Passion for writing ignites my soul's momentum
These barriers –
iced over sentiments
barbed-wire wounds –
How do we reconcile
when questions
resist answers?
What remains
to be solved?
I retreat into misery
Should never have allowed
heart to even hope –
Belle, you torture me so.
(Tuesdays, I borrow from Twitter @Vjknutson. Image my own.)
Midnight, the water
running between us,
frigid the air –
despondent the heart
whose selfish outburst
destroyed the bridge
to your love.
(Twitter poems @Vjknutson)
One rose
dripping red, like blood from thorns –
a warning? a promise?
even roses die –
love, too?
(Written for Dark Side of the Moon’s Reverse Cinquain.)
(Image: A Rose to Ignite Passion is available on our shop at Society6.)
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.
This path I walk is not my own;
it’s paved with genetic markers,
familial dysfunction, and ancestral angst.
Can you see them walking with me?
Those whose lives were cut too short –
the addicts, the tortured, the diseased –
none of us free – ensconced in blame.
If you walk with me,
I’ll help you carry your burden
and you can support me with mine.
I stand at the intersection
of broken dreams and hope for tomorrow
and in my altered state of awareness
see the commonality of our striving,
understand the patterns that divide,
and grasp the illusion of injustice
that denigrates our interconnectedness.
If you walk with me,
I’ll help you carry your burden
and you can support me with mine.
I stop and wait for an opening
to share this revelation
of underlying harmonious intent,
but the whir of societal traffic
complicates communication,
and I can find no voice to cut
through the din of the dead.
If you walk with me,
I’ll help you carry your burden
and you can support me with mine.
I turn the corner on my old life,
detach with loving sorrow
from a road that never served me,
a direction wrought only with pain.
Tiny arms await me on this open road,
eyes wide with wonder and possibility.
There is joy to be found along the way.
If you walk with me,
I’ll share this new adventure
and together, we’ll have much to gain.
(Changing Directions was originally published June, 2015)
mind regresses
in the aftershock –
tremors of misspent
devotion reverberate
suffocating debris
teenage hearts
caught in the quake –
a marital schism –
plucked unripe
sweetness battered
I, colourless
abandoned, like
a runner-up in
a beauty pageant
forgotten, flailed
failed as a mother
withdrawn, rattled
psyche exploding
survival a slow crawl
challenges weighty
aligned my burden
with that of another
six adolescents, and
a bi-polar man looking
for female direction
craved the laughter
of children, the sanity
of structures unbroken
dust of the aftermath
clouding sensibility
anarchy rejoices
at lack of clarity
loss of control, dreams
of bliss have no home
when depression rules
retrace steps –
ponder the road
that led to destruction
search for light before
darkness took possession
found a trail of
foundations lacking
fortitude, wrought
with cracks, underlying
angst threatening
the earthquake, I see
as inevitability –
my landscape strewn
with fault lines
corrupt under stress
drama follows the weak
an internal compression
and shifting, uncontainable
wildness – destined to
destroy – breakthrough
(Image: dictionary.reference.com)
Been taking inventory,
gathering essentials,
craving nourishment,
coming up lacking –
cartoon version of a former self.
Spirituality, once fiery
now looms over me,
a stilted attempt to uplift –
redefinition of self –
grossly overstated.
I have been locked up,
misread, am unkempt,
a dishevelled mess –
childish demonstrations
proclaiming innocence.
All the while mouthing
nothingness – exaggerated
exuberance, tiring even me –
have destroyed compassion
with carelessness
I would embrace Spirit,
be comforted by that old familiar
warmth, declare faith
and be absolved of guilt,
but I am too far gone.
Before I jump into another man’s bed,
(especially one who has already cheated),
whisper my deepest yearnings to his
lusting heart, arch my hips to meet his
less than satisfactory thrust, I will make
sure that his compassion meets mine,
that he has the balls to prioritize, and
does not soften at crucial junctures.
I can look back at past follies, blame
hormonal rages, or beat myself over
shameless acts, but I am not the one
whose cojones, like deflated balloons,
lacked the wherewithal to differentiate
between brain and penis, and chose
to corrupt rather than protect the
sanctity of our children’s future.
Call it emasculation! Call it female
wrath; accountability goes both ways,
and as long as we women are willing
to carry the burden of guilt, believe
messages shoved down our throats,
and submit to impossible ideation;
relationships will continue to crumble –
Stand up! Make a statement! Be a man!
Tucks her granddaughter in,
gazes into wide blue eyes,
flashes back to another girl –
now grown – apple cheeks,
and an unruly thicket of hair.
Nostalgia is shattered as
the child smiles back, lips
betraying a trace of another –
once father – whose absence
clouds the old woman’s heart.
She holds the child closer,
reassuring her undying love,
cannot not shake the echo
of words spoken only that day:
Kayla’s daddy always picks her up.
Told the teacher her dad is dead;
a reasonable conclusion for a
young mind unable to articulate
the questions in her heart: why
his name is only ever whispered.
Tries to draw his picture, talks
of missing his cuddles, surely,
cannot remember a man who
left before she was two – the
grandmother prays silently.
What will they say when she asks?
Niceties about how he wasn’t ready?
Leave her to believe she is somehow
lacking, unlovable, when in truth
it is he who is incapable of loving.
Chases women like cotton candy,
three or four a day, cannot help
himself, an internet-driven obsession,
uses his daughter’s picture as bait –
perhaps she is right, her father is dead.
