helenvalentina

I Did Not Know

Posted on February 20, 2013 by Helen

I did not know love
Until this moment
I am not sure
I know it now
Is it the sweetness
Of a stolen kiss
Or the kindness etched
Upon your brow?

Is it the hollow feeling
In the pit of me
That trembles at the thought
Of being filled?
Or the acts of kindness
Deep understanding
At your feet where sadness
Has been spilled?

Is it the longer glance
I return in kind
Or the smile now turned
Just to me?
Or the simple fact
That my wandering soul
No longer seems to yearn
To be free?

I did not know love
Until this moment
And it yet may
Something other prove
But this fluttering
In my heartbeat now
While unsettling
I’d not remove.

Posted in Poetry, Water | Tagged acceptance, hope, Love, passion, Relationships, truth | 4 Comments

Joan Of Arc

Posted on February 19, 2013 by Helen

Joan of Arc
prophesying
to the Dauphin
Stricken by brilliant grace
or madness, or both
Fevered warrior
driven by her god
for righteousness whispered
in a fractured mind

Voices haunting
sometimes screaming
Tell it all, tell it all!
Brook no opposition
narrowing in
upon the royal
hidden and disguised
Prove your worth
your insight and foresight
your commune
with the divine

While the prophecy
brings intelligence,
hope and victory
on ambitions wings
all is blessed
Then fortune changes
Voices betray and lie
In thicket and flame
is she now dressed

Joan of Arc
Chosen one
of a devil or a god
or the whims
of chemistry
not recognised
or understood

Was it heresy
or the loss of victory
or just the creeping
dreadful politic
seizing at the weakness
of madness and belief?
Led her yet
to the executioner
And her frenzied
and her fiery
and her final
painful grief?

Posted in Fire, Poetry | Tagged alchemy, dark, devil, God, history, Joan of Arc, Musings, Politics, prophecy, Spiritual, war, warrior | 6 Comments

Genetic Entropy

Posted on February 19, 2013 by Helen

Genetic entropy
No issue from
This generation
A name disappears
The line ends
Much as it began
In silence
And obscurity.

Posted in Earth, Poetry | Tagged denial, entropy, family, genetic, Musings, Philosophy | 6 Comments

Jester

Posted on February 18, 2013 by Helen

See the clever jester
Speaking truth to power
In this medieval court
Where dark secrets flower
And with numbers to the axe
Rising by the hour
See the jester strut and dance
While the rest must cower

Only in the jester’s words
May the truth be seen
Rarely can bad tidings be
Told to king or queen
In the web of satire
Is the whiplash keen
Here the truth is palatable
Somewhere in between

Should bad tempered, half mad kings
Enjoy an odd satire
You see a deep true belly laugh
Diminish royal ire
Surely then the jester here
Wouldn’t be a liar
If his wit delays his time
To join a heavenly choir

If a truth you need to tell
Will not pleasant be
In a court where fear for life
Dictates your destiny
If your words and actions
Would be danger free
Like the clever jester
Rely on irony.

Posted in Fire, Poetry | Tagged court, danger, dark, Humor, jester, king, medieval, Queen, royalty, truth | 12 Comments

Would Be Kings

Posted on February 18, 2013 by Helen

Taking a global view
Reading their Sun Tzu
Smoke filled rooms
Moving the chess piece
Palm covered with grease
Treachery blooms

Shorting the stock exchange
Itineraries rearranged
Viral campaigns
Finding their winning streak
Secrets begin to leak
Nothing’s restrained

Throwing the loaded dice
Aperitif? Very nice!
Quality’s king
Watching the innocent,
poor ninety-nine per cent
feeling the sting

Thinking they’re born to rule
Strategically no-one’s fool
Perhaps it is fair?
What are they fighting for?
Should we reach heaven’s door,
none of them there.

Posted in Fire, Poetry | Tagged Aspiration, corporate, cruelty, dark, economy, greed, ninety-nine percent, Politics, truth, Wealth | 4 Comments

Poisoned Chalice

Posted on February 17, 2013 by Helen

To open up my heart – a thing to learn for me
As though another’s glance would yet return for me

My splintered feelings prick you like a thorny rose
And yet I bid your love be soft as fern for me

I choose so oft to hide behind a cool disdain
While deep I wish another’s heart would burn for me

So many times I leave before the curtain call
But wait behind the stage for one to turn for me

A priceless gem’s a hand that clasps but yet is free
Oh could the light I served but lost still yearn for me?

An attempt at a quasi ghazal form – only quasi as its possibly not quite themically differentiated enough to be classic form. This form is a challenge! 🙂

Posted in Fire, Poetry | Tagged Aspiration, cruelty, lost love, Love, Musings, pain, passion, regret, Relationships, Spiritual | 11 Comments

Raven Flight

Posted on February 17, 2013 by Helen

The raven’s eye
Blinks slowly
Settled on its prize
It has travelled far
Now to find its way
Cross a world of thieves
And lies

It holds alchemy
And philosophies
Within grasping claws
So strong
Like a psychopomp
It will traverse death
It will sing
Its ancient song

The raven surveys
Mere humanity
As we strive to live and die
But the raven knows
If we would transcend
First we need to learn
To fly.

Posted in Air, Poetry | Tagged alchemy, Aspiration, death, flight, Life, Musings, Philosophy, raven, Spiritual | 6 Comments

Heatwave End

Posted on February 16, 2013 by Helen

Waiting on the breaking storm
To steal the humidity
Of the day
Clouds hang as though anticipating
Movement across an impatient sky
All is so still
Not even leaves
In neighbourhood trees
Seem willing to rustle
Disturb the moment
The air is a tease
Promising un-delivered relief
A lifting of oppression
And a chance to truly breathe.

Posted in Earth, Poetry | Tagged delivery, heatwave, oppression, storm, summer, weather | 11 Comments

Someone To Watch Over Me

Posted on February 16, 2013 by Helen

Strapped down I am only completely aware of the lethal grasp of restraints, scratching as though alive, on my skin. He says, you will feel great energy and pain, just for a moment. You must bite down on the cloth in your mouth. Oh I know, it will taste of hopelessness, of death, of straw and loss. He says you will then feel release, into a dream. Or a nightmare, but let us hope it is a dream. I don’t want to answer, can’t. Beyond this moment I know the next steps, realising I’ve traversed this path before. Over that sickly, savage rainbow. He’s silent now. So it comes and …it is excrutiating..of course. It is also nothing, nothingness. I am beyond myself, fractured across the cosmos, starting to feel something else, something new, but still familiar. A song is playing in my head as he seems to take my hand. I’ve forgotten why I should be afraid, it seems only a lullaby now.. ‘Oh how I need…’ I fall into the endless, bleeding night….’ someone to watch over me….’

Posted in Air, Prose | Tagged cruelty, dark, denial, dissociation, Dreams, electric shock therapy, mind control, trauma, truth | 11 Comments

One Perfect Night

Posted on February 16, 2013 by Helen

One perfect
so unusual
night

Like a song once adored
heard by chance
on the radio

A memory
Full of promise
never realised
yet still shining
in my mind

A reflection of
a different life
and different choices
made somewhere else

somewhere wonderful….

Starlight blazes
mirrored by city lights
strung out on anticipation
exhilaration and adrenalin

Spanish food
deep and redolent
shared by many
but still somehow
alone with you

Touching moments
of caring
Coat lifted to my shoulders
as we leave
Crowded together
just to be close
in the taxi
driving into
more of the night
Together alone

Out till early morning
when I never
do that
Dancing at 3am
to a song
I don’t even like
Thrilled by a crush
unspoken regard
and brittle, wonderful
attention

Drunk on life
whiskey for a teetotaler
giddy like the schoolgirl
I never really was
even when young

Belief for precious moments
Even I
solitary and contained
could be together
with someone
even me

Still it never realised
never came to be
Time burnt the intensity
to dying embers
never more than friends
not here, not then

But I still have
the memory
of that perfect night
So that now
many, many years later
I imagine some other life
another love, for me
Lived elsewhere
somewhere far away
Somehow more
happily.