I’d Reach Out If It Wasn’t So Far
20 years of dizzying changes gone by.
I miss our times together my brother.
The old wounds have faded and gone
soft in my heart.
I know they were never deeper than my
over sensitive skin anyway. To hear your
voice on the phone every few years is
nice, but I love to see your great big smile
dance across your face and hear that deep
so true laugh rise from your chest.
We parted ways on uncertain terms, but there
was not malice in me when you got
on that lonely Greyhound bound for the deep
South. I’ve missed you over the years as I left
our Northwestern home state and moved across
the world to my Far East destination.
I should have reached farther. I should have reached
out sooner. The bridge isn’t burned, but I can see tiny
tendrils of smoke rising in the distance and I worry.
#poetry #poem #loss #family #grief
Dance of Shame
“Shame on you, Ocean Boy!”
Her words cut me like
A barbed verbal insult
“But, I…”
It was all I could say
“But you said we should dance.”
“I meant with each other, baby.”
Her tone made me stagger
I’d been dancing like Jagger
With a girl dressed in black
Like a passion attack.
“But we’ve never been lovers,
Always dancing with others!”
And she snapped back her head
And her look cut me dead.
“You’re so full of emotion,
Just a lusty wide ocean
And you don’t see my tears
When my hope disappears,”
And her eyes filled so quickly
I felt I was fainting.
I never had seen
How her love held her back
And the shame rolled across me like thundering black
And I stepped in to kiss her
A moment too late
As she slapped me and left me
In a moment of hate.
And she ran from the club
Carrying five years of pain
And the driver had no chance,
Tyres slid in the rain.
And I live with the knowledge
That her love was so pure
As I visit her grave every day I feel sure
That the shame I am feeling
It will always be there
For she loved me completely
And I just didn’t care.
I like this version (it could be the video.. tsk!)… I only just came across this, but I actually love it… makes me smile…it is such a fun version!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CkjKgh-G6vg
Not the original by Shirley and Co, which is here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YEzQV75LDL0
Shame Has No Boundaries....
I wrote this back in the 90's for someone in the family that took his life after suffering alone with HIV/AIDS.
Shame Has No Boundaries
By Tonya Rene Gill
Shame has no boundaries when you're alone in life.
No one to feel your heartaches no one to feel your pain.
There's no greater shame than a man who walks alone.
No one to remember who he really was, no one to guide him home.
A man who everyone would walk around but never saw inside,
the soul of a loving caring man who also has his pride.
Remember his courage he tried so hard to keep.
In the midst of battles where all he could do was weep. There's no greater shame than a man who walks alone, tormented so badly he never waited for God to take him home. Shame has no boundaries when hanging from a rope, ending the shame because no one cared to offer him hope.
My shameful past
As I sit worklessly and aimlessly
my mind wanders through the walls of past,
head bows down and eyes clench tight as I recall...
The days when I refused to say “yes”
as the teacher took attendance in 1st grade
because I was scared and a coward that I was.
As I climbed up the stairs behind my mother,
“mother’s tail” they said and goaded me
where I became extra aware to climb stairs in their absence.
That day when I broke my own record of being
“girl who never got scolded by the teacher”,
and got slapped in front of the whole class.
When my parents stotl my diary and
later chastised me for writing rubbish,
and then hid my own diary away from me
When yesterday I stood like an outcast and invisble
where none cared to acknowledge me
while they were talking and playing
And they call me “friends”.
The shameful events of my past still haunt me
where I just can’t let go,
So instead of trying hard to forget it,
I think it has to be embraced and accepted
because that has shaped the person “me”.
s is for shame
shame slithers round me
like a sly, sorry snake.
he curls ’round my legs,
capturing me like his pray,
never letting his eyes leave mine,
not even for a second.
i am enamored by him,
i am his vessel,
wreaking havoc to all i touch.
i am not a good daughter,
i am not a good sister,
i am not a good hater,
i am not a good lover.
shame slithers shamelessly until i’m shaking in shambles.
sexuality a sin, sin is my shame,
my sinful shame strikes my soul from heaven,
strikes my soul and leaves its sorrow,
my sorrowful sorry, my sinful shame.
She hides it well
“Just look at her all prim and proper.”
She hears their whispers in the air.
“How can she even walk into the same room as us?” As they all stop and stare.
Still the whispers go on as she takes her seat.
It takes every bit of strength she has left just to sit in her family’s pew. The same pew in the same row in the same church whith the same people she grew up with. Half the congregation she’s related to, the other half she’s known all her life.
So one would think this so called “FAMILY ” would come together when one of their flock is suffering.
Instead they sneered at her. They judged her.
Everyone assumed she was easy and she could hear some of them whispering
“Slut” “Whore” as she held her head up walking from the door. P
Everyone assumed this was her doing, because she was born pretty she was too enticing to men so it’s no wonder she was in the family way, only 15 years old and not married! If only she didn’t have those sexy long legs, the kind that look like stripper legs in high heels. Maybe if she wasn’t so well developed “38”- “24″- “32” and looking like a 25 year old it wouldn’t have
happened. Maybe if she had fought harder it would have made a difference.
What a pity it’s a shame she was born so pretty.