Love and loss are inextricably connected.
The pain of the loss of those we love is beyond
this writers ability to say or even imply.
The ache is primal and enduring, always
there as each image passes our memory.
Loss of the material is transitory, the image
endures but the ache is gone. Today, we have
lost so many with whom we joked and laughed
with last week. We know the cause but can’t
understand why. Because we can’t understand
why we not only suffer the ache of love lost but
we, ourselves, are lost and adrift, clinging to others
as survivors for fear of being lost ourselves.
The bond of caring for each other will
keep us afloat, though the chain be broken,
love mends all. Together we find the way
but the ache of loss never ceases.

Why do we write poetry?
A need burns within us.
The conflict rages between
self gratification and
desire to relate to all.
Cryptic verses gratify self but
plain language verses
stimulate the emotions of others.
The choice comes down to impact,
interpretation, and ultimate feelings.
Cryptic is very effective with the
very sophisticated poets
and those that can glean
meaning from terms seemingly unrelated.
Inspiration is a gift but communication is
an art to be judged by the observer.
Whatever the format, the honesty of the
effort will shine through.

Am I awake or just aware? Am I moving or just imagining?
I’m in the mist, the fog of uncertainty. This is the
world of inspiration. Inspiration, like a thief, comes
in the nighttime and abducts you’re thoughts to another world,
vague yet vivid, where ideas appear in the thinning mist.
Nondescript outlines at first, gradually clearing to
disclose the tools and elements of a poem. I record
my thoughts, describing what my minds eye see’s.
Sadly, the fog rolls in again. The vivid world becomes
vague once again, outlines fade and I am alone once
again, moving or imagining, awake or aware. I’m left
with words on a page from a journey
I don’t even remember, wondering who wrote those words?

The Name...

Lini Solo Altimari, a name I read once in an obit.
I have no idea who she was only that her
life ended at 25 years. Did someone love her
and now they sob alone, tormented by
what might have been? Did she have dreams
that she pursued only to have death step in?
Her name has haunted me for decades. Maybe
I knew her in another life. Maybe I loved her
and shared her dreams.
We go through life with a small circle, a small
group we think we know. All we know is
the surface, what’s deep is always a secret.
But a name in a obit captures us for a reason.
Perhaps this life isn’t our first. Perhaps deja vu
is a real peek into our past. Perhaps, someday
someone will read our name in an obit
and pause to wonder why it seems so familiar.

To understand is to focus. Yet
how do we focus if the
norms keep changing. Do we then
understand change without focus,
just a chaotic spinning existence. Or,
is the quest to understand just a question of
how to understand? Understand what?
I hate the word understand and all it stands for.
I prefer feeling which is true understanding.
You can’t understand love but you can feel it.
We know how we feel but don’t understand why.
Maybe life is a question of why,
a constant question in the fools errand
of trying to understand. This piece
is about confusion. It is confused. There is
the need to ramble without direction or sense.
Every poet needs to stream thoughts. That
stream will make no sense to him/her or to
the reader. If you understand that
you don’t understand, then, I guess,
that’s understanding.

My inspiration comes in the nighttime.
Like the tides, controlled by the moon
inspiration ebbs and flows.
But, the poet is also a victim
of that very darkness that offers
those thoughts and feelings,
then gradually obscures them
from view. I am left haunted
by the ghosts of ideas left
to torment me, love, certainty
and infinity. My heart moves on
but my hand is controlled
by that force unknown, risking
endless repetition of the
same themes. I pray for the clarity
of daylight. But daylight brings an
assault of reality without love
or certainty only infinity,
the great unknown. My hand is held
by that vice of confusion, unable to
function, to explain love
or certainty. The great unknown
wins, devours all and, then,
the night returns.

Lack of choice is a prison. What’s missing is hope,
what’s left defines us. We are what’s missing.
Life is a thief, stealing our dreams and
replacing them with reality, a barren landscape,
desolate and confined. We live in solitary,
bounded by our own thoughts of a fuller life,
a life with love. Love is choice, love is freedom
to feel and dream. Pardoning ourselves
allows love to rescue us. Once rescued we
are free to hope and dream, to feel
and be felt, to pity those souls whom choice
has abandoned.