Words are...

Words are ‘would’

words are ‘could’

words are ‘I can feel!’.

Words are feral things hiding in corners

words are broken things on the floor.

Words are etched on stone

words are carved into skin.

Words are dreams undreamt

words are selves unfound.

Words are hearts beating, breathing, breaking

words are where you land.

Words are expectations

words are primal needs.

Words are private and sacred

words won’t change the world.

Words help me remember that I exist

words are what I feel.

Words are all that I have sometimes

words are often too real.

Words are demons that plaque my dreams

words wake me from my sleep .

Words I covet, words I steal

words, my soul you will take.

*For dVersepoets.com*

...lines on a page...

It doesn’t matter, it’s useless really

as useless as lines on a page…

The meaning inherent, the content palpable

but does it really ever affect time?

It has to be done, for it lives and it breathes

 a being unto itself.

Yet its value, its worth, is questionable still

as it remains tightly within pages bound.

If words were written and no one read them

would their meaning cease to be known?

Would they become stacks of paper lining walls of rooms

disintegrating with time.

They have to be written, I understand

with a force they demand release.

Like a blade across skin, or an empty bottle drained

we are convinced they bring us peace.

Scratching and scribbling and scrawling

we craft our immaculate webs.

Perched safely back in the shadowed corners

waiting for anyone uninvited to be trapped.

New Day ~ Learning

I’m learning how to do this slowly

a little more each day.

Learning how to calm and quell

the voices that have so much to say.

I’m learning how to be

the woman that I have implied.

In thought and word and action and deed

I am learning to live revealed.

I am learning how to trust in truth

and to living fully exposed.

Where the answers may not always be

what your heart was hoping to hear.

I am learning to risk standing on the edge

perilously close to the fall.

I am learning to fall with head held high

no matter how much it hurts.

I am learning to sleep more soundly

without anything left to hide.

I am learning to live in the moments

before they are just memories I am longing for.

I am learning to live unfettered

untied, unchained, and unbound.

I am learning to breathe in slowly and steadily

instead of holding my breath.

Walk on a warm day

I walked through the streets for miles

towards what, I don’t really know.

Into something or away from something

this feeling I can’t really name.

Through piles of leaves that have helplessly fallen

and covered the earth in red.

Through trees and bushes all the colors of fall

on an unseasonably warm day.

I am walking to sort out the tension I feel

walking to clear out my mind.

Walking to bring me back to the place

where there is nothing but thankful joy.

I am trying to quiet the voices I hear

the opinions of what I should do.

I am concentrating on one step then the next

to find the quiet space where I feel.

     It’s simple really after hours on the road

                   to lovingly come back home.

         To see you sitting in the afternoon sun

                your face lit in a gentle glow.

               The day is slipping slowly away

                 the metaphor a little to real.

       I want to wrap you in this moment forever

        before the winter chill enters the room.

            I am here today and here with you

              and forever I will recall this day.

      The warm soft sun on a gentle afternoon

           when life couldn’t steal away time.

*being thankful, prompted by dversepoets.com*

Falling Short

This is just one more way in the list of many

where I fall short of what you need.

Maybe that’s not what your words said

but the intent was certainly felt.

Maybe I know too much about you

and have been trapped within a regimented set of responses.

With each word spoken, I run wildly through what my heart wants to say

discarding every word with the memory of your past reactions.

I’ve fashioned my own little handbook really, the do’ and don’ts,

the how to’s and what not’s of what the words will do.

I listened too hard and took it to much to heart

and it has left me with nothing to say.

May be that’s why for them it’s so easy

to choose the perfect words.

No memory has been etched within them

of what a poorly made choice will affect.

I am trying as hard as my heart will allow

to love in the ways that you need.

If I had any idea what that was at this point

do you think I wouldn’t give it all to you?

I feel completely ill equipped

 and I have no idea what to do.

The proverbial bumbling idiot

and away I want to run.

Away from here, away from this place

from the things that I cannot control.

Away from this angst and the bleeding of my heart

to that silent place where I used to live.

To show you...

I want to understand what this feels like for you

I want to take your pain and hold it in my hands.

I want to hear every word that falls from your lips

and know exactly what to say.

I want to tell you how gorgeous you truly are

and cast a soft light over you.

I want to make love to every single inch

of your soft and tender curves.

There is nothing I can say to convey this to you

as you say that biased is what I am.

Why is what I say so discounted in this

yet you expect me to know what to say?

The things that I know, they are simple and true

and I know that you don’t want to hear them.

I love you, I want you and I ache to show you how,

to make you feel the way that I see you.

I would hold you high and carry you along

on my shoulders in celebration.

For the beauty in you sparks a fire in me

and the heat is beginning to sting.

My breath is taken at the sight of you

at your steel blue crystalline eyes.

At legs and fingers, graceful and long

at a smile that steals my heart.

Feminine and elegant, head held high

gestures that take me away.

I am over the moon at the sight of you

it is visceral, it is base, it is core.

An instinctual and physical reaction

one that I cannot control.

Your discomfort is evident and I understand

but not how to ease your pain.

If I could love it away in soft tender strokes

I would never take my hands off of you.

She~the words

It’s a strange relationship we have

this steely pen and I.

At times we have moved together as lovers

and at times been like enemies at war.

She has held me close in her twisted grasp

and listened to whispered words.

She has silently stood in the corner and watched

as I cut myself and I bled.

She has cloaked herself in a gauzy veil

onionskin, or vellum, unclear.

She has rolled herself up in a scroll tied and bound

so I could not read a line of her words.

She has left me in silence the inkwell gone dry

as I have wandered around in this place.

She has called to me jeering in a single line phrase

and then left me with nothing to say.

I have looked for myself in the reflection of her

in etchings left scratched upon glass.

I have listened intently for some sign of what I feel

in the melodies sung in her voice.

She teases, she tempts me, she taunts me

the whispers just too faint to discern.

She haunts me, she tortures and betrays me

and all of this is something unheard.

I can only stand against her

with two simple tools in my hands.

A ragged piece of paper with edges tattered and torn

and a broken, dripping, ink bleeding pen.


*submission for Open Link Night at dVersePoets.com*

Broken Glass

Where do you go,

when the light is just too bright?

What can you hear,

when the sounds are just too loud?

Are there moments and days when all you can see

is the sun eclipsing the moon?

Are there words spoken in voices raw

that drain out all of the meaning?

On days like these, when the sun is high

I begin looking for places to hide.

I want to crawl into a bottle and plunge

into the warm shadowed  depth of its numb.

The first splash is shocking, a jolt to the soul

starting everything moving at once.

The heat, the breath, the pain, the ache

the intoxication momentarily real.

It lasts only seconds and the warm slowly fades

the desperate chase ensues.

Trying to capture, in vain, to regain

that feeling, yet it never returns.

It can easily become a lifetime’s quest

to once again touch that place.

Where your soul felt loose and your spirit free,

at least you thought it did.

With that first swallow, first hit, first step of the chase

you wrap yourself up tightly in chains.

Condemned to the hell of the search that won’t end

until it defines every fiber of your being.

Step outside on bright sunny days

even if it leaves you, for a moment, blind.

Listen to the screaming and let it fill your mind

lest you fall into the depths of this hole.

Walk across the broken glass

as the bottle hits the floor.

Feel the pain of your bleeding feet

with footsteps steady and slow.

Conversations

Harmful words that leave a mark

thrown carelessly across the room.

Without thought or remorse of the cut

they are dragged across naked skin.

The build up, the bracing, preparing for the hit

trying so hard to stand on your own.

The blatant or the subtle,

the attack rarely misses its mark.

Word games, shadow boxing, playing hide and seek

if only there were time to count to ten.

Sharpening tools and stretching out limbs

trying to find the endurance this will take.

Who we are and who we must overcome

is defined and lived within those walls.

The road that we take and the journey we choose

will almost be in spite of our past.

They were supposed to nourish and comfort us

to grow us up strong and proud.

More often than not they’ve left us struggling

weakened and standing alone.

Where is the haven that place called home

is it a fairy tale land in a dream?

Are there moments free of scrutiny

where who we are can simply be?

  

*it seems that no matter where we are in life, 

we will always be challenged by the roles we play with our parents*

Exposed

Raging in ways that I cannot explain

searching for solid ground.

Trapped by the weight of this pain in my soul

trying to push it aside.

It moves in quickly and quietly

it takes me from behind.

With a masked face and whispering voice

the allusion has taken hold.

My heartbeat reacts in rhythmic response

pounding inside my chest.

My mind searches wildly for windows and doors

through which I can more clearly see.

I am pacing and frantic and spinning around

with thoughts let loose in my head.

I am aching and screaming yet you can’t hear a sound

as I lie next to you in this bed.

The questions of trust, the questions of faith

painted visibly here on this page.

The reasons to wonder are screaming in my ears.

shaking me to my core.

Unbalanced and raw and spiraling madly

and dangerously out of control.

Needing to breathe and sit with this pain

letting its voice find a name.

Disinterest, distaste, for this moment in time

disgusted at how small it makes me feel.

Discontent, disdain as it takes a hold of me

disconnecting from the tangible.

This is simple really, it has a name

yet I would rather not say it aloud.

Not envy, nor coveting for that of another,

this is jealousy purely for mine.

This is not a moment I stand in with pride

no ceremony of innate strength.

This is baseline emotion in its most ragged display

with a power I cannot control.