Thank you, Tawt. I will have to do that. I already found the poetry forum and posted a couple there. May you have a good day =^)

Thank you, soufie. I actually tired indenting, tabbing, and spacing to define separation of paragraphs, but it lumped it all together every time I hit save. Any advice on how I can type it to make it separate my paragraphs?

I was surprised to find that it was not easy for me to fill out the "about me" section of my profile. Usually, I am better at writing what I would like to say than actually speaking it, but in this case, it seems more difficult, because although I am still new to this, and know I have the opportunity to make some really good friends, I am still conscious to the fact that there is still the possibility of finding that special someone, and it seemed that most of what I had to say about myself was better said up front, even if it seems like a deterrence to some, especially with it being so lengthy. I just believe it is all things someone would like to know up front. That being said, any feedback or advice, especially from the sincere and respectfully honest ladies, would be greatly appreciated. Thank you, and may you all have a wonderful day =^)

An amazingly beautiful write. Such depth and description of feeling. The first half is where I find myself in my own experiences, and the second half is where I still look forward to. Thank you so much for sharing =^)

Thank you, and you are quite welcome. I love the way you described the feeling in such a moment. It is much like a flower budding to bloom again. Beautifully spoken =^)

Diary of the Damned -- Wednesday, February 26th, 2014 - First entry

Up out of the gloom we sometimes rise
Surrounded by gloom we sometimes stay
Each of us clawing away in our tombs
At the walls we have built 'round our hearts on display
For things never seem to go quite the same way
As we so would have had it in our way alone
And the realization doth seldom occur
That with too many standards now written in stone
How could we expect others to share our reactions
When often it's so hard controlling our own
The advice that we give never failing to fail us
The fruit fallen far from the seeds we have sown
We can't expect others to treat us respectfully
If not the same respect we've ourselves shown
Or do unto others a harm or an action
We wouldn't want done to ourselves, nor condone
We each should treat others as we'd so be treated
Forgiving as we would have others forgive
Honoring truth as we honor each other
In word and in action, in take and in give
Know that we all are exactly the same
In different ways and to different extremes
We all feel the same, just to different depths
We all have our different versions of dreams
In so many ways, if not so many words
For different reasons, despite circumstance
Whether shrouded in silence or screamed in frustration
We feel the same pain, whether dulled or enhanced
And to some, our words may not fulfill the description
While to others, the same words can be so exact
For each of us show every joy and each sadness
With different emotions and different acts
Some contain them so well behind veils of fake smiles
Some show them so boldly in voice and in song
Some drown in them, so isolated from reason
Some mirror what they wish they'd been for so long
So many more ways with which we all express
How we feel, how we think, how we rise, how we fall
We are different forms sharing life individually
We are one in the same, we are one, we are all

Daniel Smith - Imperfect Poet

Thank you =^)

Diary of the Damned -- Thursday, February 27th, 2014 - Second entry

Words cannot bring but much more than a fling
If they aren't reflected by actions
You can say all you want; you can say anything
But I want more than brief satisfaction
You can tell me you want me, that you love and you care
But promises cannot console me
For mere words are always all I'm ever given
And words without love cannot hold me
So many have spoken the kindest of words
And thought that alone would sustain me
While treating me harshly, as more of a slave
Wanting love, all while treating me hatefully
I will not accept, nor will I justify
Being treated as less of a lover
When I've honored each one of my words and my promises
Despite lack of such from the other
No more hollow words, and no more broken promises
I will not take part in your one sided high
If you can't show me love just the same as you'd have it
Then the only thing left to say now is goodbye

Daniel Smith - Imperfect Poet

Silence Speaks

Silence is a hard thing to understand. It has a wide vocabulary, and sometimes rings out so loudly, as if a choir of confusion, that it is nearly impossible to translate. Sometimes it is so void of life that one cannot even hear one’s own heart beating. Silence is never the same twice, for it comes with different emotions and circumstances each time, even if seemingly the same, and it always has something new to unravel, whether it is what we need to hear, what we refuse to hear, or what we’ve been waiting to show, or trying not to show, ourselves or another, all along. Silence can be an ever changing friend, or an unrelenting enemy. No matter the form or fashion, silence is, and will forever remain, the most welcome and unwanted part of our lives.

It is an often overlooked truth that silence can be anything but. The voices echoing within the vastness between one ear and the next are still far more audible than anything exhaled amidst a mixture of lips, teeth, and tongue, so that even when we are not speaking our mind, the mind is speaking, even if only to the soul attached to it, speaking volumes silently as they translate into emotion and action, or the lack thereof, creating a vocabulary of gesture and expression, but also of stillness and blankness, woven together in both intricacy and complication, losing nothing in translation of language, but sometimes losing much in the heart’s translation of emotion to and from a soul other than its own.

Emotions are each a different language in themselves, for each has their own gestures, expressions, and blank stillness. The mind learns new languages by hearing and reading and teaches the mouth and fingers to translate from thought to spoken or written word, and it depends upon the exposure and the depth of study and experience in any given language as to which we become more or less fluent in, both in speaking and in understanding. It is much the same with the heart. It learns each new language of emotion by the experience of feeling, and depending on the depth and experience with each, the heart becomes more fluent in some over others, and sometimes one over any other. But, it is the relationship between the mind and the heart that truly allows us to understand these feelings, in others as well as in ourselves.

We say that it is the heart that guides us. We say to follow our hearts. We say that our heart has been broken, or that it has been made whole. We say that our heart hurts, our heart leaps, skips a beat, races, that is swells and that it grows cold, or one of any other descriptive analogies. It is often what we feel inside our chest that dictates what we decide upon in our minds in any given thing of emotional importance. Poetry, literature, art, everyday speak, and even actions and expressions project and profess what it is that we feel in our hearts at any given instance or in any given circumstance. But, this is merely the hearts reaction to what our minds perceive in any given emotion of circumstance.

It is the depth of the understanding of any given thought or idea, fact or fiction, that ties into the emotional in any way or on any level for each of us individually. Depending upon what we think and believe about any given thing, it will have a different reaction in each of us depending on how important or unimportant it may be to each of us based on our individual way of thinking. The differences between what each of us considers important or unimportant has an influence on how each of us feels about any given thing or circumstance. It is our feelings about what and how we think and what we understand (or sometimes believe we understand) that are the basis, the origins, and the essence of our emotions.

The mind could not function if not for the heart performing its own function. In turn, the heart could not function if not for the mind. They are dependent upon one another. They are slave to one another. As long as the two continue to function together in any conscious state of awareness (or in some unconscious states), the mind literally controls the heart and the heart literally sustains and obeys the mind. The mind may decipher and understand what the heart feels in reaction to its thoughts, but it is the heart that feels it. This is why we speak of the heart and not the mind in almost every instance of emotion. This, however, does not mean that everyone’s mind understands the hearts obedience to the emotions created by the thoughts it produces, just as most do not realize it is the heart’s physical reaction in emotion that the mind relates it’s thoughts and feelings to unknowingly and descriptively. This lack of understanding applies more to the emotions emanating from others, be they audible or silent, than they do to the emotions we feel ourselves the greater percentage of the time.

How can this be so? How is it that the majority of the time, we misread, ignore, or completely overlook the emotions emanating from others when we feel those same emotions ourselves, and often express them in the same ways, whether more or less often, and whether we show our emotions deliberately, or they show despite our failed attempts at masking or hiding them? How is it that we fail to understand, or understand more fully, the torment or elation anyone other than ourselves can be going through at any given moment when we, ourselves, have been through the same or similar circumstances? Even when we have not been through the same circumstances bringing about such emotions in others, how is it that we have such a hard time understanding that the same emotions we experience can be brought about in others by completely different circumstances?

Maybe it is the amount of people who fake emotions to gain for themselves something from another in ill begotten ways so often that it becomes hard to believe what so many try to show or hide from us emotionally. Maybe it is that we are so often trying to understand those things in and for ourselves that we fail to see how those emotions affect others in their interactions with us and in their own lives. Maybe it is where some of the circumstances that bring about the same emotions for others are not quite the same circumstances that bring them about for us at times. Maybe it is where we are in a different state of emotion at times than the person or people we are interacting with, and our absorption in our own emotions takes our sight and understanding away from theirs at any given moment. It could be any one or more of these reasons, or even that we have had our own emotions misread and disregarded so many times that our own emotions have become so deep and ominous at times, that we cannot see through the shadows that surround us or the elation we feel for ourselves in those moments. There are so many reasons that could be factors.

Even if we don’t feel the same emotions at the same exact time as someone else, or for the same exact reasons, we still feel the same emotions as everyone else, for despite each emotion being a different language, what we feel is universal. Despite the false witnesses of emotion who seek to deceive for whatever gain or manipulation they so choose, there are still so many good people trying to understand themselves, as well as others. In emotion, regardless of race or nationality or origin, we all speak the same emotional languages, even if some of us are more fluent in some emotions over others due to our personal experiences. If more of us would try, and some of us would try harder, to understand the emotions of others, not only from the circumstances bringing them to life, but in the effect each emotion has on each person in their moments of emotion, just as we so try to understand our own, then maybe, just maybe, there would not be so much confusion, misunderstanding, and in some cases, judgment, at the differences in what others feel and experience in any moment, whether similar or the same to our own, and hearts would heal more so than being broken, and we would see similarities over differences.

Despite how we live, where we come from, and who each of us are personally, we are all the same in what we feel in our hearts and through our minds, and in our differences, we are still one in the same. Our minds control our hearts, and our hearts control our minds. We all feel, and we all feel the same, even if at different times than one another. Even when there are no words to say, and even when our words won’t bleed upon page or screen, or our emotions will not translate to whatever medium of expression we choose, our silence still speaks just as loudly as our words, for our every thought and action is based upon the language of emotion, and in that, we all speak the same language, even in silence.

Where it is so often that silence from another, or reflected upon another, determines our own understanding and emotion in interaction with the emotions of others, we should listen and try to understand more than just cursory what those silences reflect emotionally. Sometimes, our silences speak just as much, if not more, than words or other mediums can allow, if we would but listen as closely in others as we do in ourselves in the languages of emotion, with our hearts and minds in equal measure, instead of letting our own emotions in our own circumstances at any given time impede or disrupt how we see or hear these emotions effecting others in their own circumstances, similar or differing, for they are something we should try to relate to, not self-sidedly compare to our own in trying to self-deceptively prove that no one understands how we feel.

Daniel Smith - Imperfect Poet

An excellent and beautiful write. Thank you =^)

Bittersweet. An excellent write steeped in the tragedy of the sorrow of the loss of what seemed to be so real. I can relate. I can't tell you how long it took me to wash the case and get a new pillow when it happened to me. But, as sad as it is to lose what one thinks is real because it feels so, it but shows how beautiful the feeling will be when the one who will not leave will be more than the memory a scent in a pillow can bring, and in more joyous ways =^) Thank you for sharing.

Nice write =^)Sometimes, it does feel very much that way. But, I agree with tommyboy. There are still good people out there, and that special someone is waiting to find us just as we are waiting to find them. Keep wandering, and keep wondering, for one day, you will wander into the most beautiful of all wonders =^)

Thank you =^)

Thank you, and you are quite welcome =^)

Thank you =^)

You're welcome, and thank you =^)

Work in Progress

Pain is time, and time's depraved
In sanity that's not so sane
For though a wait is needed
It's a weight unto the soul
Although all good things take time
The time between is bent and frayed
Because some pain is needed
To hold on, and to let go
Every grain of sand that passes
Through the crooked frame of chance
Echoes through the halls of madness
In unwanted circumstance
Every day that finds us waiting
Wanting just a little more
So to keep our hearts from breaking
Like so many times before
Drives us further into doubting
If our dreams will ever be
Or if the truest nightmares
Are the dreams that never come
Is it worse to feel the torment
Fighting for what seems to flee
Or is it worse to live there
As we slowly come undone?
For giving up and giving in
Are very much the same
My friends, we cannot live this life
Forever cowering
Afraid to fight for anything that matters
For the fear of losing all
How can any of us feel alive
If we refuse to fall?
So we wander, and we wonder
Just how long this time will tell
That in weakness, we are stronger
Than the darkness that invades
We will never see the glimmer
If we worry our eyes closed
Just because the nights seem longer
When our hearts can hardly wait

Daniel Smith - Imperfect Poet

Dream Come True

The waking world is dreaming with its eyes half open wide
And I am but another lonely soul
With visions often fleeting in their clarity, as I
Continue wishing time would make them so
Longing for the future doesn't help to make it so
Any sooner than its time is meant to be
More a self inflicted torture than a punishment, I know
But it can't be helped when you're so far from me

Call it what you will, for good or ill, or not at all
My feelings on this aren't soon to change
I cannot find the words, nor rhyme the feeling that enthralls
The normalcy is feeling oh so strange
Each time I hear your voice, or feel your touch when you are near
Then wake to find it once again a dream
I hold you oh so dear, but I have yet to know your name
Or in my waking hold you oh so near

Although our time is yet to come, I feel you in my heart
And every day, you're often on my mind
Sometimes I feel I'll come undone the longer we're apart
Even so, it's you I long to find
You may not know my name, or see my face with open eyes
But I know you dream of me as I do you
If we can but remain true to the promises of time
We'll find each other when our time is due

So, let us keep on dreaming with our eyes shut oh so wide
Until the two of us, such lonely souls
Encounter our first greeting, and we finally realize
Our dreams are wide awake and finally so
The promise of our future, heart to heart, will finally show
That loneliness can't stop what's meant to be
It only makes us stronger 'til the day that time bestows
Our heart's desire into waking dream

Daniel Smith - Imperfect Poet

Truly Beautiful

Sometimes, it is the beauty we see in others
Despite them not seeing it for themselves
That shows us that, sometimes
What some may see as flawed or imperfect
Is nothing less than the rarest of beauty
So many fail to see it in themselves
That they begin to fail to see it on others, as well
For it gets harder to trust and to love
When so many only use their words as masks
Deceiving those who hold true to respect and honor
Until they fake their way in so as to take and abuse
And then tear them down
Oblivious to the pain they have inflicted
Sometimes proud of it
So many times causing such good hearted people
To believe it is they who have done something wrong
Until the loving person they were begins to fade
Retreating in to a shell of depression, darkness, self loathing, and hopelessness
Forgetting or denying how truly beautiful they are
And when someone finally sees in another
The same things they have failed to see in themselves
It opens their eyes
It awakens their soul
As hearts start to mend
Until there is beauty to be seen in the darkness again
Never gone, but merely overlooked and ignored
Once again shining forth in understanding
There is someone, just as they, who knows what it is to suffer
In every doubt, worry, and fear
In wounds self inflicted or forced on by others
Whether physically or emotionally
And they begin to see the beauty in others, again, as well
In honor, truth, sincerity, and respect
Finally realizing for themselves much the same
Despite those who merely pretend so as to take and to harm
Until the darkness isn't so dark
Loneliness isn't so lonely
And even the worst of the pain can bring smiles
Shared between two perfectly imperfect souls
Who have found beauty in the world once again
By finding beauty in each other, and in themselves
When so many still refuse to see the same
Finding beauty in the darkness
Where once they could only find pain

Daniel Smith - Imperfect Poet