Withdraw

Posted on June 11, 2013 by Helen
Violin

Violin (Photo credit: pellaea)

I withdraw from you
I’m moving further for a safer view

I decline your voice
I used to kid myself I had a choice

Ah then, but we both know
You played me like a violin on show

I disavow all you
Have said and done and put me through

I decline your charm
You’ll find another who will take your arm

And let our history show
I knew you better when I let you go

I withdraw my heart
I fared much better once we were apart

I detest your name
And all the pettiness you trade for fame

And in the end we’ll know
There was no further left for us to go

(c) Helen Valentina 2013, All Rights Reserved

Posted in Fire, Poetry | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , | 22 Comments

Haiku of the Unwanted

Posted on June 11, 2013 by Helen
Sickness.

Sickness. (Photo credit: loicdupasquier)

Toothache calls/
Dentist phone number/on the wall

Sickness chills/
Toilet bowl haven/of the ill

Feel it snap/
Broken bone now that/won’t set back

Tympani
Of the heart’s true anx/iety

(c) Helen Valentina 2013, All Rights Reserved

Posted in Earth, Poetry | Tagged , , , , , , , , | 10 Comments

Desecration

Posted on June 10, 2013 by Helen

Moonlit Night

Moonlit Night (Photo credit: Daphne Borromeo [Back from hibernation])

At sweet moments of elation
Comes the whiplash-like sensation
When the rose begins to bloom
Comes the harbinger of doom
When the sun ascends the sky
Moon must bow and quiet, die
When the stars are seen again
Then the lunar goddess reigns

As the train now leaves the station
With a killer’s condemnation
See the darkness’s frustration
Bring to us the desecration

(c) Helen Valentina 2013, All Rights Reserved

Posted in Poetry, Water | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | 19 Comments

Transcend

Posted on June 10, 2013 by Helen
Transcend

Transcend (Photo credit: gascan555)

Between us all perhaps
Are threads of light
Shimmering
For those with eyes to see
Ephemeral connection
Pulsing with pure love
Every moment
As we breathe
The mystics say that God is One
And so it seems are we
In any case
Life’s imperatives
Are best nourished by
Unity

Your mind and mine
Like twins, devoid
Of womb to join
Our spirits cross this space
And in this singular
Existence the physical
Creates for us
This other place
And all the memories
Of distant union
Like sand by seas erased
Yet in remembering
Earlier fealty
We transcend to former grace

(c) Helen Valentina 2013, All Rights Reserved

Posted in Air, Poetry | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | 19 Comments

Brightest Flame

Posted on June 9, 2013 by Helen
Flames

Flames (Photo credit: swamysk)

The brightest flames
Burn too quick
And are gone

The purest melodies
Barely last
For a song

The strongest heart
Beats its rhythm
Too brief

The greatest souls
Find that time
Is a thief

And in these moments
Of loss and of grief
There must be balance
A reason, belief

Nature is strange
Its dominion dismays
But some lives are so full
They are lived in a day

(c) Helen Valentina 2013 , All Rights Reserved

Inspired by the book ‘The Draft’ by Jemima Layzell, which I promoted via a reblog on this blog a few weeks ago and have just finished reading. An inspiring, uplifting and heartbreaking book. This poem is dedicated to Jemima and her family.

Posted in Poetry, Water | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | 35 Comments

First Crush

Posted on June 9, 2013 by Helen
Oxalis 'First Love' 花朵

Oxalis ‘First Love’ 花朵 (Photo credit: 澎湖小雲雀)

When I was sixteen
I saw a face
I will never forget
Upon his skin
Not yet a trace
Of time’s sweet savagery yet
I yearned for him
But spoke no words
All these secrets that I kept
At sixteen

When I was seventeen
He gave to me a book
He spoke my name
Just like a kiss
And from this simple look
Ignites eternal flame
Our tastes it seemed
Can weave a web
And in these dreams comes blame
At seventeen

When I was eighteen
We parted company
The end of school days
And different lives
Was our first entropy
Dreams withered in a haze
If he once knew
What he was to me
In my silence, he’d be amazed
At eighteen

(c) Helen Valentina 2013, All Rights Reserved

Posted in Poetry, Water | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | 19 Comments

Life Lessons

Posted on June 9, 2013 by Helen
Angry Face

Angry Face (Photo credit: wstera2)

Oh wow I lost my job today
What gift in this circumstance
Is hidden away?
Gift, schmift
Is what I say!!
Crap happens somewhere
Every day

Karma is a bitch but from what I see
She bestows her fortune and furor
Indiscriminately
The innocent suffer
Finding no reprieve
While the guilty get rich
And stay free

Time wounds all heels, the promise made
A final reckoning
For the betrayed
But before my faith
Will e’re be swayed
Explain why the reckoning is
So often delayed?

(c) Helen Valentina 2013, All Rights Reserved

PS:  I didn’t really lose my job, it’s just for the purposes of the poem storyline.  If anyone has recently lost their job, my heart goes out to you and I hope you find another soon!!

Posted in Fire, Poetry | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | 15 Comments

Prompt 7 – Nonsense Madness – Sixteen

Posted on June 9, 2013 by Helen
Fly

Fly (Photo credit: Jim, the Photographer)

Sixteen days, sixteen hours,
Sixteen minutes
I saw sixteen flies
Around the carcass
What?
What did you say?
Oh, you think
You’re very clever then
Sixteen
One plus six is seven
All good children go to heaven
Cosmic jokesters all of you!

There’s nothing heavenly about that death
That stinking thing
On the road
Spreadeagled like a promise
Of the pit
The flies know
The flies
All sixteen little soldiers
Of their dark little lord
They know

I know
I’ve known for days
Does it make you satisfied?
Sick to my stomach and I can’t eat
Can barely think
But I can count
You didn’t count on that, did you?
You think I don’t count
Ha! Did you get that? Did you understand?
You think I just..don’t count

But I’m counting
I’m counting backwards, all this time….

When I was sixteen
A dark little man
Took me by the hand
Now it’s all just death and debris
All the flowers
Sixteen little lilies
That he stole from me
And they think I don’t remember

I bit off all my fingernails
They bleed at the quick
The salty taste of blood
Like a familiar friend
Sixteen days, sixteen hours
Far more than sixteen years
I know they’re coming for me
Coming for me in the end……

I’m counting on it….

(c) Helen Valentina 2013, All Rights Reserved

For mindlovemisery’s prompt 7 – at http://mindlovemisery.wordpress.com  – one of the options was to write as though one was mad/insane, so I gave that a go…hopefully it worked! 🙂

Posted in Fire, Poetry | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 29 Comments

Bitten Twice

Posted on June 8, 2013 by Helen
Ants!

Ants! (Photo credit: Romain Bochet)

I heard your voice this morning
Across a crowded café
And in this vocal memory
So many years just washed away
I would have searched you out
Before you went away
But I found I had nothing to say

You didn’t see me there
Or even if you did
All the instincts of our complex past
All the promises we bid
Like ghosts in some old castle
Into crevices have slid
And within this debris they hid

We could have shared a coffee
I think that might be nice
The friendship that we severed then
Should not have turned to ice
Or time by now should thaw it through
And give us sage advice
But no-one should be bitten twice

(c) Helen Valentina 2013, All Rights Reserved

Posted in Air, Poetry | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | 16 Comments

We Repeat This – A Rondelet Stream

Posted on June 8, 2013 by Helen

Mimicry in Butterflies Is Seen here on These C...

Mimicry in Butterflies Is Seen here on These Classic “Plates” Showing Four Forms of H. numata, Two Forms of H. melpomene, and the Two Corresponding Mimicking Forms of H. erato. This highlights the diversity of patterns as well as the mimicry associations, which are found to be largely controlled by a shared genetic locus [15]. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

We repeat this
In each life returns the same thread
We repeat this
From betrayal of a lost kiss
Comes the certainty of true dread
But no matter what we have said
We repeat this

Please don’t lose heart
Even while the arrows come your way
Please don’t lose heart
Try now to press the re-start
There is so much you can still say
Many ways this game can yet play
Please don’t lose heart

I’ll forgive you
Even through the dark you’ve done now
I’ll forgive you
For I see all that you’ve been through
See that you survived it somehow
In that dark place you were allowed
I’ll forgive you

Glad it’s over
Let all the fires now burn out
Glad it’s over
Now in solitude recover
See the way that this has turned out
Never showing what it’s about
Glad it’s over

(Thanks to Kira for introducing me to the Rondelet poetic form – hope I’ve got it right!)

(c) Helen Valentina 2013, All Rights Reserved

Posted in Air, Poetry | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | 8 Comments