‘Your wish is my command’
he said it just as any woman in love
might want to hear
He said it like he was evening some score
somehow leveling the playing field
but said like he might really mean it some day
He said it like he was divulging some deep secret
that might otherwise never see the light of day
yet here was one step closer to a goal or destination
He said it loud and deliberate
so I could not misinterpret
or pretend I did not hear
‘Your wish is my command’, he said
so I’d know that somewhere below the surface
he meant it to some degree
I knew he liked the gallantry of it
and might even want it be true
so I took the gift as it drifted onto shore
Lone and castaway, a care package of sorts
I didn’t know what I might do with it
but I gathered it under my wing and
offered it a home within my heart
AP: 3rd place 2022
[ credits to LAURENT YVAN from France who read my poem ]
"Though I freely walk these streets, sometimes I'm mentally confined
Yesterday, today and tomorrow seem forever entwined
When I think I'm moving forward somebody pushes rewind
Gone are the bars in the windows, but not the bars in my mind" -RhymaRhyma
they cut me loose
free to roam about the earth
a castaway a loner
me with my troubled thoughts
my shame my regrets
cursed with a past that haunts me
a shadow I simply cannot shake
the constant nagging reminder
of my remorse my burden
the debt I’ll never be able to repay
so I wander and let time try to heal
the broken man that I’ve become
guiding me down secluded paths
far from everything and everyone
where I seek nature to face my god
shedding the weight of layers at his mercy
AP: 1st place 2026, Honorable Mention 2020, Honorable Mention 2025
Read on air by invitation ~ September 4, 2020 'LATE NIGHT POETS'
Submitted on August 13, 2020 for contest STRAND COMPLETELY NEW (22) sponsored by BRIAN STRAND - RANKED 1ST
The castaway (a throwaway)
The one who always pays!
Set aside as people go by
Invisible to the human eye.
Little by little inside they die.
How they would love to be accepted,
But the seem to always be rejected.
A birth deformity, they see themselves to be.
They think, “Could it be,
God was experimenting when he made me.”
They hear what other people say,
And live lives against the wind day to day.
Everyone looks the other way.
What future would they have anyway as a castaway?
People turn them down without a care.
Really, do you think that’s fair?
In this world there’s no space
Where they can make their place.
There’s nothing special about their face that shows
And deep down they know.
The misfit kid,
The one everyone needs to be rid.
No one ever finds out what there really about.
Tender hearts with hard stars,
No one sees the painful pleas.
The castaway (a throwaway)
The one who always pays!
Set a side as people go by
Invisible to the human eye.
Little by little inside I die.
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