Poems

Love Song for a Hollow Wasteland

”And yet, to me, what is this quintessence of dust?” 
-William Shakespeare, Hamlet

I

I have found in you, Love, no decency.

Destined for greatness, yes, we were trying,

but you chose to leave, instead of dying.

You began to question, why, and—to be?

You called me the greatest lover once; truth.

When my love was spread out against the sky,

like a patient etherized upon a table; it dies.

No! I am not Prince Hamlet, nor must I be; He,

loved Ophelia, more than forty thousand brothers,

but, she knew how to die, leave him sweetly. 

I did what God and strength allowed me,

holding on to our destiny with the past.

This wasn’t enough for your purposeless heart,

indignation coursing through your veins.

II

You left me under the stars,

desecrating my home.

This is where I lie at night.

This is the dead land.

This is cactus land.

You are not here,

it is dreadfully hollow.

This should be a spot,

Where women come

and go, to see me.

None will touch it,

not after you.

III

For weeks, I didn’t know what I would do,

without you.

The shame you caused me was too personal;

an insult really.

I’m unsure. Will I recover from what you have done?

And for what?

I will touch myself, pulling up what is left,

In your decay.

I want you to see what the lack of you can do,

It undoes.

I grow no longer, after what you have done here,

like the tree outside, withering.

I will show you fear in a handful of dust.

Ruin.

IV

The sound of your leaving—

was the bang of the door,

it has left me, in whimper.

Louise Harvey Wilds

Ghazal

Louise woke up every morning, hands to heaven that had blessed

her, proclaiming to all that would listen that she was blessed.

She is my mother, my comfort, the one who gave me my life—

one that has been by her, and those like her, so incredibly blessed.

Louise lost her husband to the three packs he smoked a day,

but this was a part of God’s plan when he died, still blessed.

She saw him fall to cancer in 1983, when I had aged one year,

never doubting, raising the three of us alone,  we were blessed.

Louise and Calvin had already lost a daughter before me;

Kelly’s death made the church stronger, Mom says they were blessed.

She felt for her daughter when her husband Ronnie died unexpectedly,

but she knew that if Tracy looked to God, she too could be blessed.

Louise’s youngest was in the hospital with an illness no one knew

and she held my hand, telling me not to worry that I was blessed.

She’s in the hospital now, not long after she passed out at Michael’s,

calling me to say, “Stephen, don’t you worry, because I am blessed.”