Choices

What intercollection of life-events
Brought us to this place?
If you or I had missed a turn
Would we find our lives enlaced?

Amazing when you give it thought
How the cards had to fall
To position us for this moment
To press forward or forestall

The decisions that we make today
Will shape us for tomorrow
Will they bring us happiness
Or fill our lives with sorrow?

For the path we choose to travel
Is filled with possibility
But to act on how we feel right now
Is our sole responsibility

Copyright © 2001 by Jake Olden Shy

Wanting More

Wanting more than I have today
Something missing immaterial
Searching to place a finger
Lost within the depths
Touching nothing save vacancy
Surrounding pitch
A blackness thick and clinging
The prize just beyond my grasp
Reach and almost there
Lose a fragile hold
Plummeting back to
Wanting more than I have today

Copyright © 2000 by Jake Olden Shy

Untitled

I am a fake and a fraud
A waxing intellectual. Rattling
Off mindless prattle
Perplexing
The ignorant. Impressing
The naive

I am a charlatan and a hack
Scribbling amateurish prose
Upon sheets of dull
White paper. My words
Reflecting

What? Characterization
Of emotion? Measure of event?
My chest expands at adoration. Secretly
Guarding insecurity. Dwelling
Deep within my mind

I am no Sexton or Plath or Lowell
My lyric yearn for Longfellow
O to truly feel
As they. To see a world
Though eyes of passion
Break free of binding pragmatism
Venture out of concrete
The world of real
Into a world of feeling
Expression and experience

I don’t desire your praise
My experience can’t spawn
Greatness. I have no pain

Copyright © 2000 by Jake Olden Shy

Love is Lost

A collage of mixed emotion
Holding me in chains
Oceans of contrasting thought
Flowing through my veins

Dreaming of tomorrow
Like a memory forgotten
An emptiness within me
A child misbegotten

I fail to see affection
Love has been erased
Hollow is my heart
My life has been debased

Where can we be going?
What else can I give?
If indeed, I can’t give love
Where then, will we live?

This very tenable feeling
I just can’t seem to find
Once it shined so brightly
Now it leaves me blind

Will there ever be an end?
Will love refill my soul?
Or will I languish in my cell
Hoping for for parole?

How long can you wait for me?
Have I the right to ask?
When finding myself proves to be
A monumental task

Copyright © 1999 by Jake Olden Shy

The Other

I see within the mirror,
a glass representation of myself,
identical eyes staring back at me.
What secrets are revealed
in that reflection?
Can I truly know myself?
Is what I see mirrored
in the minds and hearts
of those around me?
or am I considered differently?

I am known by the other
He knows me in a way I can
never know myself;
in a moments evaluation
he pronounces an instantaneous
judgment of who I am.
In a flash I am reduced
to an impression; a supposition
that is reality to the mind that
owns the thought.
I am a slave to that image
if I have no further contact
with the other.

Gazing on my reflection
in the mirror, can I truly know
something of that image
unknown now to me?
Can I see what others see?
Can I be the other?

Copyright © 1999 by Jake Olden Shy

Drowning

Thunderous crashing
Saline spray
Tearing tide
Waterborne prey

Flailing violent
Swirling splashes
Before an eye
A lifetime flashes

Sallow sparkling
Rippled movement
Beneath the briny
Threshold sent

Upward glimpses
Blue-green haze
Wavering orb
Moonlit maze

Gasping gulping
Liquid breaths
Fire burns
Inside a chest

Shuddering shaking
Slowly sinking
Unconscious euphoria
Moments fleeting

Finally resting
Floating free
Welcome end
Serenity

Copyright © 1998 by Jake Olden Shy

Inside the Hands of Time

In the crisp autumn twilight
Stretched upon cushioned earth
My mind wandering wonders
Staring at the evening sky

Perched within the dimming blackness
Between the twinkling spheres
I see the smallness of me
And the insignificance of man

Worlds collide across the sky
Stars are born, burn, and die
Time is a wheel in constant motion
Endlessly turning toward implosion

Copyright © 1998 by Jake Olden Shy