Long Unfinished Poems
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This is the time of the year, to look back
But not stay, and explore your goals for 2020.
Invariably, these goals are relevant and detailed,
but something is often missing.
As some may talk of their goals,
I detect no sense of enthusiasm or excitement.
The goals are “should I do”, not “I must do”,
And certainly not “I can’t wait to do”.
New Year resolutions so often go unfinished
And unfulfilled for lack of firm decisions.
What can we add to an element of 2020 vision
To our goals for the New Year?
"Write the vision, and make it plain
On tablets that a runner can read it
And tell everyone else.
Make it resolute and determined manner
So when the time approaches they can be fulfilled.
These things may not be fulfilled right away,
it may seem slow, wait patiently,
For they will surely take place."
2020 or beyond, wait for it.
We wander through so many gardens,
doting robins, ignoring the crows.
Our personal oasis is an unfinished poem.
Plastic flowers may last longer, but their dead scent,
cannot compare to freesia and frangipani.
In fading grey sunset,
I crumble, crouching in musk air.
An arch frame with withered wood skin
and paint peeling in need of black dye,
but still Shalimar honeysuckle wraps like a quilt,
weaving around amber roses and velvet clematis.
Battle scarred thorns may stick and prick
these gangly timber legs, but each blemish
is soothed from butterflies floating from petal to petal.
In speeding winds I rock like an armchair,
helpless to save cherry blossoms falling,
creating a carpet of pink upon flakes of green.
Knotweeds sneak through a resurfaced pebble path,
but my dandelion heart seems fond of its purple tint.
Midnight raindrops sting like sake,
but I know dawn will bring bright blue skies.
The loss of the known
A sudden flash occurred, a moment of a forgotten past
walking down a wide road that only had a few cars trundling along
to the left where the road wears to the right, a café I thought of going
in for a beer, but the dog if left outside, would fret
A fine day, not hot or cold, must have been early spring or fall
tried to remember what I was doing before the curtain was drawn
I was left with an unfinished memory, one I had to make it up
to fill in the blanks.
Something sad about the scene of a sole man with a dog
walking down a road he had never been to before; his mother
had died, and the point of reference was missing
now he was alone and lacked a compass.
In one day, I will be ready
to tackle what needs attention:
the unfinished projects,
the unsewn socks
my son gave
to me
In twelve hours, I will be ready
to write the symphony
that will make you
stop and look
at me
In six hours, I will weed the garden
of what is stronger than me,
whether it deserves to grow,
or not
I was here first!
I cannot compete,
so, I will tap dance
and look lovely
for those still watching
in the back rows
I found myself
in the forgotten shadows
of America
Listen!
I'm still here!
Even the stars tick in time
In three hours, I hope less,
the words will freeze her letters,
her letters will melt her lines,
her lines will spill over
into puddles
I am still collecting dimes
In the heart, something ungoverned hums beneath the language of reason.
In the heart, feeling refuses names, slipping past definition like light through unclosed curtains.
In the heart, grief softens into a quiet weight, mistaken for emptiness by those who have not held it.
In the heart, desire grows in secret, wild and unchecked, asking for nothing it can justify.
In the heart, memory rearranges itself, a gallery where nothing hangs where it once did.
In the heart, words arrive too late,
Already inadequate to what they attempt to contain.
In the heart, we learn attachment not as theory, but as ache.
In the heart, pleasure leans too closely to pain, the two speaking in nearly identical voices.
In the heart, thought turns inward, questioning itself until meaning frays.
In the heart, the body remembers what the mind abandons.
In the heart, the self flickers, uncertain, unfinished.
In the heart, shame settles deep, unnamed but always understood.
In the heart, time stretches under sorrow, each moment lingering past its welcome.
In the heart, love becomes too many things at once: devotion, hunger, illusion.
In the heart, fear redraws the world in harsher lines.
In the heart, clarity becomes cold, almost cruel in its honesty.
In the heart, hope remains anyway—small, unreasonable, alive.
In the heart, contradictions make a home beside one another.
In the heart, silence is full, not empty.
In the heart, everything is felt too deeply, until feeling disappears alltogether.
Pained piano keys compose
a chorus-less composition.
Melancholic moods crave
to sway back and forth
like bluebells and lilies dancing,
when kissed by the morning breeze.
Forlorn flute flirts with sympathetic tunes,
echoing vivid vibrations,
piercing layers of a forgotten heart.
Somber undertones seduce the soul,
as it struggles to swim,
silently immersing in sorrowful symphonies.
Yet the orchestra is mute - slumbering
in the ruins of unfinished musings.
Ignorant to the heartbroken harp
that lusts to strum romantic melodies,
but stands in sincere elegance,
decaying as dust suppresses its emotions.
Lyrics float by, searching for a home,
but remain unheard in the absence of the viola.
Its loss has become an enemy
to violin strings, crippled from cries
yearning for their cello comrades.
Alone their music does not co-exist
and falls upon deaf ears.
Music has no providence,
yet the mind is lost in its province.
Searching for soothing serenades
that softly sail ships towards
shores strumming sweet strings.
Sometimes harmonies struggle to enlighten in solitude,
but when composed together, their lyrics live forever.
My grandfather was an artist…through an artist eyes he’d see
when I was five he gave me a portrait…the portrait was of me!
There I was on the canvas…my eyes, my smile…my hair
everything about me…was in the picture…everywhere…
“Thank you! It’s beautiful Grandpa!” I said, “but tell me how can this be
you titled it ‘ONE…UNFINISHED’, but It looks all done to me.”
“Oh, this painting is quite finished,” Grandpa said, “as anyone can see
but you, the subject of the painting, you will never be….”
“So each year I will add a painting…
next year’s will be UNFINISHED…TWO
and when your birthday comes around…
I’ll present it, then, to you.”
“For if there’s one thing I can teach you
One thing I know to be true
it’s that I will never finish being me
and you will never finish being you…”
Grandpa knew what he was talking about…
and he kept his promise too
He gave me 25 UNFINISHED paintings
before his time was through.
And whenever I look at my paintings today Grandpa
here’s something else I know is true….
you have never finished loving me
and I will never finish loving you…
Little boy scales the snowbank
in Spider-Man boots
stomping snow,
relentlessly
a focused performance
superboy tantrum, gushing discontent
flattening worlds imagined
crushing lands gripped by villains
His mother, nearby, gleams
like heat under a stove pot
a wary gatekeeper,
extending love unmatched
to watch the giddy rush of boy
to dream a soulful future
to wonder on the needs of self
to view a son's awakening
in the freedom of spaces
Little boy
unfinished work
putting his stamp on joy
as bits of snow fly like a tale unfolding
As a mother watches the elastic bounce of youth,
till the real world runs away with him.
Poem composed: January 23, 2021
2025 Poetry Marathon Mile 8 Poetry Contest// Sponsored by: Mark Toney
Contest Judged: 8/19/2025 7:00:00 PM
( 7th Place )
Written: August 16, 2025
I have carried myself through miles of silence,
where the wind speaks louder than memory
and the ground keeps every secret.
I thought I had put out of sight.
A child’s laughter drifting through twilight,
the scent of rain that lingers like prayer,
and shadow in hand now behind my reach,
These are the pieces I collected along the way.
There are nights when the stars lean dazzling like lanterns strung across the dark,
showing the way about something unfinished,
something I swore to myself long ago.
The road teaches in whispers,
that regret has weight,
that love outlasts distance,
that every fall can still be a beginning.
I do not count the miles anymore.
I measure them in heartbeats,
in the quiet mercy of mornings
in the truth that waits at every turning.
And when I reach the place
where the horizon bends into light,
I will know I have not been running away,
but running toward—
the long road home.
If souls have fingerprints,?mine has always carried yours deep within
Not as some sort of possession,?not as destiny demands,
but as the moon carries ?the memory of the sun?long after night has swallowed the sky.
There is a darkness? that only true love understands.
I have imagined a thousand lifetimes with you.
In one,?we ruled kingdoms ?and were buried beneath the same cathedral.
In another,? we were strangers? who passed on opposite sides of a crowded street, yet both turned around? because something we can’t explain?refused to let us disappear unnoticed.
Perhaps that is what we are now
Not unfinished.
Merely remembering.
The world may measure love?by rings,?by addresses,?by calendars,?by names signed beside one another.
But love and eternity has never cared? for earthly evidence.
If darkness ever claims me,?I will not fear it.
I no longer believe?the dark is empty.
I believe it is where souls wait,?patient like the stars hidden behind clouds,
Waiting for the darkness of the night sky to reveal its true beauty. ?until they find the one heartbeat?they have been listening for?since the first night God showed them what love really is.
And if there is another life,?another century,?another world stitched together?from different skies,
I won’t search for your face
I’ll Search for the feeling.
The inexplicable peace.?The impossible familiarity.? The certainty that home?has somehow learned to breathe.
Because I would recognize you? even if heaven?forgot your name.