Prescience

Image credit: Amma Cat

Image credit: Amma Cat

I had a sense of you
long before you came through my door
I felt a chill in the early morning breeze
and noted sickness take the ivy
in the eaves around my home
I felt the earth beneath shudder
at footsteps unknown
I knew of you before you came

Are there whispers in the night
which penetrate all goodly sleep
to tell their bitter secrets?
So it may be that I came to sense
a dread and certain prescience
of something wicked on the wind
that bore your stranger’s face?

And since this is so, as sure as I
am breathing now in dread relief
to have you finally from my life
then what price destiny to take
the chance of you when first thoughts came
I think I even knew your name
and yet I let you in

Embracing all the certainties
We go as willing sacrifices
to the pre-determined places
where the paths of enemies must cross
And worst of all are those at first
Who wear a lover’s smile and gaze
while building life’s depravities
from innocence’s deep cavities
and yet I’d lie to say that I
was even yet one whit surprised
when down the rabbit hole your knife
Came whistling in my wake

(c) Helen Valentina 2015 All Rights Reserved

Posted in Air, Poetry | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , | 2 Comments

The Dragon and the Wolf

Image credit: Planil Astro

Image credit: Planil Astro

You hunt within these hemispheres
Whirling in the gyre
I call to you as energy
I’m drowning in your fire
My dragon wrap your wings around
My trembling body still
I’ll be the wolf upon the plain
Just waiting on the kill

In spiral light you sparkle here
In distant worlds you roam
But in my planetary space
You’ll always find your home
My dragon flow within my veins
And fly as we were young
This wolf would beat the winter chill
And bask beneath your sun

Give me your grace like angel wings
Bestow your kinder eyes
You are my blood, my heartbeat here
I’ve always realised
My dragon watched the hour of birth
And hour of death will come
But till that day in harmony
My wolf will gladly run

(c) Helen Valentina 2015, All Rights Reserved

Posted in Air, Poetry | Tagged , , , , , , , , | 6 Comments

Your Gaze

Image credit: Chris Tefme

Image credit: Chris Tefme

Your gaze was far too old
And we were but teenagers then
Still unformed and awkward
But the intensity drilled within
Spoke of hope and dreams and sin
And it lingers with me still
In these later, later years
Something far too old to begin
When we were young

Your gaze was a siren call
And I do not think you knew
Just a callow youth unbridled
All your strength still uncoiled
And nothing yet has spoiled
The memory of those moments
When you turned to me and smiled
All my sweetest dreams yet foiled
For we were young

(c) Helen Valentina 2015, All Rights Reserved

Posted in Fire, Poetry | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Deep Silence

Image credit: Alastair Scott

Image credit: Alastair Scott

This deep silence of morning
Starless sky before dawn breaks
Blanketed in dark and calm
An island to myself
I seek a comfort long forgotten
In the weave of black and grey

Dreams adrift and quickly floating
Lover’s kiss a brush
Against my chilled, smooth cheek
Memories a retreating cacophony
Only in my waking mind

Like some secret I’ve misplaced now
The promise of these moments
Tantalising on my tongue

Like a traveller still weary
From a journey undiscovered
And the day has just begun

(c) Helen Valentina 2015, All Rights Reserved

Posted in Air, Poetry | Tagged , , , , , , , , | 6 Comments

Days

Image credit: KPG_Payless

Image credit: KPG_Payless

I wrap my days with little tasks
Chores and thought aimed to distract
From this relentless sense of lack
My time is filled with petty fights
And aims from which all soul departs
Out of banality, these daily arts
Provide an opiate to deeper thought

More fool by far would I yet be
To look this truth full in the face
I’d stop this toil, yet be bereft
With nothing more nourishing to replace
This monotony, which in its way
Holds darker tragedies at bay
The dark of everyday, just nothingness overwrought

© Helen Valentina 2015, All Rights Reserved

Posted in Earth, Poetry | Tagged , , , , , , , , | 5 Comments

Triumph

Image credit: rui vale sousa

Image credit: rui vale sousa

The soul triumphant alights
As eagles to the air
The sky splinters across
This desolate hemisphere
As holy armies clash
And raise their righteous spears
Till this scarred spirit brings
Hope yet to deep despair

An angel’s wings must break
And plummet to the stony ground
God wails just like a child
Without its mother near
The brave now know their souls
Draw from the depths of fear
And what was lost for love
Will yet be birthed, be found

And what was lost for love
Will yet be birthed, be found

© Helen Valentina 2015, All Rights Reserved

Posted in Air, Poetry | Tagged , , , , , , | 2 Comments

Once

Image credit:  Antonio Guillem

Image credit: Antonio Guillem

Once I felt my heart
Murmur as the softness
Of a slowly billowing summer breeze
The sight of one
Across a room who gazed
A moment too long my way
Found something stirred within
I’d never thought this time
Would come to one like me
And for this time’s demands
I had no artistry
And so it also passed in time
Regretful for the start
But once I knew this sense
For moments, knew my heart

© Helen Valentina 2015, All Rights Reserved

Posted in Poetry, Water | Tagged , , , , , , , | 6 Comments

Safeguard

I must safeguard my soul
From darkness trickling
Cross my pallid skin
They say an invitation draws it in
Draws it in

Must barricade my heart
A dream’s a hopeless place
Here true despair begins
They say that praying merely draws it in
Draws it in

I must close every door
In solitude’s a sanctuary
No rejection of my deeper sins
And in surrender I’ll not draw it in
Draw it in

© Helen Valentina 2015, All Rights Reserved

Posted in Air, Poetry | Tagged , , , , , , , , | 2 Comments

Weight

Image credit: cunaplus

Image credit: cunaplus

There is too much of me
These days I lumber,
old bones covered
in skin that is loose, it folds
across territories alien
My rib cage disappeared
so many years ago I can’t recall
Beneath the layers
hides the lithe form within
and is stricken with invisibility
The girl I was
is gone

Still she’s in my mind
The eye within sees form
and function gone so silently
I dream a dream of me
as I once was
as though in needing only may I be
and turning careful at my mirror I can see
any remaining angularity
I fool myself with kindness
others will not give, or see

But for those moments when
I stand with thinner friends
in stores where clothes
might call to such deluded whims
I dare not try them on
For in the mirror on the distant wall
is where the end of all such dreaming falls
I did not see it, did not turn away in time
I see myself unalloyed and unarranged
and recognise with fright
this person there is me
the weight of years so heavy
on this stranger’s frame
I am no longer young
The girl I was
is gone

© Helen Valentina 2015, All Rights Reserved

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

Serene

Image credit: Igor Zh

Image credit: Igor Zh

The serene quietude of night
As lazy colours paint
A fast retreating sky
Above the stars alight
One by perfect one
To shine upon my way

You’re there amongst the falling light
Some stars have died and yet we see them still
Their soft light reaching cross the years
To pave our way to where they strayed
Like you, just ghosts within the night

So peaceful I can almost feel
Your touch like feathers on my skin
Like all the lullabies you’d sing
To fill the quiet with such joy
They were your love so unalloyed
I know you still

One evening within serenity
Just as the night blankets the sky
I know you’ll come
You’ll come for me
And gently take my hand
And then all of the dreams we planned
We’ll capture each here
One by one
Before the rise of sun

I do not weep that you are gone
Within the stillness of this night
Or under earth you slumber soft
It’s only time that separates
Like these sweet stars
Or co-joined fates
Must fall together in the end
And in this perfect reverie
In silence I hear you call for me
My lover, host and friend

(C) Helen Valentina 2015, All Rights Reserved

Posted in Air, Poetry | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | 2 Comments