Before I became a not very pompous young man, I used to be an extremely pompous boy. I wrote horribly. Verbosely. Pompously.

I wrote this poem in the space of fifteen minutes as part of a creative writing competition for a fest that I went to.

This is one of the very few love poems I have written, and it is one amongst those of my own poems I least like. However it did win me the first prize, and I like the way I arranged the poem in three line stanzas.

I am putting this up to show one person who agonizes about her own writing, one of the follies that litter the landscape of my own creative efforts.

Before you read it, remember to not judge me too harshly. I was young. And foolish. And had a crush on a girl I thought I’d never see again.

Ah. Youth.

The topic they gave us was, “Love Among the Ruins.”
Yes, I know. Browning turns in his grave.
And yes, I have noticed my creative use of adverbs. It is called poetic license.

LOVE AMONG THE RUINS

The velvet night was dark.
Yet it all stood out so stark,
Against the confusion that was your hair.

We stood in front of the walls,
That stood surrounding the dark halls.
Our love, we vowed, would never end.

The wind from the sea was salt, and sweet,
I saw you turn to me, watched our eyes meet.
But I never finished what I meant to say.

When I met you that night,
Your face was framed with ethereal light.
I was falling into the dark pools of your eyes.

The walls echoed softly, with whispers and sighs,
Of long dead lovers, their half-truths, and lies,
The ruined halls calm, and indifferent to our love.

We turned from each other, tears in our eyes,
I was a fool, and so we said our goodbyes.
But our love was enduring, as timeless as the ruins.

I meet you today, after eons, it seems,
And these ruins are the same, moonlight gleams
Off them tonight, as they have done for years.