The darkness had a waiting quality to it, an insistence that I decided was another reflection of my immediate need, but also distracting; heavy on my intentions. It took another longer minute to rid myself of the feeling. Strange how loud these “perceptions” were screaming out, like my own thudding heartbeats.

Void is emptiness. Emptiness is void. I found myself repeating the words over and over again; not saying them out loud, but softly thinking them, until I could almost follow the threads they were made out of unraveling farther and farther into an expanding cloud, until it became a booming basso mantra wrapping me into a metronomic beat that preached possession that promised eventual silence…until even the burden of its dissolution, its reason for existence, was no longer mine.

I was a cloud floating above a black and swollen river. If this was a flight, then it was that of a moth’s, sensing for a flame to burn myself into. Not to expire. To be part of it.

i had no idea...of course now you know we shall expect to see you more often in these parts.

Thanks, kc. Would it make some sense if I say that in a twisted way, silence brought forth out of dismal moments, or maybe not that...maybe even just somber quiet, can be beautiful?

It brings to the front a lot of things we either ignore or unintentionally overlook. Things that make us sad or happy, even things that render us defiant against life and its trials. Things we’ve never honored with a conscious pervading thought.

I think we need these moments, but not too much. If one would care to toss a bottleful of uplifting words to the human sea, it might do well to take the chance and toss oneself as well.

well to me all silence can be beautiful even though it is difficult to harness.

and yes it is in that sea where we find life, where we find ourselves, if we dare search.

To harness silence, just sit, neither in the presence of repose nor grief, listen to nothing, except for the strangely phonic feel of your toes etching figure-eights against those of the other foot, as if the thinly-scratchy roughness of boned-skin against another is the exact small sound necessary to greatly magnify the depth of non-feeling with which your soul can drop into; both an additive to the other to complete a darkly pregnant, even blearily empty, reverie.

Teeter, as on top of a questionably- sturdy fence, astride the knife-edged road between hope and resignation; the sum and substance of which holds you between daring to say a word, and forecasting the word’s uselessness...with a next step consigned to the certainty of a possible fall into an abysmal despondency.

Go between darkness and false dawn, in the middle of the only time that your world is most-likely to be at rest, and silent, there; you, awake or dreaming, find yourself, among all its fears and poetry, among its demons and beauty, among the wreckage of your soul-child’s dreams and the shining towers of hope grasping the tail of a future yet to be...there you swim straight into, around, before, beyond the birthing of a word, in speech, in a message you grapple into the sands of this sea.

harnessing used to come easy to me, now it seems, teetering is more the norm.

i do understand that skills once learned are not quickly forgotten, though the recipe's for the desired results sometimes fade into recesses seldom explored. it is returning to those places that, from time to time, seems less than obtainable.

all in due time, i suppose...

Ah, I know of those places, that space within ourselves, well within our souls, where we can lie down to rest. We spend time and countless words to define our need for it; as if to define it was a way to find it, as if analysis was to finally substantiate it — as if giving it shape and parameters was to finally find ourselves on some solid ground with which we can separate the reality of it from mere wishing. Yes, I, too know the need for it. All in due time.

There are days in my life when thinking leads me nowhere. I look out from the windows of my soul and see gray expanses. I measure those spaces out; expand and decrease both my ‘line of sight’ and the depth of that grayness, with perspectives varying only in degrees of desire, or the absence of it. Depending on how much a particular lack offends my sense of proportion, I try to splash bits of color onto that gray tapestry; a mental transposition of a remembered image of a bedewed leaf, a virtual imposition of a pair of impossibly-blue eyes, a rolling-out of a cherished memory of full black tresses curling down an alabaster cheek like huge falling teardrops. There are days when my thoughts simply are.

During these times, I tend to watch life go by. I do not do so out of cynicism, or out of any sense of complacency borne out of any feelings of superiority. Call it self-preservation, or call it by any other name except selfishness. For the most part, I am caught midstream in most things that affect my life; the flow of life only steadfast, only meaningful, for me, if my commitment was halfway total. But there are times when my involvement is better self-defined when I can lie back, as it were, on a bank, while the river of life rushes by. To seek that definition, nebulous as it usually is, gives my soul a basis to move in a gentle and peaceful direction. Almost all of my thoughts, if burdens they can suddenly become, are as nebulously real as the reflection of the night clouds on the surface of a lake.

Do you think any one of us really, ever stops dreaming? In the middle of strife, in the concourse where grief seems to gather and peak at its most painful, in the hardest grip of loss and in the most poignant of ecstasies, do our souls ever really stop dreaming? Do we ever stop wishing that some of our fantasies become as real as breathing?

There are days in my life when thinking leads me nowhere. In days like those, I am sadder than most, I am happier than most. I look out windows of my soul, see gray expanses, and fill them with the texture of wind slipping past my cheeks, to wipe the tang of absent tears from memory. I measure those spaces out, fill them with the laughter of everyone I have ever cherished, color them with the knowledge that there are days when thoughts must simply be themselves…and that, truly, there are times that are simply meant to be.

Wonderful! Good mornin miss Lace

BD! Hello!!! Nice to see you again.

bleaker than emptiness
gapes open that spring
where mystic fire had seemed
so undying
like heart-pumping dreams
the night before
subsiding
without a whimper at
the light of day

the soul cries out
one more time
like a heart coughing
up one last defiant breath
of air
how many wrongs
does it take to make one
right
how many vermillion
sunsets going home
does it take to greet
one sunrise
cleanly without
despair

Nicely done, I really enjoyed reading them!!

Hello, hello, hello, pkd!

~0~

i have learned, like a sailor on a ship
going through a reef passage, to sound
the depth and nuance of your every hello,
for i have no other way to know you

otherwise, no other recourse to seeing
how you might be coping with your life.
Of course, there must better ways
for measuring concern, or to show it,

but some things; like the effect
of civilization on a wild heart, like a
sudden storm ruining the seamless joining
of ship and sea, the quality of one hello…

some things need the relentless passing of
time to show them the unfolding course,
and whether there is still a moment left
to look forward to,perhaps; another sunrise,

the wanton splash of a wavetip against
the salt of my cheeks, the bite of a cold
morning seeping through my flesh into bone,
the freedom of the open sea unfolding

like one more smile, like one drenching hello.

so, hello, and well met; ship and sea,
sailor and night, anticipation and the exact
nuance of a meeting, the realization of one
segment of a disjointed dream floating

on the wisp of a briny sea, the merging
of twilight to darkness and into dawn,
all the unspoken words sandwiched between
friends and lovers and distance…

the disappointment of a larger, empty space
still unfilled and unfulfilled, the wanting
that will never end, the reaching out
of human hands and souls for a heaven;

a state of mind that will ever be imperfect,
the perfect nuance and cadence of a hello
embodying a missed warmth, an understanding
that no one else had ever shown before…

hello…hello…hello…

I want a drenching hello Great poem, great line.

I am amazed
at how things around us
GROW each day -
like a baby slowly
becoming a child,
a seed becoming a plant
or a bud blooming into a flower.
Such is the wonder of LIFE.

This is the same kind of
amazement
I have as I stare
at the growing toenail
on my big toe.
It used to be just
a small whitish speck.
Weeks after, it is now
occupying one-third
of the space left
by the toenail that
was once there.
WOW!

I am not even remotely brilliant
in any two-minute way,
or in any explosive manner
you want to name.
I merely perceive my world
through my reactions to it;
the quality of my own mortifications,
the incongruous way speechlessness
takes over my senses
when beholding wonders,
the easy way words run into the meadows
to chase feelings and butterfly wings.

Hello, kc!

hi

Fully enjoyed and hope you continue to add

Thank you, LAMom!