what can I do now?
you’re gone

you are gone
from my side

the seat besides me stays empty
the bed grows cold
frozen
untouched

and nothing else
I do
will ever be enough
to fill this space

it’d be so much easier if I could just not think
not think
but I do,
I do

and this is all my fault
you’re gone,
gone


By Sara
written October 8th,2006.

Poetry Tag

I was at Poets Who Blog when I saw this post:

It's a game of poetry tag. Be the first to post TAG in the comments. Then take these lines and add one, in a post on your own blog, along with these instructions. Whoever adds the nineteenth line then takes the poem to Poets Who Blog at http://poetswhoblog.blogspot.com/ and puts the whole poem in the comment section there. Each person who plays need to also mention what site you were at when you found the poem so that other bloggers can follow the breadcrumbs back to this poem. You can play more than once but not twice in a row.


Poetry Tag Poem

The sound shook his bones
like a cymbal


My line is the second one. Tag me and you can be the person who writes the third line.

teetering precariously,

this
heart in me
clings to your confession-
my water in the desert,
my oxygen on the moon.

who could have known?
who knew?

mere breaths from dying
and then there was




you.

You weakness sickens me.
Such a pretty girl
wasted.

The lines in your face
aging
away your youth every second.

How do you stand it?
Can't you feel the air getting thin?
Time giving in?

Next year, next year....

I promise the face in my mirror.

I will do better next year.

when you are eighteen, you think like this.

you brought me to the edge of free-
a tattered soul,
incomplete-

and for your price you asked for
absolution.


it wasn’t much.
it wasn’t hard.
you were a floating vagabond
who prayed that I could be your

solution.


I was spinning- hard and fast-
against myself,
against my past,
but somehow you....

you never knew it.


young
free
you
me


just starting a revolution.

revolution.
revolution.

Times were good but we.....we never knew it.



By Sara Pufahl with thanks to Rob and The Writer's Island for the prompt: The Journey.

If I....

bereft of power
I approach you,
eager to please.

like a child
I long for you-
unconditionally.

stripped
of all my defenses
down upon my
knees

I lay my sacrifice before you
and in a gesture
I




concede.

Faithfully

Disappointment flows
like
muddy water through my viens-

running thick and cold-

full of all the
things
everybody knows;
nobody's gonna
say.

Maybe if I could change (change)
get rid of all this rage (rage)

everyday day day day
day
day

wouldn't be the same same same

same


same.

Suicide

You found me standing on the bluffs.
hollowed eyed, bemoaning lust-
and all that it had done
to undo me.

It left me gasping shallow air,
choking on sins and despair-
far from the girl
you once knew
as me.

Your greedy hands
they brought me
down.

Oh, what a shame,
I loved the
fall-

and in your name I did it all.

Look what
I have done to me, to me, to me.

Look what I have done to...
me.

Look what I have....

More

Waking in the moonlight,
she's
went and lost her will to fight,
doesn't have the strength-

not anymore.

Stumbling down dark sidewalks
wondering where the times gone-
used to be
days to waste-

not anymore.

Well they never told her about this
back when she was
innocent.

Filled her head with fairytales
so somehow she expected more.

She expected more.
She expected more


than living under streetlights,
lying her own head off,
everythings a compromise,

life was supposed to be more,
supposed to be more, supposed to be....

its dark now and she's weary,
best to just keep moving,
don't think about it,
don't crave





more.

Twisted

Like liquor tumbles over ice
in a chilled glass,
that was your laugh.

And how it danced right over
my spine

every time
you thought you knew me better,

knew me better,
than I know me.

your insincerity
is startling.

your veneer is cracked.
and still you laugh,

you laugh,
you laugh,

and still I take you back,
back
back

like ice scraping against glass, glass, glass.

Like a desert who longs for a flood,
you come over me with fingers scorching from the sun
that has beat you down


and this life
they saddled you with, you say
it just ain't right
ain't right

nothing should be so hard
but, boy,

we all got scars and rivers that are running dry
inside,

as the news sells all those lies.

It just ain't right
ain't right


you can say it again a couple hundred times
repeat it like a flashing sign

shout it from that mirage of a mountaintop
where you stay

left me lonely but its you
who will say

It just ain't right
ain't right

its not going to rain in the desert tonight
your touch has gone to ground

you're lost
never come around
no more

weary from your cracked life

it's so unfair and you just can't survive
you know that just ain't right
ain't right
ain't right

I broke my heart,
broke my heart
for you.


Look at the things I would do
just to help you.

I broke the wall,
fell right on through,
into a well for you-

only wanted to help you.

I twisted the laws,
made lies true,
made lies do,

just to help you.

I broke my heart,
broke my heart for you.

You never saw the bruise-
such a cost to help you.


Look at what
what
what
I would do, what I would do-

yet


it never helped

you.

I could never help you. I broke my heart...

Even avalanches couldn't stifle
her.

mouth wide open

stealing all the air in the room-
leaving nothing left

clean.

Like dirty, dirty, dirty

running water, red and cold.

She was forever painfully bold,
bone twistingly brave

was she.


and all her lies you could not help but believe,
believe, believe....

snow can't bury everything.

adept at stifling sonic booms

to make sure
I break down;
I never do break through.

don't call it constant drama
no, you never knew-

you never knew me at all.

sabotage my own
grandiose fantasies.

take a knife to
stab away reality.

cut you with the bitter blades of what
I'll never be.

you never knew,
you never knew me-
at all.

Trip over this news,
fall down the stairs.

Didn't catch a clue
till you were in midair.

Thought you knew the truth
but what you knew
was never really there.

You never knew. You never knew
me
at all.

don’t fight it-
this mudslide of swollen dreams

that whisks you toward the grave.
don’t say its

more than you can take
just take it-

over your skin, smooth like gin,
in a glass that is black

so you can’t see a thing
till it’s all too late.

flesh pressed against
the gate

foolish

hopes drip away,
gurgling down the
drain.

used to think
you would die if it all
turned out this way.

Then it did.

Under endless skies, she wore white
and danced with hips
that sighed

and slid, and smoothed their way to
unheard beats-



beneath the thumping Mexican heat,
he found her

withering there.

And was it fair? No, it was not fair.
But what? What?

What in life ever was? What dream would come?

For them the answer was none, none, none, and

simply never.

She had always belonged to someone else and she would forever.

Note- This poem was written for Poetry Thursday. The first line comes from Brian at Truth is Freedom

The W's

When all the sand in the hourglass
slips
like wine squeezed from the fruit of time

and what I thought I would one day be
becomes
what I never quite could find,


who shall I seek?
where shall I search?

who cleans up messes when everything hurts?

If the broken break under a moonless sky
does
God still see the tears they cry?

Just whisper to me the cure-
who,what, where,
why, why, why
did time run out and I was still chasing my ghost of a life,

just chasing ghosts, and catching nothing, nothing
every time.


Note-This was written for Poetry Thursday’s April 1st prompt: absolve
My idea was to describe a person who seeks forgiveness for wasting their life but who can give that forgiveness and what would it look like?

Beautiful Madness

twin hues of
green and blue
light and pain
align in the portrait she paints,
a lovely bitter face.

And she wonders....


is it a symptom of madness

to find such beauty swirling

around all that
sadness?



Note- The picture comes from Write Words Writing Club

see me in the chipped paint.

smell me in the dirt, the dust, the musky smell of
rot-
in this place that time forgot.


You loved me not.
For you ran out, and ditched me on the side of this dirt road
long, long,
before
the end of breath in me.

Feel me in the breeze,
haunted angry screams rip through
the trees

yelling about lust, discarded dreams and us-
yelling about trust, discarded dreams and us.



Note- This was written for Poetry Thursday. The idea was to write a poem inspired by a picture of your own choosing.

My photo came from here,
a site with pictures that are in the public domain.

The artist who took it is named Clarita

you hold your image of me
in your hand
like water

fluid

leaving me shivering
biding my time
till you open your hands

and let me flow away