A poem about lost love by David Tombale: I believed

Some romances come and go leaving their own stories behind, this is one such story.

I believed

 

Every song we played was ours,

every turning step, every brush

of skin on cloth, every glance

was the beginning of our romance.

 

 I said it often, wrote it upon

 the mirror, printed t-shirts with

 our faces in them, put it in the

 papers, hung it from the trees

 and for some reason I believed

 you’d never leave.

 

A poem about priceless love by David Tombale: Your song

Your song is about a love devoid of money or status. I wanted to write something that would perfectly describe that and this is what I came up with.

Your song

 

Deliver me a promise deep from the

 depths of you and let me inhale the

 musk on your neck, the crush of soft

 satin that falls from your back

 

 Tonight we lay down in silence,

 cut adrift from our words and living

 in statues and portraits, verses that

 lead me often to you

 

 To others the grand ballrooms,

 the gleam of jewels and strings of

 pearls but for me your love,

 your song.

 

A poem about fear by David Tombale: You're afraid

This poem was inspired by the prompt, "You're not afraid of love, you're afraid of not getting loved back." It seemed interesting enough to build a little narrative around.

You’re afraid

 

He wrote a note in black

and left it by her windowsill

so no matter what day

 might come she would

always remember him

 

 Crumpled paper sits by

her short black hair,

 one hand beneath and one around

and though the tears won’t come

her days go down beside the sun,

leaving the light of dusk to fill her

 house with scent of love that’s passing by

 

 Those written words she said

have ripped my heart,

“You are not afraid of love,

you are afraid of not getting

loved back.”

 

 

A poem about loneliness by David Tombale: On the dock

Loneliness comes in all kinds of forms and is caused by any number of reasons but regardless of the background behind it the feeling always remains the same.

On the dock

There is no beauty in this surfeit
of emotion, no destiny in the cold
abandon of lonely shore,
my arms crossing into signs that
might someday form their own language,
a thumb and index finger brought
together joined into a partial wave that
reminds me of a ferry passing out of dock,
its wind tugging at the collars of my jacket,
flinging my tears out behind me where
you won’t see them,
suffice to say I think I’ll miss you.

 

A poem about nostalgia and life by David Tombale: Sometimes

Life can sometimes change so drastically and so quickly that it leaves us dazed and longing for the familiar past. SOMETIMES is all about those feelings.

Sometimes

I find sometimes that I think
about the taste of ice cream
and watermelons

the drenching wet and rapid fire
of sprinklers as we sprinted through
them hand in hand.

Sometimes I think of Saturdays
spent rolling round, the tv’s on
and I’d play Hogan and tear my
shirt to bits, (at least I’d try).

Sometimes I think of Star Wars
and Indiana Jones, the days you’d be
Macgyver and I’d play the villain

sometimes I think of life before the
evening news and they’d frightened us
with bulletins and bullets,
car bombs and anthrax,
Ebola and the latest flu epidemic.

Sometimes I think things were easier
when the bad guys dressed in black
and the worst things we ever saw
were those damn commercials before
the good guys won and the credits rolled.

 

A poem about discrimination by David Tombale: The Life of an Immigrant

Discrimination like all forms of abuse leaves its own scars and that's what this entire piece is about.

The Life of an Immigrant

This is that other kind of tale that
the clink of jailhouse bars has told me,
the cold breeze on my feet, the throbbing,
the hellish nights spent on concrete floors
for days until the day the lock comes off,
the chains come off and you look upon
the face that frees you, this face that laughs
a laugh that mocks your disheveled state,
your questions, a face that reminds you
of the only answer that remains,
“Negros are never welcome here.”