Blog Feed – Page 16 – The Author Stew webpage

Lift Up / Vengeance Lamentation

Photo by Ruel Calitis on Unsplash. Edited by me

Lift up my eyes to heaven 
Seek his eyes, to catch the ear of the Creator 
Hear the cry of pain 
That echoes in my bones
The tears that water my garden of vengeance 

Call down holy fire!
Burn through the wickedness as seen by my eyes
Follow the arrow drawn by my bow oh eternal maker
I name your enemies 
Smite them, destroy their sanctity 
Take away their peace.

Why so silent oh heavens?
Where is thy thunder? Your lightning strikes?
The fires in my enemy camps light faces and warm hands when they should be burning flesh.
Where is thy justice, oh holiest of holy? 
Take swift action in unleashing the mighty judgement of above.

Tear them down to the fourth and fifth generation.
Let their children’s head rest upon the gravestones of their forebears
Orphans of the wicked shall their legacy be
I have no sympathy left within my dried bones,
Empathy leached away like blood from an open wound.

I call again to your might hands, though echoes of my previous pleas sound around me
You oh might prince of peace, bring your peace to those who lay defeated
Love most pure, shower down upon those you favor most. 
Can we know love amongst the shadow of stares whom hate your beloved?
Wipe away the stain from among us. Leave only those you know as pure
I cry to thee again oh greatest one.  Hear my lament. Have sympathy!

I chose to share this not as a call to hate but to say that there are times when we all feel that need for something outside of ourselves to take “revenge” and that it is okay to feel that way sometimes. Sometimes you want destruction to rain down on whatever you felt has wronged you.

Yet, often, like the speaker of the work above, your words will just echo; unheard. Destruction does not come at our beck and call. Nor is it a balm to our troubles. Vengeance is not ours to have but ours to live by living better. You do not get vengeance fully until you don’t need it. When you have lived past the need for vengeance only then will you have it completely.

Live a life that is vengeance. Live a life of love, a better life, a life lived looking forward.

You’ve been intimate, you’ve had a relationship, you’ve fallen in love … What’s next?
After All is Said . . . 30 poems about what comes next. What happens after …
Read these poems that get to the heart of what comes After All has been Said http://books2read.com/u/3Jo61B

A Spell Cast – Paradelle

Tis a spell I cast on thee
Tis a spell I cast on thee
On this night for begging sweets
On this night for begging sweets
This night tis a spell for sweets
I cast on thee begging on

With sugar and spice, oh so nice
With sugar and spice, oh so nice
Screams and wails, and scary tales
Screams and wails, and scary tales
Sugar tales, spice wails, and so nice
And screams scary, with oh … and -

Add a dash of this, a dabble of that
Add a dash of this, a dabble of that
Eye of newt and of chicken fat
Eye of newt and chicken fat
Dash that eye this fat dabble add
Of a chicken of and of a newt of

Spell I cast, oh screams and wails,
Tis on this night of dabble eye
Sugar of a newt, with begging tales
A nice fat chicken of scary add 
And for a sweet and spice
Dash this and that on thee so

This was a prompt from dVerse. The prompt was to create a paradelle. Go to the link to read the background of paradelle, which is rather interesting and funny. But the rules of a paradelle are:

Here are the rules:

The Paradelle is a 4-stanza poem, where each stanza consists of 6 lines.
First Three Stanzas:

The first two lines as well as the third and fourth lines of the first three stanzas must be the same (repeat). Where it begins to get difficult and become more of a poetic puzzle is when reaching fifth and sixth lines. These lines must contain all the words from the preceding four lines within the stanza using them only once to form completely new lines.

Last Stanza:

For the most difficult piece of this poetic puzzle, the final stanza of the paradelle does not repeat like the preceding stanzas, rather the final six lines must contain every word from the first three stanzas, and only those words, again using them only once to form completely new lines.

The Design is simple:Stanza 1: 1, 1, 2, 2, 3, 4
Stanza 2: 5, 5, 6, 6, 7, 8
Stanza 3: 9, 9, 10, 10, 11, 12
Stanza 4: 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18

This was harder than it looks. And it wasn’t the greatest but I can live with it. 😁

My Love Is Fatal

My love is fatal
You will not be the same
When we're thru
Who you thought you knew
Won't be you.
You are brand new.

My love will kill
All the doubts and fears 
That plague your mind
My eyes are not blind
Your faults don’t dim your shine
You still sexy fine

My love will destroy
The walls built up around your heart
That held others out 
Imprisoned you within
Your prison sentence will end
Our love will begin

My love is death
To lonely nights
Endless days
Of wandering around 
In a mindless haze
Of heartache and desperation

My love is fatal
It will kill and destroy
Death waits in its embrace
My love is fatal
Are you willing to die
For our love?

READ MY POETRY BOOK! After All is Said . . . It’s Poetry! It’s relationships! It’s emotion! You want to read this, trust me.
A collection of poems that say everything to be said After All is Said. After a relationship, after an intimate night with a lover, after another disappointing night.

After All is Said … you’ll be glad to know you’re not the only one to say it.
Available on Amazon and Kindle Unlimited.
#poetry #relationships

Halloween Reads!

Looking for something a little spooky, or dark, or scary? Check out the stories and poems below. Ghoulishly good!

Stories

Poems

Picking Up A Hooker – Micro fiction about what happens when a man picks up a hooker and things go wrong. Very wrong.

A Goth Mermaid Tale – A prose poem about a man’s attempt to woo a goth mermaid. Does he win her over or does he just go overboard?

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 …

Read my short erotic story for only $1. See if Just One Kiss is enough for you!

Seasons Change

Photos by: me

Season’s colour change
Bright orange, red, yellow, green
Dying or blooming


     “It’s spring down here,” she informs me, as though I was unaware of the changing of seasons and their differences depending on the hemisphere.
     “That must be nice,” I said into the phone.
     Her image smiled at me. The wonders of technology. In my youth, the thought of being able to talk to my daughter in Australia while I was in America and see her face just as though she was in the next room would have been the stuff of science fiction; today it’s just another Tuesday.


The leaves fall downward
Gravity grabs for each leaf
None escape its grasp


     “I miss the bright colors of the forest, and pumpkins and Halloween candy,” she continues.
     “I’ll save you some for when you come home,” I say.
     “Oh Dad,” she rolls her eyes, “I can get some here. It’s just a little different”.
     “I can imagine. It’s different here without you too.”
     She smiled at me.  “Awww. I miss you too.”
     “Hurry up babe. We’re gonna be late.” I hear a voice say in the distance. A male voice.
     “Gotta go Dad. I love you.”
     A blank screen. 
     Who was that? I want to ask. I don’t. Sometimes the seasons change and you’re too far away to do anything but watch. 


The trees hold answers
They tell of the year’s changing
Bright buds, falling leaves

Another dVerse prompt. This one was: Satisfy your thirst for seasonal color! Write a haibun that alludes to either Fall foliage or Spring blossoms.

Why Fear the Dark

A skull in the middle of a black table with a black background in darkness — Image by Pexels from Pixabay

Why fear the dark?
Is that not where we dream?
No-one goes to the light to get lost in fantasy,
Nor do they stare into the sun,
Otherwise they'd go blind.
I fear not the dark.
For I am light.
Even more so, 
When I close my eyes.

The Sex Cycle Collection is a collection of four books: The Sex Cycle, Seduced by Seduction, Fires of Fornication and After All is Said …. Read over 150 poems that explore the spectrum of sex, desire and relationships.

Yellow Flowers In a Vase

(Still Life with Yellow Roses)

An oil painting of yellow roses in full bloom with various other flowers of pink and white with green leaves in a vase. — Le Pho (Vietmanese, 1907 – 2001), *Still life with yellow roses,* oil on canvas, signed Le Pho in Chinese and English (lower right)

The flowers sit on the table 
        in the corner
                     In front of the window
With the shades drawn
The colors of the flowers reflect off the off white curtain
                 creating an aura 
           around each bloom
Though that could be due as much to my not having my glasses
                       as to the reflection of light 
       from the sun

Mom always liked yellow flowers
“Good fortune”  she’d smile and say
I wondered if Dad felt they were good fortune or just cost a fortune
But he never let the vase be empty of some sort of flower
And always something yellow.

Yellow, pink and white
Orange and green
           All the colors stand out 
      and combine
Against a hazy backdrop 
That is the room where they sit
        The room of my childhood
    The room of family 
The colors of prosperity and good fortune
Simply colors of the past
                 like the petals of flowers
      soon to fade away

This was from a prompt from dVerse, see below. The artist is Le Pho. I chose to use the artwork shown above and to do a derivative haibun.

For your Poetics prompt today, I would like you to select one of the artworks I have included in this post, or you may peruse Sunnyside’s selection here. Once you have selected an artwork, write a poem blending ekphrasis and theme (choose one from the list).

ekphrasis: a literary description of or commentary on a visual work of art
theme: a subject or topic of discourse or of artistic representation
*women
*flowers
*landscapes
*family

On The Net

Hi there!
Sometimes people link to my work. Which is very nice. So when I have a link to my work I’m going to try and shout out the page and give a little plug. Go visit and maybe even visit back here by clicking their link.

I have a link to one of my stories, Spice & Soul, on Ryn’s website. Ryn has a page that she calls Guest Writer’s Page. It’s a page where she features or links to a “guest” writer and their work.

I was also put on another page. Frank J. Tassone’s blog featuring haiku, senryu, tanka, haibun, haiga, renga and other styles of English-language, Japanese-style poetry. I had my haibun “Remembering In The Rain” linked to on his blog.

Have you read The Sex Cycle, Seduced by Seduction, Fornication’s Fire and After All is … ? Now you can get them all together in 1! collection. The Sex Cycle Collection. Read over 150 poems that explore the spectrum of sex, desire and relationships.

If I Told You I Want To Fuck You

Black male model with a padded black background — Image by Darren Constance from Pixabay

If I told you I want to fuck you
Would you say it back to me?
Would you whisper it in sweet kisses
Your lips upon mine?

Would you let me strip you naked?
Would you undo your blouse on your own?
Would buttons be undone
And the zipper go down?

If I said I wanted to fuck you
Would you stand naked in front of me?
Would you tell me you wanted me
Without words, just sounds?

Can I slip inside you?
Move back and forth, up and down and around you
Make myself at home
In your most intimate space?

If I held your heart in my hands
Would you trust me to keep it safe
From hurt, harm and danger
Would you open it up to me
As you do your legs?

If I said I wanted to fuck you
Would you say it back?
      because

I want to fuck you

A collection of erotic poetry to set your mind on things sultry, make you think, let you know that someone else has been there.

Have you read The Sex Cycle, Seduced by Seduction, Fornication’s Fire and After All is … ? Now you can get them all together in one collection! The Sex Cycle collection. Read over 150 poems that explore the spectrum of sex, desire and relationships.

Autumn Poems

—x—

Slowly falling to the ground
Swirls of red and yellow
Back and forth, back and forth
Slowly undulating on the breeze
To gather beneath the wooden limbs
Of a naked tree

         —x—

The leaves change color
Orange, brown, yellow, and red
Autumn leaves gather

 —x—
             —x—

Gather my children
Listen to the whisper of the tales the trees tell
Gather my children
When the leaves fell
Gather my children
Together in a pile
Gather my children
Beginning of harvest trial
Gather my children
Watch the colors play 
Gather my children
At the end of the day
To listen to the tales, as they fell, in a pile at the trial made into a play at the end of day.

This is a dVerse prompt for Fall with a focus on leaves or colors.
I chose 3 short poems, the middle poem a haiku, the other two free verse.