Sanctity

He possessed a certain divinity,
a soft-spoken modesty she read
as safe harbour, fell for maiden-like
innocence, her blessed compliance.

Married in the sacred way, carnal
mounting accentuating a tailored
love – husband and wife exploring,
celebrating glorious submission

until joy plummeted – impossible
to duplicate infatuation in a void –
they grasped at objects, mystery –
remodeled, relocated, searched,

constructed a delicate balance –
contrived happiness, passionless,
spontaneous and fearful, rawness
of exposed souls clinging together

saw deliverance in the perfection
of celebrity, worshiped at the feet
of media icons, like fools pandering
to a naked Emperor, no amount of

polish could contain the anxiousness
of their precariousness; quietly he
undressed another, fiery girl, while
surprised onlookers, sensitive, yet

unwilling to intervene – the discernible
darkness seeping through cracks of a
once golden haze – closed their doors to
the holy union now veering off course,

shielded themselves from bludgeoning
nostalgia, the anguished cries of vows
slaughtered bleeding onto sidewalks,
as if pain bore tentacles, spidery limbs

able to infiltrate the secrets of their
own carefully compartmentalized
partnerships, disrupt the grind and
lay bare the godless infidelities within.

(Image: nypost.com)

Daughters

You think we don’t know
what happens in the darkest hours;
that somehow slumber blankets,
plunges us into oblivion….

The same slamming of fists
that awakens you, alerts,
drags us from deepest sleep,
thrust into the violence

No amount of denial shields
from the trail of bloody droplets,
witnessing his arm on your throat,
threatening….always threatening…

we have risen to burning rubber
watched with the same submissive spite,
powerless to call for help, muted by
the futility of endless abuse, bystanders

cowered by a caregiver’s venomous spittle,
estranged witnesses,  marginalized,
held hostage by the choking reality
of an offending appendage.

(Image:  Pinterest)

 

Educational Lapse

Confess, I am a proponent
of life as education, and would love
to expand on the lesson at hand,
but haven’t made the morning class yet
as consciousness and I have no early rising
agreement, and higher learning
involves climbing, and
staircases are out
at the moment

so even if the term
is in progress, I lack essential
energy to aspire to enlightenment
and I appreciate that you have prayed
for me, and Mary and her Son
may have inspired motivation,
but without working memory
directions are lost –
I could guess

at a destination,
would likely discover that
my aim has been off base,
could pretend I am gleaning
reams of information from the process,
just to appease higher-ups, but healing
is what I really need, not learning,
and help finding those elements
of self that others

have come to depend on
and now grieve, and if life is
education, then my time is fading
and as day gives over to darkness,
I’ve found my bed beside
the ocean of consciousness
calling me to another cause.

Midsummer Night’s Trap

I am no Titania,
whose mind poisoned
by Puck’s subterfuge,
finds your asinine
nature alluring.

You once slaughtered
all rational instincts,
beheaded my sensibility,
paraded my gored heart
like a trophy oozing blood

Thought to seduce me
anew, so confidant in
your primal charms,
my carnal libido, but no
flowery fog deludes me

you are not a guileless
Bottom, but an incubus
maliciously motivated,
a destroyer of souls,
conquest a side sport…

So willingly we entered
that midnight garden
of lust – me, innocent
as Helena, you a serpent
in the plot, more twisted

than Puck’s foiled plan;
I fear I have not removed
myself far enough from
that enchanted dystopia,
am grasping to reach

something stable, sane…
a solid security that defies
magical notions, grounds
me in respectability, a return
to a banality that precludes you.

(Image:  classicmoviestills.com)

 

 

 

Bundled Memories

I carry my past
in a long, white sack –
canvas like a sailor’s –
as if my life depends on it…

or a laundress toting
bundles, tied with string,
promises of toil and
recompense to come.

My contents are not
sustainable, though,
only sorry tales,
entangled woes
mutated into plastic
figurines, more comical
than menacing,
torment born of
pretense and shame.

I am eager to set
this burden down,
loosen the binds,
but self-assurance
and management skills
are just out of reach
a level above me

preoccupied with
organizing
appearances,
disinterested
in healing
old hag’s haunts.

Common sense says
let go, but I’m not sure
I can handle the repercussions,
fear there is more to suffer
for their release

can’t be sure I won’t be
feeding these frailties
to a bigger beast –
the stuff of nightmares –

once exposed will become
bait for a lascivious predator
who toys with ruffled emotion,
a vulture for vulnerability.

Is it not better to cast the
damned so far as to be
forgotten; to be free
for once and all, board
a bus on out of here
find comfort in masses
following a common drum?

My husband has license
to drive a bus, if I take
my chances, could we
prevail together?

How I wish I knew
the protocols of social
etiquette when involving
baggage, am so afraid of
igniting rage in anyone else
but me.

(Image:  www.ebay.co.uk)

Next Door

Next door dwells perfection,
gardens pert with flowery blooms
like vibrant little soldiers heeding
the command of love’s labour,
exuding confident pride.

My house, marked by overgrown
vines, chaos’ shameful exhibition,
bemoans the futility of planting,
knows they’ll be no follow through,
betrays the absence of love’s toil.

Life has schooled detachment,
lessons in loss counsel protection.
better to guard than invest; how
can they be so reckless, do they
not know that all is for naught?

(Image from Pinterest)

Eccentricity Counts

Professors may make strange bedfellows,
but originality does engage young minds;
ideology while exciting, repels intuition;
and doing well is not about belonging,
it is acknowledgment and reward received.

Listen to me, I am lost, begging for do-overs.
Superiority is a goal for some, while I retreat
into leisure, begin losing awareness, am an odd
gatherer, keeper of underdeveloped knowledge,
gushing creativity, and injecting limitations.

If I could meld empathy, follow unbeaten
paths, inform myself afresh, I’d be bloated
with enthusiasm, pregnant with progress,
but my outlook, like moss, is humble: I am
outcast, marginalized, insignificant…

Projecting discomfort into materialism,
may once have been healthy, now initiating
death by unconscious eating: a human sponge.
Instructing once fueled me –  my passion
eclectic, as all good teacher should be.

What remedies will persuade those who have
forgotten the way, are numbed.
What new dawn will force feed us out of this
resignation, instill pursuit of higher knowing,
ignite a quest for empowerment?

(Image from pinterest.com)

Business Venture

Victim, whose season is always Autumn,
bloodied tears like fallen leaves trailing;
and Martyr, for whom worship and self-
sacrifice is a dietary requirement; propose
to venture into retail ownership – recreating

a former failed attempt; believing that if
you build it (again) they will come, as Ego
has promised.  “Well, it worked for that
Kevin guy,” Victim agrees; Martyr’s eyes
shine with adoration and eager anticipation.

Spirit says:  Let it rest.  Leave the past
where it belongs; there is a time for
everything and with patience your
future will reveal itself.  No need to
grasp; learn from failure and move on.

But Victim is headstrong, has something
to prove, believes her finest moments
are in the past, is certain she can change
it all if given another a chance, and Martyr
well, she goes along willingly, has faith…

They’ll serve the public, create a niche
that no one can ignore, save the world
with each item they sell, market health
and cure-alls, and invite miracles to
grace their square footage and forget

about reality, and bills, and licenses –
refuse to let overheads dictate downfalls,
convinced they are divinely guided,see
evidence in the motley crowds drawn
to their recycled vision, scheme to find

a new location, mooch off the unsuspecting;
Victim swearing not to repeat old patterns,
Martyr offering up her life, her family, to save
the dream – It will be okay, Ego says; It will be
okay, Victim echoes; It will be okay, Martyr beams.

Spirit emits a silent sigh, has watched this
carousel ride for some time now, has a strong
inclination as to where this road will end, yet
knows that lessons can only be offered, and
perspective only gained through release.

 

 

Breaking Free

Seems we are singularly obsessed –
we two, one story – driven to acquire,
invested in finding comfort, facing
tumultuous conditions, as if property
like a fortress will cloak our insecurity.

Look at us, disheveled, gambling on life,
average citizens, likely to fail – choosing
to recreate, question our destiny – the
dilemma: having been disgraced once
can we rise now to release, reset the dial?

What if we cut the ties; free ourselves
from disappointments – no longer feeling
like we’re coming in last – let’s ponder
intuitive moves, fun – we have been beaten
up enough by life, what is there to lose?

Have you noticed our lives have become
prisons: strategies tied to ancient agendas?
We are more twins than lovers, dwelling,
existing, double collateral damage – time
to quit this sham, fragment to find peace.

Let’s leave this house together, dress
our residence with wheels, aged as we are,
(on the other side of the lie), unclothe our
regimens, puzzle over serenity, expand;
urgency calls us to repossess our lives.

This is no lottery: lightheartedness a choice,
we make the openings for understanding,
are destined through our surrender to succumb
to a new definition of love, shed our culture,
our burdens, and formally declare a rebirth

 

Wayward Daughter

Back and forth I travel searching
for her – retrace every bend, curve,
detour – back to the water, the sand,
the beach where I lost her; haunted by

those velvet brown eyes – bedroom eyes,
they told her, men with greedy loins,
calculating – I lost her to the lure of
alcohol, to the pounding beat of drums,

in those smoky corners so far removed
from the purity of her dreams….
it’s been an arduous journey, some days
so lost in the daze of forgetting; I cycle

back, memories of manhood exposed,
egos craving stroking, how she learned
what men wanted, learned to numb
the disappointment with fast-talk

and all-nighters, suppressed tears,
discovered that words hold no promise,
and water is deep, and going within
is a dark, foreboding place, and worth

is shrouded by the shame of discovering
that even the father she adored was not
as she’d thought, and that this primal
urge she felt for mating was a trap

designed to eradicate her beauty, not
enhance it…I need to find her, hold
her afloat in sacred waters, help her feel
the healing light of a thousand women’s

hearts all bleeding as one, all warped
by the same convoluted messages
about womanhood – that lust is sinful
and copulation a man’s domain, and

that in order to be espoused she must
forego her own nature, tame the wild,
settle for loss of control…but as much
as I travel these lonely roads, I cannot

find her, the traces of her innocence
washed away by the tides, lines now
on my aged face…if you see her, please
hold her close, protect her from beasts,

hold her until the beauty of her being
is a solid knowing, and the shame has
been vanquished; and that being a vessel
for man’s release is not her only purpose.