Mike Turner is a songwriter and Pushcart Prize-nominated poet living on the USA Gulf Coast, with over 300 poems published in over 65 journals and anthologies. His poem, “Sense of Peace,” was awarded the Alabama Writers’ Cooperative’s 2023 Roger Williams Peace Prize; his original songs were featured on the “15 Minutes of Fame Stage” at the 2020 Monroeville Literary Festival. Mike’s poetry collection, Visions and Memories, was published  in 2021 by Sweetycat Press.

To Outlast the Night

As sun loses its luster

Black darkness closes ‘round

Silently and stealthily

Muffling light and sound



We lose our will to struggle

Wrest destiny away

Entombed in bleak despairing

Our demons keep at bay



Perhaps in such these times

It’s enough to persevere

Not accept, but not surrender

Endure; hold close our fears



Retaining faith that morning

Will come resolve our plight

Then find our comfort knowing

We’ve outlasted the night

Daisies

She loves me do

She loves me not

I held the daisies in my hand



(And whispered my warm longings to the wind)



Oh! I hope she loves me

Oh! I hope she cares

My pleas ran though my fingers like the sand



I can’t stand this betrayal!

I can’t stand all her lies!

I shouted as the pain consumed my soul



(And felt my world a-crumbling from within)



I thus was left with nothing

Was hollowed, banished, lost

And sank into a dark and bottomless hole

 

Oh! Had I but reflected

On the beauty within reach

Of the daisies soft and vibrant which I held



Such agonies avoided

Such heartache turned away

All my discontent and suffering thus dispelled



(Had I focused on “what is”, rather than “what could have been”)