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With Grace I’ve Been Fed

I’ve been hungry. 

Not just a mere inconvenience

Hunger as a presence

A dinner companion as you salivate over a slice of bread

So it is not with grace that I bless this food

But in knowing it’s grace

That I have been fed.

This was for a dVerse prompt: Pen us a poem of precisely 44 words (not counting the title), including some form of the word hunger.

Thankfully I have not been hungry much but I have known hunger yet nothing is worse than not being able to feed your kids. So it is with grace that when going through hard times that I know that I am not hungry.

Ignite


Ignite the fire in my heart
Start the flame 
Burn in my eyes
I want to see you as fire

Bonfire of desire
I stand before the flames
Watching 
As you turn my indifference into ash

Ignite my passion
Light my flame
Watch as I burn
Into cinders 
Yours to claim

Audio book listener? Well check out Just One Kiss written by me, narrated by Ruan Willow.

Could one kiss get you in bed? You think so? Well, Karen thinks Shawn is full of it when he comes over to her table and says he can get her in bed with just a kiss. But …

A short erotic read of what happens to a jaded Karen after Just One Kiss. It’s what you think but not what you think. Also one of the stories inside Author Stew Erotic stories collection.

Is This Not Love?

Image by Pepitas And Pepitas from Pixabay (I added the question mark :^)

Look around you, it lays there among the clutter and mess,
The tidy corners and cleaned spills.
There, where dirty socks used to lay or lay still, 
There, where footsteps left their imprints from the rain.
Is this not love?

As I sit alone in the warmth of the bed where your body did lay
As I sit across from your smiling face breaking fast at the break of day
As I kneel in the corner, your arms around my shoulder letting me cry
As I kneel beside our children gazing in wonder pointing to the sky
Is this not love?

In passion, fiery and hot, burning through doubts and hesitations
Fierce in its desire, consuming, explosive, destructive in its intensity
Destroying anything that seeks to separate us one from the other
Flaring hot as it devours; you stand in the embers of discarded dross, pure gold.
Is this not love?

How is this not love when I am here with you?
How is this not love when my heart beats with yours?
How is this not love when the years spent together were the best of my life?
How is this not love when I still love you?

 If this isn’t love
        I never knew what love was
                And I’ll never know what love is

This is for a dVerse prompt: For today’s Poetics, I want you to write a poem about love as something quietly sacred — not just roses and hearts, but the small, unseen ways someone stays. I hope you enjoy.

That Which Lay Beneath

“Hello Afrael.”

“Hello Sir Dragon, Yeon.”

“Why so formal Afrael? Your lips forget what they have kissed,” said Yeon, smiling broadly.

“You were not in that form,” said Afrael. His cheeks took a slightly redder hue but his eyes remained fixed.

“Would you prefer this?” asked Yeon, shapeshifting into a tall middle aged half elf female. Her long blonde hair flowing down her back.

“Or perhaps this one,” he said, shapeshifting into the shape of a full elf, well muscled and young.

“Do not wear that form,” said Afrael, his voice tight. “Do me the courtesy of honoring my brother’s death.”

“Is the outward form so significant that it shrouds that which lays beneath?”

“Some things are best left buried. And yes.”

“Have you come to ask my aid with your war?”

“No. Something much less seemly. I’ve got a business proposition for you.”

This was for a dVerse prompt: Write a piece of prose, up to or exactly 144 words, including the given line: “Lips forget what they have kissed.”

I decided to take it a different direction and use it in a fantasy setting with a shape shifting dragon and a former elf lover. I hope you enjoy!

I’m Weak

I am weak for merely, am just a man
Your body I still crave though you have gone
No longer mine to set my gaze upon
Over as quickly as it had began
You rule my thoughts as only lonely can
I’m small in the sight of my mirror on
The wall shining light of an early dawn
Mirror reflecting horrors that I plan
I am meant to be strong in your absence
Instead I lay in a puddle of tears
To be found wanting no sense of balance
Alone with my thoughts, wants, wishes and fears
I’m spinning along a tilted axis
Was I to know the cost of our affairs

After All is Said …

What’s left after you’ve been intimate? 30 poems that answer that question. Good, bad, worse & perfect. The responses to what happens after intimacy. Know what happens After All is Said …
Available on KU and Amazon.

If I Could Not Touch You

If I could never touch you again, I’d lose my will. I could not go, on or through. I’d crumble where I stood. Who could stand such cruelty? Who would do such a thing? How could I stand to look at you, knowing my hands could not feel your body again?

I’d remember the feel of your skin, so soft, beneath my finger tips. The feeling as my hand ran down your arm, before taking your hand in mine. Fingers entwined. Heat radiating between our palms. Give that up? Have it taken away? I could not go on. 

I long to touch you even now. I want to feel the weight of you in my arms. Heavy laden am I, with desire, with need. For the pull of gravity, the attraction of one body to another, holding each other. Holding each other together. For without you, without the touch of you; I’d shatter.

So though we must be apart, separated by distances too far for my arms to reach. Despite the fact that I won’t feel your breath warm against my neck as we sleep. My fingers do not run along your cheek, raising your eyes to mine, and our lips do not at this moment meet. Despite all these things and more, I do not despair. For I know I will touch you again; because if I could not touch you. I would come undone.

This is for a dVerse prompt: I’d like us to focus on one of the five senses (sight, taste, smell, touch, or hearing) and write a poem exploring what your life experience might be without that sense.

I hope you enjoy! 😊

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Flower Waiting

Background Image by yayang art and Middle Image by Amy from Pixabay Japanese characters Flower, Spring

Petals closed in sleep
Winter winds over the ground
Flowers hibernate
Waiting for spring sun
To awaken sleeping eyes
Climb up through the ground
Say hello to warmth
Say hello to new sunshine
Say goodbye winter

Flower waiting sleeps
To awaken in the spring

This is from a dVerse prompt: So today, I’d like you to pen us a poem that includes some form of the word FLOWER. Pen us a poem of precisely 44 words (not counting the title), including some form of the word flower. I hope you enjoy! 😊

Calm Before War

On the eve before the war
The calm in the streets
Is an eerie echo that rattles in my mind
Like the faint call of a forgotten lover
Or a missing child. 
It calls to me with it’s naïve whimsy
Come let’s play
It’s all make believe
You’re safe where you are.

I stand on the precipice
Watching the fires burn
Like spots on the sun
Close my eyes
I see that yesterday
It was yesterday.
Today, can go to hell.
Hell is where we are today.

Boarded windows greet me
With the dawn
Reflecting not the light but
Dark of man
Chants of the aggrieved,
Angry at the march of time
Roll over the horizon
The warning shot
Before the drone’s strike

“Black man! To the fore!”
Why must my melanin
Mark me as target,
Aggressor, savior and flag bearer?
Oh right

They call it the race war
A race to destruction
Only 5 feet ahead
Why don’t they call it
The crazy shit White folk started
Yeah you right
Which one?

Now you’re all agitated
Aggravated, bothered and such.
Calm your bits.
There’s plenty blame to go round
Ain’t all White folks,
Plenty of color in that rainbow prism.

Your red hats
And baseball bats
Black flags
Blue on White
Raised fists
Pink and baby blue
Symbols for what?
What do they mean to you?
Your heart and desires?
Passion’s fire,
Ache and grievance.
Missed opportunities,
Past defense,
Things done,
Things to come,
All come undone?

You don’t know.
Just here for the blood boil
To feel alive
Comrade in arms
Fighter of freedoms
Oppressor
Oppressed 
Just have a violence fetish.

Second day 
Marching forward
As if soldiers
All in a row.
Armed for war,
So easy they fall.
Funny little lines.
Soldier boys no more.

Uncertainty
Fog of war
Fog of foolishness
Fools and their plans 
Soon part 
Run and duck
Duck and hide
Hidden holes 
Fill with ink
Black fills in the circle.
Today starts the war
Spot on the calendar
History calls the starting point
Peace is the period
When does this sentence end?

After All is Said

After All is Said . . . 30 poems about what comes next. Read poetry that deals with how it feels after you’ve been intimate, in a relationship, out of a relationship, in love, out of love. After All is Said … What’s left to say? These poems.

Buy it here: books2read.com/u/3Jo61B

Which Makes Our Wicked Loving Ways Sublime

Marveling at a love so fair
I hold her hand in mine
Her eyes meet me where I am
A love true, pure and divine
Which makes our wicked loving ways sublime

Flirtatious flutters of her lashes,
Lashes of her whip tailed wit
Cut deep, so sweet, so many times;
I look so forward to it.
Marveling at a love so fair.

Her skin so soft
I love to touch
From head to toe and head to Oh!
Skin to skin and such
I hold her hand in mine

She smiles at me with secret meaning,
Knowledge for only her and I.
Her devious desires she discreetly
Says what things we together should try.
Her eyes meet me where I am

Not where I used to be.
For she lifted me up from the dirt
Dirty and desperate for love’s caress
Across my chest and under my shirt
A love true, pure and divine.

I took her angel wings
And anointed her with oils
The better to slide in between 
The pleasures of hedonistic spoils
Which makes our wicked loving ways sublime

This was for a dVerse prompt: Today, we’re going to revisit the cascade form, created by Udit Bhatia.

“The cascade is not a difficult form to understand. You will use each line from your first stanza in subsequent stanzas. For example, if your first stanza is three lines, your will have four stanzas. The first line of your first stanza becomes the last line of the second stanza. The second line of the first stanza becomes the last line of your second stanza, and so on.”

I hope you enjoy! 😊

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I yam who I yam

How do you keep silent
On a cold winter’s day
Like the snores of a snake
Hibernating in some forgotten hole?

Do you bury your head? 
A gopher in a field or 
Perhaps an ostrich in the sand,
Your head buried like treasure.

It’s the polite thing to do,
To say nothing,
When inside your head 
Spins a running commentary

Like a golf tournament
Announcer wincing in whispered tone,
‘Ooo that one is gonna cost him, Bob’,
As you watch him flounder like some landed fish.

I am not like you;
I must spout off like a teapot,
Boiling with indignity,
Uncouth in my opinion.

You sir are a buffoon and she deserves better!
And yes I know the location is not ideal
And the timing could be better.
Perhaps I should know who they are before I speak.

But I am who I am,
Like some pipe smoking, sailor man;
Hyped up on spinach canned.
Love me as if you understand.

This is for a dVerse prompt: Whatever the subject you choose to write on for this poetics challenge, I’d like you to use the rhetorical device of a simile.

“As you know, a simile is a comparison between two unlike things using the words, “like” or “as.” The word “simile” itself is a Latin word meaning “like.” And we use a simile to describe or explain something unfamiliar, or to expand on or distill an abstraction, by relating it to something more familiar. As a rhetorical tool, it‘s very effective in conveying meaning while giving pleasure in discovering resemblances. But it also satisfies our deep emotional or psychological need not merely to inform but to relate to one another.”

I hope you enjoy! 😊