Runner

A moment
frozen
crystallized in time
one of a multitude

Icy eyes
what have you seen?
Blue and cold
lost passions, hidden possibilities

A face 
you were smooth
once
before the withering storm

We are all blank canvasses
waiting for life to fill us
waiting to die

The rain falls
carrying with it
all those moments
all those memories

Lost 
once our eyes close
Gone
without an echo

Who are you?
Did anyone ever really know?

© M. A.
29.05.2018

The Secret

It flutters
like a caged dove
beating feathered wings

It stirs,
a shining light beneath
a calm, silky ocean

It strains my lips
they pout, and move
silently, then they smile

Someday,
it will escape, to fly and soar
amidst gasps and incredulous joy

But not just yet
for now, it is mine
and his. Alone.

Order

In the beaming of the Moon
the stars go on arolling
under his patriarchal eye
healthily aglowing

A stream, a glade, a shallow reef
they all spread out on yonder
beneath his benign fragile gaze
in fearful harmony and wonder

Nothing could ever break that look
surrounding them, so strictly
Nothing could ever distort the order
regimenting them so thickly

For his stern paternal gaze
is what keeps them in line
willy-nilly, it’s always there
ever controlling their shine

For what would happen without the Moon
in the dark of the endless sky?
What would the twinkling stars do
all alone up above so high?

How could their light reach over it all
with no shepherd there to guide them?
How could they find the way to go
with no sergeant to deride them?

It would be chaos! It would be wild!
There would be no end to it!
How they would dance, jump and cavort
for sure the globe would be too brightly lit!

No no, such things are not to happen
no play or song, no laughter or brightness, ever
The Moon is there as it has always been
Set the clock, turn around, yes forever

©M.A

 

Weekly Writer’s Challenge – FUN

My tights are ripped, I do not care
Pink hair, tulle skirt and a daredevil flare
sumptuous breasts and a wicked smile
these are enough for a job like mine

Here they come with their slouching gait
one and all – looking for a date
someone warm, who will take them in
as long as they’ve money, it is not a sin

A girl’s got to eat, my mam used to say
For good or for ill, be it night or day
just call me, you know me, I’m always game
many hands and no faces, to me all the same

As long as you pay me, I don’t really mind
if we do it standing, from the front or behind
I’m not picky, not choosy, come on one and all
we can rent a room, or go behind the wall

A pert bottom, parted lips, with high heels and a wink
I’ll have your interest and pecker, before you can blink
Look no further, come hither, yes I am the one
‘Hey Mister, I’m Heather, let’s go have some fun!’

This poem was sent to esthernewtonblog as a Weekly Challenge – https://wordpress.com/read/feeds/10756820/posts/1147306343

Reality vs Fake Airs- Why Write?

I’m not the kind of girl who likes to boast. I don’t play the passive-aggressive card. I don’t like playing the victim in order to get pats on the back. I don’t like putting myself down in public, in order to receive commiserating compliments. I got past all that immature stuff at approximately the age of 15.

It does not mean that I am emotionless or that I don’t have feelings. On the contrary, it means that I only share what I find worth sharing. Moreover, I only share it with a limited number of people I am close to, and definitely not with social media at large. I’m not that desperate yet.

Perhaps it could be that I don’t have the unmitigated urge to display all my insecurities and naggy rages because I have, I admit, always been kind of an introvert. Yes, I communicate and share my experiences through writing, but still I  pay attention to get only as personal as I’m comfortable with. Especially if I’m writing something which, I know, many people are going to read. How many intimate sentimental poems have I written? How many embittered and angry short stories, reflecting my moods and my past, have I penned? How many irritated rants about my disgust and dissatisfaction with the human condition at large have I scribbled? No one knows the answer to this question except myself. Mainly because no one has read them – or if they did, it was only one or two people at the most. This is because, when my heart bleeds and my fingernails gauge half-moons of frustration on my palms, I write – I cannot help it – it is the way I vent what I feel and the way I tick. However, just because I write something, actually showing it to someone is something else entirely. 

I write for myself. I write because I cannot stop. I write because it helps me come to term with reality – ironic as that sounds.

Whether something is floating on a current of social media out there or not, is irrelevant.

I guess it all depends on whether you prioritize yourself as an individual most, or whether you are more focused on how you appear to others. For me, my internal personal life has always been more important than the way others perceive me, how ‘popular’ I am or what a ‘good’ impression others have of me. In the end, I prefer having some friends who care for me for who I really am, than many acquaintances who might hang out with me for any fake ‘persona’ I might project. At least I know that those who love me, love me. In all my silly, eccentric, weird singularity.

Quoting one of (in my opinion) the greatest fantasy writers of all time:

“My immagination makes me human and makes me a fool; it gives me all the world and exiles me from it.”
― Ursula K. Le Guin

Insomnia

I cannot save you
While the blood rages and the heart moans
I cannot save you
As you look askance at the twisted vines
I cannot save you
Your gaze is too suspicious, your mind is too old

Let go
Of all those moments of rank belittilement
Let go
The gnashing thunder within your veins
Let go
Those tears of madness you are still hiding

You know
They clamor ever hungry for reprisal
You know
Your violent flame is roaring for more
You know
This is the reason why sleep flees

And yet
The pounding surf cannot be silent
And yet
That vortex of hate will not be still
And yet
Your eyes will always spit blood and flame

And that, is why
I cannot save you
Unless you save yourself
And dream

© M_Moonsong

ANNIVERSARY of Edgar Allan Poe’s Mysterious Death!

‘I became insane, with long intervals of horrible sanity’ – Edgar Allan Poe

Technically, this was yesterday, but I only realized today.

Edgar Allan Poe, his works, and his life, have always had a special fascination for me. He is the daddy of the horror genre and the supernatural mystery. His poems especially are so full of dark romantic agony, that they called to my trembling brimful heart from a very young age. Poe, who married his cousin a child bride of 13 who died only 2 years after the marriage (she was 15). Poe, who forever after wrote sad poems lamenting his pure innocent lost love. Poe who was given to bouts of depression, took laudanum and was a drunk, but published brilliant detective stories, the first of their kind. Poe, who always had a kind of mythological terror of cats, because for him they symbolized the dark wild part of himself, and who feature again and again in small ways in almost all of his prose-work.

Poe who mysteriously and inexplicably died 166 years ago, yesterday.

Most people erroneously believe he died of his alcoholism but that is not the case. First of all, though he was a known alcoholic, he is reported to have not touched a drop for ages. Also, the person who found him, alone, confused and wandering, in the dark a week after he had disappeared from his home on the way to New York, said he looked sick but not drunk. Secondly, let us keep in mind that the person who wrote Poe’s biography after his death, Rufus Wilmot Griswold was a hated rival who was trying to portray him as badly as possible. He said he was ugly, dirty and unkept, a drunk, a brute and a savage. To which others, Poe’s doctor included, attested he was not. Unfortunately, there was no autopsy done on Poe’s body, and all his medical documents were ‘lost’, so there is no record of what actually took place.

Theories abound. Some say he died of a heart-attack. Some that it was suicide (he had already overdosed on laudanum once), which is not possible since he was ‘found’ wondering the streets. Some say it was diabetes or tetanus.

Like Poe’s marvelluous detective mysteries, his death too, remains a mystery. Still he played and still plays a big influence on my mode of thought, not to mention my writing and my tastes. ALL HAIL EDGAR ALLAN POE – MASTER OF TERROR!

Btw this is a very good article on his death – http://www.openculture.com/2015/10/the-mystery-of-edgar-allan-poes-death-19-theories-on-what-caused-the-poets-demise-166-years-ago-today.html

Enjoy 🙂

Ocean Song

Churning, turning, ever burning
Twisting, rolling, always moaning
Groaning, gurgling, even twerking
Dancing, sloshing and gyrating

Spilling shinily on the rocks
Flecking the air, bathing the docks
Breathing gassily amidst the pores
of unknown, unwanted shores

Spawning fish and hiding mermaids,
deep within, where no child ever wades
Tinkling melodies far below abide
where the sand is not reached by the tide

Screeching mollusks, roaring sharks
fluttering ferns and eel-like sparks
some fish puff, others mutter
within its smothering, searching stutter

As it embraces all and none,
below the air, beneath the sun
the song goes forever on and on
in its relentless joyful drone

The Secret Sin of Writing

It is a truth universally acknowledged that what sells, and GOOD WRITING are two very different things. It is also a fact that most artistic geniuses, which are freely viewed as such today, were nobodies when they were alive, and in fact many of them were unbelievably poor and wretched.

Not all of them of course, Charles Dickens, being a carismatic charmer, made more money out of his public readings, which advertised his own writing skills, than from his journalistic writings. Mozart, who was a child-prodigy, wowed the nobility with his precociousness, and Lord Byron was also well-known not only for his boyish Casanova-like behavior, but also for his poetry and grace. These however are just flukes, and not the norm at all.

What sells is what magazines and newspapers look for. What sells is the thing most Editors really consider when reading a draft for the first time. Shakespeare was a struggling playwright in his time – one of the many trying to gain the attention of the nobility to earn a living. The same could be said for Marlowe, Blake and many other such artistic geniuses. They tried to find a balance between pleasing the masses and being true to their art. One wonders what great artistic treasures they could have produced, had they not been constrained by the need to earn money through the use of their talent.

I need money. Doesn’t everyone? Now more than ever, I need money. This is the point in my life where I think, I will need money most. That is why I totally understand how and why a writer, a musician, an artist, sometimes has to prostitute his or her talent. It does not mean I like it. Hopefully, it will not always be so. I will always need money of course, but I dream of a time in future, when I will be comfortable enough to at least relegate my office hours to work, and then afterwards be free to write whatever I want, for the sole pleasure of writing it, and not for any other ulterior motives.

Of course, if others like reading what I write, and I make a gazzillion euros out of it, I won’t complain either ;p

The Weaver of Tapestries

The darkness faded long ago
the shards have healed, the soul has eased
and yet somehow, at times my mind strays
asking why’s, looking for might-have-been’s

Do you ever think of me?
Telling everyone I was the cause, I was the pain
did you really suffer, were you grieved
were there a million pieces of you, like there were of me?

Excuses, excuses
Anything to use worn beds
tattered into incredulity
even after the passage of time

Yet, you spin the old mantra
of lies couched in sweat and sniggers
corruptible spasms in a sea of disruption
Fanciful cocktails of blood and music

Beneath freckled claws, under wide eyes
do you really believe what you say?
Does the villain always see a hero in the mirror
or does he open his eyes sometimes?

Clutching spheres of crystals and tears
sucking in derailed hearts
No – I will not forget. I do not want to.
Frosty-eyed I clutch at the withering storm

Dark stars falling on fluttering eyelids
nails scraping at the brittle grime
Still here. I am still here.
Bereft, but whole.