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Best Poems Written by Chuck Novotny

Below are the all-time best Chuck Novotny poems as chosen by PoetrySoup members

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When Young Men Die

When young men meet with
inexplicably sudden and biting ends,
     not the whitewashed passing of those long in the tooth,
     the silver-maned for whom all mourning may expire at death;
that burrowed-under-the-skin ache
where labored breath takes speechless flight
and bids farewell to carefree thought -
that a God of love
carries my heavy heart
seems inadequate in its wake.

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In Losing At Love

Having hiked a thousand miles
through forest, field and alpine valley,
and lived a life of forced smiles
while wasting time in fruitless dally,
this highway hoped to bring me home
yet no one's there to bid me, "Come."

This life seems so ill-fated now
and serves to keep my nerves at strain.
The chase that led me away, somehow
creates painful disorder in my brain.
The wicked dreams became my master
then let me be to clean disaster.

How death-like it is to lose at love,
but I refuse to take his hand.
Emotions rise on wings like dove
and I walk boldly in this new land.
I've a rendezvous with death sometime
but not 'til done with life sublime.

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Precious Things

I will talk with you of precious things,
The sunsets' hue and birds that sing,
What children did and adults do,
And teaching babes to tie their shoe.

That time is worth much more than gold,
And greater still - someone to hold.
Health is not so over-rated,
Biggest regrets? O'er those I've berated.

To spend an hour with my niece
Is like another puzzle piece,
The real measure of a man
May be in how he takes a hand. 

How dawn and dusk partner their color
And share that with an ardent lover.
That tiny bloom so trodden on
Could still bear seed, even looking wan.

A child dancing with Elmo and chasing the dog
Is better than coffee at cutting through fog,
Anticipation's not better than the event,
And moments together are time best spent.

I've learned I'm not completely whole,
That television can't fill my soul,
And what I've been and what I've done
Have been negated by the Son.

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Haiku 4

springs' gentle breezes
stir hearts to dally and then
chuck at aspen leaves

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Until You Came Along

As emptyness beats on my door
I try to word a song.
It's now so clear I'd naught to say
until you came along.

It's true, I was a most small man,
pretending I was strong;
a portrait of my own flawed self,
until you came along.

I've spent a life apart your love in but a single night,
while thoughts devoured memories of everything delight,
and daylights' conflict generates new fears to face tonight
while love demands I think upon what I know is right.

The secret that I'd loved to keep,
the one love only knows,
was oh so far beyond my reach
until you came along.

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Haiku 6

crowbar tries to pry
my oyster solitary
exists self-contained

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A Thunderous Silence

Her memories had her waiting
for his oft' tardy appearance,
and in her patient time
perhaps wondering,
"Has he ever noticed the scar
below my kneecap?"
His litany of lateness'
was covered by a bond 
of mutually assured affection.
She'd never hold him to a sundial.
And in those times together,
four eyes flickering
with a lingering seep of memory;
each owning a piece of time,
holding it to savor,
watching her, pleased more
by her company
than any assistance,
silence seemed to have been there,
waiting for them.
And in that moment's breathless anticipation
his realization was;
he'd wait an hour to watch her mouth,
the scintillating way words
unspooled from her lips.

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Fauxbia

The deep and sonorous voice of
his defeatist self-talk was paternal,
and torturous, 
reinforcing the force fed message,
"There is no happiness,
only gradients of misery,"
leaving him indifferent to the present,
careless of the future.

Reared in the shadows of perfection,
parental conflicts played out
as the "self-made men"
of a fathers' generation chased ambitions
beyond the cramped lives
of their own youth.

Affection and approval,
bestowed and withdrawn
by the performance scale;
he was a sundial
numbering only sunny hours,
with little of consequence to say,
a lucid, inquisitive and fertile mind.
His native endowment
a vivid sensibility for the beauty
of words.

He learned woman from
his quint-essential sisters
yet remained profoundly ignorant of women;
if love were happiness
it generated a loneliness
made all the more desperate
by the intimacy of severed connections.

Psychic numbness, and fauxbia,
yes, he feared being false,
had plunged him into darkness,
with his vision
of a minimum level of connectedness,
the raw ache of personal loss,
the empty feeling of helplessness.

Forced to live as that outsider
trapped inside a familys' feuds;
being bonded to survivors,
learning to live with the understanding
he would be jettisoned for others to survive:
emotional dishonesty became
necessary for survival.

Denial was the best defense
since he could change nothing
and repression had long since
ceased to offer relief;
he was too articulate
for that lie.

The tightly packed crowd
contained inside his head was
momentarily frozen by the question
"How to unlearn the lessons of his youth?"
To love and be loved, a necessary condition,
a prerequisite to a happiness
that could not exist?

Now, he works,
and writes,
and trusts in simple verities;
chaos, pacified by distance and routine,
serve to mitigate the sting
of realitys' reminder -
he'd found that so urgently sought,
only to have lost it in the finding.

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Ventana Thoughts

These are all ruminations that arose from a recent backpacking trip in the Ventana Wilderness


Needing to bring spiritual realities
into the press of raw humanity,
amongst the most humble
the dreamer seems visionary.


Addiction is a mirror;
if I look into it for long
I will see myself
attempting suicide.


With my conscious mind in tow
I descend into my heart
through imagination,
there learning your memory
is the sunshine
each new day bears.


A covey of fat
mountain quail and me,
we surprised each other
on the trail this morning
at just past six,
the significance of this not eluding me
having already had my manna.


In a field of false lupin
spilling the earth 
an unearthly blue
surrounded by young madrone
of vibrant green and neon brown
sprung from the ashes
of disastrous fire
i chanced an encounter
with One who has all power
in taking a chance
on His love


They are
perhaps not stars
but distant openings
windows to beyond
to back where i started from,
ever His intention
i find my way home


It would make more sense
were my gray matter
yellow, or white
with a goldenrod center,
given the scrambled
and fried responses
it comes out with 


Little glimpses
leaving hunger for more,
poetry draws me into 
an other's life:
just because I wasn't there
doesn't mean
I can't recall it.


A non-entity with ambitions
inured to my own strangeness,
being published gave an air of respectability,
the way squirrels are saved
from looking like rodents
by their bushy tails.


In process he found
a self-worth being, then
a self worth becoming, and
a self worth revealing.

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Beyond Fear

Beyond fear,
     in broken moments
          of fearlessness,
these heart-scars
     lose their memory
          of pain