Submit your work, meet writers and drop the ads. Become a member
 
3.5k · Oct 2013
If I could Speak
Tammy Boehm Oct 2013
If I could speak
I would spill these lamentations
cloistered sins and secrets
whispered vespers for wretched dreams
Retching sentiment
this malignant manifesto
a macabre mantra
eats my skin from within
transient refuge for temporal treasures
inexorable moments carry life away

tick tick tick
the seconds scurry
flurried ineffectual supplications
demigods of affluence
the cacophony of the machine
I spin within
cogniscient of my myopia
the funneled tunnel vision
drips from the end of a pen
furtive verses on paper
fading ochre moments
somber drops of ash and bone
poetic exorcisms
of wicked things unknown

phrenetic
sensibilities trickle
spilling life
black and withering
is the gain worth sacrifice
crackling fat of dreams
too costly
this shallow palette
self obsessed
eyes gouged out
hands shackled
to the reality
the immortality

trust the dust
the dust becomes me
soul focused on decay
spectre death
devouring this unsparked spirit
If I could speak
truth into your heart
would you
believe.....
in anything more than what you see
I trust the dust and dust will be
the remnant me
TL Boehm
042508
this is admittedly toxic - I'm actually quite normal - because I purge in poetry.
2.8k · Sep 2014
Serendipity
Tammy Boehm Sep 2014
Single minded sister
Solitary soul searching
For my whole
Set my purpose defined
Within my spotlight mind
Could see that when you found me
My perfected sight was blind
Serendipity
Filled the emptiness in me

Wistful litanies
Distractions the futility
Of intimate action
Wife and mother not for me
The daydream others
Ceased to be desired destiny
Surprised to find in your eyes
Serendipity
The reflection of a family

This frantic spinning pace
A circular path I race
From frustration to futility
You took my hand and
Changed my course
With measured steps
you run with me
Serendipity
Without you where would I be

TL Boehm 070408
- For Dave
A rare poem for my hubby. A bit o sap and fluff
2.7k · Oct 2013
Valleys
Tammy Boehm Oct 2013
May be you see my life
Across miles and years
The gentle rolling hills and valleys
Verdant earth that ebbs
And flows
Summer grass cool beneath
Wearied feet
Lazy sunsets slip soft and smoky
Rest for another day
Quiet against my breast
Breath measured
I treasure you
Sheltered in my embrace

Is this your love
Blinded to the rifts
The ragged cliffs
Barren and ravaged
Weathered scars
Torrential rains and landslide chaos
Define me
Canyons so deep
Light never descends
Do you find beauty
In my weathered soul
The rush of ascent
As you fly from this valley
Pinnacle bound
and breathless
Love is rarified air

I am your oasis
In the shifting sands
Drifting dunes and valleys
I shimmer in your love
Your mirage
A vision of shelter
Beautiful
Forever....
TL Boehm
051308
hey its almost a happy poem.
2.4k · Oct 2013
Gossamer
Tammy Boehm Oct 2013
In the solace
Drifting transient
Before the dawn
Quiet light
Scattered sentient thoughts
Dreams lift on gossamer wings
Effervesce on heady winds
Like milkweed fluff on a summer day
From the narrow path
I stray

Lost in thoughts
Consuming
Stones thrown from distant shores
Placid surface
Fractured
This undertow defines my mind
Spinning evidence of chaos
Purpose slips away
From the narrow path
I stray
  
Fogbound vessel
Aimless deadwood
On a restless sea
Storm tossed
Lost and anchorless
Victimized by riptides and eddies
Uncharted course each sunless day
From the narrow path
I stray

TL Boehm 040508
This is about the spiritual and not physical intent. I am guilty of the random "Godpoem"
Tammy Boehm Dec 2013
Cerulean breeze
on an indigo night
You flung starlight
on my stellar path
The aftermath
of lovin' on my knees
My aim to please
Falls short between wrong and right
Walkin' out my denim days
And flannel nights

Azure eyes
Serpentine disguise
Took fruit from you any way
Coiled yourself around me
In the middle of a powder blue day
Never felt the strike till you were gone
Poisoned by your midnight song
Skin bruised by scales so tight
Walkin' out my denim days
And flannel nights

I am your china girl
Your cornflower field your summer day
And you are my river flowing
My blue moment slipping away.
Walkin' out my flannel nights
Trippin' down my denim days.
TL Boehm
you know, coulda woulda shoulda been a country song - but I don't sing anymore and when I did, I thought I was Stevie...not Shania....So.
1.3k · Oct 2013
Spark
Tammy Boehm Oct 2013
Matthew 19:5 …a man shall leave his mother and father and be united firmly to his wife and the two shall become one flesh…

Are we simply stardust
Celestial fallout somehow sentient
The connection that effervesces between us
Happy accidents
Or is there that spark of the divine
Helixes and Holy angels
Spin a different plane
Eternal DNA
Existence beyond physical
This side of forever

Sacred accretion
Boundaries blurred
Do I begin then where you end
The weak made strong
Sight to the blind
And love the ultimate healer
For hearts torn asunder
Broken parts made whole
Bound by ties that set us free

I cleave to you
Under sparkling stars
Gentle passion envelopes us
Pulse and breath as one
You surrender pleasure to me
Wild moments sublime
We scatter seeds of immortality
Fertile earth
Breath over water
A single spark in darkness
And the universe
begins anew
TL Boehm
11/3/07
a little poem about creation that went off on its own elemental tangent
1.3k · Sep 2014
Circumspect
Tammy Boehm Sep 2014
Ever decreasing circles
Tessaracts
And mine fields
Hindsight blind sided
Ostensibly this funneled
Tunnel vision
OCD in oscillations
The vortices surround me
Gravity
On my event horizon
The memory of sunlight thins
This meridian
Soul and spirit intersect
At the latitude of foolish intentions
Emotional circumspect
The absolution of revolutions
Pull my fatal focus center
Enter in
To end
Where I begin
aufero vestri cranium ex vestri ****
whispered litany
reverse reverberation
In that space between statis
And 360 degrees
Stretch out my arms
And I am free…..
Ever increasing circles
From the epicenter
To destiny
TL Boehm
092809
remove your cranium from your ****....
the oozlum bird was the inspiration for this mess.
1.3k · Oct 2014
Bella Donna Requiem
Tammy Boehm Oct 2014
This peace you offer
Pinioned prayers and platitudes
Scry in the mercury shattered
Your brittle whispers snap in the rarified air

This madness is thunder at the back of my throat
Ragged and storm weary
I tread water in your wake
Spin my tahrihim and trim the fringe
I am the terminus of fragile breath
Falling away from you

Benedicimus Deum meum adventum et egrediente
There is solace in the blind blue moments
Let me surrender
To the baptism of despair
The upwelling catechism of deliquescence

Souls fall clutching the flesh
Gasping for one more shredding dream
Fill the spinnaker and set sail

I am no longer a seaworthy vessel
This tethered hope you offer
Stinging nettles in my mouth
On flitting wings
Is the drone of hornets in my hair

I crave
Oblivion
And you are bound to your promise
It is my free will

To let go...

06/12/12
TL Boehm

God bless my coming and my going out
*melt away/decay
1.3k · Oct 2013
Chiaroscuro Moment
Tammy Boehm Oct 2013
chiaroscuro moment
molten chords
in golden glow
titian ringlets cascade
from linen shoulders
as your hands bring liquid color
to idle black and white
chorded words of three parts
Not easily broken
Ebb and flow as breath over water
a shift in timbre
resonant teak fettered in silver
heady scent of resin and balsam reeds
echoed drones the cantored dance begins
Taking flight the quiet arias rise
coursing low over open moors
Eyes veiled green
a fog shrouded shoreline
We leave transient prints
In damp sand...
Sonorous notes
From kilted pipers
A flash of tartan on thistled field
Drummers pulse the motion of life
You raise the standard
This ancient song is yours
and mine.

Open eyes to desert sky
Burning blue and empty
As fresh pages fall un-inked
on thorny ground
Only the ache of a melody remains
Lost refrains
broken notes in my DNA
Inspiration drifts away

I used to have a recurring dream of me, and two other friends - in a recording studio with the complete sheets of music in front of us - which we were singing...and when I wake up...I can never remember the song.
03/2008
© 2008 TL Boehm
*in high school I had the opportunity to play a bagpipe that had been made in Pakistan....the drones (for those of you unfamiliar with the instrument - drones are the three pipes sticking out from the top of the bagpipe) were made of teak with silver joints. In each drone there is a reed and you tune the drone by adjusting the wood pieces at the joint. the lining of the bag - and the joints of the drones are resined - so a set of pipes has a specific scent to it. - Pipes are instruments of WAR....and I loved playing them)
1.2k · Sep 2014
Lucid
Tammy Boehm Sep 2014
Have I forsaken
The sanctity of dreams
Enabling the cacophony of small chattering crises
Droning desires dominate my days
Clinging to incantations and litanies of little lies
Repetitive resonance no substitute
For your whispered word
Sipping the residue of wickedness
from this burnished cauldron of the world  
Toxic stupor no replacement for you
Enabling vulgarities to reign supreme
This was never my lucid dream

I am blinded by your radiance
The mirrored pure light of your soul
Resplendence magnified
Purified in a river of pain
You cleanse me from within
Erase my melancholy days
I am uplifted from this abyss
You breathe my lucid dream
TLBoehm 061807
perhaps a God poem
1.2k · Mar 2016
Electricity
Tammy Boehm Mar 2016
I want to live life fearless
I want to live life brave
I want to live a legacy
This soul you died to save
Electricity you’re life to me
Free forever from the grave

Your breath across the water
Your words set in my heart
This spark of life so holy
Now I am set apart
Wrapped up in your pure presence
Where I end is where you start

I was made to worship you God
With all I am and am to be
My love poured out for you God
Like your life poured out for me
Electricity your love for me
Lights up everything I see

TL Boehm
Feb 2015
This is one of the last of its kind I suppose. I was inspired by a worship leader who said that God's love was like electricity. I wrote this and sent it to the worship leader and absolutely nothing happened. I now am in a place where I no longer attend regular praise and worship. No choir, no joy....I go to a church out of obligation and because of this and so many more reasons - I no longer praise. At least not like this. I believe it is integral but I am currently unable to do it. Just rambling.
1.2k · Sep 2014
Friction Addiction
Tammy Boehm Sep 2014
Friction addiction

Hostilities slip from blistered lips
Scald the core of me
The I don't love you
War of words
and absurdities
What will it take to please you
Teasing me with shackled pleasure
The measured moments
Your addiction is friction to my spirit
I hear it in your veiled promises and lies
Defies the logic that tethers me
Responisibility
Civility
The trappings of this plastic
Psuedo humanity
Insanity the manacles I drag
Bound and gagged by your perception
The deception of what you choose to see
Skin to skin we writhe enslaved
I will never be set free
TL Boehm
080708
not about the spouse. love the spouse. always have.
1.1k · Oct 2013
So I Do Not Breathe
Tammy Boehm Oct 2013
“Music takes us out of the actual and whispers to us dim secrets that startle our wonder as to who we are, and for what, whence, and whereto.”

The witching hours between
Onyx nightmares - and dreams that sparkle at first light
Find me catatonic amongst my secrets and inuendos
Ragged shell
an insinuation of skeletal existence locked
Emotional rigor mortis
Hushed, suspended and supine
Stasis waits, hesitating
For the thrumming drums of life
a message of motion
sensual resurrection
That whispered music
melodic song my confidant
The rush of blood
This exhalation across lifeless lips
Speaks nothing into the void
So I do not breathe
In my skin that crawls beyond darkness
Recoiling from oblivion
I thought you loved me
Yet you are without utterance
And my heart breaks straining
For a note of music
and the silence ringing in my ears
A regretful requiem
Careless undertones
mimic this rumor of survival
Suspended I am
Unsung
TBoehm 022008

© 2008 TL Boehm
its more about the relationship between writer and writing than about a physical relationship
1.1k · Sep 2014
Integrity Leaking Away
Tammy Boehm Sep 2014
Skeletal babies too weak to cry
Hollow eyed mothers
Fractured families scratch pits in fallow ground
Earth and hope
Dust scattered chaff
Rice in bowls for ***** hands
And hungry mouths
Cracking smiles optimized
"Mister Christian" done a good thing
Sign your name and look away
Feed a family of four for the price of a gallon of milk
Minimize your guilt
Clinking trinkets in a rusty bucket
Change the channel
Change your mind
Envision God and mother Africa
Doe eyed and grateful placing the crown of the faithful
On your generous brow
While another woman silently screams
Integrity leaking
In the baptism of red earth
And *****
She sleeps outside tonight
No shame for you the miniscule
Separation of virtue and flesh
The seeping reality
Scarred body and mind ravaged to feed
The baser needs of a man
Who will no longer have her
Worthless animal that she is
Brittle field unripe for planting
Seeds of life burst the seams
And she only dreams of a day
Unstained.
Untainted
Waste no meditation on the knowledge
She won’t bring another child into THIS world
For you
Insular in your indignation
Recoil at the colossus of poverty
Knuckled clicking at your heart
While you coddle your conscience
With spare change offerings
Consider dignity
At what price
Small sacrifice to you
Another mother sentenced to desperation
Crosses her legs and prays
While her integrity leaks away

TL Boehm
061108

While I am not addressing well intentioned givers - or Christians who donate money to worthy causes - I am often deeply disappointed in those who "throw money at" a situation - and then consider the minimal effort sufficient. Yes, we need to feed hungry children, but we also need to educate young males on the difference between a wife and property. We need to help women who's bodies have been ravaged by constant famine to take better care of themselves before, during and after pregnancy and we must destigmatize conditions like *** and fistulas that cause women to be shamed and further abused. This poem specifically addresses birth related fistula - a condition in which the bladder or colon is torn during a difficult birth - usually attributable to other conditions like constant malnutrition, immature (underage) mother or a baby too large for a safe vaginal delivery. The fistula results in incontinence for the mother....

See the two agencies below for further information. or google fistula foundation - or clean birth kit.  
www.fistulafoundation.org
www.path.org
Peace
a rare "protest" poem. They don't happen often. That's probably a good thing
1.1k · Mar 2016
Grace Is My Destiny
Tammy Boehm Mar 2016
Put my petty dreams on the altar
My wasted time at your feet
Set my shattered soul before you
And this body worn by defeat
On my knees and I surrender
The battle lost now i retreat
And you meet me in this chaos
In the dirt and the tears and pain
In the middle of my humanity
Remind me who I am again
I’m your child and you’ve adored me
Forever loved since time began
In you I am beautiful
In you I am free
Only in you do I shine true
Your light bright in me
I’ll live this life reflecting you
Grace is my destiny
TL Boehm
02/15/15
Last God poem. Peace.
1.0k · Sep 2014
Cloister
Tammy Boehm Sep 2014
Cloistered manifestation
Candle lit veneration
Indoctrination it seems
The apocalypse of dreams
subtle degradation
emotional *******
a soul split at the seams

you whisper wicked words
pleasure and pain are blurred
subliminal hypocrisy
fingers slick I grip these beads
wheat and tares sprout from these seeds
twist the truth in a noose for me

formidible religion
this gospel of indecision
life bled out on your killing floor
render me defeated
my lesser gods unseated
wrath poured out I am no more

chant your litany of lies
This sinner you despise
clench that unread Bible to your chest
consign me to eternal shame
never again to speak my name
bury me with the rest
your religion is death
with my final breath
a means to an end is best
TLB 11/01/08
there is a difference between religion and faith - this is not a dig at faith -but religion by rote with no faith in God is enslavement
1.0k · Aug 2014
Caught Looking Away
Tammy Boehm Aug 2014
His matriarch set off in the brilliant burn
Pre-monsoon summer skies as she flies
Home to Big Blue and strawberry fields, rolling sand dunes
Studded with peaches and cream stalks full corn ears
Past the gunmetal  hulls - Motor City madness
Send that cheap crap back to China
Import ratchet dreams that obsolesce faster than a preteen’s
Boy band crush
We left our polite goodbyes on padded benches in the Sunport
Trekked the cement labyrinthine path back to the car
Sprawled myself out in the backseat
Marinating in my bipolar haze of relief and regret
Two weeks of my soft under parts presented  
Respect for the Alpha who never hacked up a rabbit
At the mere sound of my keening cries
Sate the pack tomorrow I’m off the forest floor
In all my ears back, feral, foaming at the fangs glory
Salient thought abandoned on the crest of a stressed induced migraine
And the whelps yipping for pricey coffee with caramel drizzles

She broke my bleary eyed unfocused reverie
Wrangling two carts corralled by bits of ragged twine in the parking lot
As she ferreted through her peculiar tinsel adorned collection
Scraggly plastic wreaths, sad ghosts of Christmas past
And her grizzled locks wound round a red velveteen door decoration
Muted hues against her transient mantle
I caught myself looking away…
A triad of flies buzzed her presence
The dull thrum of something important forgotten
She shuffled to a center table
Arranging dusky floral skirts and kohl layered clothing
With hands caked with cracked black grit
Fingers studded with grimey chunk costume jewelry
Dug at the lid on a generic bulk bowl of noodle soup
While baristas and capri clad patrons skirted her table
As though they were restless waves
Fleeing before the power of God across the Red sea
And me ******* spun fat from the top of an overpriced iced concoction
Without pittance in my pocket
Caught myself staring…
Waiting….
For someone else to do the Christian thing

Is that how a Freak rolls?
Tongue lolling for the opportunity
When crazy plants itself
In the high backed chair in front of you
And pops open a styro container of “stroke in a cup”
Do you flash that cash wrapped round a tract
Put a hand on her weary back and pray
Do you simply look away
Caught up in awkward indecision
Uncomfortable in your urban bubble
This is latte day at Starbee’s for God’s sake
And she never put a hand out for help
Or spoke a single word
As if a bag of Oprah’s cut leaf tea would
Change her world.
Or yours.
Pride goeth before Christmas wreaths, and shopping carts
And *** metal costume jewels

Under the cool blur of my ceiling fan I glance skyward for answers
Offer a smattering of plaintive prayers
For matriarchs
And mavens with dull velveteen bows in their hair
For my children
For release from the pain at the back of my brain
And the constricting grip of entitlement torqueing my brittle heart
God breathes in moments missed
When we simply look away…
TL Boehm
08/21/2014
The day my MIL left after a two week visit, we stopped in at a local Starbucks in the Burque and ran into this woman in the parking lot. She now has a permanent if cramped home in my memory.
998 · Oct 2013
Descant of Light
Tammy Boehm Oct 2013
Descant of light

The raconteurs of spring
winging whispered sonnets
chase the woollen winter malaise
from silent skies
fluttered hush of doves
herald the nirvana of dawn
Shadowed palette of dusky hues
muted blues spun somber grey
give way
the subtle brush fades
to the rush
of insatiable light
the alchemy of day
and night
Dismiss this imbroglio
melancholy thoughts
Bitter vignette of lamentations
words chilled expire on lips
disappearing wisps
My spirit lifts
in the blush of sun
dancing across pristine paper
arias burst in the illumination
scattered saffron pollen
blessing multiplied
my hands industrious
I lift my eyes....
The avatar of hope supplies
this descant of light
04/12/08
TL Boehm
a shiny happy Tam moment.
993 · Sep 2014
If I Had The Words
Tammy Boehm Sep 2014
If I had the words
A gift of wings that would not fail
Set my sword
To perforate the veil
Cut this clinging death away
Let the light fall like rain
Solace on a summer day
But I’m bound
Dragging shackles and chains
Starving for grace
As I choke on the profane

Sacrificed my petty dreams
Bled out on the altar of fools
Propitious as light might have been
I let darkness set the rules
Circumstance stultifies the child inside
Nullifies the need
To hope for a greater salvation
My spirit fights but my head concedes
Lost in the chaos around me
If I surrender who will lead

And if by chance you went walking
Through the shattered past I’ve left behind
Pick your way through emotional wreckage
Find my inner child deaf dumb and blind
This failing hope will not carry me
As I struggle toward the light
And so I wait abandoned
As the world spins fast toward night.
I know the truth you cannot see
What I carry hidden in me…
08/22/09
TL Boehm
Morose and peppered with self loathing. But HEY it rhymes....sorta
960 · Oct 2014
Unreachable Dream
Tammy Boehm Oct 2014
Cast one more stone
In a well void of water
To sustain you
As if your trebuchet barrage
Scattered talismans at my weathered feet
Will bring the deluge
Pour out sacrifice
Redolent offering to the god in you
I want nothing more
Than to sharpen my sword on the bones
of your unreachable dreams
Draw this blade across your saline skin
Etch my grievances in blood and mortar
The panacea of fools
Are you even capable of feeling pain?
What a waste
This dance
Your ineffable demesne
Is nothing but gossamer threads
Smoke and mirrors
Cannot contain me
I refuse to move to your
Susurrous litany any longer
I'll cut out your tongue
For my standard
And leave you silent
To decay
TL Boehm 11/09/12
933 · Oct 2013
63 Lives
Tammy Boehm Oct 2013
Now that we've seen the true depth of evil
The cunning agents who wield the power
Set in motion machinery of destruction
The insidious shackles of war and death
Washed up on our shores
The crone in our own reflection
Can we abnegate the course
The blind rage that sets our mouths casting stones
Can we truly love as the so called righteous sanctify
Other lies
We condemn men, governments, religions
We ostracize, prostelitize, criticize
Until our eyes don't recognize
The dignity of 63 lives
Born into a world forever changed
By the sacrifice of mothers and fathers
Sons and daughters
Serenade the heroes who did not falter
In the face of demons and ashes
Falling glass and jet fueled funeral pyres
With the apropo of excellence they chose
To stay...to fight...to climb the stairs
The true bane in the battle is the heart
So scorched it cannot care
For 63 lives in the balance
63 sets of ancient eyes and smiles of a child
It is time
To rise

TL Boehm  
Originally written 9/11/06.
Celebrating life.....

ABC NEWS - 9/11 babies five years later - google it
written for the 63 babies born to mothers who lost their childrens' fathers in the WTC  disaster
931 · Oct 2014
Gun Metal And Asbestos
Tammy Boehm Oct 2014
Gun metal and asbestos
The tundra of your father’s eyes
His heart left in London after the war
Stubborn, your mother clung to the lie
Hide the shameful sight
Your hands left over right
Roll a crochet ****** under your blanket
Picture perfect mask the missing
Digits and appendages
“That child’s not mine…Ma”
Shoulda put ya in a home

Whispered sins and indiscretions
You slept with your sister in silent rooms
Peed in a porcelain ***
Defiant, Old Nellie in her witch gray wool
She won’t latch the outhouse again
Keep that abomination strapped to your thigh
Crossed and awake at night
You came out swinging when he touched you
"Shoulda put ya in a home…."

Pick the rock salt from your hide
And never cry
Secrets sting more than saline bullets
You bared those knees in a hand made dress
And fled…newly wed
Birthed that ten toed baby girl
Relegated yourself to the drain of domesticity
Brownstones and picket fences
When did you cast the first thread
Spiderwebs and pyrite
Whispered sins and indiscretions
Broken dishes…
Broken bones…
Broken vows…
You lied so much better than you lived

That crave for validation in your fathers’ eyes
Drift away over his open grave
You played Taps in the shadows
One last time
I was an open wound in a house of pain
You couldn’t love your child
And swallow the shame
That little redhead down the street
Baby boy you couldn’t give
Fed your shattered ego with fear
In my eyes
Notch your bedpost with ticks for lovers and fools
Man eater never sated
**** point met….She’s not your daughter
You left him in an empty room
Payback is a jade eyed snake coiled up in your marriage bed

That High school Knight
Greasy hands and milk toast breath
You fled again
Tell me you’re happy
When he’s gone from dawn to dusk
Catching crappies* and suckin Pabst in a can
While you pickle yourself with cheap *****
And soap operas
Buried your crazy mother, your Witch of a sister
And the **** you married first….
No ripples of remorse
In the cement of your soul

We only speak across miles
Unreconciled
You will never apologize
Little dreams strangled
Wet ******* around my neck
Soap in my mouth
Welts and belts,
Wire brushes and hangers
Fitting discipline
Can’t leave my own alone with you
Drown your grandchild in the toilet bowl
Rather than ask for the truth
From a terrified child
Who had only begun to adore you
Now I can’t love his scars away
The truth is bitter, cold and lonely
Love cannot grow in a heart of stone
Chiseled bitter by the sins of a mother
A father and another
You never had a chance to be
Complete….
02/24/10
For Barbara....
*crappies are a pan fish.
My mom was born with congenital birth defects including a missing finger on her right hand, a missing limb below her right knee and no toes on her left foot. Her father swore she was not his child for several years. Her family was dysfunctional and she married into another dysfunctional family. When she finally divorced my dad to marry a high school sweetheart, she told my dad he was not my father. I know specifics weren't required but I felt they were necessary to understand the context of the poem.
898 · Mar 2014
The Rose Remembers
Tammy Boehm Mar 2014
Pressed between the pages of an old diary
An age lightened rose
Lies soap bubble thin
A claret echo lingers in once vibrant petals
Like the smudge of a first kiss
On a clean shaven cheek
Does the rose remember the blush?
Of the first love
Does it remember the warm wet earth?
That held it close
The scent still clings to its petals
Does it remember the morning dew?
Trickling down its leaves
Like droplets of liquid laughter
Spilling from my eyes
As I held it to my face

First love fades
Like the flowers crimson hue
But this rose
Like a dear old friend
Remembers

TL Hughes (Boehm)
1987
another one from the vault. Before I really knew what "love" was.
831 · Oct 2013
These Breathless Moments
Tammy Boehm Oct 2013
These breathless moments

Dreams flutter boundless

Pinioned on stellar winds

Constellations rise in indigo eyes

And I pull in spinning

Euphoric aspirations glow

In vertigo as the accretion heats

Birthing a new universe

I am astounded by the light



Interminable epochs

Found me comatose

At the divination point

The juncture of the void and life

I dance the staccato steps of departure

Memory of thin skin disappears

Beatific vision shimmers

In glistened entreaties

Lacrimae sunt arma femina.

Console me with forever

The emulation of flight defines me

Zenith in your twilight skies

On Heaven's breath I rise

*tears are the weapons of woman

TL Boehm
2/22/08
Another Godpoem of sorts.
806 · Oct 2013
I Can't Get Away From Me
Tammy Boehm Oct 2013
Everywhere I go
There I am
Casting shadowed glances
This periphery of lies
And smiles that grace the face
Gazing out from my mirror
Is it fear or something sinister within
Where does the image end and the girl begin

Everywhere I go
There I am
Cracked lips pursed in condemnation
Glass refracts the dissonance
Of this existence
Etched memories in skin
Furrowed face and furrowed mind
Beauty lost when the world is blind

Everywhere I go
There I am
Familiarity a festering wound
From love to loathing I’ve come undone
From creation to forever
Everywhere I go
I am my destiny
I can’t get away from me
TL Boehm
01/22/08

© 2008 TL Boehm
another archived work. and where would I go if I wasn't where I was when got there.
801 · Oct 2013
Starlit Spectre
Tammy Boehm Oct 2013
starlit spectre
on crescent thoughts descend
the lonesome days I spend
apparitions disappear in daylight
Like whispered promises
of friends

celestial solace
nocturne's daydream
on pinioned wing visions stream
the sparkled rush of lovers hands
cross silvered sands
mercurial stream

Cast away imagination
Set to flight in ravened skies
the ghost of hope now flies
shh don't wake me
to the harsh light
I despise.....
TLBoehm
032808
sometimes Tam (that's me) gets the blues....
782 · Sep 2014
Hating Shakespeare
Tammy Boehm Sep 2014
Oh, tragic Romeo and Juliet,
Two star-crossed lovers, by the way
Thy tale of woe makes me *****
What else could be more cliché

Or morbid Hamlet’s *******
With a jester’s empty head
Thy necromantic discourse
Woulds’t be better left unsaid

And woe betide who says thy name
I’d sooner choose a horrid death
Than sit through the doubled bubbled fame
Of the queer kilted lad, Macbeth

Thy coupled innuendos, Bard
Doth soften thee rigored mortis hard
TL Boehm 03/14/09 (edited by Fred Boehm)

PS: I conducted an interview with Shakespeare in an attempt to gather inspiration...from the sour sonnet above it was fruitless...my questions and his answers below...

1.Are you a male or female: "Tempt not a desperate man"
2. Describe yourself: "Wisely and slow; they stumble that run fast"
3. How do you feel about yourself: "Methinks I see thee, now thou art so low,
As one dead in the bottom of a tomb."

4. Describe your ex boyfriend/girlfriend "Tis torture, and not mercy
5. Describe your current boy/girl situation: "It seems she hangs upon the cheek of night like a rich jewel in an Ethiope's ear"
6. Describe your current location: "Not stepping o'er the bounds of modesty"
7. Describe where you want to be: bid me go into a new-made grave,
And hide me with a dead man in his shroud -

(snippets of Romeo and Juliet, by the way....)


9. Your favorite color is: That which we call a rose
10. You know : Parting is such sweet sorrow, that I shall say good night till it be morrow."
11. What’s the weather like: Never was seen so black a day as this.
12. If your life was a television show what would it be called: For you and I are past our dancing days"
13. What is life to you:  "It is the east, and Juliet is the sun"
14. What is the best advice you have to give: "These violent delights have violent ends
And in their triumph die, like fire and powder,
Which as they kiss consume."
15. If you could change your name what would you change it to: "What's in a name?”
a flippant quip in honor of the Bard
779 · Mar 2014
Death of Fear
Tammy Boehm Mar 2014
Today I found myself...chaotic
My soul the rogue wave
Rippling the placid ocean flow
Destruction a force multiplied
Swept away by the undertow

        Shh...I calm the waves
        Your restless soul
        I make you whole

Creation torn asunder
Ferocious surf
The thunder
Of a heart apart from you
Damage I cannot undo

        I cast the lines
        To draw you near
        Its your heart I hear

What angel in heaven cries
Sundown light slipping from ravaged skies
I lie powerless in the ebbing
Life of dreams slowly die

        I give new dreams
        Unquenchable light
        Illuminate your night

Cast ashore
Wrenching breath
I fight no more

        I am your breath
        Your living water
        You are my daughter

Writhing fright
This fear of death
This prison death

        Don’t struggle let me
        Hold you near
        I am the death
                            of fear
TL Boehm 2007
I suppose this is an "antiphonal" poem. a conversation between my soul and my spirit. The soul wants what it wants. The spirit is pure....I usually live therefore from the perspective of my soul.
776 · Sep 2014
The Watermark
Tammy Boehm Sep 2014
So this is the watermark
The stranding after the deluge
Tidal storms recede
And I am wreckage on your shore
Gulls hover
Strident cries they scrabble
For cast off sparkling trinkets
Dead flesh
Winging requiem for a life unlived
Slip the yellow tape boundary
Drape daisy chains and platitudes
Across my fractured hull

Would you find wild beauty
In weathered wood
Barnacle scars
And the echo of measured surf
Set this longship by the sunstone
Radiant light when skies are heavy
Sullen with winter chill
Would you cleave to the beat
Aegir’s heavy hand on your prow
The moon pull of open water
The tease of salt spray
On full lips whisper my name
One more time
Quiet
Voice across the deep
And I will breathe

Will you simply wreath
My memory
“ see the line of my people back to the beginning
Lo, They do call to me”
Cast the fire and plot the stone ship
Pebbles skipped cross brackish water
My legacy sinks
Little rippled terminus
Wont shred butterfly wings
Or froth the wild tides
To the maelstrom
So this is the watermark
Strand my heart
With one spilled tear
TL Boehm
09/03/2014
Aegir is a norse sea god
the sun stone was a viking navigational tool - a stone that reflected light even in cloudy weather
The quote is from a Viking Burial Prayer. Contrary to myth - vikings were often buried in the earth with the grave outlined in stones in the shape of a ship.
I don't write pretty poetry - and this is a lamentation of sorts for my lack of ability to write something beautiful.
759 · Oct 2013
Lady Desperation
Tammy Boehm Oct 2013
If I handed you the knife
Let you cleave flesh from bone
Spilling blood
And broken promises
Fragmented thoughts
Fall where they will
Would you crack the marrow
Leave me dry
Pain the only release
In pieces of me consumed
Death is a shuttered room

Singing Psalms
Your Pollyanna mantra scatters rainbows

And dirges to the troubled skies
Revel in the celebration
Of a slow descent
Skipping stones across poison water
Wings of paper cannot save you
From the fall
Rushing pulse in my ears echo
This empty shell
Illuminate my way to Hell

Screams in silence
Lady Desperation

Behind my weary eyes
Ties another knot in the cord
Hold on a little longer
Let the words
Fall where they will
Vain resurrection of the faithless
Pain is the only force
Along the course with me exhumed
Sanity is a shuttered room
TLB 012208
Sometimes there are too many 'me's' in my mind

© 2008 TL Boehm
not knowing where to begin here - I'll just point and shoot and see what happens. I started writing in 1982 and I continue to write today. There's a lot of junk in between those dates...and there may be poetry.
755 · Oct 2014
The Maid of the Hesperus
Tammy Boehm Oct 2014
On wintry nights the mariners sing
Of tales such as these
The sound of a fair maid crying
Carried on November’s breeze

On moonless nights along the shore
Where plaintive surf does sigh
A chill will set in the bones of those
Who hear her mournful cry

Beware good men who ride the waves
Should you hear young maiden fair
Set a new course for open sea
Lest frigid death find you there

She drifts alone on storm frothed waves
Icicle tears form round her eyes
Her frigid embrace a sailor’s death
When winters wrath fills the skies

Alas fair maid of the Hesperus
Her spirit a slave to the wretched sea
The deep no kind of resting place
For a beauty such as thee

Beware good men who ride the waves
Should you hear young maiden fair
Set a new course for open sea
Lest frigid death find you there

TL Boehm 2007

dedicated to Longfellow...
http://www.bartleby.com/42/777.html
Inspired by "The Wreck of The Hesperus - by Longfellow
751 · Oct 2013
Get Up
Tammy Boehm Oct 2013
Got no use for aggression
Racial prejudice or abuse
Blamin’ everyone else
For your sorry self
Is a waste of breath a lame excuse

One day you’ll have to stand up
Face your Maker all alone
And all those losers wh
Ran around with you
Will fade away, you’re on your own

Got no use for whinin’
Spare me your tale of pain
We all walk the road
With a heavy load
We stumble and fall then get up again

One day perhaps you’ll listen
Your Maker’s burden is easy and light
You could share the weight
Yet you hesitate
Getting it wrong makes it feel right

Get up reach up get up
Stand your ground
Rise up fly up step up
Keep your ground
Step away from yourself
Step up to Him
Stand on Solid ground

TL Boehm
12/02
12/26/05
If I had any ability to write music - this would have a bit of a reggae feel to it. But Tam can't write music. Or lyrics actually
746 · Feb 2015
Salome
Tammy Boehm Feb 2015
Perhaps it was the blasphemy of lovers and fools
This dalliance of ravens and necromancy
The brush of pomegranate mouths
Amaranthine against the backdrop of ochre and tintype
I dance the silent rhythm
Innate the rush of blood in veins
Salome
I am your feathered death on prism wings
Small consolation you cannot see the soul beneath the veil
Spin a legacy of heretics starry eyed and hungry
For flesh and soft skin
Spills the stain on pristine canvas
The palette of indiscretions
Peep show intimacies
Vibrant I am unfettered light
And you are blind
In black and white and gray
You twist this myth
Ropes coiled serpentine
Hungry eyed you feed on dreams
Cellulose crackling in the heat
Borne on desert winds
I rise to claim you
I am the moment
Pigment and poetry
Alive and fluid in your mind
Inescapable
Whisper my name
Salome
031113
746 · Feb 2016
Here Is My Everything
Tammy Boehm Feb 2016
Here is my broken heart
Here is my shattered life
Here are all my faults and failures
As a woman a mother and wife
All the promises I've broken
All the hateful things I've said
All the life I left unspoken
Wasting my breath upon the dead

Here is my sweat and sacrifice
Here is my blood and pain
My hollow effort to pay some price
Worry wasted for no gain
All the lies I cling to
All the truth I threw away
All the darker thoughts I bring you
Waste my steps and run astray

Here’s the sum of my existence
Here’s the hardest part to learn
This wretched pride and persistence
Stokes a bonfire set to burn
All I am at the end of me
All damage done that I could do
All that’s left is the love that sets me free
Everything comes from you
TL Boehm 10/06/2013
another Godpoem
741 · Mar 2016
Considering Eve
Tammy Boehm Mar 2016
Considering Eve
Male and female created he them; and blessed them, and called their name Adam, in the day when they were created. (Genesis 5:2 KJV)
From the moment you breathed
Dust disturbed across this barren earth
I was clothed in radiance
Infusa lux Dei
Skin and bone and soul
As one we walked in the still of the morning
Tender blooms un-bruised by the weight
Of flesh pressed soft
Fertile ground I found
The fatal embrace
Sinister beauty
And choices begat consequence
And consequence begat the lie
Never the two shall become one flesh again
Desperate we search for the God shaped hole
In our hearts
Filling the emptiness with poison
Until the acid bleeds from my tongue
Suckling the ******
Of Babylon
I will burn forever and never be free

Trace the letters set in stone
Echoes etched by the hand of the Paschal lamb
Qui sine peccato est primus lapis sint eiecti
And still the ******* would sell my daughters
To sons for a goat and a gold nose ring
And consider Eve the mother of all imperfection
Yet you named us Adam…we were one…

Forgive them Father for they’re too stupid to understand
Angels with flaming swords a metaphor lost
On sheeples and E.C. Wannabes
Intervention is a painful consequence when haughty children
Cleave bone and souls to succor their own crave
This crumbling throne is transient
I will walk in the cool of the morning with you
Clothed in light
Again.

TL Boehm
2014
published in Mavguard Magazine. www.MavguardMagazine.com
Tammy Boehm Jul 2014
Would you kiss me
Gently
On the back of my neck
My collarbone
Whisper soft
A feathers’ touch
Would you close your eyes
Breath to breath
Linger
Lost in the moment
Embracing each taste
Sensations
Sweeping down my spine

Stopping
Before the mundane
Mechanical act of *******
Leaving foreplay
For the desperate
Communicate your forever love
Not your temporal lust

Just seal me
With a kiss
Goodbye
To keep me
Until the time is right
For the two of us
To be one.
2006 TLB
corn. corn. and more corn.
733 · Oct 2014
Perpetual Retrograde
Tammy Boehm Oct 2014
I used to think that I could fly
Held aloft when I closed my eyes
Earth a bauble below me stayed
In perpetual retrograde

I used to dream of heady things
Effervesced on gossamer wings
A world of petty dreams I made
In perpetual retrograde

When I awoke it was too late
Vision fades when you hesitate
Capricious fantasy will fade
In perpetual retrograde

I'm earthbound now and gravity
Has left a terminal mark on me
This truth is a fatal move I played  
In perpetual retrograde

TL Boehm
08/29/12
Kyrielle
710 · Sep 2014
Doppelganger
Tammy Boehm Sep 2014
In the hush of moments
Before the breath of day
Expressed from hesitant lips
meus animus vacuus vita
Before the pulsing flood
Of light spills across the floor
My heart the cadence of skipping stones
Tossed across the abyss of moments
I am the skittering silence
Taboo communion
intereo regenero

granite manifestations
This flesh a memory of dreams
Swallowed by sightless eyes
Oblivion a sanctuary for fools
Flesh and bone obey decay
And you wait in the space between
reflection and rejection
for me to put out the light....
TLBoehm
082808
my soul without life
to die and be reborn
nails and rust
709 · Feb 2016
Lost in Your Words
Tammy Boehm Feb 2016
I find myself
Intoxicated
Letting your words spill
Fragrant like crushed flowers
To settle at the base of my spine
The lush moments
Intimacies
And daydreams
Effervesce on the tongue
I savor the phrases
And catch my breath
There are days I could drown
Let my foundations crumble
In the torrent of you
My mouth full of succulent fruit
Un-bruised by the hungry palette
I could drown
Looking up at metaphors
You fling like stars in my night sky
The thrill of sacred and profane
Crystalized on the tip of your pen
The alchemy of lovers
Passionate
Raw
Nightmares that creep with words
Stretched over bone
And those that dance
Enrapt within
Surrender of flesh and spirit
I am lost in the power of your words…
TL Boehm
04/15/13
705 · Aug 2014
Will You Carry On
Tammy Boehm Aug 2014
Will you carry on
Over open water
Will you go
Toward the rolling shore
Will you fly high
Ever rising spires silent skies
Rush of wings brings you home

This is the moment
Smile and cry
Goodbye
Will you leave me for ever
Little girl no more
Sail far from this troubled shore
Broken wings can’t fly with you

If I could be your light house
Shining bright for you
But I’m only the mirrored darkness
Reflecting torment we go through
One faded image shattered
By the stones thrown from passing years
Bruised and broken on the highway
Washed away by blood and tears

Will you carry on
Through windswept waves
Will you go
Til you find your way
To a harbor safe and dry
Spread tearstained wings and fly
Until you find your way home….

Leave me lost
I stand sentinel
On this troubled shore
Alone
© 04/01/2006
For buffi and beth
Inspired by the song "That Lonesome Road" by James Taylor - a moldy oldy
700 · Dec 2013
Indelible
Tammy Boehm Dec 2013
Your love is a line
Tattoed down my spine
The pulse of a tentative touch
This pain is an art
I play my bit part
When you leave and I miss you much
Your mark on me
Indelible
I close my eyes and see
Your soul is a beautiful picture
Superimposed on the skin that's me
Indelible
My baby.

Write my life with your ink
I cannot think
Of a better way for the page to unfold
Each line a caress
This gentleness
Of a love story in flesh be it told
Indelible
The name of the story we write
Your soul is an epic masterpiece
Written on my flesh at night
Indelible
That's right

Indelible
Your mark on me
Indelible
Sketch my destiny
Each stroke
Set me free
Indelible
This tattooed line on me
13107
TL Boehm
© 2007
I don't often write of love but when I do, I would probably embarrass the object of my affections...
694 · Sep 2014
Wild Vine
Tammy Boehm Sep 2014
I have found myself
A wild vine
Growing away from the center of You
Tendriled pathways
Coil around themselves
Clinging to rough stones
Searching for nourishment from barren ground
That cannot feed me
Leaves crushed and trampled by treading cares
Of this world
Parched and soiled, by sin
Choking out Your son light
I am unrecognizable as Your child
A wild **** to be ripped from the field

Yet you find me
wash me clean
with gentle spring rains of love
Your word cuts away
Bruised and broken foliage
Your breath stirs me
To put forth fresh leaves
The promise of fruit restored
I can feel your life  
Welling up
As you turn me again
Toward your Son
TL Boehm
021208
Definitely a God Poem
692 · Oct 2014
Torreon
Tammy Boehm Oct 2014
"Baby Brianna was five months old when she died...she had multiple broken bones. Over thirty bite marks. She was beat to death..." "Susannah Martinez (campaign ad)

Doe eyed ghosts
Y los ninos mi corazon
Mall haired mamacita with the lined lips
505 madonna meant nothing to you
Bust that cap while she sleeps
Represent
And leave the little ones behind
Curled up against her cooling breast
Black blood and coffee grounds under their nails
It took them weeks to starve to death
Abuelitas they lament
Light the candles in Torreon
Would you buckle under the weight of tiny bones
Small hands that clutch the sky
Sightless eyes
Fragments of a smile stopped by a single shot
Gangstas gunning the wrong house
Little girl lost in poppi's arms
would her whispered breath against your neck
bring one tear
Baby Bartholemew in his car seat
choking to death in his own blood
Head lolling back crying for mommy
One last time
The sound...the stench forever resonant
Cuz teddy bears cant stop a bullet can they
Wrong place
Wrong time
Hand the grieving parents a tissue
And straighten her hair
For the cameras
This indignation will rise
Bile in your throat
for the next 40 minutes
Until you return to the blur
Of your regularly scheduled lives
We're so casual with our offspring
But Brianna, Bartholomew
and the ghosts in Torreon
they haunt these tears I cry

"It took us three years, but we fought to make it a death sentence. Baby Brianna's picture still hangs in my office." Susannah Martinez (campaign ad)

I will not forget....

TL Boehm
December 2010
This is a rewrite of a poem I lost - written about a culture that used to strap the murdered to a murderer until the murdered corpse dropped off. That was the punishment.

The Torreon cabin murders are true. Gangsters decided to **** a mother and her boyfriend in a cabin in Torreon and left her toddlers to starve to death. They ate coffee grounds before they died.

Bartholomew is also true. A drive by shooting....wrong car.

The little girl shot in the face, also true. Wrong house.

Governor Susannah Martinez and Baby Brianna Lopez. Yup. True.

It makes me physically sick.

you can google "Torreon Cabin Murders" as well as "Baby Brianna Lopez" - I cannot bring the pictures here. Only the words of my heart. Ask me now why - I am perpetually dark.
690 · Sep 2014
The Bones of Winter
Tammy Boehm Sep 2014
The Bones of Winter

The sun rests cold
On the bones of winter
Bleached mirror of oneself
Shedding light
But no warmth
With the tenacity of sinews
I am tied to you
Drawn in by the solidarity
Of shared intentions
Tethered until death parts us  
I'm starved for intimacy
Heart stretched taut
Thin skinned belonging and attachment
Characteristic covenant of a lie
Your drum song litany of sorrow
Wasted on empty air
Our mutual decisions shackle me
This reciprocal forgiveness
The pleasantries of acquaintances
Quaint values wasted  
Bands of gold identifying markers
The dirge of mutual caring
whispered fireside stories of life
Enhancing spirit
Walks a well tread path to a shallow grave
This passing of our forever friendship
Trade better for worse
The sun rests cold in this soul of winter
Remembered warmth in your arms
Fades away.
TL Boehm
01/28/09
I'd like to think it was more creative than saying I'm peed at the hub for leaving me wait in a cold car all night last night, but maybe not.
I was planning to go home, to enjoy some desperately craved quiet time, to catch up on the little things like blogging and sock mating and choking down banana nut muffins the other peeps revile, and so I left work with a light heart and big dreams only to be crushed when my key wouldn't fit in the door...
685 · Jul 2014
Secret Garden
Tammy Boehm Jul 2014
He was born from spring rains
When new leaves unfurled
Heady sweet mimosa and willow
Filling the air with peaceful green
Lacing the ground in spinning shifting patterns
Scattered sunlight as drops dripped from trees
Knee deep in rivulets bubbling and rushing
To my back door.
He called me out to play

I ran with him hand in hand abandoning
The mundane four walled pristine
Plaster world I passed as real
Feeling cool fronds brush against my hungry cheek
Neck tilted
Back arched
Swallowing the droplets as they trickled from
The branches
Unmoved by the rushing water
The thunder
Spring rains turning to the deluge
Of a summer storm
Innocence swept away on the furious current

Now I dream in green
Fervent unseen passion
Masked by my lack of reaction
Yet the back door stays open
As spring rains drip from leaves
Rustled by a gentle breeze
Could it be that he...
Comes calling me to play

TL Boehm
072206
clueless where this came from
678 · Feb 2015
If only the Days
Tammy Boehm Feb 2015
"Slowly, silently, now the moon..."--Walter de la Mare

If only the days slipped soft
Eider down from quiet skies
“Slowly, silently now the moon”
Crests and ebbs in the star swept horizon
Mercury moments I consider the sinister things
The rush of blood banging at the back of my throat
The cadence of daybreak
And heart break and darkness hearkens
Scurrilous thoughts scatter faster
Roaches at the flip of a switch
Writhe in the light
Seek solace in shadows
Rats scrabble for higher ground in the downpour
Drown me now but I’ll never be clean
I carry the disease of this civilized beast
Scorpions under my tongue
And splinters in my skin
The higher rungs are toxic
And the air thick with afterburn
The antiphon of the apathetic
Chirrs me from daydream to entropy
Peace is hospice for poets and fools
Grit under my nails
And ***** in my mouth
Forever falling forward
The warp and weft stretched
Taut expectation
Of the cut that never comes
Just let me fall
Feather light and quiet
Let the gravity relentless
Have her way
TLBoehm
040113
Tammy Boehm Mar 2016
So you're the queen of hearts
Barefoot summer grass green and cool
Trade that tiara and party dress
A princess is now the fool
And its dreams not dragons laid slain
What will you do when it rains

What will you do when it rains
When Mr. Perfect is Mr. Pain
When your Prince Charming is so alarming
Love songs are a sad refrain
What will you do when it rains

Unicorns pure they surrender themselves
Gilded brows genuflect at your knees
Open your eyes to the stark surprise
The fairy tale hero you think you see
Mr. Right is Joe Mundane
What will you do when it rains

Love confronts and love contends
A battle over but war won't end
Only the strong remain
Life's not fair and love is war
The hardest fight worth fighting for
When you lose you gain
What will you do when it rains

TL Boehm
1/1/15
Every time I see a pair of flitting little love birds cooing and nuzzling - the song "Love Stinks" pops into my head....
Real love is terrifying, messy and complex.
665 · Sep 2014
Condor
Tammy Boehm Sep 2014
f I could fly
Ascendent circling thermals
Spattered ash on God's blue palette
Perhaps you'd shudder
As my shadow passes
Spectred tingles scurrying beneath your skin
Like mice before the combine
My soaring sight unfocused on the chaff
Or the burning curve of the earth
I'm only fashioned for the passing
Gliding in on the last breath
Life ebbs
And I'm scrabbling for sustenance
In the dirt
A mongrel bird
Insatiable for the taste of decay
Raucous opportunist
Crack the bones of broken dreams
The marrow of life a dry memory
I am built to consume
Your castaway flesh
As you slip from death to life
I begin and end with eyes wide open
Transient purpose served
This side of Heaven
You won't find me aloft
In empty skies
When death passes
Into life
TL Boehm
031809
664 · Mar 2016
Songs Unsung
Tammy Boehm Mar 2016
So we live in these two worlds  
This aching dark this perfect light
A standard of love unfurled
No more struggle you’ve won the fight
Tread the threshold of forever
Your joy has just begun
There is grace to surrender
There is one more song unsung

Where is God in the chaos
When torment takes us down by degrees
A little more broken every moment
Down in the dirt and the fight on bloodied knees
God is there in the heat of the battle
Telling you you’ve already won
He is your words when you cannot speak
And your music for songs unsung

And I will dance in the depth of sorrow
And I will sing In the midst of pain
And I will live today and hope for tomorrow
When I will see you whole and rejoicing again
Tears are temporary in this place  
Your celebration has begun
Standing with Him face to face
Singing sweet songs unsung

TL Boehm

02/09/14
I don't know if this link will work - this was written for Colleen Cawthon, who passed away after a long battle with Lyme disease. She was an inspiration to me and she and her husband headed the worship team where I attended church for a decade. http://kiroradio.com/listen/9967949/
663 · Sep 2014
Coyote Dreams
Tammy Boehm Sep 2014
Perhaps you aggrandize
Those sacred manifestations
Lupine resonance
When the moon takes a cooler hue
Ebbing in the western sky
As I scurry
Furtive in the wake of wolves
Cavort under cover of shadows
The darkness lenient
Diana's placid orb obfuscates
Any deeper meaning
These solo notes from husky throats
The soul’s chronicle lost
Your hackled superstitions don’t abet me
Demure dogs shiver on silvered chains
With the acumen of stones
They throw themselves
Lick the hand of the master
Fawning malleable in your fettered life
You crave the panacea
Of stagnant water and stale kibble
Trade these wild cries for silence
Shrink from the eminent colossus
Freedom is the howling nemesis
Beyond your black and white vision
You never see
The multifarious color of coyote dreams  
TL Boehm 070508
Random bad poetry
Next page