Definition of Friendship

Anonymous

I had this and lost it completely. During the years I didn't have a friend near me, I came across this and remembered my old friends (this was before cell phones and internet was available in my house). I hung on to it and I am proud to say that I am this type of friend.

Friendship is the comfort, the inexpressible comfort of feeling safe with a person having neither to weigh thoughts nor measure words, but pouring all right out just as they are, chaff and grain together, certain that a faithful friendly hand will take and sift them, keep what is worth keeping and, with a breath of comfort, blow the rest away.

Quest for Rest

1998 by Melanie Lynch Evans

I tried to sleep on the couch last night
but I just flopped, rolled, and flipped
You would have thought the kitchen faucet
was in stereo as it dripped
On a rageful stomp toward the noise
My tender feet found Lego toys
In sleep deprived haste
I dove back into my space
Nestled myself in, thinking
to get any rest must be a sin!

I threw the covers over my head
curled up into a ball
and silence gave way to a mouse
crunching through the wall
So up I went, to quiet the
stupid little pest
I hit the wall, fist and all
to stop his frenzied fest.
Tromping back to the couch
he started gnawing again
so I surrendered and
picked up the pen.

We lived in Creola, AL and those were hard days.

Old Love Song

Heard an old love song
and I wonder if you did too
Like an old record spinning through time
you haven't left the edges of my mind

For a couple of words or so
in some way we had been
two beating hearts togeher again

And just like the song,
all good things must come to an end~

Melanie Lynch (Evans)

A Thought Exhaled into the Night Air

Dawn comes too soon
Reality's lost to a fantastic moon
Darkness Steals busy sight
Calming the world by night

Seems as though the clock is still
As I breathe out from my window sill.

Melanie Lynch Evans 1996 (photo Scooter E. from 2012 Orange Beach)

I Wish I Could Go Back and DO the Little Things You Asked Me to

Anonymous

My hands were busy throughout the day
I didn't have much time to play
The little games you asked me to.
I didn't have much time for you....

I'd wash your clothes, I'd sew and cook,
But when you'd bring your picture book
And ask me please to share your fun,
I'd say: "A little later, son."

I'd tuck you in all safe an night
And hear your prayers, turn out the light,
Then tiptoe softly to the door...
I wished I'd stayed a minute more.

For time is short, the years rush past...
A little boy grows up so fast.
No longer is he at your side,
His precious secrets to confide.

The picture books are put away,
There are no longer games to play,
No goodnight kiss, no prayers to hear...
That all belongs to yesteryear.

My hands, once busy, now are still.
The days are long and hard to fill.
I wish I could go back and do
The little things you asked me to.

A Letter from A Soldier to His Son

by G.S. Vigor

My son, I fear you're becoming a man
And I am not there to guide your hand
May God damn this accursed war,
but I know what I'm fighting for

My son, I want you to know I love you dearly
And, even in this hell, I want you
and your mother near me
Fret not, my son, for your dear ol' dad
Though I know my absence has made you sad

Do not hate and do not fear
those are the traits that brought me here
Listen, son; hear me well
This war I'm in is a living hell
But I'll fight on to keep us free

I'm fighting, my son, for you and me.

Myself (Edgar Guest)

Myself
by Edgar Guest

I have to live with myself, and so,
I want to be fit for myself to know;
I want to be able as days go by,
Always to look myself straight in the eye;
I don't want to stand with the setting sun
And hate myself for the things I've done.
 

 

I want to go out with my head erect

I want to deserve all men's respect;

I don't want to hide on a closet shelf
A lot of secrets about myself,
And fool myself as I come and go
Being bluster, bluff and empty show 

I never can hide myself from me,

I see what others may never see,

What kind of man I really am;
I don't want to dress myself in sham.

I know what others may never know,
I never can fool myself -- and so,
Whatever happens, I want to be
Self-respecting and conscience free.

You Learn (Anonymous)

Poems are for the reader's interpretation. I have had this for a long time and it does help a young person "step into themselves" if they have been leaning too much on others to validate them.

“After a while you learn the subtle difference
Between holding a hand and chaining a soul,
And you learn that love doesn’t mean leaning
And company doesn’t mean security.
And you begin to learn that kisses aren’t contracts
And presents aren’t promises,
And you begin to accept your defeats
With your head up and your eyes open
With the grace of a woman, not the grief of a child,
And you learn to build all your roads on today
Because tomorrow’s ground is too uncertain for plans
And futures have a way of falling down in mid-flight.
After a while you learn…
That even sunshine burns if you get too much.
So you plant your garden and decorate your own soul,
Instead of waiting for someone to bring you flowers.
And you learn that you really can endure…
That you really are strong
And you really do have worth…
And you learn and learn…
With every good-bye you learn.”

I'm Writing Another Man Today

I'm writing another man today
Tired of what you still don't say
I'm going to see Him soon
In my prayer closet this afternoon.
He will ease the void you leave
For another week, where I can breathe
In this house we call a home
Where we're all together, all alone

I'm going to tell him my heart is broken
and He will say what you leave unspoken
He will actually listen to my heart's desire
He'll fill me with HIS PASSIONFIRE.

You look, but He sees
My hard heart soften on my knees
You touch, but do not feel
a false reality in a hope that's real

He loves me in ways your unaware
To let me know Someone cares
Sometimes I wonder if you see Him there
and catch glimpses of my love affair

But for now, I wait, pen in hand,
for you to become another man.

Melanie Sue Evans 2007

Living water saturate my thirsty soul.....(photo not mine)

Playing House

So much passion without a place
I'm getting older in the face
House is decked with empty frames
dusted with tradition's empty games
Playing by the rules of "love's" charade
a waterfall of words that never cascade
blue birds of happiness with nothing to say
we're just playing house day by day.
Inside we are so alive
buried in this fearful disguise
and Denial makes her wishes
while you work, and I, the dishes.
Love on purpose don't stay in the past
When you work a life, it will last
Lonely if it's only one of two
but the Creator, He will stand with you.
~And there is a friend that sticks closer than a brother.

Melanie Lynch-Evans

Playing House came from the irony of empty family frames on my shelves.
I was also "Waiting to exhale" or "holding my breath" for things to get better
or take form instead of taking responsibility spiritually in faith to MAKE things healthy and happen. I only looked to my husband for my worthwhen it really came from God. I punished him for not validating my worth (He did hurt it though) when I chose to marry him.

1989 Poem for my Dad

You and I
My love for you Daddy, runs deep
an eternity within my soul
where the tender thoughts of you and I
dwell to fill me whole
Everyday we spend apart
prolongs the emptiness inside
I long to know PURE MANLY LOVE
that loneliness doesn't confide
Ponder the mystery of our days entwined
searching in your songs I measure
the distance between your heart and mine
across a world of buried treasure
I looked for you in strangers
I wrote to you in art
despite the songs of bitterness
that tried to break my heart.
I found you in the Lord.
By: Melanie  Lynch Evans (17 yrs. old)

Little Thoughts of Mine

The greatest difficulty is an effective simplicity. (Studying Jesus)

"It's not true," the Indian within me stated, "that many moons will heal your wounds."
Time is only anesthesia --not a healer.

I am not to control my fate or destiny! I am to control myself one day at a time. For then and  only then will I arrive in my destiny!

Tis a marvel that one come into the world crying, and leave it laughing.

The heart remembers what the mind forgets.

I don't believe beauty is in the eye of the beholder becaue they keep looking past my shoulder.

He tells me he loves me and its warm like sunshine.......that burns.

I slipped on a kiss and fell in love.

You haven't noticed the differences we share. Am I so good an actress or don't you care?

Funny how some places hold a memory for you.

You protect yourself with words unspoken
but the silence leaves my heart broken.

My lips are the instruments that play the songs of my heart.

No one could take your place
but I weep silently beneath a smiling face
Your arms were like the strongest foundations
where I grew roots and wings
Your heart like the deepest sea
where I found the most beautful things


I know you send me on a chore when I sit down by you.

When you come to the kitchen and hug me, I feel like you took the hug instead of giving it.

Love in the Gray

I kiss you but my lips are numb
My heart sings no more song
Has the love story ended
that has played for so long?
My hand in yours
but I can't feel you there
I never really see you
even though you're there
When I look into your eyes
the colors aren't as fair
They used to be vivid
I lost myself in the stare
I penned you  poems
wove my love into rhyme
but now, the song has stopped
and no words come to mind.

August 16th 1989 by Melanie Lynch Evans
(My first love)

The Weekend Fight

Well, we had the weekend fight
Now, it's alright 'till next Fri. night.
I want to go have fun
after all the work I've done
You will want to rest and
Blame me for my PMS
Mon. thru Fri. It's all good
or its just misunderstood
Really on trial
and in denial
More hurt to file
in that folder in my head
as you touch my shoulder
in the bed.

A Man's Tears

A tear's purpose is to mend
A tear is a gentle friend
It's blood from your soul's veins
They comfort in pain

Hardened hearts, clinched eyes
Smother the tender cries
from the child forever within
chained beneath cold blood and skin
Warmth streams down the salty stain
Dousing that inner flame
that blackened mental skies
erupting from a flame of pride

Just as rain lifts a flower from gravity strong
Your tears are not weak nor wrong.

There is nothing as tender or precious as the tears of a calloused heart.

Melanie Lynch-Evans

Love is not Time's Fool

He stole himself from me.
He sold himself to her. What began as magic
has twisted quite tragic.
Time...like the sun
evaporated our "love"
My heart became a lifeless desert.
Like a refreshing rain, he first
quenched all needs drowning me with "love" but Reality (the Sun)
came and dried it all up leaving it drier and more cracked than it was before.
It was Shakespeare that said it best: "Love is not time's fool."

Melanie Lynch Evans 1994

Freedom Has Its Prisons

Voids of intimacy
   Fill my flesh
Leaving me full
    Of emptiness.
Freedom has it's prisons.

Melanie Lynch (Evans) 1993

Android Addict

Dim lighting features a glow on your face, I wish it was about me;
but instead, it's about android technology.
Motorola Blur is a new fancy name for "Her."
She has your mind
She has your sight
She holds both your hands
It just isn't right!
Across the love seat your toes wiggle atop the chair
a flag of hope there is life ,still, in your downward stare.
Only room for one
beside the technozombie you've become.
Like look'n at you in another dimension
I can't remember your undivided attention.
She has Facebook as bait
and seductive apps I now hate
He admires her GPS system to track
but when I ask "where you been", he gives me flack!
SO, I propose a new app, the app called SLAP
Seriously Losing Android People
and it should come with a MAP
so you can hit them on the head with it
O.K. it's late and I am getting silly now. Meow.

By Melanie Lynch Evans 2011
(GEtting a little "SIC" myself)

A Family of Phones

Family of phones without the time
I can't hear you beween the lines
Wireless hearts, disconnected
Distraction and distance have corrected
A thousand times,
Our silent crimes
Of not reaching out and touching someone.

Oh, I've got your number!
I know how you really don't feel
We just pay diplomatic "respects"
And the telephone bill.

A Family of Phonies
Says, Love you, gotta go
And spend time with strangers
That they will never know.

Melanie Lynch (Evans) revised 2012

Hinder Me

Help me be blind if I hide a wicked mind
Hinder me from singing if it's a fool's rhyme
Help me close my eyes unlike the anxious child
Hinder me from arrogant victory keeping me mild

Help to cripple my dancing in the darkness of fools
Hinder my searching for the "Light" of Satan's "jewels"
Help me fail to teach hollow and deceptive trends
Hinder me from hurting the things You would mend

Help me become sick in my double- minded ways
Hinder me from praying the way a hypocrite "prays"

Help me not to decorate with fleshly desperation
Hinder me so I might illustrate Heaven's inspiration. 

Melanie Lynch-Evans Jan 29, 1992 revised 2012

Find Joy Today and Not Tomorrow

December wont seem quite as merry

And January's clock will not tarry

Time blows clouds on across the sky

February's future will be forgotten

as time's ticking by~

March, marching on like an autograph

April washes weeks away from a bird's bath

May marks a memory made

Soon to be forgotten in summer sleeper's shade

Though summer's leaf be green

What's taking the Lord so longis reflected

 but unseen

Even though I 'd like to stop a leaf

from turning brown, stop Fall from falling down,

Fruit must do its dying before coming aground

So, nature brings and takes her gifts

Season spirits come and take their shifts

The twig of time, in the beak of the bird of borrow,

breaks with hearts of those that put off loving until tomorrow.

1991 Melanie Lynch-Evans

My Garden Sign

Garden of Love

Let Love be a garden

where the soil of heart not harden

both rain and shine

take turns in time

feeding the soul in prosperity

and wisdom blooms in charity.

Melanie Lynch (Evans) revised 2012

A Moment I Remember

I found God's Love in the palm of my hands.

Waiting and Watching

Waiting on the wind to blow
Coolness across my being
Watching for the Son to glow
Some Light into my seeing
Waiting on the day to know
Love and mankind agreeing
Watching for the time to show
Freedom is finished pleaing

Waiting on the peace man bound
between the stars of the sky
Watching for the selfless found
that the selfish passed on by
Waiting on the trumpet sound
while the wicked wonder why
Watching for the oppressed crowned
So my Spirit can F..L..Y

1993  Melanie Lynch (Evans)

Bleeding Pen

I release my pain
through my pen
ink bleeds
from sorrow within.

1990 Melanie Lynch (Evans)

A Teenager's Cry

Trapped by fears
Choking on tears
My eyes see dreams
washed away by esteems

I feel locked out
Where do I fit in
Family is broken
so what is a friend

I need to belong
I've been alone too long
Well, except for when
I risked protection for a "friend"

So when I am betrayed
People do not see
I have only me and
that's not security

No one really, that understands
human shoulders with no heart
I wonder why I must be
set so far apart

Locked in loneliness
Tears of stone
I wear pretty clothing
hiding wounds to the bone

I wish you could hear....

Melanie Lynch-Evans 1993

If Only

If only he knew,
If only they could see,
If only will never be.....

by Melanie Lynch Evans

Glacier

From a geological study of glaciers at the University of Mobile
under the professor Mimi Fearn (best teacher ever).

May 3, 1995

Loneliness is the glaciation of the heart
Where warmth once did flow
But everything now is cold
And time glides by so slow.

The glaciers strong and silent prison
Beyond the surface deep below
Contains the remains the heart envisioned
That once had the life to grow.

The painful erosion of time and scope
Between the mountains of my mind
Cut chunks out of established valleys of hope
Leaving deeper scars behind

Lying beneath this icy sheet
Melting on a bed of rock
My moraine of ink at its retreat
Is all that I have got.

Melanie Lynch (Evans)

Mels, an Emergent Writer

at Hoppa's house in the dining room

Poetics 1451b

Aristotle said, "Poetry is more philosophic than history since it's statements are of the nature of universals, whereas those of history are singulars."

The scripture and the world meet

Ecclesiastes 5:19

New King James Version (NKJV)

¹⁹ As for every man to whom God has given riches and wealth, and given him power to eat of it, to receive his heritage and rejoice in his labor—this is the gift of God.

Ecclesiastes 6:1

New King James Version (NKJV)

6 There is an evil which I have seen under the sun, and it is common among men:

² A man to whom God has given riches and wealth and honor, so that he lacks nothing for himself of all he desires; yet God does not give him power to eat of it, but a foreigner consumes it. This is vanity, and it is an evil affliction.

Here is a blast from MY past in the 80's and few people remember this song, but I remember it sittting in the sun bathing by the pool at Cretia's house:

Ode to the Roaches

(from the original author in the USA in its first form before the Poetry Winner scam)

by Melanie S. Evans

Scuttle, Scuttle, little roach
How you run when I approach!
Up above the pantry shelf
hastening to secrete yourself.
In the garbage heap they leave
Do you browse among the cheese?
Does your long antennae whisk its
Gentle tips across the biscuits?
How delightful to suspect
All the places you have trekked
Under the fridge, above the door,
Must you produce 10,000 more?

My Boys in War

If my kids ever go to war
I hope they know what it's for
Wearing a uniform is but a part
of winning with knowledge and of heart
Live and die with all Christ's might
Freedom is the ability to DO what's right.

by Melanie Lynch-Evans  (I looked for  a pic off the movie Pearl Harbor/Ben Afflek (spell?) that has soldier boots next to a child's bare feet both kneeling and praying before Dad does to war...but I could not find it after an hour of searching).

Loneliness Haiku (a la carte)

Carving your name on the wall
      Your memory's ghost
    in the prison of my heart

by Melanie Lynch-Evans

The Cursing "Prophet" Haiku (a la carte)

"Growing older, you will see!"
Long you will have heard me.
   ~ Self-fulfilling prophecy~

by: Melanie Lynch-Evans

Truth Haiku (a la carte)

Truth, a gift you discover
     in quiet delight
   unfolds in a paradox.

by Melanie Lynch-Evans

Nature's Origami :)

Love Haiku (a la carte)

Love, a tumbled fleshless dance
            two butterflies
       Carrying His energy

by Melanie Lynch-Evans

Don't Hate the Puppets

Double minded people
allegiance unaligned
Spirits play puppets
with people they find

Against flesh and blood
we war not
but lies and fears
and pride we've got

On goes the drama
it's all about me
cut the strings
in Christ we're free

Free to love
behind the scences
trusting Him
in all means.

Melanie Lynch-Evans  2001

Red Carpet Moment

A lonely concrete walk through the city
Numb to hope, inundated with self pity
Her fragrant debut caressed his face
On a red carpet in a world of grays

Spun him around on the tips of his woes
Against his will, the desire rose
Imprinting her red sunkissed hair
with an accidental invitation to stare

Entranced with desire
warmth igniting to fire
in a quiet scream he stood
too far from the taxi's hood

That moment when ordinary is sublime
It leaves as fast as it comes in time
And all the love that's found alone
returns from what's not been known

Another time, again, they'd never meet
the red carpet ran out from beneath their feet.

Melanie Lynch Evans age 17 revised in 2012