She used to play Angel on repeat
it was 1997 or 1998, I remember the tape.
the room was cold, just like in the song.
her body curled up in that greenish purple bed spread as she hysterically cried
if there was one word to describe the ambiance
Haunted
Sarah McLachlan’s voice
tried to lift her
but the weight never moved

She kicked everyone out of our small new york city apartment that day after a meltdown
but she told me I could stay
she was gentle with me and told me I could stay
but, she was only inviting me to a party of two
a tragic party of two
little girls should be laughing and playing
not witnessing a mother's total breakdown

She was broken even before my lifetime began
her oldest sisters brother was a bad man
His name was John and he walked free
Dad tried to carry the truth and he even fell to his knees
Dad was cut by every single thorned rose in the garden he married into
and he only had two bleeding hands
and way too ******* much to hold

I must have been 5 or 6 and I stood there in the corner
watching her weep
It scared me, she was my monster but she wasn't under the bed
she was hiding in it.
As I grew older, I'd know Angel by Sarah Mac by heart
it lived in me
I sang it well. but not because I wanted to
but because its blueprint, bones and dna had
used my heart like a storage unit
the song became antique to me
the song is my mother
and her unwillingness to free herself

She made the pain sacred to me
but not the truth.
She wrapped it in ointment and gauze.  
she forced me to watch her lock it away in a safe. she even gave me the key. looked back and watched me watch her put it away.
Every time I reached for the wound
she turned me into the problem.

She told me silence was safer.
she told me rage caused by ****** abuse
was betrayal
But I saw John in the silence
I saw him every time she looked away. when he eventually came for me.
I see him still.
abuse doesn't leave

When I started dancing to the firelight
that resides in my own soul
she tried to extinguish me with troubled waters
but my soul couldn't be sold so shed try to seep the truth from my veins
She became like the abusive boyfriend in the song "voices carry." by til tuesday
except she was my mother.
"Shush little baby don't you speak...shush little baby

Sorry Eileen
but you gave birth to a warrior princess
Winning is what I do best
and I will fight every dagger
with 11 of my own
and you know it
I'll come out stronger
than you
I'll fight the lie
with the true

I am not here to protect an abusers image
Angel still plays
somewhere in my mind
But now it sings for me

Your.....magic ability to harbor, to hide, to deflect
knows no endlessness
feels no endlessness

mom you should have held me in her arms
and had us fly away from John
I still love you always will
but mom you know no referee
and I do
and I'll never stop fighting

Unlike Kristen, I wont let the dark devour me
Unlike Eileen, I wont let sorrow seal my soul

Like Jenna, I will call it out

Im in a long term relationship with the Hands of Time
but, sometimes I don't want them touching my soul at night
Guess we been together, way too long
The 33 year old itch has now become a haunting song that I don't want to sing
I feel like I'm sitting in an old theater house, tearing as I watch old black and white films of a fallen queen and king

Seems these keepers of the hours don't know
that I dance with my ghosts of womans past
the tug of war inside, or the questions that I ask
Sometimes, it feels like they just left me behind
when she was alive
by the light house in Montawk in the summer of 99

I'm in a marriage, married to the Angel of Time
Sometimes I cant stand the sound of it's tick, it meets me with terror and fright
Im fooled after I fall for it's tricks, then soon after I fall sick
Seems these keepers of the hours don't care that
I try to hold onto my birthday balloons that dad got me, for as long as I can
But time won’t wait for no woman, they're deflating like the time that is slipping away
through my own hands
Everyday
I miss him when he was was alive
when wed take
our searching for the best Christmas lights treasure hunt drives

But then Time
it kind of stops 
when I need it the most
my heart is a clock
my heart is a clock
and the hands of time
they can be so ugly and cruel
but they're forgiving too
Like when you Fall in love
and 8 am takes forever to turn into the Am hours of 2
And you wonder
How did I extend the hours?
Maybe, magic lives in the hours
Maybe Time can be our
Power

Time it can kind of stop
when I feel like a squeezed out sponge and ***** old mop
my heart is a clock
my heart is a clock
and the hands of time
they can be so cool
but they're mean too

Like when suddenly
something that happened 20 years ago feels like todays news
And you wonder
How did I miss all the hours?
Maybe cruelty and thievery dance together in the hours
Maybe Time steals our power

my heart is a clock
Tick Tok
my heart is a clock, wishes for tomorrow
with every hour comes a little sorrow
my heart is a clock
tick tok
Il mio cuore e un orologio
e in ogni ora vive papa


Inside the clock
the hands don’t know how to live as one
they push and pull
in a wedding dance that’s never done
that's what friends are for
supposed to stay
but the hands of time will run

im still dancing to dads guitar riffs
my heart is a clock
it never forgot

It's never just hives
It's the way he doesn't look at you anymore
It's the crushing weight of always covering the shift
And losing your religion
Losing your humanity
Your neck, right above the thin ACDF scar,
Splotches of angry crimson
Pay no mind
This will pass your usual, painful way
Slow as time
till the lessons burst through
Cursed with color, and too much flaming self-reflection
Not enough benydrl for all this
It's the figuring it all out as you go
till it explodes without you
Come back, I say.

Live this life or better days

It's never just hives

Deep darkness, despair.
How could you know, you’re not there?
Empty mind I crave,
But constant chatter takes me to the grave.

Fleeing, running; working, studying, drugs, and stuff,
Distractions from revelation; I am enough.
Progress is prized; the final nail,
We need true clarity; the holy grail.

Opening out and up to the mystery unknown,
Here, flourishing can become our own.
Insights of the true us,
Found when there’s nothing, no sound, no ***...

Embracing loneliness can be the pearl sought,
Moving away from things ought,
Turning to the unknown,
Is where true dreams are sewn.

"Today I didn't think..." she paused without breathing, "I took the shoes today... to get comfortable..." A monalisa smile on her beautiful face, as if  happy to get lost into an unseen dimension. Her body was cuddling on the sofa like in a fresh nest. Silence was spinning softly around us. I stared at her shoes emptied on the floor, I entered their dream. Minutes passed or half minutes, they felt years.
Years of hope and heaviness, ambition and laughter, ignorance and bliss. They looked helpless, tired,  used against their vocation by a stern pace. " My skin is itching... again...." Her skin doesn't want me to see through her, I thought, her skin doesn't want anyone to see what she saw, to feel what she felt. I looked at her in silence, I waited for the shoes to unfold their poetry. I hoped for a smile to slide on her skin one day

https://hellopoetry.com/poem/3369599/snickers-on-a-hill/

the forming of substance 05
Stephan W

"But I will not drive them (the 'inhabitants') out in a single year,
because the land would become desolate
and the wild animals too numerous for you.
Little by little I will drive them out before you;

Until you have increased enough to take
possession of the land."
~Exodus

.
Within the sphere- formless and void,
there was all but nothing to inhabit.
Existing within the eternity of the moment,
unable to retain--
it could only experience.

It could behold perfection,
but not hold on to it;

No need..
perfection was ever-present--
In full view of the sphere
and the precious spirit- encased within,
now, wrapped within a living, breathing skin-
this body- for the spirit,
and the spirit for the one body

each part of the heart-- a city in itself.

.  .
Reaching across the chasm,
there is an almost symmetry in
the layout of the cities

     but their inhabitants are unruly

and the spaces between far too great
for any kind of order to become able to
break through the chaos--
there is no longer communication
between the cities.

There is a yearning for consolidated-Sovereignty,
but the cities have long forgotten themselves-
Strewn about.. in the pain of it all,
they no longer know each other.

.  .  .
But the spirit within the body-- it remembers.
There is a gathering back into wholeness-
waiting..
and so we learn how to wait also.

Parts, and pieces-- members rebuilt-
little by little
Not too fast- take it easy;
70 years, maybe more.
Which way will it go-


There is a promised land;
waiting to be taken--

    one city at a time.

“when I see the moon rise in the deep sky, all  
large and looming,   that is hope

and as the sun is red-setting, throwing its last rays
of God-love over the hills,   that is hope

when a ranger sees the homeless man parked in
his illegal overnight spot, and decides not to
disturb his sleep,   that is hope

when you hear a dream from a friend of a wall of
steel wrapping your home whilst fire tornadoes
around it, and wake to find yours one of two
homes still standing,   that is hope

when a son who has received absolutely every
reason to leave, Will Not Abandon his abusive
elderly mother,   that is hope

when the city dims down enough to see the darkness,
lit by a Universe of stars——”