Shoebox Love Song

My heart is in a shoebox

I think it’s pretty safe

It’s sitting by the corner

Left unwritten on the page

 

Someone please explain to me

I’d really like to know

How people can so carelessly

Fill rooms with halls of show

 

I hide my heart inside a shoebox

It’s tucked under my bed

I try to write it down sometimes

But it’s always better in my head

 

Tell me what I look like

I really want to hear

Tell me how I’m pretty despite

The wrongs I’ve held too dear

 

My heart lies in a shoebox

With the letter held and read

I think it’s safe beneath the rocks

Of a level ridden tread

 

Your name is in my heart

My heart is in the box

Remember four when you fall apart

But who am I to talk

 

Write my name and save it plain

The way it’s meant to be

Wear it when there’s chance of rain

On the heart that’s on your sleeve

 

Will you engrave it on your heart?

Nothing but my name

Carry it with you when we depart

So I may do the same

 

           Please

           Give me time I’m not so quick

           To lead myself out from my own grip

                                                I’m not as drunk as you’d prefer

           But with just a little time I might be heard

           But with just a little time I might say a few words

           That would bring me down to my knees

           With all the glory I deserve

           My words are my music and the chords are all wrong

           And I won’t pretend to right a love song

           

           Please

           Write my name and save it plain

           Just for the time of day when we all proclaim

                                   I love you

                                   I miss you

           Dear Tabby, I was dreaming just a while ago

           I saw myself holding out a piece of my soul

           My heart was in the shoebox with your letters folded close

           I gave up on romantics so I locked up the soul

           My heart’s still lying in the shoebox where it cannot be disposed

           No one took me for a poet so what good have I told?

           All the fiction in the world can never behold

           What I’ll write as you and me will scream as we are

           Spiraling:

                       Downward

                                   Upon all

          The people

                      Still dreaming

                                  And then we’ll

         Distort things

           With all of our new life

 

Reviews

[R J Askew]

I kept thinking as I read this of Le Grand Meaulnes, the great romantic French novel of lost teenage love. You conjour up a wistful sense of surrender. The love is over, is safely locked away, but is clearly not over. It makes me wonder can a love be one sided? Yes, of course it can. There more be many instances of such one sided love which last a lifetime. Perhaps it is sufficient to worship the lost love in a one sided way for the rest of life. Isn't that what Petrach did...he saw Laura maybe only once and spent the rest of his life fantasising and writing about her. Maybe the frozen love is better than a love that becomes dirty washing, ironing, weariness and mortgages. It sounds like the love you write of here is a classic young romance when romance still has meaning and has not got lost in the busyness of day to day living. So for a reader caught up in the bussyness it provides a little escape, perhaps to recall his or her early loves.

I like the repeated return to the box, this gives real obsessive focus. I like 'fill rooms with halls of show' which seems like a reference to noisy up-front individuals, all TV teeth n smiles...great contrast to the modest confines of the shoebox. 'Wear it when there's chance of rain, on the heart that's on your sleeve' is a lovely line...suggests sacrifice for the loved one and a physical intimacy.

But the poem gets really interesting when it gets its second breath...I really like that little gasp and the sustained continuance. The drunk line fascinates, but I can't work it out...and the knees line hints at some drama. And the image of the soul being given is very strong... 'You have my heart now here! My soul, take it!
And the final twist seems to be poetry trumps fiction in some fantasitcal way. So the poem ends in a very different mood to how it begins...it travels from a despair to a sort of elation after going even deeper into the love by the giving of the soul. The ending is a sort of spike of positiveness. Enjoyed the read.

[thetinydancer]

"Fill rooms with halls of show" I think that's my favorite part.

I'm having a little trouble staying with the flow when you take it out to that ee cummings part toward the end but, i like it.

[mysticgmekeepr]

Welcome to writers cafe! Thats a very heartfelt poem. personally I think you should keep writing poetry. It seems you have a poet's soul and if you keep writing your thoughts and feelings as you did here, you will no doubt evolve into a great writer of poetry!