B&P’s Shadorma & Beyond – Free Verse

Sabin Balasa. Freedom in the Aquarium, n.d. WikiArt

Freedom is a muse

Diabolically preening

Her multitudinous veils.

I sit sullen by the water’s laughing edge

Wringing my heart

As if it were a bundle of wet hair,

Each drop an echoing tome.

–

There is very little

An opinion can inform.

I am so much more and so often less.

The only freedom

Left a man after the streets

Have been laid is his curiosity

And I’ve a mind for misdirection.

–

I kind of cheated on this because I decided to have 2 stanzas but they can be seen individually

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Wordle #115

My heart is a bridge

Connecting one island to the next,

A wilderness hewn of both rock and bear.

You cannot escape me,

Retreat as often as you like

I am unstoppable,

Unstable at the best of times.

An angel fallen and passed

Round the bend

There are no lanes and no meadows

In which I might seek

Direction or solace.

I am devastating

In the fervid deforestation

Of my nomenclature.

A poem for a posy,

A poem for a mind split

Along the sieves.

I bandage my wounds in vowels,

In ink and holy water

As if I were significant.

I am only me and my words come

From the very same ruined heart,

Sometimes at great expense

But the charge is as it should be,

For I am nothing if not free.

Wordle #217 and Photo Challenge #79

– flashuser.net

My heart is only

A nick, a valley carved

By years of erroneous weather.

Your smile is an eviction,

A dash of joy like sunlight

Fleeing through parted blinds.

–

My life, being dehydrated,

Carries with it the constant

Threat of drowning.

Your life precedes gravity

And all its crude assumptions.

–

Denial does not yield

Freedom, however, fiercely

The trick is applied.

Try as I might

I can find no tread

Within this artificial flood.

–

You suffer no such compulsions

And as others subside into

Their respective apathies

You are still dreaming,

Buoyant as a Spring shower.

Writing Prompt #120 and Wordle #131

Her vacant mouth balances,

Corners scorched, an amalgam

Of lies and proximity.

She wears masquerades

In the company of strangers

And in the absence of friends.

–

Hurled into the faces of others

Tears can feel like gravel,

In the heart of the holder

They are bricks and walls.

An angel cheated

By the enclosure of time.

–

Despite all her nothings

The clock still notices.

Days fall into place like a fence,

Like feathers in a raven’s cloak.

Everything to gain in her freedom,

Her tentacled hands clutch

At devastation, at keepsakes lost,

At the ingress of human trash.

For

https://mindlovemiserysmenagerie.wordpress.com/2015/08/16/writing-prompt-120-collage-4%E2%80%B3/

Writing Prompt #118 “Collage 3″

I am given to certain

Eccentricities of gravity,

A pull toward expired luminaries

Toward pocket watches

And sepia-toned reliquaries.

An odyssey unto myself,

I sit aside my bike,

My legs, my arms,

All things mechanical

For the freedom of

Puffed dandelions and dreams.

I spin flowers from regolith

And mammoth bones,

Clouds tucked behind

My ear in place of coins.

I seep into hidden passages,

Into nooks both real and rehearsed,

A Cesarean scar,

A ray of sunshine,

A bucket of rainwater

Gathered accidentally in the shriek

Of an impromptu storm.

For

https://mindlovemiserysmenagerie.wordpress.com/2015/08/02/writing-prompt-118-collage-3%E2%80%B3/

Trap

Couth as an old mule

Her brandished heels

Recede hastily toward

The horizon.

White as a swan’s back,

Those dainty feet,

A connoisseur’s dream.

Their delicate patter

Sent up plumes of dust

Like a phoenix mid-revival.

What hope has love

When dreams desensitize?

*

Her suitors stack

Themselves together

In interchangeable rows

One man’s face

Another man’s behind.

Suitcases bursting,

Mostly socks.

*

How she longed then

For the love of a good woman

For a conversation

Without the implications

Of that bitter stem.

Who could blame her retreat?

*

Though these bridges

Go up in flames

I can still ferry

The waters beneath them

She thought chewing

The inside of her sleeve

To dislodge

That disreputable organ

Which had come

Upon her so often

As a trap.

*

I am going to be quite busy the next few days so I may not get the chance to write I will have to see.

Love in Ten Sentences

When I was a girl I wrote a poem called “Love Is” and this challenge prompted quite the scavenger hunt as I wanted to see what my juvenile self thought about the subject. I wasn’t sure if the sentences were meant to be separate or part of a cohesive whole (I went for something rather separate). Since the onset of our existence we’ve been trying to describe what love is, which is rather like growing an angel in a petri dish if you ask me.

Love is the ocean (fathomless and deep). -from the original poem

Love is a precipice (that does not diminish in retreat).

Love outlives the host.

Love is the arrow (and the mark).

Love exonerates the soul.

Love is not blind (betrayals of the mind never infiltrate the soul).

Love is not conquest (however deep the surrender).

Love is not merchandise (it cannot be bought, bartered or sold).

Love has many veils (but wears none).

Love transcends any attempt (at explanation).

This challenge was brought to me by

Unbolt

Wordle #47 “Swan Song”

 

Voice 1: How long do you intend to leave your baggage sealed and unattended?

Conscious: If my existence is indeed the oubilette of a seldom-petitioned deity perhaps I will remain here, at this terminal, until my very bones pollinate the earth on which I stand.

Voice 2: There is an elegance in scripture but that does not excuse its improvisations.

Conscious: What excuse can I employ then? Every crutch I have ever leaned on has proven unsteady. I am to blame and yet I do not know how to assume responsibility, only guilt.

Voice 1: Blood or syrup? Which is sweeter? Man is indebted to failure. How else can one measure success?

Conscious: There are dents in my heart and evacuations in my shawl. I am imperfect and yet even still I deny the excitement of those seams and ripples. Better that I should paddle myself than accept the monstrosity that is love and sexuality. Isolation is unnatural and yet it is my prerogative to bare.

Voice 2: There are canals for which the destination cannot be known until arrival, an aorta is such a passage. The heart cannot rationalize its impulses. The mind is clouded by preference. The Devil is always articulate but would you stake your soul on his counsel?

*

I went in a very unusual direction. There are so many voices inside my head (inside any head I imagine), often competing and contradictory points of view. The older I get the more time I spend exploring the grey zones of morality, of existence, the more time I spend searching, desperate for clarity, for an answer, for a solution, for a cause only to find that all we have our choices and those choices can lead us in directions we can’t even begin to fathom!

Counsel

I sit by the window

Watching the world spill

Into greasy prisms

Rainbows within which

Only excess remains.

I could do with

A little distillation

A little clarity.

A root or a hand

To serve as a scale

When judgment

Offers no recourse.

 

A breath carried

To climax

Can withstand

The miracle it seeds.

To collapse riven

At the finish

Is to be present.

An urge is just an urge

Until the host

Proves irretrievable

And a knife

Is just a tool

Until the flesh

It clutches

Is your own.

 

If a location dictates

My pilgrimage

It exists in a hollow

Not yet quarantined.

Whomever beseeches

This menagerie

Becomes a beast.

To be beholden

Is to be assigned.

For better or worse

You are everything

When held within

The inflation

Of my scathing black

Counsel.

We are all eyes

When the witness

Is time.

We are all heart

When the witness

Is love.

 

I might pinch

The clouds

To escape altercation

But the devil

Hath many guises.

The greatest illusion

Ever sponsored

Is the illusion

That any government

Supports freedom.

 

I hold my breath

Above water never below.

There is a depth

From which

I scarcely emerge.

Calm is not my default.

I am the prodigy

Of a lesser fought

Cataclysm.

A poetess between

The sheets,

A paper wrapped

Emissary,

A dream unpronounceable

In human speech.

*

For some reason I was fascinated by this arrangement of trees

Synchronicity

Catrin Welz Stein

Hearts are not cages

Still they cannot

Fathom freedom

The way that doves can.

It’s only human that I hope

To possess you and only human

That I hope no such need exists.

 

Your soul does not sing

As it was designed too.

Mine hosts a spectacle

On the planes of your flesh.

If only I could fit inside

As we were destined too

But we are not fractions

And no matter how fractured

We are still complete.

 

If fate had a hand

I do not remember her

Being chivalrous.

Your attention

Was hard to gather,

Fireflies in daylight

And not a jar in sight.

Your love came after

Lengthy deliberation

Cautious but willing.

I should have sought

The clouds instead

But they would not

Have weathered

My suspicion.

 

We are an awkward pair,

A perpetual collision,

An arbitrary revelation.

I love the way you move

Behind me, your footprints

Broadening my own

A deliberate shadow

An essential ghost.

I hope you swallow my lungs

That I should not breathe

One moment more

Than you can claim.

 

We are weary but set on

A similar course,

An infinite truce,

A lidded moon

That smiles to the left.

Soon the stars will fall

That is when

Captivity yields to dwelling

That is when

The wishing starts,

That is when my hair

Tumbles through

Your outstretched hands

Strand by strand

And I become me

Without conceit.

 

There is a tragedy

In assumptions

But if I choose you

I cannot but dream

That you will turn

And address

My propositions.

Grant me a reality

That I can occupy

Not one of my own design

But one in which

We both can host

A reality that does not

Stockpile graves

A reality that evolves

From trust and ardor.

Grant me asylum

And I shall remain there

Of my own desire.

*

I think this a little different from my usual style but I thought the picture begged a certain rhythm (unfortunately I don’t have any rhythm lol).