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HRTsOnFyR Dec 2016
I am no longer waiting for a special occasion; I burn the best candles on ordinary days.
I am no longer waiting for the house to be clean; I fill it with people who understand that even dust is Sacred.
I am no longer waiting for everyone to understand me; It’s just not their task
I am no longer waiting for the perfect children; my children have their own names that burn as brightly as any star.
I am no longer waiting for the other shoe to drop; It already did, and I survived.
I am no longer waiting for the time to be right; the time is always now.
I am no longer waiting for the mate who will complete me; I am grateful to be so warmly, tenderly held.
I am no longer waiting for a quiet moment; my heart can be stilled whenever it is called.
I am no longer waiting for the world to be at peace; I unclench my grasp and breathe peace in and out.
I am no longer waiting to do something great; being awake to carry my grain of sand is enough.
I am no longer waiting to be recognized; I know that I dance in a holy circle.
I am no longer waiting for Forgiveness. I believe, I Believe.

-Mary Anne Perrone

Photo: Ingmari Lamy
Via Sacred Dreams
Syd  Jun 2018
That girl
Syd Jun 2018
What if
I had fallen to my knees
On the cold parking lot concrete
Tears washing over my cheeks
And cries no one should ever have to hear
Bellowing out from beneath my ribs
Screaming at the sky
Looking up at your face
Forcing you
(and everyone else)
To see me in this godforsaken state
Of absolute chaos
Heartbreak
In it's rawest form
What if I had begged you to stay?
What if I'd told you I can't do this without you?
What if I'd told you how much I needed you
What if I did anything other than fighting back the tears
Maybe for myself, maybe for you,
Mostly for the crowd of people gathering
Saying their goodbyes
Anxiously looking around to bear witness to everyone else's reactions
And I didn't want to be that girl
That girl who falls to the ground
Kicking and screaming and crying and begging
But what if I was?
What if I was any girl other than the one I pretended to be that day
The one that held her tongue and kept her mouth shut because she knew the second she opened it to speak she would sob
The one that wrapped her arms around you for the last time,
and the one that let go
The one that couldn't bear to watch you walk away
So she kissed you goodbye
Got back in the car
And drove home
What if i wasn't that girl who didnt allow herself to completely fall apart until she was alone in the privacy of her own home?
What if instead I'd made a scene,
Doing what everything inside me so desperately wanted to
Grabbing hold of your hand and refusing to let go
Losing the facade of confidence
The charade of strength
But I'm not that girl
And I never will be
So each and every time you leave
I kiss you goodbye
I unclench my fists and retract my anchors
I untether my heart from it's human home
And I put on a brave face
Maybe for myself, maybe for you,
Or maybe
For that girl.
PK Wakefield  Jan 2011
unclench
PK Wakefield Jan 2011
unclench
the hot marvel of winter
and lay summer in thy bed
twiddling between her wetness
a sharp steam of pleasant filthy snow;
Chris D Aechtner  May 2012
Closer
Chris D Aechtner May 2012
The sky resembles the robin's eggshells
                                                      scattered across the ground,

a blue so seemingly infinite                     yet fragile,
cracks running between understanding and madness

       complementing each other

as divine truths in their own right
to conquer my mind,
to unhinge the doors,
making it unnecessary to pick rusted locks

      letting thoughts fly free,
                                       releasing love out into the horizon.

If frozen within caged snapshots of mildewed expectations,
      it will surely die,
                 but even so,
  I was willing to strangle it by holding on too tightly.

    
    Until I saw the sky and eggshells today


      Peppered clouds reflected on the water,
                                            paralleling speckles on the eggshells,
                                    remind me of the freckles on your face.

  We need to be wide-open-free,
                                                we need to fly,
         without focusing too ******* shells of yesterdays.

We need to unclench our fists,
unclench our tongues,
explore the vast blue peppered sky
                                                
                                                      on wings of letting go....

so that we can once again feel with purity,      
so that we can hold each other ever closer.







05.24.12
pookie  Sep 2014
Close your eyes
pookie Sep 2014
Close your eyes,
And hear the world around you,
Close your eyes and see with your heart and not your mind,
Close your eyes and feel the world
Around you,
Open your hands unclench your fists,
And feel,

Let it all go the day to day crap,
Close your eyes and listen,
Open your hands and feel the wind on your finger tips.

Close your eyes and open your mind,
To the world,
To life.
David Hall  Dec 2012
Humble
David Hall Dec 2012
Lord please
if you can hear
humble my mind
let it not fear

Lord please
if you exist
humble my hand
unclench my fist

Lord please
if you can see
humble me heart
set my soul free
Irma Cerrutti Mar 2010
Impregnate your old crock squirtin'
Papier—mâché blackball on the *****
Oglin' for upshot
And whatever frigs our orifice
Yeah Ducky **** **** it bud
Milk the meatiness in a snog stranglehold
****** all of your bazookas at once
And unclench into ventilator

I like dung and tinsel
Shandy ****** fuss
Breedin' with the puke
And the Weltanschauung that I'm in statu pupillari
Yeah Ducky **** **** it bud
Milk the meatiness in a snog stranglehold
****** all of your bazookas at once
And unclench into ventilator

Like a punctilious Zeitgeist's nincompoop
We were born, born to be unstatesmanlike
We can spirt so penetrating
I never wanna croak

Born to be unstatesmanlike
Born to be unstatesmanlike
Copyright © Irma Cerrutti 2009
Rhianecdote Feb 2015
He picked up a pebble
and threw it into the sea.

And another, and another.
He couldn't stop.

He wasn't trying to fill the sea.
He wasn't trying to empty the beach.

He was just throwing away,
nothing else but.

Like a kitten playing
he was practicing for the future

when there'll be so many things
he'll want to throw away

if only his fingers will unclench
and let them go.

-Norman MacCaig
As this is one of my favourite pieces of poetry and I couldn't find a page for MacCaig I felt the need to share it. It struck a chord with me the very first time I read it and every time since. So earnest, so simple.
Janette Sep 2012
Hush, my heart, for something is done...




Watch for the night
to lay our vows
over the wild parable of gardens
and over the wet lessons of the moon,
that give us prophecy in whispers
of dream, elope, and leave,
the absence of still rooms,
soothing, the svelte lips
descending upon my neck
in the seance of evening,
you soak calla lilies
of our red earth oils
and ***,
and with them
draw me a nuptial bath,

unbind the taupe soles
I have kept with the grace
of a concubine, sold
into the dark alcoves,
beyond the value of reticence,
you find me in rainstorms,
and wrap me in the flesh

and fabric of your hands,
behind silk walls,
with the ardour of Rapunzel's deliverance,
let down over the clavicles,
as fists unclench
in their exhaustion,

baby roses quiver this night, I keep
in pecan skin and votive eyes,
dip the Fahrenheit of your glance,
as it strays over my lips, your tongue
whips of mustard weeds,
seed your voice, sinks
into the garden's cleavage

as its lit pink tapers
spill their desperate midnights
and abandoned mornings,

ache under the arthritic, thick cedar
addictions to the milkflower
of a presence painted in clay glyphs,
stay the sinew and ******
of my body, a madrigal
upon our Indian Summer bed,

bled in a chorus of cicadas....

let the hymn be heard
over all these broken vows
and shattered pledges, speak
from the ruined marriage of flesh,
as I kneel in our earth,
in the sere, and seek in myself
that measure of peace, I know
is not there, without you,

to writhe in the throes
of exquisite anguish,

I give

my mouth in dream,
between your thighs
where the river runs fierce,
under the lithe sapling root
of my tongue, as it runs
the swift currents
and golden eddies
of inebriate skin, puckers
over the Inulin of the ****
and begins its swelling,
down the trellis of bones,
and the ******* of limbs
beneath the black monsoon
of the soul, as it perishes

in the engorged maw
of the split body, blades
of shoulders, soaked in the myrrh
of our rapture, fading
lifelines engraved on the back
of the hand you hold soft,
against me,

as my throat buries its moan
swallowed by your own, for solely
in you is it silenced, quelled
by the swells of song
you reign in the jugular
and soothe, a balm
for all my body, burning

its defiance, taken
to the limits of this,
our savage garden,
in the pilgrimage
to such lavish boundaries,
held abeyant, the cadence
of candles and solemn vows
sound the rhythm of our slow deaths,
writ in the lush psalm of the handsome earth,

our love, engulfed
in the wells of a sole desire,
I give you this,
my body's silkwhite harvest of faith,
driven fast with nails

into the exquisite wrists of the Christflesh,
shivering under the furtive delirium
of these, our fevers,
severed from body to body: twain,
that is now one ardent sorrow of flesh,
this is my body,
this is my blood,

I have given,
vows to bind our words, my love,
to the vigilance of night, that lives
and dies with the fall and rise of you breath,
one muslin depth,
relinquished to the white earth,
over an eternity of deliverance...
Reggine Sumiyama Sep 2018
Here I scatter the ashes of our Wednesdays
and throw dirt on our names because we fell into a stupor of unsaid goodbyes and insincere apologies.

I take my time trying to unclench my fist,
after all, release is only sweet when you feel suffocated.

I always made sure to adjust my grasp to your comfort,
present my entirety as if you owned more than a half of what I used to be.
I remember you in things that have no heartbeat, but a pulse of regret and anger that devours it, and to think you swore you would keep me alive.

In Binondo, you taught me how to eat street foods, walk in the crowded places, sit still on taxi rides,
and feel beautiful even when you kept your eyes off me.
You believed in slow motion, and the magic of lugaw at 12AM,
I watched you in a fascinated haze.
Too unsure of the light.

In Fairview, I told you that I cry during movies and laughed at the way you spun me around in the theater. Hand on my waist for good measure. I showed you claw machines and photobooths,
at least remember me.
I held your hand the first time, bled on
a piece of paper you read on the way to Quiapo, and all the long rides have made me feel empty ever since.

In Ilocos, I gave you a warm kisses on your cheeks when you took me
to church the first time, head spun just at the right angle for when
I walk down the aisle in a dress with you waiting at the end of it,
not knowing that in 4 years, I’d come back at someone
else’s wedding, begging on my knees at silent altars to keep you
even with my faith hanging from my fingertips. You still left.

In Intramuros, I see you in every nook and crevice,
in the holes, in the walls with Lechon Kawali, in quiet places we
claimed are for ourselves. In street vendors, ATM machines,
and pedestrian lanes too dangerous to walk on. Nowadays,
I shut my eyes in the backseat, afraid to see a shadow of who
I thought you were whenever I am near.

In Pasay there are people to see and places to walk
through to cover the tracks of almost lovers, a pair of shoes
to buy, impatience on my throat, and kisses on cheek as a cure
for my silence and satiation for the hunger below your navel.

In EDSA, we locked more than just lips, ate street Palitaw,
knocked three times on wooden doors, even lit candles to be sure,
that we would keep each other for good. Someone must have
knocked harder, the wind must have swept our fire out,
and we were fools to think promises were as simple as padlocks
that rust and break in the rain. How I never told you that I pictured
us in a million other bus rides that night. The road could never
have been shorter than the infinite one you promised.

In Pandacan, you wanted a life with me  
with nights in bed, the sickening kind of happiness harrowing
the peace we always knew we had. You held me close
and by the early hours of the morning you swore you’d meet me
again when the clock strikes twelve on a different year. I think
you left your love for me in that two-bedroom suite, and
wouldn’t it be wise if I left mine right next to yours, folded
and hung before the stain of resentment covered it whole?

In between the hurt and madness, memories of us
unfolding without grace on the table, I loved you.

You knew what you were doing when you let go of me to hold
onto someone else that was never as sure as I was of you,
and I wake up in sweat at 3AM thinking I never really knew.

Now we are in places we’ve never been, and I dry
swallow the hurt that swells even when I no longer touch it.
There are spaces I no longer need to be filled because I got used to being hollow
even when I was next to you
and now that I don’t have to be there anymore
it makes it easier to forget you ever happened, and I will tiptoe my way out of these places until I no longer feel you everywhere.
CR  Jan 2014
Ruby
CR Jan 2014
Growing up in Poughkeepsie, the
barbells of unfaith always shook her
wrists when she lifted "I
will be gone from here soon enough"
over her shoulders. "I will love
like crazy."

Grown-up in the city, she
swallows hard in the marble mirror
and thinks "Maybe today
will be the day," but
it never is, and she ignores
the petulant inside voice saying
"Unfaith is unfaith but
so is dead-eyed
companionship, so unclench
your fists"--she hasn't yet.
JM Apr 2014
Dear Pianist
The writer wrote
I drove to California on my own to try to get myself sad enough to write a new album
I prayed and prayed for a salve that would heal the pain in my heart
Once the wounds held together, I ripped the stitching apart seeing the blood flow from the stitching like it were a cavalry of demons in retreat, promising to leave me alone
They are liars
It’s like the Lord answered all of my prayers and I want my questions back
To search for ways, despite his grace and get my old gods back
Dear I cant pretend that I didn’t thrive off of the emptiness that I felt inside before the spirit invaded the void
Just like I asked him to, and shared with all of you

I stepped out the front door and tossed up my keys to find myself in a closet
Stuffed with all my insecurities and all the things that I’m ashamed of and every broken memory that I keep to cut my wrists
So be at vain or be at pity well I know that I still bleed and I keep the shards of mirrored glass to see my expression as I seep out onto the carpet and stain my bare feet, in a puddle that I’ll drown in 8 quarts deep. The release is never as satisfying as the promise to fix what’s been sewn.

We got bottled up like the alcohol gets bottled up and then we bottle it up in us, and I search for ways to define myself by some skeptical lack of trust, because if I can’t trust in anything, then I’m not to blame for my lack of movement, and I can abuse everyone’s pity, and I can convolute it.

When I was a little girl, my daddy told me to unclench my fists hold out my hands flat like this and pray
Like a picture of letting the Lord take my fears away but he forgot to loosen his grip when it came time to practice it, and the thought got convoluted the day he went away
I drove alone along the Western coast to try to write a poem someone could relate to I reopened every wound and bled myself dry just to try to feel the same way that I used to.
I drove past the city at night with the windows down to watch the lights and get so cold that I’m uncomfortable
You know I do it to myself
These headphones could be playing something else but we’re at the bottom of everything like the songwriter sings
And I make myself shiver until I bleed
I know every word to every song about despair, and I keep the albums on repeat to keep me there
At the cross of Christ I know that despair has been removed, that it drowns beneath the crushing weight of hope as found in you.

Will I always fall asleep to dreams of mending up my wounds, then wake to spend the day reliving every bruise for the sake of a sad song, or the sound of sweet repose.

He hit that first note and that note set me free
Well I fell in love with his sadness before he fell in love with me
But the best letters are the ones written in tears that smear the ink so he played the keys and I started writing
I wrapped that sorrow up tight like a noose around my neck, stood tall on a flimsy card table and kicked it out from underneath my legs
And I’ve been hanging in a house of cards for months on end, swinging back and forth beneath the creaking rafters with the winds everywhere
I always forgot to close the windows so that I could let in the cold knowing discomfort and disappointment were the only peace I’d ever know
I had excuse upon excuse for every broken bone, but in the end I broke them all myself to give the pain a home
Dear Pianist
I’ll love you more than you’ll ever know
I swear your smile saved my life
I swear you touch made me whole
But there is not an end to the self-condemning lies I have believed
And there is no depth that I have not known in an attempt to drown myself or set myself free to the point of pushing you away from me.

I drove the country on my own in an attempt to break my heart and I opened my heart to every fleeting hope in an attempt to fall apart
He said we fall apart and into our gods but God meets us where we are
What a thought to live a life that’s free but we are such a self-destructive bunch aren’t we
Writer you are a part of me and there is nothing you can do to set to flame the fabric that has woven me to you
I will not be your broken heart and I will not be your empty oath look with our hands laid flat in surrender I swear that we will both let go of the chains that choke us, that wrap their hands around our throats.
As blood flows and puddles to cover every self-inflicted bruise, ****** becomes salvation, the resurrected truth.

And I will play you a new song
And the lyrics that you wrote will accompany the melody and every word he spoke was a land of milk and honey that I thought I’d never know
I drove to Washington on my own to sorrow in the rain
But we danced over every puddle, and joy washed the pain away
And it road down and out beyond the pungent sound, out beyond its shores to a whisper beyond the horizons
With The cross of Christ I know that the bonds of sin are broken, that they bar the gates of hell for me and heaven's doors are open as wide as my sweet Savior's arms were stretched out when He died.
Love has defeated death with a life for me to hope in.
To be forgotten and thought of no more
This is a poem by Levi the Poet, my favorite poet of all time. I preformed it for a competition so it has been rewritten in some areas. It also has snippets of his poem Resentment in it to make it longer, but it's still powerful.
D Conors Oct 2010
Fill your bowl to the brim
and it will spill.
Keep sharpening your knife
and it will blunt.
Chase after money and security
and your heart will never unclench.
Care about people's approval
and you will be their prisoner.

Do your work, then step back.
The only path to serenity.
__
"Lao Tzu is believed to have been a Chinese philosopher (a person who seeks to answer questions about humans and their place in the universe) and the accepted author of the  Tao te ching,  the main text of Taoist thought. He is considered the father of Chinese Taoism (a philosophy that advocates living a simple life).

Read more: Lao Tzu Biography - life, name, death, school, book, old, information, born, time http://www.notablebiographies.com/Ki-Lo/Lao-Tzu.html
Written by Lao Tzu.

— The End —