In this episode from Stream of Imagination, you will listen to three poems. I wrote two of these three poems and the third was written by the Great Percy Bysshe Shelley. 

Poem 1

Come Take Away by Danny Ballan

Come take away what’s never been mine—
It’s young enough to lay to waste
But old enough to bear your gun.
Beyond the silky threaded skin
Are bloody trenches filled with parts
That once belonged to one person whole—
That girl you thought one day you knew
Is a girl from there has long been gone.

Come take away what’s never been mine—
For whom do I fight and clench my fist?
For whom do I die and cut my wrist?
But for the woman in whom they all had doubts
I would have long surrendered
And saved you all the trip and thoughts;
All your naked principles they finally joined—
As sisters they wake up in the wrong era
And sleep in oblivion all the time.

Come take away what’s never been mine—
For love is dead and so is the sun
Standing still no light to tell
If all these rays rise from beneath
like heaven was once in just one place
and now it pours out down from hell.
Look deep beyond the clear blue eyes
In which I do too look, just a shade,
No more I have than what you do;
You dare not look as you can see
Nothing while there is life in me—
The lifeless face you one day killed
Is all you see and comprehend.

Come take away what’s never been mine—
And never yours or so you thought;
For just having that fun one night
You owned this flesh eternally—
The life and dreams and all along,
A woman you failed to see it seems.
A lonely pawn in a manly game,
Tossing around you thought was chess.

Come take away what a gun can take—
Or leave, I promise, my heart won’t break,
Nor will this rock within your chest.
For once for free, for once willingly,
Come feel it pumping down my breasts—
Like a miracle I have finally seen,
But long before me, there was you.
Come feel it like an eagle’s nest—
From miles away I have seen you,
Just leave before my babies wake
For then I will reach out and take
And do what you came here to do;
The piece of flesh you once forsook
Enslaved your world with what she thought
Her weakest link as all foretold—
I, Juno, have enslaved your world,
All down to that woman I am.

Poem 2

Ozymandias by Percy Bysshe Shelley

I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert... near them, on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed;
And on the pedestal these words appear:
'My name is Ozymandias, king of kings;
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!'
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.

Poem 3

La Primavera by Danny Ballan

Look at my face and run or flee—
I’m as random as the thunder
Roaring down an apple tree
Hitting the world from down under;
For me it shaped that gravity
I have been shaking so gently,
As far back as I remember.

I’m not your hands to move so keen,
To stir me up and down the strings;
I thought one day I could redeem—
little girl was told she had wings,
Now feet in earth cannot be seen
And fingers wearied by your rings.

Look at my face and go or stay—
I did have every chance to leave
I thought — There — would be far away
Or so the stories used to weave;
They said to serve you every day
And if you die on me, I grieve
My eyes without you could not shine
I thought I did not have a spine.

Too many stories told the wind;
Once my breasts were blooming young
But bearing like a fruitful spring,
They came for me so dark at night
They stole a song that was not sung—
I thought I could keep all my dolls
And dreams until eternity,
But life it seems is full of trolls
And so it is reality.

They killed tomorrow and the past
They left me only with today—
Not that nothing would ever last
But so I could not raise my head;
Too late I leave never too late—
I should have lived out There instead
A nail a day that coffin sealed
Bolted secured and choked to death;
Only a few the fingerprints
That did belong to killers’ hands
It took me long, a life to find
The con hands of civility.