Tag: Pain

Blog, Pain/Sadness

Broken

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Broken

Broken like the wing
of an injured bird
Broken is the silence
of words never heard

Broken like branches of a tree
slowly bent and withered
Crippled by the performance
You so cruelly delivered

Feeling shattered and
broken in a thousand parts
It is the sliver of glass
that is optimism in my heart

A heart left in pieces
after you rendered your speech
You have exited my world
and you are now out of reach

I struggle to sweep away
the fragments of a dream
Scattered in explosion
A world of hope to redeem

Broken is my spirit
at the end of this line
Broken is this heart
You took what was mine


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


Sanaa is hosting Open Link Night at D'Verse Poets tonight.
I wrote this poem about four years ago.
Blog, Pain/Sadness

Living Death

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Living Death

This pain of mine cannot be denied
My anger chooses not to bargain
As I sink into the lows of depression
I cling hopelessly to the habits 
formed by your dysfunction
My crippled heart beats
to the sound of a broken drum
Acceptance is my demise
because each day I die a little death


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


Lisa is hosting Tuesday Poetics at D'Verse and has prompted us with
the book On Death and Dying by Elisabeth Kübler-Ross, M.D. In her book
she says the five stages of grief are: denial, anger, bargaining, depression,
and acceptance.  We can choose one or more of the stages in our poem.
Blog, Pain/Sadness

City of Lost Souls

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City of Lost Souls

The vanilla sky masked a sun
desperate to break through
Dreariness hung in the air
like a wet blanket on hopes
never to materialize

Remains of life lived
lay in derelict piles of rubble
Dreams and memories scattered
Never to be retrieved
The city, a heart without a beat

Ghosts of the brave
wandering empty streets
Searching for lost souls
stolen from broken bodies
Forever haunting 


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


Lynda Lee Lyberg is hosting D’Verse Poets tonight tonight and has prompted us with first lines of a novel.  There were twelve to choose from.  My pick was:

The winter sun, poor ghost of itself, hung milky and wan behind layers of cloud above the huddled roofs of the town.’- Thomas Mann, Tonio Kroger, Penguin, 1955
Blog, Pain/Sadness

Tiptoe Through The Tulips

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Tiptoe Through the Tulips

After last night’s storm the tulip petals
are strewn across the patio
where they mortally fluttered
The stems lay where they were thrown
Deflowered, Dead-headed
as they landed in his face
falling ingloriously at his feet
Pistil and stamen in tact
Naked tulips
The deep violet petals took flight
Descending to the ground in slow motion
The storm, a tempest in a tea cup
Coming from nowhere
with a whipping wind
stirring things up
that are better left alone, 
Words cannot be unsaid
The previous night’s debris
a sad reminder that
not only flowers die


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

Linda Lee Lyberg is hosting Poetics tonight at D’Verse and has prompted us to start our poem with a line from James Harrison’s Songs Of Unreason

Here are the eight lines to choose from:

I chose the last one

“There is a human wildness held beneath the skin.”- Arts, Jim Harrison

“He went to sea in a thimble of poetry.”- Poet Warning, Jim Harrison

“In truth each day is a universe in which we are tangled in the light of stars.”- Horses, Jim Harrison

“I don’t know what happens after death but I’ll have to chance it.”- Desert Snow, Jim Harrison

“Yes, in the predawn black the slim slip of the waning moon.”- Remote Friends, Jim Harrison

“Some days in March are dark and some altogether glittery and loud with birds.”- March in Patagonia, AZ, Jim Harrison

“We’re doubtless as old as our mothers, thousands of generations waiting for the sunlight.”- Sunlight, Jim Harrison

“After last night’s storm the tulip petals are strewn across the patio where they mortally fluttered.”- Church, Jim Harrison
Blog, Pain/Sadness

Don’t Forget The Caregiver

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Don’t Forget The Caregiver

She asks for nothing but time
so she might remember
who she is and
that for one waking
moment she does not have
to worry about his needs
That she might be herself
The one she knows still exists
Someone carefree who brought
joy into a room with her smile
and a sense of playfulness and fun

She wishes to be left alone
to be perfectly selfish
To think of only herself for just a while
To worry not of doctors’ appointments
and transportation,
of groceries and cooking
To worry not of tending to another’s desires
To listen not to constant rhetoric
of the unfairness that has befallen him 
and hear not his reminders of her duty
bound by their marriage vows

Being constantly sapped of energy
She finds herself drowning in his pool
and litany of demands
Struggling to breathe her own air
Her face now a mask hiding
the weariness of caregiving
Her laughter silenced
and wishes go unanswered
Clinging to hope that one day
it will be different from the one before
Or she may just lose her mind


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

Lillian is hosting Open Link Night at D'Verse Poets
Blog, Pain/Sadness

Out To Sea

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Out To Sea

Breathless, sinking into dampened sand
A collapsing heap of bones and skin
lays immobile, grateful for silence but for
the ebb and flow of waves washing the shore

In silence memories flood into a mind 
trying to close the gates of hell
Tears pour from eyes witness to the unspeakable 
A throat chokes on words refusing to swallow

Between heaving breasts lies a heart
piecing together the puzzle
of broken rocks that weigh it down
A wave washes over a body of disbelief
Wishing to be taken out to sea


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

Word Prompts

Between - FOWC
Swallow - RDP
Puzzle - Stream of Consciousness
Blog, Loss

My poem is featured on MasticadoresUSA

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I am honored that another of my poems, “Where Do We Go From Here?” is featured today on MasticadoresUSA. Please visit their site to view it and see other fine works from our fellow bloggers. You may also read it here.

Thank you all for your continued support of my poetry. It is much appreciated.

Where Do We Go From Here?

Now the love has gone 
and open wounds will not heal
Wanting to move on
but paralyzed limbs
are planted in stone
 
Neither wanting to make a decision
Who will go first
to choose freedom?
Is that what it will be? Free from each other?
Did we try hard enough, if at all?
 
Too in love to let it go
and break the tie that binds
Who is fooling who?
The love is missing
What magnetic force is in play?
 
Is it time to rip off the Band Aid
we plastered on the cuts and bruises
from angry words weaponized?
Time to stop kissing better
those things that won’t ever?
 
I will mourn each day
Because he is gone
You are now living in his body
But you are not him
You are a shadow of who he once was
 
You look like him
But you are someone else
A person I don’t know
A stranger in my midst
who sees someone else
when he looks at me
 
Where do we go from here?

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

Blog, Pain/Sadness

Taken

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I am thrilled that MasticadoresUSA has featured my poem Taken. You can read it on their site or here at Poetry For Healing.

Please check out the MasticadoresUSA site and view other poems and prose from our featured fellow writers.

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

Blog, Pain/Sadness

Weary

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Weary

Weary of this game called love
Exhausted by rules always broken
to serve the other’s purpose
Watching you justify your own
unacceptable behavior
as I become a target for calumny
You have so few redeeming qualities
that there is little left to respect
Let alone love
Where is the man once so principled?
So courteous and kind
All I see is someone selfish and cruel
And I am too tired to do this anymore




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

Word Prompts

Calumny - RDP
Exhausted - Word of the Day
Redeem - FOWC
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