Promises made in gall of love
The lies some tell in thrall of love
Another sigh while pictures tear
The heart that breaks in stall of love
Lighting a flame, saying a prayer
Things done in hope in call of love
Sometimes one needs to lose to win
The second chance in fall of love
Then chains of fear soon fall away
And Raivenne flies your halls of love
====================
Trying my hand at a traditional Ghazal form.
dVerse ~ Poets Pub | FormForAll: On Ghazals and the Ghazal Sonnet
You walked in as always, someone grand
Full of ego and pride, swagger on display
The tone of my words caused your grin to wane
Releasing myself from you wasn’t planned
But I knew it was right and held my ground
The words once spoken tasted sweet as candy cane
Like summertime as delivered by Coltrane
I know I said goodbye, for that was all left to say
Despite your efforts to get the words all twisted
From the window I watch the receding back of you.
Your snowy footsteps a contrail, as you walk away
Then watched them get erased with a shovel’s scraping
Sometimes letting go is just all you can do
But Miles knows, it’s still just some kind of blue.
And like that it’s as though you never existed
The memory of us already starting to fade
I feel like I should at least want to cry
But my breath on the pane is the only thing misted
And I pour myself a glass, as the witching hour chimes
Snow done falling, staring out at a chilled winter sky
A glass of red ’round midnight, just Thelonious and I
====================
A little etymology here…
The final couplet (the last two lines), is a direct quote of my Facebook status from Saturday. Those two lines inspired this write. I had also promised myself, since I had tried my pen at David James’ Karousel from last week’s FormForAll | Karoulsels and Weaves, that I would finally tackle his Weave form. However, I really like the final couplet so much that I could not bear to separate the lines that inspired it all to fit the form. So, as I am wont to do with forms, and my apologies to David, I compromised. The result you see is a variation on the Weave form. Think of it as adding two extra strands to the pattern. The rhyme scheme here is: abcad cc befbg ff ehiej ii (and so on).
My pen’s a stitch of creativity
Against a world of mediocrity
A refuge within the palm of my hand
Whether cursive lines of one leaf’s rustle
Or prose on the weight of madam’s bustle
My pens lodge a dream of nocturnal bliss
Onomatopoeia of a snake’s hiss
All that’s required is my mere command
To push it further than my very best
Even when it looks like a Rorschach test
Equipoise is lost on the muse you see
Control’s illusion gone in a vapor
Pens hold infinite possibility
Upon contact with blank sheets of paper
====================
dverse ~ Poets Pub | Meeting the Bar: Creativity
Distance makes the heart grow fonder
Even while it tears us through
For all the miles that between us wander
Its just one heart beat between me and you
I lay awake at night staring out the window
Staring at the moon staring back at me
With an odd envy in the knowing
Unlike me, you the moon can see
Holding the telephone ever closer
After our nightly calling
Warm with the comfort of knowing
I am your one and only
The sweetness of your voice so soothing
and so enthralling
That the silence after we hang up
Makes the emptiness all the more lonely
I cry myself to sleep knowing
That my tears are all in vain
For it’s only your warm embrace
Now far too distant to ease this pain
And I am haunted in the night
For the want of your strong touch
My memory taunts me with the ghost
Of that which I desire so much
We’re both so near the breaking point
Of memory’s latest gall
I watch you turn over in frustration
To see me smiling in the moonlight
It takes a full moment to digest
I’m not imagination after all
That I am in fact here with you
As you reach to grasp me tight
My need of your touch pushing me
Past the point of any qualms
Of driving hard through the night
Straight into your loving arms
And like that everything is all right
The heart cannot this joy contain
The pain of parting is nothing
To the joy of meeting again
Distance makes the heart grow fonder
Even while it tears us through
For all the miles that between us wander
Its just one heart beat between me and you
<>==========<>==========<>
I sit here in this foreign clime
Skyscrapers far as the eye can sweep
And strange rurals, bring forth a yawn
Once joys, now all things I detest
I’m going home, aye, yes it’s time.
My home so many scribe, regale
Of craven and the ones of brawn
The men of yore adorned in crests
Words that make one laugh and weep
And yet fall flat upon truth’s tale
The hills that rise and fall gently
Row upon row of verdant breasts
Their knolls soft, their valleys deep
That lull in dusk as well as dawn
My lands of home they call to me
Oh yes, my life will travel and roam
Yet never thought these sojourns would keep
Me so long from the lands that I love best
This homesickness must be withdrawn
Aye, yes it’s time, I’m going home
<>==========<>==========<>
Trying out David James’ Karousel form.
Ulanda Williams, a social worker in New York City, fell into a hole when the sidewalk beneath her collapsed last week. Ms. Williams was waiting for a bus and sought shelter under an awning when it began to rain when the ground gave way seconds later. Not falling straight through to the cellar below, she wound up wedged in the hole instead, it took special FDNY equipment to pull her out. She was taken to a hospital and was released the next day. Ms. Williams was extremely fortunate that her injuries were limited to a broken arm, cuts, scrapes and bruises. Apparently EMS and FDNY concurred that a smaller person may have died from the drop. It is Ulanda’s size that likely saved her life.
And that (her size), as they say, is the rub.
Granted, in each article I’ve read, the news sources have taken care to mention that upon inspection it was determined by the NYC Department of Buildings that defective steel doors and a loose staircase were partially responsible for the four- by-six-foot slab of concrete’s collapse. However, that part of the story is almost seems a side-note to the main article. Why?
Because in each of the sources that I’ve read, the story was not that a woman nearly fell to her possible death due to a poorly maintained structure. The immediate focus for each of them was that the woman in question was nearly six and a half feet tall and weighed 400 pounds, according to the New York Post. Yes, Ms. Williams is in one word fat. Journalisms presumed penchant for being unbiased (yeah I know), went out the freaking window once her size was known. Don’t believe me?
Here is the lead-in line for the Huffington Post article? “Looks like she got her big break.”
The New York Post’s opening salvo? “Size does matter!”
Oh, and my personal favorite, the first sentence from RoadRunner: “Whoever says good things come in small packages hasn’t met Ulanda Williams. Williams, who is 32 years old and tips the scales at 400 pounds, claims she owes her life to her trailer-truck physique.”
Oh, look they so funny! So why the hell am I not laughing?
Why is it when something happens to a person of size in the news it becomes all about the fat?
Even in their headlines, headers and web links, the view is already skewed to immediately blame the victim.
*Woman who fell through sidewalk says her ‘girth’ saved her
*http://www.nypost.com/p/news/local/manhattan/too_big_to_fall_Fz8VbWLT2tMkq9gvShHF0J
*Ulanda Williams, 400-lb Woman, Falls Through Sidewalk In New York City
I am not saying that her weight did not contribute to the incident. My complaint is how the media specifically and the public at large focused mainly on her weight as the culprit. Fellow blogger and someone I’m lucky to call friend, TheNatural54 rightly notes that if this were two men of average size who had fallen, or even a tackle for the Jets or Giants football team (because we know tackles are rarely small guys), the focus would be more on the badly maintained property and not their weight.
I generally do not read the comments on such stories unless I just want to be pissed off and appalled at a bunch of strangers who are never worth the energy spent in the ensuing foul mood that will then color my day. Unfortunately, because this story came to my attention from various fronts, I wound up reading quite a few comments and yes, I was pissed. From their view it seems the concrete collapsing would never have happened to someone of a smaller size and that just is not accurate. But for the sake of devil’s advocacy let’s just say it really was all about the poundage. What is it about being over a very subjective number that a person is no longer considered worthy of basic decency and respect anyway? The mocking bullshit tweeted by Rupert Murdock before issuing a not even half-assed retraction (because it damn sure was not an apology), notwithstanding – the general public is absolutely vicious and loves using the mask of the internet to spew its fat hating vitriol, especially fat women.
If it had been a smaller woman who fell there would be much sympathy for her and anger against the building owners/managers. Ulanda Williams has cuts, scrapes, bruises and an arm broken in not just one, but two places from her ordeal, why does her weight not entitle her to such?
Judge not, lest ye…
I’m sitting here, just sitting here, wrapped in your memory
It’s one so deep in my heart and I really know that I should let it be
But it’s like a sad, sad love song stuck on the same sad, sad refrain
I can’t stop myself from feeling this, even though it’s all just pure pain
But here you are locked within my heart
As if we never said goodbye
And I don’t know why
I admit I didn’t think, I’d make it through those first heartbreak days
But much time has passed and I’ve been just fine since we parted ways
I laugh at our past, brush it away, I got over the things I miss
So I do not understand why today I am so deeply feeling this
Because here you are locked within my spirit
As if we never said goodbye
And I don’t know why
I can’t seem
I can’t seem to excise my heart from you
It’s a struggle
It’s a struggle I thought was through
But your smile, our laughter, all we had
Is right here at easy recall
Oh, we sure were worth the rise, baby
But I can’t, I can’t, I can’t, I can’t,
No, I just can’t redo that fall
Yet here you are locked within my soul,
As if we never said goodbye
And I just want to cry, feel like I want to die
And I don’t why
No, I don’t know why
<>==========<>==========<>
Trying to excise a memory
Do you hear me?
knock…knock
I can arrive in a blinding streak of light
A reverberation of considerable noise
Sometimes I’m just a hiss in the night
A susurrus lodged against the equipoise
Do you hear me?
I come to life with anticipation
Sometimes the rose, sometimes the thorn
I can die under the weight of trepidation
And thus never will I be born
knock…knock
Both wise and foolish in my own way
I am one and all of the muses and sages
A nocturnal refuge in the bustle of day
The launch and conclusion of many ages
Do you hear me?
I am the road less traveled or forged ahead
Choose wise and I can further your niche
But choose wrong or not at all instead
Then I can simply be a… stitch
KNOCK…knock
A unit of immeasurable gauges
A mystery of infinite possibility
The door through all of life stages
I am the knock of opportunity
KNOCK…KNOCK
Do you hear me?
<>==========<>==========<>
I know your eyes in the morning sun
I feel you touch me in the pouring rain
And the moment that you wander far from me
I want to feel you in my arms again
How Deep Is Your Love – Bee Gees
I feel your skin reflect the flames from the fireside
But it’s no match to heat felt deep inside
And in the fire of your kiss I’m simply undone
It’s a fervor repeated all night long
Like a pleasantly broken record, like a recorded song
Then my alarm breaks through the throes of passion
In the reality of dawn my heart start to sag
Like the air gradually seeping from an airbag
As I awaken to the new day just begun
I know your eyes in the morning sun
I try so hard to hide this – thing it’s so surreal
It asks much more of me than I deign to feel
You are so close and yet so far to attain
There’s far too many years between our ages
No reconcile of which I find assuages
All the emotions I try so hard to refrain
The greenhouse effect when I think of you
And in my heart’s downbeat knowing, you feel this too
Like in ways I simply cannot explain
I feel you touch me in the pouring rain
You have all my desires in a bottleneck
And by taking my lead you’re equally in check
I tell myself that this simply cannot be
But “To hell with convention!” I used to tout
When did this prudish side come about?
Who’s this face in the mirror that I see?
The mandates of the norm are quite daunting
What’s this humbug to deny my inner wanting?
In the moments when we touch accidentally
And the moment that you wander far from me
Behind closed eyes you are my backbone
‘T’is but a number twixt what I can condone
Won’t lie to myself, that’s it beyond my ken
The sway of emotions when you look in my eyes
And I know it’s nothing but a pack of lies
When I say I can live without you, but then
Am I willing to risk you for my pride’s shortfall?
I discover that you are what I want after all
For my eyes are wide open now and I still yen
I want to feel you in my arms again
<>==========<>==========<>
Me and my fave poetic form the Glosa , again.
My child you’ve asked Me to define
How do you feel a life divine
A presence in the air you breathe
It’s when My child I call you Mine
I’m in the shh-shh of the breeze
Soft flowing through the willow’s leaves
I’m in the chanting of the chimes
The faltering of buzzing bees
I’m wrapped in the most ancient rhymes
Brought through to these most modern times
I’m the warble of bluebird’s song
A testament to changing climes
I’m the magnet whose pull’s so strong
To help right you before the wrong
The crowd you handle on your own
The Single Presence in the throng
I’m in the chances that you’ve blown
I’m in the peace when you atone
I’m in the strength when fears you fight
I’m in the pleasures when you moan
I’m in each morsel that you bite
The prayers you retire at night
I am the final finish line
The practice of a life lived right
So child you’ve asked Me to define
How do you feel a life divine
It’s when My love is mixed with thine
It’s when My child I call you Mine
<>==========<>==========<>
Raivenne-lations 
