Poetic Form 29: Free Verse

Believe

I’m trying to hold on, I swear, 

to believing in love.

Dear God, I feel like an 8 year old again,

hearing the stories that Santa isn’t real

from the school yard bullies.

Standing on that cusp of a belief

between what I feel on Christmas morning

and what my mind knows of the world.

Even though I can’t stand their voices,

their jaded taunts.

Always in a group, their laughter mean.

My mind knows there is truth

in their destruction of my joy.

Is there no longer a desire to see what love can do?

Have we dumped all our resources into hate?

The flames high,

heat radiating for days.

I know how tempting a fire is in the middle of a cold night.

Red flames dancing seductively,

promising to keep the wolves at bay.

But the fire will only burn if it is constantly fed.

There is only so much a person can sacrifice to pain,

until there are no more planks left to build a life with.

Dear God, I am tired!

My armour pierced.

My reserve spent.

My fingers blistering.

My body weak from holding my children away from

the onslaught of division and wreckage.

I am tired!

My eyes closed from the sweat dripping into them.

I want to believe,

I want

to believe.

To believe…

I believe,

I do...

I have lived long enough to know

that Christmas mornings

are still filled with joy

because I am the one that wraps the presents,

fills the stockings

and places the packages under the tree,

as all my children dream.

I know of the joy they will feel come morning,

because I believe.

I believe in love,

    even as I stand up on spent legs.

Poetic Form #29: Free Verse

Free verse is a form that is free from limitations of regular meter or rhythm, and 
does not rhyme with fixed forms, yet still uses literary devices like metaphors, 
personification, irony, and similes.