Otherwise – Forever

“You are full of questions,
but answer none of mine.
Bit unfair, Lovey.”

“Oh, honey,
that’s how I roll.
You know this
after how long???
I take without giving.”

“No, no, it is not always.
It is past many years,
wretch,
that I have been attached to you
with chains,
I cannot wrest away.
Longer,
because you owned me
prior.
You are the enigma that
restlessness invokes
amid paradises
of supposed pleasure.

Yeah, keep that one for your
letter trove.

Escape is no frigging option.
Still, I am the villain.
I love you,
when love
is not your
purpose.
You desire to be
the bait,
then when the wild
beast
is captive, to run away.
I am willing to play
your game
because I enjoy
your peculiar brand
of pain.

Here lies the rot:
You have had your loves,
more lasting
than my own,
but somehow you are
not all away,
because
in your depths,
you realize
my heart is
your home,
but only at
a distance,
because you fear what
we would be
come into our own.

And here I have awoken
with ink
all over me, again,
and am yet to
discover why.
Perhaps even in
sleep
words
keep me company
as will never
the love I want.

Am I so dangerous?”

© Jo Ann J. A. Jordan

Willing Walls

Every rock feels like a wall
Weighted on the edges fit
To gloss right over
Enjambment holding words, lines
Together sentenced inside
The poem, river stones
Smoothed yet separated like
Those who secrets keep
Under mounds stacked much
Higher than maybe any desire.

Constant, no buyer
For the passions readily
Acquired under siege
Of rolling onslaught, bolder
Than before romance tendered.

The song, melodious surrender,
Now love, revoke the walls built
On forgotten dreams
Turn to see what such fascination
Means as inspiration – flames –
Creativity, freedom inclination,
No mystery tearing down
Careful barriers
Constructed to prohibit feral
Growth as if nothing is enough.

Love is no stone though
One might throw, causing ripples
On the surface, it seems time
Is only these shared moments,
All other becomes deprivation extreme,
A heart can be open
Or remain as hard as a stone;
The bedrock alone
Challenged with an anomalous difference
Which may be given and shown,
Love is and becomes the soul’s true home.

© Jo Ann J. A. Jordan

These Four

Fertile light
Which nourishes
Every living thing,
Letting healthy energy
Pour over all life
Existing and growing
Full within common
Circles of influence.

Water, bearer, builder,
Giver, in everything,
The element of cells
Binder of creation
Healer of random hurts
Companion on the journey;
Life contains a thirst
Deeper than any ocean.

Air, holding breath
Loss, immediate death;
Containing space,
Spirit, dreams
Where time meets
Being – quiet, soothing,
Invisible nurture,
Life bringing fullness.

Earth, the surface,
Ground, beneath all feet
Remaining, sustaining
Though civilization
May timely turn
Into its overwhelming
Dust – there lives trust
The base providing
What fuels living
Enough to retain foundations
Raising survival, life.

© Jo Ann J. A. Jordan

I am aware most use fire instead of light in a presentation such as this, but light is how it began in this instance. What I am given I usually keep.

Blue

Blue of a crisp
Cloudless
Sky seeming
A rich robe
Wrapping
To a distant horizon.

Clouds encroach
Shedding plenteous
Tears rolling down
Spilling as lightning
Releases cries of 
Intense thunder
Unleashing 
The held hidden hostage.

Anxiety, doubt, fear,
Tension filter like
Torrential rain filling
A hole in reality;
Swallowing
It all benign in
An effort to become,
Become relevant.

Gardens grow vibrant
As rainbows, delicate
As butterflies winging
Across the bruised
Evening 
As the sun slowly
Sinks, a vessel
No one can bail.

Relentless people
Compel stories told
Before grudgingly
Retiring into
Comforting downy
Covers whose cost –
An unknowable secret
Paid by those who
Gave enfolding safety
Out of the blue.

© Jo Ann J. A. Jordan

Prompt:

  1. Take what time you will and free-write.
  2. Keep going for the period you have chosen.
  3. Do not worry over correctness; get the words out. You can come back later and edit.

Kept

Forbidden entrance
The remains
Though shattered
Survive, alive
With curiosity,
Wondering
How reason
Keeps pace when
Alone all is
Nothing.

A steady fall
Of rain
Washing recollection
Into ditches
Run with clay.

A deep ocean regret
Roars a forward tide
Booming a cave
Where mysteries
Like ghosts hide;
A twine of trellis
Roses with bloodied
Thorns
Upward climbs.

Language aspires
To expand intellect
With fine rhetoric;
Somehow
Encouraging noisome
Ravens to disperse,
Shades, shadows depart.

Love ransomed,
Life sparkles.

© Jo Ann J. A. Jordan

Prompt: Create something about a circumstance you overcame or would like to go beyond.

Night Chair
© Jo Ann J. A. Jordan