Category: Poetry

Muscles, sinew, bone, marrow

Blood runs through it all

Brain and mind, meant to work higher

Function better than animals

But often just the same

Animalistic behavior

Devolving, we’re devolving

Into what we were never meant to be

Where and when did it go wrong?

When was the hairpin turn?

Are we being punished?

Left to become

The consequences of

All our sins?

 

When I tune out all the noise

and set my focus

When I think of no-one’s opinions but heaven’s

When I dig deepest into who I am

I am supremely peaceful

Uniquely blossomed

Divinely divine

 

 

Blame the tricky moon for refusing to shine long enough
For your romantic encounters to fulfill

Blame the sun for not staying up late just for you
So that you could do all the things that YOU want to do

Blame it on your parents for not raising you right
Because they taught you too much peace, or maybe taught you how to fight

Or on your school for harboring bullies and thugs
Miscreants, losers, weirdos and drugs

Blame it on everyone in your life neglecting you
For never being enough, not being there for you

Blame it on the rising temperatures in the world
both literal and metaphorical

Their heat is making you crazy
Making you completely hysterical

Blame it on your husband or wife
Or on your kids for taking over your life

Blame it on midnight or noonday for all their faults
Look everywhere else for the blame

Look past the mirror and all your own flaws
Yourself you will never name

Blame it on sad music, bad food, bad service, bad news on the news
Or how about blaming all the people you work with, who haven’t any clues

Nobody cares anymore and hard workers are hard to find
Stamina is a thing of the past, long since left behind

Blame it on this group or that, this race or that, this view or that
Your perspective is always the right one and you’ll stand by it

You’re right and they’re wrong, period, but whatever the cost,
You’re the only one found and all others are lost

Used to wound or heal

Build or destroy

In partnership with tongue and mind

The wish to rewind

Take them back

But that we cannot do

What’s done is done

Once begun

So hard to change.

Let’s rearrange

And put thought first

Before we do damage

They cannot manage

Love first, listen first,

Talk second

Or not at all.

 

Breathless we lay, sweat upon our skin

Reckless we played, caring not for sin

Love was a living, tactile thing

Poems written and read

Songs we’d sing.

 

Days melted into night

So quickly our heads would spin.

Time was but a construct

We ignored with all our might

Never giving in.

 

Then, as life goes, we moved into

Another place, another state

Of mind and of being

Feeling something’s lost

Not understanding.

 

As he walked away I found my cheeks

Wet with the tears of regret

And neither speaks

But the silence spoke volumes

As he left my life.

 

I remember that day

The first time we were breathless

Two as one, as they say

And way too reckless

We lost the magic .

 

Like sand it slipped through our fingers

And we knew not how to grab

A chalice in which to hold

The glory, lest it escape

And escape it did.

 

Looking back I wonder

What would’ve, could’ve happened

If we’d been stronger, wiser,

Knew better, held on longer

Would it have lasted?

 

Or were we destined to move on

And away to other lovers

To love others, and feel

Again, what it’s like to be

Breathless.

 

 

 

When you know that you must make a change

It’s inevitable, nothing stays static

Yet you’re hanging on to the edge of the cliff, hanging on for dear life

And your fear keeps you from letting go and moving on

 

When you see the future laid out at the end of the drop

And you know that once you start down the path, you’ll feel better

And you know that it absolutely must happen

And should

But you don’t let go

 

You don’t because it feels like a death.

You don’t because it feels like giving up or giving in.

It feels like a loss of control.

Like a loss of yourself.

 

Until the pain becomes unbearable.

 

So, when you let go, know that the journey

Is just beginning

And don’t forget to laugh

On the way down.

 

 

 

Your labels are for you only because you dare not remove your filter glasses.

You must place people where they go in your waffle mind or leave them all behind,

Each one has a box and in it they go, one by one, or you come undone.

As you sit sipping your religious tea, watching people as they stroll by the window of your life

You sum them up, good enough, or not, based on your criteria, you check off that list

With a crimson pen stained with the sin of judgment and hubris.

Compassion packed its bags long ago and headed East. Love is a word on a cutesy card

But as a sentiment you have no use for it. As long as your little protected world is safe

You care not for real love or real truth or enlightenment, only that the status quo is held.

Your position in the world is secure, so you believe, so behind closed doors your heart grows hard.

Different is as different does, you laugh as you dismiss them utterly from your mind

When deep inside your shriveled heart, you’d know if you looked for the tiniest shard

 

Of care or concern, it isn’t there and you can no longer manufacture it. Your heart has quit,

Though it keeps its beat in rhythm with your fetid breaths. Your mask secure and held in place

Sits ever so securely on your face

And only heaven sees your truest form, dried and twisted as a prune

And all weep for you, for as you rejoice in your own righteousness,

The truth someday will out, and the mask will fall, and all will know all, and you will fall.

 

 

I feel it already, the first dew drops of pain and grief that will come

When you cease to exist

Or just cease to exist for me.

It’s as if there’s a lever on a board and I move it back and forth,

Present to future to present again

And I can nearly feel it, the crashing, tearing pain that will befall me

As it does all that love completely.

This being the reason people don’t love completely,

The knowledge that with life and love comes

Ultimate death.

Ultimate pain.

It’s inescapable except for those who know no love at all,

Nothing deep or real,

Those who come to the conclusion early in their life

That it just isn’t worth it, love.

So, I did the deal, I took the plunge, I released it all to you,

I signed the bloody contract with my heart’s blood

Which ensures that I will know, eventually, inevitably

Greater pain than I ever have felt or could imagine.

Sometimes you can find good things through pain, like you’ve visited the very pit of hell and, unbeknownst to you, you grabbed something bright and shiny, some light or truth, and it stuck to your clothes and it rode back up with you.

Sometimes you have to see something ugly and wrong about yourself in someone else before you recognize it in the mirror. (Is that what I look like? Is that how I sound?) and then, upon the realization, you carve that bit out and discard it.

Sometimes others don’t understand what’s happening with you, so they write you off as crazy, and sometimes people love you anyway, stay, love you through.

Sometimes your arms reach out and grab onto an angel and you wrestle it to the ground, demanding truth and light, you wrestle it until you’re totally out of breath, spent, lying on the ground, out of strength and you think you’re dying.

Sometimes the sheer brokenness of the world collides with broken parts within yourself and your soul cries out in pain. And it hurts more than anything physical when you realize no-one’s got it together. Nope. Not a soul on this planet.

Sometimes I beat my chest and scream at the top of my lungs without ever opening my mouth. I walk away, away from it all, the frustration and struggle of it all, completely overwhelming me. I hide in my cave and sulk.

Sometimes I find beauty in the world that astounds me and transports me to an altogether different place, an Eden, Nirvana. I glimpse the world as it could be and for a second my soul grabs my spirit and they fly, fly, ever so high, not daring to come down, not daring to look down for fear of falling.

Sometimes reality bursts in and I’m wondering how to pay the light bill with my meanderings, wondering what it’s all for, wondering why I couldn’t stay in that place.

Sometimes reality stinks.

Sometimes I try to shut the mind down, turn it off like flipping a switch and suddenly I understand why people take mind-altering drugs, numb themselves with alcohol.

And sometimes someone or something comes along and pulls me out of my monkey mind and back into the world of living, breathing people, some who love me and want to hug me back into existence.

Sometimes I’m found.

 

Have you ever felt totally completely alone, even when there are others all around you

Whether you are by yourself or at a party and you get that feeling that absolute feeling

That you are utterly alone in the universe? That nobody ever gets you, nor will they ever?

If ever there is a feeling I’ve carried with me forever it is that feeling, that raging knapsack of doubt, fear, Neediness, utter neediness.

 Is it being the youngest child? Is it being completely self-absorbed? Is it the creative gene?

Or do all people feel this way at one time or another, like they’re sitting on the edge of a knife

Like at any minute they just may explode from the intensity of their need? I think I’ve heard of other people feeling this way, but that can’t be true, can it? Can the world really be full of us?

 I feel like I’m in the circus and I’m tied to that spinning board and there’s a man in a black cape

Throwing daggers at my head, but he’s hoping to hit me, right through the brain, if he hits the wood,

He’s missed his true target. It would be easier for him to make his mark than for me to be free.

Some days I feel it’s just me,

Some days I’m walking through the forest alone but feel my Creator

Inside me, around me and we commune, He and me, and some days it’s like I’ve been, like the detritus

Of the Titanic, lost forever on the bottom of the ocean, never to be found again.

 

But learning, shutting out the doubt and fear, the voices, real and imagined, that hurl insults

Shutting it down, tuning it out. I will be me and do what I do and when the good comes

It comes and when the bad comes I’ll try not to slip and fall into the mire again, but, no doubt, I will.

I will feel it again, I’ll feel it all, again and again, because this is who I am and one day maybe I’ll learn to

Turn it off.

 

 

 

Something about the white and the light

The shadows they cast, never the same twice, like snowflakes

They’re joy and prom night and weddings and parties on the deck

They’re childhood but the best of it, the kind you really wish you’d had

Laughing at you or with you at every joke you’ve ever heard

Drawing the best thoughts and feelings from deep inside like water from a well

It’s impossible to be sad around them as they fully complete their mission

And a lesson we learn: do what you do, be what you are, shine, chase away the dark

 

They stir me, every time

I see it when I close my eyes
Between wake and sleep
A faraway place where pain is absent
And time is not.
Light and color redefined
The unseeable now seen
The indescribable comes to life.
Love fills every pore and peace
Floods the mind and soul.
There is that place, I have glimpsed
And upon waking mourn the loss of it.