Coffee Table Heartaches

 

Linking with Shay's Word Garden Word List

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 than 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.

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!

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!

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!

We Want to Harness Moonlight,

 

Chasing the moon by Catrin Welz-Stein….Surreal Art & Graphic Design. 

The earth is sliced into furrows that seeds may burst with life; even thus with our wounds.

 ~Henry Stanley Haskins

The laurels and the willows know the strength of a rainy day,

but my heart is still learning.

We want to harness moonlight,

and have the flowers of May always,

but we only truly appreciate the shine of a clear sky

when we have endured all the dreary days.

Life teaches like a professor that will give the lesson harsh yet sure.

It gathers us together the way you would garland upon a tree.

Makes us sit in the church like children to hear the sermon

whether we want to or not.

We will learn one way or the other from the slough or from the river’s harshest flow.

For the laurels and the willows know the strength of a rainy day,

 but my heart is still learning.

Linking with Shay's Word List "A. E. Housman #19" now at the Sunday Muse every 3rd weekend.

Come join us!

I Held Sorrow Like a Saucer

 

Power of imagination by Joiedevivre89

“Hurt people hurt people.” As they say in Recovery.

 

I held sorrow like a saucer of hot tea

gentle and careful and true.

You flung it far and wide

the pain was sure to fly and spill on me and you!

It is strange how some things fester

and others dart like vultures for the kill.

But no matter how you carry it

it will surely burn as it will spill.

A house can be a true shelter

 or it can be the very storm we should escape,

and like a tree, the heart learns from weathered living

to either bend or surely break.

Click HERE for source.

Linking today with the Sunday Muse for Muse #206

Come join us!

The Things I Remembered at 2 am Waiting for the Test Results

 

Photo by Jonah Reenders

The best thing I know in favor of TIGHT SHOES is that it makes a fellow forget all of his other troubles. ~Josh Billings

 

I used to search for worms in the blades of grass by the porch.

I found them fascinating like a scientist studies disease and the cells of change.

All the hidden things we do not understand; they escape us somehow.

Too small for human eyes to truly see or hands and minds to grasp.

I asked questions as children always do;

Why is the sky blue?

Where are my go-go boots?

Why was daddy drunk last night?

When is mommy coming home from the hospital?

Some answers never came, and others I wished didn’t,

but it never stopped me from questioning the world.

I just moved on to bigger questions and bigger problems,

like a graduate of hard knocks climbing to even higher spots trying not to fall.

We learn to tie our shoes, before we learn to hike, but sometimes we slip into the water before we can swim.

I have learned that sometimes knowing is painful, but uncertainty hurts more.

Like stepping out into the brush barefoot.  It is better to know where not to step,

and what direction you truly need to go.

Linking with the Sunday Muse for #201.  Come join us!

Hope Can Be Held Whole or Served by the Slice

 Freedom is strangely ephemeral. It is something like breathing; one only becomes acutely aware of its importance when one is choking. ~William E. Simon

 

I never was brave or good with a knife,

but sometimes I take words and slice them,

so, you can see the core of my life

 and I serve them to the world on once empty plates.

For the rumbles of hunger call like thunder in the rain,

to sailors and farmers alike.

The living yearn to be fed.

Be it hope or be it bread.

So I started trying to fill the emptiness that lives in every silent place,

brush away every heartache

like tears from a child’s tired face.

 And say, it will all be okay,

but truly mean it!

You see I never learned to swim underwater.

Because I was always frightened of not being able to breathe.

I saw someone take their last gasping breath,

and I heard the silence that it leaves.

Since that day, I took hope and ink and learned to speak,

to soothe a bitter ache in the world,

and sooth the ache in me.

Cause I was never brave or good with a knife,

but sometimes I take words and slice them

so you can see the core of my life.

 

 

Carrie 101 💗:

In continuation of my post at the Muse, you may know I work at a library, and that it is inside a lovely garden park where photographers and families come to enjoy the beauty, but what you do not know is:

.....I am almost 60, I have been over weight most of my adulthood.  I have always struggled with knowing how to tell people "no".  I am horrifically afraid of heights. I work out 3 days a week or more to keep my heart healthy, cause most of my family members have died young.  I have a major addiction to English muffins and tacos.  Now that I got some of the messy stuff out of the way, I will tell you all the good things:  I have 5 grown kids.  One I gave birth to, and four that God gave me in marriages.  In turn I have lots of amazing grandchildren that make my heart smile.  We will leave it at that, but if you have any questions, feel free to ask in the comments.

Thank you again everyone for being a part of the 200th celebration at the Muse!  Especially to Chrissa, Shay & Toni too! 💓💓💓

Linking with the 200th Sunday Muse.  

A Saloon of Pure Twilight

 

 

 

 

My womb is a saloon of pure twilight,

yet the lamp of breaking dawn.

Longing for no fruit like bitter apples,

but for all the daughters and the sons.

Recalling a colder winter, my mind holds doubt

like an axe that cuts the cord.

Yet, my heart is a crafty weaver

mending together all the fabrics

whether tattered or even torn.

Then one day I gave birth to an ocean

in the shipwreck of my days,

and I let go of sorrows lonely helm

reaching out my hands to pray.

Now my hips have beheld eternity.

The echo of eons past, yet future’s song.

For my womb is a saloon of pure twilight,

and the lamp of breaking dawn.

Linking with Shay's Word Garden Word List #13 (Gordon Lightfoot)

Image Source Photo by Rachel Claire from Pexels

The Memory of Sorrows

 

There's nothing in the world that clings

As does a memory that stings...

~Georgia Douglas Camp Johnson

 

 

Everything is fragile

skyscrapers

 bobby pins

an old woman’s hands

Styrofoam cups

the northern spotted owl

a human heart

you see even the moon has craters

being the old woman that I am

I have come to understand and know this

still my mind forgets all the details

but my heart remembers things

the flickering of starlight

the joyful tears of birth

the song they played at my grandfather’s funeral

falls that scrape more than knees

for words crash like waves upon a shore

relentless like a salesman

and serious like a preacher on Sunday

the memory of sorrows

is a child waiting

 promised a day at the county fair

you can bet your bottom dollar

that day will be remembered

in the joy of going and even more so in the not

it is all the things our hands never hold

that seem to leave the heaviest of weights

for a child never forgets

and one day that boy becomes a man

with a heart that still remembers

what a child cannot forget.

Linking with the Sunday Muse for Muse #198

Come join us!

Glimmers of the Soul,

 

Linking with Shay's Word Garden Word List # 12 (Richard Brautigan)

 

"My poems are love-drunk letters to the universe". ~Terri Guillemets

 

How many lanterns does it take to light the truest way?

As many as a poem can hold

As many as it takes!

A poem is like candles that can burn no matter how high the wind

It moves and makes the impossible

like Frankenstein and wonder

possible again

for the creation of a poem is like making wool without a spinning wheel

it brings to light beauty from soot and embers

and makes soft what once was hard as steel

poetry is a whisper that can be heard in the loudest place

it is letters that always arrive with no postage ever paid 

we dig into the trenches fierce like lions yet with the ink of grace

searching for a million strangers and yet just one familiar face

for poets and their poetry are explorers of the soul

they reach out toward the farthest mysteries

and yet dig even deep inward for their own

so the question is, how many lanterns does it take to light the truest way?

the answer is, as many as a poem can hold

as many as it takes!

Life is Crazy That Way

 

Photograph by Anita Sedberry at Harold Ross Fine Art Photography.

Life is a long road on a short journey. ~James Lendall Basford

 

Life is crazy that way

A bird that flies away and home all at once

It reaches tall

Like a boy at 16

And then stoops

Low like an exotic dancer

Leaving us mesmerized and complacent one time or another

It quivers like a flame

Yet is still like fog on a winding road

it moves slow like an old man’s stance

and then zooms fast like a dragon fly

it is erratic like a small child

and then floats on air like a ghost

it is a million loads of laundry

and yet just one true kiss

the kind one never forgets

long after the flame has burned out.

Linking with the Sunday Muse for Muse #195

Come join us!

 

Autopsy of the Soul

 

Linking with Shay's Word GardenWord List # 8 (Russell Edson)

It is in the silent pondering 

the kind poets always do

that life gets a deeper cut

powerful like a hatchet digs

an autopsy of the soul

for we the poets are vicarious

silent ghosts of opportunity

following you to the cellar door

just to see what you shall see

to feel the electric shock

and taste the loss of words unsaid

we long to pull years out of the clogged pipes 

of one man's memory

we wrap them with soft metaphors

and then clasp each one hard with tusks 

so no one else forgets

we give them to the world.

 

Above Bullshit & Silence

 

Linking with Shay's Word Garden Word List #6 (Laura Marling) 

Come join us!

I held my love like a wounded bird

Wings broke from life’s fickle ways

The skin of my heart bruised

From fallen words

Spoken on lonesome lips

Yet I still write poems of love like a song of blues

For I am a hunter of truth in a wild land

Searching for warmth in December

For holy in the lost places

Crying for sand and sea in the waste land of dust

I ring bells trying to be heard above bullshit and silence

For that is what poets and lovers do.

I Would Fly but My Hip is Acting Up,

 

Linking with the Sunday Muse for Muse #191 hosted this week by the utterly amazing poet Shay!

Come join us!

"Everything slows down with age, except the time it takes cake and ice cream to reach your hips." - John Wagner

 

 

I have become heavy like a ship

But not so sea worthy

Capable of sinking at more than an iceberg

I cannot pinpoint the exact moment

Nor remember when I could no longer move with the ease of a raven

I just know now my being is cumbersome and weary to run

It happened like wrinkles and joint pain

A slow conjuring of proof of the journey

Slow like a teenager heading to chores

But sooner or later the leaves are flying all around you waiting to be raked

Dishes are crusted and need to be soaked

Just like my feet

A Mighty Weakness

Linking with the Sunday Muse for Muse #190.  Come join us!

Each substance of a grief hath twenty shadows... ~William Shakespeare

 

My soul is a parakeet that tries to fly

But my heart can be a cage

Gripping mightily to all I hold dear

But in the letting go I am weak

Like a lost man on a ledge

No longer able to stand

We lose many things in this life

And we carry each loss as we go

Like weary children crying to be picked up

We lift them upon our hip

Close and careful not to drop them

So I find that even in the letting go

I am still truly holding on.

 

Three Different Sisters of the Same Mother

 3 Simple Poems for the Sunday Muse # 186 hosted this week by the stunningly talented Shay!

Come join us!

The question is not what you look at, but what you see. ~Henry David Thoreau

Speak,

Things are not always what they seem to be

This world has a way of taking away and gifting what we do not expect

We hold what we can and take a lifetime learning to let go

when I was a child

 mountains looked so far away

and so did the future

my grandparents’ house was a mansion in my eyes

rooms echoed with my voice

and I felt large like a star

every bad day and mistake was an ocean I could not handle swimming

expectations

so many expectations

what I should be

how I should behave

but I learned from the men in my life how to be a good man

that may not be what you expected me to say

but things are not always what they seem.

Own,

I have picked flowers from someone else’s garden to place upon my table

For I had no garden of my own

I built a house from the wood of someone else’s trees for shelter

For I had no place to call home

I read poems from the lips of someone else’s parting

For I longed to have a voice of my own.

Open,

My eyes are tired of seeing what you cannot

Open eyes cannot see what truly is

Especially when hearts are closed

Shut tight like a prison door

Beauty is everywhere

It is in front of your face

It is written between the lines

Of all the lines one heart must cross

To reach where it was meant to be.

Being Alive

 

Linking with the Sunday Muse for Muse #185

Come join us!

Life is a mixed blessing, which we vainly try to unmix. ~Mignon McLaughlin

 

 

Being alive is a strange and magnificent thing

a vessel

 that moves

and breathes

and holds

we are filled with a spirit

 like wine in a glass

yet we can hold so much emptiness

and carry loss with the gentle strength of a mother holding her child

my hands tried to keep you close

to know you like a mother does

and fill every need upon your lips

I thought love could be strong enough

to never break

but I have learned a thing or two since then

a heart that has never broken

is broken indeed

and even a hurting heart can move on

it beats even when shattered

and unlike a fallen wine glass

It still can hold what it longs for

love

that is one of the many bittersweet miracles of being alive.

 

 

 

 

 

The Most Elusive Bird of All,

 Linking with the Sunday Muse for Muse #175.  This week our image is brought to us by Susie Clevenger an amazing Muser, poet, and friend!  Thank you Susie!

Come join us!

 

Sometimes it is the person closest to us who must travel the furthest distance to be our friend

. ~Robert Brault

 

Love is the deep void and the grand expanse

The rushing river yet the desert sands

A place we know but don’t understand

The most elusive bird of all

I held you once on a starlit night

Soft like feathers yet hard like might

My heart held on and it held on tight

But you flew just like a bird

My heart flew through lovers and stranger’s eyes

My arms reaching like branches no one could climb

I tried to give what was never mine

For my heart had flown away with you.

The Wrote Those Songs To Hear Your Voice

 

Self Portrait With Accordion""naive" style art by artist Guido Vedovato

Linking with the Sunday Muse for Muse #173 hosted this week by the brilliant poet Shay!

You don't have to suffer to be a poet. Adolescence is enough suffering for anyone. ~John Ciardi

 

 

 At 15 the world holds a bigger view

and each hurt is a million falls

from the same kicked shoe

a heart has trees upon mountains

 that no soul can climb

we hold empty hands and loads of time

wide eyed we see the horizon

like a barbed wire fence yet an open gate

freedom’s curse and then freedom’s fate

for blue eyes see a heavy plot

what home should be

and what home is not

in 1978 I sang of broken dreams

as my voice carried on a drunken breeze

of my grandfather’s stories and my mother’s lies

It kept me searching

 naïve yet wise

I wrote those songs to hear your voice

 and see the truth

to find my path

 beyond the plight of youth.