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 quiet hush of dawn's first light,
When shadows flee and dreams take flight,
I gather words like petals rare,
To weave a tapestry of praise laid bare.

With whispers soft, like a summer breeze,
I turn my gaze to the swaying trees,
And in their motion--graceful, true--
I find a rhythm, a song anew.

Praise is my craft, my heart's own beat,
In the mundane, I find the sweet--
The glimmer in a stranger's smile,
The warmth of kindness that makes life worthwhile.

For every heartbeat, for every sigh,
In the laughter that dances and the tears that dry,
I gather the moments, both small and grand,
And spin them into gold with a gentle hand.

Praise for the mountains that touch the sky,
Praise for the rivers that sing as they fly,
Praise for the love that binds us tight,
For hope that flickers, igniting the night.

In every sorrow that stirs the soul,
In every triumph that makes us whole,
I pen the verses that rise and fall--
A hymn of gratitude, a fervent call.

So let my heart be the vessel, true,
As I cradle the world in praises new;
For in each word, a spark I find,
A bridge of beauty, intertwined.

In a life well-lived, in the breath we share,
In the simple act of showing we care--
A poetry of praise is what I do,
To honor the light that shines in you.

In a room where time seems to pause,
Soft whispers linger, while moments cause
Hearts to dance with hesitant hope,
Beneath the weight of the world's scope.

Walls painted in soothing, muted hues,
Holding secrets in their silent views,
Where shadows play and light gently spills,
Upon dreams cradled in fragile wills.

The ticking clock, a solemn friend,
Marks the cadence of breaths that blend,
With thoughts of healing, of fears laid bare,
In chairs familiar, hearts yearn and share.

Each glance exchanged, a story unfolds,
"Tales of courage in the face of cold."
The worn-out magazines lie untouched,
Yet the spirit of warmth cannot be clutched.

There's solace found in the ailing sighs,
And hope reflected in tear-streaked eyes,
While the hum of machines, a lullaby sweet,
Sows comfort in the weary heart's beat.

In the quiet chamber of waiting, we stand,
With fragile strands of both love and demand,
A tapestry woven of heart, soul, and grace,
In this sacred space where we each take our place.

For here, in the stillness, the world seems to bend,
Uniting our spirits, a common thread to mend,
A compassion that flows like a river's embrace,
In the poetry of life, we find our true space.

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.

It cracks the night like glass--an animal, a bell,
a throat unzipping to pour out a sky.
It spills, a red river down the face of the moment,
flashing teeth at the steady, indifferent stars.

NOOOOOOO!!!!! echoes in the ribs of buildings,
boomerangs off distant, sleeping houses,
finds the small room where hope had been folded,
unfolds it roughly, leaves the paper thin and trembling.

It is the sound of a hand pulled from another's,
of a light blown out in mid-sentence,
of a name that will not be buried politely.
It overturns the tea, it topples the faith
you had arranged like trophies on a shelf.

But listen: the scream is not only ruin.
It is also a beacon, raw and incandescent,
a flaring refusal that clears the fog.
In its wake the air tastes new--sharp, honest,
like rain after fire, like breath after being held.

NOOOOOOO!!!!! breaks open the sealed things inside,
lets you see the hands you thought were steady--
trembling. It forces the dress to the floor,
reveals the wound that was meant to be contained.

And from the jagged heart of that sound
a quieter music is born: a no that is a wall,
a no that is a door slammed shut against harm,
a no that makes room for the yes you might not yet know.

So scream it if you must--let it peel the paint,
let the neighbors think the world has ended.
Gather the pieces, count the cost, and choose:
not every NO is loss; some are the very shape
of the life you are still building.

NOOOOOOO!!!!!--a thunder that finally clears the sky.

Every other city we go becomes a small religion --
a cathedral built from our suitcases, ticket stubs,
and the way you cup your hands around a steaming cup
like it might confess the route it took to find you.

In Marseille the sea taught us how to argue softly,
blue and salt between our teeth; in the next place
we learned to speak in corners, in leftover bread,
the quiet grammar of two people trying not to leave traces.

Every other city we go keeps a piece of your jacket,
laces knotted into memory, a receipt folded like a prayer.
One city glows with neon and stolen kisses at three a.m.;
the next is a photograph of a bench where we apologized
for the weather and for everything else we could not change.

There are cities where we sleep like travelers in borrowed names,
where strangers offer directions and we are grateful for the past.
There are cities where the lamps throw our shadows long and hopeful,
where we map each other on the backs of postcards and hotel keys.

Every other city we go is a ledger of small miracles:
the street musician who taught us a chorus, the bakery that kept our secret,
the taxi driver who listened and refused to fix our problems.
Between them, in the odd ones, the silence gathers meaning,
a quiet room where we relearn how to be two without decaying.

By the time we learn the language of stoplights and rain,
the orbit of our feet has become a constellation.
We carry cities like coins--some bright, some worn flat--
and when we press them to our palms at night they still hum,
like a promise we are not sure we ever made but keep anyway.

Every other city we go is not a loss but a ledger of living:
an atlas of small departures and the tender ways we return.
When the plane lifts its hands and the skyline thumbnails away,
I count the spaces between us and know: we are always building home
out of the few things we keep--each other, and the names we refuse to forget.

There is a light beyond your window--thin, impatient,
like someone who has walked all the way here and won't wait.
The couch holds the shape of your evenings,
the kettle remembers every ritual,
but the world outside is an untied shoelace,
asking to be knotted into your next step.

Get out for more than air. Go for weather that argues with your bones,
for streets that whisper names you've never answered,
for alleys that fold themselves into secret rooms of sky.
Leave the small map you've learned by heart;
there are countries of sound and color waiting
with passports made of possibility.

Take the day that smells of wet cement and coffee,
take the night that tastes of streetlight and song.
Practice a courage that isn't loud--just steady,
the kind that eases your hand into the pocket of the universe
and finds a coin bright enough for a new beginning.

You will be awkward at first--two left feet at dawn,
fumbles at sidewalks, laughter that arrives early and stumbles.
That's how growth arranges itself: imperfect, insistently human.
You will also meet people whose names are warm like bread,
whose stories leak light into your marrow.
You will learn the language of cats and trains,
and the grammar of getting lost and then returning.

If fear is a locked door, curiosity is the long key--
it slides and clicks and finally turns.
Do not deny yourself the thrill of an unlocked life.
Collect small proofs: a sunset that makes you weep for nothing,
a stranger who becomes a memory you can slot into your bones,
a map smeared with coffee stains and yeses.

Return sometimes, but do not live in the doorway.
Carry the landscape inside you: the hush of the sea at three a.m.,
the honest glare of a noon market, the hush of someone's prayer.
Let those places teach your hands new ways to hold the world.

Get out for more than scenery. Go for the story you haven't told yet,
for the song you pretend you can't sing, for the truth that trembles
beneath your usual answers. Step until your shadow lenoers
and the horizon learns your name.

When you come back, bring the weather with you--
damp courage, bright wonder, wind-dusted teeth of laughter.
Set them on the table beside your old routines
and watch how the house rearranges itself
to let in a life that finally remembers to breathe.

Say it once like folding an old letter--
the edges soften, the ink blurs,
a confession turned into paper boats
set out on a late-summer river.
Nevermind, and the current takes it,
not cruel, not kind, simply moving.

Say it soft as moth wings against a lamp,
a small apology for wants that burned too bright.
Nevermind becomes a lullaby for the stubborn heart,
a quiet room where arguments unpeel
and sunlight finds the dust in forgiving ways.

There is a strange mercy in the word:
not erasing, but shelving--putting the ache
on a high shelf where we can see it, not live in it.
Nevermind teaches hands to unclench,
teaches mouths to close around the sharp things.

Sometimes it is a door left ajar,
sometimes an ocean swallowing a name.
It is not surrender to the night--more like
learning the map of your own soft places,
tracing the seams where sorrow and relief meet.

Say it when you must: to a fault, to a friend, to the mirror.
Let it be small and human, a bell rung for passage.
Nevermind--three syllables that carry a cross and a key,
a weathered hush that somehow clears the room,
and leaves you ready, at last, for morning.

They call it talent when lightning strikes once,
but skill is the slow keeping of fire--
a patient bellows under the ribs,
a hand learning the hymn of its own work.

It is the hour repeated until muscle remembers
what thought forgets under the weight of fear.
The edge that shaves away the useless,
the small gestures that tilt fate's heavy wheel,
the quiet sharpening of a single motion
until it sings true in the dark.

Skill is not thunder; it is a seam
stitched through days of stumbling and return--
scars mapped like constellations across the palm.
It converts doubt into a steady currency,
turns clumsy hopes into instruments of light.

See the maker bend to wood, to code, to clay:
each breath a syllable of apprenticeship,
each mistake a tutor who refuses to leave.
Power blooms where repetition meets attention,
where the ordinary becomes miraculous by care.

And when the world needs to be remade,
it asks not for raw force but for hands that know
how to coax a stubborn thing awake.
This is the power of skill--silent, relentless,
the small, fierce music that reshapes the world.

Between the chandelier and the bare bulb
a rumor of light moves like a thief --
it spills in crystal and puddles on pavement,
it learns the shape of silver spoons
and the hollowness of tin.

The Haves dine on calendars of plenty,
their plates are maps with no borders,
their laughter spins like coins
and settles soft on linen.
Outside, another door breathes on cold hinges,
a radio counts the hours in static,
a child folds an empty hand into a small fist
and names the wind for company.

Glass towers mirror the sky and keep their secrets;
cardboard dreams stack like low-rise constellations,
and in the alley the have-nots stitch dusk into blankets,
each thread a story of what was carried and lost.
The rich lawn keeps its shoes clean of mud,
while other shoes memorize the cracks in the pavement,
learn the language of soles.

They measure time differently:
one house counts gold as proof,
the other marks it by the patience of waiting.
But both feel the same late hour,
the same moon--thin as a promise--rising.
Both lovers press the same thin light to their faces,
both mothers name their children aloud
as if names could keep the cold from knowing them.

Sometimes the Haves grow small from too many doors,
and sometimes the Have Nots walk like kings, crownless but upright.
Compassion is a room nobody owns,
a table that will not seat just one kind.
When hunger is spoken into a bowl, when coin is split into care,
the wall that divided softens into a threshold.

If all the world's wealth were only weather,
we would still need umbrellas and hands to hold them.
So let the sun be shared in ledger and sky:
let no one wake to an empty cup while another's overflows,
let us remember we are not islands of profit,
but a single, breathing sea, rising and falling together.