IN THE FOREST OF THE FULL MOON

              in the forest of the full moon

slipping my tiny hand into yours,
I felt your big hand close around it

and you smiled down into my eyes 
and sparkled like a beautiful diamond

for a moment in the growing darkness.....

and I felt so safe.

It felt as though I had known you forever....
you were so kind, so thoughtful

so warm, so all knowing and powerful

like the daddy I never had, like the brother I always wanted,
like the friend  I never knew
like the lover of my soul they always told me would come my way.

you made me laugh, you made me hope, you made me trust

meeting you was like the fairy tale come true,
the three wishes granted,

the waking to find the dream was real..........

I couldn't smile big enough.

we walked and talked all through the day,
stopping for treats and tea and flowers picked 
and rainbow watching and running in the rain

so wonderful a world I had never known! 

the people looked at us as we walked side by side, hand in hand
and they smiled upon us as if bestowing us with honor 
due a princess and a king...........

and I glowed in the basking of the love
and let it heal my wounded heart.

toward evening, I asked you where you were taking me 
and you patted my little shoulder and softly said.....
somewhere where you'll be safe, where you'll be cared for 
and wanted and loved forever and ever
and never be afraid.

those words caressed my mind with tenderness
and I sighed a sigh of relief and thanks that at last
the orphan in me had found a loving home......

we walked on and the familiar gave way to strange landscapes
and the day slipped down into fiery sunset 
and hurried on it's way into the dark.

at the edge of the forest, I felt a tinge of fear within me
but brushed it off as your hand pressed mine in reassurance 
and I saw your white teeth gleaming in a loving smile.........

everything will be alright, you promised and I nodded, 
trusting in your words and loving you with everything in me
because you loved me....
the lost and unloved child of the streets and earth 
and fatherless/motherless family.

promise? I asked so quietly I could hardly hear myself
and you said, promise!

and I let you take me into that dark wood
with it's thousand trees and thousand birds and thousand eyes 
that suddenly stopped their rushing and went silent as a stone.

I heard you breathing, fast and faster 
and felt the pulse in your hand speed up and race so furiously 
that I pulled my hand from yours in confusion
and you made a sound that I had never heard before.

quick as a flash, the moon came up 
and sped high into the sky before my face
and lit up the ground on which we stood,
showing the brook nearby rushing over large and tiny shards of rock
and the trees that appeared to me to be like castles, 
huge and overshadowing the two of us, so tiny in their sight.

taking in the scene, I looked for some semblance of a house
or home or tent or arbor, some place welcoming 
and warm with fire and sheltering from wind and woe

is this where we're going? I asked..........puzzled 
and turned to search your face now turned from mine 
and hidden in a shadow I could not penetrate with my unadjusted eyes.

yessssssss.... you whispered in a voice not yours,
not warm, not kind, not known, not.....human

and there in moonlight, bright as day,
with clouds circling it's rocky roundness 
and birds as quiet as whispers and night as still as death.........

my cherished friend, my new found love, my hero and protector 
became a beast.

a changeling, huge and evil and terrible in it's face and form

a nightmare come to life with ravening mouth 
and eyes full of horrible, man-less hunger
I could not move. I stood and stared.........
and then I shed a tear and put out my hand, my little hand 
that moments ago had held yours in blissful friendship.

and you took it...and crushed it.........
threw back your head and howled an endless screaming howl

no trace of the man there any longer.........
and without one word of apology or warning,

you devoured me and my trusting heart
threw my bones into the brook and ran into the darkness growling.

and here I stay unto this day, a child ever remaining
my spirit haunted and haunting the place of my betrayal, forever
in the forest of the full moon

watching and waiting for your return.........

bringing other trusting children to their dark despair and lonely ends

smiling that gleaming smile.......
and holding their little hands in yours.

©by voo 

Aug 6, 2005 

7:47 p.m.

for all the abused...and trusting victims of monsters, human and otherwise

THE PERMANENT SCAR

                                           

The Permanent Scar

Divorce.......

What an evil, cold-blooded word

I wonder who originated it?

I wonder what slimy pit of lowest hell

It crawled it's way from

With that wicked, sickening grin

Upon it's face?

I think I know.......

I think I comprehend all too well

The day divorce was born

And thrust upon a world

That until then, had known only joy

Harmony, unity and true love:

The day Lucifer shook his fist in God's face.

Man was meant......

To have his mate, his helper

His companion through life's journeys

His lover, his friend, his partner, his muse

Man was alone

In a garden full of couples

Until he was torn apart and then made whole.

How lonely......

Is this world full of strangers now

Strangers that used to be friends

Friends who used to be lovers

Lovers who used to be partners

Partners who used to be mates

Mates who used to be married.

All strangers now......

Estranged and hating

Bitter, broken, bruised and bleeding

In places no one can heal

No matter how many times we plead

Or pray or give ourselves to others

Who will only wound us deeper.

Divorce is just a band-aid .....

Casually displayed on the shelves

Of convenience stores

Down the street from the wedding chapels

With their flashing neon signs

Enticing you to make the commitment:

Tomorrow you can undo it!

But see the zombies.......

Walking the streets

After divorce court?

Hearts torn out and big dead eyes

All dark and hollow and full of dreams

That will never come true?

Divorce is worse than death. Worse than death.

With death comes.......

A kind of peace

Not this cruel rejection that says:

You are no longer a part of me!

You are not worthy of my affection!

You are despised and scorned and unwanted

I never loved you!!

How God's heart......

Must break for the forsaken

The cast-away, the bereft soul

Lying in the street of rejection like refuse

The shattered families who will never be mended

Never know security, never know the comfort

Of a hand in hand again.

I suppose if anyone......

Could understand divorce

It would be Him

He, who was rejected by the very vessel

He formed there on the potter's wheel

By the very people He birthed to love Him

By the very world He holds in the palm of His hand.

Scars are usually permanent......

Even when the wounds have long healed

They remain, a constant reminder

Of what we have endured, what we have lived for

Would have walked into hell for

With love shining brightly on our faces

Knowing that for love, we would do it all over again.

              

©by Voo

Oct 5, 07

1:24 a.m.

BEAUTIFUL IN LOVE

Beautiful In Love



He makes me feel like a woman 
When he smiles 
I am enveloped in warm honey and moon glow 
I am bathed in sunshine and sweetness 
And I am so glad to be alive. 

He sees me like I'm beautiful 
And always has 
Even though I know I am not fair 
Or fine or lovely as the girls he painted 
On the canvases of his youth. 

He shines me like a diamond 
With his artist's hands 
Outlining my features with his fingertips, 
My mouth, with the curve of his thumb 
I am subtly, and permanently, imprinted. 

He holds me like a treasure 
As though I were fragile 
And I let him think I am 
For my strength would only make him feel 
His weakness. 

Oh, but when he touches me 
In the darkness! 
In the cocoon of love he spins there 
Dancing to the music of my joy 
Flying as one, on a single pair of wings. 

Without light, I forget his eyes are blind 
And cannot look upon my face 
Cannot see the sunrise, or the setting, 
The full moon hanging in the sky, or storm clouds
Unless he sees them through my seeing tongue.

He gives me more than I can give to him 
Because my eyes are full of life 
And his are full of memory and of wonder 
Gifts he finds, on the midnight paths he walks 
With sharpened senses I will never know. 

He's painted all my sorrows now with beauty 
In tender shades of love and light, 
Traced my heartbreak with knowing hands 
Until it disappeared 
And cast it far into a hidden sea. 

The world he paints for me 
Is more magical than the one he remembers
When his eyes were whole and unwounded 
And his brush yielded poetry to hang on the walls 
In a world that could not be framed. 

I did not know how blind I was 
Until he found me and showed me the light 
That love only illumines in a life that's gone dark 
I did not know that my unlovely face 
Could look back from a portrait, and be beautiful in love. 

He makes me feel like a woman 
When he smiles 
And when I tease him with silence, he reaches out, 
Touches my lips, my heart, my soul 
And sees the sun shining on my face. 

©by Voo 
July 29, 09 
7:43 p.m.

NOTHING LIKE REJECTION

Nothing Like Rejection

There's nothing like rejection
To make you want to cry
Nothing like the pain of that
To make you want to die.

There's nothing like rejection
To make you ugly feel
To make you doubt there's any way out
Or that you are really real.

There's nothing like rejection
To cause you to despise
The reflection in the mirror there
In front of your own eyes.

There's nothing like rejection
To make you hopeless be
You lose your mind and then go blind
And life no longer see.

There's nothing like rejection
To shatter your fragile soul
Cause nothing seems genuine after that
Even if it's gold.

There's nothing like rejection
This verse has plainly shown
For rejection is my daily bread
And all I've ever known.

There's nothing like rejection
To make you in sorrow dwell
You feel like Heaven doesn't want you
And you're not good enough for Hell.



©by voo
Jan 11, 2005
 1:15 a.m.

I THOUGHT I KNEW YESTERDAY

I Thought I Knew Yesterday



I thought I knew yesterday
What I didn't today
I thought I felt happiness
Coming my way.

I thought I saw yesterday
What would happen tomorrow
And receive joy in hand fulls
Not buckets of sorrow.

I thought I'd found yesterday
What would come with the dawn
A little dream coming true
That by night would be gone.

I thought I believed yesterday
What I cannot today
For today like a thief
Has stolen all hope away.

I thought I tasted yesterday
What was sure to be great
But today I am holding
Just this cold empty plate.

I thought I knew yesterday
What tomorrow would bring
But tomorrow is here now
And I don't know a thing.


©by Voo
August 21, 2017
1:04 a.m.

ADJUSTING TO THE SILENCE

Adjusting to the Silence



Adjusting is never easy
For the heart is set in stone
To turn to touch the one you love
And find that they are gone.

The ears are tuned to tender words
The hands are taught to reach
The smile's a prize for sorrowed eyes
And the tongue, it lives to teach.

But these things are worthless to a soul
That has no anchor's depth
A ship that's tossed on a lonely sea
With one crew member left.

The prose of your heart, it fills my thoughts
With passion's memory, calls
The laughter that taught my heart to sing
Is silenced, once, for all.

Adjusting to the silence
(I do not think I can)
My world's an empty seashell now
Half buried in the sand.

My ears are full of wordless roars
That make no sense, no rhyme
Those sounds of joy were all deployed
When our love ran out of time.

©by Voo
May 18, 2005
midnight

THIS WHITE ROOM

This White Room

This white-walled room

Streaked with lavender

From the glass heart

Hanging in the window

In the sun...........


The heart you gave me

With a smile in your eyes

The heart that was shattered

By cruel unthinking hands

And was mended, restrung, on it's white silken cord.


My bare feet rest

On moon pale carpets

Strewn here and there

On hardwood floors

Clean and cold as a hard winter snow.


Silky white curtains

Flutter in day breeze,

Tease the book's pages

As it lies on the shelf

Reading to it's self of my long ago dreams.


And here sit I

In my satin and lace

White sofa covered with pillow and fur

Waiting, as I often do

For my life to go on......


Long, silver mirrors

Catch the odd glow of sun,

Of fragmented purple, of my long raven hair

And reflect back the silence

That the world cannot hear.


In the garden, a cat

And the song of a lark

Sharp smell of roses

And the whisper of trees

But I do not turn, I sit stiller than stone.


Waiting for footsteps to fall on the stair,

A door opening softly and the embrace of your eyes

Waiting for the smile that once out shined the sun

Waiting for forgiveness in a world that's gone dark.


Maybe today, I think, he'll come

He'll stand behind me, brushing my hair

Watching me watching him as I did in the mirror

Before I crushed his heart like the lavender glass

Now mended, restrung, on the cord in the sun.


Maybe today in this white room

The wind will blow my hair like ribbons,

The book will close and my heart find peace

Maybe today, on moon pale carpets

My sad, sad feet will stand up and dance.


A sound in the garden, not of cat or of bird

On the wind there's a sweetness

And a tasting of hope

Gently, the lavender heart starts to sway

And I watch it transfixed and I turn towards the door....

                 

©by Voo

Feb 24, 2010   

9:36 p.m.

DAGGER THROUGH THE HEART

Dagger Through The Heart
          ......Killing with words



I slump and bleed my life's blood
Out onto the ground
No bullet through the brain
No smothering without sound
No accident with car and tree
No one involved but you and me
No bomb, no blast, no driving past
But wounded, dying, just as fast.

Not in the back did the blow come
But in the heart and in the home
My eyes on yours as you stabbed there
And told me how you didn't care 
The twist it took me by surprise
More than the leaving and the lies
No pain like love that quietly dies
No weapon like your tongue.

I gasp as words like bullets fly
No defense from hatred in your eyes
I try to make you alibis
I love you as you kill me
And as you turn and walk away
I try in vain to make you stay
The heart it holds on to the day
As night descends forever.

My life and death are in your tongue
What seemed so right now shown so wrong
We sang two verses of a different song
And the curtain fell without notice
The dagger through the heart, it stings
A slow, sad death with no peace, brings
And as I sink, I see these things
That I could not see before.



©by Voo
September 17, 2005
 11:30 p.m.

MUFFINS IN THE YARD

Muffins in the Yard 

Granny threw the muffins out

Pa said they were too hard 

She'd baked all day and got hell for pay

Now there's muffins in the yard.

Granny cooked a possum stew 

Up special for a treat

And Pa came home, left it alone

Said it smelled like his bare feet.

Granny baked a birthday cake

For Pa's eighty-eighth birthday

Pa blew out the candles and went to sleep

Without a word to say.

Granny made an apple pie

With apples picked herself

Pa came in, went out again

Left the pie there on the shelf.

Granny cooked some gravy

To eat with eggs and bacon

Pa woke up, poured him a cup

And no gravy was ever taken.

Granny cooked and Granny cleaned

And Granny did the chores

Pa sat around and went to town

Till she couldn't take it anymore.

Granny stirred and Granny mixed

A formula perfected

Arsonic, strychnine and a pinch of thyme

For the years she was neglected.

Granny waited and Pa came home

From sitting on the Square

Whittling with the good ole boys

Like he didn't have a care.

Granny set the kitchen table 

With the best china that she had

So pretty in the candlelight

It made her heart feel glad.

"What garbage are we having tonight?"

Pa snickered like a heel

He filled his plate and then he ate

His last supper, his last meal.

Now Granny cooks to her heart's content

And life is no longer hard

But the wild life outside has all up and died

From eating muffins in the yard.

© by Voo
December 2, 2004 
10:30 p.m. 

              

  Lord I wish I was a single girl again