This is one of my all time favorite poems that I have written. When I was a young man, I was obsessed with William Shakespeare. Seriously. This is sort of a light hearted mockery of his lofty prose and angsty love stories. It’s absurd and I love it dearly. Thinking on it today, it still cracks me up. In the poem, I make fun of his perfect prose and rhyming schemes while trying to mimic it at the same times and it turns out rather hilarious.
It’s silly,
I know.
Gargantuan towers rise—
melodramatic things,
aren’t they?
Like some lost page
from Shakespeare’s angsty phase,
all groaning stone and ghostly weight.
Statues smirk as though they know the punchline
to a joke I haven’t heard.
And yet,
in this realm of brooding façades,
my bliss comes softly.
A kiss.
Because lips don’t mock,
don’t preach in iambic riddles,
don’t carve tragedy
into the silence between breaths.
Old Will would twist this into sonnets,
tie up my heart in rhymes,
pretend love isn’t messy,
or that hope doesn’t trip on itself.
But what he missed—
in all his “wherefore art thou” dramatics—
is the simple truth:
sometimes,
she smiles.
And in that smile,
there’s no need for soliloquy,
no tragedy waiting in the wings.
She smiles,
and for a moment,
she knows she’s worth it—
worth the rose I’d burn for her,
the dimple I hide like a fool.
While I wage wars in my head,
the screaming chaos of battles
no poet could ever frame,
she is calm,
unbothered.
What do they know of this fight?
Of fear that snarls like a beast?
Of rage that whispers promise
you pray to forget?
Maybe it’s silly.
But I laugh,
because in this ridiculous instant,
I am undone.
Smiling like a madman.
Laughing like I know the secret.
Breathing—alive despite it all.
And though the dark tower looms,
its shadow stretching across my thoughts,
I won’t break for it.
I may never conquer its heights,
may never face the beast
waiting in its highest keep
on its top floor.
And still—
still, I let go.
Because her scent lingers,
pirouetting through my brain,
an unruly dancer
that refuses to stop.
It kisses my memories,
lays waste to my resolve.
And even as I’m left
with the ghost of a kiss,
skin aching with absence,
hands crying out
for what they can’t hold—
still,
I write.
Not like Shakespeare,
with his polished metaphors
and well-behaved quills.
No, my pen scratches wildly,
sloppy declarations of love,
angry declarations of war.
Because this tower,
it calls me.
Damn you.
It’s my peace and my torment.
And I will rage,
and fight,
and climb—
mocking every bard
and every ghost
along the way—
until I see its top floor.
And then I’ll let Shakespeare know.
That he was full of shit.
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