Embers to Ash

He was an addict.
She didn’t believe it,
even when he lit her on fire and began to inhale.
She saw the hunger of addiction,
mistook it for passion.
He breathed her in.
She swirled.
Flowed and ebbed into him.
her a flame,
for him an ember.
She burned.
Impetuous and simple,
she saw only desire.
Believing in magic of shared experience.
A shared moment yes,
but different experience.
Not jaded, she did not judge.
Instead she reveled in the heat
and in the moment
and was consumed,
breathed deep and deeply breathed.

A moment of stillness,
a pause.
She felt the temperature change,
the stall
and then a push.
At first slow and imperceptible.
Then full and hard.
Evicted in a single breath.
She, intent on staying near
swished, and circled.
Her form a shadow,
a memory, a smell
and she clung,
then was swept out into the ambient air.
Dissipating, floating away on the wind.
She’d been transformed into smoke,
taken from her identity,
there was no going back,
could not keep herself
or remake her image,
having turned to shade,
and so it was that she blew away,
carried off in a breeze.

All things burn,
then turn to embers
and embers turn to ash.

The above loose form poetry was inspired by another blogger. Crap if I have any idea about blog etiquette. Hopefully I don’t piss him off… I think he’s Greek and hopefully being married to a half Greek buys me a little blog personality cred…if not, hopefully he comments and tells me to shut the hell up and stop hacking him for inspiration! At any rate, go check him out...he’s a way deeper thinker than yours truly…there’s your heads up. 😉

live wholehearted and give everything away and be rich because of it.

I keep saying that writing and creativity can be inspired by one thing and still become a whole other thing.
That a man (or woman) setting out to express something, especially really compelling stuff, ought not stifle themselves out of reservations or fears. I care less about what moment, thought, or experience inspired it and more that it’s relative, creative, conveys a thought and evokes a response in me later…(years later if I, or you, did a good job.) That’s the highest goal for me. If it made you think, twitch, barking mad or a little sad that’s an added sweet treat.

Sometimes I write things and feel ashamed. I know it will be too raw, too critical, too something and that someone I Love will wonder if I’m broken or think that I’m just wrong in the head (which may be the case).

I know too that we are humans and in our own iniquities, and weaknesses, judge others. That too many, too often, have a real need to feel more than someone else. Feel vindicated in their version of “righteous” and “good” or whatever. I feel pretty confident that you can’t take righteous with you when you go…you only get to take your wholeheartedness, your triumphs, your love and your memories…

I care what you think I should write and I want to uncare. I want to write words with own heart, my own demons, my own convictions so that maybe it becomes okay for you to do the same.

Maybe you’ll change somebody’s world. Tell them it’s okay to feel alive, to be alive, to live wholehearted and give everything away and be rich because of it.

So often my poems start with one intent but as I work them, read them and rewrite them they begin to tell their own story. I wrote a poem about relationships. In it there’s a woman who’s too busy to see she’s tearing down her man, eroding him into something else. She too wrapped up in her life, and the reality she wants, to even consider where he is in his life and that things may be more static for him until one day he’s gone.

Originally I wanted to write about people who’ve hurt me and how angry and hurt and raw and terrible it was but as time went on, memories replayed, I saw the attempts they’d made to be and stay my friend…it’s an okay story but not the one that wanted told in the end, and so it morphed into something entirely different.

A good example is a friend who was facing a conflict, the end of his marriage, and he began to tell a story of heartache but it turned into a beautifully romantic story…not what he intended, except he listened and followed where the characters led.

Write. So I do. Maybe I won’t ever be great, heck I might not even be good…but no bad can come of it, or at least the potential benefits outweigh the risks of humiliating myself.

🙂

Naked

I did it.
It never plays as well as the fantasy.
Even blindfolded.
But I did it.
I made my demands,
laid them naked before us,
without ceremony,
without explanation.
I want…

If I’ve ruined anything
it was by taking and fucking.
Setting the stage for an expectation
that I don’t want to own every time.

I’m easy.
I know about pleasure.
My pleasure.
And so I know I am part of this,
This that I seek to undo, untie, unbridle.

I used to speak and not think,
now I think but don’t speak.
His withheld passion is a tourniquet.
Always his mouth is soft,
his touch gentle, tentative, waiting…

I take him.
I use him.
Waiting, hoping to be used.
So intent on the performing
he holds back,
keeping part of it from me,
or else why does every kiss have to have a moan, need
to need.

(And I ruin it some more,)
Shhh. Don’t speak.
Don’t make noises.
I say this.
To unhear gentle, passive.
I ask and my ask hurts.
I want to see the parts he hides away
that are scarlet and terrifying even to him.

A story I don’t understand.
The strong man made vulnerable, impotent from the simplest asking.
Honesty too bare and forthright.

I wonder.
If he had it to do all over again
would he free himself,
lose the judgment, the expectation,
Not put her on a pedestal.
Let her be real.
Not rescue her.
Teach her to fight.
To be free.

Out of his Sight

Her perch was precarious,
dangerously perilous.
Fear seized at him
when she started to fall.
She was slipping,
toppling,
losing the ground.
He was desperate to save her,
panicked,
falling down.
He grasped
and she gasped.
She was turning,
twisting,
he was clenching,
clasping.

There wasn’t time for a plan,
there wasn’t more than a goal.
He saw only her doom.
Felt apprehension and dread.
He faced panic,
read it too on her face.
His breath caught in his throat.

He couldn’t know the struggle
she was facing inside,
only that his own fear
was too big to hide.
With a last heaving effort,
nearly losing his place,
he reached and he caught her.
Finally safe.

Her eyes fell on his
and a moment was shared.
Only then did he hear.
Alarmed by her wish and
afraid for her fall,
he held on so tight
before he finally saw.

---

She was jumping not falling,
hadn’t needed a rescue.
She was jumping
and leaping,
intent on flight.

---

Then with some effort
he let out his breath
and loosened his grip.
He watched as she
slipped
into the air,
and she twirled and she circled
and she soared
then flew away far
out of his sight.

So she locks it away, keeps her eye on the key.

Her greatest achievement, her finest accomplishment, its less tangible, touchable and real than castles, and trophies, or even silver and gold.

She has children who are babes
and children who are grown,
a husband who’s her friend
and her lover.

She looks at her marriage and it’s ups
and it’s downs.
Sees she’s not perfect
and still it’s profound.

It’s part of her greatest achievement.

She fixes her gaze onto her kids
sees hearts that are pure.
That they smile,
feel love and that they tackle their fear.
That still they are learning, and searching for life.
They forgive and let go but don’t hide from a fight.
She feels pride, joy and dread as they embark on their flight.

It’s part of her greatest achievement.

When she sits with her lover
and can be honest and open.
When she’s willing not just able,
let’s go of her pride.
Sets it aside
along with contempt
and the judgments she hides.
When she forgives all her stumbles
and sees who she is,
then steps with intent,
won’t stop with “content”.

It’s part of her greatest achievement.

She looks in the mirror, sees who she could be.
Heart: black, cold, and hard.
Safe from the rain away from the pain.
But she locks that away.
Leaves her armor tucked inside and
the evil at bay.

Then she puts on her crown
and she dances around.
She’s fragile sometimes
and it does wears her down.

It’s part of her greatest achievement.

…then she thinks of the dark
an unholy sound.
Of hearts broken.
Falling down.

She knows what she wants and who she can be
and she just has to learn to stay strong.
Keep her eye on the key.

It’s part of her greatest achievement.

Broken Feathers

Artist Sid Widmer @ sidwidmer.com

He never was fragile.
Even when she found him (mortally wounded) he was fierce.
Threatened to eat her.

---

Promised to.

---

Fire on his lips and a storm in his heart. His wings weren’t broken but he didn’t take to flight.
For days she fed him.
Weeks.

She fell in love with the idea of him.
Saw his storm.
Imagined his rain.

A secret in her heart whispered he wasn’t hers to keep.
she hushed the sound.
Watching and knowing.

Not yet.
She could not leave.
Could not set free a thing untamed and honest as the night.
She loved the black and how it can’t hide its darkness.

But her cage was still a cage and her intent turned selfish and she believed her need, made valid the bars.

So he flew away.

Then she remembered her intent.
Saw how her head had deceived her heart.
The lies she planted and the mess she’d made.
Got out her garden gloves and all the tools…

There Should Be Dancing

There should be dancing
And kissing.
Nights of it.
No dreaming out loud.
Words wasted on sound.
Sing into my ear.
Abandon your fear.
Moon light or maybe fire.
Fingers pressed, hard into flesh and desire.
Lips searching
Breathing in breath.
Hearts in our ears.
Clothes hug the floor
as if there they belong.