disguised as a stunning illumination

The toxic person disguised as an angel of light

Capable of burning us alive

Has come and gone

The true threat has already passed

What you’re left with is the voice of thunder

And it may sound like your world itself is breaking to pieces

But really that’s all it is

It’s just sound

And when in the history of noise and chaos,

Has anyone ever been destroyed by sound?

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gabcos23 · 6 years

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And The Oscar Goes To

I always knew I would never be an actress

It’s easy enough to commit lines to memory

I was born with a liquid imagination

So the fantasy of it all wouldn’t faze me

But there’s a talent of a good actress

A skill I always saw as impossible

Crying on cue

Tears are such an involuntary reaction

They come from a cavern of emotions so stuffed full

That your body can’t contain the overflow

How can such a thing be forced?

How can you just make yourself feel sad?

And then I got older

And I began to see life outside of the black and white

That’s when I discovered the age old secret

It’s not about creating sadness where there was none

It’s calling upon all the tragic moments

It’s remembering the things you’ve been shutting out

You get to a point in life

Where you’ve earned so many things to cry about

There’s a permanent lump in the back of your throat

And it only takes a single thought

To cry on cue

So I understand the once mysterious

And with that knowledge I uncover a dark truth

Perhaps it’s the brightest of us

The stars among men

Who hide the most shadows

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gabcos23 · 6 years

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Babydoll

They called her spirited

Larger than life

A sassy curly headed wonder

The type of little girl who never stepped outside her own spotlight

And when you’re 4 years old

They say little girls like that

Are going places

Years later

They called her a trouble maker

Sneaky little flirt

A fair haired, crystal eyed party girl

The type of young lady who liked to push limits

And when you’re 14 years old

They say young ladies like that

Are asking for it

Years later

They called her a train wreck

Damaged and out of control

A puffy eyed bag of bones

The type of woman who gave her body to men and her soul to the needle

And when you’re 21 years old

They say women like that

Are a waste of potential

Be kind to the women of the world

Because broken or not

At one point

We were all just little girls

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gabcos23 · 6 years

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Spaghetti Night

It is 6:00 pm

The high school girl in the apron and beat up sneakers

Rides her bike home to her family’s trailer

The straight edge boy in his crested Polo

Prints out his biology paper

The old bearded man sips his whiskey

Attempting to numb the pain in his hip

The new mom with the ponytail and faded sweater

Unstraps her baby girl from the car seat

The graying professor packs up his briefcase

Swinging it gently on his way to the bus stop

The grandmother watches her evening shows

Joined by the ghost of her late husband

The college boy with the broken heart

Shuts away the world under the covers in his dorm

The jailed man with the scar

Gets in a brawl with his cell mate

The single mother with the sick child

Begs her landlord for just one more week

The business man locks up his office

In a hurry to meet his new mistress

The little girl holds her father’s hand

As they cross the street home from the park

The young woman with the sorrow in her heart

Prepares her very last meal.

As different as they may be

All of these people share one universal truth.

It is 6:00 pm. Dinner time.

Because no matter what walk of life we come from.

Everyone eats.

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gabcos23 · 6 years

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Let You Down

I wanted to be close to you

But my palms were sweaty

So I didn’t let you hold my hand

I hadn’t eaten all day

But you were saving for a car

So I didn’t let you buy me dinner

I felt attracted to you

But you made me nervous

So I didn’t let you kiss me

You said I looked beautiful

But I disagreed

So I didn’t let you take my picture

I needed to learn how to swim

But I was self conscious

So I didn’t let you teach me

You wanted to know my family

But I wasn’t ready

So I didn’t let you meet them

You only ever wanted to show you cared

But I refused to be a burden

So I didn’t let you be yourself

I didn’t want you to quit us

But you’d made up your mind

I had already controlled so many things

So this time I didn’t fight it

I let you do what you wanted to do

I let you go

#love #passion #relationship #couple #romance #wishes #life #relatable #heartbreak #loss #strength #wisdom #art #beauty #inspiration #story #poem #poetry #poetcommunity #words #quotes #author #writing

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gabcos23 · 6 years

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The First Day of Us

It was halfway through first grade

Walking into my new school

In pigtails and an itchy gray turtleneck

I sat in my assigned seat across from him

His name was Connor Cole

He was the cutest thing I’d ever seen

And he made me laugh so hard it hurt

Little did I know that this was the boy

Who would own my heart for the next 7 years

Our last names were next to each other in the alphabet

So throughout our school career

We were always seated together

And as he grew taller and stronger

And my pigtails became ponytails

We never lost that unspoken connection

I cherished all my little moments with him

Bumping knees on the auditorium floor at assemblies

Stupid faces shared behind the teacher’s back

Beating him on the race track in Phys Ed

Dressing up for recitals and plays and him telling me I looked pretty

Looking back I know it couldn’t have been love

But whatever it was

I felt it everywhere, all the time

And then came middle school

New building, new teachers, new rules

New girls

And suddenly I didn’t see him as much

We had different class schedules

And while I entered the phase of braces and bad haircuts

He became the basketball MVP

One of the designated golden boys

He even got his first girlfriend

But those few times we passed each other in the halls

When his brown eyes met my brown eyes

He would smile at me like he used to

And time would rewind to the first day of us

The new girl in pigtails and an itchy gray turtleneck

And the charming little troublemaker who would steal her heart

#love #passion #romance #childhood #memories #nostalgia #cute #sweet #life #wisdom #strength #friendship #story #poem #poetry #poetcommunity #words #quotes #writing #author #art #beauty

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