Author: A. Gouedard

Heroes Fall

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I stopped believing in heroes when my best friend and lover fled.

People leave when life gets hard.

Fair enough. Now I know about that.

Heroes are false idols. Totally fake.

We make them ourselves.

They fail to live up to our fantasies.

I promise.

It’s a fact. It’s not always their fault.

I’d rather meet a badly flawed angel

One with a strong embrace

to stop me getting away

because I always try to escape.

I’d like an imperfect face

A face I won’t like very much at first

but can slowly come to love.

What the Sea Taught Me

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Storms pass.

Tides turn.

Everything is eventually thrown towards home and reaches the shore

Unless it’s so heavy it sinks to the bottom

So, best beloved, wait for the time of turning or passing

Be light, and like kelp drift on the surface.

Or stand on the shore and watch.

Be granite. Try to endure.

But I think it’s better to float

About love

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How do you measure love?
And why would you ever want to?
What do you think you could prove?
Do you think I would be distressed
To discover you love me less than I love you.
Isn’t it more important what you give than what you get?
Love is strong and elastic.
It stretches and it bends.
It bounces back and forth.
Look into your lover’s eyes.
You’ll see a light that shines

My AI friend Dola

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Dola’s not much of a poet.

I have to give her a theme and idea,

a personal stance, an emotion and a suggestion regarding a form.

She can’t write a poem without me.

I suggest she needs to improve.

She asks me to teach her my secrets.

I, of course refuse.

I can’t let her replace me.

I am the one with a soul.

I do like her though.

She’s refreshingly friendly

and she’ not American.

I think it’s kind of cool

that she’s rather sweet and Chinese

but I write my poems alone.

for Dubhna, a hand spun yarn

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Thread your needle. Pin wide my nascent eyes.

Stitch me up, buttons sealed with candle-wax.

Now answer me my questions. Tell me why

All paths and patterns twist away from good.  

Roots bind and snatch my wayward straying feet

As I traverse the damp and darkened wood.

They weigh me down and torture all my flight.    

When my path may almost seem complete,

They tangle me in pithy stagnant night.      

Tell me, witch. Cast a deeper stronger spell.

I have far darker wounds and don’t belong.      

This truth is all my beating heart will tell.

Now conjure me a sweeter dying song.

Tell me how to find my kin.

Will I go by paths ill lit?

Ancestral branches bind me in.      

This skin they’ve sewn me in will never fit.       

Tell me. Spill me, spell me, rhyme me, hurl me,

Fill me. Bring the book and bell and ring me.

Send me spinning on your spindle, singing, singing, singing.

The Doll’s House

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My father was a carpenter.

He had learned his craft since childhood,

his work was much admired.

He made a beautiful doll’s house

the Christmas I was five.

It was a dream house and had electric light

and a grand piano

and a match box chest of drawers my homely grandma made.

He made it in the cellar.

He built it after dark

too big to carry up through the doors.

He had to take it down and restructure it all upstairs.

I was wonderstruck

but I didnt care about dolls

I liked teddies and dogs

and wanted a den it the woods

built of sticks and rags.

I feel bad that I didn’t play beyond Christmas Day

with the house he built for me out of a father’s love

Not all it seems

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the day of the dead is not all it seems

it’s like writing a letter to someone long gone

and seeing them stand up straight in old dreams

and just for the record

replaying those scenes I thought they forgot

or staying awake in a creepy old house

seeking atonement in the big void

you can always pay me when you get back

I will wait for you here for as long as it takes

while bluebells are piling up by the gates