Sheets of blank paper had yellowed with age
I wielded a pen, but no ink was spilled by my hand,
Memories were left unwritten on every page,
though as many as a beach holds grains of sand
I gave in to my Muse and scrawled line after line
thoughts drawn from my soul, buried fathoms deep
Were all of those sad recollections really mine?
They were flowing as freely as the tears I weep
Reflections of my past in sunlight and ebony night,
refusing to remain entombed, fled from their prison
Strokes from darkness were escaping their plight
Released by my pen, from their sepulcher had risen
There is battle brandishing power in the pen I wield
A weapon I've found useful in place of a silent tongue
It cannot protect me as though suit of armor or shield,
Emotions shouldn't be confined; they should be sung
My name is Captain Thomas Blake
William’s company commander
I am very sorry for the loss of your son
at the hands of a sniper
I did not get to know him as he was assigned
to my company only a week ago
I have enclosed his personal effects:
1. a sepia toned picture of a young woman holding a
baby boy with Mom and Me in black marker scrawled on the back
2. an envelope with the name Susie written in feminine hand on
the front containing a love letter from her
3. a well gnawed penicil and tattered notebook-
your son was an excellent poet
4. one dog eared Gideon New Testament
5. the Scot Terrier token from Monopoly
wrapped in a zip lock bag
It is with deepest regret we can only return these enclosed
items and not your living son.
With humble regards
Capt. Thomas Blake
Co. A
1st Battalion
504th Inf. Reg
82nd Airborne Div.
Fleeting images haunt my life,
ghosts of my regrets,
memories referenced
by a long, deep sigh;
things not done, words left unsaid,
unresolved aspects of my life
are open-ended dots
upon the page.
Conversations for which I compromised
intelligence and wit
are exclamation points
within my mind;
regrets for which there is no cure,
no admonition given,
no recompense
for those mistakes once made.
Knowledge stands alone
within reversed quotation marks,
utterances of the mind
scrawled in the margins;
residue from lessons learned
that float within the mental mist,
ready-references
for situations yet unborn.
All those past regrets are footnotes
listed randomly, at best,
after which
a period is placed.
There once was a lad with a spray,
Who snuck out at the end of the day.
On a house near the park
He scrawled in the dark,
the words “Ur gay” for Vinnie to bark
“It wasn’t me who voted them in.” He bleated, quite moronic.
“And all the lies we’re being told, I think I need a colonic.”
He looked around and gathered his thoughts, “I need to pen a missive,
To my local member, here in town, and it needs to be derisive.”
His needs lined up and in a row he smoothed the sheet for writing.
Nib to page, ink to flow, the Minister’s in for a smiting.
And as the words began to roll with sweet and honeyed menace,
The smile in his eyes began to show, he started, “My name’s Dennis.”
He listed off the promises made with a corresponding date
And coupled them with grievances to even out the slate.
He moaned and groaned and spouted steam. He really was quite grumpy.
And when he read it back again, he found his syntax lumpy.
Scrunch it up and start again, it surely must be proper.
With guilt to place and thoughts to sway, he breached a mental stopper.
And now, when Dennis wrote some more his thoughts and words were crystal.
Seven pages, neatly scrawled. What a delightful epistle.
"I love your art"
scrawled onto the back
of a mud streaked maths book,
held up to the Driver's window.
It took about 30 seconds; maybe less,
just four words and a crooked heart
in exchange for one of the sincerest smiles,
the kind that makes you believe
that the world is going to be okay.
Such a small spark
and yet see how it lingered
in the chubby cheeks that flushed red
and the bristly silver hair,
how it glowed in the quiet of rushing footsteps,
like scented candles cupped up
beside your face in the cold.
So let this remind you
to be someone else's firework.
Burst bright in their dark,
scatter colour through their doubt
because sometimes
one shimmer in the night
is all a soul needs
to keep walking till dawn.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
A blinking cursor laughs at my delay~
a white page, vast as January’s air.
No resolutions scrawled in bold or with flair,
no grand design, just silence on display.
I’ve known this pause before—when fingers hover
above the keys, when time forgets to pass.
The weight of what might be is brittle glass;
yet, something hums beneath, half-dreamt, half-lover.
The new year, like verse, refuses to be planned.
It stumbles, then it surges, then it bends.
A comma where you swore you’d place an end,
a metaphor that ripens uncommanded.
So let it come unwritten, raw, unspooled~
this year, this poem, neither tamed nor schooled.
this poem was written in December 2025 as I reflected upon the upcoming year
A blinking cursor laughs at my delay~
a white page, vast as January’s air.
No resolutions scrawled in bold or with flair,
no grand design, just silence on display.
I’ve known this pause before—when fingers hover
above the keys, when time forgets to pass.
The weight of what might be is brittle glass;
yet, something hums beneath, half-dreamt, half-lover.
The new year, like verse, refuses to be planned.
It stumbles, then it surges, then it bends.
A comma where you swore you’d place an end,
a metaphor that ripens uncommanded.
So let it come unwritten, raw, unspooled~
this year, this poem, neither tamed nor schooled.
I want to tell you about my day,
My day of fun and flight,
But I'm worried that if I say
My say, I'll keep you until night.
So I'll settle for leaving hasty words
As words scrawled by the door,
And hope you read my scribbled thoughts
As signs of something more.
Uncertainty follows the wishful star
Wanting to follow up the 9 heavens
A heart scrawled on the screen
A thousand prints writing the scripts
100 TIMES I watch the show
Drifting through life's woe
Dancing with a song of hope
But each ending inexorbly slow
I reach for echoes that do not stay,
names that vanish before I speak.
Doors I once trusted swing shut,
their hinges remembering only goodbye.
Every promise carries the dust of others,
every smile asks if I am enough.
I press my palm to the cold glass—
does anyone feel the heat on the other side?
Yet the wishful star still burns.
Even in this endless pause
its light says: you are seen.
And for a breath, I believe it.
My grandma had a book in which
To write what she recalled
Of her early life; I found it
And I read what she had scrawled.
She came from Pinsk and she described
A time when she was young
When she helped her mom make matzoh;
To this memory she’d clung.
Her father drove a trolley car
But left her mother when
She was pregnant with child # three –
That happened even then.
To make ends meet, her mother ran
A restaurant from her home,
A two room flat - how hard was that?
(But that’s another poem.)
My grandma never got to go
To high school, but she stayed
At a job ‘til she got married –
Just three bucks a week she made!
She never once complained aloud
Yet as I read each word,
I’m glad that even though she’s gone,
Her feelings have been heard.
LESS SAID
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
first stone cast—so sure, so light—
now echoes in canyon's throat.
path not taken, sharp and bright,
still glints beyond each scrawled footnote.
compass needle, rusted true,
points only to what morning knew.
FLOTILLA
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
her heart, once a crammed attic,
overflowing with yesterday’s dusty relics,
became a barren room.
each secret—a silent, fragile confession,
she scrawled on paper thin as skin,
slipped into the throat of antique glass.
a cardboard ark, ferrying her bottled truths,
down to the shore she walked,
where the sea sighs secrets of its own.
a flotilla of confessions and longing,
a bobbing armada of regret,
pushed by the tide—away, away, away.
she raised her hands in farewell
releasing all her burdens,
their echoes fading on salty winds
I can’t believe I once believed
that dragons could shed tears—
a time when my mind was robed
in the fragile cloth of childhood.
I wandered alleys where clouds bent low,
pressing their weight upon my skull.
Shadows snapped at my heels like starving dogs,
my heart swung loose inside my throat.
The tremor in my boots chained me still,
and every thought I birthed became a phantom,
scrawled in the dark, painted across the sky.
Those years were lived in trembles and fears,
each night a prayer for the ocean to come,
to wash me clean of figures
that crouched in corners,
that flickered like mirages where light bled thin.
How did those faces dissolve,
slipping from cloudbanks and corridors of shade?
How did they crawl out of my mind,
leaving silence where terror once nested?
Why was the darkness that devoured me then
locked away as a riddle,
a secret even I cannot untangle?
And those I asked only mirrored my silence.
Some still breathe the same trembling air—
fears childhood carved deep,
fears adulthood disguised.
But new specters gather around me now,
pressing their weight like tides unseen,
and once more I beg the ocean:
take me under, strip me clean.
What shades of colours do we paint
while walking on this earth?
Do we leave behind a masterpiece?
or a squiggle with no worth?
Will the colours that we choose
look vibrant, - do they shout?
Or are they like dull grey lead lines
so easily rubbed out.
Are all the brush strokes that you paint
precise, done with finesse?
Or are they like thick crayon scrawled
on paper in a mess?
And will you hang upon a wall
admired by the best?
Or stay unseen and never shown
Remain an unfinished sketch?
The colours that you choose in life
portray your inner self.
So, are you rich, red, powerful paint
or a shade left on the shelf?
You could be bright and beautiful
in orange, yellow, green.
Or does your glossy outer fade
and quickly lose its sheen.?
Are you a calm and turquoise- blue
just like a tranquil sea.
Or do you live with black or grey?
that’s all you’ll ever be.
The colours in my life are prime
though that can be changed.
to any shade I choose to be
if mixed or rearranged.
Seek out the artist in your life
ensure he paints you true.
Be one to stand out in a crowd
there’s only one of you.
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