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Best Poems Written by Steve Edwards

Below are the all-time best Steve Edwards poems as chosen by PoetrySoup members

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Quasimodo

Quasimodo

Is tha' I gan't ta'k too good
Tha' keep me silent, not my mood

They thin' I brooding monstrosity
All thin' so, except, not she

I feel so shame when she look at me
I wish someway she see only heart of me

It sometime, seem somehow she do
Esmeralda, I play my bells for you

Her touch soft not like whip they use
When for sport they me abuse

Mob laugh to see me bleed
Quasimodo’s life is made of need

They eyes, like church, cold as stone
Poor Quasimodo feel alone

She gave me water
Gypsy lady gave me water

I deaf, ugly, half blind
Would that God were half so kind

She not see my awkward gait
She know, like me, inside, I straight

She dance like candle flames in the Rectory do
I glad to have just one eye, couldn’t stand such pretty if I had two

Her smile like melody. Like me, she wear no shoes
No pity me, but be's my friend. Like my bells do

Though I not hear, I feel them sway
My gargoyle friend speak to me someway

Inside my head I hear him say
Dear lady-inside-my-heart, that I will someday

When worthless life of me has passed
In heaven, with Angel's ears, hear you laugh

Oh Esmeralda, Until that day,
I will in shadows of the spire, love and play-

my lovely bells for only you…

Details | Steve Edwards Poem

Damaged Goods

Damaged Goods



In summer sun’s sagacious rays
A butterfly with ragged wings
Settled on the sidewalk
In search of food or rest or other things
Slow, strolling steps brought me to her side that day

Her wings were slowly yawning to and fro
I saw the ragged edges marred
A predator had tried to take her life
She got away but bore the scar
Now she flies erratically, and slow

But ah, her colors shimmered so!
Blue purer than the air
In the sun, sparkled like a million atom stars
Yellow so shy it was hardly there
Emerald splashed like strokes by Michelangelo

They froze my gait 
And captured my eyes
‘til I was lost in a universe
of delicate size
and majestic fate

I held my breath
My throat grew tight
I fell in love
With the spirits’ fight
To live beyond its brush with death

Feelings tumbled from my breast
If I could only paste a part of my soul
On her wing to repair its ragged loss
I gladly would, to make her whole
Who more than measure, she had blest

But hope and want rarely comply
With harsh reality
Or the step of time.
Nor can beauty cure insanity
Or heart enfold a butterfly

So I stood entranced by her beauty there
And caught the spirit of her bravery
Though torn and damaged goods
She was the loveliest butterfly I shall ever see
Her injury made her only all the more fair

She could not have known how much I cared
We both were bound by destiny
The moment passed as moments do
And then she flew away from me
Fluttering and stumbling through the air

Details | Steve Edwards Poem

Pearl

Pearl



The pearl is precedence
A quiet resting creature who but deigns to live and die
When life inserts hard measure
Surrounds with gentle folds
And turns its pain to treasure

But lesson more than learning
That time alone will show
Already tells me nothing
Ah pearl, I do not already know

This tiny hurt of love was left, so like a grain of sand
When last she made to go
Time graced my heart to understand
Ah pearl, I know

I know

Emptiness would rest
Without that grain of hurt
So 'round its pain I grow
'till hard layered shell disguise the thing
Ah pearl, I know

I know

Oyster-man lie quiet
There's nothing left to do
Save gently rock in a sea of time
And grow 'round the grain of love she left in you

Encase it in a luster of multicolored hue
Mixed of tear and hope and memories
Of when your love, loved you

Hard over hard, and slow
'tis not an easy shell to grow

when years of time have rolled by thee
if some forsaken scientist from curiosity
Should wonder at your core
And crush your opalescent majesty
From vain wanting to know more

Perhaps in wonder he would see
That tiny grain of sand that hurt you so
it caused a thousand-layered soul to cover it 

and brought beauty borne of pain that it might never show

But I would not have to open you see what made you grow-
Ah, precious hearted pearl
I know,

I know.

Details | Steve Edwards Poem

Misconception

Misconception


Dear Laura,
Do you know that night when you stayed with me?  
When we had time to reach for each other,
without the urgency of the clock?

That night-
I drank your breath
I held you while my passion swallowed yours
You thought I was inside you, oh no-
I pulled you deep inside my core.  While our skin burned
I was throwing away my heart, my bones, 
I was throwing away my brains, dissolving my tissue.
I was flushing my blood to the floor.  
Ripping away my muscles.  
Becoming an open shell.

Then-

I cradled you inside of me.  
I filled myself with you..  
How else could I get you so close?  
How else could I have gotten so close?  
I put your heart in place of mine.  
I stole your being.

And you thought we were just making love.

Details | Steve Edwards Poem

Julie In the Nursing Home

A drunkard hit her before he crashed.
She lay thirty minutes on blood-soaked dirt.
He staggered away; wasn't hurt.
Her lovely neck was broken; her brain-case smashed.

red lights, white coats, time blurred into a crawl; 
Now she sits perfectly still, her bright, blue eyes so glazed
in unblinking endless stare, in an endless daze
at pictures pasted on her nursing-home wall

Painted by once-young schoolmates hands
"we love you!"   "get well soon..."
"This is us on the playground", a smiley face on a big red balloon
"We're waiting for you"  "Your friend always, Jan"

Bright colors, stick-figure play-scenes painted with vigor and feeling in an early grade.

Each day she sits and watches them fade.

	Julie turned 13 today.

the colors have lost their bright hues, the drawing paper, once white, the sun has made tan,
the cellophane tape is yellowed, the edges have curled
and classmates have gotten on with their lives in the world.

She must have a brace to hold up her head.
The nurses aides whisper "she's better off dead"
All day she sits strapped in a chair by her bed.

the pictures stopped coming, children forget.
 sometimes her eyes grow wet.

The aides wipe them roughly talking about last night's date or tomorrow's homecoming parade

Julie just stares at her pictures and watches them fade.

Details | Steve Edwards Poem

Ember

There are ashes.
There are scattered blackened brands, 
some still smoking that just were seared
and some lie quiet, burned thru to the core.

Deep in the center of the burned out fire there is a small ember.
It burns and burns.  It will not give over to the cold and night

It peels the flesh from my heart.  
It burrows a tunnel deeper than I knew I had depth to give.
It evaporates my blood.  
Agony greater than its vessel.  
It causes terrifying pain.  
I cry out.  
Each small moment I pause from the chores of the day, 
it is there burning me. 
I am weak with the agony of it.

Yet, I still embrace it with a great love.  
I rush to its hurt like a starving man to bread  
I beg life it will never go away.  
It is a jewel beyond measure.  
Above all the spires of heaven, I treasure my pain.  
I hoard its burn like a treasure of childhood.  
For, you see dear Laura,



it is all I have left of you.

Details | Steve Edwards Poem

Arc

ARC
(to David)




There is a thing people sometimes see
if they look long at the heavens, eventually

an arc of light across the sky
as a comet burns through the troposphere to die

it burns also to memory
its light and shape and symmetry

and once seen, is rarely forgot
Many things it is. I will tell you a thing it is not;

it is not sad.

Only perhaps, a solemn event
as the life of the comet is burned and spent.

no one should mourn the death all life must find
rather marvel at the trail of beauty it leaves behind

at the path of luster and the brilliance of light
that graces the heavens with the arc of its flight

seeing it, we are not sad that part of the universe flies to rest
but that, having stood under its arc, our spirits have been so greatly blest.

Details | Steve Edwards Poem

Claude's Lines

Claude were you tired that night
Of the slashes from life you’d born
Or the effort it took
And the ruts you’d worn

Did you sigh and quietly go away
Or groan and curse and fight to stay

It doesn’t matter I guess
Smooth or rough, night or noon
It’s all  to us one thing
Too soon, too soon

You lived your life full and bold
What a life, what a trip, what a soul

Memories like the notes of a wind chime
We’d struggle and laugh, call each other “pard”
Life around you my friend
Was somehow less hard

What passion you had
And infectious joy

Full tilt, wide open, and crank it up
You gave your friends such love and trust
You gave so much and gave so well
That part of you became part of us

So we will live this day in your name
Sad, oh sad that you left, but blest that you came

Warrior, artist, son, brother, husband, father and friend
Claude, so well mixed were thee
That in all who loved you when we heard you were gone
Not an eye, not a tear did not shed

Including me,



Including me.

Details | Steve Edwards Poem

To Old Pup

‘Round and ‘round and ‘round
in a circle ‘til he died.
Old Pup walked

In the middle of the field
He’d found though he was blind
I guess he knew how to find it
It was one he’d chased odd sprites across many, many times

He’d stayed with us when he lost his sight
I’d feed him by hand
that day though, he’d refused the meat

Old Pup had his pride.

He would not stay where he had ruled in prime
Or lay him down where he once guarded,
too weak and old to stop a fly

He’d left, farewell, without a sound
and found the field...

August sun’s heat rose in waves like Cicada’s buzz
No breeze, no leaves moved, no dust stirred
The fierce heat stilled the countryside
Light green Mesquite, buff brown drying weed
the sky, heat faded blue, two small white clouds, utterly still

the only movement, a small tan dog
going ‘round and ‘round in a circle
in a barren cotton field
looking for a place to die.






(to the one he loved, who loved him back
he gave his loyal life, but hid from me his death
even now, his last, noble gift
wets my eyes and steals away my breath)