I choose to ignore my aching heart
Carrying it in secret behind my shadow smile
Heavy legs take me around this cold dance floor
Waltzing as words beat on my sensitive brain

I’m Alice in Wonderland!
Drowning in abnormality
Forcing myself bigger in a shrunken surround…

One two three,
One two three,
Keep it in har mo ny

Round and round I continue to go
Rising on tip toes in my mental capped boots
Dancing small steps to the matriarchal tune
While turning my blind eye away.

I looked into unseeing eye;
it didn't blink
Tears pooled blurring my vision....
Perhaps I could pass through that shuttered gaze,
probe deeper within;
pass by blood and tissue
and reach the fleshy beating heart?
I closed my eyes and appealed with words,
clawed blindly at emotional walls;
pleaded with silent screams at pie in the sky dreams....but
Treachery had been there first;
plucking away...
stealing the heart with its persuasive sway

They slip through the cracks
In and out of every pit
Until with ease they arrive
Where Fools sit...
In grotesque embrace;
Questioning deafly till
They're blue in the face
Doubt spins round
Desecrating the air
And manic eyes blink
With glassy-eyed stare;
Murky mirrors reflect pale
Shadows of mens' minds
Mockingly peering down nose
As they sweep truths from under toes...
They slip through the cracks
In and out of every pit
Until with ease they arrive
Where Fools sit....

It’s fragile and fleeting and filled with fear
Tentative, uncertain, uncomfortably near

Loss

The losing of you; horrifying, insane
Picking and tearing, hurting my brain

Loss

Of you is foreign, extreme
Never considered even in wildest dream

Loss

It hangs on nothing though intrinsically tied
To my life and your life, it waits as it hides

Loss

Of your breath will suffocate mine
Turn me inwards and upwards and over the line

Loss

It’s fragile and fleeting and filled with fear
Tentative, uncertain, uncomfortably near

I chose you for captain though you were off course
I saw you a hero, a knight on a horse

I dreamt of you sailing when I saw you’d no boat
I spoke of your valour, put you on a high note

I believed you were convinced though I knew you had doubt
I willed you a listener while hearing you shout

I put you up high even though you were low
I smiled and I laughed to cover your sorrow

I wished with all hope while you crawled and you groped
I submitted to faith while on logic you coped

I watched in helplessness as you slowly slid away
I heard my words echo when there was nothing more to say

Sitting
In the dark
Feeling the beat
Of my foolish heart

I touch my face
Alien lines push away my fingertips
I don’t feel like me
I am a woman possessed

Eyes widen out to let in more light
Dark unseeing pools disguising my fright

If I can just stay here…

Still in the night
Protected by blindness
Sustained by no sight

Sitting
In the dark
Feeling the beat
Of my foolish heart

I want to fall into Poetry
Where warm billowing words will comfort me
Enfold and cover and immerse fully
Each phrase a feather of soothing down
Padding each wound softly and sound
And there I can fall so deeply to sleep
While each stanza reaches its crescendo's peak
Falling and surging with rocking~horse sway
Taking my sadness with words all away

We’re falling
Little grey particles sliding from grace
Floating sporadically through smog filled space
Only to land
In perfect place…
Sometimes

You’re falling
A tortured soul disguising your hate
Lying dying knowing too much too late
Groping with hands
In tearful wait…
Sometimes

I’m falling
Matching lost memories piece by piece
Building what’s broken to take one more peek
Remembering old hurt
Too numb to speak …
Sometimes

What possessed me to wrestle so long
Picking away on unchartered ground
Pushing emotions around and around
Spinning so many an unfinished song?

What carried me off into deeper waters
Wading through mire and murky corners
Falling again and again and again
Over husbands and fathers and Wonderland mothers?

Ease blows over this punch-bagged heart
I fall on soft pillows of steady stillness
Breathing freely and deeply and emotionless
Letting it all go into archival winds...apart

We walk amongst shadows
In a quiet detached way
Swaying against the shoulders
Of others day by day
And behind all eyes a world
Lies hidden...
...tucked away
Where thousands of untold feelings
Seek words to have a say
Deep wells lie scattered
Brimming with decay
While down rains new emotion
Into puddles of yesterday

On still waters Debris I became
Stagnant, Drab, Lame
Held fast in emotional halters

A fresh wind blew in the form of you
Slowly sensation seeped
Until one day I knew..

A river in places a pool may form
Until the rain into does fall
Then overflows
Breaks down the wall
A trickle
A river Reborn

I set you free cause you hungered to go
You gnawed for so long on our family tie
Chewed at the cord till you made me cry
Well, goodbye my dear one, be free and fly

Perhaps one day when your wings hang low
You'll remember my hands that held you near
You'll remember my eyes welled up with tear
You'll remember my smile that quelled your fear

But then up you'll soar to the heavens you follow
You'll chastise yourself for thoughts you entertain
You'll bring out the waters of jealousy and pain
And wash away all traces of the love you disdain

So, be free my dear one, be free in your mind
While I'll hold you in secret by the ties that bind

Tears fall down from deep emotional graves
Like waterfalls covering over dark hidden caves
But no one notices the agony ...the pain
Cause I am crying ..crying in the rain

I fled
I fled to the comfort of the dark

And felt soft swarthy fabric
Envelope my heart
I allowed myself to deeply sink in
Peering into the blackness
Seeing nothing
Like a blackboard duster sweeping
Off the chalk
So my mind was uncluttered
Of all it's wild talk

I stayed till first light
I stayed

I lost my grip and down I slid
And felt no urge to stop
My scanty power enveloped my will
As I succumbed to my downward spiral

The inevitable pulled its peaceful ruse
I felt dead before I died
The blackened fiend sat with twisted smile
And watched me breathe into airlessness
Down down I slid into the well
Where no wishes or hope or light do dwell

And there at the bottom amongst the nothingness
Love scooped me up in gentle palm
And placed me amongst the shattered souls
Pieced together by second chances
And slowly there on tessellated plains
My Life began again

Liquid walls begin to swell then ..
                                   concave down into a well

I slip through ripples and slide down streams

Swirling around in muted dreams

Down down I sweep to dark cold pits

Numbness sets in and inside it sits

I look through a veil at the grainy surround

Floating in pieces going round and round

Straining to gather what makes me a whole

Struggling to steady my shakey soul
.

Be careful as you go through dark tangled webs
Trampling and tiptoeing round life’s sharpened dregs
Be careful as you shoot blindly from hip
Mindlessly aiming through pursed tight lip;
For amongst us gentle souls do lie
Rare soft creatures with hearts that sigh
The world around them like strong currents flow
They cling frantically to the quiet peace below

Be careful, as you go...

I find myself in a place so quiet
That I dare to even breathe
A stillness within that I want to touch
A pocket of palpable ease
The chaos outside wields its frenetic pace
The loudness turned down to mute
I cling to this peace possessively
Willing it so to take root