The Fortress
by -tena

This fortress of walls that I have built
To suppress my rage, impatience and guilt
I need them there to keep me sane
To keep silent the knowledge of the pain


I have subconsciously put up these bars
To halt the tears and hide the scars
And forget the years the locust ate
To forgive myself and those I hate

I’ve put them there to save my heart
In case it heals from being broken apart
These are my walls of discontent
To hide my hell to a greater extent...

who dare go next?

you are a poet - and quite excellent too!

you can post your poems or any poetry that you may read -
for many years I have read Ms.Emily Dickinson -
as I relate well to her
so I will quote Emily Dickinson for you, dear Miss SunnySide...

Delight becomes pictorial
When viewed through pain,--
More fair, because impossible
That any gain...
_________
~
I am the flower
tread under foot
crushed were my heart petals
of pain~
and though glancing back
does me no good
I do it again and again...

written by tena

Oh be still my heart! Ladies...what a wonderful thread to wake up to!

Tena I knew of your talent but now you have company in our Sunnysidedown.

I have lately discovered Ellen Bass and am slowly devouring her book, "The Human Line". Here is one of her gems.

The End

All through the dark hours
she mumbled goodbye,
as though the word itself
could make it happen.

As if she were a novice witch
learning an old incantation,
Goodbye, she'd say
with fresh determination.

But night after night, the lungs
kept stealing air, the stubborn
muscle refused to give up.

Help me, she begged,
an ashy whisper. Please.
I stood in the cold spot in my heart
from where I could watch everything.
She was out beyond being a mother
and this my brief chance to know her.

In the morning, when the new
angel of morphine arrived
in its full brown bottle,
we funneled it into her throat.

My daughter helped me
and when the rattle began
she was closest. I leaned in behind,

It was like a birth that way -
The baby coming too fast
to change position-
and I thought, Okay,

She'll know how to do this.
And we kept at it together, both of us,
killing her as fast as we could.

Wren,

Education happens more in life than in any classroom. We learn from being curious, wondering, searching - no need for formal education. (sh.. - must remember not to put that on my teaching resume! - or hell maybe I should - it's true!) Never equate education with intelligence - just not the same thing!

TC,
I would never consider myself a poet - actually dreaded poetry in school. There were patterns to use, rhymes, etc. I hated it! I like reading poetry periodically. I like writing about stuff but am highly critical of myself so it is hard to share. But I will accept the complement coming from someone who writes so well.

Alffe,
Ty - I don't think TC has anything to wrorry about. Ty for the poem.

A special place to post Poems, Drawings, whatever is your means for expressing yourself.

Wonderfully written - I have been published...
what you may have disliked in school taught poetry was called - "Form"
that was suppose to be a rule of poetry style
the reason why I love Emily Dickinson -she made her own style...
poetry is art -art is in the hand -eye and mind of the Artists...

and you are a Word Artist...
and Wren - You too have an artistic gift...
Bravo to you both!

thankyou dear Alfee & dear Curious! ~~~ :hugs:


this a quote from Einstein
It is important for the common good to foster individuality: for only the individual can produce the new ideas which the community needs for its continuous improvement and requirements—indeed, to avoid sterility and petrification."

—From a message for a Ben Schemen dinner, March 1952; Einstein Archive 28-932; Expanded, p. 286

dear poets and poetry lovers -
I was very tired and had too much shakey shakey pain today -
so I will post now --- perhaps I am the midnight writer?
for you youngin's that was a pun on a old song sung by the Allman brothers band, it was my older brothers song era... my high school daze had disco and Queen? etc. feels like a century ago - probably because it almost is?


I am concentrating on healing emotions
I still have scarsz - don't we all...it's evidently what we do with the pain
that helps us heal instead, and with that I submit these two poems...



Sunset Blue
Out across my minds eye
I am sailing to sunset blue
An island hidden far away
where my heart ran away with you

I see you there so handsome
I feel you like you are there
and I hear your voice, and laughter
The passions from everywhere

Oh my love what happened?
Please tell me where you have gone?
I searched for our life,
till midnight broke the dawn

Was your love a fable?
Were your words untrue?
Tell me someone if your able?
While I sail to Sunset Blue
_______________



In the twilight garden
one eagerly awaits
amongst the blooms of ardent flowers
and past wrought iron gates

Her loving heart skips a beat
While breathlessly she sighs
And his steps are quicked by
The love light in his eyes

Glancing past the summer rose
Trail the honey suckle vine
With passions kiss upon their lips
That taste of vintage wine

Amongst the floral envelope
Wild fantasies collide
The night of hot passions rage
will now, no longer be denied

Hence those nights now are past
And colder went my bones are chill
Yet like a beacon in the night it's search
My heart is shining still
written by: tena
__________________

what a wonderful gift -


today for me was full of woe
the pain crept through my brain
and night revived me and so I awoke
to see what was pain -is gain!



see ya, up-top!

Here is another Ellen Bass poem from The Human Line

Gate C22

At gate C22 in the Portland airport
a man in a broad-band leather hat kissed
a woman arriving from Orange County.
They kissed and kissed and kissed. Long after
the other passengers clicked the handles of their carry-ons
and wheeled briskly toward short-term parking,
the couple stood there, arms wrapped around each other
like he'd just staggered off the boat at Ellis Island,
like she'd been released at last from ICU, snapped
out of a coma, survived bone cancer, made it down
from Annapurna in only the clothes she was wearing.

Neither of them was young. His beard was gray.
She carried a few extra pounds you could imagine
her saying she had to lose. But they kissed lavish
kisses like the ocean in the early morning,
the way it gathers and swells, sucking
each rock under, swallowing it,
again and again. We were all watching -
passengers waiting for the delayed flight
to San Jose, the stewardesses, the pilots,
the aproned woman icing Cinnabons, the man selling
sunglasses. We couldn't look away. We could
taste the kisses crushed in our mouths.

But the best part was his face. When he drew back
and looked at her, his smile soft with wonder, almost
as though he were a mother still open from giving birth,
as your mother must have looked at you, no matter
what happened after - if she beat you or left you or
you're lonely now - you once lay there, the vernix
not yet wiped off, and someone gazed at you
as if you were the first sunrise seen from the Earth.
The whole wing of the airport hushed,
all of us trying to slip into that woman's middle-aged body,
her plaid Bermuda shorts, sleeveless blouse, glasses,
little gold hoop earrings, tilting our heads up.

it was taken when I was 15 years old -my thirty seconds of youth
I just turned 45-

age 15


age 20 -married oh -very young and stupid


divorced -age 45


I am starting to mold?
hahahahaaa!

my ex-husband age 46 -last time I saw him



I will be posting - look up at -----> the top of the page: where the Artistic Expression is located -