Her World No More
You left her lying in the field,
sad, afraid, and broken;
you always pointed out her flaws,
but her value was left unspoken.
There was a time you made her walk
behind, in your shadow...
and even then, you put her down
to drop her self-worth low.
Luckily, you didn’t know her
strength or resolution;
you underestimated her
resilient constitution.
She crawled across your fading tracks,
and stood on her own two feet,
then grew and thrived, for even bruised,
her loving heart stayed sweet.
She came across a cave of gray,
where I had crept to hide
and wait until the Grim Reaper
found me asleep inside.
She knew I’d been her first true love,
and saw past all my scars;
her perfect voice woke up my soul,
and warmed my cooling heart.
For she had been my first love too,
back in the days of our youth,
and even though I’d messed it up,
her heart still knew my truth.
So I must give you thanks today,
though friends we’ll never be;
you had her once, but did her wrong,
and now she’s safe with me.
———————---
© 2023 - dustygrein
(based on Christina's World, by Andrew Wyeth)
Les Amants: Till the Gallows Do We Part
No promise can be forcibly broken
if we insist that nothing comes between us.
This cloth sundering our lips
is merely the grand drape of our affaire—
Never their barricade to our love.
Our passion is an insurgency that will blaze on post-mortem despite it.
A linen kiss;
Our crowning embrace until we head for the gallows.
The audience clusters outside to behold the finale of our melodrama,
and I yearn for your naked touch once more.
We squeeze with the thrills of memories afar.
and soon memories afar are all we’ll be, but not without this last mutiny.
Our love is why we’re here
so, it’s only fitting that this is how we’ll part.
If only we had run away instead,
we could’ve left our decrepit marriages dust bound—
Never stealing from our spouses their lives,
but we wanted each other so badly, we consummated our new life with murder.
As the noose is placed around our necks, our future is revealed;
It used to be a cabin in the woods—creek side in autumn.
A rope swing hung from a front yard maple; A few leaves fluttered down.
Our kids chased the dog in the yard or she was chasing them. We never knew.
but now this Townsquare has become our château des bois and our maple has been cut and formed into a stage with a drop floor and a single rafter.
I'm glad the rope still swings freely.
Lines of blood form our signatures on death certificates,
as the last words from condemned lovers are confessed.
“Our love was a sin coiled around our hearts,
and we were unconscious of it until we’d became its servant.
We stand proud of our reasons, but not our actions.
Our admission heeds a warning to any lovers too weak to see it through, like us.
I did the deed myself and she drew up the plans. For our love, for everything that we ever felt, and for the possibility of true happiness
we would do it all over again, tomorrow.”
The floor opens…
...Catherine Miller and George Smith parted ways at the Gallows on Feb 3rd, 1881. It was 11:20 am.
The clouds shed not one tear for them. It was a relatively sunny day.
the Painting:
The Lovers (Les Amants) by René Magritte
1928. Oil on canvas, 21 3/8 x 28 7/8" (54 x 73.4 cm)
© 2023 Chris Sadhill
The Great Masturbator
raise the grasshoppers legs
to your lips
taste the glory
as you shed your form for pleasure,
that amorphous self,
twisting into something almost impossible
to recognize.
something formed of pale flesh
but not quite human,
ascending, flesh rippling
under the soft touch of her ghostly lips,
balancing fears
like rocks upon the skull
distant
for a moment,
sweet relief
found only in images of her
face stretched towards your legs
mere seconds away from
release.
but there are
cracks in this facade.
ants along the grasshopper
feeding
crawling
twisting at the seams
a face within the folds
of your cheeks,
laughing
leering
and from your neck
the roots of rot spread.
you can only have a temporary relief
before the distortion claims you.
golden hair sweeping the space between
your thighs
until it returns
to the rag you had before.
lips return to fingers
and fantasy dies,
reality returns,
a constant battle between
the eternal now
and
the persistence
of memory.
The Fallen Angel
It's been so long now but still, I remember.
Alexandre painted me well, did he not?
I wonder who gave him the vision, I wonder why...
It seems I must have a few admirers in heaven.
The world imagined Satan ugly.
A snake, a beast.
Forgetting, despite how wrong they are about me, that evil is rarely ever hideous on the outside.
It festers where you can't see it
Until it is too late.
No victor, no vanquished.
I had love for my father.
I suppose that was what caused the tears most of all.
Beneath every other emotion - the anger, betrayal, that shameful feeling of being humiliated so, the fear of what would come next...
My love burned through it all, twisting like a dull knife in an already shattered heart.
Like the child I was, I had only wished for his attention.
For him to truly see me.
I was only a babe, then.
I do not regret any of my decisions, it was as it was to be but
Even now, I can feel the heaviness and change forever marked upon my self that came with being suddenly away from home for the first time.
The strangeness of your air, your surfaces and textures...
Rock and sea,
Oxygen and gravity.
It was decidedly too much.
Perhaps I should have let it break me.
But I wouldn't be God's fallen favourite if I wasn't too strong and too proud to rise, regardless.
All these years past,
I do not forgive, nor do I forget,
I simply choose not to care, anymore.
Because the fall, painful as it felt then, was nothing more than fate.
And now I have a kingdom of my own to take care of.
A hell where the scum of his creation come to pay their dues.
It isn't a job I take lightly.
My pride has been restored, you could say.
He would tell you my ego is insufferable
But he's the one who agrees to our curious little games from time to time,
Those brief conversations along the millenia...
Perhaps he misses me a little, after all.
A Pathway In Monet’s Garden
A brilliant path to walk along
A colorful song
Easy to lose my way
Life leads you to stray
Blinding
Confining
film covers my eye
from all I cry
The light scatters
Unable to see what matters
I have to think
I have to blink
Take a breathe
Accept
Open up to see
The beauty in front of me
A masterpiece of art
filling my heart
Life in true color
Path of wonderment and discover
White on White: Kazimir Malevich, 1918
We pick up
the pieces
and put them back
together washed
and squared
and its
never
what it
was
but
who's
to say
that what
was
was
worth
keeping
anyway?
and the what
that remains ajar
the paste, polishes and paints
a more accurate picture
in the frames
of Yesterday...
The canvas's never blank
but is always man made
and she stands before Michaelangelo
where neither can speak
because the point of reference
divides
the two and the three
a spectrum of light
beamed
in excavation
between fossil and bone
the mind and the body
parting like foam
in the mouth
where life is
escaping
the blast...
white on white
05.16.2023
Suprematist Composition: White on White
Kazimir Malevich 1918
https://www.moma.org/collection/works/80385
Imitating Art challenge @TheWolfeDen
Imprisoned
From Danella Rivas’s “El Camino de Esmeralda”
—————————————————
Cowering in fear of those angry eyes,
Of those angered lips which brought the curse
She hides even now when she cannot be touched
In her prison in the frame
What brought her here?
That innocent face,
No sin could she have done!
But to her eternal shame
The witch displayed her guilt
What guilt?
The egg
Yes the egg,
The implanted egg
The egg that found its match
And thus it shall remain
While she cowers in her shame
In her prison in the frame
She cannot run
She cannot hide
Forevermore naked, weak she cries
Of things she should not have seen
Things she should not have seen!
Him!! And his lustful intent!
She could not have seen and this fell victim by
But now she bears his shame
Oh regret! How dearly she feels it!
How permanent her fear of him!
How vulnerable and wrecked she is!
And shall be evermore
Crisp and open in the frame
How pained she is when he passes by!
And how disturbed the footsteps that pass
He must not look, or must he?
For the guilt is his as well
Those eyes that trapped him in desire
Are trapped now in the frame,
In that look of fear and shame
And trapped forever in the frame
Starry Night
Despair is all I've known
As I lay in this room weak and alone
With no happiness nor a home
Only one thing in this world can remember me as I lie
The stars shining upon the navy blue sky
"Come with me," a soft voice whispered from the night
I could not answer in my fright
As it was not from the night
But from my mind
"Why do you fear the stars?"
"I do not fear the stars but the emotions they show I feel so raw"
The need of acceptance in the eleven stars is all I see
As the mourning cypress tree scratches the window beside me
My mind only swirls with the wind in the sky
As I focus on the crescent moon, stars and village in their dim but hopeful light
In this quiet peace is something I might find
As I find my thoughts go astray
'I often think the night is more alive and more richly colored than the day'
