On revisited themes

I wrote some poems lately, which I will now post.

Desire
Moonlight whispers toward the midnight shadows
And silence roars like endless rolling waves.
Heartbeats thrum in cloistered darkness, waiting,
Tumbling into fireflies' graves.

Desire, desire, the spider-catching web.
Sparrow swallowing the hurricane.
Sunbeams sing toward shadow-shrouded moon face.
Sieves raise high to catch the evening rain.

Fires scream through frozen night-drenched hollows.
Snow flakes blossom thick on desert sands.
Ashes fall on springtime seas of roses.
Soft caresses touch indifferent hands.

Desire, desire, the sun-consuming flame.
Kings bowed low beneath the twisting wrack
Yet still might find an easier smile than mine
As I look into your eyes and only see your back.

**********
Perspective
The garden of my heart I water
With a rain of spite,
And let the fruiting trees of malice sink their roots and grow.
Churning envy, buried rage, and
Pride are all my seeds,
And black despairing days shall be the future that I sow.

Pain and sorrow, lonely nights,
Companion paths I stride.
N'er shall dawn come rose my skies;
Let grief stay at my side.

You fool and man-child, self-made martyr,
Slave to passions mean.
Why do you whip yourself with scourges of your own design?
Envy flees, and rage does die, and
Even pride will break.
And foolish seeming shall be things that once you did enshrine.

Pain and sorrow, lonely nights,
Shall dog your winding way.
But so too always dawn does turn
The night to golden day.

**********

I wrote those poems from very generally the same frame of mind, although I was feeling much more rhetorical and contemplative for the first, which is probably why it's so florid and purple. I like to think the slightly overdone descriptions actually help to heighten the impact of the last line, however. I may go back to revise it someday. I'm undecided as yet.

The second one I like considerably more, because I actually started writing it from a position of a little bit of pain, a little bit of despair, and a not inconsiderable need to destroy something large and memorable. I'd initially intended the theme of the first two stanzas to carry all the way through to the end. Writing it down, however, proved remarkably therapeutic, and after those two stanzas I found myself unwilling to continue it in the same vein, because I don't actually believe in what they say. The first two stanzas are so self-absorbed, so utterly emo that it HAD to elicit a proper response. And that response, I think, forms my penultimate position.

I really do worry too much about my writing. Considering that I've written almost no poetry in my literary life, I'm actually fairly pleased with how these two poems turned out. In my darker hours, writing is always there to help lift me out of whatever ridiculous rut I've entrenched myself into, and more often than not it satisfies even my critical eye.