Sound Of Poetry Review has 10 of my poems up!!! Thank you SOOO much!!! Super exciting that! They can be read here.
Tag Archives: Loss
When There Is No Other Way
Mother – Melissa Fry
Claire Askew has been kind enough to feature my poem “When There Is No Other Way’ in her ONE NIGHT STANZAS here.
This week’s My Roots, here.
It has been such a horrific and devastating week for every Oklahoman. There has been so much loss. There is nothing to compare the landscape to but a war zone, much like our spirits. These storms hit at such an interesting time. With children happy to be finishing another school year. Looking forward to the summer break ahead. Parents busily making plans and arrangements for the same. None of us expecting what would be. One cannot help but realize and consider how short and precious life really is. How much time do we waste each day on worry, stress, things that would not matter if we weren’t promised tomorrow. We are not guaranteed a thing in this life, including anything beyond now. It should not require tragedy to jar or wake us from our self absorbed existences. There is always more we can be giving and doing for others. There is always another person who needs our love and help. A person reaching out, who needs someone. There is always somebody in need.
I am so touched and humbled by the strength and resilience, the way we are pulling together as a community to try and get everyone through this. To help people pick up and salvage the pieces we can and are able. To help to somehow go on from all this. To bring a bit of light and hope into such darkness. These are the very reasons I have always been proud to be an Okie. I have always known we have amazing people here. Truly GOOD people. It is my prayer that we learn from this and take away the wisdom that there is no time like the present. There is no other day than this, no other time than in this moment. To live, to love, to share, to laugh, to give, to cry, to help, to heal. To BE for another, for the people.
The storm’s victims will need long term care and assistance, we should not forget about them in the weeks, and months to come. We should also learn to practice gratitude for all the blessings we have in our lives, and learn to let go more of all the petty things we let interfere with our peace and happiness here. When I was little, (a long time ago, in the very old days lol) if we were sad, feeling sorry for ourselves we were taught to go do something for somebody else. It is hard to feel bad if you are making others feel better about things!
There are opportunities right now from making donations, to hands on labor. We can open our homes to a family that has no where to go. We can make prayers for all those involved and impacted. Those of us with skills, talents, or other creative resources can come up with even more ways to be useful. These are our sisters and brothers, these are our mothers and fathers, these are our friends and neighbors. There shouldn’t be anything we wouldn’t be willing to do huh?
4 Pieces
1st Lie, Autumn Between Us, Another Being
Almost – D.G.J.
Almost
DGJ
“ Our little envelope of time we share during the hustle and bustle of these green country days in Oklahoma like constellations of yore or some intergalactic planetary Z world. Sometimes two meet in harmony, come together and orbit around each other. At first a tender orbit that starts in a moment & leads to clasping, gripping, kissing, licking, holding into a thrust & release. Release back from each other and their orbit ….back to their worlds …back to their separateness….for a moment until the arc begins again. “ (he said)
What you didn’t do was sing to me one more time before said release.
There was no rain to save me from the drought cracking away at my spirit.
What you didn’t do was even ask before you ran. (again)
You assumed he would mean more than you,
or hold some sacred place he had never touched or known.
You didn’t see my world crumbling and falling around me.
You never really stepped inside.
I have spent the last 1097 nights alone.
With some days more bleak than this longing since your absence.
I recite you every moment like a prayer or poem.
How can I forget the sudden ferocity of our commingling
Here where more than flesh remembers,
in faint drawn out sounds.
I am but a ghost walking empty streets
draped in great stars of white hoarfrost,
in time that thickens and closes around me.
This is written with brushes
made from the bones of what could have been.
You folded my heart like it was paper and crushed it beneath your shoe.
(she said)
© 2013 Melissa Fry Beasley, All Rights Reserved
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Endings Begin Thus Quietly
The fortune cookie at dinner read,
“ You will make many changes before settling down happily”.
In that moment, I knew there was more to love than you.
Strange the way something so simple can speak in signs, significations.
The way omens are visions and we will suddenly see what is sitting before us.
I knew the road behind had not led me to you, so much as to this place.
Where I would awaken within and see that there was another thing
I was meant to be doing this entire time.
Years wasted and gone in what was never anything more
than pictures we painted for those watching.
© 2013 Melissa Fry Beasley, All Rights Reserved
Sycophant
We are all broken bits
left over from some end,
doorways leading
to empty rooms.
We run while we wait
for something to move,
everyday a barter of
quench and thirst.
Sycophant you are,
i’m always giving in
to occasions
with too much
in my mouth
to speak.
No space for tongue
or meaning,
no room
for reason & rebuilding.
We are all broken bits
left over from flawed beginnings.
They said we never stood a chance.
© 2013 Melissa Fry Beasley, All Rights Reserved
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Rich Men Know Suffering
Fingers have their own prayers
like expectant mouths and widened eyes;
dreams inside my clinched fist
to prevent their escape.
The starry blizzard will
soon freeze heaven harder
than in the year
that has passed.
In winter some must die,
but nature is just.
I have waited for
something to escape
from beneath the burden
of the lies we tell ourselves.
The hammered talk of consequence
and the ways we learn
to live with stone.
The first slaughter is for victory.
The second for grief twisted like roots.
Because our pain is ancient,
I have not trusted those
who never came back
from the dead.
Stay and mourn the collapsing
of the burning house
from which I flee daily.
Poets change loved ones
more than words,
blanks we fill in
between ourselves and strangers.
This hardening is a way to grieve.
We have known lesser wins and greater losses,
like picking among the charred bones.
Rich men know about suffering,
constructing catastrophe gone blue with cold,
fragile as the surface tension of water.
© 2013 Melissa Fry Beasley, All Rights Reserved
________________________________________________
One Set Of Borders
How easily the mind
can switch from one
set of borders
to another.
Raindrops on metal roofs.
Bones that can no longer
hold the skin.
Seasons and distance.
I let you make love to me hard
against the edges
of mountains and towers,
scent of canyons after rain.
There are many ways
of knowing oneself
and together we learned
every way to come undone.
Beyond the body
or bees making honey.
Before we were even thought.
A long string of small extinctions.
© 2013 Melissa Fry Beasley, All Rights Reserved
_______________________________
My friend Amit was published today in Miracle Ezine!! Please read what he had to say about it, and me! lol
http://all-amit-thinks.blogspot.com/2013/04/my-first-publication-in-miracle-e-zine.html
That Night
That night
Together
In quietude
We saw the moon
Rise slowly above the lake
Paving stones on path
Worn smooth
With secret walking
Waterlilies edging water
© 2013 Melissa Fry Beasley, All Rights Reserved
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Mourning Figure
A mourning figure walks alone
his heart wont let him rest,
it seems he held just yesterday
the one his heart loved best.
He walked the wide world searching
time drew on he was worn numb.
Tried everything to draw her back
his love, she would not come.
She was not here, nor was she there
But lingered somewhere in between;
Lost in a tangled web of memories
haunted by the things she’d been.
It’s the way love binds a broken soul,
our dreams so slow to bleed.
It’s the way his scars will never heal
and no one but her could fill the need.
© 2013 Melissa Fry Beasley, All Rights Reserved
_________________________________________________
Rain Falls
Whenever rain falls
On a wind swept desert
It is like the coolness
Of dreaming in
A blue green shade
Rivers of sacred mud
Bring the dead
To life once more
Like a sudden downpour
You startle me
From distractions
Of grazing sheep
Lingering like
Lovely ladies
In flowing shawls
On their lips are stars
With tongues like rainbows
In the rumble of thunder
I remember the way
You moved inside me
Your fingerprints here
Footprints there
Before the wetness
Washed it all away
© 2013 Melissa Fry Beasley, All Rights Reserved
In My Verse- New Poem
Bed Yourself In My Verse
I love the way
you bed yourself
in my verse
making each song
one about you.
Earth’s sweet perfume
fragrant on night air,
your memory
the breeze that caresses.
A muse, my delight
from whence such craving
springs forth,
like swollen fruit raised
up in offering.
Under your skin
the moon is shining alive,
like the light that
radiates out from you.
I love the way
you bed yourself
in my verse
like awaking to the suns
of our ancestors.
Something so primal
and natural calls
and if there were
but a moment,
i’d hide in you
To be carried close
buried deep in your soul
like the warmth
of a sunbeam or melody.
© 2013 Melissa Fry Beasley, All Rights Reserved
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Remembering
Remembering
the past
only makes me
miss it more.
All the old places are gone.
People and attitudes have changed.
Sometimes the memories
are more painful than
the joy I remembered.
I still find the need to embrace
out of fear that we would forget.
(those we loved and cherished)
We can let them know
that they are still loved,
our heart remembers their lives &
aches for their passing.
They come back
to console me when I mourn.
© 2013 Melissa Fry Beasley and Carlos Guevara, All Rights Reserved
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Also they were kind enough to inclue my poem 1st Rain in “That’s How Romantic Monday Goes” here:
http://edwardhotspur.wordpress.com/2013/04/08/thats-how-romantic-monday-goes/
Daddy
Not Sure Who Took Photo
Daddy
You are the hot oceanside sands slipping all too easily
Through my fragile fingers.
You are the tide rolling carelessly in, breaking,
Roaring back out into vastness.
You are the moments fleeing far too quickly now.
The child lost, indigenous vagabond, rebel without a cause.
It seems I possess no hour glass in which to contain you,
No bucket to carry you home.
No light, that you might see your path.
Cursed to endlessly roam,
You are the satellite in outer space.
It seems i’ve sailed the universe
Since last I saw your face.
You may be a free bird in your own mind,
I see a dandelion.
Soon some round faced child shall clumsily pluck you,
Close their hopeful wide eyes
Only to wish and blow
Sending you soaring through the atmosphere
With only the galaxy to hold you then.
© Melissa Fry Beasley 2003
Melissa Fry Beasley 