Category: Poetry (Page 1 of 36)

The Hand of Love

January 2, 2022 / Tom

I thought I heard her in my ear,
“My love, relax for I am here,”
But alas I woke and knew it wrong,
For there was nothing but the Siren’s song.

The minute my feet found the floor,
I turned to where she was before,
The devil laughed and then he spoke,
“She was gone before your heart awoke.”

Lost once where oceans know,
The mountains, that’s where I must go,
Her notes I find where Sirens dwell,
The valleys can bring pain as well.

Do not trust what Siren’s sing,
Or the feeling that their song shall bring,
Steer your ship away from shore,
Or find her death as those before.

Instead head up and touch the sky,
Watch the birds as they fly by,
Hold the one that wants you near,
Forget the rest who disappear.

Then when the final curtain’s drawn,
And your sands of time are nearly gone,
The hand you hold you’re worthy of,
The hand you hold is that of love.

The Winter is Coming (A Poem)

September 25, 2020 / Tom

Winds announce the coming freeze,
There is a rustling among the trees,
Their leaves now old, about to fall,
Will always answer nature’s call.

Man now grown, forgot the sound,
Tone deaf to life around,
Nothing more than a fearful child,
Ignoring calls to walk the wild.

Yet he who came to Nature’s breast,
Would love the fierce, ignore the rest,
When Winter comes his footprints know,
He was born to leave them in the snow.

The Autumn seeks to end his youth,
Turn what was young to aged truth,
Still he rises to walk some more,
And forget the path he’s walked before.

Alone he’ll sleep under the stars,
Dream of love that’s healed his scars,
He’ll love the places still in pain,
And know his Soul in Autumn rain.

It was in the Autumn he saw the end,
As Winter waited around the bend,
But now he smiles at what he sees,
For he’s just a leaf among the trees.

~Tom Grasso (25 Sept 2020)

My Certain Truth (A Poem)

April 29, 2020 / Tom

I know,

Through the veils and wails of yesterday,

A certain truth.

That in the end,

Even if I leave this place surrounded by a crowd,

I will walk away alone.

Not burdened by the weight of painful diatribe,

Or solemn oaths broken by uncertainty,

Or the windless flight of angels helplessly tethered to the ground.

No, I will walk away alone.

Perhaps, though, the winds that carry me will be of a certain heart,

The one who’s placed her hand upon my chest,

Who has gazed lovingly beyond the curtain I place before my eyes.

Maybe, as a stroke of fate, or luck, or of a story written by the Divine,

A man so blessed as me,

Will know the wind of love that lifts me off the my earthen home.

I shall fly away alone,

My wings born from those I love and have left behind,

Those I’ve seen born into this world,

Who have turned a mere boy into a man,

Who gave him pause to find himself,

And the strength to carry on beyond the wounds he thought he owned.

They may forget me, but I will be unforgotten,

I will exist in their tears and in their laughs,

In their challenges and in the their triumphs.

When their own wings are born they will remember me again,

And they will pay homage to me not just when they fall,

But when they stand again,

And when it is their turn to fly,

When they touch love’s sky for the first time,

I will be there waiting.

I am but a man, anonymous to most but well-known to the gods who gave me life.

Born a liver and a lover, a sinner and a saint,

Perfect in my flaws and built to rise above my ashes.

Yet I am nothing without a certain truth.

One recited in the chills I find when she touches those parts of me built to touch her back.

One shouted to the heavens when my children call my name,

The name only they are free to call me.

“Dad”.

When all is said and done,

When my wings take me to a place I am not yet certain does exist,

I can only hope I’ve given more than I’ve received,

That my best was good enough to see me pass through the eye of a needle,

And that those who give me the wind to fly away,

Know they are

My certain truth.

~TG

Goodbye to my Father

January 9, 2020 / Tom

People around us can be so shallow
Hollow, absent a core.
Guided by fear, lost to the voices of their own discontent.

Yet time and truth brought us together,
Our time. Our truth. Not theirs.
We shared laughs scattered between decades.
You challenged me to break the cycle.
I accepted.
You told me things that showed me who I was.
A child of living,
Your son in this life,
Different yet the same somehow.

I heard a whisper in my heart this morning,
And I knew that you were gone.
I am so saddened by your passing,
Of the lost time, the insanity that put a valley between us.
I will miss not knowing more of you.

I accept the sword,
As I am now the oldest generation of my birth,
Free to do it differently,
Your first born was not made to be like them.
You gave life to a fighter, a warrior of light and truth,
Honor and character birthed from the fires of my own destruction.
As you said, it’s my time to change everything.

The tears I shed this morning are for you and I,
For us,
Father and son, son and father,
The tears, our Holy Ghost.
The laughs our sacred memory.
Sadness will not be the legacy we share.
Defeat not an option to our undertaking.

Goodbye my father, I will see you often on the road that lies ahead.

Woman

December 10, 2019 / Tom

Mother

I can hear your voice echoing through my caverns,

I can feel your rage building like a storm,

I can see your smile, rare and unforgiving,

I know all I am through your eyes.

I am your son.

Sister

I can hear your cries seeping through the darkness,

I can feel your mind twisting in the wind,

I can see your smile, longing for reality,

I know I am forgotten through the temper of your lies.

I am your brother.

Lover

I can hear your heart beating in my silence,

I can feel your soul afraid in being open,

I can see your smile raising me from my ashes,

I know I am alive through the desire of your embrace.

I am your partner.

Daughter

I can hear your first cries as though they sang but yesterday,

I can feel your hand as it grasps at my one finger,

I can see your life unfolding before my eyes,

I know I have done something right when you simply call me “Dad”.

I am your father.

Woman

There are many things that have shaped me,

That have pulled a sculpture from the roughest, burdened stone,

I’ve been hewn by heaven and hell’s sweet majesty,

A woman’s touch is the discourse of this living.

I can rise, and I can love, and I can be all I’m meant to be.

I am a man.

The Walden Pond Within (A Poem)

December 9, 2019 / Tom

I heard a calling once,

The woods, the hills, the simple life,

A small area to call my own.

A devoted hand fearlessly in mine,

A shared dream,

Creating words in the woods,

Stories born in the space between

The soil and the sky,

Living clean, without the nonsense of the lost human mind.

I heard a poem once,

A walk through nature by a heart so inclined,

Footprints left on the earthen soil,

Wiped cleaned by the whipping winds of time,

Still the words imprinted on the sweetest parchment,

Eternally mine to hold, to cherish,

To share to the ones who come calling.

My friends, alive among the trees.

I read a story once,

A man in love with the truth of Walden,

He and I have sipped from the same cup,

Bent our knee upon the same muddy shore,

We’ve written songs only the loon can hope to sing.

Together we have made our stand,

In union we have found the space of our truest love,

Our tears flow as we leave her far behind.

We never truly leave her at all.

I hear the calling now,

Recite the poem in my heart,

Tell the story in my soul,

I see the cabin where we live,

An orange flicker of the fire where we lay,

All we need around us, in us, between us,

A simplicity we’ve birthed in the honor on which we stand,

Two souls warm in the company we have found,

Even as the snows falls out there.

We kiss, forever, here.

One Day (A Poem)

October 21, 2019 / Tom

I knew, from the day that she first told me,

In a swirl of wondrous mystery,

One day it would all be over.

A hand that once wrote an impassioned plea,

Would turn to stone.

A finger that once drew on her glistened lips,

Would draw no more

Eyes once moistened in tales of spirited victory,

Would be closed forever.

Breath that once whispered wanted dreams of love,

Would be silenced for eternity.

I knew, from the moment of that conception,

When the tides had turned and I nearly drowned in my own insanity,

That the end was just around the corner.

But I did not want my hand to become so cold,

Or my finger so absent it’s truest intention,

Or my eyes dried to the truth of my heart,

Or my words silenced

Before their time.

One day you shall feel my flesh and know that I am gone,

What was warm, now cold,

A room filled with laughter, now coldly silent.

One day you will call my name and birth sadness when there comes no answer.

Perhaps.

But we have but one day left,

One day to fill our cups with honey,

One day to traipse where the Earth meets the Sky,

One day to end the life of all regret.

So that we may etch on the stone that marks our end,

“Here lies a life worth living.”

Because I Was a Lion Once (A Poem)

October 3, 2019 / Tom

Because I was a lion once,

I hear the call of the wild,

Smell the sweet fragrance of the aspens

Pulling me toward the mountaintops.

Never lost and never to be forgotten.

Because I was a lion once,

Demons sent to frighten me,

Only cause my soul to growl.

A whispered roar to warn the beasts,

I own them. I am their king.

Because I was a lion once,

I roam where my soul wants to go,

And seek no recompense for my wanderings,

For I will starve if she so demands,

And I will feed when her hand opens to my call.

Because I was a lion once,

This pride, this brood, I shall defend,

Clarity abounds in the process of my starvation,

A frenzy ensures in the hour of its quenching,

I can not silence nature’s call.

Because I was a lion once,

I know my time is near its end,

Yet no tear forms in the thought of this departure,

For I know with each passing day I shall return,

To be a lion yet again.

She’d Rise Again (A Poem)

September 26, 2019 / Tom

I heard what she said,

Before she fell,

Before the world crumbled around her,

She was, for me,

The calm before the storm.

The placid sea churning with uncertainty.

I heard a faint sigh,

A slight gasp peer through the crack in her lips,

And she uttered,

What I heard lifted me from my doldrums,

A single ray of light that poured through the clouds,

And I knew she would return.

Then a single drop splashed hard upon my forehead,

Thunder rolled as she tumbled toward the ground,

I heard her growl in the moment that she fell,

I heard her swear in the second she let go,

Her words still echo in the canyons of my soul,

As I felt her blood trickle down my skin.

There is nothing like the sight,

Of a warrior losing to her demons.

There are no words,

Like those she spoke to me that day.

Yet in the moment of that surrender,

In the moment her walls turned to dust

And her sword faltered her fiercest undertaking,

The world

Knew

She’d rise again.

The Truth, It Seems (A Poem)

September 20, 2019 / Tom

I once heard a voice through the timbers,

It’s breath shook branches and rustled leaves scattered upon the ground.

“What do you do with this moment?”

I sighed,

Knowing what I was supposed to say to answer,

Knowing what was expected of me in response,

Yet knowing it was a lie.

The truth, it seems, was nothing I was told I could do.

I was taught something different,

I was shown a path not my own,

And I agreed to the limits others had placed on themselves,

As though they were my own sacred truth,

My birthright,

The agreements I had made at conception.

Their truth had been turned into my lie.

My truth, it seems, was nothing I was told I could do.

I stared silently into the soul of the forest,

The growl,

I could not be sure if it was out there,

Or radiating from my trembling mind,

A deep breath, and I knew what I must do,

My mouth opened, but no words would be born,

My heart, instead, gave it’s answer.

This truth, it seems, was nothing I was told I could do.

I would live,

Without mercy offered to the demons that would see me die.

A code, written not in the book of others

But out of a desire to find my own bliss,

A life not being lived in the light of another’s torch,

But of the one I had built, that I had lit,

With my own trusting hands.

The truth, it seems, was something I knew I could do.

I turned, and walked to my own destiny,

Cleansed by the dirt of trails I would find,

Forged by the fears I would banish into history,

A deep breath,

Unsteady legs would become strong,

Uncertain thoughts would die on their vine,

My life became my own.

The truth, it seems, was something I discovered I had done.