Best Yesterdays Poems
She swept the side effects of yesterday
Into an unknown place where
Longing transcends the ache
Of remembered years that cling
To wounds that never heal.
The haunting specter of childhood ghosts
Lost in some nostalgic fantasy
Sift sad shadows from the past;
Unwilling to release the pain
That surrounds her days and nights
With the relentless intensity
Of memories that will not fade.
Perhaps time is ready to embrace
The ceaseless repetition of all
The yesterdays, todays and tomorrows
Bringing reality to a new transition;
So the shutters of her mind closed
And in her darkness she found release.
I ask you now is this my plight
I cry out to you all through the night
My tears run dry, my heart still stings
My soul seeks solace but no peace it brings
Words expensive hang in the air
They wound so deeply,
The air so thick
On the thorn of a rose
Did my finger prick
A drop of blood from innocence lost
Can't be regained no matter the cost
Is this my lot to live and die
To find no comfort when I cry
To seek with all that is within
And know I must begin again
A brave new world
A hard new truth
A past that I will never elude
In
This
Slumber
*******
Yesterday
Exists only in
Special dreams
Tomorrow it will
Exist in reality again
Resilient and offering
Delights untold expressing
Answers to ease lonely tears
Yesterdays that have seeking
Solitude and peaceful silence
**********************
Days that mask all truth
Reaching for a word
Esteem for you
And even
Me
This morning, I opened a drawer to my yesterdays
of crumpled poems half written, but thought I'd tossed
Here I am, reading them, through a tearful haze,
and remembering nights I wept for love I had lost
I flattened the pages, one by one with fingers shaking
A sonnet pledging love was abandoned, unfinished
My breathing was shallow; doleful heart was quaking
It's passionate memories were not quite diminished
On this note, the ink was much too blurred to read
where tear stains had fallen when I tried to explain
the despair that caused my fragile emotions to bleed
and pain in verses that I'd written in aching refrain
My wrinkled sheafs were an army of aborted thoughts
Awaiting me to deploy them; their orders still pending
Pens are mighty, but they cannot heal broken hearts
Some poems are not destined to have a happy ending
"Why not finish them?" asked my consoling muse
That's a burdensome endeavor that I simply cannot do
"Forgive me," I voiced, "but I must respectfully refuse"
Love ended, and there's nothing poetic left to pursue
There's no war to fight, and I moved on from my plight
My wrinkled paper soldiers would not go in the trash
I placed them on a funeral pyre. A match, I did light
and watched as burning embers turned them to ash
June 27, 2022
2022 Poetry Marathon Mile 5 Contest
Sponsored by Mark Toney
In what haunt hath hope,
he who in solitude,
weeps into soiled palms;
calloused by that labor
desolate of redemption.
Leathered and wrinkled
by ever so recent a passage
of too many yesterdays.
In what haunt hath hope
those tears shed in anguish
amidst gales unrelenting
which snatch at birth
and toss into oblivion.
Unmarked is the course
across age weary cheeks
drooping under the weight
of too many yesterdays.
O miserly fates
how hollow thy prize
no less, at so great a cost.
Greatness is lonely,
my soul for a kingdom
bartered so unwisely
from dust to ash
and the shimmering
to rust by the reckoning
of too many yesterdays.
In what haunt hath hope
such beggarly ilk
adorned in finery
beyond dreamscape lux.
Hidden under lavish raiment,
decay of the forsaken
lost even to themselves
in a calmly rippled wake
of too many yesterdays.
07/03/15
Their days are very much the same
Like soldiers marching to the drum
The cadence of the ticking clock
Marking time as each day passes
They wrap themselves in memories
Replayed like notes of a well known song
Steps slowed by the weight of years
Their candles growing short
We look at them but do not see
We listen without hearing
They are but shadows in our minds
Close but yet so distant
But if we were to look inside
We would find ourselves
Sharing needs that transgress age
And values that are timeless
They are the you of days gone by
Their life then still in bloom
The taste and thrill of love and life
Now just footprints on their hearts
And as their many seasons grow
And their autumn becomes winter
Who will mourn and say goodbye
When their soul meets its tomorrow
Inspired by volunteering at a nursing home and watching the deterioration of body and mind.
If tomorrows never mattered and yesterdays forgot
Living in the present would count much more than not
Our days could have more meaning, each word chosen more precise
Visions may be clearer, not clouded by the past
Every time I'd be with you I'd make each moment last
Your kisses might be sweeter, your eyes might twinkle more
Our hearts could dance in perfect rhythm
Under a smiling moon from your ocean to my shore
The settled times of yesterdays grow old
And turn a weathered gray inside my mind
My memories have even now turned cold
I need them not to be there to remind
For tomorrows came sooner than I thought
The days and nights have passed in growing speed
My minutes rushing to the marker's plot
When final breath will come as I concede
I'll search my soul to face the dim-lit days
And thankful for my time that's yet to come
I'll try and live in calm and peaceful ways
Until the last to which I must succumb
I will seek to be a wordsmith to the blind
And guide them to leave yesterday behind
7/31/17...contest...Let it be
Those walls of my captured annals falling
By steel leviathans devouring my solitude
Capped blasts dropping the once proud structure
No longer is a mans home his palace
Histories cowboys are the future’s vagabonds
Their ranges of ranches a dying lot
Borders now shrinking as the rooms collapse
Giving into the fear of the outside world
No one is really who they appear to be
Stowing and stealing all for a free ride
The trust in humanity a long extinct idealism
Falling in flames from the final battles bullet
Yesterday’s judgment is the hope of tomorrow
If the sun may ascend to the songbirds cry
No promises of integrity to hold onto justice
While the carrions crawl the balances edge
Holding within that which disaster has taught
Building upon the hangman’s piety
To breathe for a moment the sweet water of utopia
With every falling grain of the hourglass
…Time slows in the winds of obscurity
I saw my yesterday's love today,
on a quiet, shady, backstreet lane.
I knew his eyes, though his hair was grey,
said he'd forgotten my married name
Or would have called me when moving back
to see how life had been treating me.
Just words said to fill memory's lack
Smiling, we talked a moment or three
Then we hugged and each went on our way,
and I thought how easily our romance,
we dreamed would last forever and a day,
became a passing meeting by chance.
On an ordinary summer day.
Promises not clasped closely in hand
can slip away like but grains of sand
That was yesterday.
I forgot.
If I could…
I would have just done the laundry.
It’s afternoon.
The moon came out already.
It does that sometimes.
After the moon, I eat.
Laundry.
Socks, shirts, spinning, and churning.
I wish.
That was last night.
I have work today.
I pull out my last clean clothes.
And leave.
Between yesterday’s memories
And tomorrow’s expectancies—
Lies the today
Yesterdays bring sweet wistfulness
With tomorrow comes hopefulness—
Verity stays
While the hours-days- months-years parade
Quietly moves forward and past fades—
Clocks ticks away
There remains a dream to fit in
Somewhere; somehow; someday begins—
What can one say?
Between past participation
And future’s anticipation—
Mind is at play
There must be a day that transcends
When yesterday-tomorrow blend—
Until – someday
Old flame memories, and game show repeats,
viewed through tobacco, it's smoke fills the room,
loneliness, only, stays glued to defeat,
blue-bottles, can't help, but choke on the gloom.
Dreams like the remote, corroded to rust,
unopened, unpaid, bills sit by the door,
surrendered and lost, to despair and dust,
no-one levelled up, around here for sure.
Each day's an ashtray, of stub filled regret,
while moth eaten drapes, block out the world's light,
another neat gin, will help to forget,
added indifference, towards day and night.
The blocked drains and sink, dirty old dishes,
all that remains of, yesterday's wishes.
"When yesterdays became devoid of compassion",
you became the reflection in my mirror—
the darkness that cast its shadows upon my walls,
the screams that woke me in the dead of night.
Reaching out, silhouettes dissipated into thin air.
When the clock approached the witching hour.
Nothing but my demons were there to keep me company.
Forked tongues whispered insecurities,
poison-dipped lies into bleeding ears,
twisting and contorting what remained
of a false saviour's psyche.
You see, I could not save you from the depths of pain you swam through.
It was pulling us both down, drowning us in murky waters,
choking and gagging on your sins—we kept sinking faster.
The blackness became heavier
until light could not pierce the veil.
Begging me, you pleaded, "Hold on to me just a little longer."
But the weight became unbearable.
I had to untie the rope around our fragile souls.
I had to let you go.
And now I drown in my own guilt
every time I take a tainted breath
in this distorted world.
Yesterdays' Acrostic
Y...yesterdays' are already gone, but not forgotten.
E...Every now and then - we think of them.
S...Some of yesterday's memories are very vivid in our minds.
T...Tomorrow will be a brand new day that will soon be a yesterday.
E...Everything in life is not always peaches and cream.
R...Remembering now is like sweet dreams.
D...Do on to others as you would have others do to you.
A...Along life's way - you will leave many yesterdays.
Y...You will always be the master of your life.
S...Save a memory today - so tomorrow you can remember a yesterday...
02/06/2014
Written by Lucilla M. Carrillo