Deep and meaningful' conversations.

These days there seem to be no victories,
No marches in triumph between a roaring crowd:
Only the sad parade of sorrow,
The sounds of pain keening on a carrying breeze.
Your friend’s eyes full of sympathy,
Ears catching your confessing words:
But behind the attentive face
He waits the time
To match your grief with his.

poem by Roy William Gotaas
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Driven Memories: Howling Dog

Driven memories
Back
To the now
That isn’t any more........

As a child
In the blue-dark London night,
On a car roof by my bedroom window,
A dog howled liftingly,
Split jaws snapping my sleep.

Sick so young,
That already a dog cried Death
Over my bed and murdered sleep?
I hid in the safe-cave under the blanket
And waited for corruption.

poem by Roy William Gotaas
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Nightfall In The Rose-Garden

Ashes to ashes,
Meal to roots of roses:
One-way street in petals falling,
Dust to dust.

The lowering sun sucks
From blown blossoms,
Their colours that go
At last to dust.

Death is in the seed
Bud, root and leaf
Which have no choice
But dust.

From death to death,
The cycle onward blindly
Rolls its endless way
From dust to death.

[...] Read more

poem by Roy William Gotaas
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Lost Heart.12.7.10

To be exiled far from what one may call home
Is melancholy sometimes, June-Paulette.
Travelling litters the planet with pieces of one's self,
But where exactly did I leave my heart?
It’s out there somewhere on a baggage carousel
Or in Left Luggage in some dusty terminal.
Under a rarely-cleaned hotel-room bed
Or at the bottom of a guest-house wardrobe.

One shouldn’t take out so intimate a thing
If one doesn’t want to risk it’s loss: or,
If one does, one should at very least inscribe it
With Return to Sender and address.
So I would send you something of my heart,
June-Paulette... if only I could find it.

poem by Roy William Gotaas
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Acrostic Declaration

(I promised I wouldn't say I loved her till we were face to face. This acrostic was my cheat on that. Acrostic? Read the first letter of each line down the page.)

I may not speak three words that tell all I feel for you:

Leaving me ball-and-chained in the race for your heart.

Or, if you will, hobbled and limping after you,

Virtually struck dumb by lack of other ways to say it:

Entirely at a loss for an alternative.

Yet, given chance and all that’s fair in love and war,

Our pact may be a little cheated with,

[...] Read more

poem by Roy William Gotaas
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