Tag Archives: Poem

The Hallucination (Fool’s Gold)

Posted on by under dialogue, Poem
Milestone DVD Hampton Man with a Lantern

I’m looking
I’m looking
I’m looking for the light in the dark of the night, and the fear is that I might
Not find the holy sight
Of the light
The light

Ten long days in the caves
And I already fear I’ve gone mad
The walls are shivering
The dirt is talking to me
Calling me “sweetheart” and “sugar”
And threatening to strangle me while I sleep
And my head plays the sound of a honky tonk piano on repeat
Dee Dee Dee
The man who plays the piano in my head is drunk
Again
He keeps playing the wrong note
Ooo – how I hate the sound –
The misaimed note screeches like chalk on a board, a car scraping against concrete, the howl of a stray cat in heat,
And it never resolves

I’m looking
I’m looking
I’m looking for the light in the dark of the night, and the fear is that I might
Not find the holy sight
Of the light
The light

Was he right?
Was I a fool to go looking?

– Lucy Schwartz

BFI Blu Eastman Man with a Lantern-1

Note: I do not own the photographs in this post. I always try to credit photos when I know the source.

Stream of Consciousness Poem

Posted on by under Poem, poetry

Stream of consciousness
Like a ribbon
That can’t be caught
Or held onto for very long
But which keeps unfolding
And revealing itself
If you allow it to

It’s strange what exists in there
Those thoughts that you weren’t even aware you were thinking
Those foreign feelings
Unknown to you before, in murky depths,
But which seem to have been a part of you all along
Those images, shapes, signs
Of a universal language
Which seek you out
If only you listen

I wish I could always live in that exalted space
Of universal wisdom
Of electricity
Electric thought.
Buzzing and whirring at a million miles a minute
Receiving.
Yes, that’s it.
I like when I’m a receiver of the great beyond
I like to sit in my little house
At my desk
Beside my telephone
Whose chord reaches up to the sky, past the viewing point,
A universal hotline, if you will,
That’s where I like to live
Waiting to receive.
Waiting for the call.
And then hearing it.
And picking up.

-Lucy Schwartz

​

 

Unconditional

Posted on by under Poem

You are lovable when you feel crazy
You are lovable when you feel sane
You are lovable in the sunshine
You are lovable in the rain
You are lovable in all circumstances
In all places,
In all moods,
In all of your emotions,
And desires,
In all your certainties and uncertainties,
In all your fears, worries and regrets,
In all the things you’ve done,
And all the things you haven’t done yet,
And in all the ways you simply, incredibly EXIST,
Without doing anything at all.

You are lovable at your worst
You are lovable at your best.

Darling,
Believe me,
You are as lovable as lovable gets.

-Lucy Schwartz

Eclipse

Posted on by under Poem

 

A poem written by the sun for the moon:

Come towards me
Hide my light for a moment
So that I can unearth truths
That have been lying in your shadow

Slow dance with me
My sweet companion
Even if it can only be for one song
Too many years have passed without your touch,
And it won’t be long before the fates separate us once again
So while we are here, together at last
Let us not weep for lost time
Or the coming goodbyes
Let us pretend
In this moment
That we have all the time in the world

As the morning birds sound “our song”
I will hold you in my arms
And dance with you cheek to cheek
And we’ll turn morning into night
With a fire so piercing it could blind
And all who witness us will be mesmerized
Standing on mountains
Sitting on cars
And porches
And lawns
Families and friends huddled together
Eyes shielded with spectacles
Hands pointing
Mouth agape
Some standing in new, unfamiliar plots of the earth
Travelers
Migrating
Just to say they caught a glimpse
Of you and I

And we’ll shake the world into remembering
That each being is a perfect union
Of both darkness and the light

Just like you and I, darling
Just like you and I

So before our song is through
Look into my eyes and
Hold me
In the way that only you know how

-Lucy Schwartz

14023-vintage-photo-of-a-lunar-eclipse-pv.jpg07_eclipse_vintage.adapt_.1900.1-1.jpg

Note: I do not own the photographs included in this post.

The Box

Posted on by under Poem

I started to wonder what would happen if time could be contained inside a wooden box
And if every New Year’s Eve
When the clock struck twelve
Each person on Earth was presented with a box and a key
Upon which they could choose to open their box of time
And see forth into the future
Of the coming year
Through dusty crystal ball
Or talisman
Or hand-scribbled clue left in the box
Perhaps each person’s box would contain something different
Unique as the person themself
One soul might open their box and find a roll of film and a projector
From which they could literally watch the entire year to come
Agonizing in advance over certain unpleasant chapters
And rewinding to watch their favorite scenes over and over
Reliving the best moments before they’ve even been lived
Another person might find a hefty script or a novel
Their life in print
Every word of their future dialogue written down, play by play
And seemingly unchangeable
Written in ink, not pencil
Or perhaps for some, this mysterious fortune-telling box would contain something much less concrete
Maybe the only thing they’d find in that large wooden box would be a small, simple, poem
Cryptic but telling
Words that could be interpreted and misinterpreted a thousand different ways
The box would deliver them truth and still leave them guessing
Or maybe for an unlucky few
When they opened their annual New Year’s box, they’d find –
Nothing –
Just an empty box
The end of their future near

Imagine the possibilities
And the danger
If the future was not this foggy thing
Unclear and out of reach
But instead something that you could hold in your hands
And if it were so
And your very own box was laid out in front of you
Would you open it?
Would you look?
Would you dare?
Would I?

-Lucy Schwartz

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Winged Woman

Posted on by under Poem

Screen Shot 2016-09-26 at 1.30.13 (bigger file) PM.png
Fall or don’t fall
The trick is to jump
And see where you land
In sky or sand
Your wings will flap if they can
And hold you aloft
In heights you hadn’t even dared to dream of before
And if your wings are not strong enough yet
To keep you held mid-air like a fairy
Then fold your wings around yourself
Like a cocoon
Like a ball
So that when you fall down, down, down, to the earth you will not break
You will simply roll
Towards something new
Towards something closer to
You

Fall or don’t fall
The trick is to jump

– Lucy Schwartz

Mark-Glovsky-Collection-Dive-31.jpg

Note: I do not own the photographs included in this post, but I always try to link the photographs to their original source (when I can find it). If you want to find out more about the beautiful images & the photographers you can click on the images.

Hope Springs

Posted on by under Poem, Short Story

new-wishing-well.jpg
We had an old well in my childhood home
My mother nicknamed it “Hope Springs”
And when she’d pull up the water, she’d smile and say
“Drink up. Everyone could use a drop of hope.”

I remember the water from Hope Springs
It tasted different than other water
It was cooler somehow
Smoother somehow
It slid down your throat and down to your belly and seemed to warm you from the inside
A tingly feeling that rippled from your head to your fingertips to your toes
If I was ever scared or anxious or sad or just unsure of myself
I would drink from the well
And it seemed to make everything just a little bit better
I believed it was magic
That it could cure almost anything

Standing here, outside the house, ten years later,
I know better than to believe in magic water
When you’ve been through a war it feels as if all magic has been drained from the world
What I had experienced – what I had seen – could not be cured

My house used to be a beautiful cottage
Flowers blooming in the front yard
Clean white walls
With a smart blue trim on the windows
Now it is black and grey
Charred and broken in bits from bombs
Most of it no longer stands
But instead lays crumbled on the ground
As sad and damaged as the rest of us
A piece of glass from the window lays before my feet on the dead grass
I can just barely make out the blue trim underneath the jet black charring

Everything has changed now
Nothing is the same

The only thing that still stands is Hope Springs
I don’t know how she did it
How she stood so tall and strong
She was already a very old well
She had been on the property long before us
I’d thought she might be the first to pass
But there she was
Cracked a little maybe
And dusty
But still herself
I walked over to her longingly
Lowered the rope with the bucket down into the water
And pulled it back up
The same way my mother used to
I expected the water to be dirty but it was crystal clear

For old time’s sake
I took a sip of the water

It went down like silk
And warmed my belly
I felt a tingling run through my body
And then I felt a most peculiar thing
I felt a weight lift off of me
One that I had been carrying for a long, long, time
I hadn’t realized how heavy it was until it was gone
It was like giant boulders had been lifted from my back, my heart, my stomach, and my mind
And for the first time in nearly a decade, I felt like everything might just be okay after all
Like there was a chance for the human race
And for me
I felt something resembling peace
The water’s magic, it seemed, had gone unharmed

A familiar thought came to me
A phrase I hadn’t heard in years
And I smiled
Eyes tearing
Because I could hear her voice in my head saying
“Drink up. Everyone could use a drop of hope.”

– Lucy Schwartz

Note: I do not own the photograph included in this post, but I always try to link photos to their original source (when I can find it). If you want to find out more about the beautiful image & the photographer you can click on the image.