Best Unspent Poems
On the precipice it stands,
loose-limbed with a sinewy grace,
body taut with an implied swagger,
face, grinning, a sun-dappled gold.
Unclouded by the cataract of cynicism,
its eyes survey a horizon heat-hazed with
a thousand promises.
As yet, love has left it with no sutured heart,
nor loss summoned a creeping despair.
By no friend has it yet been betrayed,
from no purpose has it resigned and strayed.
Lies, it has heard, but, believed, cannot hurt.
Ignorant of what it doesn’t know,
it has an ego undented by falls,
not yet weaned from the milk of optimism.
It has yet to learn the vices of body and mind
that take a lifetime to unlearn,
or the discontent sired by desire,
and what it could gain when there’s nothing else it wants,
that wisdom can be glimpsed only by a sobered fool,
yet Sobriety keeps a lonely vigil over a humanity
drunk on hate-filled wine,
and Truth is a far-flung place,
maze-like in black, white and every shade of gray,
that an ideal is oft a shabby lover next to the
painted temptresses sent by Vainglory and Greed,
that too often, in a world of crass appetites,
an angel has to stoop low before it can fly high,
and, thus flying, loses its angelic smile.
It does not yet suspect Fortune’s mischief,
taking us unawares with its games,
demanding that we shuffle in time to the music of whims,
that the love of life is often repaid,
yet sometimes unrequited.
All this Youth has yet to learn.
Pristine, with not a wrinkle on its soul,
it stands on the precipice,
untroubled by hints of the limits of infinity,
emboldened by intimations of immortality.
With wings unfurled,
beaming in the sunlight
for one last time,
it soars wide-eyed towards
a life yet unspent.
28 Words Unspent
David J Walker
Each first verse
Revered
Within the confines
Of the wind
and time
unspent
a single chime
with no interpretation
lent
Each middle verse
muddled
befuddled
is a funny word to use
but true
though bent
Each last verse
Rehearsed in
phonetics conversed in
Mortal sins recited
One at a
Time to repent
28 words
Unheard
Held in a
Futures file
Each from a
Different style
Unsent
The last verse
Is the first
Before death
Lonely Days filled with sorrow
Swimming endlessly through the pain
Living for worldly possessions
Soon to find I'm going insane
Trying to classify my sadness
As a type of never-ending disease
Diagnosed upon your good-bye
Never to put my mind at ease
I thought things would never change
I was lost in time unspent
Spending countless nights asking
What those cold words meant
Yet days are getting better
I've found a guy who makes me smile
When wrapped in his arms I soon realize
All my heartache and tears were worth while
There is no dream
I haven't dreamt
throughout my life every theme
found a moment to be spent.
Just a dreamer they always said
looked away in their dismay
believing only foolish dreams in my head
but still each found a place each day,
A scientist, teacher, writer, daughter, sister, friend
first to go to college
waylaid by reality now and again
but succeeded in accumulating knowledge.
Retired now, ready to relax and recall decades of living
each achieved in the years now passed
and the images of wonder find thanksgiving
in the heart of every soul in which the dreams are cast.
for Silent One's contest
I dreamed a dream
2/16/19
Days so real
I feel alive
Do what I do
Never to die
The only one
I have known
Energy in me
Soul unshown
Time is what
I wonder why
We must have
A day to die
For the days
I may regret
Days unlived
Life unspent