Tuesday, November 12, 2024

Poetry Can Fill an Empty Vase,

 


Image Credit


Linking with Shay's Word Garden Word List --Joy School

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I am a poet and a mystery,
Each day myself as in a glass I see:
Creator and created fused in one,
Sun that makes night and night that drinks the sun.
~John Gould Fletcher

 

Certain poems are sharp like an iceberg

 floating on an evaporated sea,

whispering sounds of the ocean from a conch shell

with a message as loud as a scream.

They take us somewhere far yet close as home

 with the soft touch of a special lover,

then tell us how to fix our deepest ache,

 like a devoted mother.

They conjure up my brother’s hardest punch

or my father’s long-lost voice.

Some poems carry the whole weight of lifetimes,

yet the lightness of a single choice.

A poem can transfix or move us,

it can narrow, or expand the views we hold;

give us spring’s spray of flowers

 in the midst of winter’s dismal cold.

They stir the cauldron of memory,

like a witch crafting a certain spell,

leading us to forgotten secrets

that we never planned to tell.

Then they open us like a wrapped-up gift

with a remembrance made brand new,

again, witnessing the birth of grandchildren

and the graveside service that came too soon.

I keep an empty vase in the kitchen

that once held the flowers for your grave.

Poetry has the power to place it back in my hands

holding the newness of grief, I knew that day.


Saturday, November 9, 2024

The Haunting of Her Lips

 



Linking with "What's Going On?" for an Open Link-- Where we can share our favorite poem and maybe explain a little bit about it.

I actually am just sharing a poem I posted in the beginning days of the Muse and it didn't have a lot of exposure so I thought I would share it again. I have changed the image but the rest is the same. (The image was an old eerie house.)

Thank you Sherry, Mary, Susan and Sumana for all you do!

Sending everyone a big hug right now! <3 


Love, thieves, and fear, make ghosts. ~German Proverb





 You are a haunted house my love and I am the ghost that walks your halls 

I have every room memorized but you do not remember me at all

I kissed you once and I kissed you twice more

but before the next you were long gone out the door

you see time stops for only a few things in this world

childbirth/seeing a ghost/ and kissing a girl

I held you close in your red sequin gown

and paraded you on my arm all over town

but what made me fall was that first kiss

and now I am a ghost that you do not know exists.


Nerves of Steel Are Not What They Seem

 



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"A full heart has room for everything and an empty heart has room for nothing.

 Who understands?"

 ~Antonio Porchia

 

Feeling no pain is not a strength darling!

True guts and nerve require a certain suffered calling.

We must be willing to sit within the bitter ache of it all, like we would a chair in the surgery waiting room.

Then hold the hand of grief and cry the tears of another’s greatest loss.

For we get nowhere if we recite words we do not know

to souls we understand even less.

Some things must be felt to be truly understood.

The years never pass quietly with nothing to struggle through;

we will be awakened by more than alarm clocks and baby’s crying.

There are phone calls at 2 am, the crash of thunder, and emergency sirens.

And where there is something to hold, there is also something to let go.

If you are grieving then you hold the greatest treasure of mankind;

a loving heart!

For empty hearts are too lazy to move what matters.

They only leave a soul roving far from where they should be.

You see weakness lingers in the comfort of the sidelines,

but strength runs into burning buildings

to save someone it doesn’t even know!

So, don’t be discouraged beautiful soul,

it is far grimmer to feel nothing in the midst of a hurting world.


Friday, October 18, 2024

I Have an Announcement: We All Get the Invitation, No RSVP Necessary.

 

Photo source ~here~

Linking with one of my favorite prompts: Shay's Word Garden Word List "Book of the Dead".
Come join us!  


Because I could not stop for Death –
He kindly stopped for me –
The Carriage held but just Ourselves –
And Immortality....
~Emily Dickinson


I speak of death

 like I know it well,

 always pulling at its shirt in public,

 like it is my mother and I a timid child.

But I still hate it,

much like a sad teenager views life,

or an old man his symptoms.

It is crashing thunder

 and everything I wish I hadn’t remembered at 2 am:

unsafe ladders, a box of matches near an open flame,

 all that hurts and takes away!

Then like bells that ring of morning,

there I am trailing behind it like it is my father and I am 9 years old.

I have spent my life all too aware of its existence and how it looks to take a final breath.

Unwilling to forget, yet, in a constant state of trying!

A heart can become weary dodging every invitation and risk,

but I have also learned that staying clear of everything is in itself another form of loss. 


Saturday, August 24, 2024

August Lives Forever...

 

Linking with What's Going On? for this week's prompt "August"

Thank you Mary, Sumana, Sherry & Susan for all you do!

Come join us!


There is no timetable for grieving —
      Grief is a snail
      It's a shooting star
      A walk around the lake
      It's eternity
      Or frost 'til bloom —
Memories coursing through the heart
It lasts as many heartbeats as it takes;
      sometimes all of them.
~Terri Guillemets

*******************************************************

My heart is a train,

and it passes through the town of your last days

over and over again.

True destination August

 first day of school, 1972

at a hospital now abandoned.

The time and place are etched on a ticket to board,

and I take a window seat watching things pass by.

I am 61 now

having traveled 52 years since that day.

The view still has the same solemn news,

the shock and the suddenness

like a train stopping in its tracks.

I can still feel the jolt of it,

hearing those unexpected words.

More things were abandoned that day, than a hospital.

Loss is more than death certificates in file cabinets, and witnessing a last breath.

It is days that bleed into years with something greater missing.

I hold this ticket, it heads to all the places we will never go together,

and unspoken words I shall never hear.

A birth, marriages, divorce, and graduations all hold an empty chair,

the one next to mine by the window seat

the place where August lives forever.

For my heart is a train, and it passes through the town of your last days

over and over again.


Monday, August 19, 2024

Coffee Table Heartaches

 

This week the words are from Stephen King's Full Dark, No Stars.
Thank you Shay for all you do to keep us writing!
Come join us!

Like magazines, I set them all in rows;

the nights

the weeks

the years

with every possible heartache laid on top.

Remembering each sorrow as if it were a pretty wedding.

Every harsh word is close like lips and lovers.

I can drink them like lemonade and hold them like polaroid photos, fast and sure.

The day I lost you stands tall like an oak,

for love and loss are kindred cousins I know too well.

So, I must keep them both close (at least that is what my heart once told me)

for it is far easier to hold on to the pain that let love be faded by time.

You see, I forget the colorful Care Bear’s names,

but cling to the dark and lonely crow,

gingerly holding with no plans to set him free.

It is funny how that somehow soothes the wounded ache

even though it is the very thing that broke me.


Saturday, July 6, 2024

The Dwelling

 


Linking with Shay's wonderful Word Garden word list. This week the words are taken from a beautiful poetry collection written by the one and only Mary Oliver.  Come join us!


I dream of a house that no longer stands,

yet the creaking of wood floors still echoes in my poems.

The hours sleep hard and endless, you see it is August every day here.

Miles and the busyness of life are snow falling in summer and

your words are books burning before their time.

Grief has a generosity that swells like wet wood and feet can.

Timeless it lingers hidden in the quiet of remembering

 and still blinds us in the light ahead.

Yet, I hold its hand willingly,

for my heart is still holding on to you.



Saturday, June 1, 2024

Her Voice is a Stranger Now

 




It is strange how we lose the memory of a voice. We can picture the smile, feel the grip of the hands, or see the stance, but the voice it slowly fades into the distance like a cowboy on his horse into the sunset. After 50 years, it is something I know has slipped completely away from me, like a lover that was destined to leave one day; her voice is a stranger now. I can only wonder if I heard it again, would my face light up or would I be unaware of the gift.



Linking with What's Going On? The prompt this week is "sounds".

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Saturday, May 18, 2024

A Good Writer Walks Through the Puddle,

 


Linking with Shay's Word Garden Word List

I can't believe I made it! Trying to write has been a true grizzly bear lately!!!
Thank you Shay for keeping the word list alive and thriving!

A good writer doesn’t run from bears; no, a good writer goes to where the bears are. He watches them in their habitat and how they have evolved looking for clues on what makes them tick, or what makes him run, or possibly how close the nearest freeway is if he has to get to his desktop computer in one piece.

A brilliant writer doesn’t avoid the hospital; no, a brilliant writer puts himself in the thick of it to have his dying character’s perspective. It could be exposing himself to the most recent flu, or jumping in front of a Camero.  Either one can work if he is lucky.

An amazing writer doesn’t keep to himself with his eyes closed; no, an amazing writer stays starry-eyed focusing head on to every Godzilla! Touching his furry coat while singing a Blondie song costing the lives of children while leading him into central park to see if he strikes a muse or maybe a building nearby.

A fantastic writer doesn’t go into public luxuriously looking well kept; no, he ventures out dumpy-looking to appear like he has been busy at the keyboard with no time for anything else. He can only hope no agents or publishers are at the pharmacy when he finally picks up his meds. 


Saturday, October 1, 2022

That Kind of Wreckage

 



"The best way out is always through."  ~ Rober Frost


Sometimes to stop the fire you have to break down walls

 and other times you must leave some doors closed.

Destruction comes and leaves in different ways,

 like lost sons returning home.

Each one holds a different heartache,

yet the affliction is the same.

It is a painful feeling

when you must watch but cannot fix.

You do not hold the hatchet.

You do not have the power to stop the flames.

One can only pray for healing,

and mercy from that kind of wreckage.

 When the one you love is the soul that cannot run away from the burning building,

but can only go back inside

to save their self.


Linking with the Sunday Muse for Muse #230.

Come join us!


Saturday, September 17, 2022

The Drummer,

 


Theda Bara in Cleopatra 1917


“Iron left in the rain
      And fog and dew
With rust is covered.—Pain
      Rusts in beauty, too.
I know full well that this is so:
— I had a heartbreak long ago.”
~Mary Carolyn Davies

 

 I don’t need an axe!

I can grind words

with the romantic stare

of all my lost lovers.

I have lived intensely in the wasteland of charm and pretty lies.

A Rockstar of heartbreak with all the stages of grief.

I have known the scary feel of veering into oncoming traffic,

and crashing into hardcore hearts.

All the anesthesia in the world cannot stop that feeling,

and metaphors can only reveal a ghost of what was.

Writing poems now is my solace and my story.

They sing the song I will never sing again,

and make love to the drummer that first broke my heart.


Linking with Shay's Word Garden Word List ~ Featuring the come back of Creem Magazine

& the Sunday Muse for Muse #228

Visit both prompts and join in the fun!

Saturday, September 10, 2022

What the Fox Knows

 



A fox has no expectations of what lies ahead.

He trails down the path where the lilacs brush across his face,

and it is always a new hello.

He deals with the seasons as they come.

A symbol of resilience he does what he must.

He has a way of enduring the shiver of winter’s sting,

and he survives to enjoy the summer’s breeze.

Never consumed with the memory of anguishing struggle

he moves onward.

I wish I could be like him,

but instead, I cry over letters that never arrived.

Every loss is a memento I store away like a ticket to a rare ballet,

for my heart is a feeble handbag filled with a quandary of old things

that were never mine to cherish., yet I fumble through it anyway.

Again I am lost over heartbreak like a girl that has astigmatism and yet no glasses,

I wander and yes, I am lost.

Somehow the fox has a deep and clear vision

of where he needs to be.

I am busy staring at an old crinkled map I cannot even read.


Linking today with Shay's Word List where this week she is featuring the poet Amy Lowell.  I had never read her writing, but was delighted to find that I love her poetry!  Thank you Shay for another wonderful prompt!

Come join us!


Wednesday, August 31, 2022

Lost Upon a Wind That Never Blew,

 


“Ah, look at all the lonely people.” —The Beatles (Eleanor Rigby)

  

Flocks of birds and forests must know something human hearts do not.

Like a choir they hold the comfort of reaching in unison.

Always hungry for the sky.

Still man becomes a ghost

alone down a darkened hall.

A silver haired shadow

searching for a memory

that no one else recalls.

Silent stories

are a house burning to the ground,

never to be entered or seen again.

Some hearts are broken wings and fallen branches.

Secrets lost upon a wind that never blew.

A loneliness that only humans truly know.

 

 

 

I am so delighted to be participating in one of my favorite prompts, Shay’s Word Garden Word List!  It is always fascinating, educational, and inspirational.  Thank you Shay my friend!!

This week the featured theme is Jackson C. Frank.  Click here to learn more and participate.