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Douglas Felsch Poem
The lips can tell a story, or wear a mask of stone,
But the eyes reveal the secrets that the heart has always known.
I’ve stood within the shadows where the light begins to thin,
And watched a dying man look out as the shade was drawing in.
I saw the color surrender, a quiet, fading gray,
As the life poured out like water and the person slipped away.
No words could bridge the distance, no prayer could halt the tide,
Just the heavy, hollow silence of the vacancy inside.
I’ve found the lost and searching, in the cold and frantic night,
Reaching for a tether, or a glimpse of something right.
Their eyes were wild and wandering, tied to a fading thread,
Searching for a roadmap through the static in their head.
In the hallways of the hurting, where the struggling find their seat,
I see them shield their vision from the people that they meet.
They look away to hide the salt, the weight of all the fears,
Hoping no one sees the truth within their heartfelt tears.
But I have seen the flip side—the fire and the bloom,
The lightning of a mother’s love that fills a sterile room.
I’ve seen it in my children, in the deep and steady glow,
The kind of light that only hearts in pure surrender know.
I’ve seen the spark of triumph in the one who stood alone,
Who carved a path of victory from a mountain made of stone.
The gaze is never lying; it’s the mirror of the years,
Reflecting every hard-won joy and all the silent fears.
So let the world keep talking, let them whisper, let them lie,
But the truth is written clearly in the language of the eye.
I notice every shadow, and I keep each golden ray,
The haunting and the healing that I’ve gathered on the way.
For when the shift is over and the city’s finally still,
I see the faces of the past against my own free will.
They linger in the mirror—the lost, the loved, the brave—
Holding tight the memories of the ones I couldn’t save.
Copyright © Douglas Felsch | Year Posted 2026
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Douglas Felsch Poem
The Five Faces in the Glass
I saw them in the window when the night was closing in,
Five faces etched in shadows, thin as paper, pale as skin.
They stared back through the reflection with a hollow, heavy gaze,
The ghosts of every worry born of long and lonely days.
I thought they were a haunting from a world I couldn't see,
Until I realized the faces were just different parts of me.
One was Fear, and one was Grief, and one was purely Pain,
The others were the Stress that falls like gray and biting rain.
They gathered in the glass because the pressure was too great,
The burden of a thousand things, a soul-crushing weight.
I was standing in the center of a storm they couldn't name,
While everyone around me looked for someone else to blame.
They pointed to the medicine, to the path that I had chose,
To the changes in my spirit and the softening of my prose.
They labeled me as "dangerous" and pushed my life aside,
Ignoring all the honesty I’d offered up with pride.
It wasn't HRT that brought the shadows to the door,
It was the stress of bearing more than any soul was fashioned for.
To be feared for being human, to be cast out for a tear,
By people who would rather judge than face a silent fear.
They didn't see the woman who was drowning in the deep,
They only saw the fighter with a promise left to keep.
I’ll face those five reflections now with a steady, quiet mind,
And leave the weight of what they thought to hollow hearts and minds...
Copyright © Douglas Felsch | Year Posted 2026
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Douglas Felsch Poem
Unholy Hell
There is an incredible emptiness
that will not settle,
a holy loneliness blocking my way.
They tell me not to think so much,
not to worry,
but the heavy quiet of failure drowns out that vow.
Inside these walls, there is no sovereignty.
Just hands, reaching—
everyone wanting a piece of me.
Only music remains a cure,
a quiet place to go to ease the road,
to carry this bitter load.
I was a proud soul once.
Now, I am stripped to the nerve.
Left entirely alone to survive their quiet contempt.
I dream at night, and the nightmares come to call,
and I wake up to the morning sun
already shattered before the day even begins.
More work is what I get.
No time away to sift through the wreckage,
to find what is left of me.
Just the endless expectation of another’s payday.
Deep in my soul,
my mind cries out for reprieve
that my battered, bloody body will never get.
The void is deep.
The pain is real.
The days gone by are misery.
Tough as nails they reference me.
Deep inside only history.
Copyright © Douglas Felsch | Year Posted 2026
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Douglas Felsch Poem
The Flint and the Flame
The Flint
I am the flint, the iron, and the wall,
Braced for the winter that never would fall.
I traded my youth for a suit of cold stone,
To stand as the bridge that you walked on alone.
The Flame
And I am the spirit, the silk, and the light,
The candle you guarded through darkness of night.
But the fortress you built for my safety and grace,
Became a cathedral with no living face.
The Flint's guard
I watched the years ripple like ghosts on the lake,
A harvest of seasons I could not partake.
I am the Heart, a heavy, locked drum,
Waiting for music that never would come.
So close to your pulse, yet a desert apart,
A prisoner bound to the beat of your heart.
The response of the Flame
I felt every frost that you caught in your shield,
The scars of a battle you never would yield.
I am the Soul, a bird in a spire,
Feeding the shadows with desperate fire.
I reach through the iron, I reach through the years,
To wash all your armor in rivers of tears.
The Yearning of the Flint
I ache for the touch of a hand, not the steel,
For a wound that the sun is permitted to heal.
The hunger is marrow, the longing is bone—
To die as a statue and wake as your own.
The yearning of the Flame
I crave the collapse and the heat of the fray,
The moment the "Safe" is all stripped away.
A hollow so deep it is echoing you—
A sky that is screaming to finally be blue.
The End of the Watch
Then the silence dissolves inn a crumbling rust,,
As the pride and the protection return to the dust.
The heavy door splinters, the iron gives way,
To the gold-bleeding light of a long-buried day.
I fall in your arms while the lost seasons weep,
For the promises kept and the secrets we sleep.
No shield but your skin, and no law but this breath—
The Soul meets the Heart in a life beyond death.
In the salt of the joy and the grace of the scar,
We are home where we were... yet exactly where we are.
Copyright © Douglas Felsch | Year Posted 2026
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Douglas Felsch Poem
Cries from the Abyss
Alone in the car, the night’s work is done,
Covered in grit, hiding out from the sun.
I smell like the sweat and the dust of the coal,
Just an empty shell and a broken soul.
I take hit after hit, and nobody gives a damn,
They take all I have, and they take all I am.
My soul is a black abyss filling the void,
By every promise broken and trust destroyed.
The sun comes up promising a brand-new day,
The night shift is over, but the pain's here to stay.
I fall in the heat, and I weep in the sun,
In this hoarded hole of hell where the damage is done.
A pit full of snakes, the lies and betrayal,
The venom of man when the handshakes fail.
The world misunderstands the weight of the fear—
Do I wear the perfume of poison that draws it all near?
I sweat it all out in the foundry's cage,
And I bled every drop on the lines of this page.
There is nothing left now, there is nothing to tell,
Just the salt of the tears and an empty shell.
But let the record show that I never quit,
I stood all alone in the face of it.
Through lies and corruption and greedy souls,
I carried the weight and I paid their tolls.
A shell is all that remains at the end,
Done in by the devils of men.
The silence is heavy, the spirit has bled,
Perhaps they'll care when words go unsaid.
-Debra
Copyright © Douglas Felsch | Year Posted 2026
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Douglas Felsch Poem
The truth, the passion, and the Poet
Ridin' high, the truth is told, passions and poet collide,
Igniting the shadows with fire and light!
My heart is open, free to decide,
I break to the open and soar with the bold!
Passions collide with the woman I know,
The fire is rising, I let it ride,
No longer walking with stories untold!
I've crossed the wild and rocky range!
The fire is lit and I let it glow!
My heart is free and it feels so strange,
Untied from the stories of my former age!
Passions collide as the high winds blow!
Feeling the heat as my fires rage!
On top of the world I fly,
With every heartbeat I feel the pride,
Kissing the past a sweet goodbye,
The truth, the passion, the poet and I!
— Debra
Copyright © Douglas Felsch | Year Posted 2026
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Douglas Felsch Poem
The Tracks of Forlorn
The gravel is new, freshly laid,
The boundaries bordered by fences we've made,
Walking along in my tarseled feet,
In the dark of the night and midsummer's heat,
I look at the tracks and feel the horn,
The world at my back and all of their scorn.
The train passes by on ridges of steel,
Shaking the ground and all I feel.
It rolls along as the ground surely shakes,
The peace is shattered as my mind itself quakes.
Stress of the mind feels like torrents of sin,
As the wind rushes by pushed from the lead engine.
Memories flash by as trains eat up steel,
Running through mind like an old movie reel.
I've lived and I've loved, but memories are torn,
Like the train of my mind on tracks of forlorn.
I've stood and I've felt,
Pondering now the cards I'd been dealt,
In the dead of the night and train's aftermath,
The silence is deaf'ning on the cold gravel path.
-Debra
Copyright © Douglas Felsch | Year Posted 2026
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Douglas Felsch Poem
I See You For Your Soul
I see you for your soul and all that goes with it,
I see you for your smiling eyes and tender lines of grit,
I see the way you move and treat your fellow man...
For it's down within the soul that the truest essence brings
Love and tenderness and all the finer things.
I see the caring heart of you, and all your saving grace,
I see the many tears you've cried left streaming down your face.
I see the mark you leave on those that you hold dear,
And leave them always wishing they could have you standing near.
But the biggest and the best of all you know,
Is the giant place where you leave love for it to grow.
You never have to hide from me, or play a different role,
Forever and completely, I see you for your soul.
— Debra
Copyright © Douglas Felsch | Year Posted 2026
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Douglas Felsch Poem
The Train of Darkness
The train of darkness barrels down, I hear the railroad clack.
Shakes the baghouse now, standing next to the tracks.
The ground beneath my feet comes alive, with a pulsing, steady vibe.
My first intuition is to hide.
I see the train coming in, a monstrous, breathing beast.
Eating up the track, invited to a feast.
Out of the darkness he rolls, alone,
A king of iron, on a bed of stone.
Rattling in the night, pulsing through my fear,
He rumbles into view, then boldly disappears.
The ground beneath my work boots quakes, as a pulsing rhythm makes,
Leaving behind a cloud of dust, that the iron monster wakes.
Dragging the crew, to the emptiness of hell,
A story they have told before, a story they know well.
I wave goodbye, a wish for luck, aboard that tyrant, roaring fear.
Into the dark it drags its prey, upon the turning gear.
Copyright © Douglas Felsch | Year Posted 2026
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Douglas Felsch Poem
Bone Chiller
They strapped the dead man’s skin to me, and threw the key into the sea.
I played the husband, played the dad, while silently I went quite mad.
I built a life, I paid the bills, I ground my bones inside the mills,
A waking corpse in broad daylight, pretending everything was right.
I wept a thousand tears of blood, and drowned inside a silent flood.
I couldn't let my loved ones see the broken thing I'd come to be.
I swallowed down the vicious tide, to keep the agony inside.
Behind locked doors I broke alone, and ground my teeth against the bone.
So when the house was dead and still, the woven rope would do its will.
It wasn’t just a passing thought; it was a predator I had caught.
It waited in the bedroom gloom, a patient shadow in the room.
It breathed my air, it stroked my head. It offered me a vacant bed.
“Just take the step,” the fibers sighed. “I’ll hide the things you want to hide.”
I carried on. I worked the grind. I shoved the rope into my mind.
Until the day my body broke. The spine gave out. The demon woke.
My working hands could work no more; I bled my rage upon the floor.
The sheer, compounding weight of years erupted in a flood of tears.
It was set the heavy burden down, or let the rope become my crown.
I dragged the carcass to the light, and screamed the truth into the night.
I told the doctor, pale and grim, "I am a ghost. I am not him."
And for a second, I was free. But God, you have no eyes to see—
The horror isn’t in the lie. The horror is that ghosts don't die.
To clear the poison from my brain, I had to walk back through the rain.
My raw and unprotected mind drank every horror left behind.
The grief I shoved beneath the floor came rotting through the cellar door.
The midnight thief inside my head began to drag me to the dead.
And nightmares walked the midday street, the past wrapped tight around my feet.
But I refused to quietly break, to drown inside the blackened lake.
I took a pen of sharpened bone, and dragged the phantom from his throne.
I pulled the thief out from my head, and nailed him to the paper, dead.
I drove the ink like heavy spikes, to paralyze his midnight strikes.
I pinned his carcass to the page, and locked him in a written cage.
He bleeds in black for all to see—he lost his grip on killing me.
So tuck your children in their beds. Ignore the voices in your heads.
Go to your jobs, and fake your smiles, and walk your endless miles.
Keep burying the things you fear. Keep swearing that your mind is clear.
But if you wear a face that’s wrong, the dark will feast upon you long.
The rope is patient. Trauma waits.
The Reaper stands beside your gates.
Copyright © Douglas Felsch | Year Posted 2026
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