A Thousand Fair Suitors

A thousand fair suitors all stab at your heart

Those poets of movement and jockeys of art

The high-volume vendors who hustle romance

Splashing their canvas with color and dance

The blasters of trumpets, gold banners unfurled

They offer lush gardens in glistening worlds

Yes, bearers of torches and carvers of stone

Who whisper their sonnets and surrender their thrones

And there in your doorway, no shadow is cast

No lingering voices, no ghosts from the past

Just a cluster of walls, and a window of pain

Collecting the heartache like droplets of rain

Still I stand before you, with palms to the sky

No gold in my pocket, no thorn in my side

And all I can offer, where words have no place

Is a body that trembles, and this love that awaits

– Jeff Kurfess –