Melinda Pillsbury-Foster
4. Fear and Pain that Still Detain
(Dedicated with complete sincerity to Allen Craig Franklin, my husband and abuser)
Battered hopes and shattered truth
Begun with trust removed with lies
This the wretchedness of my youth
Distorts my life, unmakes, denies
Abused, a word that understates
The harshness of the world it makes
Abused in mind, in body bashed
reproved by love that kills- but lasts
He came with smiles, seduced with faith
designed the ugliness of fear
An interdiction for all belief
that shackled self when he was near
Abused.
Used, rejected, scorned, detained
denied the scope that life retains
Needed, sold to use again
a life that grows more ever grim
Abused.
Battering on body, mind,
that fractures thought, my will and signs
Remakes the person who was me
into something that I hate to see
Abused.
If you have not walked and known,
not tasted fear and so been owned
You do not know where I have been
a place that holds no hopes or friends.
You have not lost the inner scope
that held your course and gave you hope
You have not lived and breathed and died
in soul belief he would not lie.
Abused and Freed
When grief is wrung, despised and gone
while still the spirit listens, longs
To hear the echoes that belong
to the voice that held that song.
When I learned to see anew
that life could be again renewed
And shackles that had owned my bones
were broken by the life I'd grown.
My breath was eased, in body, mind
The walls were breached, dissolved in time.
I tasted, relished, lived and laughed
Freed of what distorted, grasped.
Freed
Manumission of emotion
that can never compromise
The transmission which, evoking,
fractured self to make me wise. 1.
When Laughter Fades
When laughter fades and thoughts return
to find their threads worn thin with timeWhen emotions that you knew had cooled, burn
and shatter, flame and splatter, and find designs. When the laughter fades and cools
idles thought, returns to touchThe stagnant, unconsidered pools
of things that hurt too very much There, in that unlikely place,
dump of fears, vestigial wasteIn the place where you most hate to go
are all the things that make you so. Laughter coils, removes and takes
redeems our smugness, builds us brakesTo hold off thoughts that wiggle in
born from places deep within. Laughter heals, and also wounds
laughter palls and calls and soonYou will find laughter at its best
when slivered truth lets you digestThe unarmored ripples that remind
each of us of human bindsThat don't refuse, excuse, degrade
others who with us share this shade.When laughter fades we see and know
The directions that we need to go.
2.
Clinton's Dog
What kind of Love wags Clinton's Dog
That kills and maims with bombs and bluster?
What kind of tempered thoughts revoke
the sanity we once could muster?
His needs.
He needs to reposition, prove,
that he is really presidentno lusting, lurking, mindless void
but a man with morals residentHe needs.
To remake the flaccid soul within
to something less debased with greedsTo create a mirrored image, friend
that frees him from what's there to see.He needs.
He needed women, needed power
Needed, needed every hour
Needed discourse which could show
His life had worth, design and goals
He needs, now cancerous, still must grow
He needs to remake the world's own stage
Into a place where battle's wage
Where he may become a human soul
With noble bents and worthy goals
His needs, he needs and so he feeds
As it was, on women, liesNow he feeds on human lives
The right of free expression revoked
Because these people cannot vote
All rights invalid at his pleasure
His whim the only given measure.
He feeds his needs with children's dreams
And cannot see what actions mean.
It's up to us to stop this war
with minds that say, No, never more.
Never more use Nations might
To kill and maim, turn day to night
Never more shall children die
And never know the reason why.
Never more, the blood and killing
Never more, shall we will willing
Never more, I say to you.
The people don't belong to you.
3.
Hendry's Beach to Neverbe
My steps went North along the beach,
the silvered sand remanded thoughtRemoved the sought and stilled the breech
reproved my anguish, quenched my droughtThe sand rushed in on wave-made coils
the wind consumed the distant soundsas I watched and tasted, revised and roiled
reflected inner place unbound.I walked North along the beach,
straining eyes that I might seeThe promised land of Neverbe
a non-existent entity. But eyes can see through mind wrought will
things that never, never come to be. Such saw I, remaking truth, to wish fulfill
Southward coming, too faint to seeI saw and heard, believed and hoped
designed a meeting, strained with needAll my thoughts there telescoped
wishes warmed, conspired, greedsI walked North along the beach
Hendry's Beach, backed onto cliffsI saw the rocks, lent breath to grief
and knew that I was still bereft. Neverbe, a place of myth, where lovers meet,
requite and touch, fingers brush in lingered proofA place unmade defies defeat
where love unsaid is yet enoughNeverbe, where I walk North and he walks South
Where Lovers meet with unsaid vows.
4. Fear and Pain that Still Detain
(Dedicated with complete sincerity to Allen Craig Franklin, my husband and abuser)
Battered hopes and shattered truth
Begun with trust removed with lies
This the wretchedness of my youth
Distorts my life, unmakes, denies
Abused, a word that understates
The harshness of the world it makes
Abused in mind, in body bashed
reproved by love that kills- but lasts
He came with smiles, seduced with faith
designed the ugliness of fear
An interdiction for all belief
that shackled self when he was near
Abused.
Used, rejected, scorned, detained
denied the scope that life retains
Needed, sold to use again
a life that grows more ever grim
Abused.
Battering on body, mind,
that fractures thought, my will and signs
Remakes the person who was me
into something that I hate to see
Abused.
If you have not walked and known,
not tasted fear and so been owned
You do not know where I have been
a place that holds no hopes or friends.
You have not lost the inner scope
that held your course and gave you hope
You have not lived and breathed and died
in soul belief he would not lie.
Abused and Freed
When grief is wrung, despised and gone
while still the spirit listens, longs
To hear the echoes that belong
to the voice that held that song.
When I learned to see anew
that life could be again renewed
And shackles that had owned my bones
were broken by the life I'd grown.
My breath was eased, in body, mind
The walls were breached, dissolved in time.
I tasted, relished, lived and laughed
Freed of what distorted, grasped.
Freed
Manumission of emotion
that can never compromise
The transmission which, evoking,
fractured self to make me wise.
5.The flow of moments
The flow of moments can't remove
The source of pain that still reproves
We act in hopes we know what's best
Putting life and thought to test
Our beliefs, built on shifting sand
of thoughts denies the truth and bans
the hope that we might come to see
the ancient source of destiny
The moments flow reminds and brings
the ravaged scenes that fear and wring
our souls to stand on shattered edge
the precipice that Time alleged
We come as children, live and die
Knowing just the soulless lies
That harbor, steal and maim our hearts
With never promised, unformed doubts
When knowing, truth is bare to see
To souls that breathe Earth's destiny
The signs and learning, all are here
Speaking to us through our tears.
And still we linger, willed with dread
Because its here our fears have lead.
6.
To Save Mankind
We cannot change the leaders, they're lost in dreams of power
We cannot change or rearrange our history's sullen hours
We cannot use their self same tools without becoming them
We cannot do
and we cannot retreat without amend.The nots are many, often tried, marches, starving, asking why?
Begging that the war should end, refusing service, money, men.
All these means we have employed, to end the tide of unjust wars
Now we need another way, to bind the wounds that rend and slay
We need to take back all the power
Every second, minute, hour.
Because we are not property
We are free to live our destinies.
The vagrant might of those who rule
Must be challanged, changed, denied
Each of us had been a tool
Each of us, ourselves, has lied
If we say that we cannot
If we give in, relinquish what is sought
If we excuse because we need
Savage others with our greeds
If we do not live the dream
That misted glimpse of what life means
Do not find the place within
What all dreams and shadows touch as kin
If we do not, give not, comply
Need we ask the reason why
The core, our essence had to die?
A world that shimmers, lives and breathes
A world united in One Dream
One living, mind-spun long beginning
Isn't that a thing worth winning?
Tempestuous and untried hearts
That doubt your power, please own and start
Become the living will sublime
And in this way become divine.
7.
Layerings of Truth
We find the truth in layered sheaths,
woven unexpected turningsThat lend our minds to find relief
in sudden light and time made yearningsThe truth can stalk our worried lives
lending to our echoed coursePatinaed blendings, surprised disguise
to rave and sunder all discourseThe truth, that sought and fearsome jewel
releases what we fear to knowUnsuspected twists, designs most cruel
show our spirits what is so.Always sought, and rarely found
the Truth gives way to what we wishAlthough its resonance abounds
leaving hollowed places we dismissThe Truth, a thing that cannot lie
Gives light to those who'd rather die.
8.
When Shadows Speak
The lengthened voice of shadowed thoughts,
bemused by all that time divinesSlings hours grace, beguiled child,
into the searing wedge of doomDesigning mentions of intentions,
recoursive blandishments reboundInto the wastes of silent hastes,
divorced from what is seen and foundThe idylled hopes of flaccid minds
removes from all its tendriled linesReprising what is devoid of thought
the wizened void that tarried, caughtWithin the monument of Place
with Light, elector, detained with GraceSo that within the harbored realm
lives summoned mentions overwhelmedThis, the fractured place in time
Wherein we dwell wrapped up in Mind.
9.
The Fund – Dedicated to John Fund
Timid and protected by the fences, walls and moats
His life is undelected, preselected and remote
Unable to connect with the woman half of Man
He's an also run for power that gives in to their demands
Unenabled and unstable in the wordward side of mind
He remembers, burning embers, of a place that once was kind
On the nether side of Jersey he elects to live his life
Divorced from pain and sorrows that still edge him in with strife
Writing, writing, tapping, tapped, this the life that takes and grasps
Talking, speaking, giggled thoughts, still unbelieving, savaged droughts
For connecting to the life's blood of the place within the heart
Takes courage unpossessed by one whose life is yet to start.
10.
Anger Slowly Brewing
I'm coming to the edge of boil,
finally seeing all the coilswrought by those who used my dreams to feed
all their appetites and greedsWith open hearted empty head
I gave and gave until I bledI worked and sweated, created, taught
astonishing heights I paved and wroughtPoems written, lit their lives
hopes unrequited, burnished, diedScenes electric and surreal
told them each my love was realBut giving as a voiceless void
is not a woman's just rewardI needed to get something back
the thing the suckers, each had lackedI needed to be visible and held
in honored love, the cusp that meldsOne and one into a whole
that leaves no doubt where values showA sad return for what I gave
but lesson learned is now time saved. 11.
The Breath of Time
From simple ambulated needs,
cored in just the will to breedTo subtle nuanced thought borne coils
which give a species well edged foilsTo carry on the mindward voyage
that evoluted cunning deploysThreads of thought that do not end
light made minds that curl and bendRetreat, attack, and dance the steps
that lend their brains to timeborn treksThreads of passion, woven, greeds
and in that tapestried world we grieveSundered from the conscious One
intellect fills breeches, lungsSends natal cry of solitude
where nothing else may dare intrudefor countless hours, years and lives
the lonely journey rebeats and thrivesBuilding up the inner paths
that each sustains, retains and graspsThat in that distant place of time
a reconnection will be designedAnd each, patinaed, time tempered soul
will intersect with all its goalsBecoming thus the One, and Whole.
12.
One Dance
The evening filled with chattered wit
and elegancies that salved and fitThe occasion, was I have forgot
but hundreds came, remained and talkedCandles glowed, and napery hung
the colors soothed and smoothed and sungOf minds that noticed all details
not hidden behind tomorrows veil. But I was there, I don't know why
but there I loitered, smiled, sighedMy gown the deepest, richest red
clinging, long, of silk that spreadand coddled, tendered, glazed
the skin on which it scarcely laid. I knew you were invited hence
but so was I, delighted wenchI danced with this acquaintance, that
not knowing quite what to expect.I saw you talking, knew at once
and you saw me, reacted, jumped. I just smiled and moved away
I didn't know exactly what to say. You found me and spoke my name
I was trembling then, devoid of gamesYou took my hand, kissed and held
and led me toward the music's swardMy breath came quicker, as we touched
your lack of words said just as much. You pulled me close, I sighed again.
My heart a hammer, and you grinned. We really had nothing left to say
Eyes that spoke forgave delaysJust one dance, we parted then
fingers clinging to the end.
Just one dance, eternal touch
One dance to say so very much.
13.
Elven Moments Love May Prove
I laid the clues with complex foils
Involving much of mind borne toil
I hired, quizzed, devised and found
Ways to make her heart astound.
All for love, and gladly done
All for love that's just begun.
All for love that flickers, makes
My heart the captive of strange fate
While all my thoughts surge, elate.
Our future sealed, without debate.
I've yearned to find one such as her
One with elven, giggled turns
A woman who can reprise and think
And command my thoughts with one sure wink.
I can't belief I've found at last
A passion that can hold me fast
I can't believe we resonate
In sure divined elected fate
I can't believe that it is true
But it is, and raptures prove
That sure delectation of love's cost
Is sweeter when it can't be lost.
14.
Can Words Selected, Sorted , Sate?
The fulsome flood of worded thoughts,
bemuses mind defines the shots That echoing, refuse to cease,
their resonance, recused and brief They come as cadenced, inner truths
that unsolicited bring rebuke For all the harbored, undone deeds
that still remain sustained by need. Words, the outward mind bent veil
that inner knowing chiseled, frail Indeed, this cognite, finite tool
can undo the inertial bindings rules. For words, the only weapon here
can work, if I just lose my fear. For I am afraid, in dark bound night
of those preselected acknowledged sights That only words, select and right
can turn back to never sight. A scarce begun yet now known work
that, having means I cannot shirk. 15. Speak Not Truth
What unsaid passions, inward sate,
the fooled rhythm that course and make The verdant, lilied, in seeing eyes
born with questions become wise? What timed, and chorded rippled hymn
reminds our kind to live and then Removes the memoried, edge long threads
that recorded each thing we ever said? Who or what, the questions glance
by defining losing each seared chance To understand, encompass own
the truths thus promised, and unknown The wise who speak in silvered runes
and speak, divining, signing, truths If truly wise must understand
that speaking truth remands the strands So speak with actions, learn with hands
That times infractions,
unspoken sanctions,
might not command. 16. When Love Will Not Die
When bindings prove against the tides
of anger, fear, and will not die When bindings forged in cybered space
engage our thoughts, remind, deface The futured worlds that thus are lost
Tell me, how shall I count the cost? When furtive passions, given, owned
remand my soul to grieve alone And covert yearnings, echoed needs
exact a toll that stills all creeds Tell me how I end their hold
bindings that take, remake, and mold? To ease my heart, remembered smiles
languid raptures that beguiled While echoes of the ruptured Not
remind my spirit, so distraught I grieve the loss of Neverbe
The loss of what I'll never see.
17. The Shores of Time
Oceanic thoughts that harbor, loom,
encompassing all of life's first womb Remember shards of time worn dreams
that, abandoned still stretch our seams Remanded into wakeful nights
born in shadows, lost in light Still abide the wind ward waves
that bear the print that steals and saves A print of cyclic, mind touched means
that partially known is still unseen A part, not whole is what we find
scored by body, soul and mind The shores of time that rivet thought
subsumed within divided Nots The matrixed coming into being
of land locked hopes and things unseen Ocean, deeply laid and scarcely known
Ocean, first cradle, womb and home Ocean, filled with life in light embrace
Ocean, forgive this, our disgrace 18. When Thought Runs Dry
When lilac visioned lights run thin
and echo shadows velvet gloss Our hands remake, disjoint times twin
and touch the moment of our loss The Jasmined curls of spring warmed thought
designed to temper, doubt and breed In kind begin again their drought
denying depth and tone to destiny Sweet ages spent in rapture, twined
so languishing and filled with need That this fair anguish, death inclines
and so stills and owns, and sets you free Sweet passion's child, light endowed
With this spare verse I weave your shroud.
19. Esperanto
Thought flows in timed discourse with errant,
riven eddies lightly combed Consuming houred, molten moments within the current
flow, sequential, monumental matrixed loom. divided on circumferenced chords in time. Human minds that blend and burnish,
cadenced edges always furnished with the sensed remorse of promises Replete and so defined.
Will Esperanto, manufactured from linguistic, polyglot refine?
When Mind is poised for substitutions and dilutions so inclined?
No. In experiential discourse it will lose and so decline.
20. Eddies in the Turns of Time
Sharp divining, still point found, idylls inclining, borders bound
This, the cyclic, time worn design that empowers and defines
Unexpected, tripped and shorn
of delectated ancient, echoes patient, mind remade in current points. Pause in thought that will become
The seared electric age to come.
Through winnowed time, combed and thinned
My silent frame contains and wins
Finding places faint and thinned
By those suspected, unelected, coy and kinned.
When shadowed, pulsed and finite thoughts
forget the timid forms they wrought When reality turns time, so caught
That destiny reminds us not
That this, the waning age of Man
Is poised, transmutation, joined and planned
Unstoppable, uncharted shores
Beckon us forevermore.
Forever, past and future age.
Reminds us not to count its wage.
21. Into Space
Within the soul sealed cup of Earth
bestride the follied course now run We poise in labored force of birth
To taste a future just begun. What the Mind of Humans wrought,
brought to this revising hour Is outward seeking, life quest sought
Linking minds, desire's power On templates newly made and tried
a world holds breath, in imaged sight The ancient seat of human lives
hanging free, in sun clear light Emerging soul of Earth's first child
Grasps the source of life compiled
22. Habited, Inhabited, Haunted and Humored
In the hedonistic havens of the nights than harbor hope.
My mind debriefs regressions that enlarge my soul born scope
Always looking for the future in a past that mists and moves
I taste the edges of emotions that evaded, lost and crude
In the feckless readmittance to the fortress of dismay
I repeat the interdiction of the drought that this portrays
And knowing we revise, recircumferance and so denote
The replication of conditions that derive and then emote.
So listen to the pulsing that subsumes, repeats and sings
And hear the glad declination that the barest mention always brings
23. What Comes of Age
What numbering of rough hewn days
reminds our bodies of the ageThat shivered fingers clutch and catch
within the pall of time's own latchAge, that bane of sunlight thought
That promised life, remains to tauntThe callowed spirits who remain
within the cloak of what's deemed sane.Aged spirits, new to life
redeem and court the end of strifeWhile older lovers sample truth
gaining thus the source of youthOlder growing, older still
The insubstantial core that heals.
24. When Morning Grieves with Tear Worn Wishes
The morning grieves with seried brief
Abiding time designed and deft
That fortress place where love, bereft
Retreats to find those shards still left .
Grief
For losses, disjoint and solemn things
Remandered to undestined wings
That imagined source of what might be
Might regain the magnitudes of misspent dreams
Pain.
Unborn, unrealized, heart and mind
can not forget, find recoursed signs
That tell and supplicate the fates
In kind explaining truth's rebate.
Sustained
So while the throbbing, thrumming lives
While pain and grief still pulse and give
While all of these still make us real
Give thanks for pain that hurts - and heals.
25.
(Written to Bil Munsil, on line acquaintance May 7, 1999 around 5:20 PM)
Typical of what? Achievement is measured my as many standards as there are people. It should like you have found the means to spend your life doing what you love. To do that most people have to be either independently wealthy or retired.
Life, is after all, what we make of it. The Sum of Life
By what measure, at what cost
is life's true assessment, taken, heldWhat values summon, found and lost
contain the pain and joys we felt? Birth beginning, death the end,
between the two we weave and makeThe only truth that can rescind
the darkened hollow which is our fate. Hours, minutes, days full count
time will sheer, divide and ownThese spare pages, ours to mount
the essential us most true to bone. When all is dust, forgotten lost
when time removes the scents of loveNo one then will count the cost
or ask what years and thoughts could prove.Ask yourself, then, as you write
The price of life you live in light.
And that is what I have to say about the matter. Pleasure in your day. Melinda 26.
(Written for Ted in Hawaii. No particular reason. )
Taking Tea
We met across expansive gleams
Of nappered linens which were whiteA rose pursed pink lips, coyed by leaves
that nodded, spoke in both our sightsWe took tea, we nibbled, sipped
we nuanced, foiled, laughed and sighedAs time unfolded we traded, glimpsed
the parts of us that do not lie. We took tea, in sylvan air
reforming wishes, vaulting hopesWe strengthened spirit, lost despair
resetting goals, we stretched our scope.We took tea, one afternoon
And found the best things end too soon.
27.
When You Don't Know What To Do.
When the slurried eddied, timed and turned,
roiled hours, wrack and churn.When all is discord and dismay
and nothing placed remains and staysWhen fluctuated, unsettled thoughts
recant the control you'd hoped you'd gotAnd all within the flux of time
retrofits your whole designYou've bottomed out, lost all your gas
and still you grasp, bemoan, but lastYou've found the nadir, that's true
but you've also found the core of you. So when nothing else can now go wrong
Think positive and so grow strong.
28.
Solitude, Silence and Serenity
Serene reminders, coiled thoughts
that still the idylls life has wrought.Solitude that steals our grief
leaving gifts of time made relief. Echoed anguish dies unheard
in the momentary breath of wordsThat finding place within the soul
remind our spirits and our goalsLilied pauses that reprove
the chaliced hopes that search and movethe houred minutes of each life
that born in fractions breed in strife. Tremble when you hear the voids
that such remainded voice employedTo steal and maim, reflect, avoid
the empty thoughts that echo joyFor joy, the implement of light
Cannot be found without life's right.
29.
Been There.
When lassitudes inertial force
contains the all we've ever been.When all emotions become remorse
for what we've done, and not, again.The grinding, maw of all the Nots
opens wide with grin grimed rageWe forgot to see the wonders lost
in contemplation of the graveRemember touches, raptured hours
remember jokes that brought you homeRemember moments that empowered
and unnumbered smiles within life's loomLife is what you did and gave
And not the things that you can save.
30.
In Acts
Questions die on lips that cease,
their unremitting need to knowWhile surety, the God Unknown,
remands my soul to bind and sow.Questions.
Inward looking , focused thought Seeking answers never askedFinding raptures seldom chanced. Promised shards that gleam and dance.Questions.
Poised in place and time and lightFound where surety is ownedDivining thoughts and can delightIf posing lends itself and hones.Questions.
When asking echoes, resonatesAnswers form and end debateLending hopes that remand, elateThe linkages that known, must sate. Questions.
Life expounding, tempers thoughtsTo winnow, taste, consider, touchThe lasting answers that reproveDesigns that make, and so improveQuestions.
Finding answers deep withinQuestions heal, relieve and mend. 31. Two Haiku
Love reaches us. Touching
that place of stillness
where no one else may come.
Words trickle into our ears
Travelers from a place
We cannot go.
31 One Haiku
Seasons of rapture
Caught in one intaken thought
Gives place to wonder
32. Convolutions
Matrixed void of mannered thoughts
that pace and promise time's repriseSpeak the sum of human hopes
in intellect and reason's guiseFrom human minds in pulsing course
the answers trickle, squeeze and dripWhile lobes denied full intercourse
ignore the truths that fall from lipsA wracking convoluted maze
that winnows truth and fractures thoughtThe mind, now birthing coming days
that promise and imply the soughtFields of diamonds, in full sight
Ignored because they catch the light.
33. When Thoughts Still Catch In Eddied Memory
The tumult, wracked and harrowed time,
has gentled; course relieved and cooledIntellect now controls my mind
emotions sort, reflect, detach, unfooled.Yet still you linger there, in mind-made fantasy that beguiled
Still your words, tasted, owned and so sharp honed and needed still repairTo that rare place, still there. Even now, events receding into Nevered homeof desires died for want of breath and life and pleadings.Still there. Giving aching memory to both injury and joy so sharply etchedThat the barest edge of touch can cut. To bone and deep born needings. Still there. In that harbored time encapsulated place
Where two were one within embrace.
Where looking into other eyes
I saw myself, believed, surprised.
Whose lips still press on mine in the almost woken time
of jasmined morning barely broken into day? Gentle lips that brushed away the unbeguiled, riven questions now unsung? Speaking magic interludes of dear becomings, rapture hung.
Those encaptured memories, never sought
that cling and keep and touch and own my heartits murmured recollections to so impart. That time, both friend and traitor, might restart.
34. The Fragrant Scent of Life Unspent
Time's coursing cadence melts the heart's
own distant summings while echoes proveThat seldom touches, improve those parts
that fickle lovers deceive and rue.Deceptions writ on shadowed tomes
that spoke in wit-toned sly, taut runesDeface the truth of love's own tomb
and trill discordant half made tunes.This the song that freezes time
discoursing follied hopes worn thinThis the chorused unmade lie
where love once given found its end. Fragrant with the hearts own tears
Jasmined eyes that know no fear.
35. Insightful Thoughts
When idle thoughts design our lives
renewing time crossed echoed deedsThat half remembered, wit rich scribe
whose worded life rekindled dreamsLives on in half toned, still born pleas
that once uttered draw in the thoughtsThat course the haggard destinies
now owned and given since they've broughtThe fine divorce that made us free
Inseeing scribe that age forgot,
who spoke the words that summoned griefRemake the coming time of drought,
that well of words that blinds, retrievedThe memoried unfolding, lost in time
That pulses still within our minds.
36.
Verse in Me.
My verse pervades the timeless wastes,
building epochs, lending grace
to those sublime and tortured thoughts
that prevail when I can't talk.
They come in cadenced roiling tides,
that dwell within, be still, abide, remind my soul of onward dreams
that glance and stipple all I see.
Enjoining mind to circumvent
the ravished tangents time has sendTo echo terse and fractured rhymes
that enter magic, words divine.
Into pauses fraught with tendered hopes
that promise me enlarging scope.
36.
Obsessions
Stealing moments, hours, lives,
they forge the fevered, unriven liesThat shackle, maim and swallow hopes
that less compelling still lend us scopeTo lives that thirst for untried tastes
that forbidden still invite embraceObsessed.
When mind remakes and takes and needs
a thing that promises scarce breathed releaseWhen life's own pulsing is fever starved
for that spare touch which fate has baredThe brain can not retain its course
and all within explodes remorseObsessed.
The barest edge of needed bliss
retains the hopes that life has missedBut even this, the dungeoned keep
of ravaged will can learn to sleepWith time, the edging dims and ebbs
and passion pays its debt - in death.
37. To be finished.
The hour grows late
and the arms of Morpheus beckon me to sylvan slumbers couched in unknown dreams, coiling both the rigid thought of reason modeled mind and the passioned unplumbed depths of emotive acts, the two impacted, corded,
always twined and so combined. 38.
Touches Never Felt
Ideas that reach a place within, which fingers never touch
Illuminate of liquid thought, evoking fire so mind is caught.Cascades, connects to interlace
In this, the intellect's true embrace.
Thoughts
The webbed reminder all are One
Revealing first, and last, the sums
That toll up eons, epochs, lives
That adding thoughts cannot then die.
39.
Dusty Books
When volumed rows of unread tomes,
residing, stilled in silent thoughtRemind the passerby who owns
to look and catch a thread of noteAnd pause.
Remembered moment fraught,
with time turned destiny wrung dryTo turn the pages long unsought
And seek the newborn answered whysReflected.
Found in margins, scribbled lines
rioting with insighted eyesThat saw, and understood the kinds
of nuanced distance given liesRemind
The mind to sift through time
discriminate, detect, the winnowed truthThat direction may storm the sharp incline
of faulted theories, aborted, rude.Rethink
Through houred, yeared, dishonored lives
we touch on turnings, twisted timeThat shift and savage, gild, devise
the bedrock from which spirit's mined. Reremember
In booked corners, dusted, cloaked
We find the tortured page unspoke.
40.
Sorting Through
The boxed remains of houred life,
removed immediacies of needRemain to clutter, creating strife
filling places we don't wish to seeImpending clumps and sordid sheaves
of banished hopes and stillborn dreamsRemaindered mementos of things most brief
or of love's endurance, sweet with griefThrough all of these we sort and sigh
touching life's reflected ohmsAnd as we winnow, tear, delight
Our thoughts return, for nothings goneSort through accumulated things
And find unremembered, hoped for wings
41.
Abuse that Clings
The surge of love that finds your soul
glancing touch, indifferent voiceWhen this wretched thing is your one goal
Can light your heart and birth your joysYou love, are tied by things unseen
those shackling, endorphined echoed hopesThat live to breed in mind made dreams
rescinding life and all your scopeYou love, unable to retrain
your mind by recognizing the source of painYou love in prisoned time drawn long
unabled, needy, reason gone. You love and hope, believe, have faith
remake the past for someone’s sakeThe someone, source of life's own light
the one who curses you to endless nightAbusive loving that distains
To let you live among the sane.
42.
The Twists and Turnings of Fate
In jasmine minted memory,
the twists of fate remind and reachTo turn the face of destiny
and call the spirit back to teachLook and see the woven thoughts
that cradled who you have becomeLook, accept what you have wrought
reject the drugs that conscience numbWithin the folds of misspent time
the dross transformed relents its costAdmitting, with sight the sure design
that denies that savor can be lostBanished hours, poignant touch
to bind up wounds that could not healAdmit the pain that aches is just
and own the truths that make you real. 43.
Justice Quest
Justice.
Balanced lives that echo truth. Belie the garbed perversity of false designbanishing the fragrance born on windful tidings breathing sacred, solemn moments strung in time. Justice.
Lives in weighted thought spun action come.Becoming echoed fractions sung in sense drenchedlastings; tilted, tensive, ceaseless passageof those threadings interactivefilling, time and introspective surety, known though undefined.This the stark redemptionnever mentionedwhose summation isDivine. 44.
Walk the Tall Ships to Ninivah
Tall ships that shift and shape a world unmade
Taking sail to Ninivah
The blatant, bannered, bastioned wind-filled cups
That slice through time and spaceremaking paths in unseen minds.To Ninivah.
Shattered mote of time, lost in travailed, oncoming acts
Matrixed place of Man's design, trading, loving, bold becoming
Ransomed now from dust and thoughtStones and mud reproving unheard echoes, lives undoneThe tall ships walked to Ninivah.
To Ninivah.
Placed in lives that glistened, flourished, spoke
Reproving all that makes their time remote.
Laughter spilling over into eyes that touched
tomorrows now unknown.Acts that raptured, owned, devoured, lusted
snuffed by candle coddled lightlost in void of unbottomed night. Ninivah.
Ancient silence owns you still and still and always
Swollowed ships and caravanned oncomings
Laughter, tears and softest touches, musiced hum
of inward turning deathsUndone. Exhumed to fractured shards of sightthrough minds in forward flightwith wind captured odes of ancient, tragic heights
Tall ships that sail in wordward air of mind.
To Ninivah.
45.
The Song of Tongues
In cave cupped ambiance, forgotten, lost
Eyes looked up in love that left no place to ponder. In momentary wakened need relieved or sated. Eyes locked in love, believed and joined. Coupled lives that birth deployed. The Song of Tongues first fluttered, toned and sung
the liquid love of laughter scented joy. Birthing Song of Human Tongues.
A mind gave garbled form to cadenced onward rushing pleas
unwoven threads spun gold and dross in wayward wonder.Her will elects to slake his needs. Uttered joy that owns the soft warm weight of mother
to eager lips pursed touched on breast.Endorphined rapture drove and bonded, And so began the endless quest. Fragrant tang of milk that filled and stilled all inner hungers
Embracing arms, circumferenced worlds unnumbered. A Song both heard and sung its wafting wonders.
Small beginnings. Source of untapped futures unadmitting. Formed unseenin those convoluted foldings, a fortress built inside a dream. Song of Tongues
That speak through wending ages, coiling in minds that lifted fragile thought
into oncoming tides of breath made sages. To dance the metronomed delights of mind
Sheered and glanced through tendriled course of echoed time.All born from upward glancing loveThat gives in full, forgetting life bound reachRemaking tongued nothings into speech. 46.
Burning: Twists in Time
The slow sure creak of labored hours
that filled the passing days with meals and duties done uncountedThe burning came on this.
Into ordinary lives that laced the past and present timesFrom honest faces free of fear To questions poised and answered true with only mild trembings of tearsto flesh wrenched chasmed screams unmadebecause their voices died awayin racked remaindered eons filled with pain.That someone's cleric might find gain. The times of Burnings
Lost from sight of historied pageTheir sorry plights, dismissed, ungauged. Only women, shrugged, distained.
Only women's blooded pain.
In twists of time removed from saged returnings
dismissed to crisp and blacken in endless nights of shackled screamsEmptied homes and unbaked bread
unmothered children left for deadNo stone to mark their passingEmptied passions in the wake of wordward fashion. The times of Burning
Villages that lost their heartsunwoven clothe left on the loomunspun lives remarked their doom. In twists of time and ravished lives
the women cried and begged and died. Witches named for virtues lived.A time that maimed, defamed and caughtwomen, of high and low degreebinding all in death drawn misery. Women.
Marked for death that raped and ateordinary lives that ended, bent the shape of decades made from wrongful thoughtsSeizing all and leaving naught.
A punctuated, shrugged off event
that stole their lives without defense. Twists of time that burn our souls
because their deaths, still unavenged
salt the soil where dreams might grow. Justice.
Word that summons, begged, defiedthe psalm of death that tainted lives. For justice done can cast out lies.
47.
Perfect Pastry
Secured on doilied dish, pristine, untouched
With chocolate manner, crisp and light
It promised tastes exquisite, lushTo sooth my angst into delight. Raspberried gloss invited tongue
While vanillaed, ambiance promised greeds
would be sated, surcease begunand unthought delectations made known to needs. I breathed in hungers all unknown
Felt the pangs of unfilled life
While saliva beaded my soul bemoanedthe sure confection of each bite.Untasted thus unknown and left
Life of promise, myself bereft.
48.
Celestial Orbits Which Touch
In passaged wander marked through time
to run through voids of ethered air.The winged webs of matrixed minds
kill out reproof, disown despair. In circuits terse, arched wide and thin
from course run past to never yetThe coming birth, disjoined will mend
the emptiness of scored regret. Metallic mottos retread the Gods
remind our weaved body's soulsThat no matter how remote the odds
the longest game remains our goal. Ethereal vision wrought in light
Celestialed orb wrenched from the night.
49.
A Long Waiting
Scored by murmured promises
that rend the mind, divide our hopesI stand unsure of how to mix
the unsaid words that fate revokesRedeeming hours lost to lips
that paused when speech refused the breechThis, the echoed force that slips
from lives that torture, sear and screechA long. long waiting, wrested life
That harbors unseen, restless tides.
50.
Smile for me
Joyful weaving, time and space
reminds our souls to interlaceReflecting pasts untapped or known
and all the shadowed former homesThat held the sparkling, refracted thoughts
That owned our hearts and told our doubtsInciting hungers born in minds
That find election through design. Laugh, and linger, touch and stroke
recline in fond and tendered hopesRemain the cusp and core of soul
That never changing, needs no goal. 51.
Looking back in Time
Reflected thoughts that age and grey
rekindled hopes removed by fear
Remind my mind of its redoubt
Simmered holdings held in mouths
For paused dreams remander lives
Reproving ages yet unborn
As fulsome laughter lights your eyes
My heart experiences your scorn
Reflected thoughts that winnow hours
Refining those unspoken dreams
So thus is lost the source of power
Even as your drowned in schemes.
Elected hopes, refined from thoughts
that magnify the core untouched
Select the future and its droughts
costing us so very much.
Reflect the life that you would live
neglecting nothing left to give.
52.
Anti-Matter of Little Moment
Time slips and slithers, washed from hands
that carry burdens and demandsAntiquated, fragiled thoughts
thinned by unsaid time honed truthsRelease our intellects, reprove our doubts.
Ragged reason, cognite tool
fractures on some new made rulesThus have the moments held and taught
Since punctuated by times sharpened toothGained both weight and cultured clout
Once, and once and once again
Exchanging thought can still begin.
This, the mote that said, amends.
53.
Child
Our children hold our only tangible promise of immortality.
They bind us to the fate of the world by the heart strings.
I never knew the naked depths of fear until I had children to lose.
And I never knew the completeness of uncalculating love until I held a baby in my arms.
All in all, it was the best deal I ever made.
54.
Letting Go Illusions - To Craig Franklin
The tendriled tug of memories reproves my reasoned thought
Sharp and sweet that idylled time, devoid of all but drought
Sanctuaried, love made place
Where I have lingered in embrace
With that one imperfect, personed soul
Who spun out love in raptured flows
Of song borne thought entrancing, glad
Reminding, lighting, the life I had.
Illusioned figment of my mind
Where only grief and sorrows bind
The soul seared silence that you left
Leaving me consumed, bereft.
This, the logic of your acts
Stark and violent, ugly facts.
This the unmade years I'd given
Disposed and sneered, my heart so riven.
That even logic turns away
When so little remains to do and say.
My hand, that still, still longs to touch
Mind reproved, it winced but trusts
Because love filled, consumed, forgave
Till nothing there was left to save.
Addicted to the thought of you
Now realized: who I never knew.
So mind - release your argued wish
Logic, reason delve and sheer
Revoke the memoried source, dismiss
The undone presence once most dear
Remove the Craig who was my heart
That I might breathe, live on, restart
The life I forged from living will
that pain in me be stilled.
55.
Finding Place in Chaos
Structures, mythic places wrought,
in human action found in thoughtSustain our cherished place in time
a sure cognition of the mindStructures fail us when we pause
to read the clarity of lawsRevealing what is true and not
the things we have so eager, soughtStructures; neverland of what we wish
revokes complacence to dismissThe certitudes that hide and frame
the yesterdays that once detainedQuestion structures, own your soul
For only questions reveal us whole.
56.
The Fading Light
The shadows lengthen to remove
the coursed thoughts that masked delightContentment, encroaching condiment
reminds the spirit, confines our sightTo what has nurtured, held and touched
the quiet hour of day that trustsConfiding all its memories
This, the time most like to please. Lilaced masking that confines
the vivid wishes, morning bornThe deep breathed chalice of the mind
harbored keep against the storm. This hour savored, tasted, owned
Reminds the soul you aren't alone.
57.
Thistles
Spring-fed suppled, barely grown
the thistles seldom show their thorns. Waxing into yearful fruit
the tiny hooks rear up their shootsClasping, working, into flesh
into hair, in time locked questThistles living out their lives
spreading promises and lies. Promised beauty, joined with thought
Gravid need that can't be stopped
Thistles
Unthinking knowing, breeding on
into a future’s seeded lawnFrom voids of past that saw the same
without the structure of the nameThistles
Genus, kingdom, named and writ
the plant that nabs with time tried witLife insists that it continue
A war within the cusp of meadowThistles
Blended growing, poised in time
To render true their self-made kind
58.
Blending Thoughts
Our thoughts combine in cadenced dance
reminding motes of fractured timeThat this, the pivot of life's chance
plays out in metered, fleeting kindsEach breath removed from future owned
each smile given into darkRemembered love, a precious loan
that carries us to blending sparksSparks of life that seried move
through rapture, raging, lost, despairTo remember eyes that prove
that someone in that void did care. Blending thoughts that make us whole
Fractured thoughts that tell us so.
59.
Remembered Pain
A ravaged life that poured out love
distorted, stolen without thoughtRemains to sear with harsh reproof
In quiet cloistered, sad, redoubtWho took the gifts that offered life?
Whose calloused greeds have emptied hearts?Whose unremitting, unbottomed needs
Disowned honor, denied belief? A million takers, feed on truth
feasting on our lives and trust.
A million, million, throughout time
Continue to repeat their crimes.
Through fraud, coercion, force they take
The lives that touch theirs own and make
A banquet of those trusting souls
Who gave and gave for common goals
Wives who labored, stayed at home
Creating place and future hopes
Their lives ripped out from part-make looms
Investments stolen with their scope.
This, the kind and part of men
Who feed on trust, again, again.
60.
Pauseful Wish for Amusing Summer
Vedaed, UFOed and informed,
that mysteried lives are unadornedThat myth and fact don't intersect
When actually they make one setThe world, in process, partly seen
By eyes that hold what minds will bring.
The life of authored thought deployed
Speaking, writing - and annoyedTersely written, to reflect
Exasperated they can't detectThe edged touch of myth and fact
With minds that try and trying, lack. Fun to be a savant sage
Exasperating to pay the wage.
You wait, expectant, for light to dawn
While others scratch and fumbling, yawn.
The single mind intuits much
Retrieves the threads of former thought
And still will miss the barest touch
Of integrative, futures sought.
But human minds, those wondrous tools
Remand the intellects of fools
For all go into what will be
Unconscious of the world they see.
61.
A Fine and Thorough Grieving
It fills up lungs with rancid aches
That rake the futured worlds unsummed
It scores my skin and binds and breaks
Unwritten songs that die unsung.
Grieving
Chaliced holding of love unmade
That excises pleas, reproves all hope
This, the unplumbed source displayed
To all who know the heart revoked.
Grieving
Burning into deepest places unrelieving
Lost to eyes that held and touched
Lost to arms, encompassed lusts
Lost to voices, broken words
Lost to ears that strained and heard
Grieving
Bitter fragments, shards of thought
That held belief in what is not.
62.
Shadows on the Lips of Time
Brave houred lives that flow the course
Reproving vanities sublime
This, the fractured thought derived
From all summations of design.
Tendriled sparks, unspoken love
Uninvested, unseen breathes
Derange the conscious taken path
Leading us to misspent deaths.
Actions taken, actions owned
Actions wakened, truth will hone
Shards of wakened, time turned truth
That crystallize the source of youth.
I listened to the things not said
And smiled at whispers which cancel dread.
63.
Waxing Life Reproves Our Doubts
Life swells with promised futures wrought
In time blessed interest spending thought
Life, the process from which Time gleans
The woven substance of our dreams
Dreams; becomings crystalled form
Which refutes the lies of Nature's storms
Remanding all the unseen whens
That unremembered test Time's end
In process caught we strain to see
That manifold reflections breed
A larger world that can be thought
Untasted futures not yet sought.
When slumber evades your peace starved needs
Remember this, all time still weaves.
64.
Passaged Time
Seasons tasted, owned, and tried
Create the world in which we live
Seasons savored, honed, implied
Refute that we've none left to give
Works continue past our years
With well considered force retained
Works elemental course of tears
Into lives that gave as well as maimed.
Seasons.
Time for passion spent in acts
Time to taste the fall of tears
Paused to reconsider facts
That understood, relieve our fears.
Seasons.
Beginnings that reprove our doubts
Dreams that carry us past now.
64.
Unowned Thought
Lighted majesty of unowned time
Removed by acts that course and cross the void.Rebel from destiny of echoed hopes
That touched the sanded need of ventured joys. Foresworn
Reminded child of uncommon needs
That touched the cusp of untried vaults of timeThat seried acts might satiate the greeds
Of appetites that feed on Truth’s decline Foresworn
Coarse reprimand that blinds the eyes divine
That Spirit thought might languish and declineDenied untrammeled course of Time’s becoming
The blossoming of Man; cacaphoned dunningForesworn
In worded shrouds that pall, distort and maim
Deny the verities of light and timeStill, frightened things whose needs must clinch and shame
Confounding human hopes to unsaid crimesForesworn
This, the idled greeds which made the Now
Shall sheer and fracture, given edged thoughtBecause of all the unsaid vows
The future, yet unseen is still most sought. Foreswear, again, again, and yet the past
Remakes distortive cloth, reweaves the ash.
Jasmine Series - 1 - 64
Begun April 24, 1999
