You speak to me as sunlight
life-giver, making the leaves glow warm
and tender, their fragile fabric of pulsing chlorophyll,
veins as roots as branches. And when you speak I become greedy.
I am so very hungry for more. Fold me into
the wings of angels, polish me with the love that lifts them high.
Fill me until I splinter into shards of unimaginable light. Parcel
out my soul to the scowling faces of teething infants,
incontinent seniors with their paper thin skin, pregnant mothers
and petrified fathers, adolescents with their angst fueled heartbeats,
the dying swathed in the echoes of laughter, the departed
who surely know better than I.
Submerge me until I breathe you in, saturate me until I become you,
until there is no you or me.
You are the melody maker and the song. You blink
and darkness falls. You smile and grace
melts like butter across this veneer of sorrow.
Spinning orb whose filament is the web that binds us,
for you, we are the atoms sprung from your muse, let loose
to become what we will
until we see
we have no face to reveal to the world, only compassion
for what moves upon it.
You are our deepest thirst and hunger, the path to you
our longest, riddle ridden and darkest night. The stars shine
because you smile upon us, and pepper us with glimpses
of the way back home. To believe in you is to reach up a hand
only to find you there
beside us
as close as a shadow or a hum.
© Tina Zabielski 2011-2019
theminstrelscitadel 
Very potent. Full of imagery. Like it.
I get a feeling of hidden energies, secret worlds, a pulse beating a hair’s breadth beneath the veneer of life.
Nice to read something like this on a dreary Monday morning!
Reminds me that life is ticking away: day to night, week to month, month to year, inexorably plodding onwards, unstoppable.
At this time of year we are all glad to catch a glimpse of the Sun in a clear blue sky. But, I do enjoy those cosy, dark evenings with a mug of hot mulled wine.
Here in Germany, we will soon be having St Martin’s Day on Nov 8th: (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St._Martin's_Day).
This is also a colourful occasion as the children make coloured lanterns and go on a small procession through the neighbourhood singing nice songs together. They walk a special route, and the people who live on these particular roads put coloured lanterns in their gardens and windows giving the world a beautiful touch of colour. It takes place in the early evening and when the long walk is over, we return to the junior school where there is a huge bonfire awaiting us. Here, the story of St Martin is retold.
St Martin’s Day always reminds me that X-mas is just around the corner.
I suppose your next celebration is Thanksgiving – pumpkin pie, mmmmmmmm, delicious!
The next few months will be filled with colour as more and more people decorate their windows here, trying to forget that in the next few months the freezing shroud of winter will once more return.
Oh, by the way, please check out Storyshucker, he posted a really nice story “You’re an Abelia” http://storyshucker.wordpress.com/
You and Stu are two of the bloggers I regularly follow and always read.
Oh yes and part four of revenge is on the verge of completion! REALLY!
The past two weeks have been filled with time consuming activities and now I’m glad I have time to get back into it…
Talk soon.
Nice to hear from you, Phil. The children’s parade sounds wonderful, and so does the idea of making windows colorful. I think we shall have to do something like that here, too. Looking forward to Part IV – keep me posted. Glad you enjoyed the poem. It’s the first one I’ve written in some time since I’ve been working on my book. Coming along nicely, but slowly. I read Stu’s writings, too. 🙂 Be well. -Tina
Hi TIna,
Your writing a book. Sounds fantastic.
Have you a particular genre/direction; reality based, fantasy, adult, love, action, historic, etc?
Apart from my “weird” short stories (which comes from my love of H. P. Lovecraft) I tend to focus on kids fantasy, which are basically extended versions of the stories I’ve told my own kids.
My eldest daughter asked me to tell her about the “Tree Guardian” yesterday. This is a story I composed while taking her to bed years ago.
It’s had time to mature; so there’s a plot , character list and a fully fledged story planned out chapter for chapter and an end! The only thing lacking is the time to write it. 😦
This is just one of many stories I’ve got on the go. I remember I used to play out scenes in my head while driving home from work on the motorway. It’s a great way to pass the time. Why hadn’t I had a digital recorder on the passenger seat to record the ideas? I’m kicking myself now.
Part 4 of revenge is finished; however, now I need to do some editing and read it again.
I hope the ending isn’t too obvious!
Keep writing. Keep at it.
Looking forward to a taste/snippet of your story one day.
Phil
Make time to write the “Tree Guardian”. 🙂
Here is the briefest of excerpts:
“There was one tiny miscalculation, of course. His name was Henry Seidling, he was married, she was only 22, and they were both petrified at the thought of her getting an abortion- him because of his Catholic faith and her because she’d heard the horror stories other dancers had recounted . She decided to keep the child and he decided that he’d been wrong to cheat on his wife. What a funny guy he was, what a comedian. So, she moved out of her high rise apartment in Tulsa and back in with her mother. Sylvie was scandalized by the situation but immediately fell in love with her new granddaughter, Brandy. Julia had given her daughter that name, by the way, because it was her lover’s favorite after-sex drink. He always said that Julia was as sweet as the Brandy on his lips. During the time they were lovers she wasn’t sure what turned her on more, the way he worshiped her or the smell of his leather wallet. He had always kissed her goodbye and left her with a couple of big bills gently tucked into her bra. It was his cute way of saying, “See ya later, babes. Call ya soon!”. The baby came, but Henry had an out of town trip that he couldn’t get out of so she was alone at the hospital. He was there to take her home from the hospital, his back seat full of diapers two sizes too big for a newborn and enough banana baby food to choke a chimp. At their final parting he slipped her an envelope too big to fit in her bra and gave her a peck on the forehead. This time he really did say, “See ya later, babes. Call ya soon!” She never heard from Henry again.
Darn… I missed your replies! Sorry! Now I have the check box checked for receiving replies.
Keep wriitng. Sounds good.
This is going to be about Julia’s life and struggles with her child, I assume.
Is this the beginning or are we some way into the main story?
The snippet is a little ways into the story, and is really just some background about Julia. As interesting a character as she is, she will not be very prominent in the tale. I’m having trouble making one of the primary characters, her daughter, as interesting as the secondary ones, and I think it’s because I haven’t taken the time to develop her in my mind. I haven’t imagined anything particularly interesting about her for some reason and so I have little interest in her. How absurd is that?! Any suggestions? 🙂
Hi Tinna,
What I normally do in situations like this – apart from killing a bottle of red wine, shaking my head, and asking myself why the hell I’m doing this – is to write back-up material, like a case study of the character:
1. What does he/she look like?
I’ll let you into a little secret, I use browse through Deviantart until I find a nice painting, photo of a character and copy it into my Word doc. Bingo! You can see her or them.
(Hey, if James Cameron can put a photo of Ellen Ripley on his wall while writing the sequel to Alien just to see his main character, then you can too)
Grab a photo and say: this is my protagonist, or in your case daughter. I can now let my mind wrestle with the plotting, dialogue etc. Believe me seeing your character (even though one dimensional) adds to the weight of the character.
But, beware, all this note taking and copy pasting will turn into a second book if you’re not careful.
This can get out of hand in a few weeks, so you have to keep an overview of what you are writing.
(Tip: if what you’ve written isn’t going to be used: put it straight in the bin. It only hampers creativity. Avoid the “Oh I could use this sometime in the future”. YEAH! REALLY! SURE! Be honest… will you really use all this ballast? Most of the time your answer will be: no Think of it like a spring clean: get rid of the trash!)
2: Have you plotted? Having a plan of where its going is imperative. I recently plotted a story and it was in the form of predictions being told to my character:
“Then you shall meet a white wolf who shall take you to the forbidden forest where you shall meet a boy named Tim who will and so on.
It showed me the mini stories along the way.
I even wrote side comments like: White wolf? Huh.. what’s he doing in the forest? I then answered my question by explaining the reasons for this character entering the field of play and what his function is: flat or round character.
3:
You want a young girl as your lead. Well, why don’t you think about books and films with girls as leading players.
My fave is “To Kill A Mockingbird”
Scout, Jem and Dill are the first characters you meet. So you know these little dudes are going to be major players and not just space fillers. We know the story is going to be from their perspective. Then we meet Atticus, Calpernia and some neighbours and some quick fire funny situations.
But the focus is kept firmly on them.
Then we meet the best character in the book (who we only ever meet at the end!) Boo Radley. The infamous Boo who stabbed his father with a scissors. OOOOOOOh he’s bad, from the kids point of view. Little do we know that he’s gonna be the guy that gets me all soppy at the end when Scout says:
“Hi Boo.”
“Jennifer Louise meet Mr Arthur Radley. I think he knows you already.”
What do we see here? The kids worst fear turns out to be their guardian angel! WOW!
Killer scene and a pivot point. My all time fave!!!!! It’s not what you expect.
No grand soliloquy’s, just plain and simple dialogue and a feeling, just a feeling that all along the kids have been wrong about this poor lonely recluse!
What about “Bridge to Terabithia”. My daughter is reading it at the moment and we’ve got the DVD. Yes, I know its young reader fiction and a bit corny, but the two main characters are fantastic: son from poor family meets artists daughter. They imagine a special place to fight out their “coming of age” feelings and school problems. They become friends. Like the above, its got some “horror” scenes of graphic: “ooooohhhhh where are the tissues”. The scene where the boy talks to the teacher in the corridor towards the end (in the film) had the whole film crew crying just watching the rehearsals. Its a touching movie.
Just brainstorming a few examples for you. I don’t really know if it will help, but the above work for me as films and books.
I suppose you have to ask your self what is the book about. Where do I want to take the “reader”.
Who are you writing for? This is probably the place to start. Write down who you want to read this book:
21 to 35 years olds?
Do you want to be the next “whodoyamaflip” 50,000 Shades of Gray woman?
Or do you want to write for yourself and people like yourself.
If so, who are these people?
BRAINSTORM BRAINSTORM:
What does Julia’s daughter become?
Think about giving her a problem, a disability?
Wow, she’s got a hearing problem. She has to have an operation to implant a hearing device. Wow, she see’s a murder. She lip reads what the murderer says. Wow, she’s a key witness in a murder case. WOW… sorry already been done. But a cool idea
A brilliant film for TV. Check it out.
BRAINSTORM BRAINSTORM:
Does Julia get a new boyfriend? Or is she scarred for life – a man hating bitch who will put her hate into her daughter?
Will her daughter have a special gift of telling stories to Julia to stop her from committing suicide because she can’t make ends meet?
I’d be happy to discuss things like this with you – if you want? Its up to you.
I’m not a pro, more of a listener.
I love brainstorming (when I have time)
Talk soon.
Phil
I liked your poem a lot. You have a wily sense of humor.