Poems by Jordan A. Leturgez

In the heart of the concrete, where dreams clash and meld,
Beneath the hum of the city, a symphony swelled.
With echoes of sneakers that whisper and shout,
In the dance of the hustle, there's no room for doubt.

A glint in their eyes, the young ones appear,
With passion ignited, fueled by hopes and fear.
They lace up their courage, the court their domain,
In every dribble's rhythm, they find joy in the strain.

Bouncing dreams on asphalt, arcs of sky-high shots,
Each feint and each pivot, a battle of thoughts.
The crowd roars like thunder on the wings of a pass,
In the cradle of hustle, the seconds can last.

Grit on their palms, ambition in flight,
They chase down the dusk, turning shadows to light.
Every missed chance, a lesson to earn,
Each victory echoed in the passion they burn.

What stories they carry, what burdens they share,
With every three-pointer, they conquer despair.
The hustle is real, woven deep in their soul,
A testament glowing, a fire to extol.

For in every jump shot, in every laid-up lay,
Lives the heartbeat of hope that refuses to sway.
So here's to the dreamers who take their stand,
In the hustle of hoops, they build their own brand.

Through sweat and through laughter, through heartache and pain,
They're crafting a legacy, a sweet refrain.
For in the game of life, both radiant and raw,
The hustle of hoops teaches us all to soar.

In the cradle of dusk, where shadows entwine,
Love blooms like roses with thorns so divine.
A heartbeat, a whisper, a sigh in the night,
Yet wrapped in the velvet of a lingering fright.

Oh sweet serenade of the heart's soft refrain,
Each note is a marvel, yet laced with a stain.
For every caress brings a flicker of flame,
And passion ignites what we never can tame.

We dance through the fields, where dreams trace the skies,
Yet fear stalks our steps, wearing truth in disguise.
With laughter like petals that fall in the breeze,
We cradle the laughter, but what of the grief?

For love is a river with currents unseen,
That carries the echoes of what might have been.
Promises slip through like sand in our hands,
Building castles of hope on unsteady strands.

In moments of bliss, our spirits align,
But the sorrow of longing, that bittersweet vine,
Wraps tighter around, chokes the breath of our joy,
As echoes of silence thwart hope to destroy.

Yet still, we believe in the power of pain,
In the lessons of hearts that take shelter from rain.
For love, in its grasp, may break us apart,
But with every fracture, it molds us a heart.

So let us embrace the anguish we bear,
In the tapestry woven of love and despair.
For each tear that glistens holds beauty untold,
In the bittersweet story of hearts brave and bold.

There are moments when the throat becomes a glass--
too thin to hold the shape of a thought,
too clear for the tongue to frame a single syllable.
A silence like winter settles behind the ribs,
and words, like migratory birds, swoon and pass the horizon.

The heart keeps speaking in a language of knocks,
each beat a small drum calling maps into being,
but the mouth is a sealed bay where ships cannot anchor.
Eyes pick up the slack--harvest light, gather the tilt of a smile--
and hands begin to speak in the slow grammar of touch.

Speechless is not empty; it is a room hung with echoes,
a laundry of moments drying on the line of breath.
It holds what cannot be caught by consonants:
the tilt of astonishment, the bruise of grief,
the hush between two people where forever is negotiated.

Sometimes speechlessness is awe--an old tree opening its arms,
a sky so full of color the tongue forgets its work.
Sometimes it is fear, a mouth barricaded by frozen rain.
Sometimes it is love so vast the map of names unravels.

Listen: the silence speaks in the small currencies--
the press of a palm, the tilt of a head, a laugh let loose like birds.
If you learn that language, you will find whole oceans
where the world had promised only deserts.
Speechless, then, becomes a poem that needs no spoken rhyme.

We unclasp the small, rusty bones of yesterday--
fingers tasting the cold iron of old promises,
and lift them like explained maps,
learning at last the names of our wounds.

Sun arrives as a patient witness,
burning the thin varnish of fear.
It finds the places where we hid our voices
and stains them gold; the songs spill out
like water from a cracked pot, generous and surprised.

There is a language that only unshackled feet speak:
the soft percussion of steps that do not ask permission,
the hush of breath that no longer counts its cost.
We trade the grammar of survival for an accent of daring,
and the world, for once, listens.

Liberation is not a single door opened;
it is the rustling of rooms within us,
the slow uncoiling of a bird's wings after winter,
the way a river remembers the sea and rushes toward it.

We plant our names in places that once forbade them,
root them deep as anchors and light as prayers.
Hands that trembled learn the shape of holding--
not to grasp, but to offer: food, truth, forgiveness.
Laughter becomes the currency of mornings.

And when the old gates fall--no clatter, only a wind that carries away the last lock--
we step through with pockets full of small, ordinary brave things:
a child's first clear question, an apology that reaches across a table,
the courage to say I was wrong, I am learning, I will stay.

Freedom tastes like a door left open at dusk,
like salt on lips after long, earnest travel.
It is not spotless. It bears the scab of every healed cut,
the history of every hand that pushed and did not relent.
It asks patience, vigilance, the willingness to repair.

Still, once unbound, we move: a sea of soft uprisings,
a chorus of feet, of seeds, of promises, of truth.
We become the small miracles we were taught to fear:
unafraid of light, unafraid of loss, unafraid to be tender.

Tonight the stars seem nearer, as if on purpose.
We lay our maps on the grass, trace new lines with bright, stubborn fingers,
and name the places we will not leave to shadows.
Liberation is the work of living whole, of being honest with our hands.
It is the music we finally allow ourselves to dance to.

In the neon glow where fortunes dance,
Beneath the glitter of a reckless chance,
There roams a creature, sleek and sly,
With dreams as vast as the midnight sky.

He prowls the canyons of greed and gold,
Where whispers of wealth grow brazenly bold,
Each heartbeat echoes a siren's song,
In the jungle of numbers, where the bold belong.

A master of hustle, a king of the game,
He wears ambition like a cloak of flame,
With laughter that ripples through walls of glass,
In a world where dreams are bought in a flash.

But shadows lurk in the glint of the coin,
As innocence dulled and ethics are torn,
For beneath the howl of the wolf in delight,
Are shadows of lives lost to the night.

The high-flying parties, the glittered excess,
Mask whispers of sorrow, of dreams in distress,
As the dollar signs dance, hearts beat in haste,
Pushed by the rush of a reckless embrace.

Oh, beast of the markets, sharp-toothed, unbound,
What price do you pay for the throne you have found?
The laughter grows hollow, as echoes unwind,
In pursuit of the beast, what treasures we blind.

For wealth is but fleeting, a flicker, a flash,
Yet the scars of the chase? They linger and clash,
In the silence that follows the fervor of heat,
Lies a truth that the wolf will never defeat.

So howl if you must, let your spirit take flight,
But remember the cost of the revelry's night,
In the bright-shining world of ambition and might,
Not all that is golden can survive the light.

In twilight's cloak, where whispers sigh,
A promise forged 'neath an azure sky.
Two souls entwined, hearts laid bare,
Yet shadows danced in the perfumed air.

A tapestry woven with laughter and dreams,
Unraveled by silence, by deceit's cruel seams.
In the garden of trust, a serpent did bloom,
Its venomous kiss heralded doom.

Once hand in hand, we weathered the storm,
Our hearts a refuge, our love kept warm.
Yet secrets, like moths, found their way to the light,
And shattered the bond with a merciless bite.

A glance, a betrayal, like daggers in night,
The trust we had built took flight from our sight.
Words carved in anger, like ice on the sea,
Stilled every whisper of what we could be.

Now shadows linger where sunlight should play,
And echoes of laughter grow distant, decay.
I gather the pieces, each shard like a tear,
As ghosts of the past pull my heart ever near.

Forgiveness, a river, flows slow in the dark,
Yet bitterness dances, a cruel, ghostly spark.
I stand by the threshold, between love and despair,
A heart weighed by longing, still tethered in air.

So here in this moment, I choose to let go,
To release the sweet anguish, the friend turned to foe.
For betrayal's cold grip will wither and fade,
And in its wake, a new path shall be made.

In the shadowed halls where silence dwells,
A parchment rests, spellbound in its spells,
Its ink a whisper of fate's cold decree,
A silent breath caught in time's tapestry.

A death warrant, etched by fate's cruel hand,
A savage tale in a desolate land,
Where hopes once flourished, now wither and fade,
In the heart of the strong, a dimming cascade.

The clock ticks louder in the hushed, dark room,
Each second a shudder, heralding doom,
Stars flicker uncertain in the vast, distant night,
As dreams slip away, swallowed by the blight.

Yet, in this saying of sorrow and dread,
Lives the spirit unbroken, refusing the thread,
For each life is a sonnet, composed with pure grace,
A fleeting ballad that time can't erase.

So gather ye roses, while still they abound,
And dance with your shadows on this hallowed ground,
Embrace every heartbeat, each laugh and each tear,
For life's deepest meaning dwells not in fear.

In the echo of darkness, let love be your light,
For even in death, there's a shimmer of bright.
Embrace every moment, let passion ignite,
For the story's not over; the soul takes to flight.

In the quiet depths of night, I ponder why,
Why the stars twinkle in the vast sky,
Why the ocean waves kiss the shore,
Why the wind whispers forevermore.
I wonder why the seasons change,
Why love can heal and also estrange,
Why time slips through our grasp,
Why we hold onto memories that last.
I wonder why dreams take flight,
Why some battles we must fight,
Why laughter can chase away the tears,
Why music can calm our deepest fears.
I wonder why we search for meaning,
Why we find solace in our dreaming,
Why the answers elude our grasp,
Why we must journey through this fast.
In the mystery of the unknown,
In the seeds of truth we've sown,
In the wonder that fills our soul,
I find a beauty that makes me whole.

In the realm of choices, where paths diverge,

A moment of pause, a chance to urge

The mind to ponder, to contemplate,

Before deciding, before it's too late.

Think twice, oh soul, before you act,

For consequences reverberate.

Consider carefully each step you take,

In the decisions that you make.

Wisdom lies in measured thought,

In the silence where doubts are caught.

Let reason guide your heart's desire,

To avoid regrets, and avoid the fire.

So pause, reflect, before you choose,

Listen to the inner muse

That whispers truths, both dark and light,

In the dance of wrong and right.

For in the tapestry of life's design,

The threads of choice forever twine.

So let your thoughts be clear and wise,

And may you see through clearer eyes.