P.G. Holyfield: Bearing Witness to Life
Are you ok?
Where did he die? Was he in pain? Was his family with him?
Do you want to talk?
When did you meet? How did you know him? Were you close?
Do you …?
Was he…?
Sad poems
Sad poems — a collection of the best works on PoemShip.
A Dusty Square
You weep for the view over there:
The tight pattern of circles and legs
Stretching into arms
And faces and squares;
A young man walking prettily,
Hips swaying in bovine grace,
People shattering into words and laughter.
My stature raises its feet
And moves off into the street-lit shades.
Your breath is at my back
Cold before it reaches me
And an avenue of coloured lights
Explodes into being between us,
And you are left with yourself.
The moon eyes me with contempt,
I belong to a pedestal
A Silent Tear
There's no tremble on your lip:
only the silent tear.
The tear for the darkness of the past
wrapped in a ray of sunlight
caught in the wilderness
of your mind.
What is that shadow
which falls upon your face
like uncertain midnight,
making you real?
In the sunlit distance,
the bowed women snap the grass
to make the playground even,
and the warmed clouds of earth-dust
touch their eyes with tears
But they have no memories
Lost Objects - Part I
The taciturn howl
to abandon your home.
The "last" pitch of
the thesis presentation,
against the broken mirror.
The shift on your accent
from every tripped up job.
The search for a familiar face,
reverted through the chai tea,
facing the boulevard or the grandma's sewing machine.
The fervent believe in love
like one who believes a speech
within the stomach's roar.
Pacemaker
You managed to get up
willing to keep things in place.
Forgetting people with the speed of a greeting
trying to smile with a suitable gesture;
encroach, with the pace of who retreats.
For you,
what mattered most was told in undertone
and it was enough to stare at the mirror,
your own way not to find a thing.
For me,
your silhouette will always be limping on the airport or
standing behind the neighbors' parade
in a vain endeavor to say goodbye.
Untitled 084
As my eyes meet the bare sky
lifeless and mundane
an unsatisfying gradient
of a dull blue and an equally dull orange
a part of me aches
aches in knowing
that no longer can i trace out the constellations
and no longer can i listen to the whispers of your comfort
played out for my chaotic soul
but aching is all we seem to be doing
it is something
every unloved
have had engraved in their bones
for finally we succeeded
in chasing away the stars
so ache we must
Untitled 083
That year was
a yellow deck of cards, shuffled dry,
a drowned building melted into chartreuse paint,
a clock on the tallest building that counted the rock bottom.
That year
put up a fight, stood sturdy on shining pavement
that sad on shattered rocks.
That year when
bathtubs were filled with herbs for tea to sip
after burning my love letters to him.
That year
a played tears at the backdoor of my guitar.
A year
that climbed a ladder of missing steps with wide
darkness spaces, and grew pale
chartreuse-colored sea-flower poems.
Untitled 082
What is your saddest story?
It was I never told him how much I love him.
Untitled 072
don't
regret
that
have
met
you
but
sometimes
wish
had
walked
away
at
the
start
and
Untitled 071
"A year ago, we stayed up till 3 am talking
And today, I don't even know how to even say hey"
Untitled 049
Maybe that's all we'll ever be
~an incomplete sentence...
~a half-written story...
Finished,
without a happy ending.
Untitled 043
You stole my heart like a torn page of an old book.
And I do remember how much you loved reading,
So I wrote letters for you.
I wrote how delicate your hands when you're turning the leaf of someone else's novelette.
You're too afraid to rimple its pages nor spill your coffee on the printed scriptures,
But you're too careless...too delinquent when you tore mine.
I wrote how you spoke those words aloud like you're shouting a name and certainly not mine.
The shout turned out into pleading.
You beseeched for her to stay and for me to go away.
No more inkjet as you crumpled the parchment paper on your carving block,
Like how it withered at the ends from the laxity you had spared it upon.
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