Silent Verses

Like a blue tulip
Sweet like a Queen Honeybee
And cooks like a dream

Haiku written on a bookmark given to me by one of my sons
Mother’s Day 2008

If you’ve come to find something soft and light
Turn around. Jump back into your abyss
My voice in your ear does not sound quite right
My memories of us are in strangled bliss
Waiting for me to end what you started
With silent, sarcastic, cruel, flippant words
Swim to the surface where you departed;
So you admit it: You aren’t who you were
Jumbled thoughts juxtipose reason and faith
You live your life. I’m supposed to live mine?
The more that I speak, the more that you hate
This battle of views is so asinine!
I have not torn our faith and love apart
You’ve become who you were back at the start

The camera captures life through open lens
Our memories are preserved from year to year
Family and friends, the places we have been
Past moments we have lived through smiles and tears
Pictures upon these pages represent
Each glimpse of time that became part of me
Celebration, experience, events
All conveyed through simple photography
Within this album lives a certain past
And future empty spaces will reveal
The art of life we find along the path
Protecting what we see and what we feel
Time moves quickly like pages in a book
We need to pause and take a second look

When your injured mind
begins to think ill thoughts of me
and tear the best of us apart
I wish you would remember
all that I have given you
how much I love you
and defend me with your heart

Every word I wrote from before to now
Has come to pass and worse, still more arrive
The promise that seemed once a solemn vow
Is gone by choice and will just to survive
Survive with pride and lies within yourself?
Pretending all was some hypnotic dream?
And what of life — are those true lies as well?
Some tear upon an amniotic seam?
I curse the words I spoke, and ones I shared
With you in trust and knowing I would lose
The love your soul released when you did care
And passion you encountered by a muse
Every word I will write from now to then
Will forecast haunting visions of the end

I gather one
into my arms
with the usual hugs and kisses
Say a quick prayer
to keep him from harm
and tell him I will miss him
But as I turn
to go back to the silence
that surrounds me indefinitely
I realize he is my
only proof of hope
that I once had your love
more than briefly

I see it clearly:
Two sides of the same
You need me when you’re weak
but strong — you play a cruel game
Have I finally learned the tactic?
Can I eliminate my intention
Of being your twenty four hour oversupply
of unappreciated accommodation?
You’ve escalated my alert
scars cover past pretenses
My trusting heart
has been betrayed again
I’m raising my defenses…

Don’t you understand it crushes my soul
When you unfinish a conversation?
Like unpainting a bright, new house dark, old
No second thought or deliberation
As to how grand that house felt at one time
With colors and care surrounding its walls
Silence was so comforting and benign
And discussions would never end at all!
But now even my verses on a page
Fall flat onto the ground beneath your sight
Our topics and subjects began to fade
And disappear before my weeping eyes
I really don’t know how to replenish
The emptiness left from words unfinished

There is nothing special
about today
cloaked in the same
disturbing, usual silence
an invisible emotional violence
has become the weekly play

Run boy run
your heart may catch up
with your head
and then you will be alone