Yet where there were curses , you will find scars, Where I found my secrets, you will see my quiet lies. What pain hides, it also still shows, Its fact hoed through ruined trails, it snares.
In shadowed dark, a fire still gleams, An ember bright that even pain redeems. The knives that gut are mirrors, clothed in mourning, Reflecting strength once buried beyond understanding.
We learn to draw a sharp edge by hand, To forge a shield of what one cannot stand. For shadows whisper stories, dark but bright, Of powers found where light is scarce and slight.
Behind the door, the soul finds light turn up, In shadows' tales, it learns to rise for us. The night is long, through wounds won, a future breathes, Where time’s embrace, in life, lays true to its sheathe.
From hushed hallways where voices of shadows call, A symphony of victory rings with thrall. The heart that braved each bitter eclipse. Now throws its dreams on dawn’s gentle lips.
They'll pity you, or, think you're a bad a**,
as they sheathe you, roughly, embodiment
of your presence, thus the Witches' Hair typecasts,
in essence, the strangleweed, acts like ground rent,
nature's parasite plant, sheath-like its host.
The trade-off, lacking chlorophylls, futures
sustained through these vampirish nuts and bolts.
Nature poised, parasite and host, assures
time without end for both species, whereto,
if one becomes an aggressor in the
course, whereby the other put a stop to,
shortsightedly, puts an end to theirs -- huh?
Witches Hair, combs sites for host aplenty,
as strangleweeds ghost life manifestly.
"The Flood Contained Electric"
walls of glass
sheathe this heart
a conservatory
for the lacking
of menagerie
the walls aren’t
bricked up
comme dans une
la orangerie
clearly seen
straight through
X-ray vision
dancing dervish
until the clouds
roll in and the
pea soup fog
mists over the view
jade is the colour
caught courting within
the flinting prisms
seen in the eyes
of jaded others
the storm's coming
warns Elektra
standing outside
the shattering
evaluation
rain like hands
clapping
hail like pebbles
thrown by the good
heavens above
turn Pollock
tomatoes crushed
hard thrown
the bleed painted
as water colour fades
pink and naked
cantoring in the mind
then, racing west
unbridled like
a white wedding
splayed onto the page
the bride stripped bare
surrenders
bricked in
l'orangerie
the flood
contained,
Elektra
turns away
(LadyLabyrinth / 2023)
canter
cantor
When day’s chores are tucked away,
I imagine you ‘that’ way.
My heart pounds within my chest.
I’m disarrayed and distressed.
The walls are too close, I feel
each corner is closer still.
My throat tight, I cannot breathe.
My fever I need to sheathe.
When you come into my view
I feel my panic renew.
My blood pressure does arise
as I gaze into your eyes.
Your touch is a soft caress
that thrills yet adds to my stress.
How can love be stricken blind -
something that just blows my mind!
My pale face is flashing flush
as my blood pumps at a rush.
Hot shivers running their course
task my shaking knees to force.
A physical reaction
to emotive attraction
will draw nonsense of it all
when in love you simply fall.
With all the symptoms of ill,
I’m glad to say that this chill
is not an infected gland.
But for all that, ain’t love grand?
Jueju-Qijue format: aabb 7777
Three years have passed by
Since the day that we met
I still remember your brown eyes
Serene, I would have called them
Until I saw myself getting reflected
In the deep dark waters that you pulled me in
I could see the chaotic waters swirling
A burning heart and razor-sharp strands of blood
Your weapons, unweilded
Yet you could never sheathe them in
Stop and Breathe
Sometimes I need to stop and breathe
sit still and calm my busy mind.
Reflect upon my inner seethe
collect my thoughts and then I’ll find,
a clearer me,
refreshed I’ll be.
To plan ahead, my angst shall sheathe
so, I’m longer in a bind.
Create myself a lovely wreathe
that when I need, I can unwind
to free my soul,
retain control.
29/6/2022
A ‘posie contest
Sponsor: Emile Pinet
True feelings concealed craftily
beneath the saccharine sheathe,
toxic fantasy of self items fostered
by the colors of chameleon skin.
Sprawling spurious emotions,
pretentiously paraded skillfully,
away from the edge of reason,
epitomize the camouflaged ego.
____________
May 29, 2022
Contest : Sentimentality
Sponsored by : Julia Ward
Words are mightier than swords – harder to sheathe, too.
June 15, 2021
raindrops fierce and rough;
confidant over and done with;
so grazed sheathe air space;
4/14/21
Written words by James Edward Lee Sr © 2021
Held unyielding in your narrow mind
is the ignorance which keeps you blind.
Building dams will only hold you back
from accepting that white is not black.
Like a slow moving, barricaded stream,
your thoughts clot like curdled cream.
Thin skin has need to slough rejection,
Your rigid stance in mirrored reflection.
Break open the dam across the estuary
that hinders your vision. It's necessary
to move in sync with malleable fluidity
instead of sputtering words of stupidity.
Shedding skin will allow you to breathe.
Release your potential from its sheathe.
Even a snake slithers out from its skin
to crawl from where it once had been.
Little is the chance you have to accept
new ideas if they are not circumspect
to the fault of having such a closed mind.
Throw off the veil that keeps you blind.
Don't become stagnant and decompose
by turning your back, continuing to oppose
any idea with which you just don't agree.
You'll drown in arrogance, acting so lordly.
In the long journey of the stream on the lap of planar plateau,
through the draping expanse of the emerald forest it slithers,
rolls over the broken contours of lowland as the surge askew
in the cascade of ribboned flow like fluidized swan feathers.
It collapses on the cleaved rocky floor, clad in reclined ferns,
as the gushing exuberance of splattered pearls of jubilation,
expressed in monotone splintering the silence of verdance,
the air in the tranquil valley ripples with the echo of elation.
Gliding with crystal waters of the bubbling champagne flow,
it dances on wave of land in dale of flowers in a looping line,
around the balanced boulders sparkling with malachite glow,
amid the patina of foliage glistened by the drizzle of sunshine.
The seamless shimmering sky on the sheathe of green canopy,
illumines the mystique shroud of diaphanous mist rising slow,
lifts the dark curtain for the dawn to rise from the horizon fiery,
in a trance I’m lured by enticing nature’s light and sound show.
Written : October 18, 2020
December 17, 2022
Contest : 2022 Poetry Marathon Mile 23
Sponsored by : Mark Toney
We are Nasty Women
When we hear haughtiness, we name it
When we see bullying, we blame it
We are Nasty Women
We do not daintily defer
For selfish whims of a saboteur
We will not walk three steps behind
We will not sheathe our sharpened minds
We are logic's clear eloquence
We are unyielding consequence
We are Nasty Women
We are out of many, one
We are the soldiers of every war
We are astronauts and commodores
We are the activists of plundered Earth
We are the executives who expect our worth
We are the advocates of facts, unsuppressed
As we walk the corridors of Congress
And we are far from done.
6/06/19
Poem of the Day
June 8th, 2019
If I could dream those eyes, bright stars! I’d be a Man, again!
(By which, I mean, awake to every need)
If I could sheathe the sword in stone, I’d learn to couch the pen,
And write words that suggest, but never bleed.
If I could muse my way through tomes and find you waiting there,
A better woolgather than any told,
If I could cross to Heaven’s Vale and kneel before your chair,
I’d live again, and never would grow old!
But there are better ways than those I choose to now embrace,
More practical, and sensible are these,
Ensconce within my heart a Rose, and in it, find your face,
And bear it with me always, sign of Peace!
3/17/2019
When fog creeps in to sheathe
the point, obscuring paths
among the brush, unseen loons,
hallooing one another,
map out this realm
of hemlock, rock, and water.
Loon cries vivify fireside
conjuring, old camper’s tales,
for the point’s new children:
they glimpse fabled elders,
conveyers of craft and lore
who made a mile or more
of winding roadway through
cut and cultivated trees.
Loon cries reassure us
as we sit in circled peace.
The birds know where they are
and so do we.
A cat of no throne still be royalty,
For a queen it be and servant be I and thee.
Shall its eyes reflect the sky of sheer equanimity,
For t’was a scheme for God to us from He,
Yet not a speck royalty I see in its colours of blight,
All which I see be a beast o’ two ears no flight,
Spatial symmetry of each strand snow white,
Erect its tail a friendliness, oh, such delight!
I love to hear it mewl, yet well I’d known,
That ode should define oh, so much more,
That knows be the thistles it sheathe unknown,
Makes for reasons to tame it so much more.
I’ll care then spoil, this peculiar feline
Not enraging it's wrath, I'm not crossing that line.
A cat of no throne still be royalty,
For a queen it be and servant be I and thee.
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