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Best Poems Written by William Haynes

Below are the all-time best William Haynes poems as chosen by PoetrySoup members

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THE ROSE OF VELVET TIME

On the dim lit streets of New York town
You danced for uncrowned kings
The whiskey harsh upon your lips
With eyes that could not see

And I'd await by the ocean's shore
With the horses tethered fast
For dawn would draw you homeward
From each exotic dance

You sought for what M'lady
While youth a withered vine
I had but love to give you
The rose of velvet time

In silks and pleasure lay your dreams
As stone became your heart
And I rode fast upon the winds
But your voice bade me come back

So life remained until the morn
When the music lost all rhyme
A sad goodbye upon the grave
The rose of velvet time

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I HEARD DEATH WHISPERING MY NAME

In the shallows of junkyard avenue
Where fiery-red stallions are mounted by devils
And desolation is your last cigarette

I staggered from the weight of her kiss
As distant cannons sounded
And angels sought shelter
Fear is often the lonesome traveler
And I drank from her cup, hungrily, thirsty

She was my sustenance, my manna from heaven
And I courted her with both wine and sweet song
I lived in her dead embrace
And never tired of her hot breath on my flesh

A man can bookmark his soul with a thousand
wounds
Yet never own a dream
I left her a rose and words that I can no longer
remember
In the hidden places; on the darkest of nights
She whispers still

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FOR THE GIRL WHO NEVER KNEW

I placed all of which I am in your hands
Dreaming of the gulls in Long Beach
Your letter had the allure
Of perfume and whiskey
Salty kisses at midnight
I wrote words for you
Carried aloft by
Sparrows under moonlight
your reply was whispered
With passion's hungry tongue
And I was taken by you
Forever

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VENTURA BLVD

Stars play so pretty in your hair
As you lose your gravity to my heart
Planets spin lazily in the contours of your eyes
If I remove my face mask, will we be able to 
breathe together? And if we are pulled apart would the
Universe fade out?

On the moon I promise you the earth and mean it.
You laugh.
I am very much in love until very much in love
Becomes a poem, very much in love, very much in
love,
Very much in love. Our love is the poem, every
line, every word. You laugh I love, I remember when
I held the door for you. I remember when I offered
you my seat. I remember when you took it. The
seat was my poem, my poem to you; better than
a carving on a tree. The seat ran on petrol, drove
around town, a mobile poem. My poem just drove
down Ventura Blvd. Since we broke up it searches
for other poems. i wish it luck.

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LADY

The lady had her day
Of bright lips and mystery
In summer she was Muskeg
Each winter a monsoon
It was as monet
Her refusal to weep

And had my courtship
Proven less lissome
If I had not cast lots
With vagabonds and dreadnaughts
Then perhaps, say I, perhaps
Time would not be vain
And the lady
Still ever vivid in circumstance
And moon fall

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POEM FOR L M

I must have come too close to tearing the veil from your eyes
To have asked you to cross a bridge
When  the distance was greater than either of us imagined
Now I wait on the other side listening to sparrows and doves
But the truth is; I hear only silence
Your heart beating someplace
That I'll never find

Details | William Haynes Poem

CRYSTAL BLUE LAKE

The picture changes to a serene painting of the sea
Then the evening clouds of late autumn by the ocean
There's a crystal blue lake followed by a lavender
River and mountains and then nighttime stars by a
Highway lit in neon/There is a city viewed from
Miles away and lighted with the colors of dawn
There is a green glow and a pinkish sunset and
Always the ocean and a mountain with a man
Pointing at the sky/The sun rises overland then
Sets leaving a calming new morning
Now there is a purple desert with twinkling stars
And a moon just sinking in a new horizon and
Clouds so thick you can almost taste them
Like cotton candy and there's a dragon
Sleeping on a desert floor with blue sand
And a river in grey pass fertile soil and
The clouds rolling in for the background
And the dawn and the river go on forever

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M'Lady

And if I were no more
than the brook that flowed
Neath' the azure of your skies
Would not the warmth of your heaven
Touch the surface of my waters
Be the season spring or summer

And if my lone voice
was lost upon the winds
with the whispering of M'lady's name
Would it not give pause to thee?

What of the grassy meadow
Where the blanket was cast
and the wine of your eyes
Drunk so freely
What has become of us, M'lady?

There be shadow where the tiny nightingale
once sung and such the cold dark heart
To have all that was undone
But I M"lady, I remember
All that was, now so foolishly denied

And I M'lady, still love
with fervent heart
That which you have taken from me
And I am forevermore
be thine

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A PROMISE TO M

I was crafted for you long ago of bronze
Carried by Egyptians like fine silk
I was once the ankh pressed against your pain
We crossed the Nile while pharaohs slept in lotus
dreams
The desert was once our home and Cleopatra, our
Queen

While the queen courted Caesar and General
Ptolemy ruled
We clung to the fevered silver of the stars
But now is today and all is forgotten of us
A promise to M.
Written in sand

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GREEN RIVER WYOMING

Somebody said that in Wyoming
That a body could recover from
The N.Y. blues that leave your soul so dry

I bid farewell to Montauk
And the sadness in her eyes
Knowing somehow that I never
Would return.
Now the skies over Green River
Somehow are not that different
And the losing end remains the
losing end.
Some days I'd trade my highway shoes
For a key to the door back home
But the past is smoke
And the locks beneath the clay
I often think of Montauk
Though the photo is all lined now
Knowing somewhere, some days
Montauk thinks of me