Someone Who’ll Believe

Is this so very difficult?
Is the question some kind of joke?
Does the thought elicit derision
Am I some ignorant bloke?

My dreams this night do haunt me
Like the ghosts from Christmases past
Spirits of those whom I’ve loved the most
Wrapped together as loves which did not last

Each sat enjoying laughter
At a table and my expense
Blood rushed cheeks delivered flight to feet
Unwilling to hope for suspense

In my mind I admit some amusements
As I studied the four who smirked
Yet sadness crawled through my darkening heart
I realized I’d become irked

If any one of the three had but simply believed
If any one had but tried
They would have felt the pain I know
They would realize why I cry

“Why three?” the astute mind may query
Rightfully so, I’d say
Four women lounged and laughed at me
In this dream before the day

The fourth embodied the woman I love
Ok, the one in my heart in this moment
She the light and the hope for my life
Assistance from this lifelong torment

The three, I realized, did not mean harm
I realized the love I still held
Despite their inability to see themselves
Their love had been the ones shelved

For I cannot in this life of mine
Set away love for conveniences sake
Love haunts and nurtures my broken dreams
Each of the three attempted to take

All I search for is the woman who believes
Who knows that love will prevail
She believes our love will carry our world
Our love, together, sets sail

I cannot hold but my end of the bargain
A love so immense time will never relinquish
Without her belief and strength of heart
We both remain doomed to our own vanquish

All I ask is for someone who’ll believe
Ride this life in enraptured love
Three muses cackle and make sport of me
While the fourth, I pray, will embrace love

I believe in my love
Love which lasts forever
I believe in my heart
No further words to tether

For I could say I believe in my heart that love will last
Love without time nor end
But this is displayed in the phrase “I believe in my heart,”
For this defines the wellspring, my friend

All the fourth needs to do
Is reach out her heart to mine
Simplest thing, this meeting of love
Yet most elusive all this time

Loneliness accompanies my infinite heart
Three muses could not lend reprieve
All comes down to this waning life moment
With someone who’ll believe

***

I wrote this at 3:00 am three days before Christmas from a dream which woke me. Three women I’ve loved in my life gathered in this dream. My love for them does not wither nor die. Sad. Very sad for me. Their humor directed at my endless love did not hurt like it once did. I even chuckled a bit, embarrassed that I possessed something they could not. The fourth woman did not completely mock my belief in love between two people. She laughed, but hope’s eye fell upon me from her glance. She desired such a love. Don’t we all?

I’ve been told many times in words and painful experience, that my belief in love between two people on the level I seek is not maintainable. I stalwartly disagree, even in the face of six decades of evidence to the contrary. I believe in a deep, abiding love, which transcends human idiosyncrasies. A love which allows for massive imperfections simply because the imperfections define the persons we live as in these bodies. Love, at the end of the day, heals. When we allow the final word from love to be pain, we lose our faith in love’s supreme power and endurance.

As much pain as I suffered with these three, the last word in my heart does not embrace pain with respect to them. Only an abiding loss and sadness because my love for them remains.

The fourth? She comes to me from a great quest. A quest one could easily say has lasted a lifetime. A quest I can identify clearly over the past three years. This quest has been, yes, to find my love, a grail beyond imagination. The quest becomes much larger because the search has required I discover my willingness and my passion to continue to believe.

I believe in my heart…

Special Solstice

In these quiet moments
Winter solstice steals into morning
Significance, blessing, and love

Years ago, at a time such as this
Our world slumbered toward warmer days
Days of hard labors of love
Midnights of warm, healing recovery

On a day, no different than any other
A child, sweet, full of heart,
Came into our lives without announcement
Her arrival more important to future lives than knowledge will ever attest.

Solstice, by definition, identifies as a turning point
In the case of this beautiful soul
Many lives will be brightened
Many hearts lifted
Many blessings bestowed

How appropriate, in a year overwhelmed by turmoil
This child, wizened by age
Marks her birth on this solstice
A turning point for many

There will never be any measurement
No capture of any uttered word
No loving thought capable
For those who know and love this incredible woman

May peace
Kindness
Love
Tenderness
All that remains good in this world
Fall gently on her this day and always

As for this writer
Only forever could hold the simplest inkling
The faintest touch
Of gratitude and love
For the celebration of the anniversary of this special birth

She

Gloomy days dip their brushes into palettes of mixed greys,
Murky mists, ominous, rousing slow from preternatural slumber,
Yet each relax back into deepest of sleeps
At the simplest and most miniscule thought of her…

Someone Cared Enough to Take My Photograph

Someone cared enough to take my photograph
A momentary lapse in banal living
A microsecond when time held not only still
But enlisted a frozen smile over something long forgotten

Reasons for smiles become unimportant
Mere crumbs in the feasts of life
Smiles worn honest and real reveal not what the senses perceived
But the depth of which the heart is capable

Life becomes a tragedy of pain, anguish, and disappointments
Battering the inner self to the brink of submission
Yet, if the heart remains strong, courageous, valiant
The corners of you mouth curl northward, lifting said heart to manageable heights

Throughout the years, people steal smiles in merciless moments
Never using nor trading their ill-gotten goods
But tossing these signs of health and hope to the black dungeon of nothingness
Which leaves the victim powerless, hopeless, downtrodden

Nostalgia may deliver that picture
The one where your only care squirted up your gut, into your throat
Out into the world as laughter – and the moment the shutter fell
Upon your gleaming smile, the moment, the magic, granted a harmony with life.

Someone cared enough to take my photograph
Despite all which goes astray in life, despite all which damages us
So as to reveal a vibrancy, victorious in the smile’s very existence
Reminding me life and hope and love nurture laughter and smiles
Moments better to live in the real than rely on their reminders from the past.
The more I learn the less I know, yet this truth remains constant
The ability to smile and laugh exists as one of the greatest gifts a human possesses
And someone cared enough to take my photograph to remind me to smile and laugh in the now, to keep that picture alive…

Prompt writing can be a wonderful tool in a writer’s kit to own. I’ve honed my prompt writing over the years to the point that mere words or phrases elicit creative juices of which I cannot, nor wish I not, to control.

Today I watched an interview from the BBC back in the day where the interviewer was attempting to get Robin Williams to be serious. The interviewer actually achieved the near impossible task. Robin made a statement about a photograph and the fact that someone cared enough to take a picture of this person.

I’d been reminded by a FB post from a beautiful friend earlier in the day, of a Socratic quote which I’ve understood most of my life, that being, “The more I learn, the less I know.”

The photograph, the Socratic quote, and a simple smile prompted me most urgently to write a poem. When the muse insists, I do my best to oblige. What I learned from this poem is this:

Smiles are a truth of strength. If life beats you down so badly that you’ve lost the ability to smile an honest smile, the time has come for self inspection.

Smiling is becoming a vulnerable act these days. So much hate. So much loathing. So much fear-mongering. So much obligatory fear.

An honest smile is a healthy experience for your body, your mind, your heart, and your soul. Not a derisive smile. Not a smile at someone’s expense. A warm, honest smile from within which requires only that you allow yourself to feel the warmth of life. This is a truth for me.

Sharing that smile with others becomes not only your gift, but theirs as well. There are many who desire these smiles wiped not only from our faces, but more so from others’ eyes. Why? Because a smile is more contagious than any illness known to man.

Honest, loving smiles bring goodness into this world. As sick and dying as our precious Earth is at this moment, we need an epidemic of smiles to infect the world and set our feet onto better paths…

Mists of Yesteryear

Tags

life

Sadness. Despair. Underlying everything in life, these two emotions trickle through our hearts, brains, circulatory systems, thoughts, actions, decisions, whether or not we realize.

Where form the roots of these emotions? I believe the pall of death. From my life observation, people everywhere do whatever they can to allay the inevitable – death.

Many, likely most planet-wide, flee to religions to ease their underlying dread. Some actually achieve a level of intellectual and emotional distance from the reality that their life on this earth will end. I am not denigrating nor supporting religion. I simply observe.

Many, likely most planet-wide, flee the thought of death by the world’s distractions. Especially in this day of high technology and low intellect, bread and circuses, food and distraction, rule the hearts and minds. The deflection of recognition whence sadness comes acts as a temporary shield from our reality.

I do not write this for morbidity’s sake. In fact, I do not condemn anyone for their particular “avoidance” of life’s most underlying theme. I simply take this moment to examine some truths.

We all seek answers. Some believe they find answers and live on until they die holding these beliefs. This situation remains quite personal and quite within the realm of each individual person. They take their answers with them.

In many ways, I feel the search for answers a futile, unrealistic effort. There will be no true answer until that time, that moment after the last breath, where time likely no longer holds measurement.

Time. There’s a construct for you! We measure time as though the measurement holds true meaning in life. Yet, not one of us knows how much of this thing labelled “time” we actually possess. Time is an idea. Getting past time as a reality is nearly impossible in this time.

What is reality? This question has been debated for millennia. I look at wars. Death. Hate. Murder. Rape. Abuse. These feel quite real.

So why do love, peace, hope, tenderness, life, feel so fleeting? So temporary? My “mini” answer is the underlying knowledge of death and the unaddressed sadness and despair humans feel on an unconscious level.

We all shoot our answers in the dark, often striking others, altering their views of the truth of life and how to live it. I’ve always held, back to my youngest cognitive memories, that the worst thing mankind ever did was identify this thing we called life as “living.”

The truth, from my youngest moments to this day of writing is that from conception, we are marked for death. I realize this is an unpopular perspective. People do not wish to acknowledge this. People label this as morbid. Depressing.

I see the perspective more as truth. Reality. A path. The annoying presence of “time” keeps us from so many accomplishments. I know. This is also an unpopular viewpoint. The arguments for “time” are compelling. But stop for a moment to consider this:

John Lennon. Forty years old. Returning to the music world with his creativity. Years of potential music ahead of him. He had plenty of “time” until someone else decided he did not. Karen Carpenter, for me and even greater loss at thirty-three years old.

The saying goes that no one knows how long they well be alive on earth. What if we had labeled this thing we call “life” something like “death.” What if we taught that we are dying every day so make each moment precious? Would we be so prone to distracting ourselves from our ultimate reality?

Of course, the entire fabric of existence would be different. The acknowledgement would breed a complex and different set of viewpoints on the existence of humans on earth. My view of this, observing over these decades is that mankind would find ways to pervert the miracle of existence in fantastic proportions just as we’ve done so now.

Where is this post going?

Nowhere.

Ok, this post is leading to a poem. Poetry and “Life’s cares in words and art…” are indeed the overlying premise of this site. Do not look to me for your answers for these answers remain held tightly within your personal heart and soul. If anything I write helps you discover something about yourself, be happy for your ability to learn something new about you.

Mists of Yesteryear

I Watch…

…days of dewdrops and school-bound walks fade into the mists of yesteryear.

…joys of vacations and discoveries and carefree times fade into the mists of yesteryear.

…first love and its exhilarating tendency to rapture fade into the mists of yesteryear.

…struggles to achieve and to excel in something of meaning fade into the mists of yesteryear.

…conflicts and confrontations over differing viewpoints fade grudgingly into the mists of yesteryear.

…the feeling of peace and connection to all that exists fade gently into the mists of yesteryear.

…the searching for answers in the mists of yesteryear yielding only sorrow and loss and futility

…for the day remains in my lungs, my heart, my mind and belongs not to the mists of yesteryear until I allow it to be so

…for the resurrection of love and thought and deeds may stroll the mists of yesteryear but these phantom mists congeal only as tears within in my soul, yet I seek them nonetheless…

…for life will always be the answer to the question of death…

…for the reverse to be true…

…making this moment most supreme outside the grasp of the mists of yesteryear…

You

I smile when I notice your digital peeks
Tiny footprints of love
I know you love

I smile when I realize you inhale printed words
Tiny love-molecules which enter your heart
I know you relax and sigh

I smile when I remember my anguish calmed by thoughts of you
Tiny snowflakes of emotional beauty
I know you send them freely

I smile at my attempt to write you into words
Tiny snippets of a soul much too magnificent to describe
I know your tears of joy

I smile when you slip into my thoughts each day
Tiny power-wisps which bolster my flagging heart
I know you love me

I smile
Simple
Direct
Inescapable
Beautiful
Midnight moon
You…

Midnight Ripples

Tags

love

Her footfalls pad gentle through the waning light of my soul,
Their gentle drops of midnight ripple emotional pools, reflecting glints of her aura.
Memories, pasts, presents, and futures roll like temperamental tumbleweeds
Influenced by whatever cares blow in the existential winds.

She rights my ship without wont or care
From simple attention and digital smiles
Electronic demonstrations of kindness lacking in my tactile world
I miss her far beyond even the possibility of meeting her

Rhymes and reasons fall by life’s empty courts
No judgments to befall us other than our own misgivings about the time we’ve spent
She rises to the horizon, whether it be dawn or dusk
Claiming the love I cannot relinquish, she, without word or deed, owns all within me

Foolishness would be the critical cry of most whom I know
Less complimentary from unknown fellow travelers
Yet nothing from others conveys any detraction
For they know not the heart I’ve felt, read, and seen with my inner eye.

Here’s what I know and love
Her awareness of how her gentle drops of midnight soothe my soul
Her lovely, chiffon elegance when love and life meet in purer light
Her ever constant of love and kindness to me
Anyone would count her a blessing in their life

In My Darkness

Tags

introspection

https://www.dreamstime.com/publicdomainphotos_info

In my darkness

Words and concepts slither in shadows
Reality struggles against the bindings of fear
Love whimpers from pools of bitter damage

In my darkness

Goodness flees, skittish, traumatized
Truth searches jagged walls with bloody hands for escape
Light and hope bear no weight other than the meager soul languishing in death

In my darkness

Clever chameleons deceive the mind with temporal pleasures and distractions
Ghosts of atrocities passed and future call attention to themselves
There stands no forest…only trees

In my darkness

A gluttony of ego rises and falls as waves in a tempest
Maniacal illusions of answers to puzzles unknown spew the inner sanctum
Laughter and bravado create a false bravado of solutions to unanswerable questions

In my darkness

I lie in a pool of angst-driven sweat
Knowing truth will eventually glow and lead the way
Yet the intervals of clarity rain but isolated droplets into what remains of life

In my darkness

I dwell, wrestling with troubles more imagined than real
Or more real than imagined
Distinction elusive, evasive, eternal…

In my darkness

I search, desperate to define myself
Anxious of my inability to right my emotional ship
Until I slump in resignation-driven apathy

In my darkness

I find that which I often believe lost
Beaten into oblivion, never to be struck as a rallying chord again…
Strength

In my darkness

No matter how deep the well of doubt
No matter how lonely my crippled soul
No matter how dejected my loving heart

I reach a point of razor-thin ledges around the abyss
Falling off points where abject destruction must surely lie
I cease foolish, desperate grabs for purchase

I lie back into the blackness
Eyes neither open nor shut
Mind neither panicked or calm
Answers neither questioned or given

Then…

In my darkness

I rise to know…

…I own nothing but the breath I’m allotted
…I control nothing but the choices I make
…I love because my nature demands this
…I rise despite myself
…I cherish clarity’s kindly visits
…I realize truth never plays favorites
…I aspire once more in the pursuit of my truth
For that truth becomes all I require of a carrot, a light, a path

In my darkness

***

Periods of creative struggle never allows for easy living. At least for me. I know I’m down. I know I need to write. I know I need to get away and connect myself with my universe.

Yes, I own my universe. We all do. We simply allow others to define us rather than walking our own path. There’s an interesting “debate” I came across through a friend between the concept that we’re all the same and we’re all different. Both stand apparently true to me, but on far different levels.

Yes, we each exist as humans with emotions, rational thought, physical bodies, etc, yet each of us live completely different lives with different views and different reactions to experiences. We may hold strong similarities to individual experiences, but even in that infinitesimal difference between you and I on ANY experience, we are not the same. Nowhere near.

When you use general emotional reactions to situations, you may make argument for this “sameness,” but everything falls apart when you take into account the varying, impossible to calibrate, levels of pain, love, loneliness, anger, frustration, etc., added to the experiential truths we each gather within ourselves separate from others.

The complexities of life, individually stand impervious to homogenization. Governments, religions, corporations, all strive to herd us together to fit the molds they deem truth. Always, without fail, the efforts immediately fall prey to failure because the rifts and difference remain, most assuredly unseen for a time, but destined to fail.

Humpty Dumpty could never be more true a descriptor of the human race. We all search for answers in structure. I sense that path, time-honored and repeated for thousands of years, will never bring us one step closer to the questions we ask.

Ramblings. Just a peek at something I gleaned from the poem I just wrote. I’ve known this many times in my life, yet I constantly struggle, like everyone else in this world, to grasp it. Relaxing into the abyss, with a forfeiture of ability to manipulate anything, revitalizes strength. At least, that’s the way it is in my world, in my darkness…

 

We spend our time searching for security and hate it when we get it. ~John Steinbeck

Hello Lover…

Tags

abiding love, love, morning dream

Hello lover…

How are you doing?

I lie in bed
Awake and aware
I know who you are
Yet I don’t know you – but I do.

Did you know I’ve touched you in my heart?

I have.

Your black, silken hair has brushed my face
The slow smolder of your eyes
Your scent
your accent
Your intellect
Your heart
Your mind

All conspire to wrap me in attentive bliss
All conspire to deliver the Grecian Urn kiss
Yet in my heart, my mind, my soul
I’ve held you in my arms on a cool midnight’s sigh
I’ve wondered and  and dreamed of reasons why
Our time appears destined to never be nigh
But hope and love refuse to pass me by…

Therefore…

I stroll with you in my midnight mind
Marvel when you capture that which needs held
You embrace me despite circumstance
Distance
A world built to keep us apart
Both in our minds
And in our decisions

I do know this
A moment
A wisp of a summer blade of grass in a breeze
A rustling of an Autumn leaf swirled on a light wind
A midnight moon to cradle our love
A spring flower to tickle our noses
Winter’s ice which inspires our mutual warmth
they’re more than desires
More than dreams
More than grails for conquest and completion

Each embody love
Desire
Need
Essence of definitions pertaining to all which is right s world

And I know this…

I’ve never actually kissed you in my dreams
My mind
My heart
Because that mere act could only be revealed in your presence
For the meeting of our lips would only be desecrated by the dream act of imagination
And is only reserved for hope
That one day the Grecian spell be broken
And I could slip into my remaining breaths
With the fervor and gentle passion of deep abiding love
Propelling each finite kiss into a gratified experience
Allowing my soul the honor and exquisite beauty
Of repeating this minute transfer of love over years or days, whichever is granted –
soft
gentle
peaceful
reassuring
melded and melted into our worlds
where my own world intersects with your own world
to the point where the two mesh
and we smile
we know the other cannot feel anything less than love

Tis a dream my heart
A dream to cap all dreams
Slight moments scattered over time
Snippets of expression
To reassure you
And reassure me
That love does prevail
When its depth reveals
no end

Hello lover….

I do more than think of you…
I more than adore you for that is but candyfloss in the wind
I more than dream of you

I allow myself to hold you in my arms
To walk hand in hand after a troublesome day
To catch the scent of your hair
the glint in your eyes
to feel the warmth of your soul
for those actions stand as all I could possibly trace through the threads of experience
to fill my entire being with everything good and right
to go any further would only detract

Hello love,
For “lover” brings a defiled connotation in this world
yet in my heart I see myself brush back a strand of your hair with my fingers
I see a wan smile
I feel a knowing
and that’s all I need

So…

May the day arrive that the warmth of our breaths cross each other
The touch of our hands reveal each other
The warmth of our embrace reassure each other
and the unimagined kiss define itself for each other
as two who know those moments of being one in love

Should we ultimately merely retain that which we’ve urned,
KNOW that you are loved.

My musings within the remnants of my midnight air this night….

***

I awoke from a deep sleep with these thoughts on my mind. Much as I desired to lie back down and return to my slumber, I rose instead to seek out my laptop from the living room. Once settled back into bed, I wrote “Hello Lover.” Now, in the grogginess of the hour before I must leave for work, I ran one pass through to correct typos (I always hope to catch all of them, but often some slip through).

Whether this writing makes sense to anyone is almost immaterial. It made perfect sense when I wrote it and now on the quick read-through, I still connect with the content. The one area I WOULD work on if I had more time, would be to clear up the line beginning “Of repeating this minute transfer…”

I actually DID tweak that line by adding the word minute, and the phrase “over years or days, whichever is granted -” to somewhat clear up what I’m feeling about the lasting power of a tiny kiss. Hopefully the addition works toward that end. I must now become a whirling dervish and get ready for work.