Tag: poetry

The Answer

3:33 AM
Startled awake
The answer
there, on the brink

Of course I lose it
rising to answer another call
Oh, how it taunts

Try to recapture the moment
find the right twist of body
as if I’m a radio tuner
signal lost

And what answer would that be, anyway?
Now fully awake, pondering questions –
only one applies

This newly formed fear
I’ve dared not voice it –
it cuts deep

Is there an answer
and if so, do I want to hear it?

I fall back to sleep
awake hours later
mind blissfully empty.

(Image my own)

We Are Not Islands

We are not islands:
isolated,
insulated,
to be ignored.

We are hearts engaged
in a relational dance:
intertwining stories,
weaving new tales

Yearning for love’s reciprocity
Delighting in wonder of discovery
Slugging through painful demise
Striving to be better

We build walls,
construct towers,
follow paths leading nowhere –
the pitfalls of our quest

Artificial barriers:
lofty ideals,
dead ends…
and still we push on

Dreaming of hands that hold
and gentle waters – soothing
and warm – passionate kisses:
Love’s rewards

We exist
not for accumulation
but for the gifts that arise
when open hearts dance

(Image my own)

Colouring Lessons

Favourite colour?
Black, says she
without hesitation

I falter, stumble,
mind reaching –
who likes black?

Is that a colour?
It’s all colours!
She’s nonchalant

intent on task –
carefully keeping
within the lines

Of course it is...
ill equipped am I
to disagree, images

of dark somber
corners, sorrow
and death crows –

Why black? ask I,
composure forced –
had anticipated pink

equate childhood
with primary shades,
splotches of yellow

and rainbow skies,
candy red apples
on lollipop trees

But black? No –
black obliterates,
negates, destroys

It holds the colour
inside, she explains.
It’s the outline.

Not annihilation –
order; her mind
conceives of order

So much to learn
from innocence,
have long forgotten

the art of staying
within lines, finding
good in all things.

(Colouring Lessons first appeared here June, 2017. Image my own)


Undeserving

Guide me to source
offer all that I ask, but  
I have no voice…

Desire cut off in formative years
a product of dysfunctional loyalty
I am tethered to other
submissive by conditioning

Have forgotten my primal roots
my lupine instinct numbed
by domestication

Lead me to riches
and I will balk at the door
wander off distracted

It is not indifference
but an inability to relate

the concept of deserving
beyond my reach.

(Image my creation)

Fabricated

The loom on which
I weave
these threads
is more foreboding
than machinery

These fibres,
neither silken
nor wool,
cottoned
from misadventures,
miscommunication,
and inner unraveling

The mind,
an unpredictable
seamstress,
fabricates a flawed tale –
silver threads of wisdom
sewn between precarious lines –
consumer be wary.

(Image created by AI. This is an edited version of the original.)