love – Page 26 – Poems by Sam

An Honest Day’s Work

What is an honest day’s work? Certainly not what happens here. It all feels so hollow. So… inconsequential. Nothing really happens here. Numbers go up, numbers go down. Meetings all day, every day. Nothing really changes. Same thing. Day in, day out. Sit at a desk. Walk to get coffee. Back to the desk. Maybe take a vacation at the end of the year. Go to Bali or Cancun. Whatever. No adventures, no quests, no treks. Back to the office, back home, clacking keyboards and haughty metronomes. A building full of cardboard cutouts that never seem to wither or fold. All oblivious to the pain that lies underneath a thin veneer of niceties and falsehoods told and retold until hearts give out and cubicles are emptied.

Faring Not So Well

Almost as if

The feeling itself

That being numb

It might be better

But whether it’s the former or the latter

Here I sit

Dreaming of forgotten malls

And Taj Mahals

Wishing I could feel something other than the one that gnaws

At my heart

At my bones

On my mind

And on my toes

Can you hear them?

Can you feel them?

Phantoms and spectres

Invisible

Screaming

Begging

My heart, it begs the question:

“Love me?”

Do You Kiss First?

How much for a kiss? How much do you love me, love? I have so much to do and yet? I do not do it. I am tired. I am not so sad but I am tired. It is a Tuesday through and through. Maybe the worst day of the week. Somehow, I do not find myself having a bad day. Just a boring day. Surely, you understand. “No I do not and don’t call me Shirley.”

California Vineyard

Creases trace lips

like cracks

In an ancient oaken barrel

Aging that smile

Like a fine wine

I never quite get tired

To see you so inspired

That glitter in your eyes

And little joking sighs

Hard enough to be apart

But always want to be a part

Of you and we

And this and us

Red lips

Sweet wine

Drink again

And find the time

Ever The Romantic

Somehow, I manage to retain my ability to see the world in rose-colored glasses no matter the circumstances. I look up through the clouds and see the stars shining just so brightly that I am basked in the faintest of lights. A world in which the problems I face are but a bump on a road to something greater. Gotta keep looking forward, that’s where your eyes face.

My Heart In California

There I am

Heart in the sand

In California where I wish I could stand

Smell the sea

And hear the gulls

Ships passing by, so many hulls

Cliffs by the ocean

Penguins in the spring

The queerest little notion

Perhaps you’d like this ring?

Hear wedding bells

Adorned in seashells

Listen to what the wind tells

That golden, shining bridge

Spied from a ridge

I think that’s where I’d like to be with you

Painting In The Park

What a beautiful day to paint in the park. Sitting here with my two friends painting and listening to music. I paint a campfire and serpent under a starry sky. I feel the cool air and the grass under my fingers, canvas under my brush. Dandelions dot the shaggy fields of green clovers, shining up and into me like stars shine down on particularly clear night. The purple padding of an open guitar case starkly contrasts these greens and yellows, an idiosyncrasy in a field of found flowers. I can’t believe I woke up hungover.

Hangover

My head’s hurt

So brief and so curt

Hard to put together

Birds of a feather

I can’t think

Fearing now that i should sink

Lost forever, deep in the drink

Missing against a backdrop sewn from mink

Protagonist

Antagonist

Both atop the list

Either way you’ve got the gist

Ein Geist

A spirit or a ghost

Caught in a vice

How gracious a host

Birds scream and sing outside the window

As grass in the wind winnows

A cold day today

There through the window, Sunshine, A ray!

Let’s Do It, Let’s Fall In Love

Consider it, my friends. To be in Paris in the 1920s, to escape and find that magic! To take it and bring it back to the present to find yourself and everything you’ve ever dreamed of. Take that magic and that majesty you found in the past and apply it to the world at large. Oh, to be in a wonderful world of wizards and sorcerers, casting their magics on pages and canvases and the keys of pianos. What a wonderful world it will be, filled with art and song.

Carnival Comes to Paris

There’s flying and there’s dying

Both ending on the ground

Hearing that one final sound

Make refuge there, in burial mound

A man in a three-piece suit

Playing the piano

Can’t help but fall in love

Fly away, little dove

All affairs fair at the fair, long as you can pay the fare

Car broke down

Grab the spare

It’s a long way back to town

One day soon we’ll be back home

One day soon I’ll read that tome

Evil little lexicon

Stare me down, thereupon

Sitting on the shelf

Bore your holes

Whack those moles

Cross the bridge and pay the tolls

Find yourself and find our souls