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.

Dis-Figured

Trapped inside
two-dimensional torus
backward spinning

Not even my pulse
emits an echo – would need
a third dimension for that

Am geometrically disfigured,
an illusion, I fear, for human
substance seldom adds up.

(Tuesdays, I borrow from Twitter @Vjknutson. Image my own,)

Another Chapter Closes

House creaks
ferocious
decries starkness
of bare walls
absence of furniture
finality of boxes
stacked and sealed

Sleep eludes me
mind recalling
passages –
his cancer
my fear
twist of fate
that left me housebound

We could not stay here
this place chosen for healing
turned prison

“You’ve been good to us”
I whisper, “Now
you’ll favour someone else”

She grumbles in response
this old house, sharing
my trepidation
of unknowns, change
always precarious

Another groan
and I concur
we grand dams
need extra TLC

but I have faith –
an injection of
new life
will do us both good.

(This is a found poem, excerpted from a post of the same name which appeared on my second blog in July of 2017. Image my own.)

Devilish This Fear

Devil borrows
Twilight’s voice
tortures sensibility

Tangled bedclothes
grumble, inflexible
bedmates – unsupportive

Where is reason?
my mind wails
heart drumming discord

I access light,
perch on edge of bed
will myself to breathe

(My dear husband is in hospital again, his fifth surgery to reconstruct his knee. It’s been a long ordeal and my heart bleeds for him. Fear is an awful bedmate. I submit this poem in response to the promptings of Eugi’s Weekly prompt: twilight and Reena’s Xploration challenge: devil. Image my own.)

Even Ghosts Yearn

Natural light preferable
to artificial – not the harsh
fullness of noonday sun
but softly filtered rays –
luxurious…
inviting

Love too, should be subdued,
gentle as a zephyr –
not mythical, but yielding…
mindful
not worshipful nor boastful
but comforting…
warm

I am waning light
the mistral wind wafting
no longer a force of nature
but smoke, spiralling
vanishing into non-existence

And yet,
even as shadows spread
I yearn – heart
beating true
not lost,
not forgotten,
but withdrawn…
humbled

passion mellowed
by years of constructing walls –
grit and tar –
scar’s long buried
save the limping gait
of a ghost.

(Even Ghosts Yearn first appeared here in July, 2018. Image my own.)