Tuesday, October 18, 2011

"The Things I Want" by Ralph Corleone

I decided to post the poem I had to write for poetry class last semester. Yes, it's original so I'm a little proud of it.

I had a really hard time writing it (since I'm a blogger and not a poet). But hey, the professor approved of these lines any thank goodness she did because that raised my morale about writing poetry (for a while).

Anyway, here's "The Things I Want"

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The things I want,
A beer with cola
A whiskey with ice
The day to leave with its sunshine
The night to drink with as company
The radio on a loop
“Strangers in the Night”
The dining table’s glass
The chair’s support

The things I lost
The window’s condensation
The sweat off my skull
Dripping
Down to my suit jacket
The lights glaring at me
The air conditioner slacking off

I see deep within the half-empty glass
The face I don’t want to remember
The face I’ve buried
With shadows and everyday people
Her smile flashes before my weary eyes,
Drawing me in like flame
A flame to my moth
But before the tip of the fire
Comes even close, her face is gone
The girl I like, the girl I once desired
The things I want
Wouldn’t even come close to her

Why do I want her?
Perhaps it’s her smile
Shallow, but sincere
Beyond common tabloid smiles
Or Stepford grins
Lust doesn’t seem present
Just whiskey and the heat

I have everything I want
Except her,
The girl whose beauty is beyond looks alone
With a smile as lovely as a flower
In full bloom,
She was my virgin, my empress
But she was distant
As far as the starless sky,
She was non-existent
From my sight and from my touch
As if she were on the peak
Of the world’s tallest mountain
But her smile still haunts me
As if it were a ghost hidden in the night
Slowly making itself visible

To her, I was a mere shadow
Hidden within the crowds of everyday
She brought sunlight to everyone
But I was on the other side of the world

Until I could exist
To her, somehow, someway
Her smile will haunt me
A reminder of the things I want
And how they can never replace her

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Well, that was average, right? I'll do an explanation of it on a later post. Until then, thanks for reading my first original poem.