To the Woman That Was

To the woman that was

Once but never more,

To the woman you were,

Once but never more,

I was the man you loved

Once but never more,

Worthy in a mirrored vision

Of that misty dream

Evergreen, lush, ever near,

You on a bed of memories lay

As the wind sighed its consent

And Time stopped to admire.

Burned by reality

The vision was gone

Lived in a moment

And gone.

Beyond reach, beyond sight,

Beyond the grasp of day or night,

Soul anchored to a memory;

The woman that was

Once, but never more.

To you that were,

But never more.

Claddagh Ring

By: Gus Victoria

In the town of Claddagh of Irish kin born

The band that once worn,

Given of friendship and love

Destined from above

To be greater than dreams

In lonely moments dreamt

More in hope than contempt,

Was made to here be betrayed

In the heart that gave

The ring of Eire;

Ashes burnt in the heart’s fire

Upon time’s pyre

You were forgotten,

Spread across the land

By Journey’s fickle hand.

Claddagh ring

Do you still sing?

Blackened and burned,

Loved, rejected, and spurned? 

Buried Dreams, Broken Promises

By: Gus Victoria

Promises spoken softly,

Wind-carried whispered offerings of a love

Gone before it faded,

Strong as it left,

I, weak in its wake,

You, joyful in retreat,

We, shattered in defeat,

The long-fingered icy grasp

Of solitude stalks

The febrile dreams of desperate hope,

Enclosing fast,

Killing them,

Painfully driving them

To a grave of memories,

Amid a procession of promises,

The spectre of everlasting joy

Is the wraith of could have been,

If you’d the eyes to have seen,

But blind you fought

While blind I sought

The love we forgot.

Never to Part

By: Gus Victoria

Beyond a bedazzled shore

A ghostly vessel

Adrift a silvery sea

Owned the tranquil night.

A single broken mast

Once proud with sail

Now sadly bereft

Mourned under the moonlight.

A lone figure stood

Upon that empty deck

A frantic eye searching

A treasure not yet found.

He was by her shade haunted

By her fate tormented,

Love heroically sustained

What guilt thought drowned.

He called out her name,

He cursed his god,

He burned with rage

As he shook with shame.

Silently we witnessed

This spectral spectacle

Of a repentant captain

And his forever doomed lover.

No one alive knows

Why the phantom players

Ever were parted.

No one can say

If ever they will

Find themselves reunited.

A lesson learned

Through ancient relic,

Upon the tablet scribed these words:

“Stone this love can make bloom,

And to ever part,

Is to part too soon.”