loss

Autumn Dawn

~ Annette Kalandros ~ 2 Comments
Image is my own
https://freeverserevolution.wordpress.com/2020/10/19/oct-4-ripples/

Ignoring the ripples doesn’t work,

Beautiful though they may be

In the early light of an autumn dawn.

 

The ripples return.

Their warmth long gone,

Drained of blood.

 

Injected with colors of autumn’s dawn,

They look full, alive with mysterious meaning.

 

But cold these ripples remain

In their return to me.

 

Time shifts,

Tilting beneath my feet.

 

I shutter and stare, a moment only—

I cannot weave these cold things

Into a useful thing, resembling you.

Musings on the Cracked Crystal Ball

~ Annette Kalandros ~ 9 Comments
Image courtesy of Aliexpress
https://amanpan.com/2020/09/28/eugis-weekly-prompt-crystal-ball-september-28-2020/

When you found the things you could,

A mist of breath showed in the rain,

Twin clouded rain shimmered colors

Of gray stone before you on a path you would go.

If only, if only, you should know the bones of us,

Move knotted stiff with the griefs you’ve piled upon your soul,

We’d glow of phosphorus and neon in velvet darkness.

Walking the dark, shadowed canyon of dreams

Wilted by disappointments and deflated sunshine

Waking to dimmest daylight at noon

Where you cannot bear to look

Upon your own reflection,

A sight of horror in your own eyes now

In that cracked crystal ball where you stand,

In your own self-consecrated field

Of plastic flowers bowing their majestic heads to you,

Your straw haired head is bowed,

Smiling at the ground.

No Disaster

~ Annette Kalandros ~ 4 Comments
Image courtesy of Shutterstock.com
https://godoggocafe.com/2020/09/08/tuesday-writing-prompt-challenge-tuesday-september-8-2020/
 

As if I’d eaten some ancient grain

Meant for those of a long dead warrior hearted strain

I strengthen myself with tears. 

 

Over the bare years

Only you knew innocence

Truth, ruin in seas–

 

Imagined decades

No time for flowers and aches

Realize in drifting

 

Down years– no disaster

Were you in the end,

We were just a moment.

Meditations on Forgiveness

~ Annette Kalandros ~ 5 Comments
Image courtesy of Pinterest

summer hot, humid

kills desire of sweetness

flowers forgiveness

 

falls decaying death

forgiveness dead leaves lifeless

blacken a gift heart

 

winter freezing ice

a cold weapon forgiveness

to cut the giver

 

spring new life begins

forgiveness lifeless, no seed

to plant, grow—never

 

The bird of flame rises

From the ashes in my chest—

Ash of forgiveness

Never given.

 

Of Need and Desire

~ Annette Kalandros ~ 7 Comments
Image courtesy of Sue Vincent
https://scvincent.com/2020/08/06/thursday-photo-prompt-fantasy-writephoto/

So very willingly,

I placed my head into danger’s toothy mouth

When I climbed the Pilgrim’s stairs–

Until dizzy from the height,  

And the steepness of the effort–

All done to look upon

A pure crystalline blue sky

Caressing a sapphire sea—

A fantasy of need.

Charms

~ Annette Kalandros ~ 5 Comments
Image from BBC Culture- The Strange Power of the Evil Eye

Serrated edges of your secrets

Sliced open my chest long ago.

Yet, I carried those secrets

Across the borders of decades.

I guarded those secrets like gemstones.

I wore them as talismans,

Good luck charms, rubbing each

Like burnished bronze of ages old.

Why have I kept them so?

I do not know.

 

Renew

~ Annette Kalandros ~ 9 Comments
Image from Gumtree.com

Begin with unpacking

the loss of years.

Perhaps, for once,

Win the battle with tears.

Start over clean, new.

 

Carry emptied, broken down boxes,

bundled and tied, sticky at the edges

with their old used tape, to the curb.

Balanced no longer on narrow ledges.

Breathe now, once again.

Written in response to: https://amanpan.com/2020/05/25/eugis-weekly-prompt-renewal-may-25-2020/

Color Dreams

~ Annette Kalandros ~ 3 Comments

https://godoggocafe.com/2020/05/26/tuesday-writing-prompt-challenge-tuesday-may-26-2020/

Today’s prompt: End a piece of prose or poetry with the phrase “I miss you”

 

Don’t know what to do

when I dream of you.

Waking, I want to drench

my brain in pure bleach,

soaking it through,

until all the colors of you

out of my soul leach

and no longer do I miss you.

Walking to Race Point

~ Annette Kalandros ~ 6 Comments
Race Point Lighthouse Sunset Photograph by John Burk

Sleeplessness always told the story

between the back when and now,

what she once thought a game,

tracks leading nowhere.

This last section of living

something not well lived.

A swirl of memory

piercing through knots

too tight to be undone.

She had lived without a plan,

having a heart that spoke in tongues

she had yet to understand.

Jagged

~ Annette Kalandros ~ 7 Comments

Written in response to:

https://onewomansquest.org/2020/05/11/vjs-weekly-challenge-95-bits-and-pieces/

Pieces broke away,
pebbles and stones
chipped from a boulder.
The edge of a pane of glass
broken off, no longer smoothly square,
but rough ridged like a broken thumb nail,
begging to be filed away.

Pieces broken away,
missing in wordlessness,
cannot be found.
Jig saw together the rest,
glue, duct tape,
what is left,
never to imitate new, unbroken.

Broken, hollowed parts,
make for an ever incomplete,
an always abyss
to fall headlong into,
always a scratchy roughness to scrape
a knee, an elbow, a hand.
Always a sharp edge to slice open
an abdomen, an arm, a femoral artery, a throat.

No. No. No.
Everything, everything
at once, best kept at arm’s length.
Never can such wounds be allowed
in the here,
in the now.