Saturday, May 25, 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
Come join us!

"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

Wednesday, May 22, 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

Monday, May 20, 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

Wednesday, May 8, 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. 


Sunday, May 5, 2019

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

Wednesday, May 1, 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