Home » Poems » Best » Jay Kirk » Best Jay Kirk Poems

Best Poems Written by Jay Kirk

Below are the all-time best Jay Kirk poems as chosen by PoetrySoup members

Details | Jay Kirk Poem

When the Ocean Speaks Her Name

I loved you like the tide loves the shore—
a quiet pull, a force that cannot be resisted.
And now, you are leaving,
pulling the moonlight from my nights.

We sat by the ocean once,
the salt air braiding our silences,
the waves writing your name into my soul.
Now, every ripple whispers you back to me,
every tide is your farewell.

We rode bicycles for miles,
spokes spinning like the clock that chased us,
laughter a symphony in the wind.
Now, when the road bends,
I see you ahead, always just out of reach.

We drank screwdrivers,
the orange glow of our glasses
mimicking the sun that set too soon on us.
Now, every bitter-sweet sip
is the ghost of your laughter,
the warmth I can no longer hold.

Our last night in this town,
fireworks tore the sky apart,
their light staining our faces,
their thunder drowning my pleas for you to stay.
When the clock struck twelve,
I learned how silence could break me.
Now, every New Year will carry your shadow,
a ghost in the colors of the night.

When I return to this town,
I will find you in every street,
in every sea breeze, in every cracked sidewalk.
Memories will ambush me in quiet corners,
calling your name in a language only I understand.

You are leaving,
but how can I let go
when the world you touched
still holds your fingerprints?

Details | Jay Kirk Poem

A Love Too Heavy to Hold

She loves me—
but I wish she didn’t.

I wish she would say she loves me.
I wish she would say she doesn’t.
I wish she would release me
from this endless war between knowing and doubting,
from the weight of wanting to love her
as much as she deserves—
and failing.

I ask her if she loves me,
again and again,
hundreds of times a day,
watching her eyes for something—
a flicker, a shadow, a sign
that maybe today she will say no,
and I will finally be free.

She wonders why I ask,
why my voice trembles
as if her love were a thing
I could break just by touching it.
She does not know
that I am not searching for her answer—
I am searching for mine.

If she did not love me,
I would not have to be enough.
I would not have to stretch my heart
into a shape it was never meant to take.
I would not have to fear
that one day, she will wake up
and realize I was never worthy of her love—
only of her leaving.

Details | Jay Kirk Poem

The Inheritance of Fire

I was raised in the storm’s mouth,
where walls learned to shudder before I did.
Nights smelled of whiskey and rage,
and the air, thick with silence,
was a hymn of waiting—
waiting for the door to slam,
for the curse to carve its way into the night.

My mother, a quiet soldier of suffering,
wore her silence like armor,
her eyes pleading with God
in the language of the unheard.
My sister, a bird with broken wings,
folded herself into corners too small for sorrow.
And I—
I memorized the rhythm of his rage,
the way it arrived like clockwork,
the way it turned our home into a battlefield
without a war, without a reason.

I swore to be different.
Swore I would build my hands into a refuge,
not a wreckage.
Swore my voice would never carry thunder
into rooms that only asked for quiet.

But now, I see it—
the way my fists clench at ghosts,
the way my voice rises without permission,
the way I become the very storm I once hid from.

I drink, and I tell myself, just one more.
I yell, and I tell myself, it was nothing.
I watch their faces flinch,
and I tell myself, I didn’t mean it.

But what is the difference between a man who destroys
and a man who never meant to?

I am becoming the thing I spent my whole life running from,
a ghost wearing my father’s face.

And I wonder—
is blood stronger than will?
Is pain something we pass down like a name?
Or can I carve him out of me,
tear his shadow from my skin,
and learn how to be a man without burning everything I love?

Tell me—
is there a way back?
Or is a man doomed to become the echo of his father,
no matter how much he swears he won’t?

Tell me, Father—
did you fight this war too?
Did you lose?
And am I doomed to do the same?

Details | Jay Kirk Poem

A December Apart

Last December,
we were a hearth,
embers blazing beneath a frozen sky.
Your breath was my language,
your heartbeat my compass—
each pulse a hymn to the warmth
we thought would outlast the cold.

But this December,
the silence stands between us
like a snow-laden tree.
I look for you in the shape of shadows,
in the way the wind bends
as if whispering your name—
and find nothing but the hollow echo of forgetting.

Do you remember the streetlamp glow
on that corner where we lingered,
hands trembling, not from the frost
but from the weight of our words?
Now the street is a stranger,
its light a foreign tongue.

Last December,
you called me by names
only the night could hear.
Now, the moon rises uninvited,
its cold eye watching
as we pass each other like ghosts,
the gravity between us undone.

Tell me,
does your breath still catch
when the first snow falls?
Do you trace the frost
like a map to the place
we lost ourselves?

For we were lovers once,
and now we are strangers.
And yet the seasons—
they betray us.
Each December,
the air carries your absence,
as if it never left.

Details | Jay Kirk Poem

The Prison of Silence

I am the prisoner of my own silence,
locked in a cell made of hours and shadows,
where loneliness wraps its cold fingers around my throat,
and the light outside is nothing but a forgotten dream.
There is no escape—
no door, no window,
just the echo of a heart
that shattered long ago
and no hands left to gather its pieces.

I carry the weight of a thousand unsaid words,
each one a stone,
pressing down on my chest,
a burden heavier than time itself.
I call out to the world,
but my voice is nothing more
than the dust of past hopes,
scattered on the winds of absence.

I am both the wound and the bandage,
the broken glass and the scattered reflection,
each fragment a memory
that cuts deeper when I touch it.
And still,
no one comes to repair me,
no one hears my cries
in the hollow chambers of this soul
that has forgotten the taste of peace.

I see the world move around me,
its colors vibrant,
its people whole,
but I am a shadow beneath their feet,
a forgotten poem in a language no one understands.
The spaces between us grow wider,
and with each passing breath,
I fall deeper into the hollow that lives within me,
a place where love once bloomed
but now withers without a name.

And so I remain—
a prisoner of my own grief,
a heart too broken to heal,
too lost to be found.
There is no escape,
only the weight of time
and the endless ache of what could have been.

Details | Jay Kirk Poem

When My Future Son Cries

When my future son says,
"But I don’t want to find someone else,
I want to be with her,"
and his eyes carry the weight of a thousand broken stars,
I will see my own reflection in the tremor of his voice,
a younger version of me,
clutching at the ruins of a vanished embrace.

I will sit beside him,
silent, like a tree rooted in the storm,
and I will not say,
"You’ll move on,"
or,
"Time will heal."
For I know the sharpness of that lie,
how it cuts like a blade dipped in salt.

Instead, I will tell him,
"Son, there are loves
that refuse to fade,
that grow like wildflowers in the cracks of our soul,
even as we try to forget their names."

And when his tears fall,
I will let them,
for they are rivers that carry grief to the sea.
And I will remember—
the nights I spoke her name to the moon,
the mornings I awoke to her absence,
the ache that time could only make quieter,
not smaller.

He will ask,
"What do I do now?"
And I will not have the answer,
only this truth:
"Carry her gently, my son.
She will live in the corners of your heart,
like a song you hum without knowing why.
And when the world tells you to forget,
don’t.
She is part of who you are."

I will watch him weep,
and in his tears, I will see mine—
a lineage of love and loss,
passed from father to son,
like an heirloom
no one asks for,
but everyone learns to cherish.

Details | Jay Kirk Poem

I Shall Be Dreaming of You

I shall be dreaming of you all night,
like a tree dreams of rain in a desert's embrace.
A whole week,
where every dawn carries the echo of your laughter,
a fragile thread binding my soul to the morning star.
A whole year,
and the seasons will carry your name,
your voice etched in the veins of every leaf,
your absence filling the silence of every snowfall.

I shall certainly come here tomorrow,
just here, to this place,
where the earth holds the weight of our footsteps
and the wind knows the secret of our breaths.
Just at the same hour,
when the sun kneels low, painting the horizon
with the colors of longing and surrender.
And I shall be happy,
remembering today,
as though time has folded itself into a flower,
pressed gently between the pages of my heart.

For even in your absence,
you are the compass of my wandering,
the dream I carry into waking,
the shadow that leans against my solitude.
And I shall wait,
with the patience of a stone kissed by waves,
knowing you are the tide
that will one day return.

Details | Jay Kirk Poem

A Little Boy Again

When she ignores me,
I am suddenly small,
a little boy again,
kneeling at the edge of a world
too vast to hold my cries.
I am pulling at the hem of her silence,
whispering, shouting,
"Look at me. Just look at me."

Her absence feels like my mother’s back,
turned as she stirs a pot
too deep to see the bottom of,
her hands busy with everything
but the fragile weight of my longing.

I am that boy again,
holding up a picture I drew,
lines crooked, colors bleeding—
"Is it enough? Am I enough?"
But she does not turn,
and I swallow the answer
like a stone in my throat.

I thought I left that boy behind,
buried him under years of growing up,
of pretending to be whole.
But her indifference calls him back,
and there he is,
clinging to my chest,
his small hands trembling,
his voice breaking:
"Why won’t she see me?"

And I realize,
it is not her I am pleading with.
It is my own shadow,
the echo of a child
still searching for a light
that does not fade.

So I sit in the quiet,
alone with the boy I was,
and I hold him gently.
For even if she never turns,
even if her silence becomes the sky,
I will teach him to stand in the rain,
to love himself without needing
someone else to say, "I see you."

Details | Jay Kirk Poem

The Fragile Embrace

I saw you in my dreams again.
You arrived quietly,
like a bird resting on the edge of my solitude,
your presence soft enough
to make me believe the night was merciful.

I held you a little tighter this time,
my arms becoming the walls of a house
I wished you’d never leave.
I whispered words
that only dreams can hold—
promises too fragile for daylight.

I knew, even as I pressed you closer,
that you were slipping through my fingers,
a river running toward the sea.
I knew when I woke,
you would be gone.
You always are.

But I held you anyway,
the way the earth holds the rain
knowing it will evaporate.
The way a poet clings to a word
that won’t stay on the page.

And when morning came,
I woke to an empty room
filled with your echo.
Your absence was a shadow
that stretched across my bed,
a reminder that even in my dreams,
you are not mine to keep.

Still, I will close my eyes tonight,
and wait for you to return.
For even a fleeting touch in the dark
is enough to keep the heart alive,
enough to make the pain of waking
a price I am willing to pay.

Details | Jay Kirk Poem

Takotsubo -For the Heart That Could Not Hold

It begins quietly.
Not as pain—
no, pain would be honest.
It begins as a hush
where your name used to echo,
as a weightless ache blooming
like smoke from a fire
that has already forgotten
what warmth was.

They call it heartbreak,
but no—
this is architecture.
A house collapsing inward
because it was built
on the trembling of your hands.

Dopamine drips like slow poison.
Oxytocin stains the air
where you stood,
soft and cruel,
the way shadows are.

And the heart,
oh the heart—
it doesn’t shatter.
It folds,
like paper soaked through,
like a letter never sent.

There is no danger here.
Only the quiet violence
of remembering
you are gone.

Fight or flight?
Foolish words.
Where can I flee
when you are the distance?
What can I fight
when you are the absence?

The breath that once
ran toward you
now leaves without looking back,
a stray wind
through a door I no longer close.

And still,
this body rehearses survival,
teaches itself
to cradle the empty,
to wake with the knowing
that some vessels
were never meant
to be full.

Not sickness.
Not wound.
Just the living art
of breaking
without end.

And God,
what a beautiful ruin
you’ve left me in.


---