Chess piece – Black queen, Staunton design (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
The pawn moves
like willing fodder
Foot soldier
Queen advances
Protected by rook
eyeing her prey
King holds back
The terrain unsure,
waiting news
Knights ride forth
flanked by bishop bright
armed by God
Achieve mate
Followed quick by check
Army falls
(c) Helen Valentina 2013, All Rights Reserved
English: Yin yang picture Español: Yin yang (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
In a dream it seems that I awoke
In wakefulness I’ve slept
In my loss I found that I have gained
In relinquishing, I’ve kept
Touch the heart of unreality
Disbelieve what I know is true
In the centre of complexity
Find the simplest pathway through
At this point of contradiction
Find a balance that is right
Seek control through wild abandon
Choose defeat to win the fight
In my hatred finally embrace love
And embittered, I’ll forgive
Through denial now I’ll feast on life
Through my death I start to live
Through reversal find this arrow’s path
And the real from mirrored view
In my solitude, companionship
Through myself I come to You.
(c) Helen Valentina 2013, All Rights Reserved
Hopes (Photo credit: matley0)
For me
Hope has always been
The thing you have
When you already know
Deep inside
That something won’t happen
It is the defiant
Small, calling card
That tries to deny
What is already seen
In so doing
It withers more
And more rapidly
Once truth emerges
For me hope is the reaction
I cannot control
That fills me with dread
But somehow
Still survives
My terrible prescience
I hate hope
In a way
But I never, ever
Shun it
For one bright day
I may yet prove
To be wrong
Oh how I hope
For that day…..
(c) Helen Valentina 2013, All Rights Reserved
Raw hunger
claws within a soul
drawn by grief
Grasping hands
close around the heart
of bereaved
Drawing life
from emotion’s well
Vampire soul
Phantom here
clamouring for life
already gone
Feed the loss
Aching cavern found
never filled
Hungry ghosts
yearn for more than this
Biting life
Shield your soul
from these ravening
jaws of loss
Turn your back
or relinquish all
to their thirst.
(c) Helen Valentina 2013, All Rights Reserved
Had I never tasted chocolate
would I miss it?
I have not known love,
not really,
so do not care
Its particular sweetness,
of which I have so often
read or heard,
is a taste
foreign to my experience
And so I have no vexation
in its absence
The idea of chocolate
alone would not
have tempted or taunted me
I had to taste it first
and then I was lost
Sheer romance,
even infatuation,
seems a construct
of an unfamiliar world
not visited and not missed
And is this something
to be pitied
or envied?
I may have missed the sweetest taste of all
and yet
I also have not suffered later
for its loss
(c) Helen Valentina 2013, All Rights Reserved
Dragon Shadow Puppet Scares Bear (Photo credit: Dan Zen)
Shadows on the walls
past twilight
flicker fitfully
in thrall to the candlelight
Storytelling
in movement
A strange grey dance
Heads turning slowly
Mass shifting, lumbering
Then sudden, frenetic
yet graceful hands
reflect precision in odd restraint
A silence
of disembodied dance
A separate world
to those that are shadowed
As though a darkened kingdom
edges towards ours
in the last moments
before night
(c) Helen Valentina 2013, All Rights Reserved
Cicada song, crackling
Soul sound in this night
Preternatural stillness
Source of odd and dread delight
Deeper fear now working
Burrowing within
An aged mind here reflecting
On deeds and words replete with sin
Cicada rhythm constant
A metronome of sort
Within this dark night canopy
A melody of memories caught
Iridescent sound waves
Shimmer through the air
Till the last regret of life
Haunts the weary listener there.
(c) Helen Valentina 2013, All Rights Reserved
A lacuna
in my soul
Hollow spaces
where the light
cannot penetrate
and the dark
refuses to dwell
It is all
shades of grey
The colour of uncertainty
the tone of doubt
Belief eludes me
though I seek it
like a friend
who never calls
I cannot know
I cannot know
And in not knowing
where may I rest?
Those with faith
with that capacity
to believe
humble me
I rely on evidence
yet I know it lies
My heart seeks certainty
in any other guise
A moment of belief
with doubt’s approach
just dies…
And yet I try
As the mystic
seeks the Beloved
for a centre
I seek to find
something stable
to fill the emptiness
that seems engraved
within me
It is knowing
I could be wrong
but unable to comprehend
the error
that holds me from
any sense
I may yet be right
A lacuna
in my soul
Eats me slowly
from the inside
until nothing is left
but my breath.
(c) Helen Valentina 2013, All Rights Reserved
I am haunted
By a ghost
Of a man
Who’s still alive
I do not know him
Never will
And yet it seems
We are entwined
His work is public
Mine is private
Yet still I find
Some similarity
Which in its strangeness
And despite distance
Still breeds this odd
Familiarity
I dream vignettes
Of his life’s work
In prescient details
Less than profound
It’s true I like him
At a distance
But no wish to meet
I have yet found
Maybe this haunting’s just
In the circuitry
Of a broader
Electric force
Still I dream his dance
In a premonition
Of the trajectory
Of his course.
(c) Helen Valentina 2013, All Rights Reserved
During the week
I play the extrovert
My role is people
And I perform
All the energy
I let them drink from me
Till my soul is like a storm
On the weekend
I am the introvert
Hiding so happily
In my cave
Rest with poetry
Creative camaraderie
And I find my soul is saved
So my thanks to you
Who I read and who
In your generosity
Read me
For in words and thoughts
Is the sweetest life
And the best way to be free.
(c) Helen Valentina 2013, All Rights Reserved
Like most people, I have a number of sides to me. The most interesting one probably emerges through my writing, hence this blog. I love to read, and also to write, and so this is a way to share both.
Gravatar image credit: (c) iStockphoto.com/Lobsterclaws
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