tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-75920357937329368232024-03-13T19:04:41.827-07:00Confessions in Stories"Some stories are true that never happened" _Elie Wieselnicolewianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12836201941173083316noreply@blogger.comBlogger284125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7592035793732936823.post-90130276783196388672015-05-26T13:43:00.000-07:002015-05-26T13:43:21.010-07:00ListeningI have never been very good at making decisions. I've been afflicted by self-doubt and fear for more of my life than I'd like to admit. Remembering daily to turn my will and my life over to the care of God has relieved this in recent years and yet there are still too many moments where I just feel immobilized by anxiety; the "right" answer always seeming elusive.<br />
<br />
I should be in Kentucky right now. Spring residency for my Master's program started last Friday and I was supposed to be there. For the past month, I had been feeling increasingly uneasy about the upcoming trip. It would have been my fourth residency and nerves had plagued me prior to each trip before but this apprehension felt different. I couldn't shake it and each time I've been before, excitement had always eventually edged out the worry. But this time, even though I prayed through the fears, practiced positive thinking, talked my feelings out with others, still the feeling of foreboding persisted. <br />
<br />
The week before I was to leave I felt like I was starting to come down with a cold. I started popping the Vitamin C. Then my knee started acting up. I'm scheduled for knee surgery on June 3rd and had hoped everything would be fine. As the week wore on, my cold grew worse, my knee swelled bigger and by Thursday I couldn't get around without my brace. "I'll be fine," I kept assuring myself but the inner nagging continued. I reminded myself, a cold is just a cold. I have the brace. I'll push through. <br />
<br />
I could have pushed through. I do it all the time. I'm a pretty determined person. Sometimes things work out positively when I do that and sometimes not. I could have gone and slowly felt better while I was there or I could have gone and developed pneumonia and been unable to walk at all half-way through the week. Those aren't just silly exaggerated concerns. With a chronic illness, those would have been possible realities. <br />
<br />
So, I started to feel a little like, maybe, God was telling me something. But then my other voice was saying, "It's only fear." So, I woke up Friday morning at three to leave for the airport. My ten year old and eight year old daughters were both awake. The oldest said she'd prayed that God would wake her up to say another goodbye. I dressed, had a quick cup of coffee and hugged and kissed them goodbye. As I hugged my younger daughter, I noted that she felt hot. Very hot. So, I took her temperature and it was 102.5. She had a bulge in the side of her neck, as well. She'd been complaining of a "stiff neck" all week but we hadn't noticed any bulge and she hadn't had a fever. My husband said he'd take her to the doctor and go into work late, so we left for the airport. <br />
<br />
I knew he had it covered. That she'd be okay and well taken care of but by now I was seriously starting to doubt my decision to go. It seemed like signs were coming in all directions that it was not a good idea. I prayed in the car. I texted my sponsor and a friend. I asked my husband to exercise his husbandly leadership and tell me what to do. We parked at the airport and we walked up to ticketing ( I limped) and my sponsor texted back the simple words, "Follow your heart."<br />
<br />
So, I did. I cancelled my trip. And something's happened in me since then.<br />
<br />
We took Verity to the doctor who ruled out strep throat, ear infection, and UTI. We were sent to a radiologist for an ultrasound and told it might be an abscess and if it was she'd most likely have to be hospitalized. Thankfully, it wasn't. It was just two very large lymph nodes reactive to...something. Five days later, we still don't know what they're reacting to. She's on an antibiotic but each day her fever is higher than the day before and we've now been to the doctor three times. Currently, we're just waiting for results of the latest tests. It's been scary and frustrating but I know God's got it. I don't fear the worst. And I know I'm here because even though she would have been well watched and well tended while I was away, it would have been horrible to not be with her while she's so sick. <br />
<br />
But there's more going on, I think. The decision to stay, not fully knowing the entire 'why' of it was pretty huge for me. I like to know things. I drive myself crazy with the need to know things. And I can't know all things. God just doesn't tell me everything whether I like it or not. And this is why I think I have such a hard time with decisions. I like to gather facts. I do not like to be wrong. I like to be right. One hundred percent right. But, this time, I followed my heart. And I felt peace pretty immediately. For a couple of hours. And in those couple of hours I began to make plans: alright, well, postponed graduation, so now, the kids and I are both on summer break and it will be glorious; quality time and I'll catch up on housework and start cooking again, etc. And then as the evening wore on doubt started to creep back in. By Saturday, even though Verity wasn't on the up and up, I was regretting my decision. It began to sink in what I'd "given up:" a much needed break, time to focus on just me, silence, solitude, creative enlightenment and for what? To hobble around the house in the mess and the noise and the chaos doing laundry? Like I do every. single. day? And I started getting a little comfy on my pity pot. But then, I also got quiet enough to look at what I was feeling. To identify my feelings without judging them, to sit in them, to move past them. And I stayed quiet. In between doctor's visits and keeping vigil with the sick child and entertaining the well children, I've been examining my life a bit. Recognizing too much to write here, today. <br />
<br />
But I'm going to keep looking at the awareness and I'm going to pay attention to what I'm trying to tell myself -- what God is trying to tell me. Because that's what I'm most taking away from this experience at this point, that I can trust myself. So rather than draw up an elaborate plan of what I'm going to do with my free time (which, one thing I'm realizing about myself is that I like to be busy and have plans; free time is slightly uncomfortable for me) is just spend more time be-ing. Being still and quiet, without expectation. I'm going to listen to what's inside. And I'm going to make some changes in order to do that. I'm going to deactivate Facebook as an "experiment." I can't be inside my own moments if I'm always in someone else's moments. But I'm going to come here and write. I could journal and that's great for sort-of vomiting out all the swirl inside my head, but when I'm here, I come closer to God and to what I really need to say. And there's a bit of freedom knowing that even though I post here, I won't be, after today, linking to Facebook. So, now I can just write and send my thoughts out to space in a way. <br />
<br />
I'm excited because this is overdue. I've been talking over myself for a long time and I'm going to practice really listening instead because I'm beginning to believe I have something important to say. nicolewianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12836201941173083316noreply@blogger.com9tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7592035793732936823.post-16164850937028900112015-02-20T11:57:00.002-08:002015-02-20T11:57:19.047-08:00Why I don't Save Flowers<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">You spoil me with flowers.<br />
Red roses at my door<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">on Valentine’s day.
Bouquets <br />
brought home<br />
fresh and fragrant <br />
from the grocery store.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">You are lavish in your flower<br />
giving. Petals strewn<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">across the floor, leading to the bed<br />
where they lay in wait of romance, heart-shaped.<br />
So, now,<br />
our house is full of flowers:<br />
in bloom<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">and wilting in their vases;<br />
some now long expired.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br />
You asked me once, long ago<br />
why I don’t save flowers.<br />
Why I don’t<br />
hang and dry and tuck away<br />
as memory.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">I said that once I had<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">and I know it hurt your feelings. Once I made<br />
a collection out of flowers,<br />
hung upside down on every wall <br />
of my girlhood bedroom<br />
single and in bunches tied with ribbon.<br />
A flower gallery.<br />
Each, reminder of a date or dance attended, <br />
an apology or an attempt. I knew<br />
each story, <br />
each suitor.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br />
Six years worth of accumulated flowers<br />
finally taken down and trashed<br />
when my parents split and sold their house.<br />
Not one do I now recall<br />
as special. Not one do I remember<br />
for individual sentiment.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br />
Only<br />
once more <br />
after that <br />
did I save<br />
these emblems<br />
given, these emblems destined only to die.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br />
When the petals turned<br />
from purest<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">red <br />
to crimson black, <br />
I placed them in the vase they came in,<br />
perched this on my dresser. Honestly,<br />
I don’t remember the exact<br />
occasion<br />
for which these were received.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br />
Twelve years, four children, eight houses<br />
and countless lies and broken promises later, I still had them.<br />
I don’t<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">remember when they were given <br />
but I do remember <br />
when I let them go. Crumpled,<br />
dust layered,<br />
now shelved inside<br />
a closet. I pulled them down and
ceremoniously<br />
threw them out, vase and all. <br />
This act, more symbolic<br />
than the actual flowers. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">I did this when I met you.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">You, the flower giver. You,<br />
who shower me with bright<br />
and beautiful bouquets. That sit<br />
and pose and rest <br />
around the house; <br />
that we photograph and draw<br />
and paint<br />
and for however poor<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">we always seem to be,<br />
I feel gloriously well-off at the sight of these.<br />
And I keep them even when<br />
they’re drooping, faded and dried<br />
up…until you bring me more and I’m out of vases.<br />
Then I have no problem tossing so I can just replace.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br />
And I guess the reason<br />
I’ve saved none <br />
is just that I don’t need to.<br />
I have you. You are the ever-living
bright spot in my life,<br />
the ever-giving blooming show of love.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">You are the best arrangement:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">almond flower promise of always and forever.<br />
ambrosia because you love me too,<br />
crimson carnation<br />
to represent my passion,<br />
mauve for what I dream of, and pearl for faithfulness.<br />
so many tiny dots of cherry blossoms <br />
for your many beauties,<br />
leaning daffodil of brand new days,<br />
creamy elderflower for your sweetness,<br />
and white heather speckled bell-shaped flowers mean that you protect me,<br />
lavender and honeysuckle for your devotion,<br />
and simple, gorgeous jasmine for this unconditional love,<br />
rainbow array of lilies, lotus for rebirth, and seashore mallow because I’m
utterly consumed.<br />
There is peach blossom because I never want our life together to end <br />
and blossom of pear because we share a lasting friendship,<br />
primroses in a circle speak to our eternal love, the trueness of this is seen
in scarlet roses<br />
and finally fuchsia displays my gratitude.
<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">And so I could give up flowers all together and
forever if forever I’ll have you.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><a href="http://margoroby.com/" target="_blank">Margo Roby</a></span></div>
nicolewianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12836201941173083316noreply@blogger.com9tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7592035793732936823.post-57341518228614703162015-01-11T12:47:00.003-08:002015-01-11T12:47:30.925-08:00Domestic Art<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">There is<br />
something<br />
about laundry, eyed, hanging on a line outside, blowing in the wind,<br />
gathering<br />
to it, the fresh scents of the air, the grass, the soil.<br />
Like each<br />
article, its own story, bodiless<br />
but embodied <br />
by the breeze, or words<br />
with sunlit possibilities, written as a list, channeling a draft, <br />
generating poem.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Too, something about hanging each item separately,
shaking<br />
it out, clipping—<br />
calming.<br />
Then, linen, cotton, single socks, <br />
sheets, side by side, mingling, evidencing kinship, in flight<br />
with each gust, unruly, billowing like flags of capitulation, shaking<br />
in surrender.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Or seen in a neighbor’s yard: an ink black nightie, too sexy <br />
for an old lady, (not viewed as condemnation, just noted as a curiosity) <br />
alongside doilies, embroidered, flowered pillowcases, <br />
her husband’s underwear.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">There is no shame in laundry. All is clean.
Though the children giggle,<br />
make fun, sense that privacy is on display.
Delicacies, <br />
like
stolen candy.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Dried quickly on a Midwest summer day,<br />
a woman <br />
with basket hoisted like a baby on her hip<br />
comes out to change loads. The children
scatter, not wishing to render<br />
help. This means a few moments of silence
for the mother. She works<br />
slowly, enjoying a time of neither ennui nor enthusiasm, gradually<br />
works her way toward the end, sighs, folds the last item, holds it up to her<br />
face, smelling the fresh, crisp aroma of her labor, inhaling the possibility<br />
of a poem.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><a href="http://sundaywhirl.wordpress.com/2015/01/04/wordle-194/" target="_blank">The Sunday Whirl</a></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><a href="http://magpietales.blogspot.com/2015/01/mag-252.html" target="_blank">Magpie Tales</a></span></div>
nicolewianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12836201941173083316noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7592035793732936823.post-70781099456314601932015-01-09T11:19:00.004-08:002015-01-09T11:19:50.007-08:00Home<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin;">I have a home
I have memories of an earlier home<br />
I have children I was an only child<br />
I have the near constant hum of noise<br />
I remember the sounds of fighting <br />
and chilled silence<br />
I have loads and loads of laundry washed
<br />
and unwashed I did not learn how to
wash <br />
my own clothes until I was married<br />
I usually have dishes in the sink <br />
I had tea parties with my dolls<br />
I have art supplies I used to draw Betty<br />
and Veronica from the Archie Comics<br />
I have a Bundt cake pan <br />
The first time I tried to bake a cake the eggs <br />
hardboiled themselves <br />
inside the cake<br />
I have a husband who cooks We ate out a
lot<br />
I have books <br />
Books were my friends<br />
I have help <br />
I felt alone <br />
I have love I wanted love<br />
I have fears Fear grew inside me<br />
I have imperfect vision I wore huge
glasses<br />
I have responsibilities credit cards<br />
and no savings <br />
I never thought <br />
to worry about money<br />
I have routine I enjoyed making lists<br />
I am divorced and remarried <br />
I prayed <br />
that my parents would stay together<br />
I am an ex-piano player <br />
I hated practicing the piano<br />
I wish I could still play<br />
I have a busy mind I had an active
imagination<br />
I have holes in my memory I learned
early<br />
to fill in the blanks</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin;"><a href="http://www.pw.org/writing-prompts-exercises" target="_blank">Poets & Writers</a></span><br />
<a href="http://pinkgirlink.blogspot.com/2014/12/warning-stars-saturday-going-back-home.html" target="_blank">Pink. Girl. Ink.</a>nicolewianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12836201941173083316noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7592035793732936823.post-28394322210855483742015-01-07T11:17:00.000-08:002015-01-07T11:17:21.740-08:00Watching<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">She wakes to the sound of the phone ringing,<br />
though it is not early. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">She should be up.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Her mother on the other line <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">only<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">says, <i>Turn on
the TV</i>. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Something about her mother’s voice tells her <br />
she should also wake her husband. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Together, they observe the second plane fly <br />
into the second tower. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">In real time.
The reporters.<br />
had been reporting on the first. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Had not<br />
expected this. Their shock and confusion<br />
exposed as they simultaneously<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">attempt <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">to report and sort out what they<br />
are seeing. As the girl watches,
something<br />
both unfamiliar and frightening <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">begins<br />
to stir; it takes up residence <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">within<br />
her womb. <br />
She is young, expecting her first child <br />
but now something else kicks <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">inside her, as new and strange as the small fetus.<br />
Innocence souring. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">All her beliefs<br />
about how life should be <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">were on that plane.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><a href="http://margoroby.com/" target="_blank">Margo Roby</a></span></div>
nicolewianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12836201941173083316noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7592035793732936823.post-41897840330092993082014-11-09T11:24:00.000-08:002014-11-09T11:24:33.883-08:00Unfinished<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Saffron yellow threads of light shine through<br />
the slats of the window blinds.<br />
She wakes early,<br />
dresses, treads outside to greet the glow.
<br />
Last night’s rain left mud so she is
careful <br />
where she steps. Otherwise, <br />
there’s not a sign of storm, the sky of sapphire, <br />
cloudless. An owl, unaware<br />
the sun soon will rise, still flies low<br />
overhead, whoo-ing like she’s the trespasser.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">She stands at crossroad in her own backyard, <br />
glances once where pale <br />
purple crocuses will open even in the snow.<br />
Uninterested in their optimism, her footfall<br />
finds dry ground to navigate <br />
toward the lone rosebush her husband<br />
planted years ago….years before he died.<br />
The roses are on their second bloom of year.
<br />
China pink at tips of petals, white in middle,<br />
and at center, a color like golden butter.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">She lets a finger slide along one stem,<br />
stops and gently, barely pricks herself <br />
with thorn.<br />
She does this every morning− repeats this<br />
strange ritual, where she contemplates<br />
beauty alongside pain, draws <br />
drop of blood, and with her tongue, suspends <br />
the flow, tasting stannic sweetness.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">She thinks of all she didn’t say <br />
when he was with her.<br />
She grants that much was said, but cannot<br />
escape the truth that death has summoned<br />
words laid latent she always thought <br />
she’d have time <br />
to verbalize.<br />
Now, these words may as well be buried <br />
alongside his body, for, though she’s taken <br />
each meditation she’s had since and had <br />
also then; let them burn unsaid, <br />
then spoke aloud <br />
with fervor at his grave, then wrote <br />
them down as unsent letter, prose in journal,<br />
and even poem, without response, <br />
they’re worthless− <br />
seeds that will never effloresce. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br />
She’s not been angry but for this, and every<br />
sentiment she’s left with is one of praise.<br />
Though not a day went by without the words<br />
<i>I love you</i> uttered, now even those seem
thin<br />
and wanting. Wrought with not enough.<br />
Had she never held what all was planted <br />
deeper in, she’d offer self-forgiveness<br />
but the knowledge that these existed<br />
without voice now haunts her. She had
tried. <br />
Found herself tongue-tied by the sheer emotion <br />
felt, unable <br />
to admit the ache that came with ardor.<br />
So, now, the tiny throb of pulse from prick<br />
all she has to serve as a reminder that once<br />
necessary words were born and budded <br />
in the silent soil<br />
of her mouth. She’s left <br />
to mourn their suicide. His, an honest
death,<br />
her words a scandalous, shameful hanging,<br />
choked in this vacant air. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">So, she forms prayers of repentance <br />
with hands that tend<br />
the garden that he left her, frets over every<br />
flower’s life but plucks them when they’re<br />
close to expiration, preserves them <br />
in a press. The grass <br />
grows free but weeds are promptly pulled.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Perhaps she believes the blossoms to be<br />
expression and that care<br />
will be her<br />
reparation, <br />
her suffering unfinished.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><a href="http://sundaywhirl.wordpress.com/" target="_blank">The Sunday Whirl</a></span></div>
nicolewianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12836201941173083316noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7592035793732936823.post-20257306299073007362014-11-07T11:12:00.002-08:002014-11-07T11:12:30.865-08:00Bones<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Could our souls be so open<br />
we could build a fire? Burn the bones <br />
of our past? We could start again−<br />
anew.<br />
Find our souls unburdened <br />
by our quondam havoc.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Yes, baby, unearth your skeletons<br />
and I’ll dig up mine− each<br />
clandestine secret ever held, <br />
every fragment of shame,<br />
every shard of self-reproach.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">It’s a midsummer eve; let’s let the sun <br />
set on all that came before we met.<br />
We’ll watch<br />
the framework of the witches<br />
wither in the gilded flames <br />
until their cackling dies out. <br />
The heat<br />
will scorch our fear. <br />
We’ll be reborn.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">These bones have been our bane <br />
and bondage. They rise at night <br />
to haunt and taunt, remind <br />
us of our sins; their limbs rattling<br />
as they boldly dance around our bed.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">So, during <br />
day, in safety, we’ll bring them <br />
to the light. We’ll make <br />
a ring of rocks to place disparted<br />
bodies in. Pile high, bone by bone,<br />
every soulless fuck, every thief<br />
of worth. Abjuring <br />
in our conflagrant ceremony,<br />
the selves we used to be and the selves<br />
the bones once feigned to be. <br />
We’ll throw in skulls with cavernous<br />
sockets, where eyes would be, still<br />
as vacant as when flesh filled <br />
face. We’ll throw in cold and lifeless <br />
frail fingers and inhuman hands <br />
that once grasped for all that was not theirs.
<br />
Their lying tongues have rotted, <br />
their fraudulent hearts, decayed. <br />
Ears that would not listen, now<br />
do not exist and wills that would not stop<br />
when asked, have been long put to rest. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br />
Now, just bones.<br />
Once the bodies of men who wielded <br />
their weapons like promise, women <br />
who seduced the weak and watched <br />
while their victims moaned and writhed<br />
beneath their honeyed words of power,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">now, unburied, we see, these bodies <br />
are just bones. Without garments of
skin,<br />
they are nothing but brittle stories.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">The stars will come tonight to shine <br />
their blessing and we’ll drop the match<br />
and we will not mourn <br />
as bones at last turn to ash.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><a href="http://poetryblogroll.blogspot.com/2014/11/poets-united-midweek-motif-bonfires.html" target="_blank">Poets United</a><br />
<!--[if !supportLineBreakNewLine]--><br />
<!--[endif]--><o:p></o:p></span></div>
nicolewianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12836201941173083316noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7592035793732936823.post-75724774728542399322014-10-06T19:23:00.000-07:002014-10-06T19:23:41.022-07:00Broken Pleas<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Lord, hallowed be your name. Merciful / Lord<br />
of
reconciliation, hear my / poem as prayer; these broken<br />
pleas in lines, <br />
Lord; /
<br />
metronomic musings,<br />
unmusical, / heavy with fear. Lord, hear
not my <br />
numb speech / <br />
but the token−<br />
the meaning.
Take<br />
away / the hindrance of self−<br />
the sense of− and
leave / with me a greater sense <br />
of your presence; / Your spirit within revealing signs, <br />
sight
/ restored <br />
and light. Within this rare
shining, /<br />
shine through<br />
the gift of losing self to You. / This vital understanding <br />
awakened / only in sheets of grace poured out and down / <br />
and seen in strips of visibility, / so release
me of all pride, <br />
generate
/ humility and create connection /<br />
so I might dine with you in communion /<br />
drink from goblet <br />
of signification /<br />
my
sins forgiven<br />
by sipping tipped back / offering and again in harmony / I pray Thy kingdom<br />
come, Thy will be done…. /<br />
Amen.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><a href="http://sundaywhirl.wordpress.com/" target="_blank">The Sunday Whirl</a><br />
<o:p></o:p></span></div>
nicolewianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12836201941173083316noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7592035793732936823.post-53397403956979430422014-09-11T11:50:00.001-07:002014-09-11T11:50:42.218-07:00Light Calling<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">She held<br />
her life in her own hands<br />
as if it were an egg. Strange, small,<br />
fragile.<br />
A world within, unknown. <br />
Unexpectedly still intact, she had never seen the whole <br />
of a shell. She imagined <br />
the egg pulsed; felt not vibration<br />
from this hope but believed<br />
birth<br />
not death <br />
would be discovered if she were careful.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Between her thumb <br />
and middle finger, she held it up to the light <br />
streaming through her bedroom window, <br />
to see if she might see inside<br />
but found the covering too thick.<br />
Still, with her index finger, she twirled <br />
this secret little world around; <br />
an oval earth rotating on axis of her will.
<br />
She cupped it gently <br />
in her palm,<br />
feeling its cold, smooth shape.<br />
She placed it on a piece of paper, spun it like a bottle<br />
in a kissing game;<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">removed her touch and noted shadow<br />
and when tired of speculation,<br />
she devised a plan for hatching.<br />
She made a nest of blankets in a basket <br />
and went to sleep to wait. She dreamed <br />
she was inside the egg, warm and safe and placid, <br />
curled up tightly in a ball. She felt
this <br />
while her eyes were closed but a sound <br />
from faraway<br />
woke her and her eyes without permission opened.<br />
Her confinement produced no great unease<br />
though her feet began to tingle.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">She strained<br />
to hear the sound outside
herself− a voice, <br />
muffled,<br />
deep.<br />
Conflicting thoughts entered her mind. <br />
She felt compelled to venture out and meet the call<br />
but also wary. There seemed only one way
out−<br />
that of fracture and this, if she were honest, she feared,<br />
so holed up like a mole in hiding she fell back asleep. <br />
For years. And in the dream she dreamed she woke<br />
unable to remember where she came from but knowing<br />
who she was. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">And light was streaming <br />
through <br />
the bedroom, spreading over her, so welcoming <br />
the day, she stretched <br />
and was subtly aware <br />
that as she did, small bits of shell fell softly off her, <br />
though overall this was unremarkable.
Sitting <br />
on the edge of her bed, she stilled a moment before rising,<br />
and asked the voice that was in the light if she might<br />
be able to see at last the large world outside herself,<br />
and for the ability to release her will, offering herself<br />
to the divine, deriving <br />
power from something higher, demanding nothing<br />
and asking for help only and finally, when she stood, <br />
with eyes wide open, <br />
she walked out toward the calling, <br />
unafraid.<br />
<br /><a href="http://margoroby.com/" target="_blank">Margo Roby</a>
<!--[if !supportLineBreakNewLine]--><br />
<!--[endif]--><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
nicolewianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12836201941173083316noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7592035793732936823.post-85860385247668802302014-09-07T14:03:00.001-07:002014-09-07T14:07:33.948-07:00Our Bedroom<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">The lock on the door that does not keep the children
out; every <br />
size of sock, balled up, scattered everywhere, unpaired;<br />
dead <br />
deep-red roses<br />
drooping sadly, heads bowed down, stems entombed in a clouded <br />
vase− eleven of them, so, one short of a dozen <br />
(strange); brown framed <br />
depiction<br />
of a laughing, happy Jesus beneath a brown for background <br />
canvas of our names in cursive inside heart of petals; bought<br />
for twenty dollars at a yard sale, <br />
end of day,<br />
two velvety violet-ish<br />
couches, covered in dog hair, one doubling as a desk, the other <br />
as a hamper; on the coffee table, another vase (this one tinted pink) <br />
with withered flowers– these of unknown variety – purple, too many <br />
to count;...<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Plants do not fare well here. Like the best-laid plans.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"> ... edges<br />
everywhere, crossed, overlaid: books, furniture, shoes overlapping<br />
the edge <br />
where carpet meets tile;<br />
edge of dresser, mantle, <br />
nightstands, all surfaced with papers, trinkets, valuables <br />
and not-so-valuables, threatening <br />
to topple <br />
off;...<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">There are no clear lines here. Sharp-played piano keys sound<br />
out. I cannot tune<br />
it out.<br />
Not <br />
plunking of rote song <br />
but rather impromptu melody made by small, playful fingers, <br />
moving like geed horses <br />
and also bullet-voices marking breaks, shooting through <br />
these flimsy walls.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">...bluest blue sky<br />
seen from my window; subtler blues inside, copycat shades<br />
on candles, glass, hair on a painting where I was favoring <br />
experimentation, in photographs, scarves, <br />
sheets; lip balm in a small, round tin that I can’t open <br />
but won’t throw out; few spots open for sitting or even walking;...<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">A dismal mess.
Signaling<br />
disorder <br />
in our marriage? <br />
So says a study.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">...blanket thrust off the bed in heat, still crumpled
on the floor;...<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">What calm I remember, a ruse believed sub rosa,
wrought carefully <br />
with such intricate threads of denial.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">...words, words, words, meandering across pages and
pages− <br />
poems, prayer journal, <br />
notebooks full of distilled hope; (such <br />
shallow thirst) <br />
attempts to release heavy weight of this; damaged trust <br />
hidden in a drawer; <br />
half-truths pandering to sentiment hanging on all the walls;...<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><i>Media in vitae in morte sumus.<o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">...paperwork combed through for clues; in bowls,
matching rings, <br />
unworn; captured and enlarged mocking smile; the muck <br />
of bad luck evidenced in disarray; indulged in urges; aroma<br />
of your cologne, distinct; written rants; and more than what<br />
is written here or even seen.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">But, oh, beautiful, imperfect man− my room was a mess <br />
before you moved in.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><a href="http://sundaywhirl.wordpress.com/" target="_blank">The Sunday Whirl</a><br />
<br />
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<!--[endif]--><o:p></o:p></span></div>
nicolewianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12836201941173083316noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7592035793732936823.post-55406708658130475952014-09-05T12:59:00.001-07:002014-09-05T12:59:04.243-07:00HOW TO GRIEVE A DREAM<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">First:
acknowledge that it is a dream <br />
you grieve−<br />
nothing more.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">I have just that.<br />
Nothing more. I have just begun. <br />
Have only just stood<br />
in the hollow made by that assent<br />
staring into the void, turning <br />
my soiled hands around and around<br />
to see if I can recognize the dirt<br />
woven in with my veins.<br />
Have only just<br />
recently seen <br />
that it (we− you) was <br />
(were) merely what I wanted it to be<br />
and nothing more.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">How, seeking reality, did I, <br />
made of clay, sculpt<br />
man with such care, my hands <br />
so gently <br />
smoothing? Yes, my fingers <br />
can still feel skin where I thought<br />
your face to be. I cannot call to mind<br />
an image of my thumbs sinking <br />
into your flesh<br />
carving out cup-shaped sockets<br />
to look so deeply into <br />
but here, I see,<br />
beneath my nails, the mud.<br />
What greater sin than this<br />
surmoulage? I do not believe I breathed<br />
when we kissed.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">I had a falling dream and woke to find<br />
I really fell. I am still plummeting.<br />
In the mornings, words greet me.<br />
Unfinished words, I long ago<br />
(not that long ago) began to paint<br />
stenciled on my wall. The pencil<br />
marks for every letter<br />
are still there, illegible <br />
from anywhere but up close<br />
but the crimson color fill-in fills in<br />
three letters only of a phrase <br />
that was meant to say <br />
<i>a room of one’s own</i>. I left<br />
the project incomplete <br />
when you moved in. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br />
Too, unseen, behind books<br />
another fragmentary sentiment:<br />
Half-done purple painted verse:<br />
Hosea 2:14. I followed your voice<br />
instead, afraid of the desert <br />
and true tenderness.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">All these partial writing on the walls.<br />
Like the picture taken early on<br />
that now looks altered in this light.<br />
I can’t say quite how I perceived it before<br />
but now your grin jumps out <br />
too self-assured and my own small smile<br />
registers a certain wariness as if that girl<br />
knew more than what I know now.<br />
And there I wore, and wear even now, <br />
around my neck a symbol of your heart,<br />
that supposed offering.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">I think step two is to stop addressing <br />
everything to you, to turn away <br />
from that which I’ve created so I can see<br />
in whose image I’ve been made.<br />
To see what is truly bound, <br />
not around my neck, but on my forehead, <br />
what is tied as symbol to my hands,<br />
what is fixed in my heart and mind.<br />
What words expressed,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">I do not wish to make you smaller<br />
than life but only life-sized, finally<br />
so I can recognize my hands when clean.<br />
You can then break, freely.<br />
I will leave your pieces be and pray,<br />
confessing guilt for forgery<br />
and after kneeling, my eyes will see<br />
the evidence of woodwork, revealing<br />
that I have never been alone.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><a href="http://dversepoets.com/" target="_blank">dverse</a></span></div>
nicolewianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12836201941173083316noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7592035793732936823.post-88960717665396770562014-09-04T16:22:00.003-07:002014-09-04T16:23:37.351-07:00These Things<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">A dream<br />
is a poem<br />
is a dream. Obscure. I am picking it apart <br />
for clarity, piecing back as best I can, the glimpses,<br />
fragile, lightweight half-truths that they are<br />
and I am considering letting them drop.<br />
Letting
them go.<br />
(Though they shine)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">I do not want to write you this.<br />
I do not want to write one more poem for you.<br />
I cannot avoid this. I cannot mature<br />
past this<br />
point.<br />
Past<br />
this dream.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">You have just brought me a cup of coffee−<br />
these<br />
are the sweet thing<br />
you do. You ask if there is anything
else<br />
you can do, lightly touching my back, leaning<br />
in<br />
to kiss me. These things<br />
that I’ve interpreted as love− as if love<br />
is a formula to be expressed by specific<br />
symbols.<br />
But nothing is this simple.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">You have left me with my coffee and my pen<br />
to write. Do you guess that I will write of you? <br />My hands are bleeding.<br />
As for the rest of me− what will<br />
become of it now? What<br />
will I look like<br />
in the mirror anymore, I wonder.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">We only ever saw the stars<br />
so dazzling,<br />
the one night. Remember? Even though<br />
every night, I look up. I said that
night<br />
that we were missing all the good stuff.<br />
I don’t know what I meant. These− all−<br />
are just fragments. Our foreheads
touching, <br />
unaware someone was taking a photo. <br />
Were you asking if there was anything I needed?<br />
Did I fall asleep with vision of that moment?<br />
Just that one. That one and ones like it<br />
and build dreams<br />
to carry me through<br />
the waking? What will I do now? Everyone<br />
else was looking at the camera but all I saw <br />
was you.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><a href="http://margoroby.com/2014/09/02/poem-tryouts-word-play/#comments" target="_blank">Margo Roby</a></span></div>
nicolewianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12836201941173083316noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7592035793732936823.post-88056191502519150352014-08-28T10:14:00.001-07:002014-08-28T10:14:33.424-07:00Belonging<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Not long at all<br />
after we started dating, we declared our song to be “Ho Hey”− <br />
which is a stupid name for a song so we refer to it instead<br />
by the lines of its chorus & these lines, I bought for you <br />
on your birthday with a frame & now hanging <br />
above our bed <br />
are the words, “I belong to you, <br />
you belong to me.” I read recently<br />
that:<br />
“There is a reason the word belonging has a synonym <br />
for want at its center; it is the human condition” <br />
& I suppose this is true, but the thing is, though now <br />
I can’t imagine how I’d live (or ever did) in your absence, <br />
belonging either to or with another was something <br />
that I always feared; autonomy, the language that I spoke, <br />
the rift that I created to exist between us & somehow, <br />
in spite of this, you caught me & being caught<br />
turns out to not be bad<br />
at all. In ways, to be sustained in
union produces certain <br />
new-found freedoms.<br />
Shortly after I ceased resisting, I found <br />
encompassed in your arms, room to move in brand new ways.<br />
Allurement<br />
sifting previous notions, softening<br />
the hard ground I’d stood upon, so flight became an option. <br />
Beneath my feet, the sturdy rocks <br />
I’d forever taken for granted began to shift like old, rickety <br />
floor boards in a dangerously aging house <br />
& jumping now, a bit more promising…<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">another strange <br />
fact of speech discovered in what it means to cleave− <br />
the unwritten understanding that inherent in the explanation<br />
of is a choice: to split from or stick
fast to or also<br />
both if interpreted in biblical terms<br />
& I think<br />
my reasons for remaining<br />
in my alienage were simply<br />
tools<br />
constructing makeshift cliff I wished someone would <br />
save me from, quite confused on the differences between <br />
what was desire & what was need until you kissed me <br />
& my bones turned into wings. I
still can’t speak to you <br />
of love without a stutter but at least the subject<br />
no longer renders me completely silent.
Your courage<br />
baffles me & fuels my own. Together,
we<br />
compose unspoken,<br />
unmatched melody reviving romance. Released
<br />
from cloud-capped<br />
captivity, I’m flourishing feet on ground.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><a href="http://sundaywhirl.wordpress.com/" target="_blank">The Sunday Whirl</a></span></div>
nicolewianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12836201941173083316noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7592035793732936823.post-44009365433326963042014-08-22T12:48:00.000-07:002014-08-22T12:48:16.708-07:00What's Constant<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Baby, I can’t tackle<br />
the news or noise− I’ve tried.<br />
I can’t take the static <br />
or the slant or the supposed <br />
statistics anymore, so, <br />
I return to you<br />
curl up in the comfort of us.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">I read the stories,<br />
the suppositions, all the slander,<br />
and I get worked up<br />
and then worn out and my ears<br />
just hurt.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">I start <br />
to fear <br />
for the state of the nation<br />
and the future of the truth<br />
and where it stands.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">I start<br />
to fear my own voice, the burn <br />
in my throat<br />
so I return to truth.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br />
I begin again to poise, <br />
to position myself <br />
on the side <br />
of what I know <br />
is right.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"> I return to you, <br />
simply,<br />
because baby, see,<br />
truth is, you’re my voice <br />
of calm in this crazy world<br />
and you’re the
reason <br />
to my rhyme,<br />
meaning,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">not that you’re my higher power <br />
but only that you’re one<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">God-given reason to believe in one, </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br />
so because<br />
I can’t write lines <br />
to tickle the ears of the masses <br />
and because<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">I have a knack <br />
for leaving unfinished <br />
what I’ve started…<br />
or<br />
rather, an addiction<br />
to new ideas <br />
that trumps my commitment<br />
to completion,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"> I find it
easiest<br />
to just write<br />
never ending words for you.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">I try and center,<br />
remember back<br />
two days ago <br />
how we had a downpour<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">and the thunder <br />
roared <br />
and the <br />
ground flooded, the rain trampling all <br />
the dirt<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">and how <br />
when the sun returned <br />
I noticed like it was a brand <br />
new phenomenon and I heard some bird<br />
song vying for attention<br />
that I’d never<br />
heard before.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">How suddenly the sky clearing−<br />
sun-cracking ember first<br />
then brightest blue warding off <br />
the clouds <br />
seemed quite poetic<br />
and verse-worthy.<br />
How I hadn’t even realized <br />
before that moment<br />
that my mood<br />
had matched the weather.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">The weather is as fickle<br />
as the headlines<br />
but at least it’s fresh.<br />
So, I’m drawing from that instant<br />
a little bit of joy<br />
and cleansing and I’m likening it<br />
to you because<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">I’m convinced that if anything<br />
in this world remains as good, it’s love<br />
and baby, love<br />
is me and you.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Love is the way you<br />
look at our daughters<br />
like they are morning<br />
glories just discovered <br />
in earliest hours.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">It’s the way <br />
you teach our sons<br />
how to be men<br />
in a world of boys.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">It’s the way you<br />
tuck me in<br />
and wake me up<br />
with the prickle of goose bump kisses.<br />
It’s that your kind<br />
and that I’m rather fond of you.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">It’s that your thoughts echo<br />
and your heart mirrors mine.<br />
It’s your midday call and your steady<br />
talk that’s balm for my frantic<br />
overloaded mind.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">And though the seasons <br />
shift<br />
and the clock<br />
ticks quickly and time <br />
slips fast away<br />
especially when we’re together<br />
the fact remains <br />
that your presence<br />
is reminder<br />
that love, not fear, fuels<br />
voice.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">So, I’m done wrestling<br />
with words of protest.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">I’m done with platform <br />
and with preaching.<br />
I’m giving in instead<br />
to what some<br />
still<br />
believe makes the world<br />
go round.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">I’m silencing whatever’s in me<br />
that’s afraid of healing.<br />
It seems this fallen world <br />
has finally culminated<br />
to a place of mass insanity, <br />
given itself over to terror <br />
and to hate<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">but I now surrender <br />
in this dark<br />
hour<br />
to a purer force−<br />
that of love.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">And I’d rather write sap than filth,<br />
romance than lies; I’m energizing<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"> my own
peace movement,<br />
my own <br />
sit-in where I don’t move <br />
until I’ve swayed<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">my heart <br />
toward courage; the courage<br />
to write on and on to you,<br />
unashamed of simple love poems<br />
believing there’s still<br />
room<br />
for progress on that front.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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nicolewianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12836201941173083316noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7592035793732936823.post-46597665800097709942014-08-17T15:12:00.001-07:002014-08-17T15:12:56.578-07:00Spent<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">I.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">To put things in perspective:<br />
there are children starving<br />
in Africa…<br />
and in India…<br />
and even here− in America ( the Beautiful).<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">The above−<br />
a note to self.<br />
<i>My-</i>self: who, sadly, it is easiest to think of.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">II.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">The list of what<br />
we can’t afford<br />
is growing rapidly.<br />
Meanwhile, we are not in view<br />
of any bright or grand futurity.<br />
The middle class is learning <br />
that the stark black type that wrote them in <br />
and the white blank space that offered room <br />
to move were merely hues….or shades.<br />
Not anything to be counted on.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Now, the gap widens and we more clearly see <br />
the grays defining <br />
just exactly what transgressions truly are.<br />
The grays grasped<br />
like straws, like the slippery lowest rung, <br />
are bleeding up as we begin to understand <br />
what it means to go without.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Oh, Lord, forgive me for hoarding <br />
such loftiness of speculation.<br />
Je suis farci of self.<br />
Hard times will soften hearts or lines.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">The underclass, the so-called dregs, <br />
the demimonde, still by definition work<br />
and the women at the bottom relent to roles<br />
and certain rites of supposed passage, sights<br />
set on some lying light<br />
at<br />
the end<br />
of a very long tunnel, the flame <br />
anymore barely visible, just the dimmed <br />
orange of a waning candle <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Forgive me my judgment of all the women <br />
who walk Van Buren selling selves, <br />
who close their eyes beneath <br />
the looming power anticipating <br />
drug of choice and its promise of relief−<br />
the feeling of (if only fleeting) being at last<br />
reborn; the only promise ever kept. <br />
Forgive me scorn for those who only <br />
seek asylum, fleeing to a country that at least <br />
has food to offer if not welcome.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">As we learn,<br />
now, to live in a nation whose dream has expired,<br />
along with any generation still inclined to mourn<br />
the loss, I ask for pardon <br />
for all previous assumptions. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">I still tell<br />
my children that there are children starving <br />
in Africa…in India…right here, in the land <br />
of vagaries. We’ve never missed a
meal. <br />
We’ve never walked a mile in a child’s <br />
footsteps on way to well for water. <br />
So what do we know of need? <br />
Divorce us, Lord, of separation if you will<br />
or must to break us into recognition. <br />
Reveal your heartbreak and stay your hand.<br />
Grant us less not more and bind perspective <br />
around our necks. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><a href="http://sundaywhirl.wordpress.com/" target="_blank">The Sunday Whirl</a></span></div>
nicolewianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12836201941173083316noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7592035793732936823.post-50870756018614767582014-08-08T15:37:00.002-07:002014-08-08T15:41:37.004-07:00Ode to My Muse<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Cloud promising a rainbow, persistent, though
rarely loud,<br />
looming moodily above my days, daze<br />
inducing. Wisp of woman, shadow-formed, entering my
kitchen <br /> in the steam <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">from stove; my bedroom in my husband’s arms, my
mind <br />
at any time, seducing. Her hands are songs, holding mine, pulling me
away, casting spell with wand <br />of many hues that bloom like flowers, <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">recognizable by aura<br />
and soft scent <br />
of childhood mixed with specks of mystery. Somber yet also playful,
contradiction is her trade mark. <br />I am
powerless in her presence.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"> I can
taste her when I wear my apron<br />
and her lines crawl across my skin in looping scrawl, spilling<br />
into,<br />
in through my willingness to listen, to be
found. To see from the sea <br /> of my
moments<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin;"> and my movements, her as land, lush <br /> and fruitful. Voice of sirens carrying across my waves, reducing <br /> distance. <br /> When she is through with me she leaves me spent. <br />
She knows I love to love and hate her <br />
and that when I remove my apron, <br />she’s the one I blame.<br />
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin;"><a href="http://poeticbloomings.com/2014/08/03/prompt-161-highly-a-mused/#comments" target="_blank">Poetic Bloomings</a></span>nicolewianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12836201941173083316noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7592035793732936823.post-2080024321686631222014-08-08T13:09:00.000-07:002014-08-08T13:09:05.469-07:00SurrenderSo, I drip sap for you.<br />Wrangle<br />
words. <br />You are my vice.<br />You are mine.<br />I have given <br />up the fight, tired<br />of pretending<br />there's anything<br /> I want<br />to write about but<br />you.<br />
<br />
<a href="http://dversepoets.com/2014/08/07/meetingthebar-its-a-small-small-world-so-lets-limbo-like-there-is-no-tomorrow/" target="_blank">dverse</a>nicolewianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12836201941173083316noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7592035793732936823.post-34639408249163654932014-08-07T13:25:00.003-07:002014-08-07T13:25:54.958-07:00I hate<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">I hate being a poet…and by hate, I mean love. <br />
And by love, I mean<br />
only, <br />
that I am compelled,<br />
driven here. <br />
I hate that I can’t write about Israel, <br />
or sunsets and daisies,<br />
or in the voice of Sophocles. <br />
I hate that I still write best <br />
in the language of a teenager full of angst − and by best,<br />
I mean, I’m most satisfied. I hate that
I write poems<br />
to you<br />
and that I write poems about writing poems.
<br />
That emotions more than imagery crowd the page, <br />
panting. That I forget that moods aren’t
facts. I hate <br />
the need – the greed for words. I hate <br />
that I tend to complicate with forced routine.
I hate <br />
that I’m readable and relatable and I hate <br />
that I just presumed that. I hate that
I’m confessional. <br />
I hate that I’m not more academic, scholarly, referential, <br />
clever or elusive. I hate that that’s a
fact. I hate <br />
that I worry I’m meant to write not poems <br />
but rather drivel in a diary <br />
and that I want to wring the little neck of Philomel.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Most of all, I hate that I sling words like hate and
words<br />
like love around. That I’m a typical
fill-in-the-blank. <br />
That I’m an adult child always waiting for the other shoe<br />
to drop, seeing things in only black or white.
<br />
That I’m an alcoholic thriving in one<br />
of only two extremes: chaos or that damn <br />
short-lived pink cloud state. <br />
I hate that I’m a co-dependent who’s ill-at-ease <br />
to think the honeymoon is over <br />
so now I’m writing angsty teenage poems <br />
instead of cleaning the bathroom like a good wife<br />
would. I hate these labels <br />
and that I fit them<br />
so damn well. That the evidence is
in. I hate that I give<br />
myself up and away with this need, this greed for words. <br />
I hate that I’m an ego-maniac with an inferiority complex <br />
and that I can’t tell you outright <br />
that I still feel jealous of other women <br />
and that I start and finish stupid poems about you <br />
looking. That when we’re in what we like
to call a funk, <br />
I won’t admit <br />
that I don’t want you to take that part-time job <br />
because I worry you’ll run off. I hate
that the economy <br />
has tanked and that we’re broke. That
real life<br />
gets in the way of playing house and that our kids, <br />
most days,<br />
scare the shit out of me−meaning, the amount<br />
and also<br />
the responsibility.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">But,<br />
baby, I love you <br />
and maybe that’s all that counts.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<div class="MsoNormal">
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nicolewianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12836201941173083316noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7592035793732936823.post-46436637048393514312014-07-30T15:08:00.004-07:002014-07-30T15:08:28.932-07:00Rupture<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Can you hear me over the sound of the story /<br />
you’re rehearsing in your head? <br />
Can you see me out- / side the mirror <br />
your reflection’s bound to, your image /<br />
bending to your will? <br />
Can you see your heart in there?<br />
My mouth is open, I’m speaking words, <br />
while you are / posing, pursing<br />
lips, pressing send. What is it that /
you pursue? <br />
What glory do you imagine?<br />
What / wish is thrown in what well<br />
when you casually / toss your change my way?<br />
What hero from what Greek myth / do you play<br />
today? I need to know my part, my / role <br />
so I can swoon on cue. You’re the lead <br />
and I’m / supporting actor− is there
another option? /<br />
Your wisps of truth fall slow like sand in the hour - /<br />
glass of time you’re wasting and when the glass <br />
shatters / your lies will leak.<br />
You’ll be exposed and I will wash / my hands of you,<br />
because I have tried<br />
to reach you. / I have stared into your vacant eyes, <br />
tried to climb / the wall you’ve built to keep out<br />
those you fear would call / you out <br />
and my arms and legs are tired. / I’ll
leave you be. /<br />
I’ll keep your secret. You keep your
superhero / <br />
mask. Save face with your stored
excuses. Hide<br />
behind / feigned power. Attempt to mend <br />
your martyred heart and / I will pardon <br />
your inability to love / because after all <br />
you’re just a scared and hurting / boy grown <br />
into the dim shadow of a man.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><a href="http://withrealtoads.blogspot.com/" target="_blank">With Real Toads</a></span></div>
nicolewianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12836201941173083316noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7592035793732936823.post-30714372625547866982014-07-30T11:56:00.000-07:002014-07-30T11:56:15.583-07:00Figure of a Man<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">My husband whose speech is suave, <br />
but only for me<br />
Whose heart is worn upon his sleeve<br />
Whose hair is the dark of a starless night<br />
Whose hair is soft as a kitten’s fur<br />
Whose skin is smooth anointing oil <br />
Whose words make gentle waves <br />
I wallow in like at a lazy river <br />
at a water park, like a hippo <br />
in a mud bath, like in riches<br />
Whose words are filling like the cream<br />
of breakfast pastries, sweet <br />
and delicious<br />
Whose teeth are white and flashy <br />
precious pearls<br />
The teeth of an actor <br />
in a toothpaste commercial<br />
Whose tongue is an orphaned child begging,<br />
tugging <br />
the heart<br />
strings<br />
My husband whose tongue is the monsoon <br />
wind bringing rain to the desert <br />
And is the cherry topping the whipped cream <br />
topping the ice cream sundae<br />
Whose eyelids are as innocent as a swallow’s<br />
My husband whose feet are the soft tread <br />
of an approaching cat<br />
My husband whose eyebrows are sepals<br />
hooding <br />
his soul, <br />
enveloping developing buds of roses<br />
My husband whose grin crinkles the corners<br />
of his eyes like toes curled in<br />
Whose toes are witch fingers<br />
Whose fingers are spades for finding <br />
fossils<br />
and stunt doubles for tightrope acts<br />
in circus films<br />
My husband with a back that is a field <br />
of stories<br />
That bewitches<br />
My husband whose back rolls <br />
like a centipede’s, like an accordion<br />
Whose shoulders are passwords <br />
and secrets <br />
divulged <br />
My husband whose wrists <br />
are the chills in a haunted house<br />
Whose wrists are floorboards creaking<br />
in a house that has held many dreams<br />
My husband whose lips are the memories<br />
brought back from a souvenir <br />
Are a pop song<br />
Whose arms are long branches of a willow<br />
and the arms of tongs willing and able<br />
to withstand heat<br />
Whose chest is a down pillow<br />
to rest my head upon when sleeping<br />
Whose falling and rising motions are like<br />
a tide at swell<br />
My husband whose stomach is stirred<br />
by hunger for me<br />
With lips that are the last bite <br />
of a favorite dessert<br />
Whose soul is a room I make my bed in<br />
My husband with the eyes of a tundra<br />
sunrise glow<br />
My husband whose heart is the tapping <br />
of stones sent <br />
to a window at midnight by a secret courter<br />
And is the rim of the steepest cliff <br />
I’ve stood on, calling out to hear my echo<br />
And is half of mine<br />
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<!--[endif]--><o:p></o:p></span></div>
nicolewianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12836201941173083316noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7592035793732936823.post-5316535555184843942014-07-28T14:02:00.001-07:002014-07-28T14:02:52.058-07:00Struck by Lightning<div class="MsoNormal">
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<div class="MsoNormal">
<span class="txt"><i><span style="color: #333333; font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Mirth is like a flash of lightning, that breaks through a gloom
of clouds, and glitters for a moment; cheerfulness keeps up a kind</span></i></span><span class="apple-converted-space"><i><span style="background: white; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%;"> </span></i></span><span class="gtxt"></span><i><span style="color: #333333; font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 115%;"></span><span id="fulltext2772">of daylight in
the mind, and fills it with a steady and perpetual serenity.</span> – Joseph Addison<o:p></o:p></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%;"><br />
</span></i><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif; font-size: small;"><span style="line-height: 115%;">What
if I want to write another poem</span></span><br /><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif; font-size: small;"><span style="line-height: 115%;">
on love? Would that be alright? Would I need</span></span><br /><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif; font-size: small;"><span style="line-height: 115%;">
to apologize? Last night, the rain fell </span></span><br /><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif; font-size: small;"><span style="line-height: 115%;">
just when we were thirstiest, and </span></span><br /><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif; font-size: small;"><span style="line-height: 115%;">
as I held you, I listened to the whack</span></span><br /><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif; font-size: small;"><span style="line-height: 115%;">
of water smacking against the window.</span></span><br /><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif; font-size: small;"><span style="line-height: 115%;">
I watched the drops stain the glass, the blowing</span></span><br /><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif; font-size: small;"><span style="line-height: 115%;">
thin-twigged bush outside our bedroom that </span></span><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="line-height: 18.399999618530273px;">I've</span></span><br /><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif; font-size: small;"><span style="line-height: 115%;">
paid more attention to of late, greeting </span></span><br /><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif; font-size: small;"><span style="line-height: 115%;">
it when I wake in the mornings, its gold</span></span><br /><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif; font-size: small;"><span style="line-height: 115%;">
buds barely visible except in light</span></span><br /><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif; font-size: small;"><span style="line-height: 115%;">
of sun rising. I am trying, lately,</span></span><br /><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif; font-size: small;"><span style="line-height: 115%;">
to form new habits, to notice the small</span></span><br /><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif; font-size: small;"><span style="line-height: 115%;">
beauties that surround me and to practice</span></span><br /><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif; font-size: small;"><span style="line-height: 115%;">
gratitude. So, last night when the storm
came</span></span><br /><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif; font-size: small;"><span style="line-height: 115%;">
I remembered that you love my touch, that</span></span><br /><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif; font-size: small;"><span style="line-height: 115%;">
the way my fingers skim your back sends chills</span></span><br /><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif; font-size: small;"><span style="line-height: 115%;">
so I traced the outlines of your tattoos</span></span><br /><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif; font-size: small;"><span style="line-height: 115%;">
again and then attempted to recall</span></span><br /><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif; font-size: small;"><span style="line-height: 115%;">
if I’d ever had an experience</span></span><br /><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif; font-size: small;"><span style="line-height: 115%;">
like this− if </span></span><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="line-height: 18.399999618530273px;">I've</span></span><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif; font-size: small;"><span style="line-height: 115%;"> made love to the background </span></span><br /><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif; font-size: small;"><span style="line-height: 115%;">
sound of thunder and rain pelting louder</span></span><br /><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif; font-size: small;"><span style="line-height: 115%;">
than the music playing to set the mood </span></span><br /><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif; font-size: small;"><span style="line-height: 115%;">
and if I have, I can’t now remember</span></span><br /><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif; font-size: small;"><span style="line-height: 115%;">
so even though I knew I left my books</span></span><br /><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif; font-size: small;"><span style="line-height: 115%;">
outside in danger, I stalled, centering</span></span><br /><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif; font-size: small;"><span style="line-height: 115%;">
in the moment, hallowed by our presence</span></span><br /><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif; font-size: small;"><span style="line-height: 115%;">
and our choice to still and to acknowledge</span></span><br /><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif; font-size: small;"><span style="line-height: 115%;">
that inside love there is something holy</span></span><br /><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif; font-size: small;"><span style="line-height: 115%;">
to be revealed so even beckoned by</span></span><br /><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif; font-size: small;"><span style="line-height: 115%;">
the worry for my words, surely soaked by</span></span><br /><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif; font-size: small;"><span style="line-height: 115%;">
now, I waited until I felt the beat</span></span><br /><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif; font-size: small;"><span style="line-height: 115%;">
of your heart slow down. We unfolded</span></span><br /><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif; font-size: small;"><span style="line-height: 115%;">
bodies, redressed and walked out into</span></span><br /><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif; font-size: small;"><span style="line-height: 115%;">
the rain, letting the cold drops pelt our skin</span></span><br /><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif; font-size: small;"><span style="line-height: 115%;">
welcoming the blasts of wind because in</span></span><br /><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif; font-size: small;"><span style="line-height: 115%;">
the desert, we’re parched and storms are something</span></span><br /><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif; font-size: small;"><span style="line-height: 115%;">
of a thrill, but still, after rescuing</span></span><br /><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif; font-size: small;"><span style="line-height: 115%;">
the abandoned books, we sought safety in </span></span><br /><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif; font-size: small;"><span style="line-height: 115%;">
the car, enthralled like children, saying, “Did</span></span><br /><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif; font-size: small;"><span style="line-height: 115%;">
you see that one?” whenever lightening flashed,</span></span><br /><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif; font-size: small;"><span style="line-height: 115%;">
hunting the sky with eagle eyes for streaks</span></span><br /><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif; font-size: small;"><span style="line-height: 115%;">
so as not to miss one and I wished for</span></span><br /><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif; font-size: small;"><span style="line-height: 115%;">
a moon roof because they seemed to strike right</span></span><br /><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif; font-size: small;"><span style="line-height: 115%;">
above us and you said you could under-</span></span><br /><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif; font-size: small;"><span style="line-height: 115%;">
stand how people could want to chase storms and</span></span><br /><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif; font-size: small;"><span style="line-height: 115%;">
I nodded and said I understood why</span></span><br /><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif; font-size: small;"><span style="line-height: 115%;">
kids and dogs are so afraid of thunder-</span></span><br /><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif; font-size: small;"><span style="line-height: 115%;">
storms because even inside the bubble</span></span><br /><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif; font-size: small;"><span style="line-height: 115%;">
of the car, the sky lit, at times, so bright </span></span><br /><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif; font-size: small;"><span style="line-height: 115%;">
and there seemed to be no seconds between</span></span><br /><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif; font-size: small;"><span style="line-height: 115%;">
that and the thunder that I couldn’t help</span></span><br /><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif; font-size: small;"><span style="line-height: 115%;">
imagining what it must be like when</span></span><br /><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif; font-size: small;"><span style="line-height: 115%;">
one is struck by lightning so I dabbled</span></span><br /><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif; font-size: small;"><span style="line-height: 115%;">
in the fancy of our house on fire</span></span><br /><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif; font-size: small;"><span style="line-height: 115%;">
even once we’d fallen back into bed</span></span><br /><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif; font-size: small;"><span style="line-height: 115%;">
but then I remembered that once before</span></span><br /><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif; font-size: small;"><span style="line-height: 115%;">
I’d been struck by lightning – it was when we </span></span><br /><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif; font-size: small;"><span style="line-height: 115%;">
first made love, so I settled down against</span></span><br /><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif; font-size: small;"><span style="line-height: 115%;">
your warmth in the hollow of the blankets,</span></span><br /><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif; font-size: small;"><span style="line-height: 115%;">
fulfilled and remembered that nothing bad</span></span><br /><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif; font-size: small;"><span style="line-height: 115%;">
had ever come from entering the storm.</span></span><br />
<br /><a href="http://sundaywhirl.wordpress.com/" target="_blank">The Sunday Whirl</a><br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<!--[if !supportLineBreakNewLine]--><br />
<!--[endif]--><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif; font-size: small;"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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nicolewianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12836201941173083316noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7592035793732936823.post-4114017602771262262014-07-22T12:38:00.001-07:002014-07-22T12:38:30.364-07:00Plunging<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Misguided passion hangs perilously <br />
in the foreground of temptation,<br />
begging action−words form, tease <br />
the tongue.<br />
The ears <br />
imagine. What can ward off <br />
what has now begun?<br />
This dark magic? <br />
This heart swells in anticipation,
<br />
spreads for flight, belly
full <br />
of worms, of
lies. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"> Without heed,<br />
deception jumps, believing<br />
it can fashion <br />
from desire, wings.<br />Storming through <br />on sheer will, this style <br />
of flying, <br />
for a while, works.<br />
Bent <br />
toward fancy, mania elicits <br />
superhuman power. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Wind whips through the creature’s imagined glory. <br />The forest of reality <br />beneath hums her warning <br />as trees <br />
sway <br />
by the force created.<br />The birds clear the air <br />and nest for safety.<br /> This supposed beauty continues <br />
soaring, riding miles <br /> in the lawless sky</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">on the
tides <br />of
lure; fangs grow as e</span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">levated <br />self now seeks prey </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">
and landing; catching <br />sight of innocence <br />unaware, the creature <br />
swoops with malice <br />but nearing, finds his whim <br />warm <br />and thriving within a swarm of angels,<br />
before unseen and now</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">fabricated feathers fail and only<br />by an act of mercy<br />
does the predator not fall. <br />Hands of God <br />pluck <br />
pride from fate and casts it<br />into hell.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><a href="http://sundaywhirl.wordpress.com/" target="_blank">The Sunday Whirl</a></span></div>
nicolewianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12836201941173083316noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7592035793732936823.post-87002903647615003912014-07-06T16:20:00.001-07:002014-07-06T16:20:43.359-07:00Myth<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">The men have written the women into stories;<br />
painted them into pictures; allotting<br />
flesh and virtue, <br />
vice but omitting blood. Captive,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Andromache <br />
stands at center, at backdrop, jagged hills <br />
and clouded sky. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">She is cloaked in rags of mourning, surrounded, <br />
yet alone.<br />
Arms clasped to chest, head down <br />
like bird at rest.<br />
She protects herself from blades of gaze.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Leighton later frees his brooding image, posing <br />
her deep in dream, <br />
carefully<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">closing the violet eyes <br />
of England’s most beautiful woman, <br />
so that she might not see <br />
the poison that would kill her.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Liberated from laborious mortality, positioned<br />
now as nymph, her sanctuary lies in sea of sleep.<br />
Here, Ada, aka Dorothy Dene <br />
blooms beneath the brush <br />
stroke of a master.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Finally, a reason to be. <br />
Evergreen, <br />
enflamed<br />
in summer slumber, <br />
uneditable,<br />
engulfed in golden <br />
hues like candlelight <br />
that flicker in the distance.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Warmed in still life.<br />
Imagine if you will, relations between <br />
the artist <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">and his muse; the classicist and his colors; <br />
the fear of lust, <br />
of men; the mission, then, <br />
to cloister <br />
what is mystery, to vilify as sinful, <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">the simplicity of love.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br />
Or perhaps, blinded <br />
by the spotlight, <br />
long-limbed <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">inspiration confuses <br />
love with art, envisages romance <br />
kindling in winter, <br />
unaware she’s doomed to neverending May.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Only when finally, flighted <br />
as Iphigenia’s ghost, does she find her voice.<br />
Under authorship of woman, she states <br />
that the lyricists have lied. <br />
She did not willingly <br />
sacrifice her life, nor did a hind <br />
arrive to take her place.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br />
Weakness strives<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">then to possess her but myths <br />
no longer <br />
sway <br />
and she reminds her audience <br />
that “women are no good..<br />
dead.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
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<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<o:p> <a href="http://sundaywhirl.wordpress.com/" target="_blank">The Sunday Whirl</a></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Quote from <i>The Gate to Women's Country</i> by Sheri S. Tepper</div>
nicolewianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12836201941173083316noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7592035793732936823.post-7824508106429914952014-06-22T17:41:00.002-07:002014-06-22T17:41:44.679-07:00We Danced<div class="MsoNormal">
<i>“Dancing is…life
itself.”</i> –Havelock Ellis</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">In the age of plague, we found ourselves dancing for
our lives inside the dark.<br />
We drowned our
dread in the music of our making, inside the silky dark.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">This way, we levitated, rose above morass and swore<br />
to not surrender to seduction of the dark.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Instead, yielding to the blood flow, the outpour<br />
of our desire, we turned together, following rhythm of the dark. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">
We danced <br />
despite the
raging, creature darkening our door,<br />
round and around, <br />
holding tight each other’s flesh within the dark.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Breathing labored, we drew life from Terpsichore,<br />
swaying in the shadows <br />
fluttering dangerously in the dark.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">We resisted death this way, moving to the melody of
encore-<br />
a different ending, <br />
our arms and hands parting the fragile promise of a future outside the dark.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">The passing black stole minds as well as lives, the
futures of all those birthed before<br />
the Great Mortality descended, the drenching dark.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">We defied the fall- death galore.<br />
We stole back life in the midst of dark.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Now aged, our future wanes, footsore<br />
lurking silent, sweet kiss of dark.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin;">We meet again
mortality, death that’s come before.<br />
Once we sidestepped fate, creating time in pulse, but now <br />
we slow, no longer fearing dark.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin;"><a href="http://sundaywhirl.wordpress.com/" target="_blank">The Sunday Whirl</a></span>nicolewianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12836201941173083316noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7592035793732936823.post-63118515504992058012014-06-21T17:28:00.004-07:002014-06-21T17:28:59.807-07:00Wishes In<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">The pit has been ripped open, now.<br />
It is gaping, dilating.<br />
Could I reside inside its swell,<br />
inside<br />
its glowing burn? <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">The cliff I stand, trembling, on, looking down<br />
is made of porcelain and unreal. <br />
I throw, at least,<br />
my wishes in, <br />
what lives inside me, splitting.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Flames lick at my feet, calling tongues, importuning-
<i>come inside,<br />
come back,<br />
drink<br />
your fortune here. Here,<br />
where fire<br />
flows. Taste goodness,<br />
experience the purity of
falling,<br />
of resolute release, taste
freedom.</i> <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">The rippling desire grows<br />
from deep-seated seed; from the pit, and the call<br />
reaches a fever-pitch, a swell, rising up, high-whistled, excited,<br />
drowning out the dark.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br />
Then,<br />
the notes stand<br />
still.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Can I abandon earth?
Give up warmth<br />
for heat? Forsake ground? <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">What cracks?
My habit of step? Of self?<br />
My will?
My stance upon these loosening muds?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Descending, I rise <br />
and leaping feels like landing<br />
and the call envelops me in her wash.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">I dreamt of death,<br />
of the light beyond my grasp <br />
in day, <br />
the healing<br />
depths finally
held <br />
but my hands were sweating and I woke.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><a href="http://sundaywhirl.wordpress.com/" target="_blank">The Sunday Whirl</a></span></div>
nicolewianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12836201941173083316noreply@blogger.com1