Tag: #hurt
Protected: Des souvenirs fantômes
Goodbye for now
In the New Year I am going to do something drastic. I’m going to close all my social media down and take the majority of my books/work offline/out of bookstores. The work that will remain is what I’m most proud of; SMITTEN This Is What Love Looks Like (an anthology, 2019), We Will Not Be Silenced (one of 4 editors/contributors, 2018) and Pinch the Lock (Finishing Line Press, 2016).
When I began, I really believed I could contribute something valuable to the world through the medium of writing. I saw many other people trying but I did not know how many and since 2015 I have seen that there is a glut of people all self-publishing, indie publishing, small press publishing, all with the same ‘dream’ of being a legit writer. Mostly wasting hours on social media futilely. I realize 99.9 percent will never be. The only ones who can do it are those on disability, who get a cheque without needing to work, or supported by husband/wife/family or you’re a retiree. If you DO have to work for a living then it’s rare you can put in enough work to even get to the indie publishing stage.
There are exceptions. One of my real friends whom I did meet on social media works full time and is one of the hardest workers I know. She will succeed I have no doubt about it. She goes home from a hard days work and produces consistently some of the best work I’ve read online. People like her are rare. They are one in a million. Others have the talent to do it but it will depend upon if they have the time to make it happen (you know who you are) but the vast majority have neither the talent, nor the ability to make it happen.
When I began writing I thought I was a pretty good writer. When you read some of the stuff online it’s easy to see why I thought that, a lot of it is really poor quality. On the other hand you need to be either absolutely brilliant or someone who is in the know, to get a really big publisher. I am neither absolutely brilliant nor ever going to be someone who is in the know/networked up to the hilt. Even those who everyone talks about as having a ‘good publisher’ actually don’t. They just secretly vanity press pay or exaggerate how much they actually earn. To earn a living wage as a writer unless you are an editor, it’s the 1 percent of the 1 percent.
I don’t want to be an editor. It’s a thankless job and underpaid. I have qualifications and I am going to use those and return to my previous career, hard as it is, it can earn me what I will need to take care of myself in the future. Maybe no job will be different, maybe I will always be taken for granted and used but I want to do it on my own terms. I have always supported myself from the age of 18 and I always will until I cannot any longer. I have never had any help.
Lastly, most of you don’t know but I was recently diagnosed with a very serious eye-condition that means I am losing my sight. I realize I have to adjust NOW rather than when it is completely gone. I doubt I will still want to live if I go completely blind and I have decided if that day comes I will elect for euthanasia as I am not someone who wishes to live as a completely blind person. Especially as I have no family who will care for me. However, if that day doesn’t come or it gives me 20 more years, (which is unlikely) I still need to change my life to ensure my eyes do not worsen.
As some of you know I had battled a serious illness in 2017 which radically changed my life. It was caused by a virus and I am still sick with it but I have learned to live with it and am high functioning despite it not having completely gone. I believe it will one day completely go but it is a long painful battle. I thought that was enough to deal with but in addition to this my mother told me she no longer wanted me in her life ever again. She and I have had our ups and downs but naively I thought as she aged we would get closer. I have always loved her very much even though she was not in my life that much. When she told me this during my illness, effectively kicking me when I was down, it was the last straw. She knew she’d hurt me as badly as she could ever hope for. She succeeded. To protect myself I accepted what she said and have tried to get on with my life knowing she will not be part of it. It has hardened me and I am bitter about it but I will never be as cruel to someone else as that. I will never succumb to cruelty to deal with my own pain.
On a positive note, I am stronger for all of this. But having the eye sight issue on TOP of all of the above, was just too much. I do have it in me to change my life. I have decided to once more change my life. I am not going to carry around the rejection, fear and grief of her hate of me or anything else, anymore. When I began my blog/writing in 2015 I felt it was a chance to try my hand at writing. I don’t regret doing that but I see now realistically I have to move on.
If you know me, truly know me, and have my number and my address and we talk, then I am bound to call you real friend and will keep in touch. When you get sick you realize who your friends are and it is a good clarity. For those of you I call friends thank you for your friendship and I hope we keep in touch. We may not as we may no longer have anything in common but I wish you all much success.
SMITTEN will be my last personal project in the publishing world for the foreseeable future, although I have also been involved in YOU DON’T LOOK SICK and hope Indie Blu(e) recognizes me for that when it is published next year. SMITTEN is a wonderful ending to this chapter in my life. It is a testimony to the talent of women when they come together. Just because we are minorities doesn’t mean we support each other and lift each other up. I hope projects like SMITTEN help future women do JUST THAT because THAT is what is needed. We need to be good to one another! To support one another!
I want to personally thank the following whom I have met on WP for their loyalty, friendship, goodness and inspiration. I think you are incredible human beings; Mark. Eric. Derrick. Bob. Crystal. Erik. Jane. Karen. Raili, Rita. Susi. Anthony. Laurie, Tony. Nicole. Tara. Helena. Philip. Sarah. Tremaine & Monique. Thank you to Christine and Kindra for letting me work for Indie Blu(e) I really hope all the work I did helped and you succeed. Rita.
RIP Natalie Scarberry you are loved.
Thank you to anyone who read anything of mine. I appreciate you. I wish you only the best.
Candice Louisa Daquin
Burning without fire — @ hijacked amygdala
Last night I scalded myself Mama and as the boiling water ran down my arm I saw you through the pain and you were smiling and everything was wrong how you are alive and yet gone, how you exist and yet don’t, how I was never right and somehow always mistaken If I don’t come […]
For Halo
My debt rests in your fur
as they light it
and it burns
and your form shrinks
from this world
your black and white paw limp against my clutching
fingers wishing you here
those images are cookie cut into my mind
called intrusive thoughts and flash-backs
I know them well
they are not my friend as you were my friend
I imagine what you feel and then recall
you no longer feel anything
though that does not seem right
without religion I am left unknowing
where you land next or if you will
awaken in paradise or remain slumbering
whether sleep or a void, if we can truly leave
and have nothing of ourselves remain
but ash and debris
it seems impossible that you were once
jumping onto the table and making me laugh
with your antics
only to be nowhere and gone eternal
I may not possess sufficient faith
to build castles in the sky but
your energy stays like stillness in
this empty house and from the corner of my eye
I still see your shadow slink just as
my grandmother’s voice is pitch perfect in my head
is that imagination or wishful?
Or do ghosts haunt us willing supplicants?
A bouquet of delusion to soothe our empty
arms or
will you live forever within me? And when I take
my turn at the Ferris wheel
our nothingness will reside near one another
I like the idea, all I have loved will
mingle as returned starlight in the ether
and touch one another with reminder
for being alone or worm food is
a cold dinner companion I wish not
to believe in
even if God turns his head from me and always has
for his man-made lack of female
and my rib is long and sticks into my gut
reminding me I am ever every man’s equal
and will never lay down to those dull prescriptions
of what constitutes truth from a man’s tongue.
Your fur was thicker than all the cats here
who grew up hot and listless on porches
you came with me in a pink plastic box
obscene in its garishness we laughed
putting it through customs
the harried lady at flight desk remarked
well there he goes as you were taken
hand delivered, to the pit of the plane
and I worried because I wanted you to be
on my knee but no madam, I’m afraid for long haul
he has to ride in cargo and don’t worry
few of them get upset, as if she were crouched among you knowing this
this seemed false as so many things do
when big decisions linger like absent friends
at the periphery of moments
too quick, too big, for staying still
briefly I wondered; Should I really be moving?
to this strange country I do not yet know and
burning this bridge indefinitely
it felt as wrong as right ever was and I stood
in the airport watching the thin man take you
behind a curtain and then as you were on your way
so was I.
You see …
I took my cue from you
quite often
and of the two of us when we landed
I think you looked less bedraggled
whilst I fought with immigration because one of my papers
was not ‘just so’ and they called and fussed because
immigrants are not very welcome in any country
and annoy those whose jobs it is to ensure
smooth sailing
and when we reunited
on different soil with the sound of cicadas or crickets
I was not sure in those days
you were hot against my grandmothers blanket
and had peed because they don’t let animals
out to the bathroom at 30,000 feet
which was exactly how I felt, hot and wet and stinking
at the same time, in this odd place where
people were outgoing and spurned shyness or other
attributes we both possessed
with aplom
following our dreams or maybe just mine
as your dreams were about mice or pigeons and later
lizards and snakes
as you learned the ways of the desert
and perhaps the tenor of your meow changed
to reflect the inflection of your adopted country.
It may seem easier but it is not easy for any of us
who come by boat, plane or smuggle, to
lands not our own, we each bring with us
that belly full of ache
and you were always able to
soothe mine with your purr and ever
reminder of our start beneath colder skies and
smaller streets with littler houses and narrow
rooms where we knew our place and here
we could only speculate or clumsily test
our sea legs against
the strangeness of being
with mistake and estrangement
our sole friends quite a while.
Unable even to drive I walked you down the road
for your first vet check and people gaped
from their large cars at the floundering Europeans
walking where no-one walks and everyone uses
big trucks to go one mile and purchase a giant
sippy cup and some Ding Dongs, things with
names that sound fun and 40 additives
my kind of humor and banter lost against
surge of habit, the vet seemed surprised I
had carried you rather than driven and tut-tutted
at your lack of dental hygiene
but remarked how beautiful your thick fur was
and how cats in these parts tend to have
snake skin, we all laughed at that, even you
cast a fish eye his direction like you
possessed the real secrets.
I remember those exploits and driving to Canada on another
exodus when stateless we began again
another groove in our fitful recording
the deep snow and your paw prints leading
me nearer and further
like ice fish we swam in our odd circumstance
always together, staring out stranger windows like
spectators at our own fair ground
in cold you slept beside me and purred
in your sleep to the sound of icicles
warming and falling into snow the
sky a heavy weight holding its breath
eventually we returned to the place of infernal heat
and sizzling side walks where no one but us
and straggly weeds dared to step and the years wound like
lost yarn beneath our odd foray
until you were old and fragile
and I barely noticing because I did not want to
believe you could quit being the little cat
in the pink plastic box glad to see me at the
first airport in our new world.
It was naive or immature of me to forget
cats lives do not echo ours and mine seemed
suddenly far too long and yours bitterly short
a terrible echo of inequality I did not
have the strength to imagine losing you
when together we always were.
Even people who wrote said; ‘Dear Candy, Dear Halo’
as if they could see the join of your fur and my
burning skin against the other
I told myself I would be there when they
sent you to that place I could not follow
despite knowing in my mind the terrible pictures
would roam long and unbidden for many years
to look into your eyes and remind you how much you mean
to me and always how I will look for you
until we are reunited and then I expect
all this will be mere bad dreams and
again we can go forward, or side ways or
whatever direction the after world takes us
but please together, is all I want
for with you gone, I wait without watch
an absence greater than anguish
for you were my best friend in this lonely world
assuaging the hard edges and frayed corners
we came here together and still I am
more lost without you than when I arrived
for your bright eyes and happy tail
gave me courage Halo and ever shall I
look for you coming into the kitchen in
the morning with your half howl of greeting
starting my day and ending it with
putting you to your bed
never once thinking there could be a time
when you were not and I still went on.
Aristotle said it best; a relationship is
two bodies one soul
that is real love
and we are floundering when absent from one another
like the ice fish when it warms up
and water is all but gone.
Two decades later & dye still runs
Acid-dye denim might be
bad-luck or I
simply too old for
bare legs and
shocking rinses
(who the hell buys Manic Panic Vampire Red
seeks to re-cultivate original sin
desperate in disjointed
camouflage & need to impress
someone who is not watching?)
However, the real
surprise lay in
realizing I could shed
as many tears as a teen
who would not blink
at acid-dye-denim
or remember
when high-waisted was
in fashion
the first time around
when heartbreak felt
much, much
more hopeful
even if red dye
be it 1999 or 2019
invariably ran
transforming
tears
pink
I AM A TOTEM OF MY OWN BRANDING
I’ve been told I’m a chronic pain in the ass
after all, it’s easy to destroy a child in an adult’s body
with past-tense words
and now in the time I’m meant to be at my strongest
chronic has visited me and stayed a long while
on a good day I think; This will not be forever
but temporary has always been a long way off
the doctors love to tell us; It’s incurable, get used to
living like this, hostage to something unknown and strange
as if that’s a normal thing to do
but if enough of us live with chronic illness, it will become normal
and that is not a good thing.
Before this …
I took chances, because you think
I’m invulnerable, sometimes I can fly
health, you take for granted
though I truly convinced myself, I had checked the boxes
right weight, exercise, organic, vegetables, no pre-made meals
(well, this is what I told my doctor, sometimes a couch counts as exercise, right?)
if I ate a slice of pizza, it was a treat with friends
though I like root beer, I never drank it
maybe making up for cigarettes, smoked in my twenties
but I thought if I keep jogging, if I keep living healthily
I won’t be felled, because you ARE WHAT YOU EAT.
A few months before I got sick, I recall
feeling strong, climbing through snow drifts and laughing
boundless energy, working long hours, feeling intensely alive
people saying; you look so healthy, your skin is radiant!
Those are not things people say now, unless
I apply a lot of make-up, to camouflage my fraying edges
instead it is me, who declines invitations
I am sorry I cannot go with you to eat, even though eating out
is the number one leisure activity where I live
because my stomach is ruined and I cannot digest much
I live plain and simple (and boring), like a nun and I am numbed
to the pleasures of wine and sauces and garlic, spices and oils
not recognizing my bloated mid section in the mirror
from the girl who once was told
she had an hour-glass figure, with a wasp waist
could run for buses and catch them in three-inch heals.
I know everyone has their burden
but when you get sick and it doesn’t go away
life becomes a series of scolds and let downs
you find out who really loves you and who harbored an anger
used the opportunity of your downfall, to insert a knife
it is the cowards way of course, but freedom of sorts
for none of us need, that kind of negativity in our lives
there is a blessing in disguise, when you find your tribe
the people who care and know the real you
not wanting to tear you apart, because it’s easy to kick you when you’re down.
But blessings do not salvage, the hours you spend sickening
remembering how you were rarely felled in past years
strong of body, sound of mind, juicing and walking ten miles
everything is turned upside down, inside out when you find
a burnt fuse, at the end of your outstretched arm.
There is no cure, there is no future
when you live, in a jar for the jarring
for a long while, I blamed myself
maybe in part, because someone I trusted told me;
“It is your fault, you must have somehow caused it”
easy to throw stones, at glass houses
I was a glass house, with many windows
break one and I cannot repair it
the wind will come in and make of my space
chaos
the sun will come in and make of my peace
madness.
Those things that brought me joy, were gone
instead, the regiment of illness strode in and stood firm
you cannot feel passion, when you are sick
ageing in hours, rather than decades, trying to stay above water
it is hard to feel hope
you rely upon the kindness of others
which is hard to do, if you are not used to it
and when they lift you to the light, you promise
if I can recover, I will try ever so hard to never be ungrateful
but with every mercy, is a dark day in hell
those days take it all out of you, like a scourge
the sickening can age you, more than a nightmare
one minute you recognize yourself, the next you are unknown
vulnerability, of not being able to take care of yourself
the expense and fear
your world crumbling around you.
These are things you get used to and when you have fallen
to the bottom and can no longer get up
that is where the truth lies
that is where you can find
your true self and the end of fear.
They tried to tell you that you were insane
making it up, all in your head, something’s wrong with that
crazy lady who pounds her fluttering chest in vain
tries to catch the eyes of doctors, with beseeching side-glance
SEE ME! HEAL ME! SAVE ME! WHAT IS WRONG?
WHAT HAS HAPPENED TO ME? WHY DID I WAKE UP ONE DAY
SICK AND IT NEVER WENT AWAY?
And yes ! Something was wrong with me and still is
not my doing, not my causing, not my dreaming
despite you saying; You bothered us, when you called and were upset
no mercy, no mercy, no mercy, that is not love.
Helped me let go. Don’t hold on to negativity.
Oh doctor, get it outt!
and if you can’t, then give me the key, the saw, the pick
so I may survive myself and somehow continue on.
Am I to label myself chronically ill, or in recovery?
Surviving or dying or all of the above?
how do you define what doesn’t go and doesn’t kill?
Spending all your money on alternative treatments that
don’t even know what they pretend to cure
how do you describe one good day, followed by one in hell?
others won’t understand, because they are well
what I would give to return, to that safe water place
but even if I did, I would not be the same
you live years with a loaded gun to your head, everything changes.
I am not me anymore
I cannot see out of my left eye
I cannot lift heavy things, with my weak foreign arms
I can walk ten miles and not break a sweat despite this and be told
by friends and foes; OH YOU DON’T LOOK SICK
I am an apparent scar of contradictions and pain
I hurt every day, my stomach feels like
something is eating me from the inside out
it convulses and retorts and shouts
“you will never win, you will bathe in pain the rest of your life”
but I will still try
because I don’t know how to give in to enemies, I cannot see
and even as I cannot eat normal food
one day I am good, the next I am dying green
even as nausea, has become my constant companion
and bottles of pills and vitamins rattle in my pit
even as I fight to be gracious in the eye of the storm
and those I thought would stand by me, try to drown me instead
I know there is still a moment
I am well enough to remember who I am
never to find that peace of mind again
but maybe recover to another state of being.
I wake in the night covered in sweat and the disinterested doctor says
“get used to not sleeping, get used to all of this, it is what you must suffer and many others do”
as if it is normal to be like this, as if it is something we should not mention
I will never think it is normal to be hijacked!
I jog into the forest, because it reminds me I am still living, my feet still work
I fight with wilted hands, when they tell me there is no hope
that I should just consign my former glories to a picture album and put
my feet up for a fifty year occupation of sofas and couches and day time oblivion
because THE POWER OF ME can overcome the power of negativity and this I believe
as I see in the mirror a girl who doubts but stares back unblinking.
I have lost my will at times
I do not write as much, I have less energy
the last time I had a romantic dinner was in a dream and I
sleep with a heating pad on my stomach every night instead of a lover
but I still pay my own way and my own bills
I have a pride in pushing back against status quo
DEFYING the prescription of HOPELESSNESS.
they tell me go on disability. Just give up
I am not going anywhere, but to the finish line
I learned
by losing everything and having nothing but
the sheer will and dim light of my existence
I can do this without those I thought I had in my corner
because I am stronger than I realized
and this grieves me, as well as reassures me
but I come from a long line of stoic, strong women
and it seems sicker than I am, that we should hate each other
because life, surely we have found out, is fragile
and love is all that makes sense
but even without love I will continue and not
let the flame go out.
Sometimes I ask myself why?
why not just give in? Take the knife, swallow the pill
to oblivion or some non-sign-posted destination
I don’t have children to protect
it would be easy to slip out of this world and its sword edge of pain
but somehow I feel I should protect myself
maybe because others did not
maybe because you defend yourself in the end
when everything else is fallen and you are still
somehow, standing.
I am weak and tired and prematurely aged into
a hunched over version of myself
hair greying with shock, skin is sloughing off and my
body is tied to the rhythm of a sickness that purges and gluts
I was told this kind of disorder was permanent
but nothing I have found, is ever guaranteed
so I have chosen to ignore this and believe
we can all fight and overcome
anything
even a death sentence
even betrayal
even silence
and when we know this
when we are strong for our weakness
realize our tears are just water and salt
burning the frustration of our visiting menace
then, we know nothing can hurt us, more than it already has
and we are free to dream
of a future without so much pain
where death stands to the side and lets us regain
some of our former dignity
for there is nothing dignified in sickness
and you don’t know me when you said I was glamorous
that is the last thing I am
I am beautiful for my courage
beautiful for my fear
beautiful for my survival
beautiful for my defeat
beautiful for my mercy of those who have no mercy for me.
And life is a wax and a wane
life is a torture and a friend
I am the totem of my own branding
I may live in a time where nobody else of my kith and kin remain
and once that would have filled me with pain
now I know you cannot rely upon
labels of safety
it is only by looking into the hearts of those
who stayed by your side when the storm hit
even if it is one, even if it is naught
you remain behind
the tempest cannot roar forever
eventually even agony ceases.
I wish now, to be everything you were not
to love others unconditionally
care for those who are in need
be the change I want to see
I want to find myself
at the end of all of this
I want to tell you, sickness
you do not win
you are just a miasma
I am a spirit with a soul
I will endure you
the me, of me, will remain
long after, to remember her worth.
Before this all began and through it, learned
only the fierce remain
only those willing to FEEL
and not those who run from feeling
with the ease of the damned.
The expulsion of love
Where are you now?
Sitting on your stoop, first light, cats weaving between
coffee in hand, watching sunrise,
what are you thinking?
You are not thinking of me
the door is shut on us and you turned the key
it took only the loss of hope that gentle thing
and I became a stranger
so many days, months, years and still
I know you less
is it that easy? Was it that hard?
The expulsion of love
still live, dying on the floor.
I met you when the coals were
burning hottest, all I wanted was
a reflection of those feelings
you took my hand and guided it
into your clasp and pressed my back
with a deep
push into another world
the world of you
where I have been these many years.
They weren’t just words
though if I strain I can hear
the first you whispered
our curled against other in dark
your fingers creating universes
I felt their beckon
as I had not before
the press of you and the beseech of me
it was as if once inside
you claimed that part and as your possessed
I never struggled to be free
it was what I had always sought
to be needed at that scolding temperature
we barely survived our love
it burned and that heat was
the very raging heart of us.
Now day is long
you are gone in so many ways
absent in your once fine mind
emptied of the gentleness I knew
a stranger to me, a welted memory
it is not death, it is not life
I cannot talk to you, the only one I would
I have no solace in recall
it is like being tortured
there is only time, and they say time
heals all, but that is a lie
perhaps for you, already forgetting
I recall too much and everything
is a red road sign to us always.
The day I stood nude on white balcony
I did not recognize that girl who
had stupidly wanted forever and you
she wanted the innocence of us
how neither had ever fallen before
how you were virgin of touch and I
closed and shut up
together we opened the universe
you, it was only you and
it wasn’t me but for the echo of you
enfolded and besotted as no
future can replicate
there are some times only
once and never again
moments and feelings untested
who meet and create together
that celestial place in time.
I think of you now with a crushing feeling
as if someone has come within me, a trespass
thrown out all the certainty and warmth
leaving me emptied and discarded
surely you know that and pass it by
as your armored heart does not
recognize me anymore
there is nothing more awful
than to fade and diminish in regard
until you are no more than
a throwaway comment.
I walk the streets of my memories
like a widow in her veil
watching myself dry into a statue
of torment and you? You I suppose are free
it was always your selfhood to
change and alter in fickle flick of wrist
the time, the hour, in this case the girl
who stands in her memory palace
trying to rid herself of the feeling
it will only ever contain your shadow
and the footsteps you left
some bloodied, some too deep
to ever expunge that influence or
the sound of your whisper calling me
over time and space to some created place
where I am ever yours and never
free of that promise I made when you asked
me to submit and wed, the marrow to
your existence.
I did not understand how easy it was
to break and smash the very articles of
us
oh my love, oh my love
I never said it before, I never said it afterward
where did you bury my soul? And where
is the key to unlock that prison I inhabit now?
where being alone, I hear at night
the fidget and torture of your touch
over the fading moon an outline of
you and only ever you, it has become
an effigy to something once
consumed me whole and kept me digested
within you darling, to your very core
where I heard your life blood rush and gather
I became then, the child of you
she cries out now to your emptied eyes
turned from me, reduced to ash
as cold and unfeeling, as if never was
the burn and sear of branded emotion
we called us two and now only one
the loneliness is destroying me
inch by inch, I claim further madness
for you were me and I do not know
how to exist without, the belief we were
sewn in harmony with
each other’s binding, become all I know
all of me born, the day you baptized me
with your claiming eyes
deciding it should be me, you take
as your mate in this world.
Now our world has decayed to naught
you will not return, or have a thought
for what you left behind when you
closed that door
and
without sound
left the key to
rust into
red
water
Yehudit
We learned to swim
in the flickering pools of each other’s eyes
desire born in quiet step and curtsy
before I ever touched you outside this dream world
you were the betroth of my sleep
we circled each other in origami folds
acquainting, never strangers, always known
as if time held us apart long enough, to generate
in the deep cry of longing, a hallowed place
where only those destined for the other
shall like painted flowers, made of paper
embrace, release and turn to ink
coloring water the stain of lacquered longing
reborn on latticed wing of desire
to breathe again in the surround of this singular girl
for you, are my pendant, hung close to my heart
you do not tarnish or fade in intensity
you are the twitch in my smile, a muscle pulling
upward each time I think of you
it is as if, with every turning day
a part of me becomes dissolved
like sugar in tea sweetens what is plain
I am able to see in you, what you no longer can
those vestiges you put away
in a box too high for reclaiming
where your silver rings and sunlit hair
lies dormant, replaced by sensible overcooked hours
I was perhaps, born to return color to your cheeks
even as it grows dark I see your
sleek head bowed in feigned peace
knowing if I were admitted into
the sanctum of your unspoken sorrow
where peach hued roses bloom fragrant
there would be a blush again
marking darkness exquisite
as the silhouette of your dusky butterfly
brands my marrow indelibly
for it is simple; two people who did not plan
falling out of the sky, meet the other
everything changes, if they leave behind fear
we are not given wings, if meant to only walk earth
you send me to heights I could not
describe before you walked into my life
claiming my tiptoeing heart
we who are dancers of dusk and dawn
whisper secrets stored so long
out into infinity and beyond
she who is diminutive and siren
hear my song
Moonshine
(inspired by finding an old photograph of a fancy-dress party I attended at University that I hadn’t seen in years)
One of them is me
but which holds the key? Later perhaps we
shall know our fruiting journey through
maze of youth
and slow pull of stocking
for kind of touch best found
in satiny afternoon glow
outside I hear my dim-eyed neighbor
mowing lawns until he aches silver
because his wife has turned away
nobody touches him anymore with
the dreams of yesteryear
so we sprint toward each
invisible finish line
with emptiness in our hearts
filled with busy distraction
nothing lasting, nothing to
endure or sate cold claim
of climbing into bed
unwanted or alone
the feel of darkness, our shroud
from terrible disappointment
and then
then I had it all and didn’t know
standing on the precipice
we laughed at our indomitable
facility to thrive
not yet diseased
not yet rawboned with stretch marks
nipping their silver lines like unwanted lace
or sagging pieces shaking to no
good beat
not yet diminished on shallow waxen wheel
of male adoration
though for me this was never
a piece I wished to carve for myself
it was the love of a woman I craved
like first drink from fountain
on a hot day with no clouds in sight
languorously we exult
in
crocheted certainty, time will stand still
make for ourselves exceptions and grand entrance
the labor of hope so easy and lubricated
then
we’ll never be shaken off
like a dull wet thing
nor left to gather dust
as something once favored
we are surely, gleaming warm heads
of our own personal state
if I could have heard the warning
should I have been able
to listen?
likely not for
day is long and hour far
we take lovers for bread and jam
hate yet a curiosity
our parents live robust
we can yet still, the freedom to
go home
there are structures protecting
the hollow timber of our hearts
from these days what we can we learn?
as growing up and away
truth becomes stretched and gray
friends falling away
the bounty of never-never coming to claim
her inevitable duality
delight in youth, for contrast is cruel
all should have its value
but we are flippant with our boon
and when the cold night comes
we usher ourselves to greater darkness
in the strangeness of change
not able to see what is portent
nor later
the freedom
released from expectation
to unfold our wings
take flight
no more a shining thing
but something effervescent
and filled with
light
casting its thrall
as long ago, diving for pearls
we claimed the moon
