Escape to Neverland (a #NaPoMo #APRPAD rondeau poem)

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She said lost boys like her are free.
She smiled at me, offered her hand,
invited me to Neverland.
I asked myself how this could be.

She promised me that love’s the key.
This kind of thing happens, unplanned.

She said lost boys like me are free.
She smiled at me and squeezed my hand.

Behind her eyes I found the sea.

We flew and left behind dry land,
straight on till dawn, past two stars, and

I’ll never be the same — not me,
because lost boys like us are free!

—–

#NaPoMo INFO:

Poetic Asides #April Poem-A-Day Challenge – PAD #9:

For today’s prompt, write a hide out poem. When I was a kid, we’d build “hide outs,” I guess from our parents or other kids. An assortment of criminals (fictionalized and real) have their hide outs. But maybe there are other hide outs, like a “man cave,” “she shed,” or the local pub. Heck, maybe it’s the library. Give it a thought, and I’m sure you’ll find the right hide out poem for you.

http://www.writersdigest.com/whats-new/2016-april-pad-challenge-day-9

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POETIC FORM INFO:
The poetic form focus for my PAD 2016 Challenge is the Rondeau — 13 lines in 3 stanzas; rhyme scheme: ABba/abAB/abbaA (uppercase letters are refrains) Usually 8 syllables per line. For info: http://www.writersdigest.com/editor-blogs/poetic-asides/personal-updates/help-me-rondeau-help-help-me-rondeau-another-french-poetic-form

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AUDIO FILE:

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Manifesto

fly

 

I believe in fairy tales,
in love,
and lust,
in the honey beneath a lover’s tongue,
in the full moon,
and a sky brimming with stars,
in a good cup of coffee,
that poetry is necessary to keep society from falling apart.
I believe we were truly meant to fly.
I believe in the right to love whomever I choose,
radically and extravagantly
and that every relationship is unique.
I believe there is pleasure in pain,
that vulnerability is a well of strength,
in trusting my heart, even if the world spins backward —
and I believe in the taste and sound of words —
in my mouth, my ears, and inked into the skin of a page.
———-
AUDIO FILE:

First Touch (a repost)

 

 

I’ve spent the past several days in the hospital with a partner. She is doing well, and we’re narrowing in on what the non-life threatening problem actually is. However, as a result, I will be re-posting a couple of previous poems this week. I hope you enjoy!

From February, 2015

———-

image

The way your hand makes love to mine —
as though we’ve both been here before,
(perhaps a different life we wore?)
our palms just like the stars align!

Your touch is warm and your eyes shine!
Two dancers swaying on the floor:
the way your hand makes love to mine —
as though we’ve both been here before.

Our fingers and our souls entwine,
the way the sea kisses the shore.
Your gaze becomes an open door,
intoxicating as the wine —
the way your hand makes love to mine.

—–

POETIC FORM:  RONDEL

13 lines in 3 stanzas; rhyme scheme: ABba/abAB/abbaA (uppercase letters are refrains) Usually 8 syllables per line.

 

advice from e.e. cummings

climbing

*on a day when i face my climb alone,
a beloved poem by e.e cummings
can say everything i need to hear.
this is my response:

advice from e.e. cummings

run to the woods
for the sun is warm
he said, “trees are their roots
and wind is wind’

so, when you feel alone
climbing your mountain
you can “trust your heart
if the seas catch fire”

you’re surrounded by strength
you are loved by many,
so “live by love
though the stars walk backward”

the words of a fool
will lose their power in truth
while you ‘dance your death
away at this wedding’

———-

AUDIO FILE:

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.

Light and Darkness

candle 2
Late lies the wintry sun a-bed,
A frosty, fiery sleepy-head;
Blinks but an hour or two; and then,
A blood-red orange, sets again.
(excerpted from “Winter-Time” by Robert Louis Stevenson)
—–
Were it not for shadows, there would be no beauty.
(Junichiro Tanizaki)
—–
Learn to reverence night and to put away the vulgar fear of it, for, with the banishment of night from the experience of man, there vanishes as well a religious emotion, a poetic mood, which gives depth to the adventure of humanity. By day, space is one with the earth and with man — it is his sun that is shining, his clouds that are floating past; at night, space is his no more. When the great earth, abandoning day, rolls up the deeps of the heavens and the universe, a new door opens for the human spirit, and there are few so clownish that some awareness of the mystery of being does not touch them as they gaze. For a moment of night we have a glimpse of ourselves and of our world islanded in its stream of stars — pilgrims of mortality, voyaging between horizons across eternal seas of space and time. Fugitive though the instant be, the spirit of man is, during it, ennobled by a genuine moment of emotional dignity, and poetry makes its own both the human spirit and experience.
(exerpted from chapter eight of “The Outermost House”, by Henry Beston)
—–
Hello darkness, my old friend
I’ve come to talk with you again
Because a vision softly creeping
Left its seeds while I was sleeping
And the vision that was planted in my brain
Still remains
Within the sound of silence
(excerpted from The Sound of Silence, by Paul Simon)
candle
Today is the day I will celebrate Yule, and my Winter Solstice. I have been thinking a great deal about the longer nights, the insomnia, the shadowy days, and the lack of the sun. Truth be told, I miss her light, her warmth, and on those days this month when she has shone her face and warmed me, I have made an extra effort to get outside and soak her in.  I am eager to turn that corner of the longest night and head back toward the light, to chase through the woods at sunset as she sets fire to the tops of the trees, and warms my skin! But I’d be remiss if I left it at that. Because I am also the girl who loves the darkness, and welcomes the night, even the insomnia. I find it is a gift, to steal an hour or three of shadowy silence for spilling ink and writing poetry, is one of the great pleasures in my life.
candle yin yang
Darkness intrigues me, calls to me, begs to be celebrated. I have felt this way since very early on in my adult journey into a new experience, a new identity and spirituality that was fully my own. I remember long ago reading a post on a blog by Poppy St. Vincent, about being a woman who in the spirit of Lilith, chases her own darkness… “Maybe sometimes she has children now but she has a life away from them as well. Maybe she loves but does not obey without question. Maybe she walks her own path, thinks her own thoughts; she has the distinct smell of trouble about her. Maybe she is so restless at night because she has such dreams of desire that they will not let her rest.” …it resonated with me so deeply, that I long ago wrote about it, and that call to leave the warmth of hearth and home for a while, and chase my own darkness down the shadowed paths under moonlight. It truly changed the way I identify myself.  I have learned to embrace the darkness in me, and yes, to revel in it. I am both Raven and Moon. My blood runs inky, and I seek out the nights, the shadows, the forest paths where I run with my Wolf. We explore that darkness together, and yes, these things add depth, poetry, adventure and a spiritual richness, a “religious emotion” as Beston says. I am deeply fed by this act of embracing the night, and the darkness that is an intrinsic part of who I am, and how I’m made.
candle snuff
I have been meditating today on this longest night, and on ways to celebrate it in my own way. I will, of course, attend a small Yule celebration, and with friends and like-minded acquaintances, I will join in the ritual, light candles, make music, and welcome the light in that circle. Today alone, as I have no other day this year, I wear about my neck a chain from which is suspended a small silver charm shaped like the sun — presented to me and to all in attendance at my first Yule ritual. It seems an appropriate reminder of the light that shines in even the most troubling times, and I need that perspective. My year has had its share of heartache, and even today, I am going through a sort of darkness that I do not relish, do not chase. I am comforted knowing that it will not always be so dark as it is now in that sense. I recall for myself in these ways the truth that light is coming.
candles
Still, my desire is to embrace that light while also honoring the darkness… like a chunk of snowflake obsidian I carry in my pocket some days, light and dark in the same small space, both creating beauty. I will carry that stone with me tonight, and I will spend some time in the wee hours, reveling in the absence of light. I will turn off my electronics, my light bulbs, blow out my candles. I will breathe and be grateful for the shadows in my life that define beauty, and provide contrast to the brightness. I will relish the stillness, the sound of silence, the quiet of four in the morning — and after a while, I will light a solitary candle, and I will write. I will do what I was made to do, what is in my blood, and bones and DNA. I’ll spill ebony ink onto my pages, to remind me that darkness too, is truly my old friend.
Candle out

Winter Solstice

Winter-Solstice-Sweden-

These long nights etch frost
across our window panes.
We are the slow, tired reply,
heavy with winter’s sleep.

Let’s draw the cloak of longing–
curl into our hollow spaces,
inspire the waning heat of
our own, too-shallow breath.

There’s in us yet, a reaching.
Limbs promising new growth
itch under stubborn bark–
breathless for season’s change.

Sap whispers in our branches.
Murmurs wake us in the night.
Rumors stirring wild imagination,
hope kindles these dry bones.

We’ll soon wake from slumber,
bathe our faces in the morning.
Our weary nights are numbered;
–here comes the blessed light.

Phoenix Reborn — After Electric Light Orchestra, Strange Magic (a golden shovel poem)

phoenix_birth_2

You might not know, I’m watching you 
as you spread your tired wings and fly.
You’ve had it all along, this strength — so 
I’ve been waiting just to see how high 
you’d soar, once you found courage.
knew you’d see it in yourself, you’d get 
the gist. Now I’m watching you with
smile. I can’t help but admire, this strange 
new fire you’ve got in your eyes. It’s magic! 
———-

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 strange poem.

 

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AUDIO FILE:

Carry You — After Coldplay, Fix You (a golden shovel poem)

http://www.ryanmcginley.com/new-gallery/77ba04t6zx5blurketbqpdy4v10qli
Photographer – Ryan McGinley, 2010
I know your wild heart — running from city lights.
I’ve heard your howls, and I’m determined, I will 
run beside you. I will trust your instinct to guide 
us. When the chasing steals your sleep, when you 
need my love to find your way, I’ll carry you home 
I’ll hold you — though you bite and struggle, and 
though my bleeding flesh burns with the fire you ignite 
— I’ll lean into you, shoulder your body in spite of your
claws. I’ll lend to you all the strength in my bones.
———-
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)”.
 
POEM A DAY NOVEMBER 2015 – PROMPT:
For today’s prompt, write an ekphrastic poem.
AUDIO FILE: