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So deep into the night I stare
Time unwraps more pain around me
My heart still revolves toward your flame
My love iself in need of rest
Time is like a womb still bare

As the moon shakes upon the water high
My soul I wear like a badge woven to my breast
I need to breathe like an ocean
That carries a song between each wave

From my lips come words so intense
I've spent too many years
Using my nervous hands
Hitting rusty nails into a broken fence
To trap myself
Inside of my self-defense

I've spent too many thoughts
Not knowing
If there's anything left
For you to call your own

I'm sitting here all alone
As weary as a wounded wing
Silent as the solitude appears
I walk around a strangers' room
I can hear ghosts inside the walls

Time begins to fall
Like passion with old age
I see you sleeping in your bed
I want to touch your chest
Softer than a feather could
Then the ghosts begin to call

They ask for bitterness as hearts mourn
I came so far to be near you
How come
Now I am here
My heart refuses to hear you?

Time can never be so true
As a pain that never leaves
In my silence so I write
In your bed I see you sleeping
I can hear your echo breathing
And my heart begins to grieve

I have no master where the shadows wait
A strangers room might tell me why
My ghost has not returned yet
I look out the window
With eyes that can't forget
The women of my wild regrets

I stare at a tree with broken limbs
I feel my spirit growing thin
I have come to a strangers' room
With memories turning dim
If I could have you
I would lose my sorrow
With my head resting on your breast
Will I hear your echo breathe tomorrow?

Hi Phil ~

South Florida, eh? I'm curious which part. It's great to see someone contributing a poem again . I'm very curious how intently you used portions of lines from Leonard's writings in composing your poem. Did you set out to do so, or have his phrases simply become part of your own, verbal landscape? I feel the sadness in your poem most through these particular lines:

I see you sleeping in your bed
I want to touch your chest
Softer than a feather could

I came so far to be near you
How come
Now I am here
My heart refuses to hear you?

Time can never be so true
As a pain that never leaves
In my silence so I write
In your bed I see you sleeping
I can hear your echo breathing
And my heart begins to grieve

I stare at a tree with broken limbs
I feel my spirit growing thin
I have come to a strangers' room
With memories turning dim
If I could have you
I would lose my sorrow
With my head resting on your breast
Will I hear your echo breathe tomorrow?

~ Lizzy

Lizzytish
I appreciate that you almost always post a response to my work. I live in Palm Beach county and have not posted or indeed written anything for a while because my house was severley damaged by Hurricane Frances.
Leonards work has had an enormous impact on my life, a result of which I find myself occassionally using some of Leonards words in my own work. It would be difficult to do this deliberately. I find I write in a very similar style and the interesting thing for me is that I can write( in my opinion) about the darker side of life better than the sunny side. For me, based on my own experieces, the darker side is more real than the other side. I relate to loss, abandonment, despair etc because those are the feelings/situations that have been constant in my life. The sunshine always seems to fade in my life, my eyes have grown used to the dark.
Perhaps on my travels our paths will cross in FL and we can talk Leonard sometime. The lines that you quote are a poem within a poem and capture the mood the way I remember it.
Thanks
Phil

Hi Phil ~

I'm sorry to hear your house was so badly damaged by Frances. I've recently returned from Grand Cayman and Jamaica. Grand Cayman's lushness was all but wiped out. We had quite a bit of surprizing damage in my area from the hurricanes. Who can keep them straight, anymore ~ which ones did what? In a case like yours, however, I've no doubt that the name Frances seered its way into your memory . Post-hurricane months can be very difficult to deal with. I hope insurance has come through for you. I was without electric for 7 days during Frances[?].

With the way you describe your personal history, it sounds like your living in Florida is a life-saving measure. If you lived in an area where the cold and the gloom are literal, you could easily suffer from the conditions that come with sun and light deprivation which, of course, only add to feeling the dark side of things through depression. Not to say that living in Florida could ever make one immune to those.

Yes, you're right. When I reread the lines and verses I excerpted, it did sound like a poem. I can see where they would have captured your emotional memory. At least our paths crossing has a fighting chance, given our relative proximity. Much more likely than running into my friend, Jo, who lives in South Africa .

~ Lizzy