Coffee Talk

Thanks to Cyanidemind for sharing

 

your tumbling waterfall of brown
once a mere stream
spills over and around the jagged scars and precipices
comprising the high altitude
i can see over it by three inches
hills and curves do not make beauty; rather, enhance it
yours aren’t verdant but tan; not excessive but supple
i remember the pasture that started at their base
the few nooks in the side
“what are they from?”
a long pause and a queer look
“i have them on my wrist too”
the running wolf on the limb
sees eye to eye with my third eye
our very own cave paintings indelibly marked
further down the bark, the avian rests
what a clever inversion
i could spend as much time on the lower trees
but for one, that special one, a rose
forever carved into the base
it’s matched by one with three more petals
on the sapling from which your seed was born
two roses in one forest, one on mother, one on daughter
i’ve been lost in you before, seven years spent wandering blindly
misguided, directionless, losing my breath with every further step
until i finally managed to escape the bramble
i freed myself of your grasping vines and your choking leaves
then you encroached again
i, like any fool, decided to take the hike a second time
was senseless enough to believe it might just be different
but though the seasons change
some people never do.

 

 

How did we get here

To the place where more’s wrong than right

When “I love you” becomes “I hate you”

All in the course of one night

When did things becomes so miserable

That life seemed better on our own

Living different lives completely

Like ships passing in the night

We said for better or worse

And the latter seems to apply

When did we get to this awful place

When all I seem to do is cry

We’re playing house, assuming roles

These are your jobs and here’s mine

Nothing share, no joy found

Hardly the simpliest touch

What happened to those happy days

When ‘I love you’ meant so much

The smallest gestures were the biggest things

Could brighten any day

Now in their place lay deep dark shadows

Where misery has come to stay

 

I want them back, those joyful days

When everything seemed right

I’m tired of all the dark days

Days when all we do is fight

I want to know that joy again

Those days when I could let you in

 

 

They’re the words I never say
The things I know would change everything
The thoughts I can’t excuse
The moments I wish I could steal
The moments with just me and you
The way you softly say my name
The way the moon gently lights your face
The fact that it’s here in your arms
That I know that I am safe

To hold these moments always
Let nothing steal them away
It’s those times when it’s just the two of us
That I revel in your embrace
I cherish each one of those precious times
I’ll hold them always near

Those words unspoken

Even if it’s only in my heart

 

I sometimes wonder where yesterday lives

where the smiles, happiness and joy survive

Where the laughter love and thrill of the first years thrive

Where the romance of the first few moments are still alive.

 

I wish for those moments, the smiles love and the laughter

I guess young girls, we dream of happily ever afters

Yet as we grow up we learn the painful bumps come

As romance fades and real life begins

We learn to take the bumps with the wins

We take every day, every breathe for what it gives

We try not to think of where yesterday lives.

Happy for each day that goes by

As pitter patters of little feet turn to the soft thump

Of young peoples heart beats

As parents we don’t ever retreat

We never accept defeat

And so as we go on with life

Though it is full of pain and strife

We take our joy, our smiles and our strength

From memories we think upon at great length

We drink it all in, filling with love from within

One thing rises above the din

As we take every moment and the gifts that it gives

Think back tomorrow on where yesterday lives.

I want to thank the writer of the piece, B. Rose for allowing me to use this for my blog.  I’m honored that you would entrust it to me.

“Things are good.”

“Yeah, I’m living.  Doing what I gotta do.”

 

“I’m Surviving….”

 

Responses and statements made to quiet the masses.  The askers.

The inquirers who pretend to care, who put on a facade not even half as sturdy as mine.

This face, this expression, this mask.  This laugh inevitably echoed from my throat passage to avoid release of haunting screams that would flood my being to its core.

This smile erratically painted across the cold, hard, surface of the falsity worn daily.

The secrets burned into the recess, the desires unspoken, wailing into the chambers of a war battered heart.

 

You’ll never know the difference.

 

You ask.

You talk.

You care…as much as you need to.

To sate the lingering desire of life to have it’s every move exposed.

How it undulates and crashes, wave after wave, until the current sweeps you into an endless whirlpool.

 

You laugh.

You cry.

You Love….as much as required.

To fulfill your thinly veiled pretense of humanity.

 

You’re just another actor who doesn’t know their role in this stage-play.

The script you were given.

Is littered with typos and clipped scenes.

You’re just too blind to see, that’s fine.

I see it.

I’ll read my script and yours.

 

Because MY script is as inept as yours.

See, I’m just good at acting, imagining the scars don’t hurt.

They don’t exist;

“Nah, I’m okay, they were just talking, you know me, words mean nothing…”

 

And all this….this perspective I’ve been revealing.  Don’t mind it.

…I’m just pretending…

 

 

Foolish games

We push and pull

Give and take

And at that end it still all breaks

Foolish games

Lovers and haters

We leave ourselves

With no room for favors

Foolish games

We play with our hearts

Stringing emotions along

Until it’s ashes left

The flames died down

The passion gone

Empty arms tangled bedsheets

The only evidence of the fires that burned

Foolish games

 

 

 

In the space between infatuation and love

In the depths of not knowing

In the darkness of not having a clue

I got lost

I let myself disappear into the dream

I gave up, gave into the fantasy he created

To the desires of what I wanted

Before things got so complicated

I gave myself over to the music

The sweet symphony of the lie

 

I hate this in between place

Between cold silence and hot passion

When I look back at the night before

Knowing it never should have happened

Should never have given myself over to your embrace

Should never have let you see the tears course down my face

Heartbroken I cry in quiet solitude

Wanting more desperate for each breathe from you

Shattered, broken and aching inside

I have to believe it wasn’t all a lie

 

 

 

 

 

 

Do you see me?

Not the picture I give the world

The happy smile

The perfect face

Every stitch of makeup exactly in place

Do you see me?

The scared little girl behind the glass

Staring through the window watching life pass

Wondering when it’s going to be her turn

Waiting for all the lessons yet to learn

Do you see me?

The struggling mother

Doing the best she can

Living day to day

Trying to figure out the plan

Where does she go from here?

Do you see me?

The devastated woman down on her knees

The empty vessel

Terrified of where life leads

Do you see me?

Wandering lost lonely and hopeless

Gazing into the darkness

Fighting for each breath

Chest heaving

Heart pounding as I take that next step

Do you see me?

Friends, peers, parents

Looking on in anticipation of the next fall

Say they know me

Have been there through it all

But that still begs the question …

Do you see me at all?

 

 

Change is a whisper, it’s a season.  It’s a slow and quiet thing.  ~ Chase

 

They say change is a part of life.  Like the seasons changing summer drifts slowly into fall, leaves dropping their florescent green shades for the glorious warming amber, red and gold’s.  Fall quietly drifts into winter the soft white snow muffles the world, dipping it into a solemn slumber of sorts. Winter lazily phases into spring, new life blossoms and the world erupts again with color and splendor.  It’s a slow gradual process, one season fading into the next in a nature progression.  There’s a peace and tranquility about changes like that.  But life isn’t always like that; changes don’t always start as an imperceptible hiccup.  Some times change is thrust upon you in such a manner than you either fight like hell to keep your head above water, take it one day at a time, or you drown in the onslaught of the fast rising tides.  During those times there are days that you feel as if there’s nothing you can do to fight the rising tides, that no matter how you handle the next situation you’re going to drown.  All you see before you is a rising wall of water, no way out or to way to overcome.  And then your instincts kick in and suddenly you’re on the other side of that massive curtain of chaos.

 

A year ago my world was torn to shreds.  I married young; to the person I thought I would be spending the rest of my life with.  To the man I thought held my forever in his hands, who I had given my heart, my life, my everything to.  March 4 2010 he came home from work, showered and changed to head out for an evening on the town with friends, promising to be home by 10.  When he walked through the door nearly 2 hrs late everything I had counted on went up in smoke.  In an instant everything that I had worked so hard to keep together was blown into nothing.  An argument over car keys turned into the next hour of hell as I fought to get out of my own apartment.  Somewhere in the process my cell phone got crushed against a wall, the phone home jerked off the wall, the jack mangled, a total of 5 fist sized holes put in the wall, 3 in the door and a human sized dent put in the wall as I was pushed, shoved and backed into a corner.  As my children stood in the hallway terrified screaming for him to stop, they watched their father put his hands around my neck and as my son would later describe “daddy try to choke mommy to death”.   Clothes torn, emotionally spent, body bruised I finally made it out of the apartment and managed to call the police.  By the time they arrived he had bundled up our children and was trying (still drunk) to get behind the wheel of the van with them inside.  What ensued after his arrest was probably some of the lowest days of my life as I tried to piece back together what was left of a devastated dream, wounded spirit and broken heart.    There were days I would wake up and I think “I can do this; you know I feel good today!”  And other days when I was sure that there was no way I was going to make it through the day much less the next hour.  I remember crying myself to sleep night after night; I would lay there with my arms wrapped as tightly around myself as I could.  It was as if I was holding myself together with those arms, holding the last shreds of myself together.  Watching someone you’ve loved that deeply, that fiercely, walk away; leaves a chasm inside that feels like it would span eternity.  It’s as if a piece of my soul went missing, and after a while I began to wonder if I would ever be the same again.   Every breathe seems to hurt, the smallest sighs tear you apart, the tears are never ending, and as I sank deeper into that darkness, into that overwhelming depth of despair and depression I wondered if anything is ever going to be able to pull me out.  And just when I thought that suffocating blackness was going to overtake, when I’d reached that breaking point and didn’t think I could take anymore, there’s a tiny crack in the ceiling.  Suddenly a little stream of light breaks its way through the dense fog that I had spent so many months just “surviving” (because that’s not really living) and a shard of hope came through.  Like a star shooting across my universe that moment hit with startling clarity.  I raised my head out of the chaos and realized that it wasn’t over.  My life hadn’t come to an end, even though I felt as though my world had exploded around me, and everything I had come to count on as permanent was forever changed.  I could hold my head up, dust myself off and know that I was eventually going to be ok.

Some say it takes a month of mourning for every year you’ve been with someone to get over a break up.  That it’s similar to grieving a death because you’ve lost something very dear to you that you’ll never get back.  It’s the shattering of a dream, the finality of it is excruciatingly painful, beyond anything you can ever imagine unless you’ve gone through it yourself.  Losing half of a whole, the other part of yourself being torn away.  But when the fog started to clear, and I started to step out of the bubble I had closed myself into, the world exploded with colors around me again.  Deep, rich and vibrant, new doors opened as old ones closed, the possibilities for what comes next stretch out before me like an unending highway.  As I begin to pick up the pieces of the tattered dreams and the devastated expectations, I am reminded that this is my time.  My time to stand on my own two feet, to make my own path, my own decisions.  This is my time to find the strength I’ve never known I had, my time to dig deep and find the perseverance to push myself through the tough days.  My world is open and spreading out in front of me, where I go from here is up to me and me alone.  I can spread my wings and soar.

“Wheresoever you go, go with all your heart.” ~ Confucius

 

 

 

 

Just a quick shout out to Jimmy Kane … recently nominated in th UK for Independent Artist of the Year.  Congrats JK I’m proud of you.  I can’t wait to see what comes next.  (And I’m still doing the told you so dance!)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kU1g8Lgx8t0

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bwoo7WJNIC0