I dreamed of you

So vividly

Before you breathed life here.

You came to me with firm belief

That you were mine, so dear.

When morning came, I lucidly

Considered your request,

And changed up my life’s plan

Right there,

Upon your righteousness.

Once committed, I prepared

To have you in my life,

Proceeding forth to welcome you

No fear, no doubt, no strife.

When you arrived,

Beloved!

I knew that we’d been right.

We salvaged joy, began new worlds,

Thanks to that fateful night.

Inspired by Three Word Wednesday… Lucid, Righteous, Salvage

 

As he teetered on the brink

Of this existence

Did he quantify success

Based on

Fast cars and hot women?

~

Any regrets?

~

Did the futile search

For his ideal

Cause concern?

~

Did he measure his own value

In the manner of the world:

Dollars

Cents

Titles

Rents,

And feel remorse?

~

Or did he say,

“Hot Damn!

This was one wild ride!

I’m so flippin’ glad

I lived large until I died!”

Inspired by Three Word Wednesday… Ideal, Measure, Teeter

“Behind all this, some great happiness is hiding.”

~ Yehuda Amichai

In the midst of the trial,

The tunnel’s length and breadth

Swallowed up its ending light.

Or did our anger and our grief

Destroy that, too?

 In the dark, we clung

We to He

You to Me

Me to You

Fear of death

~ Worse yet ~

Fear of life like this

Stopped us in our tracks

And then

Pushed!

 Pushed us

To push back, push on, push through.

Stubborn will, paternal fight, future’s-sight

Love

Were all we knew.

And they grew

Until

Thanks to the process? … luck? … good will?

We found the happiness.

Always there. Never gone.

Hiding just behind,

All along.

It did not occur to me

That you might take your leave.

~

You

Not being here

Was never

A part

Of my tidy, well-made plan.

~

But time

Does weather

~Age~

All things

~

And that once tidy plan

Now lays ragged and worn.

~

The frail threads

Making up

The fabric of our love

Can no longer hold it together.

~

Nor can I.

Inspired by Three Word Wednesday… Occur, Ragged, Tidy

~ The Sun Never Says~

I’ve encountered this poem (found on page 34 of The Gift: Poems by Hafiz, The Great Sufi Master, Penguin Compass, 1999) three times in the past week. It must be asking me to listen and then share.

“Even

After

All this time

The sun never says to the earth,

‘You owe

Me.’

Look

What happens

With a love like that,

It lights the

Whole

Sky.”

If we each practiced loving this way, imagine the light we’d create. 

Brings so much to mind… creation, “I am the light…”

Brilliance!

Regarding LOVE. Words from Wikipedia:

“Studies have shown that brain scans of those infatuated by love display a resemblance to those with a mental illness. Love creates activity in the same area of the brain where hunger, thirst, and drug cravings create activity. New love, therefore, could possibly be more physical than emotional.”

Ha!

That explains it.

The Heartache.

Did we not break through?

To intimacy?

I loved you.

Crazy love, mad love, heart-racing glad love.

Smiling at the thought of you.

Butterflies when a text came through.

Sweet goodnights, raucous hellos,

Attraction, passion, bedfellows.

Reckless abandon, a jangle of words.

And limbs

And whims

And nerves.

Fear stepped in.

The end.

I loved you.

I thought you loved me too.

Was it true?

…

Coward!

Inspired by Three Word Wednesday…Heartache, Jangle, Reckless

“Through all the world there goes one long cry from the heart of the artist: Give me leave to do my utmost.”

 ~Isak Dinesen

Oh, Isak, I get it!

I want to write, have to write, intend to write.

Then stuff gets in the way.

Internal. External. Stuff.

Circumstance, thought, diversion, onus…stuff.

Yet The Writing waits.

The Writing sits in the basement of my mind, peering up through the cracks in the floor. It waits for me to open the door, walk through the dark, down the steep, narrow stairs and bring it up. Bring it into the light. Bring The Writing into being.

The Writing waits ~for me~ to write.

Tell me…what is waiting for you? And what are you waiting for?

An Ode to Valley Fever

Breathe them in

To the lungs

Airborne filaments and spores

In the warm, moist pleura

Spots and spingles form

Then plan

Their next move

 ~

For most

It is mild,

This inner invasion

~It means~

Fever, cough, chills, ache

Perhaps a rough, red rash

~ 

Six months

A year

You’re better

~

For others

Even twenty years later

Fever, weight loss, cough, chest pain

Blood-tinged sputum

Nodules to blame

But you don’t die

~ 

For the vulnerable few

Lung growths, ulcers, abrasions form

Skull, spine and bone lesions, the norm

Knees, ankles, other joints ache

The brain and spinal cord join in

Forsake

~

Recourse?

Rest

Fluconazole

Itraconazole

~But perhaps most important~

Learn the lessons

Do your best

This may be

The final test.

A few years ago, my dear friend died from a mad conflagration of valley fever and lung cancer. This piece emerged from that experience.

For the latest information regarding Coccidioidomycosis, commonly called Valley Fever, click here.

“Love is everything it’s cracked up to be. It really is worth fighting for, being brave for, risking everything for. And the trouble is, if you don’t risk everything, you risk even more.”

 – Erica Jong

See more of Colette Copeland’s fabulous art at http://www.etsy.com/shop/ColetteC

In poetry,

Truths emerge

That might otherwise

Require

Lubrication,

Stimulation,

Serious social manipulation.

2 Gin Rickeys

Good red wine

Or absinthe over a sugar cube ~

Fine.

But in poetry,

Unprovoked,

Façades fall away,

Barriers break,

Illusions fade to opaque;

And the truth

Jumps onto the page

Big, bold and unashamed

And it declares

I AM.

I am THAT I am.