Author: VJ

Permission to write, paint, and imagine are the gifts I gave myself when chronic illness hit - a fair exchange: being for doing. Relevance is an attitude. Humour essential.

Complexity of Freedom

Freedom is four hundred and fifty square feet of moveable tin, wheeling down the highway, destination unknown.  It is long walks through exotic forests, where focus lasts only as long as it takes to capture an image.  It is the privilege of sleeping and waking according to whim, routine an estranged concept.  It is the breeding ground for creativity – passion unleashed – and it is tainted by the hue of loneliness, the stark awareness that ties are strained, and those left behind feel abandoned.

Freedom’s highway calls –
hearts follow, passions flow, flee
guilt’s far-reaching pull.

(Written for DVerse’s Halibun Monday:  Complexity of Freedom prompt.)

Notorious Limerence

Regret took root
the moment
I turned you away

grew limbs
with each
empty love

your image
like an icon
taunting me

the certainty
of our perfection
carved in bark

dreams of you
branches reaching
to eternity – bliss

notorious for
self-punishment,
poor choices

still reeling
from the rejection
decades later

a limerence
crowding out
heart’s potential.

(Poem written for daily prompt from both ragtag community (limerence) and Fandango (notorious). Highlighted words are links to the daily prompt sites.)

Scuttle

Made of steel,
I have withstood
your darkness,
borne the blackened
traces of your hardened
words upon my soul,
have carried for you,
endured the weight
of your substance –
lack of substance –
this charred shell
all that remains,
tarnished metal
walls, contents
now empty.

(Daily Addictions daily prompt is scuttle)

Disruption

Absence of table
echoes in a room
reserved for its
central role –

I am at a loss,
no explanation
proceeding
this disappearance

have just woken
from a slumber
deep, to this hole
in certitude

grasp for answers
wonder at significance
if I’ve missed signals
question permanence

left with silliness
of chairs, the mockery
of dust – balled
fragments revealed

stand at kitchen counter
nibbling, dubious
unable to relax –
the table is gone.

 

Unwanted Visit

The years have done their damage,
resentments, like border guards,
line up between us…

and then you just show up,
as if somehow that makes you the better person,
as if your presence will make me forget, forgive

and I fumble for the right words,
attempt graciousness, even as I’m struggling
to feed the hurt, coddle the innocence lost

you hurt the deepest core of me,
the child, barely able to stand on her own,
the burden of her frailty heavy enough

what amusement must you derive
from revisiting our torturous past,
I cannot fathom – all too much for me.

Wild

Strength of conviction,
power of physical being,
his spirit timeless –
yet, he is weary,
wonders how he can
maintain
a life of integrity, ensure
a future for those he loves,
in the shadows of
civilization’s whims.

(If you’ve received this via email, and cannot see the posted picture, please visit the site.  The image is of a wild stallion who graced us with his presence on our recent visit to Arizona. The poem is dedicated to the him.)