I refuse to be the puppet
That you dangle on the string,
I refuse to be the person
You always count on for things.

I refuse to have everything
Dumped on me,
I refuse to always be the one
Begging on her knees.

I refuse to be lied to,
Purposefully ignored;
I refuse to be the one
Who is left out in the storm.

I refuse to be left out as refuse;
Worthless, forgotten trash
That you threw out your window,
Scattering my soul to ash.

I miss––for still I miss.
My lips are stone, and cannot kiss.
My year was long;
What is this "bliss"?
What is love?
I can no longer reminisce.

I miss––for still I miss.
Heart is empty; no roar, no hiss.
A year, and you're still gone,
And poems are written into dawn.
Thoughts are dark like an abyss.

Etched under my skin
Flame roses blister

The scars on the
Palms of my hands
Bleed stigmata thorns

My eyes freeze to crystal
The tears 'round my throat
Are fashioned in
Black lace obsidian

My lips, the color of
Amber and fire
Are vows never broken

I perceive with the
Ears of prophets
And the vision of
Angels falling

I speak with the tongues
Of solar flares

The light finds me
Pierced with many sorrows
While in darkness
I'm stanchioned at
The fork in the path
Within the garden
Of Good & Evil

My moons are scarlet
My stars are cold
My suns are silver

And
Beaten

GOLD


Catherine Jarvis
(C) 2015
Revised 2018

There at three a.m.
on a dark and empty street
I was out walking
The demons kept my sleep

The music I recognized
Coming down from the open window above
The Eagles "Hotel California"
A song I dearly loved

It was the winter of 1977
Perhaps the coldest on record I know
All I remember was the cold and accumulations of snow

Mike had just bought the album
Invited me over to share
After we were blown away
The music cleared the air

We played it over and over
Every song on it was so great
The chill that hung in the air
Made it easy to relate

I walked back home after midnight
In the cold and frozen snow
Not realizing it was a  -10° below

The cold soon penetrated
I became concerned for sure
I was having my doubts and my skin was turning bluer


To make the story short
I ran to the door the last few feet
I fumbled with the keys
And fell inside into the heat

So now all of those memories come flooding back to me
There's someone up above and they can never leave

So I ease on down the way
out of range of the sound
And I am thinking to myself
To the words I am forever bound

"You can always check out
but you can never leave"

The ghosts of our past haunt us
They dwell deep within
They are called regret, guilt, failure, and secrets
Our childhood was traumatic
We were preyed upon
when we really could have used some prayers
We were both victims and monsters
We were latchkey kids with major attitude
My eldest sister was left in charge but
she was just a kid herself
Kids with nothing else to do but find trouble
or is it that trouble will always
find kids with nothing else to do
Things happened that should
have never happened but they did
and my sister blames herself for this
She actually thinks she is being punished
with cancer for all of her mistakes.
I keep telling her she is wrong that bad things
happen to good people all the time.
That the past is just that it is in the past
We were just kids who made some mistakes
Everyone makes mistakes but we have to learn
To forgive ourselves