Best Rooms Poems
Written: March 05, 2025
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As the final petal droops
upon quivering leaves,
while the soul begins to decay
akin to the evening lights
fading into a coffin.
Tears flow quietly across vacant rooms,
sheltered in the hidden retreat,
of a hapless fool folly.
Aged and forsaken, an ancient blade lies
on a ragged oak table.
All around the termite-ridden
floorboards are strewn with
tattered sheets of stories.
Valiant voices of victory,
vibrate in vivid verses,
preserved with lively Ink.
Decades of disarray have faded away,
leaving behind a cherished tale,
its inked revelations whirl into a frenzy,
as I peer through the glass,
reminiscing about those golden days
when my youth overflowed with joy.
I couldn't assist but notice
the drooping scarlet dahlias.
A gleaming golden crown,
sparkling with lovely
crimson queens
rests upon the head of a forlorn exile—
and that is all that remains.
Under the relentless sun
that preys upon the flames,
how can I rise above
the crimson chaos
that encroaches at the edges,
surrounding the ghostly grave
of the poetic soul
I have lost in the quest for acclaim.
Within the weeping window,
a wild wonder reveals itself,
draped in a vivid shade of vermilion.
Amid the whispers of wayward spirits,
the flawless porcelain of our past
now bears unsightly marks.
Fractured dreams are embellished
with delicate threads, while shafts of
sunlight slices through shadowy skies.
The family fortress,
frozen in cold stone,
waits for its wary wanderer,
beckoning the illustrious
to traverse its dimly paths.
In the serene silence of slumber,
the sorrowful saga emerges.
The embrace of eternal sleep.
A chilling chronicle of the collapse
cascades in the corridors
akin to a haunting harmony.
The aspiration and avarice
ultimately overwhelmed us
As the clock chimed cheerfully
at midnight on that chilling night,
the cunning usurper brandished
a blade and brutally
broke their beings,
birthing ghosts of grim,
unspoken words to weep
behind weathered walls.
At this moment, I am
the emerald evening
of the early dawn,
The waxen white wick
that waits before their
weathered tombstone is
withered to a whisper.
Nurse: Briefly describe your pain
Me: Ouch
Nurse: On a scale from 1 to 10, how would you rate your pain?
Me: I dunno...where's your scale?
Nurse: No, no sir, on a scale...
Me: Okay!...180 butt-naked
Nurse: When was the last time you had a physical exam?
Me: Well, me and this lady went out the other night...
Nurse: We'll need a stool sample
Me: YOUR stool or my stool? I'll need a saw...
Nurse: We'll need to do some lab work
Me: I understand, it's hard to keep good help isn't it?
Nurse: Do you have a history of suicide?
Me: Umm...
Nurse: Are you having trouble urinating?
Me: Just a sec...nope, no problem here
Nurse: Sh-t!
Me: Just a sec...nope, no problem here
Nurse: Son of a...How many fingers am I holding up??
Me: Aha!...One in the middle and four bent ones, right?
Nurse: I swear to G... Sign this freekin' admittance form!
Me: Uh uh!...I deny the whole thing...
Nurse: (Sigh) Are you allergic to anything?
Me: Hospitals...
. for public domain
Where we hung our overcoats I don't remember,
or at what time winter snow fell late December,
I barely recall the living room
with the television or radio on,
snuggled in a chair, wanting weather of September.
The living room, our family's sanctuary,
where we prayed for a quickly passing January,
we held our tongues from bitter comments,
mostly, but one slipped out on occasion,
which made for an unpleasant colder February.
Spring and Summer came with outdoor body odor,
showers and sweat all through the harvest of October.
Comments on sore bones and blisters,
exchanged among my mother and sisters,
kept the conversation lively through November.
Our parents have long passed on, as we have passed on,
alone, or enduring lives we have created,
lording over our own living rooms,
to keep them from becoming tombs
of the silence that awaits us at the end.
songer.co/song/e76cmz749zid6d9o4jfehl69
songer.co/song/bu7vpum9ysa33o7j0db04121
Empty Rooms Remain (Break Up Version)
[Verse 1]
In a room full of people,
I feel all alone.
Sitting at this party —
I’m invisible without you.
Pictures of us on the wall
quietly mock me now.
So I laugh too loud,
trying to drown the sound.
Everywhere I go,
I feel like a stranger.
Barely hanging on —
and I don’t think I can for long.
[Pre-Chorus]
Life used to whisper softly,
now she’s just noise in my ear.
[Chorus]
Your eyes took you away,
and sent me straight to hell.
You kissed me that morning —
I didn’t know it meant goodbye.
They say crying helps —
a blind cliché that can’t reach my pain.
Farewell, my love…
empty rooms remain.
[Verse 2]
Sometimes love lasts a lifetime,
but when it’s gone,
the hurt lasts longer.
You left so quickly,
and I’m drowning slow.
I dream of you at night —
then wake to the same nightmare.
Invisible. Unheard.
And so misunderstood.
[Bridge]
Hope is fragile —
a glass in my shaking hands.
But I still can’t let go,
of a half-believed fantasy.
Was this dream a lie,
or something worse?
You left us at the heaven’s door,
and I’m still cursed.
[Final Chorus]
Your heart took you away,
and sent me straight to hell.
You kissed me that morning —
I didn’t know it meant goodbye.
They say crying helps —
a blind cliché that can’t reach my pain.
Farewell, my love…
empty rooms remain.
[Outro]
In the echoes of laughter,
I find your ghost.
Among these shadows,
I’m missing you the most.
The nights are getting longer,
but memories still fly —
and somewhere deep inside,
I’m learning how to say goodbye.
He lived in four little rooms
locked behind the door.
And the night shined through
where a light shined before.
A red flame burned ashen gray,
dying on the floor.
So you move yourself along.
And grind on down.
And scrape the path you drag around.
Stumblin’ on the way.
A new day with no grace to say,
starin’ down the ground.
They’re softer lies to swallow
when you’re drunk.
Or when you’re full of faith
and barely saved.
It’s only things that fade.
And leave impressions in the dark.
And demons in the haze.
Sunlight burns night away,
turns darkness into day.
So sing inside your walls.
And make the lamps low.
And watch the white screen glow,
black on grey.
The words that you say.
And drain yourself away.
Another night burned white by day.
Oh my Darkness, I beg you stay.
Are you fated?
Or are you led?
Well either way the moon will grow.
And spread out wide across the snow.
Piled high and ploughed.
Raised between the lines.
And layered across the years.
Counting hours like chickens
waiting to get fried
until my last pressures get
properly denied
by that amnestic ruckus
compelling my stride.
My revelry extracts your
most suspicious eye
while I collect brains like I'm
Professor Magpie
instructing the planet on
how it ought to fly.
You wafted off on that cloud
propelling my pride
until I cried at that thick
storm brewing outside
lamenting that lonely gust
when our essence died.
Rooms
by Odin Roark
How prescient that first room
The one where under the bed
Proved private the light
Where flashlight and toy soldier
Became all that was needed
Came
The room with desk
Where locked door
Gave entrance to video games
While parents assumed study
Came
SATs where drawn curtains
No boom box
Only silence
And the study focus
Made the room
Came
The dorm room
With beer-can-crushing-to-the-head roommate
Making for final exam hell
Where stolen passions
With sorority queen fantasy
Made eating
A non sequitur
Came
The office walls
The room for fortune
Made eventually corrupt
With drawn curtains
Came
Marriage’s bed-room
That place where all became prescient again
Where a child would validate a wife’s existence
While with loving acceptance
A husband’s duty would be carried out
Came…
Came…
The rooms never stop
Some their final architecture
That of nursing home green
Other’s of palm-frond-shack freedom
Still others…
Soho 3-story condo prison
Rooms
Always unknown
Until they’re not
Forever a four-wall measure
The capsule
The coffin
Chosen destiny
One way
Or another
Let those who see fit dwell in empty rooms
Enveloped by darkness, not understood
Drenched in self-pity that loudly consumes
A world they've chosen, I care not nor would
As though their pains run deeper or longer
A blackened hood of loneliness to wear
Invisible disguise, to seem stronger
This fatal thought of illusion, life cares
First and last breath are both silent givens
The world between is but a changing choice
Decisions decided, never forgiven
When the heart and head speak with separate voice
Lonely the rooms filled with cries from hearts lyre
A song of sorrow and anguished desire
4/17/14
In mind's castle many furnished rooms
In upper chamber, chaste virtue grooms
In lower chamber, strands of civility bloom
In antechamber, auxiliary dreams, visions illume
In the inner chamber, fears, insecurities subsume
In dim, adjoining corridors, venal guile do entomb
From bed chamber, hypothalamus, carnal libations spoon
In library, Prefrontal cortex, sentient patterns resume
In nursery, hippocampus, Id suckles the womb
In hearth's cozy fireplace, nurtured Ego swoons
From dusky, dank cellar, hidden desires fume
In dungeon's dark recesses resides a foreboding gloom
In courtyard, amygdala, aesthetic designs mushroom
Gathered at the grave we pay our homage,
To the grand and the ominous relics we so cherish.
To the great life giving force that
Has indeed given me room for displeasure.
Inhale the pollutant and exhale the desperation,
In a vain attempt to grasp life's puzzles.
I see this distorted picture of you.
A hysterical comment offers itself,
And I pray this moment will never end.
But as the sun greets the edge of the world,
our minds drift downward...
to a more delusional hue...
the color of our smoke filled rooms.
Space
to sleep,
bath and shave-
impersonal
void
In the canvas of twilightish insanity
Appear pomegranate designs of passion
An intellectual dance of day flowing into night
In the sea inside skull, the heartbeats of humanity
Vibrating with rurality towards urbanity
Get oxidized in the lemon and salt of mundanity
No concern for the formality of meter and iamb
And thus blooms out the filigree of feelings
Beautiful Sylvia Plath effect revealing
They invite us to the mirror
Of our reality of current disintegration
Reeking of brutality and volcanity
Collapsing rhythm joyously spells fatality
And cheerfully grows an inanity of mentality
Eating into our diamonds of morality
You often say you will return and love
Are you afraid of the expanding emptiness
And the vitality-sapping black holes?
We do not know why profanity is considered a value
We do not know where our brutal rooms lead to
We only see green leaves dropping dead every day
__________________________________________________
25/01/2017
Word Challenge - Poetry Contest hosted by Silent One
These tears that pool
In the dark corners of bright rooms
Monsoons couldnt wash them away
These are the ones that define us
The ones that sit in the recesses of our minds
Rusting away at what we think is our core
Provoking the winds that blow closed our shutters and open our doors
These winds that blow fierce
Through your forest and across your bay
You can't catch them in your sails
They are not meant to move you
But to ruffle your feathers
And bring waves to your seas
To shake everything that you thought was serene
And to bring on the tears that pool
In the dark corners of bright rooms
listen to the moon drop silver down. hearts are out of season. and my love was hunted down, killed by the ripping of patience. pretty stars lit up by the dark. i see brilliance in your eyes. last time. skin so warm. you taste like cyanide. and i cried in absence tonight. grind my teeth in pure abstraction. rub the hands that fill me up. stretch love over seas.
Crowded rooms, though full, know many lonely hearts.
Smiling guests mingle; laughing, dancing, they sing.
Imaginary friends strange solace imparts.
Nonetheless, loneliness grips its painful sting.
All around cupid’s arrows take aim; love starts.
Sadly, upon the friendless there is no ring.
It had happened many times over and again.
Thank God, life and love began as you walked in.
© January 16, 2011
Dane Smith-Johnsen