My best moment unfolded in silence. No one observed the powerful transformations I experienced as they were frozen in time. I took back control and confidently harnessed my strength.
I quietly unraveled!
Wednesday, I folded to the supermarket floor,beneath the bright lights,between bread and milk,where strangers became witnesses to the private language of pain.
Both legs turned against me,as though they belongedto some older grief that had waited years to remember my name.
Now Friday evening has gathered around the bed,and I lie listeningto my own body argues with itself.
It feels as though two great horses,one harnessed to each leg,have lowered their heads and begun to pull,patiently,without mercy.
Inside the muscles,fire keeps its promise.
Not the brief flamethat warms a winter hand,but the ancient furnace that shapes us from dust,burning long after the hammer has fallen silent.
This is my living death—to remain awake inside a body that remembers how to stand but cannot.
Still,beneath the ash,a single breath refuses to surrender.
It rises,quiet as dawn,carrying my name through another night,waiting for morning to decide whether hope has one more step to give.
“Atala and Chactas”, Oil on Canvas: Anna De I’Epinais, 1928, (Ivory Damnation)
As we sit in my motherland
Her father has stolen and ravaged our island
But she, she has harnessed the sun's radiance
I in her beauty I am physically salient
I look at her in my hand
Her skin contrast to mines so tanned
White linens look to pure for this scene
But I am red and brown surrounded by ivory and greens.
I took her to this organic canopy
For once I forget about my captivity
I am overwhelmed with infatuation
I red and brown will serve this forlorn sentence of ivory damnation.
In horse gone wild, fighting off
What for its own good
With soft brush, once roped, harnessed
Is calmly caressed
See in street-roaming feral
Kicking and squealing
Whose own touch, once lured back there
God's; pew's for stall's care.
Rugged.
Trash.
Harnessed spitballs.
I don’t have slime on me.
Just trampled on like a receipt for coffee.
I don’t like that clicking sound.
If you asked me to have a hallucination…
Maybe it would be the last stone in the driveway forever.
Things grow that way, inside.
I don’t have slime on me.
That was just the hope of anger of grace of unreality.
Woke up to dry air and sort of don’t have eyelids.
I don’t have slime on me.
This cave is big enough for a hundred vampire bats.
And they side eye me all night.
raw unbridled zeal
harnessed strength with beauty
~ great gentle spirit
AP: Honorable Mention 2025
Fascinated, Gainfully Harnessed, Impishly Joyful
Again, a contest I can't deny.
There's someone though, who makes me grateful
While I sit and ponder, knowing my.
Kind, Loyal, Muse, Nicely Observes
My constant request for her inspiration.
By finding words this poem deserves
Through her obliging communication.
Perusing Quests Requires Studious Time
To edit, correct, some lines rearrange.
Ensuring then my end words all rhyme
Therefore, deliberate lines to exchange.
Unquestioned Victory, With Xenial Yes!
Together my muse and I agree.
These words are ours, but now confess
My secret muse is really like me!
A former place this, a patch where roots rattle,
where stubble has a ferrous frizzle.
A long-truncated railroad stop
humming still with a faded reality.
As dry voices on the wind, they return
- the homesteaders and journeymen,
the harnessed horses.
Pants' cuffs carry kernels
long planted elsewhere.
Caps, coats, and carts
Sweat, rustle and creak,
an invisible locomotion of leaving and arrival.
employed upon an iron labor.
The tall dry weeds are talkative.
Brown boots seem to shuffle
as they wait here or idle.
A hollow clock clacks,
its innards now
are a nest for ticking birds.
Dandelions anticipate twirling flight
under a corn fed sun.
A mid-day heat thrums fragmented rails.
The station seems almost ready
to receive
as if its bygone world
had not forever disembarked.
Two Mules
Miracle Man
4/7/2025
It’s so easy to plow when things always please,
when one is stubborn the other must appease,
But when harnessed together both must believe.
then be amazed at what two mules can achieve.
handsome Harry hastily harnessed hazardous hayseed Hank
heightening his hellish heebie-jeebies.
Hank helped Harry handle hordes of high-spirited hitchhikers
heaping a hodgepodge of hocus pocus on Honey,
Hannibal’s handsomest hog
On the edge where sea meets sky,
A canvas stretched, the kites soar high.
With every gust, my spirit flies,
Chasing waves beneath the blue skies.
Harnessed freedom, the ocean's embrace,
Dancing with the wind, a thrilling race.
Salt on my skin, the sun's warm glow,
In this moment, I’m alive, I know.
God, who never gives us more than we can bear…will always make a way for our over-whelmed souls to find relief. Amen. And we press-on.
He said…
he awoke…to find…
Tears…
streaming… his face
and wondered, but
even more than that…
yearned…to recall
the dream? the vision…?
that place…
Where his…
well-built, secure…
impenetrable …dam
which received and harnessed
the compiled agony…of
all…digested pains…
all his life…
had begun to …fissure.
Tears…
from sleeping eyes…ran…
free of constraint
billowing forth from pent-up…sores…
unhampered by objections
escaping from, alas…a man!
Waters…
which only once before
in his entire living
so long ago yet, while awake
…had he bore.
And…
he pressed to remember
the…local
not consciously…no, never
consciously…!
but to imagine that
unconscious moment’s ember
When God…
in His Great Mercy…reached
releasing the grievous
accumulation of cruel,
oppressive, stagnated…
waves …
ere…that which his soul
could no longer bear
…Tears
Ps 126:5, Ps 56:8, Ps 30:5
©jmsbell 9/03/22
She Reigns
Tis not today which thee will fail, Harken! Harken! My harnessed veil.
Venom may sweep your gaze away. Travesty! Dare not to look my way.
O, no, but come now, lovers. Give my course gesture no bother.
Tis only, only grace bereaved, against thy spirits stripped. Bare of safety, many lips
split and garments torn from dead seas and mounts! Once there were lands of the devout.
Here, Your Majesty, inviteth thee, all who burn. Settle thine self in her welcome reserve.
This, be one and yon only command; Your Queen says, DANCE!
Yes, yes…tis exceptionally grand. I grant you favor, Greet ye to balance.
Your Quenn, sits pleased and induced to laughter.
It was Christmas Eve night and Santa was in a pickle
when Dasher was caught giving Blitzen a quick tickle
He and Dancer had been seriously dating for a year
but his flirtatious ways had her crying tear after tear.
Worried, Rudolph told Santa she refused to fly tonight
if Dasher was going to be harnessed next to her in flight.
"Oh, dear," said Santa. Now, what am I supposed to do?"
Rudolph's nose was blinking as he said, "I haven't a clue."
The sled was already loaded down with presents and toys
waiting to be delivered to all the good little girls and boys.
Santa had a new reindeer waiting at his first stop in Britain,
a handsome one who winked at Dancer, and she was smitten.
I would rather cling to the edge of a cliff as an ugly, wiry,
weed
than be a beautiful rose confined to a pot.
They try to unfold your velvet petals with their clumsy, feeble
hands,
whereas I remain unscathed by any but my own.
You will be severed for your beauty, because that’s what they
think of
love.
No greedy hands will find my own. I will stand
alone;
strong and free.
I will see more than brick walls from glass cages;
I will see a world of color beneath my roots.
Let them sulk in beauty, harnessed by a pot of dirt;
for I would sooner wilt on a cliff’s edge
gazing out towards an unfathomable beauty, rather than by
confined by
my own.
I will let them be as flowers, going no further, seeing no more.
A bud
hanging low, amidst buds.
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