Tigress

Slight movement of the bushes
like a soft wind blowing.
Big paws parting the grass,
not a sound breaking the silence.
Yellow eyes watching the prey,
nothing escapes her notice.
Muscles twitching
with every elegant move
as she patiently closes in,
her body stretching
for the onslaught,
her strategy already laid out.

Watch her, fear her,
never underestimate her,
the fierce protector of her cubs.
A duty born of love,
she will let nothing hurt them.
Run, pull back fast
to save your pathetic little life,
she is already on to you.
She will destroy anything
considered a threat,
collateral damage
means nothing to her.

 

© november child

photo credit

Fierce

Promises

When days seem dreary
and pass with lulling slowness,
when we become paralysed
by the constraints of duty
that hold us firmly in place
as if by the jaws of a vice,
we both need a reminder.

A reminder of the promise to
hold hands at all times,
write love notes on napkins,
kiss in elevators,
dance in the parking lot,
count the craters of the moon
and oh, where is my dragon?

As long as together we fall
into new patterns and combinations
of goofiness and laughter
we escape the gloomy slumber
of boredom and habit
which so often proves
to be the slayer of love.

©  november child

photo credt: Bernard Goldback via flickr

Vice
Promises

I Am Not Her

I am not her

so let me not walk
in the shadows of your  past,
do not force me to enter
the labyrinth of wrong  turns

make me not feed
off an empty plate,
do not let me starve from
your fear of getting close

let me not hear
the whispers of bygone days,
do not chain me
to the post of revived clashes

make me not dig
in the ruins of the departed,
do not force me to brush off
the dusty bones of past deceit

make me not part of
what you left behind,
do not crucify me on
the cross of your flashbacks

count not my mistakes
on old balance sheets,
free me from
lapsed mindsets and regrets

bring only yourself
when you come to me,
bless my innocence
by remembering

I am not her

 

© november child

photo credit: Carol Mitchell via VisualHunt

in response to: The Sunday Whirl Wordle #263

Mistake

Show Me

I need you to show me,
show me the little boy
trapped inside the man.

Show me the spring
he got his first dog,
the wildness when they played.

Show me the summer
he learned to swim,
the sting of chlorine in his eyes.

Show me the autumn
he first rode his bike,
the wind tugging his hair.

Show me the winter
he built his first snowman,
the cold hands and running nose.

Show me his giggles,
his wishes and wonders,
scraped knees and angry tears.

Show me the boy you were
before the world told you
how to be a man.

© november child

photo: by Igor Morski via Random_Michelle

in response to: Photo Fiction #52

Layers

If we were to shed all our skins,
peeled off all our layers,
got rid of everything
that seems to define us
what would remain?
Who would we be?

Would it help
to take a long look at ourselves,
and muster up the courage to
be brutally honest with ourselves?

Would it help
if we recognized all the restrictions
we impose on ourselves?
Or those that we let other people’s
expectations impose on us?

Would it help
if we saw all those walls we build
around ourselves?
The ones we use to shield us
from our own fears and insecurities.

Would it help
if we realized all those activities
for the diversion they are
to keep us from looking inside
and finding our truth?

Would it help
if we got rid of all those layers
that were never ours to begin with?
And if then we only kept
what we chose of our own  free will
and  what was chosen with love

would that finally be the real us?

© november child

for Mistspell

photo credit: bambe1964 via flickr

When Titans Profess Love

You have engraved my name
across the valleys of the moon.
Chipping away with patience
at the untouched bedrock
you were sparing no effort
to craft perfect characters
then trimmed them with
unchanging garlands of dust.

I have printed your name
onto the boiling gases of the sun.
Jeopardising my existence,
yet never cringing
I stubbornly defied the heat.
I lifted, and spun and twisted
those dark hostile filaments
to create my blazing hymn.

As long as those celestial bodies
are moving through space
on their predestined paths,
while the clock is still ticking,
and the creatures of the human stem
are alive and observing the skies,
we will not be lost in the mists of time,
our love unforgotten, almost eternal.

© november child

photo credit: Top Ten Pack

in response to: Brenda Warren’s Wordle 262
Moon
Jeopardize

Haunted

I was left behind on a desert road
that was never mine to travel,
where dust devils spat sand in my eyes,
and taunted my staggering advance.

I suffered their mocking whirl,
felt them parch my waning spirit,
relishing my desperation
and snickering at my slow demise.

But I left my faltering footprints
embossed in the burning tarmac
and with poisonous blood
I signed my name in the cracks.

I condemn you to notice
my bleached broken bones
on the side of the road
whenever you pass them by.

I mercilessly haunt you
with flickering glimpses
of longed for destinations,
I make sure you will never reach.

 

© november child

photo credit: dkharvie via flickr

Landslide

You are the landslide
I did not expect
ripping the floor
from underneath my feet.

Untethered from my world
I stare at your back
as you head for new grounds
to bury in your wake.

And all that remains is
the ghost of a smile.

 

 © november child

photo credit: Sherri Terris via flickr

Ghost

With A Sigh

with a sigh
I fall into your arms

for a moment of
crystalline fragility
in an amorphous dance

with a sigh
I leave you behind

 

©november child

photo credit: Rob Weiher via flickr

Complicated

Drunk on champagne
or on the moment
or maybe on you.

You are a riddle
wrapped up in an enigma.
It’s complicated.

 

 ©november child

photo credit: Quinn Dombrowski via flickr

Complicated

 

If I were to be remade just once

Please enjoy this beautiful poem and check out Making Sense of Complications. A lot of interesting topics are covered there.

Making Sense of Complications

If I were to be remade just once
 And had a choice in all-time,
 I would choose ancient Greece,
 A student in the public square
 Learning from Socrates,
 Arguing with Plato and Antisthenes,
 Thinking new thoughts
 and laughing at the elders.

If I were to live and learn then,
 I would hope to scuttle beneath
 The perspicacious gaze of the gods,
 Hoping that a word, glance, or act
 Of mine avoids their languid quest
 To imbue another round of
 Helios’ sky-bound circuit
 With a flash of eternal cruelty.

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Chronos

Space breathed its silence
in the aftermath of creation
waiting for Gaia and Hydros to join.
In an explosion of light
ignited by their merging
Ananke and I were born.

Born to be the serpent bond
that holds the universe together,
Ananke protecting the alpha,
myself on the far side
guardian of the omega,
connected but yet far apart.

Apart, I yearn for her
as she yearns for me.
Our obsessions for each other
infecting world after world
as they race forever
towards each other
through the coldness of space.

 

© november child

photo credits: artists unknown

Obsessed

Perfume

Midnight hour
the chapel bells toll,
the crisp air containing
first whispers of winter.
As I sneak through the garden
I recoil at the noise
of brittle leaves crunching
beneath my bare feet.

My flimsy silk nightgown
leaves my blood freezing,
still I am compelled to answer
the alluring trill of your whistling,
your invitation to play,
a demand I am unable to refuse,
so I push my cold body and hurry
to avert your irascible moods.

You are half spirit, half man,
not to be toyed with,
your angelic features misleading
but might inadvertently be
the cause for these exquisite thrills.
As always your calling
instills in me a promise of
imminent danger and sin.

You smell like timber and mint
which is rather eccentric,
but then you are fae
sampling nature’s perfume
and your taste tends to be
of the exotic and sassy kind.

© november child

in response to Brenda Warren’s The Sunday Whirl Wordle #260

photo credit: Claudia Dea via flickr

The Things We Keep

I store this chest
in the depths of
the attic of my mind.

It is filled with
hundreds of  pretty notes
in all sizes and colours.

As colourful and pretty
as big or as small
as the lies you told.

Kept as a reminder
right next to the
dark cloud of my anger.

Inadvertently I wonder
about the things we keep
and those we share.

© november child

in response to: Random_Michelle Photo-Fiction #49

Every Time

brain frozen
tongue tied
hands sweating

every time

Damn you!

 

© november child

photo credit: Etolane via flickr

 

Silence

As we fill our cities with
incessant sounds,

our cars with
blaring music,

our homes with
torrents of words

and our minds with
chattering thoughts

we are gliding
on the back of noises,

for when the world falls silent
our fears are bound to set in.

© november child

in response to: Mindlovemisery’s Menagerie Friday Music Prompt # 54: Sound of Silence, cover by David Draiman and Disturbed

photo credit: taffmeister via deviantart.com

Cotton Candy

I sense the sweetness
floating
through your mind
in white cotton candy clouds.
I cast my net
to catch and keep
those delicious saccharine flakes.

I detect the sentiment
threading
through your thoughts
with tender caressing strands.
I catch the ends,
unravel the knots and keep
those delicate silken bonds.

© november child

Photo credit: photo (cropped) by Gerhard Jan Nauta via flickr

Perception

Oh, you small-minded creatures
on your tiny blue planet,
convinced of your singularity,
if only you knew.

By raising my statues
you have praised my names,
Aphrodite, Venus and Thalia
to just name a few.

You made me the epitome of beauty,
never seeing me truly,
as your eyes can only observe
what your mind will allow.

To save yourself from insanity
you needed to perceive something,
so incarnate beauty you chose.

©november child

in response to Photo-Fiction #48

photo via Random_Michelle

This was not only inspired by the above photo but also by an old movie ‘They live’ and two articles I read a while ago, one about an african tribe that has no name for the colour blue and the other one about natives who simply couldn’t perceive the huge sailing vessels of the ancient explorers because it was something completely alien to their world.

Fire

Your words used to ignite me
burning their way into my soul,
my catechism of hope
when you wrote them from your heart.

On your pages you
stoked my desire,
soothed my raw patches
and fed my numberless needs.

Now the fire is gone from your poems,
clouds of choking smoke hover,
only a vague resemblances remaining
as you write them from your head.

© november child

in response to Mindlovermisery’s Menagerie  Photo Challenge #124

photo via Mindlovermisery’s Menagerie

Veritas

Slowly she walks,
her white dress rustling,
her hips softly swaying,
to the sad nocturne
of thready voices
singing her name.

Her path leads along
the winding banks
of the river Deceit,
her words all but drowned
by the deafening whoosh
of its gurgling wild torrents.

She is called elusive,
a myth born of ignorance,
fed by the strident noise
and scratching chorus
of  those ruthless servants
kneeling before Apate’s shrine.

For in her holy well,
her abode of honour,
if one cares to listen,
her voice rings sonorous,
never reduced to a buzz
by the crackles of the mundane.

In there, when annoyed,
her anger speaks loudly,
spreading the truth
with a percussive force
resembling the whistle and pop
from a lash of a whip.

So she continues undisturbed,
which is the way of a goddess,
collecting more voices
for her choir of verity,
secure in the knowledge that
truth is not off-key and has no echoes.

 

© november child

photo credit: Darron Birgenheimer via flickr

in response to mindlovermisery’s menagerie Wordle Special Addition Sound !August 1st, 2016′