Category: Poems

For A Fool Too Wise To Be Foolish

O foolish man

Who cannot accept

The hands of a woman

Looking to heal you

O holy man

Set apart from the rest

Singled out by the surprise

Of unexpected Love.

Were I you, I would find the strength

To mount the dream

Galloping so insistently through

Your benumbed psyche.

I would hold to the pommel of

My hand offered in friendship

And admiration

Even beyond their physical application

Bound only by eternal spirit…

O man in my missing dreams

Glimpsed from the corners of

Tearing eyes

What could have been

Or might have been –

Kept asunder by circumstance

By timing

By opportunities unpresented

Unprecedented,

By promises of another lifetime

Extending into these our now-lives.

I would uncross your arms

Set so firmly over your heart

I would face my face

Shining with blessing for you

Accept what is offered

Although it can never be an all from nothing.

 

O dearest man I touched with all my being

I brushed with my beating/beaten heart

O king of my wondering servitude

I would render with tendresse & laughing joy

Were you only to accept

To the limits we must draw

Within the abilities I have to offer,

For these would delimit you also.

 

O wisest man

To back away from my incendiary

Lust for life lived well

In utter expansion &

Manifest truth

It is to your bald being

A covering so soft

It is to your naked skin

A balm upending the

Hardening of your limbs

In resistance.

 

Choose your boundary lines

Implant them well, that nothing

Can reach you

For this seems what attends you best.

 

I fade outside the vision in your eyes

 

Yet I remain, as said before

A good woman looking for a good man

Who seeks a good woman.

And Fate & Faith will not leave me upended

Fallen from the blessing of your regard.

I will not resume invisibility

As my starting place

I am far too exposed to so many surfaces

To step into any background

You may fashion.

I have seared your closing heart

Too well.

 

You may choose to retreat

To cover that which thrives in lightness

But I will never again

Be who I was

For having known the potential of your love.

 

 

 

So Close To Despair, I …

There are times I am so lonely I can taste it, hear it, smell it.

I see it in my mirror.

I am feeling empty.

Not much looking forward.

So tired of dancing with shadows when I want a real partner to my steps

In my arms, in my bed, in my head

Someone to wind fingers together

To share secrets

To smile at, crooked & crinkly.

I want to grow pale in sleep

Wrapped up in a warm body

Spooned around…

My heart aches

My throat quivers

Unshed tears, unvoiced words

I cannot even see myself anymore

Invisible as the wind whistling through the holes in my head

Where confidence lived & moved & clarified my being.

Where did I go?

Subsumed. Exhausted by my own thoughts.

Hands up in surrender

Numb.

I no longer believe in myself

Or that tomorrow will be better

A tangle around the Mayday pole of my ego.

Help me through this

Versed  in conspiracy, in what might be/might have been

Primary: secondary: tertiary

Me me me

Lost at sea, surrounded by water

Only the sky is visible from here

But the clouds change too quickly

For my hope to hook onto.

I can tell you of investigations, complications,

Recriminations, obligations.

The reasons blur.

I blink them away.

I cannot testify to

Any reasons for this.

I submerge.

There are no exit signs at sea

Only depth

I have no fins, no scales,

No colors to float from here in rescue.

 

Can you lift a hand to bless me?

Lay it upon my forehead, soothe & smooth

Iron these tears to steam

Paint me on a smile?

Reinstate my life to valid?

I am here. I wait.

Lay a wreath atop the water.

Remember me for I was,

That maybe I shall be.

 

NOR MINE TO SLEEP

Once upon a time, I read that insomniacs keep the sleeping world from disincorporating (tho the description was surely more prosaic.) 
I have a clock in my bedroom which does not glow, so when I wake, I’ve no ideas on the time. I flick the button & a blue flash lights, a bolt of pulling me from any thought of sleep; but I must know the hour. Twelve after midnight: time to write.
Recently, I “found” seven grandmothers for my walls – me, who had no grandparents whom I knew. These are women of powerful profile, women of flowing/flown hair from which eagle feathers rise in halo, or drift in unheard winds. I made a Council on my wall, replacing my Vision Board, a grace gathered of wisdom. I put away my nightlight. The silken darkness woke them. Tho  quiet til now, I feel I shall hear more, soft sibilants in a tongue far from my native, but conversation / communication nonetheless. This is the first in the “Messages from My Mothers” Series.

____________________________________________________________________

NOR MINE TO SLEEP WHEN WHISPERS WAKE ME WISE

I rise to midnight

Wakeful & alone

My life unsung, is flaring to a tone

Unwrapped & watchful,

Barefoot & outside

A shawl to cut the chill

Of night alive.

I wait on words

They rise to overfill

To flow away to rivers, all downhill

These are my true love

Ever, thus, my world:

A child’s hand in fist I might uncurl

To find surprises hidden from the day

My heart sees through all blackness in this place,

A gift to share with all, with sky so dark

Around a glowing moon I set my spark

I write an old September, or a June

One day past full, a dimming, tonsured moon…

The pages in the journal start to fill

For sleep eludes creation as I write…

In daylight worlds, a creature of tonight

Lit from within, the certain glow undimmed

I am forgiven every time I’ve sinned

The Muse awakes, she stirs inside my soul

I scattered during sleep; she knits me whole.

These folded-over pages must unfurl

A child’s fist, I open & uncurl

I see you in the distance of my mind

You are not mine, a message so unkind.

Yet knowing you, I never can be blind.

Your eyes see far beyond a simple rhyme.

As words arise, insistent of their way

These messages in darkness filled by day

With chorus/blessing both, I busy out

When nightfall sleeps, I rise to be about

My muse’s business, all there is to say

O’erflows my heart, my mind up & away

I cannot think, for caught up in this flow

Of all but poem, resting in its glow

The world, unfinished, lest I write some more

Insomnia insistent at the door.

My duties crowd around me; I don’t care

For words all dance about me in the air.

I breathe them in & write them in release

My pen, my soul, my ever-loving peace

There are no hours when I sit to scribe

These poems are my fam’ly, art & tribe

So, hear me Moon – before you fade & fly

These words may live beyond the day I die

I shall return, in line & open verse

A value far beyond that in my purse

This ink, my blood, an overlighting world

A child’s fisted hand you have uncurled

This is as much a river to the sea

My heaven at our door, these words are me

As others live for love & duty sure

I live to write. The muse is at my door

I bid her enter, take a seat & share

She takes up my most comfortable chair

And makes of it a jeweled & shining throne.

I write, & I am suddenly to home.

My life uncircumcised, creation swells

Where others sleep at midnight, I hear bells:

My seven elders whisper from the wall

Tho no one else can hear them, I am called

For all my lives are brought about by words

My mind defrocked, unfeathered, undeterred

My dreams can wait til daylight in the world

A child’s fist, the words inside, uncurled.

Peeling the Price Tags Off Life

Dear World, At first I thought these were separate poems…but as I reread them before this posting, I realize they are One Rant About Living Life. The choices are upon you, made from you, about you.

Jump on in!

PEELING THE PRICE TAGS OFF LIFE

One by one,

I scrape at these with ragged fingernails

Burning a torch in daylight

Nothing is as expected

Unless you cast off suffering

Reclaim your power

Lose the knowledge of being poor

To manifest the many lives we know

To be Available.

Stand still for no distractions.

Reach & clamp onto the wrist of the hand

Slipping into your wallet

Pinch it off. Cast it into slag heaps for the fire!

I am entitled; I am no commoner, no serf

Tho my wages are less than modest

My dreams are not

Each day is one more step into an

Unknown of my own making

Mal-informed, uninformed, misinformed

I take no heroes from among false gods

I declare myself immanent

There is no time left for dissimulation!

Our souls have been hacked

Our thoughts are written in the skies

We move in & out of credibility

With impunity; but life is not a fiction role

Where is your truth?

What has happened to your kingdom?

Where is your wealth?

Sucked dry by siege, by sanction

By laws against nature –

YOUR NATURE!

The sins of other’s fathers

Visited upon my ravaged soul

I would claim my own

Had I time to commit them

But I am wound about $9/hour

Still wondering if the coffers will

Ever clink with coin

To pay the owings engineered by other men.

I am in my own word-war, world-war

My own upsurge of independence

Created by simple aging

The four horsemen mill outside

Their minions ring the house

While one smiles, reaching for the doorbell

But I am not going to answer this call

I am no longer either in control of my thoughts

Nor in thought control…

I have moved beyond into a kind of

Lifelike improvisation

Where breath is enough

Where life is enough

Where love is never enough

Since that pushes me into the arms of others

To seek it, bring it, endure it, bow to it,

Embrace it, one from all, from one.

There is no denial in my life anymore

Only very careful choices,

Sifting thru the gemstones to find one that fits

The one that seats in my navel

Upleveling the energy of eternity

Emanating.

The blessing I place on my forehead

Shines on anyone more poor than I

Pulling them into a light

Where they dust off their lapels & fasten a flower.

I will be the one who makes it through

All Systems.

I will be loved, I will make my way

Cannot you see where your life has led you?

The life you waste in watching the lives of others

On a bright & fervent-fevered screen?

Outside, the sun is rising/setting,

Outside the skies dance with moons & stars

The air will feed you; the light is nourishment

Why would you forego this for pretending?

It is so seductive to live your own life

Free from corporate lies, medical rumors,

It is a privilege to worship the gods of my living

The angels of my choices bear me up

Out of abandonment

Into the fullest expression of life I can be.

I spend no time following the false

I worship no idles (sic)

My life moves forward of its own volition

Pulling me forward, pushing me upward.

Curtains open every day to new stages,

Stepping into palaces where I meet

The leadership of life to whom I will not give my power.

My life isn’t made of falseness

I recognize the limits of my godhood

I acknowledge the fierceness of my warrior-self

Fully. I juggle words like knives

Some do make me bleed,

None make me weep.

I have been known to make stupid choices

But only by others: to me they validate

Existence.

My life is defined by the next new pen I buy

(Herein my craft, my croft)

My boundaries gallop beyond any distance my aged eyes might see

For where the world ends

My imagination begins.

My rogue nature emerges

In the house I once divided

Yet pull back together now

The redeemers have entered

My social circle

We join hands & raise them to the sky

No longer silent, but voices raised collectively

In a song to rock the world from lullaby to

Willful march,

Be you fruitful in your thoughts; it will

Ring the world

Will take us out of comfortable orbit

Into prophecy & foretelling

Where the story ends well

Where the lovers get their Kiss

Where the wars subside into the very ground

They so bloodily seeded

The deceivings of the users

Thinking themselves possessed of forked lighting

Will instead experience my laser

Of shattering power

My brain will emerge

Through my heart

I will love the world back into being.

The Truth is not afraid of you.

Why do you fear it in return?

Your soul has never shirked from duty

To shepherd you into divinity

To reveal your god-nature

The certainty of this

Is writ upon the granite cores of worlds

Your parallel thoughts

Wrinkle stars with ponderance

The light of your being alone

Has stifled hunger, seeded worlds, changed a universe

In its course

The life you bring to life

Is unbelievable

Were it not to be believed by simple existence

Keep moving forward, keep holding forth

Your heart, keep offering

Your being to service

For everyone is more needy than you

By virtue of not being you.

With love,

Carol Borsello          9.15.2018

http://www.carolborsello.blog

Last Chances Are Seldom That

LAST CHANCES ARE SELDOM THAT

Betimes, I weary of this life, even my own name.

Far horizons sing more clearly every day

Tho I long for them no more.

The trick of the light

Turned to a trickling

After rising oceans

Stole the land I stood upon.

This place is only an awakening

I play at touch while longing for a full contact event.

I flirt when I long to fall & be fallen upon.

I bring forth this love like a treasure found in the junkdrawer.

So long pushed aside looking for a real thing.

There is only potential to be made of

Skin & tactile surface

These imply anticipation, a discovery of imagination…

All I need would be/could be given into Love

I am willing now, to release & relearn

To go public with private passions…

Bring me to the Gate, O Love,

I weigh the latch in hand & lift it free.

∉

I could care less of being found beautiful

I am as you imagined me

Finally, in the state of knowing it so.

The thoughts of others so long imagined

No longer slow me down

Or turn me away.

They travel over me as water over stone

Giving off rainbows.

A quicksilver moment

The prophecies predicted you

But left out so much –

            You’re married

            You’re committed

            You’re entangled

You’re a stranger, really.

These are not up to my undoing.

We are close by circumstance only

Who started it anyway?

So unlike me, yet it must have been.

I am an ever-opening heart.

I am the last to love, an unmarked trail

Full of my own footprints,

Far too familiar from following alone.

∉

The light has changed. I’m in another era

From that last bumbling home.

There’s a mystery as to what could be discovered,

The farthest indelible vista

Of the lover I see reflecting in your eyes.

I feel an impish sense of grace

A dance of infinite energy

Love animates my bones, adds a sparkle here & there

Smooths my skin, manifesting like silvering rain,

I will find you; I will sing you onto the waters where I walk

Upon your thoughts

I am always ahead of you…waiting

∉

The trips & triggers of clandestine love

Surround me, a deepening mystery

Of which I shall not speak.

A white flash of light in closed eyes

Turns my sleeping head to you

I walk with my heart in both hands

This simple single offering to you.

∉

Come to me

Remove the layers of obligation

Like overheating wool

Your heart is stiff with scars

I will make whole.

Offer me but a passing glance

A ticklish whimsy

My heart will do the rest

Take me at my words, this austere truth

Gone lush with longing

Only this: to feel you skin to skin

Like air in secret places

Cooling fevers of unknown origins.

It’s not that I’ve kept myself

For anyone, I’ve just kept myself

Because I didn’t know you were here to share this with.

Your hands stay at your sides

When I will them “touch me.”

Your body stays separate

When I will it to melt into mine.

∉

Let’s redefine all boundaries

Bridge all separations

Because we’re made from love for love…

I can’t be shy about us any more

I love your smile; I beg your touch

I wait your arms returning around me.

I look at you

And there isn’t a “no” to be heard.

∉

Last Chances & Random Rhymes

The lights are all off

Moonlight through the window,

Strange Venetian stripes

Make you exotic.

Words will not say this

Like your hands on my skin

Chilled & heating both

Speaking cell to cell

A communication nonpareil.

I need a man with long arms

Willing eyes – see past this skin

To the heart ablaze within.

Take me now, I’ll last forever

The end of time never so near

As when we kiss & match our bodies,

These beginnings opening fissures.

No word so pure as touch

Escapes this pen

Time has melted from the clock

Held tight to you again.

∉

I promised to clean house

But I am writing poems

About backing into love

Since we cannot meet face to face.

There has to be a way

Around or through

I refuse to take this underground

When all I can see is your sky to fly into.

∈

The Most Dangerous Words

Are those unsaid

They hide like thorns in greenleaves

They are unkind, unkempt,

Blackened by Truth.

I brawl & bawl & break open

As they pierce me.

Something is bleeding here.

All I ask for is a heaven

To rest in.

A sigh to rest upon.

A love to press into

To wrap myself around

All I have is reaching fingers

When we have to draw apart.

My eyes would fill with you

And not these tears

But love is a

Never-ending ending.

∉

There is an alarm going off in my heart

Like that insistent reminder charm

Messages await.

But this is written in blood & fire

I die to hit the “send” key –

Releasing our love to the world.

I have made up a story

I am pretending your regard

I’m playing at becoming your fantasy.

Even at my fabulous age –

Desirable, warm, funny, talented…

The crest of love forgotten:

The Love of A Life again…

“Ping!”

Oh, there it is again

It’s such a short message I want to say

To just one of the eight billion of us here,

“I love you, I love you, I love you.”

Footfalls

Gently, so gently do I touch love

The petal of a flower

With a tendency to curl into protection

Most tenderly I offer a wish, a promise, a longing

Turned into yearning, if I gaze too long upon it.

I am firm. Resolute. I will not disturb this seedling

Except to offer the water of my prayers.

——————————–

Who knows where our perceptions may bring us?

To what tall doors opening

Into adventure or amorous murmurs?

I am familiar with this dance; the steps never leave.

I am not like her; not frail, nor sickly

I am an ocean after you have tended a mountain rill…

There are mysterious depths here, a rush of saline

A holy path to follow to fulfillment

But I see you patting love down as you would a stray kitten

While I am the panther, curled upon plateaus of rock.

When it is time, we shall meet on terms of strength

In skies filled with wind,

We will open wings & fly

Be where you need to be for now

I have our future well in hand.

 ————————

I am daydreaming about being in love. What is happening here? What am I doing? What stray magic has padded in like a cat, curling its tail around my heart?

 So much is going so well, why not? Why deprive myself of a dream when being awake might bring the same thing? why else are we placed in each other’s path, except to love & become the Beloved?

 Yet I know nothing; love drives out all knowledge. What went before is erased, a film laid over the past to be rewritten, reworked, resumed at another chord.

 Don’t listen to me. It is nothing, this tiny blossom, delicate as a wish…a sturdy mountain flower bright in color against a desert sea of sky.

 I will tell none but you & my journal of this. Shh. Like oiling the tin man, this nourishes my heart. Unfolding an origami uncovers all the wrinkles; new patterns display, thoughts of never knowing this again are smoothed away. How does this happen except as a miracle patterned upon the sacred in life?

 There is nothing here but a whisper about to become a song…a melody drawing a bow across heartstrings long bundled in silk.

 O Lord.

Carol

 

 

 

The Collective of Silence

THE COLLECTIVE OF STILLNESS

There’s not far to go before the land starts insisting

I am alive in every place I stand

The telepathy of clouds

Drawing my face to the sky

The valley bows to my feet

The Rock People watching.

——-

I am listening as hard as I can to the Silence

My ears so still (no cilia vibrating)

No sound save Eternity

Settling in for the long run.

——

Earth whispers to me of immortality

Longing to be a poem

It tells me to take it everywhere

That water-meadow in Wisconsin

Chesapeake Bay largesse

The stone-poems of rock nearby

An unchanging safety

Waiting to claim all flesh

I am immortal as I can be in this moment

The activation of love in a grain of sand.

———

The spare skeleton remains; a lace & calcium poem

Yellow-white teeth resembling long-bone toes

I will be blanched

Gnawed by coyote cubs, dragged, growling, to dens

Sung into sunrise: danced on four legs

——–

Roadside flowers

Visible only en masse

A color smudging the landscape

Wreathing no arches

Serving as Butterfly’s foothold

Nectar in a bitter landscape.

——–