Your lips were kissed by angels
And your sweet, sweet smile stole the breath from my lungs

Your hand was so soft, yet so unforgiving when it wrapped itself around my neck
You choked the love out of me, strangled the words from my mouth

And I stood there while you did so

The mortuary stopped accepting bodies when it saw what you did to my heart
The coroner no longer wished to see how love could destroy anything

From the smallest, softest, most delicate petal of a flower

To a foolish heart with no more room to do anything but bleed

You are not only
A beautiful drop
In an ocean
You are the entire ocean
In a drop

What makes you think,
I can mend my broken,
self,
when Humpty Dumpty,
couldn't do it with all that help?

Cherie Nolan © 2016

Another teary Christmas Eve just passes,
as she watches the world,
some soon hold dear Christmas masses,
through her cars side window,
as the cold air just stirs,
& the engine just purrs,
on down roads she's been down too many times,
as church bells again chime,

In darkest slate blue and grey streaked skies,
against a stark white cloudscape
across her glassy mirrored eyes,

Her eyes fill as she remembers,
the argument before dinner,
& then after,
and there is never really a "winner",

She's not ever comprehending,
the why???

Back home,
& living a lie,
sitting at her stool,
her head in her hand,
& she feels such a fool,
her feet and mind exhausted,
she's emotionally drained,

Things are more than just strained,
her heart more than just pained,

Then he hears her voice CRACK
though doesn't acknowledge her pain
he gently stokes the fire,
she cries alone,
in vain,
but he is not stoking theirs,

He let that die out a while ago,
as if he couldn't care,
& she knows she should go,
still she doesn't dare,
& she doesn't seem to know,

How???

As another tear
                             D
                                 R
                                   O
                                       P
F
   a
      l
        l
          s
           plays on the radio,

She sits in silent sadness,
this is her teary Christmas,
when others surrounded by gladness,

How many melancholic Christmases,
that she just drowns in,
must she endure???

The elusive happiness she once knew,

Left right along there with you.

Cherie Nolan © 2016

So this is what it feels like
to be a new person....
no one recognizes me
and I pass on by unnoticed,
what should I do to get everyone's attention
to make my old friends remember me again,
to be acknowledged and smiled at
but maybe....
it's just foolish selfishness!
because why should I need any acknowledgement
from any of them
because who said they were worthy of my knowledge,
who said they should even matter,
I can determine that myself
I don't need to listen to what others think
the rules and standards they set, the expectations they ensure,
who ever gave them the right
to take control of my life,
my smiles,
my knowledge,
my actions
my soul,
my universal being,
when they did they ever have that right
to act like my life
was just another one of theirs?
the answer is simple:
never.

From your end of
Telescope

Thirty years scans
Infinity

From my end merest
Blink of eye.

When slightest wink
Of billion mile
Star

Outlasts every planet
In the sky

‘What a piece of work is a man!’
………           ………
And yet, to me, what is this quintessence of dust’

From Shakespeare, through Hamlet
It rings down to generations
And falls heavily on my ears too
In vain, I attempt to probe into the mystery
Nay, the enigma called man
Both in the silence of my solitude
And in the learned circle of pundits

(Fool…..
Unable to find who you are
Can you venture to say who the other man is?)

Man is a jumble of contradictions,
I know….A hard nut to crack!
So unfathomable, so mysterious
At once a Satan and an angel

To the outer world I am someone
But in the well guarded cellars of my privacy
Aren’t I different?
Hiding my innards to light
As every other man

At times, I feel so proud
Excessively in love with my own image
Like Narcissus, the poor hunter boy
Fated by gods to languish
On the bank of a pond,
Over his own floating image!

However with all my strength within
Do I not feel as helpless as Prometheus bound?
Waiting for a Hercules to come
And save me from my plight
If Prometheus’ ******* was God willed
Mine is self willed…! Is the difference so very crucial?

Sometimes I feel I am Janus
Looking backward and forward
Into my past and my future
Never living in the present
Or am I more a Sisyphus
Eternally rolling a rock over to the hill
From where it keeps falling down

Sometimes I wonder
Amid the splendor, do I not starve?
Like Tantalus of Greece in the pool
Beneath the tree, with the low lying branches of fruits
Constantly eluding his grasp
And the water, ever receding before
He could take a drink!

As a poet how I wish I could
Equate myself with Calliope
Carving my mind on the wax tablet
With stylus, my pen and coloring it with my fancy
Or Orpheus, so skilled in music
That with my sad musings
I can make even Hades weep
And the rocks fall in line

I shudder to be a Medusa
Turning everyone to a stone
With my sinister glance!
Instead, I want to be one of the Graces
And never one among the Gorgons

Pitched in this gallery
Of queer mythological entities
I wonder how I appear to others
And whom I resemble more!

I walked along the mountain stream
Where dancing sunbeams shone and gleamed

It was such a peaceful place
The gentle breeze carressed my face

I came across a country stile
Where I could sit and think awhile

Far  away  from  this  dangerous  world
The  natural  beauty  just  unfurled.

Keith  Wilson.  Windermere.  UK  2016.