Strength in the Heart

(Hey guys! You know, you guys… that… Do we have followers? Don’t know! Well if you do follow, I love you ❤ and spread the word of us!!! Anyways, Sorry it’s been awhile since there’s a post, Rach is in Africa at the moment. I know, so exciting, right!? So I didn’t realize how long it had been since there had been a post but I’m here to fill the void! Which is weird… It’s normally me that’s Shae and Rach is always nagging about posting, haha. So, enjoy! And for once it’s not about feminism!)

Strength in the Heart

My heart is open,
too open for the liking of one who is hurt,
who’s thoughtless treading in the path of life,
has brought her to the edge of the light,
blackening the bright stars that had once guided her way.

Fear filled my already anxiety-crammed chest,
paranoia was the key to my survival.

Several attempts to my heart,
brought the ache that pushed so many back.
Do you not see my thoughtless nature, now?
Allowing those idiotic morons to even place a single claw
on my unprotected spirit.

Sprinting away from the scratches that threaten to show themselves,
the injuries that I tried now so hard to hide.

See, searching the world for hopeful romantic ideals is only a
childish dream that breaks the bones of blind brats.
Only the careful planning of protective measures against the
possible invasion of my heart once more allows the endurance of what dreams remain.

Yet here I say,
My heart is too open.
Through every measure I take,
I cannot tell you that I am not invincible to the persuasion of
my childish cares of fantastical romances that
the dreadful media of literature has prompted my thoughts with.
I cannot tell you that I do not still hope for the one who will cause
fire and electricity to course through my veins,
signaling that we are known to the universe as “soul mates.”

And you sit there.
Staring at that opening, plotting every precise possible plan,
knowing and understanding exactly what it takes,
to get under my skin,
surely bringing suffering through powerful pulsing pains
that your words and actions will cause.

May I cry now?
Emptying the cistern of my tears before you have
even the slightest chance of hijacking the flow,
controlling them to your every whim.

Please.
Break me.
Break my bones, flesh,
Spill my blood
through blistering pains of passionate fire.

Yet even through each pain,
My spirit moves forward.
Broken, I may be,
Paranoid, yes,
Fearful and anxious, worried and restless,
and unprotected.
Yet, if you do not destroy that which holds my will,
As long as my heart remains intact,
I can continue to move forward.

I know, though,
that pleading pleases will not stop your progress
to my heart. So begging with you is useless,
I must continue to push forward,
And keep the claws of idiotic morons, like you,
from the only thing that contains my strength.

© Ashlea Gable, 2012

Beige

[ i hate poetry with an arctic passion. why do i do this? ]

every once in a while you come up with a story

and you scribble it onto the walls of your bedroom

with a dying crayola marker and a blue color pencil

you doodle around the scuffs and the plot holes

because you need to distract the audience away

you draw a smiley face next to the stain and the invisible leg of the spider you killed with a house slipper two weeks ago

and somewhere between the sun rise and finishing a chapter on the underside of the window sill you lose your train of thought

watch it stumble away on five month old legs that can barely hold the weight of hours of character mapping and extensive research on antisocial personality disorder when you’re writing about a hominophobic woman and cult communities and human trafficking

and you wonder if your thought is running away to someone who can use it better

who doesn’t doodle around plot holes because they have the plaster to fill them in

who draw murals of landscapes and whole dystopian cities on the ceiling

building the world in their crawl-space and sleeping on their royalties

and then you see your thought with a beautifully crafted face and an elegant script spine on a shelf in the bookstore

and the first thing you wonder is: is this mine

and the second is: how much am i going to lose on paint this time

you hide the evidence under a fresh coat of beige

because beige is standard

knowing perfectly well that you have old cans of broken eggshells and fungal unda da sea green stacked in the corner of your closet

you consider taking up an interest in art

thinking as long as there is one eccentric person on the planet, someone will appreciate blue skies splattered on 22 by 24 stretched canvas as an attempt to start a movement

thinking you should probably put that bachelor’s in linguistics to use and find a 9 to 5–

times you’ve had to repaint the walls and you’re not sure if you can do it for a sixth

after a while it pains physically and you look down to see the tally marks carved just beneath your navel

unsure of if that’s an unexplainable phenomenon or a pity party drunken mistake

(that you thereby refer to as the survivor wounds of a fatal battle you faced getting off the public bus in the middle of uptown baltimore)

you wonder if you should just give up

if it’s better to quit being a writer in favor of something less angsty and emotionally depleting

but then a few months later you start it all over again

every once in a while you need to hide your words under a fresh coat of beige

you call it writer’s block

i call it a back-stabbing thought-stealing hussy

© Shae S., 2012

A Helpless World

(So Shae is having some writer’s block problems so I’m taking her place this week. So I promise I actually closed my eyes and just typed when I wrote this poem, I was really pissed off when I was writing it and it still came out as an equality themed poem. I think it’s my women’s study class that’s doing this to me….. And on to the poem~)

A Helpless World

 

Spinning and tilting, you crash against the wall like a tidal against a shore,

You break my cage and release me into the world,

Leaving me alone,

Frantically destroying,

Unsure what else to do in this foreign place that you’ve left me in.

 

Do you not see?

I am a lost soul in this helpless world.

Yes a world that is helpless,

Unable to stop its own ways,

To stop fighting among each other like cats and dogs.

We are all the same.

Weaknesses,

Strengths,

Sins and purity.

 

We each cry our own salty tears,

A cliché that deserves to be told because,

Not one tear is more salty than another,

We all cry,

Laugh,

Love,

Living in a distant land that we call our home,

But is this green and blue and yellow and red, every color of the rainbow,

Are these not all our colors? The colors we live in.

The colors we believe in.

 

Why would you release me?

I am not happy here,

I was happy living in my hole,

Not seeing the true nature of anything,

Breathing in the salty sea like my life depended on it.

You broke me free,

Gave me air.

And I didn’t want it.

 

This world is only a cloud of darkness,

The water may be dark in the depths but that is only because we have not taken the time,

Time to look, and look hard,

Into the depths of the ocean that will reflect what truly hides in our souls.

 

It reflected my soul,

And it showed me I belonged with the clear transparency of a world that won’t hurt.

It showed me that to be happy I must leave this upside down, discriminating, horribly

Terrifying world,

And fight the darkness,

To see the truth of life.

 

And I saw the truth.

I saw that everything was a lie,

Crushing your lungs,

Breaking your bones,

Destroying your will and soul.

The world we live in today only shows the masks,

Fog covering up the truth as we pretend that we are all okay.

But we are not.

We are all damned creatures.

Maybe that is what unites us.

The damnation of our souls,

The evil in our hearts.

The desire to burn and harm everything we hold dear.

 

Yes, I see now,

It is the hatred in our blood that boils that unites us.

A horrible truth we will never accept,

Forever living in the fog,

Under the cover of masks.

 

We will never be united by peace and goodness.

Never will we all see that we are all sinners, whether that means

You have sinned against the god you believe in,

Or sinned against the people you love.

Sinners, it is just a word,

Not a religion.

And it is what we all our, for we all make mistakes.

 

And so we unite in the consequences of mistakes,

Instead of unite in the forgiveness sin brings.

© Ashlea Gable, 2012