I think... He loves me.

He just doesn't know it yet.

He's scared.

Admittedly I am too.

We sat out back of schools, fields of red and green when I was feeling blue.

My hand on his, he'd squeeze me firm. Tell me things I needed to learn.

How I wasn't so awful. That I was worth the time.

And that my mother's bloody opinion didn't need to be mine.

I needed to know, to know I should love myself too. I just needed someone to do it first, that way I knew-

Knew that I needed no rhyme or reason. I can be the painter of my season. Touches of blue, wild passions of red. And I can temper back his feeling of dread.

For all the reason that he sought. I'm right there, calm and letting thoughts. Thoughts of he, thoughts of me, all churn and crawl about. Uncertainty will go away some night, I have no doubt.

And when his fear makes him say cruel things. I know other days, he won't say the same.

He'll say he loves me.

I'll hurt much less.

He'll kiss me warmly, and steal my breath.

For what are two young scared people supposed to do? But try to learn to grow old together and learn how when our love is new.

We are the only Sun and the Moon that collide into each other

an eclipse that lasts a lifetime

( infinite lifetimes blend into a tapastry of the univers's design

and shared with you, my love )

In halls of stone, in halls of stone,

Our picks our quills, the Mine our tome,

With our own work, we build our World,

From rock and stone, we build our home.

In halls of stone, through layered rock,

We live whole lives needing no Sun

There’s gold which gleams, and fire of forge

The light of Day? No, we need none.

They say we Dwarves from surface came

For so we must, for so we must

They say we Dwarves the Sun disdained

And in its shine, we did not trust.

But know this well, do know this well,

And in your mind this knowledge lock:

We from no surface came; we’re from instead

Stone and rock, stone and rock.

From the Stone, we take our strength

For the Stone endures

You can carve it and shape it,

But the Stone is never yours.

From the Rock, we take our hearts,

Steady and strong, and yet as well

Dig down deep, to deepest rock

And strange things indeed do deep down dwell.

Through deep rock, we tunnel well

And there is meaning to our moil

Our lives we carve, as well as rock,

With the spirit of our toil.

In halls of stone, in halls of stone,

We build the World we make our own.

She gave him her smile. And her youth. And her joy. He feasted on it all, then demanded more. But she was spent. Used up. Exhausted. Still he supped on her life-force, until, with her dying breath, she cast him out. Weakly she stumbled away, her faint heart-beat barely a flutter. But outside his shadow was warmth. And smiles. And youth. And joy. The frost around her heart was hard and cold. But slowly it melted away. Each kind word. Each soft gaze. Each peel of laughter. Until she grew a new smile. Different, sometimes sad, but just as beautiful.

Who Discovered Whom?

December 31, 2024

I had nearly a hour of free time today

I took to Google

I searched for the intersection of

Serendipity and Circuitous

I found a new friend

Rather, I found a photographer who found a new friend find me

The photographer is Philip Waller

My new friend

Isn't much for words

Ironically, that is my job

And right now

I am failing spectacularly

And that is OK by me

I am quite the cook these days but I have spent thirty three years of marriage perfecting my culinary skills.

I was very much not a good cook when we were dating. When we met, I was 22 and could boil water for pasta and open a jar of sauce.

The first meal I cooked for him was blackened Salmon. A cajun dish. I followed every step of the recipe. At the risk of sounding immodest, I have to say that nowadays, my following a recipe would meet with great success and all would enjoy a tasty meal. Not so much that night.

I placed the plate in front of my then fiancé. He smiled, took a bite, stopped smiling, swallowed and said, "I can't eat this."

At the same time, I had also taken a bite and had spit it out, surreptitiously, into a napkin.

I replied, "Me neither."

I hadn't managed to distinguish "blackened" from "burnt."

Full disclosure: I haven't attempted a recipe with "blackened" in the title since.

First, may each of you have a safe and meaningful holiday.

It’s been a wealth of good, bad and indifferent here across the pond, as both my personal world (and the other one at large) has been shaken upside down and then some.

Some of us have felt that we have been put into a blender set on interminable charge and at the speed of sound, with the noisy collapse of sun sheltered dreams burst into a massacre whose rebounding echo ripples on seas of broken glass skin.

Ergo, the turn of the proverbial hand into 2025 ushers in renewed sensibilities of…ok, scratch that.

That’s the pretentious Chardonnay talking (or the pretentious lipped “poet” sipping on it through a crazy straw).

Ditching the flowery wordplay for a minute, I genuinely and wholeheartedly want to first extend enormous gratitude at the friends I’ve made here.

A few of you (you know who you are) have become blessings that far exceed the platform’s poem oriented circle of many disparate characters.

Jeff and Mariah are two that I want to thank by name for their precious kindness, humble approachability and for being not only extraordinarily gifted at words, but also at the virtues of empathy, compassion and simple amiability that this world doesn’t always so graciously afford.

There are other writers here whom I’ve grown very fond of, for both their unique work and their kindness to me and others.

There are a number to say thanks to, but I’m sure you know who you are!

We’ve inboxed a number of times and conversed via comments. You all rock!

For every like, share/repost, comment on my poems, that truly was energizing warmth for tired typing hands and caffeine fueled writing benders whereby I wasn’t sure if each poem’s creative outcome would reach the stars or crash into the neighbor’s yard (that was a joke!).

But, I sincerely appreciate the feedback and kind words!

To fully flesh out both spectrums of experience on the platform, my humble hope is that we, first as humans and second as writers, learn how to appropriate the essential elements of empathy, kindness, humility and compassion towards each other.

-A writer who parades their ego around and steps like a lumbering giant on perceived ants is not only a failed writer, they are an incomplete person, for you can’t grow fat on heady pride and expect to fulfill transparent connection with readers.

-A writer who utilizes AI and passes it along as their own work is sacrificing the wondrous utility of self discovery, for in the heart and through experience come poems that have the power to shake the earth.

-A writer who learns how to handle sometimes painfully necessary criticism, will then empower their own work into highly sharpened skill set development.

-Don’t be a callous hearted meanie who thinks they walk on air and has no time for “lessers”.

You will only isolate yourself from opportunities to meet great people. You will appear petty and churlish.

-Do be an approachable and simply decent human being, who makes time for others.

Connectivity and community are creative bedfellows and one is integral to the healthy functionality of the other.

I think free speech is a very significant and essential component for writers and I’ve read work that’s made the paint peel itself from walls from sheer shock, been roused to action by sociopolitical observations and disagreed with bluntly crude assertions and tragic musings on faith, love and life, while also being captivated by works of incredible beauty and works of incredible ugliness that revealed themselves to be gorgeous tragedy.

These are writers.

This creatively blistering ideology is what fuels an impeccably potent writer.

Every word that bleeds off the page is significant IF it is significant to YOU.

I hope this platform will continue to let every voice breathe and release every pen scrawled (or typed) bloodletting exorcism of the soul.

Here is to renewed hopes, open doors, God kissed blessings and poetic works that set the world on fire.

Your friend and fellow rider on the storm,

LDW

Three months on a jack up barge towed from Singapore in the choppy seas of Bass Strait.

To lay oil pipes to the ends of the earth Tasmania.

In the galley of the barge I worked twelve on twelve off, sleep, work, sleep. At night as the stinger at the stern beat out a metallic rhythm feeding pipe to the sea floor, I walked the yellow line up top as riggers went about their tasks.

Choppered in and choppered out I was a farm boy out on the briny sea.

Finally I was choppered to Essendon Airport to take a tram home after all that time.

Tram, taxi, and by foot I walked up the long driveway to my family triumphant at the job done.

Three months at sea and finally home.