Would I die a happy man
If I heard my name
Rumble across the Norwegian plains
And forest hills tomorrow?

Would I turn my back on all
That's mine; leave it untouched
And walk into arms
Of loving light and not look over

My shoulder?
Did I love?
Did I lose?
Did I laugh?

Did I scream?
I fought.
I sat at times and thanked.
For everything.

My hand never left my sword.
The other held glass, held pen,
Held breast.
My mouth held some of the rest.

I put pride and disappointment
In the eyes of my parents.
Put praise and curse on the lips
Of my brother,

Had many a friend, lost old,
Made new.
Did things I hoped I never would do.
Regrets like mine, are for the few.

I've seen shadows I cannot explain
Dance between trees in the
Morning hours. I've slept by a
Bonfire, face tickled by silken

Showers of morning dew, and
Knew that I didn't sit alone.
I've seen trolls hit by sunlight
Scream and turn into stone.

I've let myself down.
Put my name to shame.
My head has hurt many a girl...
But my heart has conquered worlds.

So I'll stand when I'm called
With my back straight as trees.
I've written my poetry,
Many a piece

That might live forever, unlike
My own coil.  
Buried deep within
Internet soil.

Some time in the future
When all that I know
Has vanished and died like
Last winter's snow,

And the sword that they bury
My bones with is less
Than rust coloured dust on the
Dust of my chest,

Some poem I wrote might
Oblivion resist.
...I hope to the gods it is
Better than this.

Prose is writing that goes right across the page. It rolls on, sentence after sentence, usually about things mundane.
But Verse is where you yourself
Decide the length of
Line.

Or stanza indeed. Some call lines “verses”. They can be very long.
Or short.
Iambic metre may be used
And other metres too.
You can write anapaests if you wish.

Yet Poetry is neither prose nor verse
As such.
It is about skyscraper forests looming large,
Trees spiking though mysterious mists.
Poetry is sunshine, filling your heart
With radiant joy.
Black nights of deep depression
Give way to a golden dawn.
The lonely
Find Love.
That’s Poetry.

Paul Butters

The road behind bares us a backdrop, too many nights find us fractured in our thoughts and the dreamers we once were are far from the two people who stand today.

We're broken, mere splinters of our shipwreck past, driftwood on a shore that drowns every time the ocean breathes.
The path is littered with slaughtered dreams that didn't bleed.

As time and tide wait for no man shall we find it a tragic scene?
simply erased with the sunsets demise?
No one gets away without a scar and mine speak a road map to chaos
and a found hello to you.

Mine own scars are fingertips
gouged into the sand and faded
but salted by tears of the ocean, inerasable by the tide.
A soul washed up upon the shore, a road map etched delicately into fine bones.
You can trace where I'd been before. All roads lead to your hello.

In broken lines and have uttered phrases and one too many empty night.
Backdrop of chaos does paint in the darkest colors you could ever imagine .

How does it gets so flawed by our own creations and vices my dear?
Does it still ring ever so true?

The bell rings true whispering distant voices
Empty nights are just bottles lined up as dead soldiers
We contemplated our own truths and fell victim to our own vices
The backdrop is black, no colour beneath skin.
Honestly? Where does our downfall begin?

Two ships underneath the nightscape past the spark once understood the flame and nothing more .
In empty alleys, like cats to prowl, we find our moments, and then bury our thoughts to lay for no others to see.

half written papers and half heard conversation the keys of the piano haunt the silence as myself shadows that still remain.

Nothing is but a thought and those are like dead flowers laid to waste a reflection of far better times

The night crawls to meet the day as it has so many times before.

The thought of the minds bottle lay empty upon the table.
A fond farewell is but a sugar coated goodbye.
And I seldom have minced my words to mask their sting.

The page forever bleeds.

Pages that lay scattered on a ***** floor
Bleeding ink into cracks
that will forever more
hide the spirit of our souls.

Sitting in the
Executive boardroom
The CEO on speakerphone
It's all fun and games
Until someone loosens a tie

Down at the
Local watering hole
Enjoying a round of darts
It's all fun and games
Until someone
Loses an eye

Thousands of doors are going
To open Today
After a Long Day
Of Sultry Dark
Slowly moving Clouds
But what it is!
As if the speed of the wind more than
A Hurricane

Extreme sound Rocking the Sky,
The Home
And the Expanding
Barren Field,  
Repeatedly being Thunder Around
As far as I can See
Across the Horizon
The Rain has come down
As Cats and Dogs
 
Dim Light in the Room
Hope, despair shaken
Windows Open
Southern waves
Randomize the Poetry Books
Flying Pages,
Never before or after in the

The Scent of the Poetry
In the Air
Sky-word Sentences
I have seen my Reflection
In the Light of the Short
The past Knocking
On the Closed Door
To open the Wide Sky

You have sat down
In the Horizon
That has reminded
The First Love Poem
Where I read
And planted my Dreams
Bringing the garden
Roses,
Marigold,
Sunflowers

Where there the moonlit
Of moonlight has
Crafted the Dreams  
Like an Imagination
As if,
Unclogging Peacock's Feather

But the sudden wind  
Increasing the Velocity
Light has been Extinguished
Yet the Flame Alive
But don't see my Reflection,
In the distant Glass,
In the Poetry,
In the Words

In an Angular way,
Through the Windows
Rain coming into the Limelight
Put away the Poetry
And the Dreams
As the Books of Poetry has Seemed
Like the Stones

But Yet I'm waiting,
For The Next morning
Where the Hope will Come Again
In the Shining Smile of Light

Melancholic pale moon, lovelorn shy ******,
kept on peeping from her corner of the sky,
through the window we left deliberately open
knowing her curiosity, as detained ever, to be solitary.
Let her find out that we both didn't sleep
or remain quiet , not a moment, all night,
as the night sky responded vehemently
in celestial pyrotechnics to our delighted squeals.