|
Details |
Ingrid Showalter Swift Poem
(This a new Version created using many editing suggestions from Linda:)
I picked you up
like a “shiny” newly minted copper penny
it was your kitten fur voice
O how you would hate that...
the avocado texture of it
with which
no matter what wild wicked hour I would call you
you would answer
You shimmered like sunlight
on the forest floor of my needles of neediness
glinted off the shiny chrome and twilight blinders of my
“made to order” searcher’s soul
You were the perfect portent
with your torrents of torment
to wash clean my jet and emerald caves
Or was it you who found me?
a white gem
silent, hidden behind my poetry
sitting in a seat in that Inn
listening to the hues of blues
stenciling the deep red shards of my heart
onto the unlined pages
of a blank black journal
I wore cool light blue and soft sheet cotton
like a cloud-kissed sky
I was light as air and as deep as “a thousand leagues under the sea”
You became my heroic touchstone,
my one true thing sapphire-sparked rock of glory
I hung you around my neck
oxen yoked myself with the weight of you
I hung myself
faithfully -to “my cross to bear”
your endless denial of our love.
You were lithe…thin as a straw… tall as a poplar
white as ash and grey as coal
except for the orange hot fire in the center ring
....of your cigarette
I mistook it for the flames of our unearthly love
It was just the firmament of your eternal coolness reflecting back
the stars of my own piercing need
Yoked by my own wanton weave … I drove on blindly
mind spider webbed
the ghost of your emotion-less carcass draped around my neck
“Leave no man behind”
I know you laughed and told them
that it was just a fire pit left in a cave
by the Queens of the Stone Age -Some loud, angry band you loved
Less real to you
by far more ethereal and ever lost in time to me
than the new found “writing on the wall”
Copyright © Ingrid Showalter Swift | Year Posted 2016
|
Details |
Ingrid Showalter Swift Poem
The distance between us is like a pencil line drawn on a page
like steam in air
like the drop of water that captures in its soul
the light
It is like water in the wash cloth
but also like that one ice cream drip that gets away and falls
Sometimes it is like the cool breeze that flutters the shears in the middle of the night
elusive ...beloved...treasured
like a kiss from the universe itself
it is like the suspended moment...the feeling of our foreheads touching
just before we give in ...to the kiss
You held my hand...listened to my every word
waited years to dance with me...to read to me...to tell me of your injuries
in the rear view mirror we are always surrounded by tiny glittering lights
fairy dust or is it mysticism twilight
our voices are strung up
like streamers across any room we have ever been in together
our foot steps glow and pulse wherever we have passed
the air respectfully swirls around our ghosts
but the distance you ask?
It is 70.1 miles from me to you...a graphite pencil line on a mapquest
but if you reach out you can grasp my hair in your hand and hold my head to yours
through the worm hole in the head of a pen
Copyright © Ingrid Showalter Swift | Year Posted 2016
|
Details |
Ingrid Showalter Swift Poem
You are far away now
Off in fields of gold
Dappled with evenings hot velvety light
90 degrees of separation has dulled the sword
eased the pain
The grasshoppers chirp in unison to your labors but they no longer ache in your solar plexus
Nor mine
What sweet sorrow is loss and gain
I now walk down the very paths I have always so longed for
the dark rich peat paths of happiness
contentment oozes from these fingertips as I write and I wonder if happiness is poetry
Or does it preclude it all together
The night sky fills with stars
The stars fill with fire flies that burst out of them like infinitesimal lightning bolts
jettisoned to my soul
he and I chase storms on decks swirled in smoke
We banter and bay at one another
you are in a field of gold somewhere
or beside
a river bed
The smell of the wet earth of shore beneath you reaches me… but momentarily
dismissed as the ash of the bonfire of a week ago fire or the grill of last night’s
unbelievably tasty ribs he concocted from air for me and me alone
but then we shared with so many
dinners
Lingers on my lip tips…the bottom edge
I kiss him and mean it with all I am
A being
a re-being
Super beings are we
all
and our colors wash
upon the canvas of my life
melding into one great magnificent us
Spectacular are we
the creatures who so love life
we give our only begotten selves to each other
and never ever forsake
us
Copyright © Ingrid Showalter Swift | Year Posted 2014
|
Details |
Ingrid Showalter Swift Poem
O MINE VALENTINE
We are a twine of
lines...vines
limbs
hair
fingers
sheets
blankets
couches
streets
signs
misgivings
mistakes
retreats
agressions
2 chairs
2 drinks
a fire
an oven
a burner
a melted finish
and a perpetually unmelted finish
longings
clutchings
graspings
open doors
unopened doors
closed doors
slammed doors
cracked open doors
wide open doors
tears
cries
beggings
wishings
promisings
spinning wheels
rising roads
falling rain
calls
texts
silence
long extended open unbracketed Silence
dark thick silence
light bright silence
hopeful silence
cresting like a star being born silence
....we begin again
Copyright © Ingrid Showalter Swift | Year Posted 2016
|
Details |
Ingrid Showalter Swift Poem
What is it to be a Tree?
Do trees ever mind being so close ...so intertwined ?
Do they ever long for space as I do?
Do they prefer to be so meshed…branches touching branches
all the time or do they like me long
............................................................for autonomy
Do their branches reach for another’s touch?
….................stretching to find it?
Do they cling and pine when isolated …as we do sometimes?
When a tree falls does another one grieve?
...............................................................
Do they sometimes wish to be free?
To be as free
as he does....... from me?
Does life always include such serious stuff?
Or do trees simply shift in the breezes
of superfluous fluff?
Do they ever
wish
to find
the sea?
To fly
to fly?
just
like me?
What on earth is it like ....to be?
to be a standing…a standing only ...are they lonely?
beloved tree?
What is it?
to be a tree?
Copyright © Ingrid Showalter Swift | Year Posted 2014
|
Details |
Ingrid Showalter Swift Poem
You are the river running through
unfathomable greens
glassy yellows
down in the core of the river
flicker lightness on top
You increase me…swell me…impregnate without word or deed
push me to the fore till my sail fills with your carbon
a deep blue undertow …rip tidian
only moderate and full…like a plate of food...of vegetables …of fruit…of corn
You are the dark brown peat from which I absorb minerals
vitamins … steel ...magnesium…sulfate
the pillow of my essence’s rest in your name …hurricane
You fall on me
Wash off delusion
And I am a small green thing …a fine rooted thing
Small leaves of me stretch for your chloroformian shadows
My roots dig deep
hear your drum beat in the equatorial regions of the flaming core
I bend around the rocks …look under ever beetle’s shimmering skin
in all things you can be found
Amorous and craving …a magma surface of tension and sun
in tree tops …dark places
in the dark alleys
You are the blue jay…the cardinal but also the raven
the oak knows you too well…the west wind too and swells up in my skirts…my cottons
my downy …my linen …my lead
you stand … your hands on your hips
look out over the possibilities
hungry for returns
I echo
Light housing across ….a sound burst
a wave in a vast universe of waves ..so many
too many waves
but you will hear me
Master of my heart
lover of my flesh and bone…my fat ..my thinness…my crispness…my luxury
You will hear …what no one else will ever know
and call it home
Copyright © Ingrid Showalter Swift | Year Posted 2014
|
Details |
Ingrid Showalter Swift Poem
O the sunset...the sunset...the carnelian sunsets
how I long to hold them in my hand...so when you are blue...so blue
so deep dark blue...you can come to me
I will open my hand and you can wonder...wonder...wide open wonder
at Xanthe yellows and amber golds streaming from my palm...my palm...my humble palm
and you will become immortal
O if only I could keep you there...you...only you
swathed in light and warmth
safe...sound...close to me forever
You who I am lost to...over a thousand vessel-ed seas
O how l long for the sea...the sea...the sparkling sea
in it's emerald greens and topaz hues
in it's passions and powers and motion
I long to place it in my heart...my heart...my a thousand times broken heart
so the pieces can wash away and my essence can float free into the wind...
the wind...the wild whipping winds that billow the sheets hung in your yard
and whisper wild to the my inner demons
washing them away with the rain...the rain...the falling rain
that fell and fell and fell again
keeping you from my door...O my door...that blessed door
that opened to your face one cold crisp morn...so blessed by God
O my God...my God...my gorgeous God!
if only I could hold your essence in my mind
that I would not get lost so often in the wretched forest of thoughts and shadows
my shadows ...my small and tall...wide and slanting shadows
if only I could rope you and keep you tamed...so the things that hide
behind and within you
can not escape and create in me...the darkness...the darkness...the black coal darkness that chases me down alleyways of night and slivered moon...O moon...my beautiful mindful midnight moon...my crescent and full moon
O if only to swing with you round and round and round the earth
and cast a glorious shine upon everyone...upon every single child who needs love
O my love ...my love....my eternal love
if only I could sprinkle you like confetti...upon the earth
and ease the pain I would...I would...upon my life I would
O life...the very thing life...the breathe that enters that which wasn't and so then is
O if only you did not flee so quickly by but could be cradled away from death
Death....O death...O damnedable death!
if only you were not so draped in confession that I must pray
I pray...O how I pray that the vastness...the vastness...the great and cosmic-ian vastness beyond
is more splendid still than Earth...our Earth...our wondrous
perfect hungry sad beaten tarnished dirtied Earth...
O MY EARTH...how I love you!
Copyright © Ingrid Showalter Swift | Year Posted 2014
|
Details |
Ingrid Showalter Swift Poem
O Most beautiful of places
like a whisper
read me ...if you read me...in hushed tones
"Lace and fineness"
not for me
Sweet salty sea and a sand colored shore
the lines are long ...slender ... smooth ...an ever horizon upon which I rise
the hills and valleys are silken paleness sheened by light
a channel runs down the middle
to a small perfect fount
into which I dip my spirit and am purified
baptized...cleansed of all earthly things
I rest ...but for a moment
for there is a mysterious forest beyond
plush... warm and verdant
and beyond that... lies the source of all evil ...and good
I am Eve
I am the garden...
and you are my soul's seed ...the forbidden apple that awakens
I am the ocean
...come to rock me
you turn me from stone to ice...from ice to rain...from rain to river...from river to sea...from sea to light...from light to dark...from dark
to illuminati
that I may forever rise and rise again upon your perfect pale shore
and come to understand...the true value of all things
Copyright © Ingrid Showalter Swift | Year Posted 2016
|
Details |
Ingrid Showalter Swift Poem
Thou shalt not love him said mind...never you mind said heart
Copyright © Ingrid Showalter Swift | Year Posted 2017
|
Details |
Ingrid Showalter Swift Poem
You are as the lightning to the rod of my soul
You move through me in rumbling thunder and torrential rain
You are the cellular sea of my spirit and I can deny you nothing
Enter at will into my being but bring only kindness and light
Tread gently on the sole of me
..... for I am but leather and salt
Like the wild wet wilderness drips with dew and surging waters rip the shores of bucolic meadows so you moved me
Water rushing down the mountain gathering up minerals as it goes so my strength grows and my will surges
And I am a flood of fell and fire and hope
He is coming coming ever coming to me
in his white way and ever wear and tear
his hair is on my hands
and his heart pounds beneath my palm
he in my palm a sailor bold and wild and strong and he will know me and I will know him
Frost of nothing in the silent forest rests and sleeps
the joy of us in the same spaces
I under leaves and damp with snows blanket
under these lies
the thrill of us
in a cottage cabin by the lake
beneath your hand so possessive do I rise up to the morning light
and curl deep into your loving arms
The wind never even touches our boughs
our leaves
so bonded in warmth are we
And who is it this time?
who bares the shield of pain and loss and fear ?
it is you
not I!
Facing the mirror of truth
that email address sent waves through you
so intense the seismic machines in India just went off
no need to deny what I already know in my cells
you love with an intensity that puts my own feeling to shame
and you now know it
what you do with this
is to be seen
seen and seen again and again see me
…see me C me c me soon
or not...it will remain ...the same and immovable...a feast to last ten thousand lifetimes
Copyright © Ingrid Showalter Swift | Year Posted 2014
|
|