Author: Ryan Olejnik

He could taste the saltiness of a cold seaborne rain.
He was more a capsized vessel, than its captain.
He could hear the sirens wail of a great refrain.
With the wind on the quarter, he sailed toward death.
He looked to his compass, but there was no other way.
When he left port, it was never to return again.
He saw shore just before crashing on the rocks like waves.
All he treasured inside his chest had sank with him.

This loneliness is crippling,
And alcohol is like a crutch,
For a poet wounded by love,
Whose verse is mostly scribbling.

I hear the poetry in your voice,
And then I have, but no other choice,
To get drunk on your words like they’re poison,
And your lips, well, they are the antidote.

I can feel the unraveling,
Of this ball of yarn called Earth,
To your love alone I am tethered,
But as of late, it’s only threads.

In the songs of a nightingale,
And through shadowy forest,
Where the voice of darkness does rasp,
There is a light, however frail,

In the evening dress that you wear,
Of looming shadows the moon weaved,
And the nightgown in which you sleep,
There is a light, however bare.

Over the rise,
Of briers and stone,
There is firelight,
Beckoning hillside,
Over the plateau,
Of bluffs and sky,
There are smoke signals,
Masking the blind knoll.

The sickly branches of sycamores,
Reaching frailly over the shoreline,
Of a shaky lake,
Shivering sunlight thru,
Icy white clouds,
Of a fainted sky.

There are rubies, sapphires, and emeralds,
But you were the most precious stone to behold,
I didn’t treasure your love till I was broke,
Now I propose not with diamonds, but coal.

She isn’t dead but is to me,
I am haunted by memory,
She loves with a heart that don’t beat,
And her touch is cold to my body,
She blows a goodbye kiss to me,
With her lifeless, icy lips,
But it isn’t she who is deceased,
It is I, the ghost who’s living.

I poured my heart out to you,
One cold and rainy day,
I told you I’d loved you always,
But you just stormed away.