Reflections on the dire pasts
Learning or stumbling as life so casts.
Today the air is clear of everything
What was, is what was and has little bearing.
Yes, we were there, but we have never been here before
And the here and now is what’s needed to hold in store.
I stand strong, head held high and unashamed
One with myself , my heart and soul unafraid.
I feel inspired, and find myself in a world full of light
Illuminated from within, I find clarity, insight
Feeling forced into a role of valiance
For my tears seem of little credence
I bear this all in smiling silenceThey say “It’s not for us to ask Him why”
Or the “It’ll get better by and by”
It’s two weeks! I’m not entitled to cry?
I bear this all in smiling silenceTrying to squelch fears in their own attitudes?
Is it for me folks spew these platitudes?
And THEY’RE upset I don’t nod in gratitude
I bear this all in smiling silenceBecause I’m sitting here shattered-hearted
Some take it as permission to get started
On a run of their own dearly departed
I bear this all in smiling silenceTears flow and I hide feeling contrite
Are my tears only allowed in the night
Far away from everyone else’s sight?
I bear this all in smiling silenceI’m not asking to dwell in an abyss
But I’m consoling others – something’s amiss!
Much as I need to give a moment to this
I bear this all in smiling silence
===== <> =====
I initially wrote the above as an angry, sobbing stream of consciousness in my journal within days of becoming a widow. Even, now years later, I sat biting my lip resisting the urge to choke yet another person who says “I’m sorry for your loss”, “It’s all part of a greater plan”, “He needed him more” and other well-meaning but sickeningly trite counsel. Watching a new widow of barely a week graciously handle the condolences that come her way, I can’t help but be reminded of when I was in that exact position.
I can tell by the half-glazed look in her eyes she’s merely going through the motions expected of her and all I can do is watch. One moment she calls me to her, as she feels that I am the only one in the room who really understands exactly what she is going through. The next moment, like the one in which I’m just watching from a distance, she pushes me away as I am a reminder of what exactly she is now – a widow. The stages of denial and anger just beginning their ugly battling. I’m also hoping that she’ll see, though she is far from being able to see and accept it right now, that she also will get through this and will eventually be okay.
I’m headed for home soon. I left a copy of the above poem for her. Just a way of letting her know that this anger at everyone being nice, even if by route of traditional platitudes, is also normal. I’ll happily pay it forward and help her through those clichéd, but so true, seven stages as I was lucky to have the guidance of those who also traveled this road. For as annoying as it is to hear in repetition, the only acceptable platitudes were/are “one day at a time” and “it does get better”.
Because eventually we all learn – one breath, one moment, one minute and yes, one day at a time, it does.
The challenge was to write a poem using these ten words:
eyes – give – way – dread – inside – doorknob – goodbye – shame – disheveled – curl
The following was the result…
The pictures don’t tell half the sordid tale
Roles reversed, your hidden desires exposed
As indicted in the worth of their bill of sale
Its truth as dirty and tangled as our clothes
Did you ever love me? Queried low
Your eyes give way to the dread felt inside
The unspoken answer hangs between just so
Like spent prophylactics, you’re cast aside
The effort to do this was so worth my while
He groans, so everything between us was a lie
Hand on doorknob, I toss disheveled curls and smile
No, I was always the freak, but what are you?
Good-bye
Poem - The Power by Raivenne
Why
Glower?
For this hour
Was made to soar
Not for us to cower!
I beg, beseech, Aye!, I implore
Relinquish that which harms and hurt no more!
Do all to raise our voices high unto the sky
And may it resound on every shore!
Let the world hear our hearts outpour
Embrace in Love’s shower
Rise from earth’s floor
That power
Is ours
Fly!
She sits at her vanity in examination of her face
Wary of any unexplainable mar
And gently rubs away cooled wax from her breast
Grateful it will not leave a scar
Still she smiles at the dash of lusty memory
Of how it came to be there
Its reason kneeling down right in front of her
Blowing kisses in her hair
Her robe barely hampers his gift to her
As she combusts within
A contrast of wind from an open window
Cooling her hot skin
He comments on her luminescence
As he makes an invisible notch
She comments on his effervescence
As she hands him his watch
She warms at the sentimental kiss he gives her
Just before, he leaves
Out on business for a day
But he’ll be back the next eve
She’s actually feeling good until
He uses her stage name
And pollutes the mood of the moment
Closing the door on the love game
She knows his affection is not
In the way he holds or even kisses her hand
Her cold-hearted illusion of love
Is in the wad of emerald bills left on the nightstand
====<>====
I WON!
Perfect Poets Award – Week 59
Thank you so much! I nominate Life Between The Lines
somewhere
(in the folds of lasts week’s)
(or maybe last year’s laundry)
the person
(when I’m not a mother)
who wrote poetry
(or being a lover )
drew still life
(balancing the checkbook)
designed clothes
(scrubbing a dirty collar)
and painted murals
(while vacuuming the carpets, again)
that did embroidery
(after the button is sewed on the shirt, again)
is in the mirror
(that needs to be cleaned, again)
trying to find herself
(after working overtime, again)
because she got lost
(showing someone else how)
somewhere…
(in the folds of last week’s)
(or maybe last years’ laundry)…
<>==========<>==========<>
This poem is actually a little over 12 years old. We were in the process of packing to move into our house and my then fiance, now late-husband, had found my composition book from high school with poetry. We had living together over thirteen years and he had never known that about me. He asked one thing: What happened? I did not have an answer for him. Nor did I know how to pick-up my pen again. One day I was looking at my reflection in the mirror, asking myself the same question. I was depressed to realize, though it been a of couple years since he had asked, I still did not have an answer.
Whenever I was upset I would write my feelings to sort them out. Usually, I would write it, read it and toss it. This time I did not toss it because something in those words had reached me. What reached me became the first three/last three lines of the above poem. It was perhaps only the third poem I had written in a nearly twenty year span at that point. Granted, it was one small sad little poem, but it was the first big crack in the wall of the dam blocking my creativity. A dam I was only just beginning to realize I had built and now needed to tear it down.
Innocence
Trapped by danger’s sweet fragrance
Lust of thus oozed from my pores
Became yours at soul’s expense
At first kind
Cleaving to the ties that bind
Couldn’t see the seeds planted
Enchanted, my eyes were blind
Slowly thus
Your love a snake venomous
The intent as sheer as glass
Only I passed your litmus
Blood’s imbrue
Its desires call me too
In moderation, I know
It is so, I’ve become you
Puppeteer
In your hand for uses queer
Evil once ne’er dreamed to do
Now like you I find I sneer
Purity
That is what you once called me
Only on death we gain it back
With life’s lack, it comes to be
Come my blade
With you I’m all I’ve been made
Gleaming crimson from our gut
Final cuts, our dues are paid
So we lay
It has come to this last day
Laugh at your look of surprise
Evil dies, we pass away
As a thinker I excelled in science and chess
Bright in my other academics, I gave no less
Could mentally match just about whatever you bring
Daunted only by my emotional state, a very different thing
Ever curious, I took a shine to coition with ambition
Female born, however held a certain restriction
Gracious model of virtue? Hah! I never tried to be
Held back within all the rules of social complicity
Inquisitive, I felt it more honest than being just a tease
Justly stated, I would pursue my desires as I would please
Knowing that the names for me were much closer to ‘whore’
Love was but a word as the males I knew were free to ‘score’
Mainly, I felt you can’t grow a garden by reading a book
Negating convention I dared to do more than just look
Oh guys can easily convey how often they go to bat
Privately the girls aren’t ever to admit knowing any of that
Quietly I learned to hide how I came to know so much
Raging that a male is never asked to hide knowledge of such
So, I could hum the foulest limerick and still be called quaint
Talk knowledge of a hummer when I was barely twenty ain’t
Understanding people I had known only one or two
Vicious rumors and some cruel truths I muddled through
Watching eyebrows rise as double-standards reared its head
X-rated knowledge in a g-rated world was a hard path to tread
Years went by before I felt I wasn’t a freak
Zeroing in that I’m a rarity someone unique
Allowed myself to enjoy it all in its various forms
Because I refuse to stilted by social world’s norms
Carnal knowledge once bane, I’m now admired for
Day or night, finally happy, I don’t care any more
Every now and then I’ll get outrageous with a verbal gush
Freaking people out on purpose just to watch them blush
<>==========<>==========<>
And today’s form is an Abecedarius which is an alphabetic acrostic or a poem in which each line or stanza begins with a successive letter of the alphabet. Historically, it was widely used in religious aspects as the beginning of prayers, hymns and oracles. As time progressed, variations of the method developed and new types of acrostics appeared. Some methods included using the first letter of the first word (as I have done above), the first letter of the stanza or the first letter of the first word and last letter of the last word in each line.
‘Then have my lips the sin that they have took.
Sin from my lips?
O trespass sweetly urged!
Give me my sin again.’
– William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet
i bask in the feel of silk across my eyes
i feel Him come so close then walk away
A teasing touch, but one that causes sighs
He knows i pray that this time He will stay
i arch my back with all that it implies
He reads me well i am His open book
He opens a window making me shiver against my will
Under the autumn’s breath He knows i can’t keep still
He parts me with blunt threats to more than look
Then have my lips the sin that they have took.
Whispering that only i make Him yearn
i know the svelte voice misleads
It’s an unexpected pleasantry i earn
Flechettes, blades, ben-wah beads
His tirade wicked and wondrous in turn
As i, His personal armiger do equip
His tastes for things shiny and steel
Their icy touch a torture surreal
Halts a Freudian slip
Sin from my lips?
It’s me He chooses first to disrobe
A weakness rarely on display
A hard pinch to already tender globes
Signals it’s one for which i must pay
Oooohhhh! He increases the speed to the probe
To the point where nice and naughty converge
Yes i do accept the blame
When His sacrosanct name
Is moaned in passion’s surge
O trespass sweetly urged!
And as His desire burns faster
Mine is halted as His get
Stark and hard He is my Master
Pliant and supple, i am His pet
His liquid heat drips as blessed oil from pastor
But my crescendo He orders to abstain
i tremble for failing Him won’t endear
With a brute mercy He releases me from my fear
Until naught but unrepentant memories remain
Give me my sin again
====<>====
Glosa form with borrowed lines from you know who.
The glosa is a Spanish form that also works well in English. Glosas open with a quatrain from another poet, called the cabeza, followed by four ten-line stanzas terminating with the lines of the initial cabeza in consecutive order. The sixth and ninth lines of each stanza rhyme with the borrowed tenth line and is the only required rhyme of the poem. There is no set meter or syllable count for a Glosa, however, a good flow is always recommended.
Submitted to:
I was with friends clubbing, at the bar sipping wine
Wearing the hell out of my Prada, I knew I was looking fine
You walked in, looking as good as you know what
Your hair so sharp, your barber must have been cut
My anchor slipped as we talked jobs as steps to empires
Like the smoky haze, our interest rose along with our desire
Yes, sometimes a woman can let sex lead her by the nose
Caught between the best of nothing and anything goes
We were together for weeks, just living the life
And then by accident, I found out about your wife
I can’t even lie and say I kept my cool that day
Once again the anchor, slipped and I began to sway
I careened into a wall so hard, the pictures on it shook
But even as I was regained breath, I knew I was hooked
And I had no one but myself to blame for all my sudden woes
Caught between the best of nothing and anything goes
With your secret fully out, your love slowed to a dribble
You promised me a feast of your love, I barely got a nibble
Each time I said no, your so sweet whispers break through
And wanting so much to be in love, I know that I let you
One day I saw you both together and I just wanted to cry
Not for you, but for me and the time I wasted in the lie
How did it come this? What was this is crazy life I chose?
Caught between the best of nothing and anything goes
As I stood at the latest hotel door, cardkey in midair
Knowing that I have no business to be standing there
I finally find the nerve to back away, but then
The door’s open and you’re standing there, calling me in
My heart is screaming “No, baby! No baby! No!”
But my body’s screaming “Go, baby! Go baby! Go!”
Before I know it, there we were again and again curling toes
Caught between the best of nothing and anything goes
It was a summer night we met and love began to soar
It was near summer again when I finally said no more
It took so long not to be sad, for the lack of a phone’s ring
I made a promise to myself, my love is for all or nothing
Another summer blazes, and once again I’m on my own
But if my only choice is to share, well, I’d rather be alone
When will my empty heart fill again? Only heaven knows
Caught between the best of nothing and anything goes
>==========<
Entered in
dVerse Poets Pub | OpenLinkNight – Week 36
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