Category: Pain/Sadness

Blog, Pain/Sadness

Love and Hate – The Flip Side

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Hate the Opposite of Love

HATE 
 
Because of me, in the valley of death
You die slowly like the petrified trees
  
I remember how you looked
How your face would contort in pain
When I angrily screamed at you
  
Because of me, you despise the chaos
of the city
the faceless crowds hurrying to their
destinations
 
I remember your silence, your piecing stare
from those unforgettable eyes
  
Unlike the scent of blossoms
Your memory of me is ugly
A weeping sore that will never heal
Untouchable as a leper
  
My words can still sting
Like a thousand angry bees poked from their nest
You will always remember the hurt
But my face will be obliterated from your memory
  
Because of me, the stench of swamp water
is ever present
Because of me, you will never search
for love again:
shooting stars and falling objects will kill you


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

Written for D'Verse Poets my poem HATE is written as the flip side of Pablo Neruda's poem LOVE (see below)

LOVE by Pablo Neruda

Because of you, in gardens of blossoming flowers 
I ache from the perfumes of spring. 

I have forgotten your face, 
I no longer remember your hands; 
how did your lips feel on mine? 

Because of you, I love the white statues drowsing in the parks 
the white statues that have neither voice nor sight. 

I have forgotten your voice, your happy voice; 
I have forgotten your eyes. 

Like a flower to its perfume, 
I am bound to my vague memory of you. 
I live with pain that is like a wound; 
if you touch me, you will do me irreparable harm. 

Your caresses enfold me, 
like climbing vines on melancholy walls. 
I have forgotten your love, 
yet I seem to glimpse you in every window. 

Because of you, the heady perfumes of summer pain me; 
because of you, I again seek out the signs that precipitates desires: 
shooting stars and falling objects. 

Lisa from Tao Talk is hosting D'Verse Poets tonight and has prompted us
with Flipping the meanings of poems.  I chose one of Pablo Neruda' beautiful
love poems and wrote the opposite. 

Image by Harsh Vardhan Art from Pixabay 
Blog, Pain/Sadness

Derailed – A Quadrille

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Derailed

Fraught with anxiety
from your polarizing display
of how to sabotage this special day
My nerve endings are stretched
and entwined into an intricate
pattern of macrame-knotted pain
I am frozen in place and time
Numbingly shocked by the spectacle
I have just witnessed
 
 
Copyright © 2021 Christine Bolton - Poetry for Healing
All Rights Reserved

Mish is hosting Monday Quadrille at D'Verse Poets
and has prompted us with the word "knot" to be used any
which way we choose

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


Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay

Blog, Pain/Sadness

Why?

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Why?

 Why do you ask me?
 Isn't it obvious?
 Don’t you hear me crying?
 Don’t you see my pain?
 Don’t you listen to the words
 that spill from your mouth
 like a ferocious, raging torrent
 of festering, poisonous spew?
 What’s the matter with me?
 Are you out of your mind?
 You clearly do not have a degree
 in the bleeding obvious
 Because if you did you would know
 I am human, damn it
 When you strike
 with your sharp, stabbing words
 I hurt
 I bleed
 I cry
 But you do not stop
 and
 this being human is not worth it any more
  
 

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

 Kim from Writing In N. Norfolk is hosting D'Verse Poetics
 tonight and has prompted us with starting our poem with
 the following line:
 
 "This being human is ..."
 
 I'm afraid I broke the rule and ended my poem with the line
 instead.  I hope Kim will forgive me.

 Photo by Johnny Cohen on Unsplash
Blog, Pain/Sadness

Into the Darkness

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Into the Darkness

An ever-consuming sadness
envelops your body in
a diaphanous veil
A storm brewing in your mind
Words of reason hide in the penumbra
Marinating in suppressed anger
that dwells there
Instinctively I know what is happening
I recognize the warning signs
triggering your frustrations 
What the eyes don’t see
Intuition already knows
Watching a rerun of the movie
I have seen so many times
I sense the imminent deterioration 
of what was once a beautiful mind
The beginning of the end



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

Prompts

What the eyes don’t see - RDP Saturday
Penumbra - RDP Thursday
Deteriorate - FOWC
The beginning, the end - Stream of Consciousness 

Image by Gordon Johnson from Pixabay
Blog, Pain/Sadness

Case Closed

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Case Closed

You carry melancholy
in a suitcase
full of hope
It is a familiar
travel companion
Hope may find joy
but ultimately it leaves you
 
Knowing deep
in your soul
pessimism rules
In abandoned dreams
from long ago
is where you
find yourself
 
You surrendered
everything for love
and it played on your
vulnerability
for happiness 
The suitcase remains
closed like your heart

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

Laura Bloomsbury is hosting D'Verse Poets tonight and
has been thinking about endings. She has prompted
us to use one of the following lines to write a poem
without first reading the work it was taken from.
I chose the last quote:

“You fling it open for the first time/ but I’m gone
M Kahf ~ Wall 

Wall
BY MOHJA KAHF

Your heart is a wall on which I knocked
looking for a door, a latch
a windowsill, a flowerpot

Everything I brought to the wall dried up
and blew away for lack of answer:
tulip bulbs, my worry for you, some children

Sometimes I pounded it with my fists
smashed my forehead on it
blamed myself for not having the passcode
hated myself
hated hating myself—started over
willed patience, got advice
cried in a heap against its brick
without getting a stir
so many night-after-nights

It’s a wall.
There is no way in.

Now that I’ve made the choice to leave
your heart suddenly has a gate
You fling it open for the first time
but I’m gone

Prompts
“As if we could hear music inside the words”
Gail Newman ~ Trust
“Airless and unloved, in the dank basement of the mind”
L. Igloria ~ A Reparation
“Call me to lie down in fragrance.”
D. Margoshes ~ Season of Lilac
“So close that your sea rises with my heat”
C.Perez ~ Love in a Time of Climate Change
“The clear vowels rise like balloons”
S.Plath ~ Morning Song
“You fling it open for the first time/ but I’m gone
M Kahf ~ Wall 

Image by ArtTower from Pixabay 
 



 
Blog, Pain/Sadness

A Depression

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A Depression

Clouds race in anger
across the sky’s limitless expanse
Blown by an impatient wind
shaking the fringes of trees
Thunder claps its warning
of what is to come
Darkening moodiness
blankets the atmosphere
and I feel the oppressiveness
of the moment
It mirrors my mood
as I curl into a ball
Unspoken words
hang in silence
Lightning cracks
Illuminating the horror
of what has become my hell
I pray for a deluge
to wash away the demons


Copyright © 2020 Christine Bolton - Poetry for Healing
All Rights Reserved


Note.  I do not suffer with depression but the barometric pressure of dark stormy weather does give me  
bad headaches.


Prompts

Skys the limit - Stream of Consciousness 
Warning - Word of the Day
Fringe - RDP

Image by Abel Escobar from Pixabay
Blog, Pain/Sadness

Deluded

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lonely woman under night sky
Photo by Veerendra on Pexels.com

Deluded

It is when the night comes
and the air hangs in silence
you again enter my mind
Perplexing thoughts refusing to die
Filling my head as the stillness struggles to calm
Recalled memories still stinging
Drawn by your magnetism
I was fooled by a charlatan
Brazen and heartless
Robbing me of joy
I was taken by your guile
and allowed caution to blow in the wind
My ticket to ride, a purchase made in haste



Copyright © 2020 Christine Bolton - Poetry for Healing
All Rights Reserved

Word Prompts

Joy - RDP
Perplex - Word of the Day
Guile - FOWC
Magnet - Stream of Consciousness
Blog, Pain/Sadness

Misunderstood

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Misunderstood 

Your eyes no longer hide the truth
They have become the lens
to your dark soul
The bitterness written
between the lines of your face
Chiseled deep into the crevices
where it now resides
Dragging the once curve of a smile
into a permanent scowl
The magnitude of your suffering
living on display for all to see
Your strange, misunderstood past
responsible for a demeanor 
that pushes friendship away
Making it impossible for anyone
to come close so they might
know more of your story and pain



Copyright © 2020 Christine Bolton - Poetry for Healing
All Rights Reserved

Word Prompts
Beginning with “M” - Stream of Consciousness
Magnitude - FOWC
Strange - RDP

Image by Sammy-Williams from Pixabay 
Blog, Pain/Sadness, Poem of the Month

Taken -Poem of the Month – November 2020

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silhouette of person s hand touching water during sunset
Photo by Emre Kuzu on Pexels.com

Taken

Standing in silver light
of consumed moon
Staring out to sea
Hair, raven black
Lifted by the wind
 
Palmed rose, thorny
Color of blood
Clutched tightly
to a heaving breast
as tears flowed
 
Skulls of saints
calling to lost souls
in watery graves
Where pearls from tissue
calcify in salty sea
 
Lured by songs
of sailors lost
Blood trickles
from royal flesh
taken by waves

 
Copyright © 2020 Christine Bolton - Poetry for Healing
All Rights Reserved

Laura Bloomsbury is hosting D'Verse Poets
tonight and has shared with us some beautiful
poems by Samuel Greenberg.  She asked us to
choose five of his twenty one "charms" taken
from his poem The Pale Impromptu and create a poem.
Mine are highlighted below.

Dim Accuracy; Candle salve; Consumed moon;
Eyes jealousy; Fouls deviation; Grey life;  
Hearts brow; Lucid farrows; Nulling marrows;
Painted mirth; Pale heat; Palmed rose;
Pearls from tissue; Pellucid quest; Royal flesh;
Skulls of saints; Slime pigments; Spiritual songs;
Solitudes wish; Times chant; Yellow dreams;
Blog, Pain/Sadness

Bruised Sky

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Bruised Sky

Looking upward
I see the blue-grey
evening sky
sprinkled
with peppered clouds
Beautiful 
in its color coordination
But reminding me
of the ugly secret
 
The creaminess
of my skin
mottled with
blue-grey bruises
getting darker
like the sky
turning purple
and yellow
like the sinking sun
 
The night comes
and envelops me
in its darkness
Suffocating
My own words
ringing in my ears
as usual
It is my fault
It is always my fault

 
Copyright (c) 2020 Christine Bolton – Poetry for Healing
All Rights Reserved

Grace is hosting Open Link Night at D'Verse Poets

Please Note:  This poem is not about me.  It is
written based on a conversation I had with someone
last week who is a survivor of domestic abuse.

Photo by 辰曦 on Unsplash
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