collab

Thursday, November 19, 2020

Like People In Paintings



soundtrack


Like People In Paintings


Like people in paintings, we sat

Staring ahead, not moving,

Not speaking, not looking around,

Feeling neither alive nor dead,

Just sitting in silence

As our hearts broke in half.


Nobody took our pictures

With cameras they loved

Or painted our portrait

With strokes of a brush

Expressed us in oils

Or faded pastels.


Nobody even noticed us

As we sat there breathing

That hard wooden bench,

That unclouded sky

Nobody frowned, nobody smiled

Nobody cared except you and I.


And yet, the time had come for us

To leave behind

The warmth of embrace,

The joy of  life,

The sweetness of kiss,

The beauty of love.


Still as statues, we sat

Shaded by branches

In the gold of the day

Not touching, but almost

So much needing saying

But too frightened to say.


Like people of an ancient time

(For lovers never change)

On history's pages,

They love and laugh

And hurt and cry

And it always, ever, will be.


You and I, saying goodbye

While holding onto yesterday,

Drifting into shadows

With sunlight in our face

You and I, sitting together 

Though a million miles apart.


What is it that rips the soul to shreds

When two bodies become one?

What is it in a man

That gives and takes away?

And what is it in a woman's heart

That will try to make him stay?


Love.... the terror,

The paradise,

The curse, the blessing,

The wound that kills

That leaves you bleeding

And never heals.


The masters painted it,

The composers wrote it,

The singers sang it,

The musicians played it

Yet no one, no one

Has held it in their hands for very long.


Like people in paintings,

Now we posed

With tears upon our cheeks,

Sighing like willows in the wind

But unlike people, hanging, framed,

We stood at last in silence and walked away.


©by Voo Shining Stone

Nov 19, 2020

4:07 a.m.