Tough Love

“When someone is hard on you it may have very little to do with you.”
― Bryant McGill

Steven Klein

Torrents of disparagement spoil little comforts that came in the soft hands of a woman. In hidden gifts her bounty is made known to searching eyes. Holding nothing but feeling everything, imagination ignites passion’s blaze in the deep recesses of cold homes. With no names and no kisses, a sole burning heat sears lust’s consummation of the unholy matrimony. Were there rings one could understand, were there concern, one could live peaceably, but in the mix of questions and longings, agonies and danger, love exists only in the breath of heavy sighs. Hardened hearts learn to feel through calloused emotion, tenderness never an option unless it leads to satisfaction of an aching in the loins or the soothing of a searching heart.

The Lord is My Shepherd, I shall not Want?

“When those who found this skeleton attempted to disengage it from that which it held in its grasp, it crumbled to dust.” ― Victor Hugo

 

            Sandra Ramos

 

When for ages the wind swept years away, there remained little of the life of the hermit, a stir past the window reminded eternity that mortality has its limits. Another flicker of movement that proved a harsh statement against all the laws of nature that screamed to be true. There’s always an exception, always an intervention by the divine laws which are generally ignored by the empiricists knowing they cannot tame the wild west of the spiritual. Though the house is dimmed by age, and windows covered in dust, sagging in their own way from age, life refuses to die. He holds on, battered and calloused from the struggle of living, refusing to crawl under the comforting sheets of the deep unknown. Something has died however, his passion has suffered the mortal wound. When it’s all said and done, am I alive if love is dead? And if so, what good is it?

Internal Dialogue

“Inside it felt like the hardest thing in the world. To just let go, and not pick everything to death. To just let go and enjoy what you had. To just let go and not make everybody around you miserable with your own internal dialogue. To just let go and be happy. So simple. So difficult. So terrifying.” – Laurell K. Hamilton

 

annacastrolima

 

The blind call the shots, when what’s heard isn’t seen
When I deal with me, it’s never what it seems
Though sight’s not given, still I judge the call
Crazy as it seems, when I can’t see at all

Medicating the pain, shown by blood not red
hoping to numb a shitty feeling, living in my head
Hoping desperately to find, a happy trail this way
Depression makes it hard, to get out of bed today

The movies are seen, and replayed with renewed vigor
Forever playing with, and pulling the hair trigger
Conversations bad when, the mirror won’t talk back
Only one side of me, carries on the attack

I want to sing and not cry, to take me through this time
The song I settle on, isn’t a lullaby
The mirror shuns the man and tears blur the day
The end of life it seems, points to a better way

Beware

I’m a dog barking in the night

at things you don’t know are there

A moon shining in the day

on the horizon but so vague

I’m tired of people and the way

along the natural pave

So I sit in the dark

just me and my dog’s bark

Think I’ve lost my nerve

’cause at every noise I stir

Welcome to my nightmare

now it’s you I’ve got to beware

Obsession

“When you live with voices in your head, you are drawn inextricably to voices outside your head. Very often the voices work to confirm your worst suspicions. Or think of things you could never have imagined! There are only so many hours of the day to hate yourself.” – Emma Forrest, Your Voice in My Head

 

templeofdamneds

 Obsession, a compulsive often unreasonable idea or emotion. My obsession is a self imposed attack on my body that’s not only pervasive, but changes it’s angle of assault every 4 -6 months. My mind, whether from a comment, a look, a misunderstood text, or a bad day, will berate me about a particular body feature without mercy. After I became completely obsessed with it, even making unreasonable changes, the area of obsession would change. I’d literally drop all thoughts concerning that body feature or action and begin a new regimen of torture around the next perceived “fault”. This led me to believe that the problems weren’t in my body but in my self-perception and what I perceived others thought of me.  Most of the time what I thought they thought about me was wrong. That “look” that they gave was totally unrelated to who or what I am. My egocentricity caused me to believe that I was the topic of every thought process in those around me. The plain truth? Most of the time no one cares enough to think that long and hard about me. To take the offensive against my renegade thoughts, I knew I had to be happy with my body and refuse to interpret what I believed others where thinking (which likely wasn’t true). I recognized the futility of conforming to a constantly changing standard of appearance and found that happiness with who I am, is the greatest compliment to my being. Holding my head high, I’ll be confident and sure, no matter what I think you think about how I look.

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Going Gently Into That Good Night

“Remember to look up at the stars and not down at your feet. Never give up work. Work gives you meaning and purpose and life is empty without it. If you are lucky enough to find love, remember it is there and don’t throw it away.”
― Stephen Hawking

                         The Crossing Over

When from birth the swaddling of obscurity
Covers my face with the harsh reality of life

How will I discover my soul and carry
the torch of meaningful purpose to my progeny?

Left with only the struggles of faith and doubt
over what my life should be or have been.

Why do I live, why has God given me breath?
Why go at all into the void of the living?

Of what purpose can it be to drag my soul
through a thousands horrors only to be reborn?

Does it matter at all and why
when I breath for the last time?

And then He whispers,
“That you may know me, this is your purpose”

It’s a fact of life that we
become disenchanted by joy without pain

And barely fight to know someone or something
unless extinction threatens to take them or it away

 

Imperfect

“I realize the imperfections in this composition, and I left it so because we’re all imperfect and need to accept the message of who we are and not what they say we are.”

I wish I were clay
then I could change myself
everyday

Today I should be this and
tomorrow I should be that
and for the moment
society says I’m fat

But not so long ago and
in other royal cultures so
this was a good to go

But merely because times
have changed and lenses
have different colors

I’m resigned to serving
like slaves in chains
I’ll be your skinny mistress

I am whatever you say I am (Eminem)
and that, by the whims of
a psychotic society

And even in writing if I forget
to dot an I or a comma I relent
of that you’ll never forget

I’ll be forever judged and that
it’s a fact of this life
YOU WILL NEVER BE ACCEPTED

Except by those who understand
that hats turned back and
hats turned to the side
are all a part
of the same ride

Curious

“I mean, they say you die twice. One time when you stop breathing and a second time, a bit later on, when somebody says your name for the last time.”
― Banksy

                              Premonitions

Some say they’ve went there, to the other side.

That’s what they’ll tell you after they died.

The tickers kick’n and soon I’ll know

Whether this day I’m livin’ is my day to go

What do you do on the way out the door

When what you see, you’ll see no more

About these things I’m curious to ask

tripping the other side of the living mask

So my friends and lovers dear

who I hold both now and there

On the other side will you come with me

and find out what’s beyond that nether sea?

Hacker

 “It’s not the daily increase but daily decrease. Hack away at the unessential.” – Bruce Lee

summer-paradise-dreamer

The way closes in quickly behind him, the path for retreat lay buried beneath the tangled brush of circumstance and pain and, as the way behind him, so the way forward. Hack. Hack. Cutting through is his only way to survive, so this occupation possesses him as the crash and thrash of falling vines collapse. Pushing against the green and brown thorny tides, his blade finds the branch and creates a hewn option for progress. His muscles shine with the sheen of a mad genius plotting against the onslaught of disbelief and solitary confinement. Hack. Hack. The enemies that dig pits of despair and throw boulders of anger at his stubborn persistence feel the power of his unstoppable advance. Deep jungles and forbidden territories fraught with dangers, they bear the mark of this maker of ways. Hack. Hack. The wayfarers and sojourners of the same trail are out of sight, but if you listen closely to the forested cries of beauties unseen, you know he’s alive, by the sound of his blades, Hack, Hack.

 

Alone –

 “Imaginary lovers
Never turn you down
When all the others turn you away
They’re around
It’s my private pleasure
Midnight fantasy
Someone to share my
Wildest dreams with me” 

– Atlanta Rhythm Section

 

DreamWind

I’d do anything to keep from being alone, pay any price, be used to the “nth” degree and never say a word. Being used is better than being alone but it stings knowing the object of my affection will hurt me, maim my spirit, and destroy my forward progress. Still, I follow hard after her, giving all to maintain that relationship and avoid the terrors of being alone. What compromises have I willing conceded to? What violations of my self-esteem and personal space have I allowed for unrequited affection? What tortures has my heart been through, my body feeling the wretch of emotions that sets my nerves on fire? Being addicted, not to a substance, but to a world of egocentric affection that I’ve created by taking the object of my affection and embellishing her to a fantastic degree. I should know better, I do know better. The voices of friends and family, concerned that I am “being used”, try to slap me awake. Ignoring their advice, pushing away the voice of truth, I continue to live a world that only I see. Go away you bearers of truth, you wreckers of dreams, this is my world, I will not see it in your light! I take my script and apply it haphazardly, patching up the holes in the dike containing my empty dreams. Eagerly lapping up my lack of self-control and willful delusion, the protagonist in my play continues to feed my world of facades with empty compliments, cool affections, and eyes empty of love.  One day I’ll wake up and grab hold of myself, one day I’ll acknowledge this self-imposed hell, one day…but for now, I look at her and imagine how she loves me.

Also published in Broowaha

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