Category: Poetry (Page 2 of 36)

Ecstasy

September 11, 2019 / Tom

I hear a subtle song,
Southern bells ringing in the distance,
Yet the flag flying 
Half-staffed,
My heart sinks into laughter.

What lyrics mention those whispers,
Where light breezes move the stiffened pine,
The bluegrass moistened by the softness of her touch,
I hear it all,
Though speak nothing of its wonder.

Where will my heart be when smoke billows from the embers?
The clouds beg for my repose, 
I give them nothing but life roaring from my chest,
The fight raging through the weary part of stories told,
Waken, I say, and enter the truth of her forever.

There's a seat for us at the peak of that there mountain,
A solitude made for two, the lightning rings beholden,
I feel her ease me into that promised land,
Takes me whole, I seldom shudder in this amazement,
Her prayer a scream that echoes in the canyons far below.

Such this dream...not forgotten through the ages,
Ecstasy reborn through the stars we kiss on longing skin,
Stories we write on flesh begging us for more,
Time spent not here, or there, but everywhere,
Floating whispers that have finally found their home.

Found in This (A Poem)

September 3, 2019 / Tom

The senses tingle,

Full of grace,

The smell of you,

Fills this space.

And here I am,

Lost in bliss,

Right next to you,

Found in this.

Within our time,

A moment dear,

We shed ourselves,

And a joyful tear,

A single touch,

A playful kiss,

Our truth is told,

And found in this.

We give it time,

To answer fear,

And before we know it,

The end is near,

So I live this moment,

I can’t resist,

The life of love,

I’ve found in this.

The Geese Know

August 26, 2019 / Tom

Bathing in the morning Sun I sit,
Wandering in the muses of masters who stood before,
Their dream now mine,
Their prose running through my veins,
I bow to the gods of words before me.

Though not sure of myself,
I hear their song rising in the distance,
And I know they know,
So whilst I bargain for a seat at Nature's table,
All I need to do is hear the geese sing.

For the geese know more than I,
Awakening to a purpose that pours from their within,
Taking to flight with the Divine gifts of their birth,
Truth to a soul that guides them to wherever they may go,
They know, the geese, they always know.

Before the Me I Am Existed

August 20, 2019 / Tom

Sometime,
Before the moment the me I am existed,
I stood there in a dream,
Wondering which path it was I’d travel.

I chose the one that made me bleed,
That threw me into the pits,
That cast me aside into the whims of fools and folly,
I dreamt there’d be something more.

I found the one where tears flowed wildly,
Where solitude forgave the acrimony of the crowd,
And I could sit before a fire,
Warming my frozen heart into puddles on the ground.

Birds could sing loudly as the morning sun approached,
I could feel alive as I once tasted the bitterness of death,
I could feel love through the broken shards of hope scattered on the floor,
Lost, I was found through the miracle of my own confusion.

Thus I was born not to ride the placid surface of a lake I’d rarely see,
But to toss and turn on waves birthed by storms on oceans where able vessels go to die,
Though strong I could splinter on rocks that would cast my soul aside,
Weakened by a force of nature carving the path that I had chosen.

The moment before the me I am existed.

The moment before the truth I am was known.

The moment before they ever knew my name.

August 5, 2019 / Tom

In the soft sand, the footprints once remained,
A testament to a journey known,
A wondering soul, the shoreline pointed me in its own direction,
The security of a compass not my own.

The waves then came, and washed it all away.

On the rocky incline, something more mine,
I found myself in the courage each footfall demands,
The challenge of the thinned air,
The struggle to breathe renews the belief I have…

…in me.
There are some things the waves can never wash away.

To rest on stone washed by a million drops of rain,
To brush off dust left by winds so long ago,
To touch the flesh of trees who have stories of their own,
I am so blessed, to be such a young, forgotten one.

We have this folly in our minds,
Addicted to the sanctimony of our supposed injury,
The stories we hold on to in our delusions of grandeur.
I wish to hold on to nothing then, but me.

And then, I will be free.

I’ve found love in the echoes of these canyons,
Found myself in that quiet solitude, broken only by a hawk’s song,
Discovered truth under the veils of lies that I was told,
Found life flowing under the stilled currents of its ending.

There is no return to the weakness of my yesterdays,
No gleam in the eyes of the demons in my mind,
A choice made, I would walk to places beyond my imagination,
A choice lived in each end and each beginning.

My foot rises and falls in hope for just another…

The crow sings beyond my window, and I just stare,
It’s wings just beg to touch the sky,
It’s talons just want to grasp at solid footing,
But its soul…it’s soul will use what it must to get it there.

A dove flew by and I swear it peeked into my heaven,
Please, my friend, tell me what to do.
Alone I sit, befuddled by my mental indignation,
“Come back to me, and teach me how to fly.”

A sigh, I sit alone some more.

Fell

June 7, 2019 / Tom

At my feet there fell a dream,
As a golden leaf fell in a stream,
A tear fell to touch you there,
The flow, the flesh, the cleanest air.

An angel fell in love that’s true,
And I fell, there, right next to you.
With a rustling through some willow trees,
Came a wind that helped me fall with ease.

And though my sultry summer sun,
Shown down on you, the only one,
A man so used to falling down,
Had found a home beneath the ground.

And there within that cold, damp grave,
He, once thought freed, was still a slave,
Rebound, refound, in a poet’s touch,
Reborn in what he loved so much.

And so I clawed for all my worth,
Until my heart broke through the earth,
A gasp, a breath, and I was free,
I found you waiting there for me.

Tomorrow is but a dream of mine,
Today, I think, will do just fine,
I’ll laugh, I’ll cry, I’ll laugh some more,
Give little thought to what’s in store.

At least that’s the story I tell now,
That tomorrow will still be there somehow,
In truth I don’t know how or when,
I’ll find myself in that grave again.

This life, it calls me wide awake,
And in that life, each step I take,
Brings me to my song of Om,
And next to her, my home-sweet-home.

For on that day in which I fell,
Ended all I thought I knew so well,
And now I hope to so live through,
To the day I am laying next to you.

Healing (A Poem with some prose)

June 2, 2019 / Tom

What if today,

We found ourselves centered in the midst of our own Being?

Could we stroke the hair

Without owning the despair

Of the one we love?

Could we somehow find the balance,

To love without owning?

Without owning the one we love?

Without owning their demons they play with in the night?

Without owning the lies they tell themselves in the moments of their despair?

It’s a challenge, no doubt.

The Savior in me wants to die on the cross for you,

To save you from your sins, to cast the devils the beguiles you into the Sea’s abyss.

And banish your tears,

Exile them well beyond the fabled gates of heaven.

But the lover in me knows there is a much harder choice.

I must let you go to wallow in your misery,

Allow you to wade in that ocean of darkened truth,

I will not let you drown, no….I will die to save you then,

But no person alive has ever become the strongest swimmer they can be

From the security of a lifeboat, of the safety of a sandy beach.

We must all come close to drowning to know the beauty of this life,

The wonders of our own strength,

The truth of who we are indeed.

Knowing love will not allow us to sink beneath the surface.

If we drown, it will be of our own choosing.

We can always push the outstretched hand of love away,

One last breath before we sink, exhaled in the denial of one truth,

For the finality of another.

We are all blessed creators, even in our moments of uncertainty.

For it is we who create even the darkest moments we have wallowed in.

_____________

I have several scars, one of which resides within my left eyebrow. It was the result of a sucker punch, but that’s a story for another day. I remember when I was in the emergency room getting stitched up, the doctor doing the stitching said these poignant words to me.

“It may start to itch as it heals. Don’t scratch it, or it will never heal. Let the healing process do its thing.”

As I’ve gotten older, and a bit wiser, I’ve realized that piece of advice is a great metaphor for all of the wounds, both emotional and physical, I have that needed to be healed. The more attention I gave them, the more I scratched them when they itched, the less likely they were to heal and the more likely they were to get infected. If I could only master leaving them to the natural process of healing they would heal fantastically without any intentional effort of my mind or ego. In fact, the only mindful intention I would give them was in the mastery of not picking at them. Believe me, that isn’t always easy.

That does not mean that we should ignore our wounds. We do, after all, need to get stitches from time to time. There is a time, though, when we need to let go of the focus we place on our wounds and allow the natural process of healing to take place. Sometimes, we need to get the hell out of the way, and focus on other parts of life, if we ever want to be truly healed.

That is a great reminder for me today, and a pretty awesome intention to set as I begin my morning.

I Find (A Poem)

May 30, 2019 / Tom

^{I find, in the way of things,}
^{A part of me that cries,}
^{A part of me that sings.}
^{Yet who am I to be?}

^{I seek, in the way I do,}
^{That part that loves me,}
^{That part that loves you,}
^{They seem to be the same.}

^{In this world I have found,}
^{Sometimes fear,}
^{Can find the ground,}
^{And we stand alone upon charred remains of truth.}

^{For those secret tremors turned to quakes,}
^{We wallow in,}
^{What our soul forsakes,}
^{We sometimes find an angel’s feather at our feet.}

^{A tear will run its way again,}
^{And soak the earthen desert sands,}
^{Though I cannot say just how or when,}
^{Beneath me I find that heaven looks like hell.}

^{For angels can show their horns as well.}

Beloved

May 27, 2019 / Tom

Alone with my passion,
A wave subsides,
Yet cannot disappear.
Building…throbbing…pulsing
It speaks to me,
Calling for you in the silence of this longing.

Dreams invade my conscious control,
Letting go to the purpose of our union.
When doves shall fly to kiss that heaven’s door,
We shall know, and we shall feel
That loving, sweet release,
And we shall know our truth again.

My love, thank you for the moments of our embrace,
When the bells have tolled to lighten up our minds,
Lifting our hearts to such beloved heights,
God touches our souls,
Unites our touch in divine pools well beyond our understanding.
Love, what caress will paint this holy scene?

While I curse the days of apartness,
A pleading to the gods that brings our hands together,
I shall beg and surrender to my wanting,
In passion, and in truth, a bent knee at the place where we have met,
For perhaps there has never been such truth in my before,
And in aloneness I suffer at the hands of my own heart.

Silence, for a moment now.
May I awaken like this is but a dream,
And you are sitting in the space right next to me,
With nothing but love, fear banished to the realm from which it came,
Our castle gates, sealed forever in a kiss,
Take me and do with me as you please.

One more day, than weeks of fighting my despair,
Then some days again, pouring nectar into the Chalice of Love’s Great Hope,
Building up the courage, to fight dismay again,
The pattern renewed in the drink that one day may never need run dry.
Yet who I am to ask for such a thing?
For birds and angels were given wings so they may fly.

Beloved, do not judge a man so lost in love’s confusion,
Do not think him weak as he falls onto his knees,
Begging for one more breath beside you,
Do not judge his tear as he watches you vanish into the heavens,
The clouds can be such evil things,
When they banish you from sight.

Again

May 26, 2019 / Tom

We all struggle with what’s right
Trying to find the darkness in the night
I just want it to be day again…
In the twilight comes a song
Written in the sky of right and wrong
Sing that song to me again…

In this room the devil stares
Yet there’s an angel just upstairs
Will the fires make me whole again?
Little birdie set to grieve
If I was dying would you leave
Would you fly away again?

Because life…because life somehow
Is right here, is right now
We’ll never get this chance again…
If the end was near
Would it be the moment that you fear
Or would you pray for just one more morning…
Again….

I just want to get it right…this time