ELIZABETH by Edgar Allan Poe

Elizabeth, it surely is most fit

(Logic and common usage so commanding)

In thy own book that first thy name be writ,

Zeno and other sages notwithstanding;
And I have other reasons for so doing
Besides my innate love of contradiction;
Each poet - if a poet - in pursuing
The muses thro' their bowers of Truth or Fiction,
Has studied very little of his part,
Read nothing, written less - in short's a fool
Endued with neither soul, nor sense, nor art,
Being ignorant of one important rule,
Employed in even the theses of the school-
Called - I forget the heathenish Greek name
(Called anything, its meaning is the same)
"Always write first things uppermost in the heart."

(Zeno, a philosopher who said "that one's own name should never appear in one's own book")

A Story of Love

I was thinking of you, darling.

Concocting a word, picture, story, a shape.

Something that in one handful, would tell you how much you mean to me.

But the word never comes,

the picture never starts,

and the story shapes up to be perfectly, you and I.

& I stand, staring at the blank page;

for cities of wishes and kind words could be spilled from these lips for days

but can never fit our storybook here on this flat blank page.

For, you see, you mean too much

for a word or a photo to complete

everything you mean to me,

everything we will grow to be.

Nothing could ever speak enough

so today, I will leave you with love.

Of A Library

I dreamt of you

once, today.

Crawled through the catacombs of your brain.

I drank the liquid

smelled the stain,

read through the journals

that wrote your name.

The ground, it shivered

across my skin

through the haunting white, covet,

I plummeted in.

Became something I have never been;

introducing the monstrous magnificence.

An exit, so binding,

ran from me.

Holding jealous, was the key,

unlocking worlds never seen.

I sought the moon, 

just past this door

a smile 

she held for me in lore...

Fell beneath 

the cement floor

searching an escape, gasping for; 

breaths be short.

You took the time to come, what for?

Was it worth it? 

Tell me now.

Oh, but your breaths have stopped, so how?

Hands so curious for this skull.

Speak to them, tell it no!

Oh, you can not?

Well what a pity

I suppose I will take your story home with me.

Trapping the cover of your story within me...

The Mystic Runaway

Beyond the seventh tower

across the raven's grasp

lie a tiny wire comb

atop this iron path.

Underneath such tower

live a liar, there.

Finely combing every thread

of her wire hair.

Asking

"Can you save me?

Will you meet me, where?"

Yet her pleas stand,
a siren's song,
floating in the air.

For the path has gone,

the wire, sod,

& just a liar there.