Category: Love

Unanswered Questions

Unanswered Questions

The past only an arm’s length away 
A glimmer of what once was
still shines briefly in the darkness
where you now reside 

Savagely robbed of love far too soon
A life taken.  Snuffed out like a candle
Leaving your body paralyzed, unable to move
As if limbs had been amputated

How can a heart still beat when broken?
Thrown so cruelly into
the dark corners of the mind
where questions will go unanswered


Copyright © 2022 Christine Bolton - Poetry for Healing
All Rights Reserved

Grace is hosting Open Link Night at D'Verse Poets

Spoken Word

Spoken Word

Beneath billowy clouds
We lay together on a red tartan blanket
Sated from our picnic lunch
The warmth of sun on skin
and sweet summer wine on lips
Wildflowers he picked and carefully
threaded into my hair
Heady, hypnotic moments
As butterflies danced
and dragonflies hovered
All in the golden afternoon

I hear the three voices
Loud and clear
His, speaking of his love for me
Mine, repeating his words back
but inaudibly so he would not hear
Then that of my conscience
as always, keeping me silent 
and so his words will remain
just echoes in my mind
and the events of this day
only memories


Copyright © 2022 Christine Bolton - Poetry for Healing
All Rights Reserved


Sanaa is hosting D'Verse Poets and has prompted us with choosing three
Lewis Carroll poems from the list she provided and weave them into a poem
of our own.  I chose:

Echoes
The Three Voices

All in the Golden Afternoon


Without a Trace – Poem of the Month – February 2022

Without a Trace

Footprints stolen
by the sea
Voices drowned
by gulls
Words carried
away in protest
on salty winds
 
The beach keeps its secrets
of ghosts from the past
Sweeping away remnants 
of life and love
without a trace
until there’s nothing left
but pristine sand
 
Although here
among the driftwood
and starfish,
your essence
lingers still
Your presence
is felt, always
 
 
Copyright © 2022 Christine Bolton - Poetry for Healing
All Rights Reserved


Sarah from Sarahsouthwest is hosting Tuesday night at D'Verse
and she has prompted us with Lost Valentines "lost loves, your
broken loves, your loves that never were! The fireworks that
didn’t quite go off, the bud that never opened, the seed that
failed to sprout."
This is a poem I wrote a couple of years ago

Image by Christina1966 from Pixabay 

Mating Dance – Poem of the Month – January, 2022

Mating Dance

A gentle touch
as if a feather
slowly stroking skin
Sending an uncontrollable
shiver down the spine
Dark eyes
holding a gaze longer
than is comfortable
Alluring, anticipating
Powerful, charismatic
The mating dance 
of two exotic birds?
Is the performance enough?
Maybe, maybe not


Copyright © 2022 Christine Bolton - Poetry for Healing
All Rights Reserved

Merril is hosting at D'Verse Poets tonight and has prompted us to write
a Quadrille incorporating the word 'Shiver'

A Quadrille is a poem of exactly 44 words excluding the title



Photo - Pixabay

Language of Love

Language of Love

Eyes closed and leaning back 
She listened to the sonorous
yet dulcet, tonal
sounds of a voice 
Comforting to her ears
In her mind she pictured him
Tall and olive-skinned perhaps
The accent so slight
and hardly noticeable
with an uncommon emphasis
on certain syllables
Making the most basic word
poetic and honeyed
in its delivery 
A soothing balm
on a scalded soul


Copyright © 2022 Christine Bolton - Poetry for Healing
All Rights Reserved


Laura Bloomsbury is hosting Tuesday Poetics at D'Verse Poets.
Today is National Thesaurus Day and she has prompted us with
writing a poem as follows:

1. Write a SOUND POEM which includes AT LEAST ONE from EACH of the FIVE HEARING CATEGORY SELECTIONS below: (reference the hearing words you chose in your post).

bellow; clink; drone; jingle; quiver;

clamour; dissonant; rip-roaring; tempestuous; vociferous;

dulcet: honeyed; poetic; sonorous; tonal;

blabber; cackle; dribble; gurgle; seethe;

beseech; chant; drawl; embellish; intone

Feel free to dip deeper into your chosen words by elaborating further from the Thesaurus with synonyms and antonyms

AND/OR

2. Simply write about the Thesaurus, as the above poets have – what it means to you; describe it, have fun with it. Let the synonyms flow, or antagonise with antonyms.

There are no restrictions on poetry style or meter but those of you who like Acrostics might want to make a nine liner for THESAURUS.

 
I chose the third set of 'Sounds'

Made With Love – Poem of the Month – October 2022

Made With Love

I pull the faded recipe card
from the tin stored in
its usual place in the pantry 
It is old now and dog-eared
The handwritten words
Faded over time 
No need to read it
Having made this twice a year
Every year since forever
Over time adjustments made
A little more of this
And maybe a little less of that
Sensing the amounts
without measure needed
Layers of love and
the essence of you
folded in and stirred
The smell of it cooking
and the taste evoking
precious memories
of years gone by
Lovingly made for you
This became your favorite dish
from a little boy to a grown man
Even when you moved away
with your family for seven years
you would ask me
to make it and bring it to you
for the holidays
It is food comforting the both of us


Copyright © 2022 Christine Bolton - Poetry for Healing
All Rights Reserved

Sarah from Sarahsouthwest hosted Tuesday Poetics at D'Verse Poets
and has prompted us with 'Food'

Word Prompt Essence - FOWC

An Amuse Bouche

An Amuse Bouche

Come flirt with me
So we might spread
Our wings and fly
To exotic places calling

Come and kiss me gently
Your lips I want to taste
An amuse bouche
To tease me playfully

and whet my appetite
for what is yet to come


Copyright © 2022 Christine Bolton - Poetry for Healing

All Rights Reserved


De Jackson, aka Whimsy Gizmo, is hosting Monday Quadrille
at D'Verse Poets.  She has prompted us with any form of the
word muse or amuse etc.

A quadrille is a poem of exactly 44 words excluding the title

Blessed is the Free Spirit – A Kwansaba

Blessed is the Free Spirit

My only son stands tall and strong
and more like me than I know
Working hard for his own self esteem
The wealth of love’s labors is shared
I cherish his first gift to me
Furry rabbit’s foot that still brings luck
A little gypsy in his old soul


Copyright © 2021 Christine Bolton - Poetry for Healing
All Rights Reserved


Grace is hosting the final D'Verse Poets for this year.
The pub will reopen on January 3rd.
She has prompted us with the Kwansaba.

Kwansaba is an African American verse form of praise. The Kwansaba, (swahili kwan – first fruit / saba -principle) was created in 1995 by Eugene B Redmond, East St. Louis Poet Laureate and professor of English at Southern Illinois University-East St. Louis. The form was developed in honor of the celebration of Kwanzaa . The poetic form adopts the number 7 from Kwanzaa’s Nguzo Saba (7 principles) as well as embraces its roots in the South African tradition of the Praise Poem.

*Unity, family
*Self Determination
*Work Collectively
*Cooperative economics
*Purpose
*Creativity
*Faith

The defining features of Kwansaba are:

1.a celebration of family and African-American culture, a praise poem.
2.a septastich, a poem in 7 lines.  (To be clear, it is only 1 stanza).
3. measured by 7 words in each line.
4. written with no word exceeding 7 letters.

True Love – A Cadralor

True Love

Shivering, the young woman stepped outside
pulling on the toggle of her duffle coat
shielding herself from the blistering wind
Just after five and darkness had already fallen
as she headed west on the tree-lined avenue

An old man sat quietly in the corner of the café
Staring into his bottomless cup of coffee
Ignoring hunger pains, twiddling with the
hole in the left finger of his old gloves
His head filled with memories suppressed

An elegant woman sat upright with a fixed smile
He, a puffed up blowhard, at the microphone
Commanding attention with his loud voice
and phony diatribe as kiss-asses drooled
Her body ached and her mind lived in the past

A lifetime ago two kids had clung to each other
Inseparable, joined at the hip, in love
She from the house on the hill, privileged
He from the other side of the railroad tracks
His intellect and her beauty, a winning combo

The young woman saw him in the cafe, head lowered
It had been a long time passing before her call to him
Entering he looked up at her, eyes clouded, and she went to him
Her father embraced her and she clung to him tightly
He needed to know his one true love was dying


Copyright © 2021 Christine Bolton - Poetry for Healing
All Rights Reserved

Bjorn is hosting D'Verse Poets and has prompted us with a form
called Cadralor.
The cadralor is a poem of 5, unrelated, numbered stanzaic images, each of which can stand alone as a poem, is fewer than 10 lines, and ideally constrains all stanzas to the same number of lines. Imagery is crucial to cadralore: each stanza should be a whole, imagist poem, almost like a scene from a film, or a photograph. The fifth stanza acts as the crucible, alchemically pulling the unrelated stanzas together into a love poem. By “love poem,” we mean that your fifth stanza illuminates a gleaming thread that runs obliquely through the unrelated stanzas and answers the compelling question: “For what do you yearn?”

Image by Please Don't sell My Artwork AS IS from Pixabay

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