Best Lanham Poems
Leave you my tears?
I think you already own them . . .
They sparkle in dew on the grasses,
on your windows they cling to look in;
They see you with someone else laughing
And wonder if the joke is on them?
Days past they would have been with you,
Laughter's jewels alive in my eyes,
But tonight they beat on your windows;
Instead of bright smiles, they weep sighs.
Leave you my tears?
In the rain they pour down from heaven,
They run down your walls to the ground.
They gather in rivers about you;
Don't you sense me when you are storm bound?
How you step on my heart when you walk out
With somebody else on your arm,
Playful like kids in spring showers,
Unaware of the heart you have harmed.
Leave you my tears?
If I could wrap them up in a present,
give them all to you at one time,
My tears would make you an ocean,
Sink your ship on the sea of your crimes
My tears . . . to me they are holy,
They tell of the heartbreak I've known;
You never knew how to treasure
The love that bowed at your throne.
I leave you my tears . . .
Faye Lanham Gibson
Copyright, September 5, 2014
Categories:
lanham, lost love, sad love,
Form:
Rhyme
You kiss my face and I turn to trace
the tracks you left on the ground;
where have you walked and with whom have you talked
in all of your traveling round?
You utter a sigh and I am wondering why
you just cannot slow down and stay;
capricious you are like a burnt, falling star,
fickle, and quick to betray.
One day you are kind, your fury confined,
the next, you are hostile and wild;
today a soft breeze, lightly brushing the trees,
tomorrow, an unbroken child.
I open my arms to welcome your charms,
but like a ghost you vanish and go;
my emotions are torn by the strength of your storm,
your inexhaustible, volatile show.
I release you! Go scream and follow mad dreams,
go blow to the east and the west;
you try to impress then insanely digress
your plan to pursue an irrational quest.
The day you are through, tame the tempestuous shrew,
come back to my warm, loving heart;
ruffle my hair with the breath of a prayer,
until them, my dear, just depart.
Copyright, August 27, 2014
Faye Lanham Gibson
Categories:
lanham, love hurts, metaphor, wind,
Form:
Rhyme
creamy cheesecake inches deep
red strawberry crowned,
mounds of whipped chocolate fluff
cresting almond cake,
maple pecan pie
sticky crunch-
yum!
Copyright, October 27, 2014
Faye Lanham Gibson
Categories:
lanham, food,
Form:
Epulaeryu
On days of childhood past
and long faded into memory,
sisters played beneath a smiling sun
in shadowed rooms of bending willows.
Dainty handkerchiefs swaddled
our Rose of Sharon infants
to keep the newborns warm;
honeysuckle spread sweet fragrance
scenting the summer playhouse
while birds trilled lullabies of joy.
Clover chains hung as garlands
to decorate our home
and snowball bushes' spread
perfumed blossoms carpeting the floors.
Simple pleasures of a simple life
we seem to have discarded
in favor of a busier, artificial plastic world
where flowers bud stale fabric blooms
on bending wires.
The evensong of the whip-poor-will is no more.
I would go back if I could harvest
the pureness of those happy hours,
distilling a rare elixir,
a medicine for our ailing times.
Copyright, November 25, 2014
Faye Lanham Gibson
Categories:
lanham, childhood, flower, simple,
Form:
Free verse
Forest fairies changing colors,
autumn's patchwork pattern weaving
in the foggy morning stillness
before winter's barren grieving,
up the river on the damp air,
up hollows through the shadowed vales
sounds the mournful, sobbing whistle:
once more memory rides the rails.
Childhood song for railroad watchers -
a tinge of hobo in my veins,
longing for the lonesome whistle
like a lost child for his name.
Life began beside the railway,
an open door to fantasy;
my dreamer's soul soaked in the flavor
hearing that whistle witchery.
Hungry tramps in search of breakfast
found our doorstep every time;
hobo network communication
marked mama's eggs and bacon "fine."
Bleary eyes and beards all stubble
made child imaginations fly
and the tales with which we clothed them
were wilder still than hobo lies.
Oh, for the days when trains were magic:
iron dragons breathing smoke and fire,
lashing long tails through the valleys
with monstrous strength that never tired.
Oh, the secrets that were hidden
behind the doors of plain boxcars;
feel the untamed urge to mount them
and plunder treasure from afar.
Delight was ours beyond measure
to waken on those special days,
finding, in the night, the dragon
had brought the circus train our way.
See the bearded lady waving
and catch the fat man's twinkling eye,
smell the coal smoke's pungent flavor
beneath our magic big top sky.
Grown up am I; steam train magic
comes swirling by once in a while
to view autumn's fleeting pageant
and make train lovers like me smile.
Nostalgic, rhythmic beating,
staccato yelps and sobbing wails
make my soul a mental hobo;
once more memory rides the rails.
Copyright, 2000
Faye Lanham Gibson
Categories:
lanham, america, childhood, memory, nostalgia,
Form:
Rhyme
Like milk from blue mountains' swollen breasts, the fog
Intertwines with pungent campfire smoke, a blue mist
Frescoing my quiet river valley's primeval lap.
Twilight tiptoes, surreptitiously, spying on secluded tryst;
Interlaced, grape and honeysuckle canopy overhead,
Noddng blossoms dripping sweet fragrance,
Granting nectared kisses my lips cannot resist.
The blue moon peers through hazy clouds, then turns
Hiding his eyes from lovers unashamed upon the ground;
Emotion rising in his core, he looks again and sadly yearns.
Furtively, he draws foggy blankets o'er us two,
Orchestrating sequestered solitude until
Golden sunlight warms the earth uncov'ring me and you.
Faye Lanham Gibson
Copyright, July 5, 2014
Categories:
lanham, earth, love, moon, mountains,
Form:
Acrostic
I feel a butterfly inside;
its wings are cramped within my breast.
The weight of flesh, o dull cocoon,
prohibits my free flight. At best
I only soar inside; my wings--
gossamer, light, remain untried.
I wait...I wait...until the day
the barred' cage is flung aside
and airy wings lift toward the skies.
I have felt this graceful creature
flutter faintly deep inside;
then, at times, so ardently,
I think no way will it abide!
It will be loosed! Its wish to fly
will push the bars of flesh aside.
Determined is this butterfly
to show its colors multiplied
and wing its way through azure skies.
The time is drawing near, I'm sure;
the throbbing swells within my heart.
The cumbrous cocoon, filled with life,
is bursting now, falling apart.
The butterfly is breaking free;
no more its wings will tightly furl,
but lightly spread upon the breeze
their filmy webs, gilded and pearled...
and, then, my soul will leave this world.
Faye Lanham Gibson
Copyright, 1987
Categories:
lanham, butterfly, death, freedom, metaphor,
Form:
Lyric
Apples ripen pink, hotly blushing,
though the ardent yellow sun grows faint;
blackbirds sucking soft honeyed sweetness.
like babies at breast, show no restraint.
Mellow ripeness splays rich-toned color;
the trees raise scarlet armed applause.
Red-brown and gray, small creatures hurry
stowing provisions for winter's pause.
Copyright, September 1, 2014
Faye Lanham Gibson
Categories:
lanham, autumn, color,
Form:
Quatrain
My neck crooked backward,
I stand between the stacks
feeling the weight of centuries,
the distilled wisdom of minds
who graced the earth with golden words,
words that pace the pages -
vellum, parchment, fine and common papers;
words, cordoned in lines, confined,
yet powerful tools to set one free,
a roamer far from home,
across universes,
beyond time's reach.
The light filters through high windows
downward to where I peer with squinted eyes
teasing out a jewel -
a title, an author, an adventure, a friend.
The air is charged,
the static of adventure,
heartfelt journeys of a hundred thousand writers,
their souls etched upon the pages
for ones such as I to stumble upon decades,
centuries later,
dream maps
thought castles,
imaginative quests.
Quietness reigns.
The elements of books -
leather, cloth, paper and ink -
infuse a rich elixir,
a mind expanding potion,
companion to best wine and oldest friendships
seasoned,
mellowed,
treasured.
© Faye Lanham Gibson, August 11, 2015
Categories:
lanham, books, words, writing, universe,
Form:
Free verse
Constantly she toils
in the darkness of the heaving sea
gathering treasures into her aprons deep;
twice a day she knocks, panting,
at the shoreline’s wide stretching door,
and scatters her abundant gifts
for vagabonds like me to reap.
Copyright, October 24, 2014
Faye Lanham Gibson
Categories:
lanham, nature, ocean, sea,
Form:
Free verse
The evening sun reclines, dips
her trailing skirts into the fire;
she lounges on the edge of dusk,
her sultry lips, crimson desire.
With violet tints, her painted eyes,
brazen behind a blushing cloud,
stare at every lake and pond
to view the beauty she's endowed.
We sigh to see her slip beyond
the rim of sight; her lovely face
may never be just quite the same
as now, framed by the black tree lace.
Faye Lanham Gibson
Categories:
lanham, beauty, cool, sun,
Form:
Quatrain
Tossed upon blank beaches
like men without souls,
shell fragments littering the sand.
Each broken shell once could sing
lyrics lilting of glories past,
tales spun in Dresden colors,
soft, shimmering memories -
blissful days beneath shining seas.
In broken men who walk the earth,
vignettes I view . . .
shattered beauty every one.
Copyright, August 3, 2014
Faye Lanham Gibson
Categories:
lanham, life, sea,
Form:
Free verse
She climbed the liquid staircase
just to gaze at gleaming stars;
all she wanted was a wee one
to light up her fair boudoir.
A thousand times she spied them
flash across the midnight sky;
she strained so high to catch one,
but the mermaid could not fly.
Exhausted with hard striving,
she lay back against the sea,
rocking on the waves, gently,
as she rested peacefully.
The moon, climbing his set arc,
saw her glistening on the foam;
at first sight so madly loved
her, longing to take her home.
To lightly comb her flowing
hair, he sent a small moonbeam,
who tangled in her tresses
and woke her from her dream.
With a flash, her glittering tail
slapped the water and she fled,
sliding down in the ocean,
hiding in her pearl lined bed.
The moon, absent one moonbeam,
wanders heaven, round and round,
surveying seas and oceans,
praying his mermaid is found.
Sometimes in the deep, dark pool
he sees a shining light start
beneath the frothing billows,
and he clutches for his heart.
Forever in his orbit...
she, forever in the waves,
her hair with his beam glowing,
all of love he ever gave.
Faye Lanham Gibson
Copyright, May 31, 2014
Categories:
lanham, imagination, love, moon, sea,
Form:
Narrative
Footsteps on stairs,
little feet pounding, running,
child faces peeking round the kitchen door,
expectancy alive, dancing in their eyes.
They know that love is always here
waiting just for them.
Each one thinks he is favorite;
in his or her own way, it is true.
Each is the most special
not for anything they say or do,
just for being.
We have our rituals -
breakfast French toast and bacon,
back rubs and funny faces,
movie nights,
ice cream after church,
backyard camp outs,
lots of love, laughter.
Happy takes me by surprise
each time I look
in my grandchild’s eyes.
© September 11, 2015
Faye Lanham Gibson
Categories:
lanham, grandchild, grandmother, happiness, happy,
Form:
Free verse
dawn
balmy, breezy
shining, shimmering, laughing
birds, flowers, color, fragrance
dimming, calming, falling
sleepy, restful
twilight
Copyright, November 7, 2014
Faye Lanham Gibson
Categories:
lanham, day, night,
Form:
Diamante