Burning Memories

Crown of Sonnets Yesterday's poems now pages turned brown Lay scattered, torn on the floor of my years Written long ago with words I wrote down When the ink was used to quell the heart's fears These words of my pen of a poignant time When beguile was a young man's chosen fruit As I searched for love of sweet scent divine When lovers lit candles with reasons mute This game of hearts was a path to sadness Littered with kisses and words on the theme Reheard by my ears as whispered madness Asked to dance with a love's broken dream Only to find the eyes could never see The poems I stored from lover's debris The poems I stored from lover's debris Are fading away on time's turning wheel Written in secret to hearts that were free They left deeper meanings that seemed unreal When they explored love's act of selfish means To hearts left in a withering morass When they slowly died and lost their bright sheens To end in a silent sad lonely mass These poems of love are yet to be found Lost somewhere in the emptiness of mirth When soft music set the stage for love's sound And the cost to love's heart paid what it's worth To echo through time from each lover's kiss Captured poems with memories of bliss Captured poems with memories of bliss Found on the winds that have carried no blame Gowns of silks flow as the words reminisce To describe the faces without a name Memories maligned now older and sane Covered in dust from roads love has taken To reach the truth of deluded disdain Unspoken bonds when love was forsaken Shadows from its mist always remain When dim-lit shades hide the presence of mind Reminders of years when love turned to pain When love was stolen from hearts that were blind To write such poems when lovers will flee To build a funeral pyre for my eyes to see To build a funeral pyre for my eyes to see With flames to burn my brown pages of bane I light this fire, to set my soul free And remove poems of passions insane The turmoil I wrought, no reason to care Trapped in my illusions that seemed to glow When minutes of time was fervor to share Until love became an old vanquished foe Love was so fleeting when nothing was meant When lies from love's lips could easily hide The lost days and nights came without lament Innocent hearts torn, bled when they complied Left with a sense of my past paradigm Poems to lovers I folded in time Poems to lovers I folded in time Written in ink when alone in the night Replayed on the page they reveal love's crime Of flattering soft words filled with delight To fill empty hearts with dry wells unfilled And find a strange world of love derelict Where lucid emotions are often spilled Like drops from a needle to an addict That rush through the cold veins of a coward And leave as a prize a dark dismal heart That slowly began to be devoured When two lovers quietly fell apart These poems were written to purify Then lost in the days where memories die Then lost in the days where memories die These written words to those who departed The ache they carried the question of why No regrets until now my course charted Perhaps a reason to hide what love sought As it was born from rile unintended To learn of love's failings to be self-taught To find it not real only pretended And find it a graveyard that always stays Buried by consent in a heartless space They took the purpose of love to their graves And left a memory I now must face These poems I now toss in flames of grime Colored smoke will freeze in the air, then climb Colored smoke will freeze in the air, then climb To be crumbled ashes of anguish lost A bell I'll ring as a memories chime To hold me accountable for the cost As I kept these memories ever tight I'll give these poems a reason to cry From a restless reason, what's wrong, what's right To watch their smoke rise to an endless sky Filled with a lover's guilt as days grow short To release these words from my deepest stain Reveal my sadness the past I abort Love's trembling frailty I disdain To burn these poems that were lost now found Yesterday's poems now pages turned brown written 7/13/20 contest Sonnet's Salutation 12/1/21