grail

keyhole

peering the eye sees only a fraction
the one inside
has the power
the invisible boundary
manifests at the door
twisting, the key, sealed
why is it the senses are piqued
when the view is limited
more, more, more
greed, lust, apathy, danger
what happens behind the door
isn't common
nothing can be assumed
create the focus
watching a person that doesn't know they
are being watched
slide a letter under the door
change the awareness
hide

depict dissociation

If I snip right here is this where I'm bound?
If I remove the top layer does the chasm appear?
Will I look into nothing and see you, in a faraway place.
Doing the things that you do.
Undetectable by your human senses
in a place the air is still
will motion dissociate from the laws of physics
in a place that my thoughts can't escape.
If I could shut off my presence like a switch
and vanish, would you notice?
I'm curious, but I don't care to know
that emptiness anymore
It took effort to ignore me
Was it fun
Did it feel good?
Was that what you needed?
a name confirmed, made one
It feels like a wedge
is being driven into me
splitting me in two
take the doubt and worry

presents

Let me get out of your way.
--You're not in my way.
I feel like I am.
I feel like I'm holding you here.
You're a star, you should be up there really high.
Not down here where I am.
--I'm here for me, I want to be here.
I don't want to share this.
I want to be greedy.
I feel like I only get a part of you, and they get the rest.
--No, you get all of me, and they get an illusion.
--You know my heart, they see what they hope to see.
I find it hard to be gracious, when things are like this.
When I hear things other than what is being said.
When I see things other than what is before me.
You have beautiful hands.
I always took a hostage to gauge my progress.
--honesty!
--I can see through you, I can see life through you.
--I can't see through them they are full of themselves.
I feel like I took you hostage.
Now it's me that's captured.
Strange how life presents itself over time.

LADY IN BLACK by Silke Liria©

She came in black rags, sat down at the fireplace and did not move anymore before spring flowers put their heads out of forgottenness.

What do you want? I said. I cannot share my food with you because I am starving. I cannot tell you stories because nothing happens. And I cannot sing you songs because the joy bird has flown away with the first rainfalls.

Sssht, said the uninvited guest. I will give you to eat. And she got out of her pocket a dirty piece of bread and broke it in two.

I thanked her, went to the toiled and flushed it down. I did not want to eat. I was too tired for food.

Come here, the crone ordered. I can tell you stories.

I stood up, with the pretext of measuring the snow in front of the cottage.

The door was closed. That old beggar in black clothes had shut me in, together with herself. I did not have the strength to jump out of the window. Anyway there was no place to go to. Nobody to open a door and to boil you an egg.

Okay, I said, you have won. So you can also tell me a story. But I hate stories. They are sad when they talk about the black and white winter, and they make me sad when they talk of the colours of summer.

There is a line between summer and winter, the old lady said. This is where stories are made.

My fear was rising. Stories were either dreadful and hurt me, or they were beautiful and hurt me even more. Yet the burden of my invisible self was too big. I did not have the strength anymore to cover my ears and just laid my head onto my arms on the rough, wooden table.

Suddenly the old lady began to hum. They were just simple tunes of only one or two notes. They had no words and therefore bare no memory. They could not hurt.

I lifted my head, laid it down again on the side, observed the old woman with one eye and put my thumb into my mouth, like a human plant sprouting out of the damp ground. Humming had no history and therefore did not hurt. It was something in this dire world to hold onto.

Slowly, slowly, the shadows receded.

Silke Liria©
_

Bastet has Wings by Nona Morris©

The vet tried to stay calm, act like every third cat she'd seen that
day had wings, but she wasn't fooling me. Cats just don't have wings.
Never did. Never would.

"She didn't have them last week" I told the vet, tugging on the leash
attached to my cat's harness, trying to pull her back down to the
ground. She was intently stalking a housefly that had gotten in.
Stalking in mid-air. The birds didn't stand a chance.

"I'm sorry." She said. "I don't know if I can do a wing removal on a
cat. It might be inhumane. I could clip the feathers though, keep
her from being able to fly."

"That would be nice" I agreed.

Together we managed to pull her down from the ceiling. She pouted
through the process, and pouted more when she tried to lift off and
coudln't. Finally she gave up and set upon grooming herself. She
spread out one wing and began preening its feathers.

"How did this happen, exactly." The vet asked.

"Mummy curse."

"Oh," the vet said, as if mummy curses were as common in her office as
winged cats.

"I have a cousin, works in Egypt, digging in the pyramids and stuff.
He found a gold collar on a kitty statue, said the statue looked like
Bast. He's not supposed to give away stuff, but he hid it in a bunch
of trinkets he bought, nobody knew."

"And now Bast has wings." she finished for me.

"Exactly," I agreed. "Now Bast has wings."

"Sooooo...." she said. "I won't charge you today, but come back when
she needs it."

I agreed, and tucking my newly grounded cat under my arm, started the
walk back home.

--
Nona Morris©
http://yummydown.com

Breakfast by Nona Morris©

Martha was sitting at the table when I woke up. The newspaper was
scattered all around the dining room. The comic lay on the floor by
her feet, Garfield grinning his kitty grin up at her as she bent over
the crossword.

Despite the early hour she was perfect. Make up applied just so, her
auburn hair piled and pinned and teased into an updo worthy of an
evening gala. The only flaw was the cigarette she held between the
first two fingers of her left hand, while the tapped the pencil
against her lips with her right hand.

Seeing me out of the corner of her honey colored eyes she asked, "What
is a five letter word for Rose's beauty?"

I made my way to the pot of coffee she had made and poured myself a
healthy dose of it in my favorite coffee mug, as old and chipped as it
was it was large. Large was important.

"What's it start with?"

"B"

I sat down across from her and pushed the sports section of the paper
aside so I'd have a place to sit my mug. "Bloom" I told her, reaching
across to take a chocolate covered doughnut out of the box she had set
in the center of the table.

I ate in silence, staring at her as she worked her way though the word
puzzle. She sipped her coffee, nearly white with cream and sugar, from
a pink mug that sat on a bright blue saucer. They were not mine.

"Nice coffee set"

"You like?" she beamed. "I found them at a tag sale. From two
different sets, the last of their families. They're perfect together
really. Perfect."

Giving up on the crossword she looked up at me, grinning her most
perfect supermodel grin. "So," she said. "How have you been?"

I couldn't take it anymore and nearly shouted at her, "What are you
doing here, Martha? You can't just come in here any time you want to.
I'm married now. What if Susan had come out here before me?"

"What if?" Martha said, and laughed. I didn't like the sparkle in
those beautiful eyes, then they darkened. "She's pregnant isn't she,
you fertile little bastard. Well, I'm pregnant too. Twins. Twins, a
boy and a girl. Blue and pink and unwanted."

She set her pink cup down on her blue saucer, and milky tan coffee
sloshed out and onto the crossword. Down the hall I heard Susan
brushing her teeth.

"Martha, you need to leave. Now."

"They're yours," she said. "You know they are."

"Leave. Now."

She stood up calmly, brushed out the wrinkles in her slacks, tugged at
the hem of her jacket. She started to say something, then decided
against it.

While I stood by the remains of my newspaper she let herself out the
side door. I made a mental note to move the hideaway key.

"Who was here," Susan said as she slumped into the kitchen still
wearing her pajamas. Her short brown hair stood up in a million
different directions and she had a smear of toothpaste in the corner
of her mouth.

"Just somebody from work," I lied.

"This early," she asked, eyeing the pink and blue coffee set with a
glazed doughnut untouched on the side of the plate.

"Have a doughnut," I said, changing the subject. She chose one covered
in bright sprinkle and tore into it while I poured her a cup of coffee
then cleaned up the now soggy newspaper.

by Nona Morris©

for more:
http://yummydown.com

Lady of the Wood by Jay King©

Moss bedecked and shroom adorned,
she bade me enter her wooden glade.
No sooner had I than she moaned,
"I'm not the woman you think you've laid." Jay King©

listen:
http://audiolingo.org/podcasts/AL006_050824_EncycloBotanica.mp3

http://hiddenmissives.blogspot.com/

"Juicy Pens, Thirsty Paper" by Wildjean©

My pen is one of my most important tools; sure, some prefer their
computers but for my journal and for writing reports, I prefer to
start with my pen. It doesn't have to be a particular pen- but it does
have to be a pen with ink an other color from black or blue- unless it
is a really different blue,
It fits my hand and my thoughts just seem to pour out of it.
SARK will be in Atlanta soon and she has a new book out called
"Juicy Pens, Thirsty Paper". That is how it feels when I start to
write. My paper craves the pen and my hands crave the pen and paper.
They all go together.
Pink pens, red pens, green pens, purple pens, orange pens,.burgundy
pens, aqua pens just pouring their ink all over the place and tellilng
my secrets or just my thoughts and or opinions. Although it is often
too fast to get my pen to paper but it still speaks my name, my ideas
and my life. The pens and paper call to me under many different
situations.
My thoughts and consciousness are slipping away from me. I am so so
sleepy.
"Juicy Pens, Thirsty Paper" Hummmmmmmmmm Hummmmm.
Yeah

Wildjean©

The Age of Love by Ron Berry©

“I’ve been waiting forty years to meet this guy.”

“How could you have? You’re only Forty-eight and that guy is in his sixties? Why not find someone your own age?”

“I needed the first eight years to learn how to read and the math to count my spinster years. As for my age, it really doesn’t matter. But, the ones my age are either married or ones I would never consider.”

Of all factors to consider when selecting a partner for life, age is not one of them. Why should it make any difference? Does love at thirty evolve into something different at fifty? No. It is an emotion fueled by hormones and upbringing. Age has the same meaning as skin color, none.

People mature at different rates. It’s a well-known fact that females mature earlier than males. But that is not true for everybody. It is often the underlying cause for marital distress in younger couples. Another major disparity is intellectual incompatibility. This does not imply one is smarter than the other. It does mean that each person’s interest and skills are so far apart that they have no common grounds for discussions. Again, this usually affects the younger couples.

So what makes me the expert? I’m not. But many years of observation and a few experiences allow me to offer my opinion.

If age isn’t a factor for a solid relationship, what is? Economics plays a small part. But overall, the primary and really only factor is personality. Most happily married couples think alike. If one is quiet and reserved, the odds are the mate will be also. A solid relationship is one in which each can sense the others moods and act accordingly.

The more mature couples, the ones that find their ideal mates later in life are able to base their decisions on personal experiences. They know what they like and what they expect. They do not want someone to enter their life and make dramatic changes. Nor do they plan to remake their partner. To do this, they have changed the person they selected and it usually does not go over well.

Where did age come into play? It didn’t. Does it matter which gender is older? No. The only thing that matters, the only factor or actually factors, that determine a good relationship are love and similar personalities. Love, romantic especially, is the one emotion that cannot be adequately described with words. You know it when you feel it.

by Ron Berry©
http://theessaywriter.tripod.com/blog/

http://rons-pdf-site.tripod.com/

TRAVELING BY BUS THROUGH ALBANIA by Silke Liria©

It is such a bliss to travel by bus through Albania.

It is so calming to relax on the bus seat and to be carried to far- away places with other friends, through majestic mountains, along deep turquoise rivers and the enchanting sea with its ever-varying rocky bays, passing historical cities with imposing fortresses and beautiful white villages with modest peasants with goodness in every wrinkle. As I cannot read or study on the mostly mountainous roads, I am forced to slow down, to do nothing except enjoying the journey. And I let my thoughts go and find inner peace in this scenery. I am led to philosophy, to think and feel my projects further on from an intuitive side. Each time I return from such a trip, I have become a bit wiser.

The greatest richness of traveling by bus is meeting marvelous people and having a great time. As we are together for several hours, we often begin to form a kind of community. Most bus drivers from the lines Saranda-Tirana-Kosova and Tirana-Tetova know me and are my friends. When I change the bus in Tirana or get into the bus in Prizren, they call me "Saranda!" In buses I have conversed with shepherds and writers, retired people and children. On my last trip from Tirana to the yearly poetry festival in Macedonia, the bus drivers and I gave each other nicknames, in the restaurant we toasted with salt and pepper, and with two students I danced in the bus at four o'clock in the morning! In most of the cases, some passenger or bus driver invites me to eat in one of the restaurants on the road. In the night bus through the night mountains in the North, I am overtired when the bus stops for the second or the third time, anywhere between Rubik and Kukës. Are we in Fushë Arrëz, in Lajthiza, in Shemria? I drag myself out of the bus into the cold air to have a coffee or mountain tea with my friends.

I always admire to what extent the bus drivers feel responsible for all their passengers. Their mobile phone does not stop. They ensure the smooth getting on the right bus or find a hotel for vacationists who come spontaneously to Saranda. Waiting relatives and friends are informed at what time the bus will arrive.. In the buses to Macedonia, we are also offered tea and coffee and sweets, as if we were in a plane. The modern buses to Kosova have video equipment, and mostly we watch New Year videos with popular music and turbo folk and silly humor. Whereas in the older buses in the South, the musical background is the cheerful chatter of the moderator of "Top Albania Radio", who rolls her R in the Tiranian way, together with pop music, or Southern folk, or fiery Greek music.

In one day you change worlds, from Oriental to Mediterranean and back, still speaking Albanian all the time. My soul is imbued, impregnated with beautiful images and good times. When times get tougher again, they appear by themselves before my inner eye: the glittering of the sea just one meter away or deep down the cliffs, or the shrewd mountains under the fairy-like full moon. And the pilaf I have eaten on the Southern mountain pass of Llogara, or the mountain tea I have drunken in Shemria, on the road, on the road, on the road.

by Silke Liria©

Molly's Catharsis by Jay King©

Grief is exhausting, so pain is purged.
by Jay King©


listen:
http://www.audiolingo.org/snippets/Lets_From_Some.mp3

http://hiddenmissives.blogspot.com/

BROKEN WINGS OF ICARUS by Silke Liria©,

"That is hybris", her father had claimed in his vain attempt to convince her. "Don't fly. Hybris means to defy your destiny, and all people who did that were punished by the gods." What do you understand about hybris, she thought. Hybris was to know one's destiny and yet not to act accordingly. It would be hybris not to do it. She simply had to fly there; the Eagle's call had been echoing in her guts for years, deafening her during the last months, tearing her heart into pieces with its longing scream. However, her father had surprised her with unexpected insight when he compared her to Icarus. Indeed, how well did she understand his impulsive elevation towards the most irresistible and most shining – and nevertheless the most treacherous and deadly.

Now here she was, on the deserted beach behind cliffs and pine trees, her belly full of wine and little fish like in former times which had been crushed under the hot iron of oblivion.

"You have forgotten", noticed the man with the birdy name beside her, whose face at the airport had been radiant with joy as she had never seen nor expected in him before. "You have forgotten everything."

"My memories are in my body", she said. "But I don't want to remember!" She was not to remember what might have linked them in such an intimate way. She had her comparatively stable life in what one week ago she still would have called her country.

At least she had found now a convincing explanation for the feeling of being home, which had overwhelmed her since her landing or even in the air, when she saw the mountains for the first time and loved them immediately. Back home. Home again after such an unimaginably long time. Oh, finally being back in her motherland, among her people, under the sign of the Eagle. Now the lifelong search for her belonging, her roots, herself had come to an end.

If the country calmed down even more after the riots, maybe she would go even further south on her next, her second visit to the land of her soul. She was determined to look for that sunken place where the sun rose from the sea and fell into the sea again after having drawn a large bow over the water – the floods the fishers sailed away with every morning and returned on in the evening, bringing nets loaded with fish and hands full of warmth to share for the night. Now she remembered the curse-blessing she had howled at the sea out of her anxious longing. "Damned be the sea which took you away, blessed be the sea which brought you again!" It was not easy for a shepherd girl to be a fisherman's wife.

"Tell me more!" she insisted. They had lived a simple life, too simple a life perhaps. She had been the first girl to choose a man out of love, and this love made her suffer as she feared for his life among the waves, and this suffering linked her even more closely to the land under her feet, the sea in her eyes, the sun in her heart.

While listening to him, she could not stop tears running down her cheeks. This was an inner revolution or rather a revelation. The revelation of her true, lost identity, a loss that had been pricking her like red-hot needles for a lifetime. Finally she had come home to herself. Yet conditions had changed. Her former brother was her boyfriend now, whereas her former husband from the white cabin near the sea, the man with the birdy name, could not be but a brother.

"When I came first to the place I was only six or seven years old", the man with the birdy name told her through the salty wind. "Even though I'd never been there before, I knew the place. I remembered it from another life, and I knew, too, that somewhere in this world you would exist. So I began my search for you, first in my country, than after the fall of the dictatorship and the opening of the borders, all over the world. That's what I used my job for. And now I have found you! I have found you!"

When they had left the decaying capital in the morning, she had foreseen that this day would be decisive. She had cancelled all her appointments without letting anybody know. He had kidnapped her with her consent, like a bride whose parents oppose the marriage. As they were driving across the large, sunny square, passing the museum, the riding iron hero and the street where only two days ago she had observed a policeman up to the hips in the floods of the heavy rainfalls, she pronounced solemnly the name of the day. Aware of its vital decisiveness, she erected the day an invisible monument out of sounds. It was the beginning of the so-called Second Autumn, a warm day between the times and therefore prone to revelations and revolutions. Indeed he had revealed her why she was here, why she had to come, who she really was. He had spent a third of a century looking for her. So she had to bow to the evidence of destiny. She was ready now.

When they kissed, she burned all the bridges behind her.

A few days later: flying back. The brutal cultural shock. An icy flat stinking of new paint, making her head ache. And her fax did not move, and her phone bell remained silent. When she called his number, his colleague told her: "He's not in." – "He's not in", the second day. The third day the employee told her that the man with the birdy name had gone to the mines in the north of the country.

She understood that he did not love her, that he had never loved her. But she was profoundly bewildered with all the rest. Who was she? What was real?

At that time a carcinoma began to develop in her breast.

by Silke Liria©

the magic happens...by JLDenman© 2008

"...leaves gently unfurling, it's petals open and full and lush. Besides it, it's shadow is carved from the black stone. However, it is depressed, concave. Unless the light is just right, you have to go up and feel that the stone is not solid, flush. Instead it's dug out, entrenched. But the magic happens..."

JLDenman© 2008
http://metalchasers.com/lola_d
http://www.freewebs.com/jldspiritcandlepoet/

POSEIDON'S PHONE by Silke Liria©

It fits exactly into my hand, as if it were made just for me. Its form is the most perfect form existing on earth. I touch it with my left index, following the road on the top. It is spiraling and my finger and my mind with it, in this movement which has made the universe and develops it further. Big, open curves at first, tightening more and more, life concentrates increasingly, becomes denser, and at the same time the spiral rises to a hill with a little road around, which is now so small that my finger doesn't fit anymore. Finally, the top. The world collapses into one point, spaceless, timeless, where all movement is cushioned in quietude and silence.

The way back, life becomes individualized again, we can talk again of a walk, of a road, of behind and before and yesterday and tomorrow. On the top, the pure being is sufficient for itself; now it moves and is moved, seeks development, becoming, doing. Spiraling around, the old ways repeat themselves, but always larger, with ever greater perspective and understanding and wisdom and compassion.

On it goes until the end, the edge between the outside and the inside, between being and non-being, which is only a different way of being. The edge is huge, sharp, cutting, like the painfulness of transition.

There are many roads now, not only the one on the top, the one on the outside, the most prominent one. All the surface in its unique form is composed of parallel roads like those of humans on Earth, and my fingers turn around, turn around, following several at the same time. They are carved in lime, none deviates on its course. Yet each one has its own personality with its own scars. Some of these scars are shared.

After the first huge turn, the way continues inside. My fingers, feeling carefully in order not to commit a sacrilege, enter a cave, the mystery of origin of mankind, of skillfulness and language. The mystery of the world womb, the unspeakable feminine, and also a retreat for the life-tired and heart-broken. Then the cave, without ending, narrows as much as to impede my fingers to continue their research. Behind, in the innermost core of the world, there is the Secret, which can not be understood with human brains and which can only be seen with the Third Eye. This is the barrier beyond which the material cannot go. This is the other realm, containing the Core, the Essence, of which the top on the outside, the point where all movements converge in stillness, is only an exteriorized reflection.

How can such a unique, artful structure with astonishing mastery, a lime reflection of the deepest timeless wisdom of the universe, have formed itself? This can only be an Immortal's masterpiece. Poseidon has made it. And Poseidon, the Amazing, the Majestuous, the Terrible, my beloved brother, has given me his unique gift through the hand of an old friend, the sea-dog Nuredin. It is a telephone. A white mobile phone from one of these salty zones where the Immortal encounters the mortals, given as a souvenir from my Sarandian host, to phone Poseidon whenever I am far away from the sea, to listen to his voice, to hear the sea.

(C) 2004 Silke Liria Blumbach

He spent...by Tina Rodriguez©2008

He spent a lot of time, a seriously large amount of time avoiding Susan. Any extra work that came through the office he was always the first to volunteer spare time in dedication to the project, the client, the office. Really he would have taken three jobs and collected garbage in the wee hours of the morning if it meant he didn’t have to go home to her.



The idea of hearing the latest litany of things he did wrong caused him physical pain, and it was a stubborn fight against his own body to turn towards home in the evening. As he would pull up to the house his body would tense naturally into the defensive position, ready for the barrage of noise he knew would come the minute he entered the front door, or the portal to hell as it often felt like. As he turned off the engine he mentally ran through the list of things he could do to keep him busy, excuses to stay away from her. He was sure she would add more to the list when he got in, it never failed, there was always something he failed to do, something he messed up, something he would be punished for.



He gathered his portfolio, stuffed full of papers and files, enough work for a month and if he could just get her to back off long enough he intended to finish it all this weekend. He mentally prepared his story, she always gave him more space when she thought he was flailing at work. With a grim smile he figured she probably was afraid it would affect the flow of money, and she did get upset if anything upset the flow of money.



He heard crickets calling loudly in the dark gloom that covered the house like a desperate shroud of death. Funny how he always thought the night was beautiful every other place but home. Even the moon overhead seemed dimmer, and he imagined it frowned in sympathy for him as he followed the walk to the front door. As he slipped his key into the door the dogs inside began their crazy barking, sounding the alarm that he was home.



“Downy, Gert, Hush, be quiet!” he barked back. He knew she would be on alert and if she wasn’t already in the living room ready to spring on him, she would be on her way down the hall to catch him before he made it to the sanctuary of the bathroom. His only hope, that she was already disposed herself.



The dogs jumped on him as he passed through the door, happy that he was home. There was a time when this would have made him happy, to have these fluffy beasts buffeting him with their over-exuberant love, but it had been the only cheerful greeting he got when he came home for too long, and now it was only a sad reminder of what wasn’t there.



His eyes swept the living room, taking in the chaos that was there. Half folded laundry draped across the couch, toys were scattered like fallen soldiers across a battle field, a stack of books threatened to collapse from the armchair to the floor as he crossed the room and set his portfolio on his desk. It would figure she had no time to pick up, she was probably busy on the computer, or sleeping. Just more things he would have to take care of.



He turned and moved swiftly to the first door in the hall and clicked the lock securely as he closed the door behind him. He made it, he would get a few moments peace at least. He realized he had been holding his breath and let it out in a deep sigh. Avoiding his reflection in the mirror he moved across and settled into the one place he did feel comfortable in his own home.



His mind began to mentally prepare the barriers. He emotionally unplugged, although this was so natural he barely noticed. He could hear sounds of her moving in the back of the house and his heart beat quickened at the thought that she would soon be upon him. He reached into the drawer and pulled out his novel, desperate to escape, hoping to draw out his moment of peace for as long as he could.



by Tina Rodriguez©2008
for more:
http://www.transitioningtina.blogspot.com/

I was listening to something...by Mike Tyrell©2008

I was driving down a mountain road listening to my
iPod I was listening to something I heard before.
It was a the same song I was listening to when
some guy slammed into the passenger door of my car.
I was the same day I lost all my money,
it was the same day a business deal went bad and I ended
up with no money only the clothes on my back in a very
dark place of town.
I had my ipod, a small bag and my cell phone.
I used the last of my change for food
made of god knows what and the last few seconds of my cell phones
battery life to call my fiancé. A stranger gave me a left to some place I
can sleep I offered my cell phone in exchange for the
left and a few bucks he declined after listening to my story on the way he
gave me money he needed most to pay for the motel he dropped me off.
He told me everything will be ok the next day, he told me we are all
brothers and sisters in this cruel world and just being there for one another will
help us get back on our feet.
I slept that day listening to that same song that night.
It was the night before my wedding.

Three years and eight months later I am driving down a
mountain listening to my iPod looking at my beautiful wife my three months
old daughter safely strapped in her pink car seat listening to the song
I heard the day my life changed

Mike Tyrell©2008

PARADISE BIRD by Silke Liria©

I reach into my chest and find a tiny, red, pulsating cushion. It feels so smooth in my hand, its warmth passes into my hand, my arm, my soul. Yet bare of its ribbon cage, it trembles of cold or of fear, feeling utterly naked and exposed, not knowing from which side will come the next blow, the next insult, the next catastrophe.

Ssshhh, I whisper to my heart. Be still and feel that you are safe. Be still and feel that all is good.

Are the warm, deep red drops, which glide down my wrist, tears or blood?

Don’t be afraid, I speak softly to my heart. From now on I will protect you. This is a new time, and some houses on the beach are white.

I dress my strange heart of mine with feathers in all colors. Feathers of the hens and the elegant white sea hens, of the roosters and the fat black sea roosters. Of hawks and eagles. Of parrots and ice birds and many other birds which I know only as fluffy feather balls in shining colors on the four horizons of the sky.

I throw my heart like a bird of joy into the blue open. Fly, my little heart. Fly, my paradise bird. You don’t need a cage anymore.

You will feel joy. You’ll be a joy.


Silke Liria©

Nubian Looking Glass by JLD

Nubian Looking Glass

June 19, 2008

Dark sister
look proud
through the glass darkly
shun the artifice
speak clear truths
dark sister
see thyself
strong
majestic
powerful
through the dark glass
shine
come forth
settle in your regalia
dark sister
look high
see sky
hear wind
feel ocean spray at the edge of the Dark coast
look proud dark sister
through the looking glass, dark, glistening, reflectent of thy beauty
high breast
full lips
wide hips
supple finger tips
strong back
dark sister
look proud
through the dark glass.

image property of JLDenman© 2008



JLDenman© 2008
for more visit:
http://metalchasers.com/lola_d
http://www.freewebs.com/jldspiritcandlepoet/

THE MIDWIFE...by Silke Liria©

The midwife knocked on my door on one evening of damp earth. She looked like a farmer with her big boots and her bucket full of water. She put the bucket down in my living room, waited until her breath would be calm and said then: "So. Here I am to get the baby."

"What baby?" I wondered and stared at the midwife. "But I am not pregnant at all! How will you get a baby? I haven't even slept with a man!"

"That is none of my business", replied the midwife. "I was sent here to deliver you. Lay down on the sofa."

I obeyed, protesting already somewhat weaker: "There is nothing to deliver."

"There is always something to deliver!" said the midwife firmly. "Normally babies, but you won't believe me what strange things I have already pulled out of women!"

I closed my eyes and tried to relax. I didn't want to see the instruments, which reminded me the teeth-puller I feared as much as normal people fear dogs.

"Do you think dogs have group souls or individual souls?" I asked the midwife, suddenly convinced that she might know the answer, because she knew things about me not even I did know.

The woman did not answer, but put her hands on my head and my chest and my belly. I did not even wonder that she had three hands. I just wondered whether she would deliver a puppy or a book.

by Silke Liria©

If only...by Silke Liria© 08

I want to share with you the beauty, (that is a gift) when born a woman~

If only
The ring out of the seashell
Was not broken

It was
My engagement ring
With the Sea

by Silke Liria© 08

~
I lived in Saranda, Albania, at the Ionian Sea,
which is a part of the Mediterranean.
Saranda has been the love of my
life, and I have been very fond of the sea.
When in August 2004 I traveled to Georgia,
and spent some days at the
Black Sea in Batumi with some friends, one of them, Keti, found for me
a snail shell with a hole, which was like a ring and fit me perfectly
and was beautiful.
I wore it often until it broke...

Every night I...by JLDenman© 2008

When something touches the heart,
we are compelled to share it with others,
if only I could write so tenderly.
The splendor that is Talula.

Every night I...
by JLD
July 28, 2008

Every night I
close my eyes
gentle lightening bugs flitter behind the lids. a light show
a sweet swirl of lemon drop kisses
I dream
dream of gentle hands roughly scarred
tenderly reaching out between sheets
resting on my thigh, hip, every curve
searching,
hoping
seeking security, love, gentleness in return
I sigh
moan
smile in reverie and certainty that it means something special
you are near
we are together
night terrors exist for neither
I pray
sing
praise
thanks give, hands folded, mind centered thinking and thanking the God of Kings
and queens that you feel what I feel and love me in spite of, because of,
Every night I
sleep, comfortable in your embrace
delighted with your touch
enchanted with your voice
beautified by your eyes
Every night I love you

JLDenman© 2008
for more visit:
http://metalchasers.com/lola_d
http://www.freewebs.com/jldspiritcandlepoet/