Monday, July 9, 2012

Saturday, June 16, 2012

mastering your absence


Only during hard times do people come to understand how difficult it is to be master of their feelings and thoughts.-Chekhov


Like, I'm gonna crawl back to you, live again where only shadows lie. Yeah, I'm familiar with 
                            that place where I fawn, excuse, deny.
But, oh my, I'm growing now and 
                               appealing as that sounds, there's something about the bright            
light of 
          freedom grounding me.
                                    I just trip in your cast of gloom and my legs-              
they want to
run.
I trembled once at your touch- it was all I knew.  
But 
     then all that waving nearly knocked me over and I learned to fear.
If our bodies are vessels, then I carried you.
                                                               You've broken free. 
Why can't I?
             No, a fresh start cannot possibly mean I enter the crypt of  your new found glory.  
I can't compromise
                my soul to give you safety.
                       Boulders lifted away become stepping stones where 
                                                                                                 with each foot placement, I'm lighter.
                                  I want back a heart of flesh,
division 
           now, 
              of equal rights, a solid body of strength and wholeness.
                             Imagine me a willow, but still.
Covering my own damn heart this time, 
branches hanging, beauteous and protective.  
                                      The weeping-healing.  Letting go                  lamentations, 
convulsing to purge but silent are those tears, 
           shaking body but
                    not mind.
Write an elegy of what
we were
and what 
        we weren't.
But 
black and white means nothing to my movement.
                      I'm 
                        mourning the theft but rejoicing the gift that's left
                                                                                            and seeing myself a widow.
                 I'm a tree unto myself, away from that brush of bullshit.
                 I'm fixing my hair a different way, viewing a new    reflection.
Any assumption
                    that I can't
                              call your bluff 
is a vapor of what you knew before and audacious
                            to say the least.
Our corona became a noose and your latest proposition, a nail in   the proverbial coffin. 
                         Circles do not have points - at least I know my shapes.
Sling mud- it doesn't stain.
   I'm spotless once again.




The SundayWhirl

Sunday, June 3, 2012


I crouch. 
It’s fear
and I have words, plenty but not enough…or not words, right. 
      So, I’m hunkering now in supposed safe haven, watching my own back
cause who else will?
          Split rhymes with spit, which is sort of how the word sounds, wrong
          somehow. Split heart, split tongue, split home, lickety split
                     hmm.
                      More than a crack – a chasm, cataclysmic.  But not really, right?
                                         Happens all the time.
So you think
                there’d be words….and I suppose there are, but insufficient to touch
                                             on….all this. 
                                                              They’re words you could eat.
                                                             The crash, the smash, the wrack up of the
                                                              tumble, of the final word which says, too
                                                                                                                robotically, there’s been a
failure…. in the system, in the program, in the house.
                                  So there you have it, get a new one.  These things happen,
folks.  Chisel out the cleaving, then the leaving. Clinging like ivy to the
                                   tearing asunder.  It makes no sense.  But no one said it
would.
A bond more than bruised-broken, there’s no mending.  The pierce of that
                               edge we can’t escape, the point of that no return.  It’s there we
                                                                 stand, surveying options, knowing now they’re
limited.
And yet, the end is only a term for this one thing.  There’s a beginning on
                                       some verge so maybe it’s best to just not draw this out
                                       somehow.  I haven’t been beat and you didn’t lose, we’ll
call it a tie.
Yeah, there’s a glow somewhere on the other side of this.  Maybe that’s
                                                              what calls.
                                                                          Crumple the papers but me, I’m
                                                                                                                     straightening out. 












“You have to hate someone to hurt them with lies.  Insincere talk brings nothing but ruin.”-Proverbs 26:28 GNT






Friday, May 25, 2012


Romanticism is not just a mode; it literally eats into every life. Women will never get rid of just waiting for the right man.
Anita Brookner

Sunday, May 6, 2012

Tears and truth

"Let our conversation now be without precedent in fact or literature, each one speaking to the best of his ability the truth to the best of his knowledge."

-Samuel Beckett

Saturday, May 5, 2012


“It has long been an axiom of mine that the little things are infinitely the most important.” – Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

Thursday, May 3, 2012

Thus Winter falls,
A heavy gloom oppressive o'er the world
Through Nature shedding influence malign,
And rouses up the seeds of dark disease.
The soul of man dies in him, loathing life,
And black with more than melancholy views. –James Thompson

Friday, April 27, 2012


He never liked to wait on her – or scarcely ever and what might
                        that mean, only a woman would
                                                       wonder.  He, his own pet and when
                                                                                                they became
one, he said, ‘Let’s be me.’ At length, she took
                                                            the stage, tossing the
mask and
          abandoning another
                    of his favorites, a word overused and inappropriate.  His
                                                                                           proposal bent her
will and one and a half they were, the half not unique, he said, but fitting
                                                                                               still just right. 
                                                                                               So who
                                                                                                     was taken
more by surprise when, at last, she was pronounced to be of noble
          blood?

Thursday, March 29, 2012

Broken words

Alone with our madness and favorite flower
We see that there really is nothing left to write about.
Or rather, it is necessary to write about the same old things
In the same way, repeating the same things over and over
For love to continue and be gradually different.
-John Ashbery




Sunday, March 25, 2012

love and trust

An indiscriminate distrust of human nature is the worst consequence of a miserable condition, whether brought about by innocence or guilt. And though want of suspicion more than want of sense, sometimes leads a man into harm; yet too much suspicion is as bad as too little sense.
-Herman Melville


Sunday, March 11, 2012

Thicket

“For we love both
                       the truth
and our friends, piety requires us to honor the truth first.”-Aristotle

 
Within this copse, this thicket we call relationship, the woods are a blur of trees and
             I, too, imperceptible.  Surely to you and now to myself.
        My self – indiscernible from you.
    The path ahead, hidden by shadows, veiled in mist. 
                              I wait for answers, praying not to disappear.



magpie tale

Sunday, March 4, 2012

To love her

She was
so much bigger than he’d imagined…but then
                          he’d never
                                       really looked before.  Looked and seen.
Her eyes revealed enormity of wisdom and had they always searched
his this way, he wondered.
     They commanded his attention so he couldn’t
     turn away. 
Forced to finally view her beauty, deep and wide and undeniable.
                               How could he not have known?




But to see her, was to love her;
Love but her, and love for ever.
-Robert Burns




magpie tales

Monday, February 20, 2012

Don't learn to do, but learn in doing. Let your falls not be on a prepared ground, but let them be bona fide falls in the rough and tumble of the world.

-Samuel Butler



Tuesday, February 14, 2012

Beloved, I'm yours.
Intrinsic reality -
you coursing through me.


The Haiku Challenge


To try to write love is to confront the muck of language: that region of hysteria where language is both too much and too little, excessive ... and impoverished.
-Roland Barthes

Sunday, February 12, 2012

Your rainbow, I love

Show me your colors.
I don’t want your black and white.
Stroke me with your stains.

Tints of all pigments,
Illuminate the hueless,
swallow the sallow

with blush complexion.
Give pallidity pigment.
Erase ebony,

Wash away the white.
Paint me a picture of pink.
Your rainbow, I love.
YOUR RAINBOW, I LOVE.
Your rainbow, I love,
paint me a picture of pink,
wash away the white.

Erase ebony
give pallidity pigment
with blush complexion.

Swallow the sallow,
illuminate the hueless.
Tints of all pigments.

Stroke me with your stains.
I don’t want your black and white.
Show me your colors.





Written for The Haiku Challenge 2012 - Day 12 – February 12th – Theme or Word: Colours Form: Naisaiku



(I played with this form a bit)





"Let
     the sun shine." - Thoreau

Saturday, February 11, 2012

Never the same

Moment to moment
shifts keep me always guessing
as to who you are.
 
He never felt twice the same about the flecked river,
Which kept flowing and never the same way twice, flowing
Through many places, as if it stood still in one.... Wallace Stevens







submitting at the Haiku Challenge day 11

Sunday, February 5, 2012

Calculation

Love is war of flesh and might, sweat and tears.
        Sometimes fight,
        Sometimes flight.


                 I’ve battled weary like a soldier, armed with
                                   weapons of all kinds.
                                             Now a veteran, I lay wounded
but undefeated.


War whoops,
                silenced, I hear a new cry, a new call
to drop my arms.


Throbbing from pain caused fervor, I will endure.


                   Mental calculation trumped as the inner man beats
                                                                    his breast
for glory.


The body is a frame,
The picture, Spirit
and I will be sustained.






submitting at Jingle Poetry

Saturday, February 4, 2012

Blue Pull

The push and the pull
that we have been reduced to,
we dance, we stumble.




Written for The Haiku Challenge 2012 - Day 4 – February 4th – Theme: Opposite Emotions

Monday, January 23, 2012

Truth

Mind and spirit together make up that which separates us from the rest of the animal world, that which enables a man to know the truth and that which enables him to die for the truth.-EdithHamilton




What you (really) need to know...is that I miss you.
What I (sort-of) want to say....is that I'll wait.
What you (absolutely) need to learn...is that I love you.
What I (kind of) want to do....is say I'm sorry.


No.


In fact,


I positively pine.
I will surely stay.
I actually adore you and truly, I apologize.





submitting at Jingle Poetry

Sunday, January 22, 2012

What one will and won't accept

Maturity involves being honest and true to oneself, making decisions based on a conscious internal process, assuming responsibility for one's decisions, having healthy relationships with others and developing one's own true gifts. It involves thinking about one's environment and deciding what one will and won't accept.
-mary pipher






Source: flickr.com via Nicole on Pinterest

Saturday, January 21, 2012

holiness

To desire and expect nothing for oneself—and to have profound sympathy for others—is genuine holiness.


-IvanTurganev


Source: piccsy.com via Nicole on Pinterest

Friday, January 20, 2012

At thirty years a woman asks her lover to give her back the esteem she has forfeited for his sake; she lives only for him, her thoughts are full of his future, he must have a great career, she bids him make it glorious; she can obey, entreat, command, humble herself, or rise in pride; times without number she brings comfort when a young girl can only make moan.
-Honore de Balzac



Tuesday, January 17, 2012

Monday, January 16, 2012

Seen from

Last night felt new, somehow.
  As though, emerging – a form of life, yet, before unseen.
Could it be?
Can I believe the power of your embrace, the truth
         I thought I saw reflected back at me?
                               Repetitive.  Déjà vu.
                                       It seemed.  But it was not. 
                                       It was new.
Parallel with counterpart,
brotherhood and metaphor
for……
what?
    A movement so combined, so intertwined, a waltz, memorized
but new,
delineating
         a memoir,
the story of
         our history, the future,
new and old.
Invisible yet palpable and seen from eyes that know, that want, that feel, that are   their own and yet a pair.
Sway.
Stay.
Receive anew.





submitting at Jingle Poetry

Sunday, January 15, 2012

That which is not

But a compassion for that which is not and cannot be useful and lovely, is degrading and futile.  - Ralph Waldo Emerson


Wednesday, January 11, 2012

Only Choice

That would be waving and that would be crying,
Crying and shouting and meaning farewell,
Farewell in the eyes and farewell at the centre,
Just to stand still without moving a hand.

-Wallace Stevens



Tuesday, January 10, 2012

"... Farewell then,
Until, under a better sky
We may meet expended, for just doing it
Is only an excuse. We need the tether
Of entering each other's lives, eyes wide apart, crying."


-John Ashbery

Monday, January 2, 2012

The Hope I Have

I don’t believe in fairytales anymore. 
I no longer see you as my savior and I can’t excogitate some story where you’re a hero.
         So take your knight-errantry, your white horse and find 
                                                    another damsel in distress.
Because the saga’s ending here. 
                  This year.
                            And the hope I have, now rests inside of me. 






"It was one of those evenings where men feel that truth, goodness and beauty are one. In the morning, when they commit their discovery to paper,when others read it written there, it looks wholly ridiculous."-Aldous Huxley


submitting at Gooseberry Garden

Sunday, January 1, 2012

vain

It is vain to expect virtue from women till they are, in some degree, independent of men ... Whilst they are absolutely dependent on their husbands they will be cunning, mean, and selfish, and the men who can be gratified by the fawning fondness of spaniel-like affection, have not much delicacy, for love is not to be bought, in any sense of the words, its silken wings are instantly shriveled up when any thing beside a return in kind is sought.
–Mary Wollstonecraft