Thirst of Another Kind

Photography by Carlo Pautasso

Linking with the Sunday Muse for Muse # 59
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"They roll by just like water 
And I guess we never learn 
Go through life parched and empty 
Standing knee deep in a river and dying of thirst."
~Kathy Matea

It is desolate in the place of longing

Where I wait for you to notice me and

  quench my desire with more than a passing nod

You with your fountain eyes that never flow my direction

Could you not see me withering away with pining

I would have soaked up anything you would have given me

Hung on your words like petals on a flower

For thirsty is a place that drowns in yearning

Dry throats do not crumple like leaves

But hearts do

Leaving nothing to fall to the ground

But regret

And that is the most desolate place of all.

A Funny Thing Happened on My Way Out of the Auditorium

Linking with Toni's Muse # 11 "I love to laugh"

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"Some things are funny after the fact."

~ me

A Funny Thing Happened on My Way Out of the Auditorium

I was attending a graduation

A long time ago, it has been a decade or two

I got dressed up for the occasion

Something I rarely do

You know how it is

Trying to look your best

Wanting to honor the family

So you wear a dress

And then it happens

Your elastic band breaks

Not the one on a sleeve

But a half-slip for heaven’s sake

It is a tricky situation

One that calls for quick action and some luck

but my hands are just not clever or near fast enough

To stop the slip from slipping all the way down to the floor

Right in the middle of heading to the auditorium door!

Moral of the story is:

Do NOT try to put the fallen slip back on, simply pick it up and put it in your purse.  Unfortunately, my gut instinct was not the latter.  LOL

Souls & Horses

Photo by Tatiana from Pexels

Linking with the Sunday Muse for Muse # 58
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Horses and children, I often think, have a lot of the good sense there is in the world.  ~Josephine Demott Robinson

Like ghosts we walk through miracles never knowing how close we come

For we cannot see what we do not believe

But in another life we were horses

Where no fences gated our hearts

Free to be what we truly were

We galloped far beyond what could be seen

Grazing truth all the while

And always hungry for more

Like a mighty wind our spirits pushed through

Making themselves known to all

For freedom does not linger on regret

Nor feed on darkness

It moves on gallantly in the light of day

and those willing to let go

Will dare to jump any fence that comes their way

But that was another life and time

The rising dust of a distant star

Here we walk through miracles never knowing how close we come

Ghosts cannot touch, but merely pass by in silence

And we cannot see what we do not believe.

©Carrie Van Horn 2019

As I Sit In My Living Room

"Protector" Photography by Susie Clevenger

To visit her wonderful photography blog click here.

Linking with the Sunday Muse for Muse # 57
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"All gave some, 
 some gave all."
~Billy Ray Cyrus

We look back past the bullets ricochet

And our hearts see

Fear cloaked in the armor of bravery

You stepped out in harm’s way

Heart pounding louder than a bomb

But my eyes were spared the gruesome details

Sitting in my living room

My brother’s blood did not splatter

Upon my face

My legs still unshaken

 still intact

no throat can express it

thunder knows what it knows

and we can only wait for the lightening flash

some memories should be unremembered

but a soldier somewhere

packs for home

carrying all those memories

he brings with shrapnel

yet leaving behind a leg

he tells himself that he is lucky

and hopes someday he will believe it

for his fellow soldier

will be laid to rest

underneath clover grass

near the shade of concrete angels 

as I freely sit in my living room.

©Carrie Van Horn 2019

Bon Voyage

Pixabay on Pexels

Linking with Toni's Wed Muse # 9 Anniversary
Thank you Toni for another wonderful prompt!!

Marriage is a book of which the first chapter is written in poetry and the remaining chapters in prose. ~Beverley Nichols

All my wedding anniversaries have sailed out to sea

One got lost at the Bermuda Triangle

and since has never been seen

My heart still remembers

But my mind forgets

Roses of longing

Are now long since shipwrecked

Another marriage got eaten by a great white shark

Every anniversary it held close

is now all lost in the dark

My heart still remembers

But my mind forgets

The flowers of wanting

are now wilted with neglect

for all my wedding anniversaries have sailed out to sea

no message in a bottle

can bring them back to me.

©Carrie Van Horn 2019

French Kissed

Linking with the Sunday Muse for Muse # 56 hosted by one of my favorite poets in the whole world, Shay!


Fear is the highest fence. ~Dudley Nichols

I watch you from afar holding my breath as you dare to live bravely

For it is a wild ride for those willing to stand on the edge

You never did merely kiss life on the cheek

You always French Kissed full on

With lips set apart

To ride with you is always an experience

That pushes past the safety rails

And dives deep into wild seas

You come up for air

Only to dive right back in deeper

You fly higher

Roll faster

And strip naked to the world unashamed

 willing to walk barefoot on shifting sands

falling never stopped you

so, you keep moving on no matter what lies ahead

and I watch you from afar holding my breath as you dare to live bravely

sometimes a cautious heart misses out on beauty

 avoiding all the bruises that could await.

©Carrie Van Horn 2019

Peace in Pieces

Linking with the Wed Muse # 7 "A Beautiful Mess"

Thank you for another wonderful prompt Toni!

Today Toni is having us explore the Japanese art of Kintsugi and how to make the most of breaks, cracks, mistakes.  Kintsugi is the repairing of a break or a crack with gold. It was created in the 5th century when a shogun broke his favorite tea cup.  He didn't want to throw the cup away but he wanted to continue to use it. 

 She is asking us all to write a poem in any form about the healing in your life - how you have repaired the cracks and breaks, about your scars, how you have triumphed or are trying to persist.  How you let the light shine through the cracks, how you grow stronger. 

If a mistake is not a stepping stone, it is a mistake. ~Eli Siegel

Note:

I could write many things about this, because if mistakes were worth money I would be rich indeed!

If I were a bowl sitting on the table

I would be cracked in countless places

No more soup eating in this one

 Maybe a place to put sweet-n-low

Or ketchup packets

You see

I have a tendency to fall

Not just the slipping on ice kind

I make decisions with my broken heart

Leaving my whole mind out of the equation

Not everyone and everything

Can be alright at the same time

But I would sure try to make it so

It is a behavior that has

Taken away my peace

My money

My health

And others sobriety

Slowly with glue

And a lot of growth

I have healed

Seeing others heal

And they grew

With God’s help

Not mine

There is a peace now

I did not know before

Holding the burden of other’s hurts

Is a heavy and weary place

That only adds to our own pain

Letting go is such a simple thing

Yet so profoundly hard

It is a lesson I have learned slowly

And will be learning for the rest of my life

 piece by piece

Like fragments of broken glass

Being placed back together

One piece at a time

To make me complete again.

Note 2:  I have talked about it many times in my other posts, but I am the mother of a recovery addict alcoholic.    I am so very thankful that he has been clean and sober for going on 5 years in July, but looking back, I know in my heart that I slowed that process.  My trying to help kept him from truly getting the help he needed.  That is something that I will have to live with for the rest of my life.  All I ever wanted was for him to be whole, happy, and live a good life.  By the grace of God that is now so. 

Skid Marks

Linking with Poets United for lovely Magaly's Telling Tales: A Pantry of Prose Month #3 The subject is Phobias.  We can also choose to take an old poem and turn it into a story in 313 words or less. (Mine is 312.)
I hope you will join us!

Note:
This is mostly fiction, only a few details are true.  I took a morsel of what is and ran with it.  I hope you like it.

Photo by Artem Bali from Pexels

Some things we go through in life, leave a lasting mark, like a skid mark on the highway, serving as a constant reminder of what was and what will never be.  From the time I was a child, fear was fed to me like peanut butter and jelly.  It always did get stuck on the roof of my mouth, leaving a taste on my tongue that would not soon disappear.  Fear is like that, it sticks with you and can be hard to swallow and wash away.   I watched my mother and her mother before her suffer from the affliction of fear, and the hold that it can have on you when it is deep inside you.  

I have found freedom and fear do not co-exist in the same place.  If you hold fear, freedom is far from your reach indeed.  When I was 22 years old driving home with a friend from a dinner party, I hit a deer on a country road.  It all happened so fast.  A figure came moving in, my tires skidding on the pavement, and my car colliding with the gentlest of God’s creatures, ending up in a deep ravine. 

That is all I remember; the rest is a blur that crosses lines of the truth and what was never spoken.  I am still here, wishing I could go back and make it never happen.  So many times, I tried to drink away the memory of it, but unlike taking out a bullet in the wild west, the whiskey only made it hurt more deeply.

You see I am still here, but my friend, a wild eyed French major, wearing no seat belt is not.  Gregg was only 24 and had plans larger than life.  I have never gotten behind the wheel again.  It is through this, I came to better understand my mother.  

©Carrie Van Horn 2019

We All are God's Messengers

Courtesy Google Images

Linking with Poets United for the Midweek Motif ~ Biodiversity

"The flower is the poetry of reproduction.  It is an example of the eternal seductiveness of life."

~Jean Giraudoux

They say flowers did not always exist
ferns and cone bearing trees dominated the earth
I say, even Mother Nature likes a change of scenery sometimes.

Everything has a story
a tale to tell
and a message grows from it
like a flower in cracked cement
or a tree in Brooklyn
growth happens
and makes it's own way
through thick and thin
through it all
with each seedling
and every mouth to feed
we find we need each other
the trees give us oxygen
and we give them carbon dioxide
it is quite the arrangement
the kind only God
could have made
and it is His
very own
true
testimony.


©Carrie Van Horn 2019

I Still See

Photo by Josiel Miranda from Pexels

Linking with the Sunday Muse for Muse # 53
come join us!

I am tired, Beloved,
of chafing my heart against
the want of you;
of squeezing it into little inkdrops,
And posting it.
~Amy Lowell,

I still see that little girl
standing before the world
she still exists
if you look a little deeper
though her skinned up knees
have turned into
deeper bruises
the kind that bandages 
cannot fix
funny how the years have a way
of changing the view ahead
turning hope into doubt
and skipping into a slow walk
we start out with a nap sack
and end up with a house full
of junk we could easily
live without
weighed down
with too many fears
wrapped in the grief of loss
we cannot forget
still I see that little girl
standing before the world
holding hope like a blanket
that same girl
still exists.

©Carrie Van Horn 2019