Untying Nots

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You are not the wind–
tugging at my clothes,
teasing my hair, always
leaving town in a rush.

You are not the soil–
cold beneath my feet,
hard against the winter,
impatient for the spring.

You are not the tide–
dragging sand dunes
from the shore, only to
push them back again.

You are the night sky–
your deep, dark eyes 
filled with stars, holding 
a moon in your arms.

—–

AUDIO FILE:

Listen to Untying Knots by Penelope Connor #np on #SoundCloud

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Appetite

redrope

 

A hunger that claws
lives in the air between us.
No matter the distance
I will always need your flesh,
and your hunger taking mine.

We are tied by red rope
a twist of muscle and blood.
Though you leave me here,
I can always feel the tug
of your appetite for me.

—–
POETIC FORM:
The somonka is a Japanese form. In fact, it’s basically two tankas written as two love letters to each other (one tanka per love letter). This form usually demands two authors, but it is possible to have a poet take on two personas. Click here for a refresher on the tanka.

 

AUDIO FILE:

Haggard (a decima espinela poem)

blackraven

My body bates at all that moves
as though I might bind to a peace
I’m sore and tired. I need release.
I hope with sleep my mood improves.
For now this ache all sense removes.
My thoughts seem just a pantomime.
I cannot force these words to rhyme.
The ink won’t flow or find the page;
My words lie trapped, in iron cage.
I feel my wing-beats out of time.
—–
POETIC FORM:
Decima Espinela — 10 line poem, 8 syllables per line, abbaaccddc rhyme pattern.

 

 

Anticipation (a shardorma poem)

wolf crouch hunting

 

Feel it there:
the tension of need —
hunger’s ache?
I see it
from across this heated room,
sense my hunter’s eyes.
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POETIC FORM: SHARDORMA
Shardorma is a Spanish 6-line syllabic poem of 3/5/3/3/7/5 syllable lines respectively. – See more at: http://www.writersdigest.com/editor-blogs/poetic-asides/poets/shadorma-a-highly-addictive-poetic-form-from-spain#sthash.bn2uFi5o.dpuf

The Way She Leaves Me

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It’s 4 a.m. and she brings me coffee. She sits with me in the bed. And she says things that make the wings in my soul twitch and tremble, preparing to fly. Not away, I would never fly away from her, in the frightened uncomfortable way of wild, nervous birds. No, this is more of a soaring on pure, clean joy, at being so greatly loved and cared for.

We talk in the darkness, steam rising from our cups and honesty filling the room with wakeful heat. She is preparing to leave me for the day — it is a Monday and work is required — but I can feel her struggling with the desire to crawl back beneath the covers with me and stay. She falls silent sometimes, gazes at me like the Wolf she is, like I am the moon in her early morning sky. I am.

I watch her shoulders tense as if they were covered in bristling fur. I feel her teeth clawing at my neck and nails biting into my hip. She will leave me soon but she wants me hungry before she goes. What’s more, she wants to carry that hunger with her too. She wants to feel it in her bones all day — to know that no matter the distance between us, I ache with it just as she does.

She checks the clock again, and growls, rolling out of bed. The right thing is pulling her, and it always wins. It’s one of the things I love about her — although today, I groan, protesting loudly about it. I watch her putting clothes on her body, and wonder how she can make that process just as gut-wrenchingly sexy as taking them off.

She knows I will linger here, in her bed. I will sip the remainder of my coffee, pull her still-warm pillow tight against my body, and watch the sunrise through her window before drifting back to sleep. Oh. So. Hungry. She tucks in her shirt tail, and threads her belt into the loops on her jeans. She pulls the blankets up around my shoulders and leans in for a last kiss, then two more.

I watch her pull the bedroom door closed and then listen for the echo of her work boots on the hardwood floor. She is leaving. Twelve steps between here and the front door and every last one feels like the Grand Canyon. Still I smile in the darkness of her bedroom. I watch her headlights sweep the ceiling over my head. I know she is a hungry Wolf, and she will be back.

—–

She Makes It Right

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There’s something calming about ironing my Wolf’s dress shirt, and pressing the pleats into her kilt. One night, I was able to surprise her, by blacking and polishing her boots. I found in that process something ritualistic, methodical and centering. I ask her, sometimes, to let me do these things, just so I can let the world go, and pull my scattered thoughts into a quiet, orderly place. These are acts of service that do so very much for my spirit, my body and my mind. It’s hard to describe. Somehow they make things right in my head.

It hasn’t been that long ago, I was dealing with some major life stresses, and she kidnapped me on a Saturday morning. She took me hiking, and though I wasn’t sure I could manage the rocky and hilly terrain, the goal was so tempting, I had to try. We made our way to a fallen tree, lakeside, and she sat me down in a comfortable fork with my back against the bark. She had me put headphones on, close my eyes, and breathe. Restricting outside sensory input, she stepped away and watched over me, while I sat in silence, and allowed my over-thinking brain to let go. The sun warmed my skin, the wind and the water sounds were faint in the background, and she was there, protecting and caring for me. It was a simple and phenomenal feeling. She made it right.

This weekend, we had a long talk about what we were doing in our relationship with the D/s dynamic energy, and how that works in tandem with my other relationships. It was a heavy conversation about the hurts of my past, and my defensive way of restricting D/s dynamics across my polyamorous relationships. In the past, I’d been so hurt by Shepherd’s abandonment, that I’d effectively talked myself out of the need for a 24-7 dominant. I’d convinced myself that I was better suited to a design where I pieced together the dynamics I needed or wanted across my very egalitarian polyamorous relationships.

I could count on Traveler for minimal structure, for the push, the keeping me honest and the mind-fuck. I could get a different sort of emotional support and creative push from my Star-Stuff Rocket Man, along with the occasional play that would give me a taste of the pain I missed so desperately. I’d been talking with The Professor for some time, about D/s play, and looking forward to exploring with him — and had even broached the subject with my Dragon — but the truth was in every case that I was still maintaining control. I was meting it out as I saw fit, trusting each to a degree, but not completely — not like I’d done before, with Shepherd. I couldn’t imagine risking that deeply ever again, and that says a lot for me, because I am the girl who takes risks for love.

When I struggle with being too much human, too much emotion, too much stress, she quiets me — gives me a strength to push against, and shuts out the world. I’ve been calling her my Wolf, and “Sir”, for months now. The truth is that I knew she was going to take that role in my world, from sometime between that first five hour conversation, and the night when we slipped out of potluck discussion for a smoke break and I asked her if we could talk about something. I was anxious, and vibrating with so much resonance, that I knew every person in my home could feel it, and it must be painted all over my face. I didn’t know it at the time, but she was just as keyed up and nervous as I, hyper-aware of every move I made and as cognizant of where I was physically, in relation to her as I was, her to me.

What I am learning, is that she does have the capacity for my fullness. She is wired to be the kind of dominant I need, and can offer me the time and energy that will allow me to let go completely. She has from the start been committed to making room for my other relationships and the different D/s energies they have. I’ve known in my body and spirit for months — that if anyone was going to be a full time dominant to me, she was fully capable, and she was the right one. My brain is only recently catching up.

Every few days, she does something new that amazes me, reminds me why she fills that role in my life. Saturday night, I asked her to make all the choices about where we went, what we did, what we ate — to keep me close, restrict my movements, my focus, remind me that with her, I could let go.  As we were getting ready to go out, she pulled her boots from the closet, and asked me to put them on her, and lace them up. It was the first time I’d done so, since I’d blacked and polished them for her. As I was lacing them up, she pointed out the over-under pattern I had used — the one I always use with my own boots — and I realized that I hadn’t told her. I didn’t check the laces before I removed them. I had no idea how they’d been laced before I went to work on them.

She told me then that the way I’d done them was not the way they’d been. But that the way I’d done them was the way I would do them going forward. It was now the right way. When I protested, asking her to show me the way she preferred, she made it clear that rather than correct me after I put so much effort and love into making her boots look amazing, she did the thing that was most right in her eyes. She made the way I laced her boots the correct way, and informed me that to do it differently in the future would bring consequences.

She quieted me. She made it right – and that is amazing.

Ink – a love poem

Murmuration_FINAL

You are blood-ink that spills across my paper,
stains these trembling-too-much fingers,
bruises my swollen lips and tastes like
summer wind, in all those 4:00 a.m. trees.

You first came, book in hand, sipping coffee.
Stories dripped steadily from your chin.
I watched hungrily, as your mouth bled,
gulped the words, like a river bed long-dry.

You’ve been here, spilling stories–
for one-hundred-and-fifty-six days.
I’ll sit beside you fifteen thousand more,
my heart wide — a blackbird’s throat.

I can’t quench my thirst for your words.
They cry in my chest — a winged cacophony.
Ink rages in my veins, and I’ll bleed out fast
— a murmuration, whirling from my pen.

—–

AUDIO FILE:

Your Way (an interlocking rubaiyat poem)

hike

I’d give you my world, baby if I could.
take you on a trip through my lovely wood —
but the nightingale lost her voice today,
so your tears have fallen just as they should.

I know sometimes you must go your own way.
I can’t smooth your path, take your pain away.
Though you do not climb this mountain alone,
you must face your fears; you can win the day.

I will walk with you, over every stone,
lend my voice to cheer you on, when you groan.
I’ll wipe your tears, when it’s hard and you cry —
believe you can win this fight, blood and bone.

You’ll find your own wings, I’ll run as you fly,
race along the forest floor, watch the sky —
as you chase the nightingale, be nearby,
when you reach the moon, howl your lullaby.

—–

POETIC FORM:

interlocking rubaiyat – comprised of quatrains following an aaba rhyme pattern. Each successive quatrain picks up the unrhymed line as the rhyme for that stanza. So a three-stanza rubaiyat might rhyme so: aaba/bbcb/ccdc. Sometimes the final stanza, as in Frost’s example above, rhymes all four lines. Lines are usually tetrameter and pentameter.

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FOR MORE INFO: http://www.writersdigest.com/whats-new/interlocking-rubaiyat-poetic-form

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AUDIO FILE:

Just a Taste — After Halsey, Castle (a golden shovel poem)

werewolf2

 

I wonder if you understand it now 
the way you draw pain from my 
body like blood from a jugular. My neck 
–both pale and trembling– is 
yours to take, always open 
to your appetite, and the wide 
hungry hollow in you, begging 
to be filled. I will surrender, ache for 
any chance to feed your need.
wild and hungry wolf, you are the fist 
that holds me close, wraps itself around 
me and draws pain like blood, just to taste it.
———-
POETIC FORM:
golden shovel – Take a line (or lines) from a poem you like. Use each word as an end word in your poem. Keep the end words in order. Credit the original poet, ie. “-after (poet)”.
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POEM A DAY NOVEMBER 2015 – PROMPT:
For today’s prompt, write a “let the moment begin” poem.
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