A Month of Couplets - August 2017

From The Daily Couplet:
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8/1/17

Change is the destiny that can’t escape me.

Growth is my future self trying to shape me.

8/2/17

Through where will happiness come when I’m mopin’?

A door I didn’t know that I left open.

8/3/17

The greatest let-down is the consummation—

The journey is the only destination.

8/4/17

Remember: when you love and live the chase
And it goes nowhere—that, too, is a place.

8/5/17

Each time we meet’s a play in which I’m smitten—

And you refuse to act the part I’ve written.

8/6/17

Losing and loving, killing and creating—

All that we do has its own deathbed waiting.

8/7/17

I like to think my might-have-beens betrayed me,

But all the roads I passed up are what made me.

8/8/17

Ask “Are you happy?” I’ll say “Hold that thought.”

But I know all the ways my friends are not.

8/9/17

We’re costumes on a skeleton of hope,

Dreaming of clothes with which we can elope.

8/10/17

The thing by which I thought I would be killed
Is all part of the wreckage I’ll rebuild.

8/11/17

Praise and salt water are the same way cursed:
The more you drink of them, the more you thirst.

8/12/17

“Find your own voice!” those writing teachers say.

Meaning: “”Choose a dictator to obey.”

8/13/17

Words are the wardrobe that I keep creating;

Photos, the self that I’m impersonating.

8/14/17

Live long enough, and you will cry, forlorn:
“No one's left who’s known me since I was born!”

8/15/17

A moment’s pleasure zips by fleetingly;

A moment’s shame lives on eternally.

8/16/17

Each memory I have is firmly set
Beside what I have chosen to forget.

8/17/17

The house of happiness is full of gloom—
Its whole first floor is one big waiting room.

8/18/17

My hopes are sleight when I give them the gate;

My fears a strain because I give them weight.

8/19/17

The joy’s not in what I know how to do
But learning what I didn’t know was true.

8/20/17

The story’s in the razor, not the edge—
Not jumpers, but what led them to the ledge.

8/21/17

It always starts with darkness to move through,
And always ends with light shining from you.

8/22/17

Hatred’s a gun that decimates the earth;
Love is the only weapon that gives birth.

8/23/17

Those who make promises and then forget them
Will only make you bitter if you let them.

8/24/17

If you want to excel in what you do,

Cling to those who bring out the best in you.

8/25/17

Lust is a blaze that scorches when it craves.
Love is a heat that nourishes and saves.

8/26/17

The new must undermine the old to thrive,
But old turns vicious when it can’t survive.

8/27/17

My past's a meal that I am daily fed
And memories the meat between Time's bread.

8/28/17

Love without wild abandon is a sin
But deadly poison without discipline.

8/29/17

The one great secret behind all great art:
You have to probe the wound to reach the heart.

8/30/17

We all share this same secret, hid from viewing:
No one—none of us—know what we are doing.

8/31/17

Leaving allows your life to change directions;
Goodbyes all say hello to new connections.

Copyright 2017 Matthew J Wells