Internal Voices

Your image rests so lightly like a sigh within my heart.
With downcast eyes I look, feeling shy within my heart.

Aware of my deep feelings, you claim a resonance.
When you ignore my pleading eyes, I cry within my heart.

Heaven’s light illuminates the secrets of your eyes.
Each glance in my direction makes me fly within my heart.

Denied the nectar of your lips, unrequited love
is hemlock to my grieving soul. I die within my heart.

My days and nights of wanting you rip at my very soul
leaving tattered remnants; I deny within my heart.

I linger. I persist. How can I go on day to day?
I have no ready answers only “why?” within my heart.

I’m drowning in my love and say “Ken, you must survive.”
My salvation: truth. I say goodbye within my heart.


Notes The theme is "Separation" and the ghazal form is tailor made for this. In poetry, the ghazal is a poetic form consisting of rhyming couplets and a refrain. Each line must share the same meter. A ghazal may be understood as a poetic expression of both the pain of loss or separation and the beauty of love in spite of that pain. The form is ancient, originating in 6th century pre-Islamic Arabic verse.