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Best Poems Written by Elizabeth Landon-Lane

Below are the all-time best Elizabeth Landon-Lane poems as chosen by PoetrySoup members

Details | Elizabeth Landon-Lane Poem

Occupy My Home

How strange this thought alive tonight,
My own recollection, birthed and taken wing;
How beautiful in flight...
How strange, I think:
A broken heart makes no sound
Soft or loud to fill the air...
Sheds not one drop of sweet red blood;
Strange..this hard jawed pain
The most mortal wound inbred
Does not kill...does not strike the body dead.

Not for the privilege of life
Nor the nectar of surcease
Are we thrown back into the arms of the living;
A deserted bride standing bitter stiff
At the bottom of an endless stairway
Dressed in designer rags...
Holding close a handful of tear wet rice...
The cheap promise of vows taken twice
Beneath a canopy of flowers 
Torn from the earth...
But these flowers gift no fragrance
Or soothe the lies above the dirt.

How strange, this farewell to laughter
In the pale silver fullness
Of time allowed
To the end of innocence
To the end of time
And the end of questions...

How strange these thoughts alive tonight
Some bitter measure of relief in practiced comfort
Still suffice for those who do not look too closely
Into Autumn's promise - however  - forever given
That Winter will not linger
In stark affection
For some un-numbered night without a name.

And stronger souls than I
Will guard my life
Under deathly cold, impartial snow...

How strange,
To Occupy this singular place
Of living thought fragile as spider lace...
Standing alone on a side walkway
Leading to a cold and silent house
Still waiting for me to come home.
How strange, to Occupy the pain
Of the bloody footprints
Leading away;
How strange these thoughts alive tonight
Of what was my own 
Hard earned safe Haven...
Supposedly, for ever..and beyond forever
For all those beloved to come after the Promise..
The Promises I made...but could not keep.
How strange...
An empty house can cry
The same dark tears as stronger souls
Will try to hide...
How strange.

Details | Elizabeth Landon-Lane Poem

A Fine Young Woman

In the manner of lovers
I embrace the dream.
In the nature of solitude
I cherish your desire.

It is an act without intention,
The cause remote;
And I am in the web of it
With all the others.

A little mad
With all this exotic experience...

Such a fine young woman,
Bemused and unresisting...
And a little mad,
Like the rest of us.

Details | Elizabeth Landon-Lane Poem

Coming of Age

There is music in her hands;
The graceful gestures of a different time,
Courtly manners and a black lace fan...
A hundred shaded meanings
In my daughter's eyes...
Mysterious, sibilant laughter without mystery
Without guile
Say so many things young and beautiful.

And the dance begins inside her smile
In the middle of her first kiss
That needs no translation...
While the chandelier in a debutante ballroom
Reflects flashes of joy
In a swirl of shining silk
And a trace of elusive perfume
Warming her skin for the first time.

There is such music in her hands;
She is my princess, unawakned
Surrounded by a future beloved,
And dissapointed courtiers...

There is such wonder...

I love you, Daughter Mine.

Details | Elizabeth Landon-Lane Poem

I Am Today

She is a woman alone beside herself
Painted with vivid words instead of colors.
She knows how to ask painful questions..
Staccato action in the faith of mind games
Driven by insolent inertia
And arrogance
And years of isolation around a dying young body...
A body that once belonged to her...
Still fighting to maintain her claim...

It's all quite simple in the explanation,
(All you pushy strangers)...

One flesh covered granite *****
Fighting for her life
Still survives...

No need to applaud.
No helping hands need apply...

She is simply a woman alone.

Details | Elizabeth Landon-Lane Poem

My Child Grown

If you were in honesty here
Standing real and flesh in front of me,
And the things of life were different from the now of it...
I would take one deep breath
And look upon you fully grown to beauty;
I would take one strong hand into my own
And say to you:

Give in earnest to me..no debt,
And the love I cannot find in this life
Nor anywhere but books and dreams...
Give in earnest to me
With no insidious touch,
Your honor for my honor...
With every trace of desire evident
As a twice told truth
Shining behind some forged, implacable masque
Confronting me...

And even in the wilder moments
When I wonder in a fevered mind
Made brittle with the yearning,
If this is all invention made desperate in the need:
I merely have to see
My own wounded soul
Sprawled upon the floor
And wonder again if it would have been different at all
If you were here....

I love you,
Daughter Mine.

Details | Elizabeth Landon-Lane Poem

Wicked Witches Aren'T the Only Ones Who Melt

The cry is a teardrop, unheard
Among all the others in a curtain of teardrops.
You stand in the rain that falls out of nothing
The way gray cats move through back street alleys...
The way we learn to live.
You stand obscured - outer edges indivisible
With all your mistaken emotion
Whose passion is spent for coppers....

Planes and angles leading inward - always inward...
An off-color blueprint
Melting in the weighted air above you;
A black & white parallelogram slightly out of skew.
Close in upon yourself - close in...
You used to hold the world at bay
Before you got bone weary,
Wild and bitter....

Cheeks and lashes wet with rain,
Or is it rain, after all...?
Is it really the rain
Or your excuse to stand there like an afterthought,
Fugitive from someone else's deeper scheme
Who put their name to yours...?

Standing in the rain,become the rain;
Become a cry.
Become a teardrop in a curtain of teardrops...

One single moment at twilight hangs suspended;
You turn in the nimbus of half-light mist
To find the street signs gone.
Become invisible.
Become a cry against the teardrops.
Become lost in the curtain..
Do not become at all..

The world is just a shade too slick for you,
Even as the curtain falls...

Even as your curtains fall
Wicked witches aren't the only ones who melt...
Wicked witches aren't the only ones at all...

Details | Elizabeth Landon-Lane Poem

Colors In a Hospital Room

Was it so very long ago
That I was painted
In shades of gray...
And never saw one stroke of red,
Or felt the warmth of yellow?

Was it then....or yesterday
That my life 
Was in Sundown
With no Horizon's edge before me
And no rising tomorrows
Could echo out
The hollow sounds..?

It seems that I could
Almost touch
Or walk beside
The Shadow that I was before;
And it frightens me
To somehow know
Standing alone
Behind a closed door,

I am not
So far away...

Details | Elizabeth Landon-Lane Poem

Incidental Story

Step softly over this silken knot;
Ease into this particular caress..
I have a story
Written slowly on cloth of gold..
The wrappings shimmer sightlessly
Around the nearest ornamental Diary.

And then, we wonder as we read
Who earns such gifts as nonchalonce..?
For effort lost we all expire
Into an alien heat
To find someone especially sacred.

Ending in historic settlement
Legitimized or notarized
As each becomes unrecognizable
With no one especially primal
In an overlong embrace...

But sacrificial relatives
Abound in every Storybook;
And your turn,
My cold young lover
Is waiting to be taken...

Write carefully.

Details | Elizabeth Landon-Lane Poem

Promises - My Daughter's Eyes

There was such beauty where I lived
Past landscape my father designed so long ago...
And I remember Mountain Street;
The sounds of early Summer all around the house..
The unencumbered freedom
And the taste of clear, pure water
Stolen from a neighbor's well hidden behind the windmill.

And just past your Poppa's verdant lawns
A gentle wildness was allowed.
He loved the earth
And let me wander as I would have anyway
Straight on those hidden paths I knew
Into my secret place..
I sat between the here and now
To watch the Summer's fullness edging closer;
Surrounded by my favorite friends:
The wild bluberry bushes.

My special place, alive and rambling on
In lush perfection for a lonely little girl
Covered with freckles.
My friends, covered with their sapphire treasures -
The size and weight which bore them down
Were offered as a gift to me;
Their color: electric blue and perfect...
We were great friends in all seasons..

And we made promises to each other
In the deepest heart of Summer,
Just before the last years of my childhood
And your Poppa's dreams...
They whispered of a great gift to be given
In a future where their time had passed.

I could hardly remember the exactness of the promise
Until I looked into your eyes when you were 2 days old.

Did you ever wonder, my beloved,
The joy in my recollection
Of the gift so sweetly promised,
And why I call you
Blueberry Eyes...

I love you, daughter mine.

Details | Elizabeth Landon-Lane Poem

Worth Keeping

My dreams lie past the Windward Islands.
Warm seas clear as azure glass untroubled;
Warm sand soft as baby's breath sound sleeping
In a safe and quiet land...

Warm lips and strong brown arms arms slow gentle
Tender as a night in Paradise - star gazing,
Tender in sublime, delightful ways...

And I am waiting, so untouched by love;
Surrounded by your echo's smile repeating,
Of immoveable ocean's space and heart strong beating.

Oh, my dearest love unknown,
Reach out for me;
You have always been
My dream unhidden...

You have always been
A forever kind of man.