On This Sea of White Light

I sit here by myself.
I am solitary. As usual,
Yet I’m speaking to you.
You are sitting there,
alone in your chair.
Yet you are listening to me.
Our hermit lives aren’t wrong,
just separate from the throng,
a decision made in a moment,
over a lifetime.
But by whom?
Them? Him? Her? Us?
You? Me?
Yes. The simple answer.
We are exiles, banished,
displaced, singletons,
because no one wants us,
sometimes not even ourselves.
But even in exile, we are together.
Because I am speaking to You
(yes, You)
and you are listening to me
(yes, still Me),
in our solitary confinements
we share with a world,
each other and no one else.
Soon I’ll rise from this island,
as will you from yours,
but you’ll not be alone
because I’m with you now.
And, on this sea of white light,
you’re exiled with me.

Day 25. An “exile” poem.

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Caught Upon His Heart

He never actually tried to catch her,
but she clung to him like a cocklebur
at his every move and thought.
And when he tried to remove her,
she stung him sorely, even drawing
some of his blood. Because it turns out
she was caught upon his heart.

She never really tried to catch him,
but he’d bull through her space
as men do. Men are about the catch,
the possess, whether they catch
that truth or not. And when he tried
touching her, she’d sting him sorely,
even drawing blood, as if she caught
upon his heart.

Now he no longer enters her space,
too tired of fighting her inadvertent cling
and too chastened from her deliberate sting.
Sometimes she’ll pick through the old days
when he’d carry off a piece of her.
She pretty sure doesn’t miss him,
but might miss being caught upon his heart.

Day 16. A “catch and/or release” poem. Maybe I did both here. Perhaps this is the only way I can tell stories anymore.

No Boundaries: To Those Canadian Girls

I’ve known a few Canadian girls,
though most I’ve never met.
Some from tiny prairie towns,
others from big cities, and yet
the one thing they all share,
is a toughness wrapped in sweet.
Maybe it’s because of their winters,
where they learn to make their own heat
as they walk to school in icy chills
a Carolina girl would say no over.
A Canadian girl will just smile and say,
“What’s the matter, eh? It’s only October!”
I know that it’s quite silly, though,
to lump all these girls together.
Each one is different, as you would see,
if you knew Joanne, Tasha, and Heather.
So I dedicate this poem to the ladies
from the Land of the Maple Leaf red.
I love them and the way they speak,
from sea to mer and from A to Zed.

On Day 11 of Poem-a-Day Challenge, a Dedication poem. And, since it’s the birthday of two of my dear Canadian “friends I never met’ (© Heather Grace Stewart), I figured this would be a good day and way to express my appreciation and affection for the ladies who’ve been so kind to me from The Great White North.

I’d Love It Otherwise

I’ve talked about you so, so many times
you would think by now I understand you.
But no, seems you’re just a frame for these rhymes.
In my heart, I know it’s all I can do.

Because you are that thing that makes me weak,
and weakness has always been my power.
While your touch has ever been what I seek,
even touched, I’d more than likely cower.

If one day, emotion, strength and insight
might somehow stir me to honest action,
you’ll know I finally won this long fight
between truth and a fantasy attraction.

It feels just like demonic possession,
my love’s just another great obsession.

Day 9 of my NaPoWriMo poem-a-day challenge, a two-fer. When asked to write a Love and/or Anti-love poem, I ended up writing one that could be either…AND both.

The Look Before You Love Lesson ~ A Sonnet

“Where’s your sense of adventure?” Kev inquired,
since it wasn’t his puppy in the fight.
“I don’t know. What if she’s uninspired?”
I replied, wishing I had his insight.

“You’ll make none of the shots you never take,”
the old gunner said. “Don’t you want to score?”
Of course I did, but I’d never be a rake
like him, with girls lined up outside my door.

Blinded by his courage, I called her room,
first checking if it was too late an hour.
But a guy answered, like the voice of doom:
“Karen can’t come now, she’s in the shower.”

Thus, I never became a Lothario.
Why tempt another worst case scenario?

Day 2 of the NaPoWriMo April Poem-a-Day Challenge. A “worst case” poem. Mulling a “best case” one, but we all know loss and failure are my métier.

Leafing Through My Memory

There are times I still see You,
though surely not how you are now.
The You I see is green and supple,
bouncing upon a branch
with scores more of your kind.
And yet I see You.
But this is how it goes
with a man such as I,
who sees a You like no other.
You who have been ripped
from that tree, buffeted
and sucked dry of your youth,
now stuck in a place where
the winds will not let you go.
But I see You as you were.
Since I was always one to miss
the forest for the tree,
miss the whole tree for your leaf.
And now I miss your leaf
for the space it has left
in my mind’s sky.

How Heavy the Heart

I never knew sitting
could be so hard on the heart,
but I can feel it pounding
where you once touched my chest.
The banging beat isn’t what’s
wrung so much shelf life
from this physical and poetic
pump, it’s more than likely
that once you did touch it.

Silly that a heart can wear out
just by a man sweating remembrance
of things that never happened
from a mind that chooses
not to know any better.

But that’s a man for you,
the kind of being who’ll
give up one life to share
another, even if it’s
one in which the lifting’s
not extreme. But the weight
of a life full of nothing
is always heavier, even when
all you do is sit to lift it.