Indefinite Infinity in space and time doth toss,
Encompassing diffusingly,into the airy cosmos,
Only to baffle the stupid wonderbound puzzle
Of all those forms and shapes that ever dazzle
Every bit of things claiming their due existence ;
All great marks, flags and colours make no sense
And look like just little dunes and pits on the spot
Or if more, are spilled, broken and torn ones a lot;
Every living thing darts across to catch the other,
Feed on,feast on or enslave all that it doth gather
The lava that erupts from within the restless land,
The lofty sweeps of storms and winds reprimand
The deviant excess that yields the froth and slag
As futile tertiaries do stem out of the empty brag
Sometimes pain overcomes
Through the shadows dark
Doubts assault, fears prevail
And life feels so hard
But I can feel. . .
Sunlight through a window
Moonlight through the pain
I can see the rainbow
Hope shines through again
Troubles may not vanish
Life keeps going on
Darkness spreads its gloom but
Soon will come a dawn
And I can feel. . .
Sunlight through a window
Moonlight through the pain
I can see the rainbow
Hope shines through again
Even when I give my best
Life may not applaud
Shattered heart, tears flow but
I've got faith in God
For I can feel. . .
Sunlight through a window
Moonlight through the pain
I can see the rainbow
Hope shines through again
Yes, I can feel. . .
Sunlight through a window
Moonlight through the pain
I can see the rainbow
Hope shines through again. . .
Hope shines through again. . .
15.09.2026
Perhaps I'll Know Your Love
Perhaps the light of day comes with a golden ray,
to push the heavy shadows to the side...
Just let me come on home.
Let me finally unload this pain.
Perhaps you'll look past these scars...
and the tears I try so hard to hide,
emotions of a weary soul
hurting deep inside.
Perhaps a life will have love,
not pretending to be...
Every word rolls off the tongue
to carry me, or pull me to your side.
Perhaps someday these pieces will mend,
with reaching arms that can hold
this fragile love that we know.
Perhaps someday my smile no longer fades,
or falls exhausted by my side...
screaming I'm alright.
Perhaps I write these words of love,
praying that you will finally see
the love I've held for you...
Perhaps, someday, I won't pretend to be someone you knew.
Perhaps, someday, you'll love me too.
Debra
This look in my eyes is all i have sometimes.
The fact that she can see my soul and I'm grateful.
Those times they see a revealing fear
that turns into a fearless drive.
she will see what i have is hers
she will see a want for greatness that i need her to be apart of
A yielding smile
A glance of gleam
A bounce full of joy
A glaring vison and dream
She's chaotic
Vigorous and playfully vicious
Unpredictable and all wound up
Safely zealous, energetic and always driven
In spite of my limits
I found what moves me so
The love of a woman
Good, true and grace in bond
I challenge myself to stay challenged
As the sun slips behind the horizon
my mind slips behind my courage
all my best moments are with her
She's chaotic
Vigorous and playfully vicious
Unpredictable and all wound up
Safely zealous, energetic and always driven
She's all i can take and I'm glad
My heart cries out in longing for my dear,
imploring Him who holds you now: draw near.
WANNA DANCE LIKE DAVID
DA DA DA DA DA DANCE
Wanna dance like David danced, with all his might, leaping, whirling
Humility, Unreserved Joy, Ignoring Pride
Wanna dance like David
Wanna dance like David danced, with all his might, leaping, whirling
Celebrating return of the Ark of the Covenant was brought into Jerusalem
In leaps and bounds, I’m gonna praise Him
With mine legs and feet, I’m gonna praise Him
With the power of my voice and tongue, I’m gonna sing hymns sing His songs
Wanna dance like David, Wanna dance like David
Dances before the Lord, Wanna dance like David
Removed my royal robes, Wanna dance like David
And wore a simple linen, Wanna dance like David
Dancing praises holy, Wanna dance like David
Cloth or naked, holy glory, Wanna dance like David
9/15/26
Written by James Edward Lee & The Corinthian©
In the shadows of the night, I dare to dream,
to be your number one, Your love supreme.
However our reality is a different tale,
You hate me, and I’m left with a heart pierced with a nail
In your eyes, I’m just a name,
a person you want to burn in flames.
I’m the ghost that haunts ur space,
the one you wish you could erase.
In the shadows, I’ll forever stay,
loving you silently, day by day.
My heart beats for you, my soul feels the pain,
of loving someone who will never love me the same.
You’re the sun, I’m the moon,
two celestial bodies, forever out of tune.
But still I dream of you, of what could never be,
a love that’s doomed from the start, yet still it’s all I see.
I wish to be ur number one, ur guiding light
but you hate me and I’m left in endless night.
I’ll hold on to the hope, that one day you’ll see,
the love I have for u, and maybe, just maybe, you’ll love me.
An ember glow
candle smoke swirls
perfume in an empty room
warmth left in a chair.
A string still humming,
a bell trill trembling,
laughter down a hallway,
whispers of warmth in an ear.
An imprint in a pillow,
a crease in opened letter,
lipstick on a glass,
a fingerprint on a mirror.
Salt drying on skin,
dew drops caught in hair,
warmth left in an empty teacup,
an open hand cupping a wave.
An empty swing swaying
ripples ringing across a pond
grass stirring; the breeze gone,
a shadow slipping around a corner.
A hug still holding
eyes moving - eyelids closed
echoes of trembling voices
the silence can't swallow.
Scent without flower,
song without voice,
intense sense of feeling
that what's gone is here.
An ember,
an echo,
a glimmer,
a ripple
a gong—
Coming, going, staying,
leaving, lingering, wandering,
remaining on.
Twenty-five years have passed,
yet the memory still remains,
a morning filled with sorrow,
a nation washed in pain.
The towers reached toward heaven,
then disappeared from sight,
leaving behind a silence
that still echoes every night.
We remember those who never
made it home that day,
the mothers, fathers, sons and daughters
who were taken far away.
We remember every hero
who ran toward the flame,
while others ran for safety,
they answered when we called their name.
The firefighters and the officers,
the strangers helping strangers too,
the countless acts of courage
from red, white, and blue.
We remember those in heaven,
and the families left behind,
the empty chairs, the photographs,
the memories frozen in time.
Though years may pass before us,
their stories will not fade.
For every life that was taken,
a promise must be made:
To remember their names,
to honor what they gave,
to cherish those beside us,
and never forget the brave.
So today we bow our heads,
with hearts both proud and torn,
and whisper through the years:
We remember.
We honor.
We will never forget.
Written: September 11, 2026, for a contest Sponsored by: Eve Roper
Note: You may listen to this poem lyrics in the attached sound video.
*************
Close your eyes—
let the music find your feet,
let every heartbeat be a drum beneath the street.
No need for light when rhythm knows the way;
the night has learned the language of your sway.
Reach for the sound—
let it circle, let it rise,
feel the thunder blooming softly in your hands.
You are not lost;
you are the motion in the song,
and every step says: I belong.
First of all, I need to say
Aloud what is hidden away.
The pain of heartache weighs on me.
Can words of truth set me free?
You made me a believer.
Pain, you showed me what is real;
You even taught me how to feel.
To believe that I could rise
Above a life based on lies.
You made me a believer.
All my wounds lie deep within,
But my demons will not win.
I'll bring them out into the light,
Tell my truth and make it right.
You made me a believer.
Born to live my life with pride,
The road has been a rocky ride
Especially when the doves cried
(Heard me screaming deep inside).
You made me a believer.
So, let life throw rocks my way.
I will march into the fray.
A victim I will never be
If I react assertively.
You made me a believer.
I see the beauty through the pain.
On life must fall a little rain
To put out fires of deep regret;
Draining feelings in rivulets.
You made me a believer.
Pain made me a firm believer
That life can be a big deceiver,
But it taught me what is real;
To reconcile with how I feel.
Pain made me a believer.
I sat again on that old broken bench at the park,
Watching birds, people, and the last rays of the sun fade by,
Remembering our final words—spoken so far from kind.
A single tear I had to shed for the moments lost in time.
The skies turned suddenly ominous, though I knew not why—
But by the grace of God, a little girl smiled, ever so bright,
And I finally realized: forgiveness is not so far behind.
Dusk
brings a sense of calm
Sultry tones of his laugh
rent my headspace
Wrap around my fingers
like a lightning rod
Flush my face with fantasies
but none are rated family
And my juvenile self wonders
What it's like
to be consumed by love...
I think I'm close.
I for one
I’m being strangled
by the radiance of his half-life essence.
Ubiquitous beauty,
bleeding through my AMOLED screen.
To truly appreciate it
I need this in 4D.
4D? Why not 3D?
Because... for me
I want to exist beside his.
If my beginning and end are the same,
I’d want them both to have his.
And if I spent it all for his
I’d be the happiest frivol.
With each step I falter, Lord
But I believe in You
I know that You love me
And I love you too
I believe in Your majesty
I believe in Your creativity
Awesome settings given
Through Your directive power
Each morning, I see Your power
Your artwork on display
I hear Your birds singing
I know You hear them when they pray
I believe in You
I believe in Jesus
I believe You love me
I believe in love
Do I write from the heart? Do I write as a song?
This voice inside is so far from all wrong.
For once in this life, in these hills that I roam,
I'm not afraid to give my new love a home.
It hasn't been gold, nor grand open plains,
Life was atop this high rocky range—
Learning to do at a half-lived age.
Now, it's all different; the spoils are all gone.
But the wings are all spread, as the wind lifts the dove,
Higher, and higher, above,
To bask in the sky where I feel totally new.
Love is atop of the cool mountain view,
Where I'm in love with you, too.
Now the pair of white doves will soar,
On to the place we've never been to before.
A beautiful freedom that belongs just to us,
With a wide-open sky soaring only for love.
- Debra
Introduction
The pleasure of reading lyrics side by side lies in hearing how many kinds of inner weather can pass through a single speaking voice. One poem may hold a quiet moment of recognition; another may surge through grief, devotion, anger, longing, or wonder. Some speakers address a beloved, a place, an absent person, or the self. Others seem to speak into silence. The subject may be private, but the poem becomes shareable through its sounds, images, rhythms, and carefully shaped turns of thought.
As you browse the community poems, notice the range between conversational directness and heightened musical language. A poet may compress an experience into one vivid scene, circle a feeling through repetition, or allow reflection to unfold across a longer meditation. Rhyme and meter may be prominent, subtle, mixed, or absent; what matters artistically is how the chosen movement supports the emotional pressure. Even poems addressing similar experiences can differ sharply in distance, tone, pacing, and degree of disclosure.
Reading beyond the first example reveals possibilities that an isolated poem cannot show. Compare how different writers transform feeling into an experience for the reader rather than merely reporting it. One lyric may rely on a recurring phrase, another on a sequence of images, and another on a decisive shift in understanding. Consider how each poet interprets the form, where the voice becomes most convincing, and how sound carries meaning that straightforward explanation could not. The collection invites both intimate reading and thoughtful comparison.
Reading Guide
Approach each lyric as an arranged act of attention rather than as an unedited confession. The speaking voice may feel immediate, but every pause, image, repetition, and tonal shift can shape how that intimacy reaches the reader. It is also useful to distinguish the speaker on the page from the poet outside it: even apparently autobiographical language may involve selection, compression, exaggeration, masking, or an invented situation. As you read the community poems, compare not only what is felt but how each poem makes that feeling audible and perceptible.
- Identify the speaking situation. Notice who seems to be speaking, to whom, and under what emotional pressure. An address to a lover behaves differently from a private meditation or an appeal to an absent listener. Ask: what does the imagined listener allow this speaker to reveal, conceal, demand, or regret?
- Listen for the poem's sound logic. Attend to vowel echoes, consonants, rhythm, rhyme, repeated words, and changes in sentence length. Musicality need not mean a regular beat; it can arise from subtle recurrence and variation. Ask: where does sound intensify, soften, or complicate the stated feeling?
- Find the emotional center and its movement. A strong lyric rarely remains on one emotional note. Affection may acquire fear, anger may expose hurt, or nostalgia may become self-questioning. Ask: does the poem deepen, reverse, qualify, or newly understand its opening impulse?
- Watch how images carry inward experience. Concrete objects, weather, rooms, bodies, landscapes, and sensory details can make an otherwise abstract feeling available to the imagination. Ask: which image does the most emotional work, and would the poem weaken if that image were replaced by explanation?
- Study line endings and pauses. A line break can suspend a thought, isolate a charged word, accelerate a sentence, or create a second meaning before the next line arrives. Ask: how would the voice and emphasis change if the poem were printed as prose?
- Trace repetition and variation. Repeated phrases may resemble a refrain, enact obsession, offer reassurance, or reveal that the same words have changed meaning. Ask: does each return increase pressure or insight, or does it merely restate what is already known?
- Examine the final gesture. Some lyrics resolve; others end with an image, question, silence, or deliberately unsettled note. Ask: does the ending emerge from the poem's emotional movement, and does it leave resonance rather than simply summarize?
Compare several poets' approaches before deciding what a lyric must sound like. The differences among voices, structures, and degrees of intimacy are part of what this collection can teach.
Writing Tips
Begin a lyric draft by locating the pressure that makes speech necessary. You do not need the largest event in your life; a small moment can hold great force if something remains unsaid, newly understood, desired, resisted, or remembered. In workshop, ask what the speaker needs from the act of speaking and what changes while the words are being spoken. That question will usually produce a stronger poem than beginning with a general topic such as love or sadness.
- Choose a charged moment rather than an entire history. Select the farewell at the doorway, the untouched cup after an argument, or the instant a familiar place looks altered. Concentration gives emotion a dramatic location. Background can enter selectively, but avoid explaining every event that led to the present feeling.
- Create a speaker with an occasion. Decide whether the voice is addressing someone, thinking privately, remembering, pleading, celebrating, or resisting an admission. The lyric speaker need not be identical to you. A little distance or imaginative framing can make difficult material more precise and prevent the draft from becoming a diary entry without shape.
- Give abstraction a physical anchor. Words such as grief, hope, beauty, and loneliness name emotional territories but do not make readers inhabit them. Find the object, texture, sound, gesture, or setting through which the feeling becomes particular. Let the image reveal more than the speaker consciously explains.
- Build musicality from meaning. Choose sounds that suit the emotional temperature: clipped stresses can sharpen impatience, while longer vowels and flowing syntax can sustain tenderness or reverie. Rhyme and meter are options, not ornaments to apply automatically. If a pattern forces filler, inverted syntax, or predictable phrasing, revise the pattern or abandon it.
- Use lineation to conduct the voice. Break a line where suspense, emphasis, ambiguity, or breath will matter. A sequence of short lines may create fragility or urgency, while long unfolding lines may suit meditation or emotional overflow. Test several arrangements instead of accepting the first shape produced by typing.
- Let repetition develop. A recurring word or phrase should gather new associations each time it returns. It can become an accusation, prayer, reassurance, echo, or self-correction. One common beginner mistake is repeating an emotional claim without changing its context; repetition is strongest when it records movement.
- Make productive use of freedom. Because the lyric can accommodate many lengths and patterns, the writer must invent necessity. Establish an internal principle-a recurring image, evolving address, sound cluster, contrast, or sequence of perceptions-so that the poem feels composed rather than merely accumulated.
- Earn the ending. Resist attaching a moral or explaining what the reader should feel. Look for the place where the poem's central image, sound, or statement acquires a final complication. An open ending can be powerful, but vagueness is not the same as resonance; the poem should have developed enough pressure for silence to mean something.
During revision, read the draft aloud more than once: first for natural speech, then for deliberate music. Mark where your breath falters unintentionally, where a rhyme announces itself too loudly, and where an image loses energy under explanation. Remove generalized statements that the concrete details already imply. Finally, ask a reader where the voice became most vivid, where attention weakened, and what changed emotionally between the opening and ending. Revise toward that movement rather than toward mere polish.
Interesting Facts
- Immediacy is often carefully constructed. A lyric may sound as though the speaker has just discovered the words, yet that effect can depend on selective detail, controlled pauses, and a precisely placed turn. Apparent spontaneity and rigorous craft are not opposites.
- The first-person pronoun does not guarantee intimacy. A speaker can use I while remaining guarded, theatrical, ironic, or evasive. Conversely, a poem can create intense inwardness without naming the self directly. Compare how community poets establish closeness through diction and attention rather than pronouns alone.
- Musicality can disturb as well as soothe. Repetition may become obsessive, rhyme may create bitter irony, and a graceful rhythm may conflict with painful subject matter. That friction can prevent the poem from becoming emotionally predictable.
- Brevity increases the burden on each detail. In a compact lyric, one weak image or explanatory phrase occupies substantial space. Compression works best when a detail serves several purposes at once: establishing setting, shaping sound, and carrying emotional implication.
- Length does not automatically destroy intensity. A longer poem can sustain lyric concentration if each section revisits or complicates the central emotional question. The crucial distinction is between development and accumulation: more lines should create deeper pressure, not merely more examples.
- An address creates an invisible second presence. Even when only one voice appears, the person, place, object, or idea being addressed influences tone and disclosure. The silence of that listener may feel comforting, resistant, lost, or unreachable.
- Several very different endings can suit the same emotional material. Resolution, reversal, image, question, and abrupt silence each leave a different aftereffect. Reading several community interpretations shows how closure governs what the reader carries away.
Popular Themes
Subject matter and lyric design shape one another. An experience suited to inward attention may call for a hushed voice and spare imagery, while celebration may invite repetition, rhythmic lift, and expansive address. The possibilities below are literary affinities, not statistical rankings of the poems in this collection.
- Love and desire. Direct address allows longing, praise, uncertainty, and vulnerability to coexist. The beloved may be present, absent, imagined, or emotionally unreachable, giving every word a particular degree of risk.
- Grief and absence. Repetition can enact the mind returning to loss, while silence and omission can suggest what cannot be recovered. A physical object often gives absence a visible outline.
- Memory and childhood. The form's reflective movement lets past perception meet present understanding. A remembered scene becomes especially powerful when the adult speaker recognizes something the younger self could not.
- Place and belonging. Landscapes, rooms, streets, and homes can hold emotional identity without requiring extensive narrative. Sound and sensory detail allow a place to become both setting and state of mind.
- Nature and seasonal change. Weather, light, plants, water, and animals offer patterns through which inner change can be explored. The strongest treatment preserves the physical world's particularity rather than using nature as a convenient emotional label.
- Faith, doubt, and wonder. An address to a power, mystery, or silence can create the tension of prayer even when certainty is absent. Questions and refrains can dramatize a mind testing what it believes.
- Identity and self-recognition. A concentrated voice can examine the gap between public role and private knowledge. Shifts in pronoun, tone, or self-description may reveal a speaker revising an inherited story.
- Ordinary domestic moments. Chores, meals, clothing, family gestures, and household objects can carry unspoken histories. Their familiarity gives a poet room to make a subtle emotional discovery feel consequential.
As you read the community poems, compare how different writers approach similar themes without assuming that shared subject matter produces shared meaning. One poet may turn a garden toward elegy, another toward desire, and another toward renewal. The transformation lies in the voice, images, music, and emotional turn.
Editorial Insights
The central artistic tension of the lyric lies between private intensity and public form. Feeling may provide the impulse, but feeling alone does not organize a reader's experience. A memorable poem converts inward pressure into an arrangement of sound, image, syntax, pacing, and silence. It offers enough particularity for readers to enter the moment while preserving enough complexity that the poem is not exhausted by a paraphrase such as the speaker feels sad or the speaker is in love.
Because the form permits many structural choices, necessity must often be created rather than inherited. A rhyme scheme, stanza pattern, refrain, or free-flowing sequence succeeds when it seems generated by the subject's emotional motion. Repetition may embody obsession; a widening stanza may enact release; abrupt fragments may register shock; a long sentence may hold a thought that cannot bear interruption. Structure becomes decorative when it can be removed without altering the poem's pressure. Editors and attentive readers notice when craft does not merely frame the subject but discovers something through it.
Technically recognizable gestures-first-person speech, elevated feeling, melodious phrasing, or direct address-do not by themselves make a compelling lyric. Predictable language can reduce a singular experience to familiar sentiment. Forced rhyme can make the speaker sound less truthful than the emotion requires, while mechanical patterning may flatten changes in tone. Over-explanation closes the imaginative space that images and silences have opened. At the opposite extreme, insufficient development may leave a draft atmospheric but emotionally unearned. The essential question is not whether the poem says everything, but whether its details and turns create enough relation for the reader to participate.
Individuality remains visible through the speaker's exact habits of attention: what is noticed, avoided, repeated, compared, or addressed. Two poets may write from comparable grief, yet one may build through restrained observation while another uses incantation, argument, humor, or surreal imagery. Such differences are more consequential than novelty of topic. Browsing the poems in this collection develops judgment because quality becomes easier to perceive through contrast. Compare where each poem earns intimacy, where its music intensifies meaning, and whether its ending changes the significance of what came before. Reading widely also prevents one polished example from hardening into a narrow model of what the form should permit.
Read, Write & Share
Read beyond the first example and allow several voices to revise your expectations. Compare how community poets handle intimacy, musicality, imagery, emotional turns, and closure. When a poem holds your attention, leave a thoughtful comment about the precise choice that affected you-a line break, recurring sound, revealing detail, tonal shift, or final image.
Then try shaping a lyric of your own. Begin with a moment that still carries emotional pressure, listen for the music already present in its language, and revise until the feeling has a form the reader can enter. Publish your poem on PoetrySoup and add your interpretation to the continuing community conversation.
Collection Statistics
This collection contains 16301 poems, offering a broad field for reading voices, subjects, sound patterns, and emotional movements in comparison. Within a collection of this size, visitors can encounter poets who follow familiar lyric conventions, adapt them to a particular expressive need, or challenge expectations while preserving an inward focus. Browse several poems to see how differently structure, imagery, address, and closure can shape the reading experience.
Lyric Categories
Read wonderful lyric poetry on the following sub-topics:
country, friendship, funny, kids, life, love, middle school, music, song,
and more.
Definition | What is Lyric in Poetry?
Looking for the formal definition, structure, and history of this poetry form? Visit the Poetry Dictionary entry below. Then return to explore how PoetrySoup members bring the form to life through their own poems.