Through My Eyes

By Joshua Torres

This book is a collection of poetry that spans over half a decade in the making. May you find words to comfort, to help reminisce, and some to challenge you. Take a journey of love & pain as you see the world through my eyes.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu.com
• Release date: Apr 24, 2021
• ISBN: 9781667137957

Book preview

Through My Eyes

A collection of poetry

Joshua M. Torres

Copyright © 2018 by Joshua M. Torres

All rights reserved.  This book or any portion thereof

may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever

without the express written permission of the publisher

except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

Printed in the United States of America

First Printing, 2018

ISBN: 978-1-667-13795-7

Publisher: LuLu.com

For more information: [e-mail]

This book is dedicated to all who

struggle to put into words how they feel.

For those who wish they could find a way

to express themselves but fall short.

May you find your voice hidden

throughout these pages.

I write because there’s so much pain in the world.

Love Junkie

I chase the rush hoping that something

will make my heart flutter again

the way it used to when you kissed me.

Picture Frame

Eyes sparkle, breath is lost,

All from a kiss, all have a cost,

Words never spoken are words quickly lost,

Hearts slowly opened, equal love quickly lost,

What’s the cost of love in your life?

What’s the value of a person when they’ve changed your life?

Hanging on a moment, captured like a picture on a wall,

Frozen in time, more precious than all.

Free Fall

Empty mind.  Raging stream. 

Broken focus.  Shattered dreams.

Fear not the way, but rather all the possibilities,

All the false roads leading to nowhere good.

Brace yourself for impact, the chute is tangled,

insecurities, fading faster than daylight hours.

Sirens scream across the distance.

It’s ok to be alive, it’s ok to be alive, death is sweeter than misery but who’s keeping company?

Neither awake nor asleep.  Neither focused nor distracted, but rather all and none.

Drunk off the Scotch and Shadows cast down upon the footprints of fallen angels. How bittersweet!

Just remember to blink twice when they ask you if you wish to live to die another day.

Forgive Me

I can beg or plead for you to forgive me but I must first learn to forgive myself. Before I let you down, I failed my own heart.

Forgiveness is more than the image of words cast upon a screen, it is the wiping clean of scratches etched across the heart to unveil a smooth surface.

Forgiveness is waking up in the middle of the night to remind yourself you are only human, and to be human is to err. I was wrong.

Forgiveness comes from a place where the sadness, anger, and despair reside, and yet stand quietly in the corner.

Forgiveness takes more than a moment to bestow upon someone and more than a moment to ask for.

Forgiveness takes a lifetime to be true, it must become part of who you are, woven into your breath, letting go of the transgressions of others and emptying the mind of such atrocities.  It’s ongoing.

Forgiveness is only truly received when you learn to love yourself and another endlessly, for nothing more than the simple fact that love is greater than all.

This is my plea to you, forgive me…and maybe then, she can too.

Stay A While

Drape your coat over my dreams and stay a while. Wipe your feet before you take a step out onto my heart, cleanse your intentions.

I will light a fire with the embers of the past lovers that have never burned out, in hopes that I can keep you warm and you might stay.

The night is darkest when all the stars are accounted for and there are no wishes left for me.

How I could go for a wish.

I breath in the dragon that lingers in the air around me, let him take me to a safer place.

Come look at these picture frames, full of memories and echoes that never fade.

There’s a pain that resides within, I wish I could be freed; I want to share the thoughts with you.

Please forgive my vulgar vulnerability as it is bold and fragile. Thank you for joining me on this cold lonesome evening, where the present and past collide.

I apologize for my absence, I was taken to another place, eager to find my way back to the now. 

Maybe we can share tomorrow, but I find it best for you to go.  Take your coat and stay warm because its a cold place out there.

I Wish

Many say eyes are the window to the soul.  I can only hope that these words are true so that you may one day be able to see the light behind them that flickers when you look at me.

If only you could peer into my mind, you would see a projector screen replaying scenes of our times together, frequently pausing on the frames with your smile.

The room is a very dark place but these images bring light and warmth to an abandoned home. 

I wish that one day my touch could send an electric shock across your skin the way my heart slips when you touch mine. 

Or you could know what it feels like to be closest to heaven. My heart skips a beat because of your lips and I hang in a space between life and death.

I wish that I could paint you a picture of how you make me feel.  It would look like a sunset exploding into a thousand pieces, scattered with stars and a smile in the middle. 

If only you could feel the joy in the moments I steal from you when you lay fast asleep in the mornings, when you have yet to wake and the world has yet to hurt you.  Where you are safe because I protect you from harm.

If only you could see my thoughts as they dance across my heart, playing out scenes from times yet to come, a life so wonderful I get lost in your smile.

You’ve become my strength, my weakness, my salvation from this lonely world and my demise.

I wish that there was a way I could show you how much I love you because words rarely will do.

But see I am a writer, so I will write you hundreds of poems, with thousands of words, arranged a million different ways to show you I do.

Silent Whispers

Isn’t it remarkable how someone we’ve never met, could make such an impact on our lives and leave such a rippling echo of sadness when they’ve gone?

Fireflies

I have taken away your priceless smile and traded it for a photograph, how foolish to hold onto paper copies when the real beauty was at my fingertips?

I had the most beautiful rose in the world growing inside my garden and I somehow managed to let it wilt.

As the petals began to fall to the earth I wondered…why?

How could I have been so close to perfection?  A morning ray of sun from her smile whispering hello to the silent beat of her heart.

I lived in those moments a thousand days only to find my reality was a dream of a restless poet who slept so long it became a nightmare.

She’s like the wind now, all around me but silently dancing. How can I capture her light if she never shines upon my face anymore?

I