Restless Hours
Posted by Barry Hurd in Coffee - Volume Two, Survival
When I fell asleep, I swear my eyes opened for the first time in my life.
I could feel what the day entailed, every breath seemed like a moment of delight.
When my slumber embraced me, I felt warm and comforted like I never had.
In a dream of things that I always wanted, yet never afforded in my heart’s desire.
Why would I hope that this veil be lifted, could I possibly dream if I woke?
If I cared for reality, as much as this figment, I would have perfection in my hands.
**************************
I have often wondered about love. Perhaps that is the fault of a hopeless romantic. I think that poets are best born to wondering about the exact destiny of a feeling. It inspires them, it pushes them to reach, it creates want.
To me, love is an absolute feeling. It is the answer to a simple question.
“Would you do anything?”
The answer, if with love, “without a doubt”
I find myself wondering about that answer. If I can relate to someone who is not myself what doubt is and is not. When I see someone, sometimes for the first time, and I know within a fraction of a second that I would take the extraordinary step to do anything.
Does that make one a fool? I wouldn’t think so. I hope that I am not a fool. yet if I am, I take no worry in it. I would rather be a fool than someone without life in my body.
Second topic of the night- in the past week I have had over a half dozen individuals describe me with the word “genius”. I do not like that word. It makes me feel different. It makes me feel as if I am better, and while I may have thoughts which make me unique, I am not better. I am only human.
I wish humility and wisdom were better friends of each other. I wish that the people that describe me as being a genius saw motivation and inspiration within that word. I wish that they looked at my action and realize the potential of how amazing they could be as well.
We are all unique creatures with wonderful gifts.
The Mercenary’s Dream
Posted by Barry Hurd in Coffee - Volume Two, Survival
I always have this hymn in my head, for reasons I don’t know why. I wrote it years ago and find myself singing it. Only a few hundred variations or so. I wonder about the statements often and the wording, perhaps thinking whether or not the light is me or someone else, the love of a thought or of a passion.
The reason I write my thoughts into my various professional and personal words is to express how I was feeling in regards to a place and time in my life. Many people do not do this, rather they capture themselves in wondrous cages of demeanor and personal perception.
If you understand any of the above statement, you are actually far luckier than most people wandering around the world today. Too many people find themselves locked in a place they chose to be and fail to realize that there is no prison strong enough to hold them.
For lack of a better description- we are all born free.
In my darkest hour
In my fiercest fight
I fall to be devoured
yet hold onto your light
I dream of no tomorrow
of honor and all it’s sorrow
In my fiercest fight
I hold onto your light
It was my darkest hour
Falling to be devoured
I only dream of all the sorrow
the honor of tomorrow
Yet I still can’t see
who I came to be
Until I find who is me
and I still know I’m free
in my fiercest fight
tomorrow defines the light
When I said farewell, I meant it
Posted by Barry Hurd in Coffee - Volume Two, Loss
When I said farewell, there was a tone in my voice that conveyed more than my words ever could. The rose I held in my hand didn’t have enough value to it, as beautiful and perfect as each petal had pain-mistakingly been, it still didn’t have the vibrancy you brought to my life.
My words sounded like a wounded soul, a prideful spirit, and a lonely heart. I couldn’t hope that you could understand what I was trying to say, only that you understood how I felt.
I was at a loss. The deepest abyss of indiscretion, wanting and yearning for something I would never have, trying to believe in a prayer that god himself had thrown into hell.
I was the child of man, feverishly holding onto my cursing words of a religion that didn’t give me any comfort today.
Yet there I was, trying to hold back the tears as I said good-bye. If you could have spoken to me, the words you would share would have lightened my life like rays of sunshine.
I wept silently trying to hide how much I cared for you, the lack of companionship I looked forward to in years to come tearing my soul into frail little portions.
When I looked up from the grave stone, everyone else was gone. The rain fell upon my face reminding me how cold I felt inside, and I only remember how numb my hand felt as I let my grasp of your rose go.
You may have had life cut short, but as with all roses, your essence will not be forgotten.
The Valentine Admirer
Posted by Barry Hurd in Coffee - Volume Two, Romantic
If for a moment, could I whisper between my lips about how I see you, the way the wind blows through your hair, the brilliance in your eyes that light up my soul, or the scent of heaven as I linger behind you for only a second. If I was only a passing memory in your life, I would be blessed to find myself warm in a place touching the eve of sunset and twilight, where I find myself lost. Yet I am not lost. I have been found. I close my thoughts to the world outside and find myself succumbing to a defining instance of perfection, the kind of feeling that only a heart understands and words can never convey.
You look at me as if a stranger passing by.
For a moment from your soul as you casually smile at me. Without knowledge, you inspire me to breathe and to hope for the day I am sitting in a quiet little coffee shop thinking about my daily errands. A day when I glance up from my routine, finding you quietly sitting there, nervously breaking contact with my eyes as you smile and join me in denying how we both feel.
Yet I think again, once over, that you do not have such reflective thoughts.
I dismiss my own feverish yearning, for that quiet smile or charismatic pause you give your words is merely the reason I find such fondness for you. I wonder- does every soul encounter you and find themselves drawn in to the flame, or am I merely the fool who holds his conscience to the warmth of the fire until my soul ignites?
Should I write about the aching wandering of my heart as I keep my lips pressed quietly, denying the sound of my spirit from escaping the prison of our social boundaries?
Should I reach my hand for yours unlike before, hoping that you can feel something, that as two souls one of us is brave enough to take action and find someone who can complete us?
Nor should I simply send you a valentine as an admirer, the altruistic spirit who fondly thinks of you and meanders into the next day of heartfelt musings?
I do no ask these feelings to answer my questions. I feign the wisdom of morality as my thoughts succumb to the fatal flaw of my human nature. If only you knew the quiet words of my emotions, how they inspire me, how they motivate me to once again return to a place in my life where the quill of indiscretion is inked by the dear cost of passion.
The Valentine Heart
Posted by Barry Hurd in Author's Favorites, Coffee - Volume Two, Love, Romantic
I won a bottle of wine for having a wee bit of knowledge about the origin and meaning surrounding the word Valentine. I guess being able to answer a few multiple choice questions about an interesting day is worth a bottle of wine for a poet.
Here is a recap of some writing I did a few years ago, along with a new poem:
A history of Valentine.
While Valentine’s day is a marketing woe for modern society, it has a wonderful history that is colored in myth and legend. Everything from the bow of Cupid to the down fall of European nations.
A good portion of historical reference lead us to St. Valentine, a third-century priest who had a reputation for performing marriage ceremonies that had been banned by the Roman emperor. Valentine was thrown into jail, who as legends go, formed a relationship with the jailor’s daughter and he wrote his last message to her “From your Valentine” a phrase which would persists through-out a thousand years. St Valentine found his death on February 14th, in the year 270, and his remains and some of his writings are displayed in Dublin at Carmelite Church.
A thousand years later- Charles, the duke of Orleans, wrote a valentine to his with while imprisoned in the Tower of London. Aside from the origin of St Valentine, the letter is on display at the British Library as the first recorded valentine in 1415.
Years later, regardless of the origin or how many have been sent, Valentine’s day still lives on as we all embrace a moment of personal recollection, hope, love, and faithful spirit to the people we embrace.
The Valentine Heart
This prison,
The place I am locked into
By feverish want,
And things I could not let go.
This is a place of recollection,
The harbinger of reality,
Where reality and dreams reside,
Trying to live within each other.
I want to look outside
yet the walls are solid,
And my sight is obscured,
By images left unseen.
Each day, every minute
Of every hour,
I beg for mercy,
From a soul who made this dream.
My only possession,
The wanting hope,
Of finding my release,
As I give the truest of myself.
A kind warden has graced me,
With an elegant quill
to write my thoughts,
Upon this parchment of my soul.
When my feelings become words,
My heart finds escape,
it finds itself free and elated,
as it ventures amongst the heavens.
If this day, dear saint,
Can release me from this cell,
Where my hope dwells,
And my heart finds your embrace.
Dreams what make me.
Posted by Barry Hurd in Coffee - Volume Two
I don’t remember the sky,
the clouds above,
or the earth below.
Memories of rain drops
and fallen dreams,
these are the things
I still don’t see.
Where am I,
what creates me?
is this story, this tale,
something I can be,
before I falter,
losing my serenity?
I pray on my knees.
Fallen, falling,
from the stars
and my home.
Finding my world,
to be harder with hope,
than reality ever was.
Dreaming lucidly dying.
If not for the hour,
the year of desire
I stopped breathing,
would I be alive, trying,
crying, seeing, believing,
in these things amongst clouds,
as I stand beneath these tears.
I am not here,
nor am I there.
Could I afford to look again,
I would try, beg myself to ask,
why I still dream of stars tonight,
and these things I still can’t see,
make the best parts of me.