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untitled XVIIII want to put my arms around you
and never let you go.

SmileYour smile.
If there is one thing about you,
one part of who you are that I love most, it's your smile.
Not because it is a rare thing to be captured and held close for fear of never seeing it again,
but because I see it so often that I treasure it so dearly.
Your smile melts the hardest parts of my heart,
warms away the chill deep in my soul that I can never seem to rid myself of.
When I wake up in the morning in your arms and open my eyes
I see your smiling face looking down at me,
and it reminds me why I exist.
If I hear you come through the door and look up from whatever it is I've been doing;
you pause while taking off your

Good NightGood Night

Cold, dark, night.
         The lightning flashes,
                  And the thunder roars,
Crash! What a fright.

Cold, dark, night.
         Lost and alone,
                 With no where to go,
Bang! Out like a light.

Cold, dark, night.
         It gleams and it drips,

I Fear HerI fear her
An empty shell of a being
In my dreams
Her eyes, no longer serene
I see her sitting
On the counter
Screaming at me
Under her nose
The white powder
It makes mine boil
Thinking of evil in her veins
I cannot stand to breath
When I think of her change
I have never known this feeling
Of rage before
Provoking comes
I do not speak
Of rape or murder
For to speak the idea
Is to make my brain run
Run to the left, to home and far away
Hoping that upon my heart
Will never come the day
When the fruits of my tears
Come to their fruition
I can only hope
That my fear will complete it's mission
I fear her
It pains me to

In A Broken NutshellWho do you think you are?
Who tells you that it's best
to voice your complete self
inside the breaks of partial breath?

And then consider yourself whole
where you're always on the go
because you can call it a day
in a broken nutshell.

I never did answer you that one day
you asked me what you call a day
when it goes through the stage
of wanting to be anyone else
and so changes its name accordingly.

You haven't lived until you've tiptoed
around a drunken reaper
like they were some wasted bum
on the sideburns of the Big City.

You won't die until he shaves
for his Big Interview at sunrise,
arrives late in a tie to be Pallbeare

The ForgottenYou left your mark as this burning fury,
As bitter as winter buried inside my chest,
Ice is the only thing left pumping through my veins,
In fame and glory, you've hidden all the rest.

A sharp pain in my stomach, you start to smile,
My heart races faster to consume its pain,
As I fall to the ground you walk away,
Hoping I'll leave nothing more than a stain.

There's a space in my heart where I welcomed you,
That still stings as I feel it beat,
Holding onto you, it aches for you,
Refusing to see its defeat.

You left your mark as this passionate flame,
Reduced to ashes and to scars,
As I feel the wound you embedded me,
Dull and fo

microscopicsilicovolcanoconiosWhen I woke up around three-twenty-eight in the morning, he was breathing star shine.

Pale moonlight slid in between the restless curtains and colored his skin alabaster where the shadows didn’t reach their furtive fingers. A part of me knew he felt my stare on the back of his head, but he was too busy studying his fingers. I contemplated the fine hairs of the nape of his neck and wondered if they still smelled like berries and soap.

“I’m cold,” he announced.

After that I didn’t think twice, and pushed the covers forward with my bare feet. I hit puberty in the time he was gone; when I slid across my bed on hands

The Price that we all PayOnce upon a moonlit night,
I traced the silhouette of my ravenous heart,
The darkness embraced me as if i were a child to its love,
But the blight of my tragedy tears me apart,
Takes its vengeance on this world,
Soon they will see my hell.

Prisons of flames
The scriptures proclaimed
Such fantasies and lies we suppressed,
A moth to the flame, A bird in its cage
Obediently we dropped to our knees,
If but to beg for redemption, undeserved freedom.

Your souls but a price
A blood contract,
As the reaper visits the grave,
Shattering the mournings stave
To hail the song passed dead,
As the ignorant bow their heads.

The Ugly Duckling

There once was an ugly duckling,
A mote of dust, surface-tension caught
On a sheet of machined steel.
Burnished bulrushes nod,
Distending edges,
And duckling slides
Across metal water.

He wasn’t hideous, you see,
Just not that pretty (or so they said)
For a duck.
Speckled black, grey feathers extruding,
A beak too large for his downy head.
Ugly duckling swam alone
On the mirror’s edge.

One day ugly duckling made a friend.
He found her, bottom-up,
Sifting through alluvial silt.
When she surfaced,
He saw that she, too,
Was not that pretty,
And his feathers stood on end.

They swam together;
Two flies thumping lazi

PancakesThe pan reacts angrily
To the mixture,
Creamy milk caressing
Teflon sides;
Bubbles rupture
Through white skin.

I put my lips against
The base of your neck,
Slide them up into your hair
And I feel your
Heart beat
Through white skin.

You melt into me,
Butter in the pan.
Brown edges curl,
Like your toes,
And I feel like I’m falling
Through white skin.

Creator in Abandoned Streets-flickering street lights-
   captured with hate
lying 'side milk cartons
right along crates

-under these street lights-
where crimson blood flows
    where nobody stays
as in fly the crows

-in these streets of midnight-
   that are haunted by dark
so that none may leave later
      forever unmarked

-flickering street lights-
   under these stand
  a person's calm absolute
this strange strange man

-captured with hate-
  within his eyes
the street blaze red
but not quite sunrise

-lying beside milk

Gold-Plated WastelandThere's no better way to make it to the top;
The fastest and easiest way to succeed,
No matter what it takes for you to get ahead,
You'll do it all in the presence of greed.

You can barely remember their names anymore,
But whose honestly keeping track?
I mean, there's thousands of them you've thrown away,
But there's always someone who's got your back.

Just buy and use your way to the top;
It doesn't matter how many names you drop,
On your golden path down the middle of a wasteland,
Reaching out, they were always offering a hand.

There's no better feeling in the entire world,
Than looking out your office window at the sky,
Stor

The Show Must Go OnJust sit back and listen to my words,
Let me paint you a picture in your mind,
With splitting personalities and broken verses,
It's the difference between the cruel and kind.

The stars contrast the obscurity in the night sky,
Adding beauty and light to the dullness of the dark,
Creating a new beginning in the end,
Lighting but a single spark.

A million sparks light up an entire sky,
And no matter where we are, the stars are the same,
Shining just as brightly as they can,
With no lost dignity and no feelings of shame.

The sun comes up and the stars disappear,
For the single sun shines the brightest of them all,
Pushing the moon

Wake UpHer figure lingers in the doorway as she sees him sleep,
Within his heads her secrets he does keep,
Afraid and alone she approaches his bed,
As his mind creates a new world in his head.

She calls his name but once or twice,
Thinking of how she rolled her dice,
Trying to think of the right words to say,
To get through another day.

"Wake up! Wake up! Wake up!" She screams,
But he's too lost inside his dreams,
Finding a new world he seems to enjoy,
As she shakes him around like a toy.

Her broken picture hangs on the wall,
Symbolizing nothing but her fall,
As she twitches at the image that stares back,
With her mind, the mirror she

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untitled XVIIII want to put my arms around you
and never let you go.

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Embrace

by ~JohnLanley, Oct 2, 2007, 2:20:57 PM
Literature / Poetry / Romantic / General / Free Verse

I want someone to hug.

Not the clammy embrace of a mother,
the rough put-the-arms-around of a father,
the fleeting cuddle of a sister,
or the likeable hug of an uncle or aunt.

I want the touch of a person
who loves me for who I am
understands me when I'm silent
laughs with me through joy
cries with me through sorrow
holds me as the tears fall
and never lets go, even at the end.

If I ever find such a person,
my only hope is this:

That I can do the same in return.

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Embraceby ~JohnLanley

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Written when I had no-one to hold. But she's looking over my shoulder as I type [kiss] and she understands me.

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Submitted on: October 2, 2007
File Size: 670 bytes

Views: 4,296
Favourites: 19 (who?)
Comments: 13
Downloads: 10

~SeekingIt Oct 20, 2008

Nehhh. I feel the same way. I love the poem

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~JohnLanley Dec 1, 2008 Writer

thank you...

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~Lunkebunk Jun 22, 2008

Its really beautiful, just how i feel atm..
But it makes me happy in some way, dont know why tho ^^

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~JohnLanley Aug 5, 2008 Writer

thank you - I'm considering publishing a book - if I did would you be up for buying it?

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~inspirational-dreams Oct 22, 2007 Hobbyist General Artist

beautiful... I really like this one, as I have a few that I myself have written.. but they aren't as straight-forward as this one.. Although, I do feel this way from time to time...

Perhaps that's why I'm going to fav this

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~JohnLanley Oct 23, 2007 Writer

thanks...

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!burnttongue Oct 3, 2007

your poetry is damn deep, congrats!

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~JohnLanley Oct 3, 2007 Writer

thank you...

are you with someone?

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!burnttongue Oct 3, 2007

you're welcome...

no, i'm single at the moment, perhaps that's the reason, why i like your poem that much. or it's just because i'm in a melancholic mood at times.

anyway, great poem (and i really have the feeling, that you're one of the most underrated artists here)

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~JohnLanley Oct 4, 2007 Writer

aw, thank you

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