Best Abandonment Poems
I chance upon her
in the far reaches of the backyard,
a place I never go. There she trembles.
A tiny tiger, whose newborn eyes blur the world,
secreted in mother-scented-shadows
below blackthorn shrubs.
Faint mews draw me closer.
The power of her vulnerability
fills my veins with a ripple rising,
brimming me with a nectar needed,
like a dry stream bed restored by remedy rains.
How helpless she is with new eyes open.
Her eyes like skylights — clear
and filled with new-wild-blue innocence.
Neglected yet beautiful, I sense in her
the familiar phenomenon of the impulse to pulse.
Her outsized feistiness belying
such a petite package of plea and need
with teeny needle claws and barely a wisp of a hiss
...and I recall when I felt the fear
of being small and voiceless in a choiceless world.
Born a feral kitten, her mother likely lost
to speed-wheels of a car or snap-jaws of coyotes,
whose throats float steaming howls above black
saw-toothed pines to haunt the long night moon
...and I wonder, if she wonders,
if the sweet-milk-purrs with soft belly fur
will ever return to snuggle her.
She’s been cold and alone for far too long.
So I gather her in the hug of my hands
warming her as I draw her in and curl
my chest around her littleness.
A shield formed against her lone-ness.
...and I, a long-ago-child abandoned,
a child whose silent cries heard only by stoic walls,
reclaims a voice that helps me make a choice
not to let Nature decide how birth and fate collide.
So I sit with her, swaddle her, love her.
Nourish her with eye-dropper milk where
hearth embers still glow after the fire,
to heal the orphan and raise the phoenix within.
Embraces shatter leaving timeless stories
Wrapped in butterfly nets, tied with velvet ribbons
Tangled cob webs and ghost blankets
Restless feelings and Kodak moments
Wasting into forever
Alone, rotting in the pantry
Forgotten happiness buried by sorrows
Telling tomorrow yesterday’s lies
A hollow soul searching for absent pieces
Going nowhere, tires spinning in mud
Falling from grace
Finding no one to catch you
Reaching out clutching entirely on air
Clouds of fog slide between fingertips
Walking through mist, traveling over quicksand
Trying to find light during a Midnight Sun
A solitary fragment in a sea of glass
Hearing the sound of silence for the first time
The empty feeling unarrival brings
Knowing abandonment.
Running off with tomorrow
divorcing today
The moment left orphaned
— all time astray
(Dreamsleep: February, 2024)
Although I seethe with fingers clenched
to silence this mad virus in my marrow,
the sight of favored quality time for siblings
gnaws this band of jealousy, untamed.
Being second or third best, rage is my ally,
igniting a fury hidden inside this chest
an expanding tremor ready to pounce back...
do you smell the pain when I reach for you?
Stop the excuse that we are many kids... liars!
As a middle child, hand-me downs are gifts;
the eldest wears silk; young Randy...leather
while I sit far off in a theater like a pile of rags.
Faking a deathly nightmare in the grim of nightfall,
Mom and Dad rush to feed my thirst for attention
and while I whisper slowly about this, my revenge;
the jaundiced ghost of abandonment is unleashed...
and they brush my hair through new moon's tint
oh full of concern...without the need to speak.
Shadow Hamilton's Contest
Through Their Eyes #2 Posted 9/9/2015
Resubmitted 8/16/2016
Broken promises and sad goodbyes,
You left me standing there with tears in the well of my eyes.
In the blink of an eye you turned your back and walked away.
I often wonder if you're okay,
Everyday i dream of how perfect my life would be if you were here today with me,
Birthdays, Graduations, Prom,
You've missed it all.
And it hurts so much you didn't even bother to call,
I still love you mother, i dont mean to be a bother,
I just hope you think about your abandoned daughter,
You chose drugs over us. At least you loved yourself, that's a plus.
Theres nothing you could ever say to make the pain go away,
I'll remember you for who you were, from early memories of jumbled blur.
I miss my mother and all she could have been, If only she hadn't let alcohol cave her life in.
I hope you find yourself one day, I just wish you would have stayed.
I sabotaged my eight-millimeter childhood.
I never knew Sartre
But I contorted my latex face,
Burying my nothingness in family films.
My child was scripted to be ugly, skipped over
In comic relief.
Only recognizable as Menoetius,
My only animation was insolence.
I believed nothing in myself,
I knew nothing.
I sought my masquerade in
Metaverse avatars,
Really just 2D analog shadows,
Swaying waves of gray on ashen tv tubes.
Without convictions, I was convicted.
My craven rudeness landed me
In squalid wreckage,
The debris of my dormant sea,
Forsaken a million or more times,
Rebuffed and scorned,
I succumbed to my dense exhaustion.
I shut down where sleep had no form,
Where space-time is an illusion.
Some hint of dream touched and aroused me.
Some anamnesis so much greater than any containment!
I awakened sweaty, wretched, and authentically flawed,
savoring the sudden phenomenal enigma,
Ready to learn the endless patterns
of all the passions and sciences.
You Raped My Soul
by Elise Hendry
I slowly trusted you…
I shared the depths of my heart and soul with you…
You allowed me to attach to you …
Like a newborn fawn…to it’s mother…
I drank deeply from your heart of love, tenderness, gentleness, kindness and acceptance…
You covered me with a blanket of grace after the shame of my childhood…
I swam in the pools of your sea moss eyes…
I delighted in the deep desires you awakened in me…
I shared the depth of my struggles with you...
And then when my pain and chaos of longing was too much…
I attempted to snuff out the candle…
The candle in the wind would not be blown out…
Left in the shadow…was the pain of awakening to life again…
But you were gone…you abandoned me…you blamed me…you labeled me…you betrayed me…
The blanket of grace was ripped off my naked body…and replaced with shame and pain of loss….
My mental health was not your concern …you traded your heart of love for a heart of fear…
You did not know me…you did not love me….you died…
I carefully climb the old oak tree,
traipsing upon its extended limb.
Hold my breath, counting one, two, and three,
abandoning my perch for the swim.
Oh, to be a broken Christmas light
Surrounded by the glitter burning bright,
While dampened by the blanket of the broke.
People look and think you are a joke.
You are alone, surrounded by the life
Of your friends, yet you are here in strife.
You try your best to glow, but you are done.
You sputter, spluck, and suck out all the fun.
They see you glow, just barely being bright,
While all your friends illuminate the night.
They take you out and throw you in the trash.
I see you there, alone among the ash.
The single, sad, and solemn Christmas light.
Left to die, because it wasn't right.
Your little glow was good enough for me.
It made my life a little brighter, see.
Alone in the night, with no one to hold,
A life she never chose, yet she's so bold.
Her mother left her, on the day of her birth,
A cruel fate, that dealt her an insurmountable hurt.
She never knew the warmth of a mother's embrace,
Feeling lost and disconnected, in this lonely space.
She searched for love and care, but found none,
Left to face the world, with no one to lean upon.
Amidst the struggles, there was a man,
Who held her hand and helped her stand.
But fate had other plans, and he met his end,
In a moment of despair, that she couldn't comprehend.
His death left her shattered, with a heart so sore,
Feeling lost and broken, with a pain to the core.
She retreated within, with her grief so deep,
Hoping for peace, in this endless, sad sleep.
Her mother's abandonment, a wound so deep,
A lifetime of scars, too painful to keep.
A love that was lost, before it ever began,
A fate so cruel, no one can understand.
Days turned into months, and months turned into years,
As she faced life's blows, with her soul in tears.
Till one day, she closed her eyes, with a final sigh,
Leaving the world behind, with a last goodbye.
And so, she joins the stars, in the infinite sky,
With her dreams and hopes, that never did die.
A life so hard, that ended in sorrow,
A story of survival, in a world of no tomorrow.
When Sartre suggested there was no God,
Did he mean female or male God?
What consequences were to be faced?
We should not live in hope he said!
We should always act rather than live in hope,
If we act rather than live in hope of rescue,
We are more likely to achieve our ambitions.
So I act - but what do you do if your act is taken?
Act again?
And what if this act is taken?
What if everything you do is claimed - after all, there is no God?
Every time you act/do something, someone takes credit.
If you stop acting/doing deeds that take you towards your goals,
Will you still achieve those goals?
After all, a wo/man is only as good as his/her last deed!
If someone always takes credit for your last deed, then what does it mean?
Footsteps in the sands of time...wiped clear...as you never existed!
One might ask why do they take your last acts/deeds - for the credit?
Are they taking your life - I.e. KGB?
One day you'll be gone and all you have will be theirs, especially your life!
After all, all your deeds are theirs now.
All your acts are theirs now.
All that was you is them now.
You have been washed from the sands of time.
You no longer exist.
Not even in a prism floating in space.
She is you now.
Your champion never came ~
The day was long gone as midnight became an opaque obscurity.
Her ebony veneer was
enough to hypnotize.
Smoke clouding homicidal judgment . . .
I stood aloof—
Wondering about death.
How am I suppose to suture such a crimson masquerade;
barely hanging onto the cuff of my blazer...?
The day was long gone as
midnight's moon gazed upon madness, well passed her
expiration.
May 27, 2017
Contest: Write me something deep and dark
Sponsor: Laura Loo
I wake up in a bed barely rumpled
to confront truth of jarring, endless ache -
I am broken, my pale heart beats crumbled.
My nonchalant is an ascetic fake.
My furtive thoughts imagine you as dead.
Finality could be absorbed by me
quicker than abandonment’s gift of dread.
Love ifs of heart-wish will not set me free.
Longing to be numb or somehow just gone,
I sit in the hole of my once whole heart.
I struggle to simply, tightly hold on
and humble myself that healing might start.
He who once asked me for lifelong embrace,
left me holding just pain lacking all grace.
A breeze did slide in under eaves
and stirred inside the air that grieves,
my children grown my dreams have flown,
alone I sit my rocking throne.
My chair in front of window bare,
I look… but husband’s soul elsewhere.
Beneath my feet the floorboards moan,
alone I sit my rocking throne.
Each day I rock the same tic tock
and change not from my sleeping frock.
Once soft my face now turned a crone,
alone I sit my rocking throne.
The length of cobwebs measure time
they speak no secret sing no rhyme,
but air that’s stirred does tend to drone…
alone, I sit my rocking throne.
I pray to rock myself to sleep
as old-age-chains do rust with weep.
These tears from seeds of sorrows sown,
alone I sit my rocking throne.
The run of beads and crucifix
will not unfix life’s mix of tricks.
A rosary my rope and stone,
alone... I sit my rocking throne.
Of God I beg relief from grief,
unbind my mind from mortal sheaf.
This plea endures like sun bleached bone—
alone I sit my rocking throne.
The Bitterness of Abandonment
Flows Most Forcefully in Memories
The Hope Endures during the Longing Journey
Leaving No Time But For The Present
Lost For Good
The Inner Compass Fatefully Broken
The Bond Never to Be Sealed
Cast Out Amongst the Unforgiven Seas
Only Love
Sweet Love
Can Steereth You Home