Tom Waits and Mary Oliver
I normally do not remember dreams
That assail me when I sleep,
I normally do not want to;
And when I do remember them,
I tend to wake up in fear and trembling
Because the same God who terrorizes me in the day
With loneliness and depression
Frightens me at night
With heartbreaking images
Of relationships breaking
As violently as windows in a hurricane
Or with tender memories of lovely cats and a golden retriever
Who have long ago entered the grave;
I awake in tears and look under my bed
For my cherished and perished pets.
But two weeks ago, I had a dream that felt like a vision,
It was as clear as the azure sky
And it awakened me instantly like my mother’s voice
Calling to me to get ready for school when I was a small boy.
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poem by Uriah Hamilton
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He Who Finds Love
He who finds love in his heart will not totter on hatred’s wind torn hill nor falter at the ledge of jealousy nor fall in the fields of the mischievous plans plotted by the hands of the envious and the cruel.
Love is an eternal essence that has always been before time began and will exist after time has ceased. Love is the mysterious substance that will transport us to a spiritual place when the time has arrived to dispose of the body and continue the endless journey unseen; Love is the seed that falls from our flower into the ground of others and lives there forever; Love is the kindness of offering food to a stranger who receives it as an angel of God.
In life, there are jobs, vocations, and careers, and then there is everyone’s real work. The real work is the work born out of love, done for love, and completed by love. At the end of the day, it is not money or material success that will comfort your soul when you fall asleep upon your pillow but the understanding that you honestly undertook your real work.
And there is no greater failure you can ever undergo than have the time and ability to feel love, share love, express love and be love and realize you never did so.
poem by Uriah Hamilton
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Redemptive Love
I’m envious of strangers
When their emotions are less constrained than mine,
When they don’t create
Emotional barriers
Like the ones I’ve constructed.
When I was young, this stone-cold face
Was not upon me;
I knew thrilling summer days upon a beach
Traveling the shoreline with sparkling eyes,
I ate exotic fruit in happy pleasure
And was in love with the golden dawn.
In those days, I followed the girls
Who wore long dresses
With the most adorable hemlines
That hung slightly above the grass
Along the garden path,
And I noticed every rose vine
Trailing white picket fences in the sunlight.
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poem by Uriah Hamilton
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Just Thinking About Walt Whitman
In the lunch hour alleys of the city,
We ate our Mexican food with the mild sauce,
Not wanting to raise the heat of our conversations;
Our plans were a rock concert at a small venue
Where the pretty but slightly plump girls scream
Drunken love to the lead singer,
And the tall man with the fresh tan
Hangs out in the back aisle scoping out the chicks;
And a few people begin to dance with missile-happy,
Excited legs spraying all over the place,
And I just want everyone to be joyful
Without punk rocking the scene with any consonantal violence,
And I always want to dig the waitress passing out the beers,
She tends to have cute, short black hair and some hip tattoo;
If I’m already sober, she will give me a free coffee
And I’ll sit in a dimly-lit back corner all lonely
And try to write a melancholy poem about her eyes;
If I’m slightly inebriated, she’ll smile and get an easy tip
And then tell me to behave myself;
Someone will bring pizza and get all-tomato stained
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poem by Uriah Hamilton
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Intensity of Her Eyes
Hypnotic drinks
And spellbound until dawn,
I’ve seen cities linger
In a moonlight haze.
Yesterday,
I was preoccupied
With mythical dreams
And exaggerated concepts
Of romantic defeat.
I have no explanations
For vanishing friends
Or inconclusive rendezvous,
No explanations
For when life
Comes to an end.
Confirming her words
By the intensity of her eyes,
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poem by Uriah Hamilton
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A Stranded Girl on a Friday Night
She was weeping when we met
Outside a party store
Where the lonely purchase their wine;
Her boyfriend had left her behind
All sad and lost after a fight,
Most likely, about inconsequential things.
I picked her up, half out of human kindness,
Half to be beside a female body
Despite how red and unhappy her face.
She was a beautiful girl in a simple way,
She wore a plain flowery dress
With some charming appeal I can’t explain.
She tried to express in broken sentences
Why she and her boyfriend were upset;
I mostly heard tears and my boyfriend this,
My boyfriend that,
I tried to act like it was as completely earth shattering
As she thought it was.
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poem by Uriah Hamilton
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Unforgiving Failure
I've spent so much time
Remembering the lightning flash of your eyes
And the inescapable excitement of your mouth
Caressing words in the dream-like afternoon
When I used to assume I meant something to you.
There was never a breath of yours that was a lie,
Never a hesitation that implored me to believe
I was a man to open your doors,
A lover to take your coat or hold your umbrella,
A gentleman with the privilege of protecting your honor.
I was drunk on the perfume of your essence,
I was staggering to feel your breath on my collar,
I wanted to write the ecstasy of your existence
On secretive ancient scrolls that deities would keep
Down through supernatural centuries,
I wanted a place in your history.
I thought I had the strength to withstand
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poem by Uriah Hamilton
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Prayer Contemplating Final Farewells
Most Compassionate Heart
Who created love as the mystical essence
That sustains the universe,
Be with us in the lonely hour
Of final farewells,
At the moment
When we must acquiesce
To contemplate
The beautiful eyes
Of a friend or loved one
For which we will never
Gaze into again,
The hands that will no longer
Clasp ours in kind unity,
The loving voice stilled
From which we found
Pleasure and solace,
The brother or sister
Who journeyed with us
Through mutual struggles,
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poem by Uriah Hamilton
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Overturn
I've tried to forget the sound of your voice
And your straight auburn hair,
The excited way that you talk,
The poetic sway of your long legs
When through the city you'd walk;
I've tried to forget the music in the air
Anytime that we've met,
Your favorite songs or the books that you've read,
Your travels abroad and exotic thoughts,
Your sexy fedora and party dress.
I've tried to forget a thousand poems
That recount your eyes when you're sad
Or the melancholy of your mouth in the moment
Of a secret hurt you couldn't reveal,
I've tried to forget the sound of your name
And the way it makes me feel.
I've told myself I can abandon
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poem by Uriah Hamilton
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Laura Lee and Her Rose
My name is Laura Lee
And I enjoy spending my time
Playing in the sunlight
With my little Rose,
The daughter of my dreams,
She came to me
As welcome as a lilac breeze
Four years ago when I was twenty.
I’m married to her father
Who is seven years older than me,
I was a young girl
And he was tall and handsome,
His words were sweet
Like tree-ripened summer fruit
And he made me feel loved
Like I never felt before.
When Rose was born,
The love that was inside of me
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poem by Uriah Hamilton
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