It was never for the night, but only
for the summer.     My seventeenth
summer. Never would I say it shouldn’t
have happened, because it did.
You with a past
I would certainly become a part of,
and I collecting stories.   An identity.
At seventeen. You took a part of that;
of all, or whatever, went forward.
What I have become.
Bones are formed through experience,
shaping us emotionally, physically, and
psychologically.           Down to the soul.
You were there.    There I was,
not knowing what to expect, and you
expecting nothing but honesty.
I didn’t question your motives, nor did I
question mine. Age was not important,
you said, nor was intent.
There was a difference.
Seventeen years. but only one summer.
July heat, the scent of patchouli,
sandalwood and #5. Intoxicating.
I tasted the moon on your breath,
and witnessed the clouds in your eyes.
A sullen anger, a hurt from before, and
your impatient need to get over
the emotions.    You talked about it.
I could only listen, or try, to understand.
At seventeen I could not know.
Yet.   I would learn.   Eventually.
In times of give and of take, we took
consciously. Each of us. Never a moment
of mixing the beginning up with the end.
We knew.    I wouldn’t ask;
at seventeen you don’t.    Of course,
I remember fireflies, the music, touch,
and the sense and secrets we rarely
acknowledged.   Not enough time.   Only
one summer.      It was close, something
I had never had before, but it was not
friendship. A friend you would see again.
Not only for a summer.

©2018 j.g. lewis

“It isn’t all it seems
at seventeen”
-Janis Ian

by Alex Maxwell

Dear Simon,

Thank you for the letter you sent, it’s wonderful to receive news from you. Long has it been since we shared a table or a blazing fire with the shadows dancing around our backs. . . your letters are always a treasure filled with memories. I am happy to hear Mary is doing well and progressing with her painting, she always was a talent; please would you send her my best wishes and bravo on the last exhibition.

Although it saddens me to read of your torments; the fears you are experiencing at the moment. The news of your inner struggle falls heavy upon my heart; the search to find balance in our days is always a tight rope. I will try and help in any way I can, although it is difficult with the distance which lies between us. My advice, and I am only mentioning this as a loving friend, comes with a wish in helping you to see more clearly. As you have written describing your feelings; ‘the struggle to find a balance’ to me it seems you are trapped within the two worlds. This, believe me, is highly common in today’s fast-paced society with so much attacking our senses.

The first world I speak of is the underlying evil ego, which as we know is always hungry and is cunning in its disguise. The ego always it seems shouts loudly requesting world domination; it requires you to trample your fears and anyone else in your way to get your inner desires. Demanding you to relentlessly push yourself, to pursue your limits and beyond; although if you fail to respond it criticises and belittles you into a feeling of less than.

The other world is the spiritual world, which comes across subtly; sometimes in the noise of everyday living it becomes almost inaudible. The spiritual as I have said before arrives as a whisper on the wind; which is only audible in calming silence and many are deaf to it. It requires you to have faith and patience, to allow your inner thoughts time to materialize. This requires great faith and solemn trust in oneself; which is difficult to maintain when the ego is hanging a noose around our necks.

‘To do or to be’ is the question which we seem to constantly wrestle on our journey through this existence. These two forces grapple in the realms of our inner being; struggling to control our thinking and actions. Unfortunately they are polar opposites; which means sometimes we find ourselves in the middle of these opposing teams, and so are forced to make a delicate decision. Although never forgetting our arch enemy ‘habit’; habit is the monster which drives us blindly so it needs to be tamed, altered or encouraged through constant practice.

I have always found that silence is our best weapon against the ego, which I deem as the voice most harmful to our well being. Silence though can be a difficult place to seek salvation; as it opens the doors to thought and this thinking is the root of our problems. Being there we can easily drift back into our past on a quest to find where we took the wrong turn, or to strike out into our future in the hope of finding a better path to lead us forward. The silence I am talking about is more in the concept of meditation, letting yourself become still while the thoughts slowly dissipate; like when we stir sugar into water waiting patiently for the heavy particles to either sink to the bottom, or dissolve leaving the top of the glass clear. It is here where we are able to hear our spiritual voice more clearly.

I hope that this helps my friend and look forward to the day we meet again, sharing those tales of yesteryear.

About me I am doing well, thank you for asking. I have a job that keeps the wolves from my door and spend my free time writing and seeking the silence of which I spoke of before. Spring is on the way and soon the dance of the bluebells will accompany me along my walks. The wind has blown strong this winter, so I am in hope we will have a glorious summer. I seem to have written much and now must take my leave.

Wishing you all my best my friend, may the favourable winds blow your sails and grant you fair weather. All the best on your next poetry collection, I look forward to receiving my copy.

Your loving friend,
Steve

I will leave your with an old story I have read somewhere –

It’s the story of two bird trappers, one day they set their traps upon the mountain and the following they return to find their netting full with pigeons struggling madly to free themselves. ‘What a waste of time; we cannot sell these at the market they only feathers and bone,’ says the first trapper, but his friend thinks for a while and reply’s ‘no, but if we feed them on bread they will grow fat and then we can sell them for a good price.’ So every day they feed the pigeons and they eat all the bread growing fat, except for one, it never eats and constantly struggles to be free; he grows scrawny over time. At the end of the week all the pigeons are now fat enough to sell, but the scrawny one has become so scrawny he slips through the netting and is free again to wonder in the hills.

©2018 Alex Maxwell

Alexander Maxwell was born and raised in Africa in the Seventies and Eighties. In the Nineties, he moved to London, England, before traveling around the world. Home has always been where his heart is, and now his heart dwells in southwestern Cornwall.
He writes poetry, having published his first collection A Passive Silhouette Spine in 2015. His hobbies are surfing, photography, design and a simple way of life. He is the creator of POEM KUBILI.

 

by Stormy Peterson

I learned early on, I’m the kind of bitch people don’t worry about. . . probably because I was raised by one, or maybe because very little escapes my attention, and I rarely find myself playing the fool.
   I don’t coo, and giggle like a baby-doll come to life, I don’t have a tiny voice and a vacant look on my face that begs someone else to ‘write my story for me,’ and I definitely don’t play small to make other people more comfortable.
   I have a big, loud mouth, and a head full of ideas that I believe should be used for more than just adding to the collective cacophony of noise.
   When I was a young girl, I sometimes wondered what it would be like to be the classic damsel in distress that the quintessential, handsome gentleman would rush to save from whatever peril I found myself in. But I was different, and always had been. I didn’t cry when I was scared, I had a calm, clear head during emergencies, I didn’t shake at the flood of adrenaline coursing through my system, I didn’t shrink from blood (at most, my worst thoughts were of staining my clothes).
   I was not the woman from the black and white movie who needed to be slapped in order to ‘snap out of it,’ and I certainly never wilted into the nearest man’s hands in a dramatic back-of-hand-to-forehead-faint. No, that woman was never going to be me. And if she was, it would require the abandonment of everything it had already meant to be me, in my most natural state. Frankly, not only had I never quite learned how to be that fake, but it sounded like an awful lot of work for a payout that didn’t seem equivalent, or greater to the required price.
   Not interested in being short-changed, my days continued on as they had before, with me growing each day (more in feistiness than size, I’m sure) until I overheard the conversation between my parents after one of my dad’s friends was killed in a workplace accident, leaving behind his widow to now navigate life on her own, newly discovered, terms.
   “That poor woman,” my dad said, “I just don’t know what she’s going to do without him; she needs so much help, and doesn’t know how to take care of anything. It wouldn’t be as hard on you because I’m gone all the time, anyway. I don’t worry about you.”
   “Yeah, I know,” my mother quipped. “I have to do everything myself, so I just pretend like you’re dead, it makes it easier to get through all of the tasks on my own without being perpetually furious about it.”
   This was a wife who, for a time, slept with a pistol in a sliding compartment in her headboard in case anyone from the rabble of weirdos, and peeping Tom’s swarming our home decided to up the ante, and force entry in the late night hours. Our houseful of women left to fend for ourselves which comprised of two teenage daughters, a runt (me), a toy poodle, and a mother with no concept of backing down. She didn’t have the luxury of catching the vapors every time a man couldn’t magically solve our problems.
   And so it is, my sisters and I never learned to be women who would trade our souls for the illusion of a man’s safety, and all of the counterfeit comforts included. I’ve seen her, though. I know who she is, and I’m not judging her, I’m wondering which part(s) of herself she had to kill to get here. This is the place where she washes her husband’s patronizing insults down with another gulp of boxed-wine bought in bulk (which is incredibly economical, and an obvious choice I finally understand considering how much fluid it must take to drown oneself every day) that has become her home; her cage. Her prison.
   Ever the perfect hostess, she (again) offers me another glass, secretly hoping I’ll get drunk enough not to notice, or remember, her humiliation. It’s not just that of her husband’s actions, but how she betrayed — and continues to betray — herself, for what we’ve been told we all really want.
   I don’t accept, and we sit awkwardly in her shame.
   She is painfully aware of how aware I am of it all, and part of me aches for her.  Do we both know the money, the property, the expensive gifts, jewelry, cars, new family, and upgraded husband are meaningless when you’re dead inside?
   Does she ever visit her own grave? Did she leave any markers behind to find it again?
   We can pretend that heartbreak and shattered dreams are avoidable, but they truly are commonplace happenings that are not exclusive to one type of person, and yet each one of us has the power to decide whether we will be defined, destroyed, or just slightly detoured by them. Cloaking ourselves in the bubble-wrap of artificial-stability does nothing but suffocate. 

“Don’t be delicate, be vast and brilliant.”
                                                -Shinedown 

©2018 Stormy Peterson

Stormy Peterson is a fine artist cultivated in the foothills of the Olympic Peninsula, believer of Bigfoot with a background in apparel and textiles merchandising, and design.  Come hang out with The Longshoreman’s Daughter herself, at  http://stormaculus.blogspot.com/

“A man without words is a man without thoughts.”
                                                                              -John Steinbeck

No matter how deep or superficial, words always send a message.

Whether spoken or written, language is used to express a certain emotion, event or situation. Many times they will cause joy, or pain, or spell indifference. We react to words.

Sometimes you have a lot to say, other times there are words you can’t seem to let out; the ones that get stuck in your throat, or are washed away by tears. Where do they go?

Lately I’ve flipped through old notebooks and journals of the past to find scraps of information, half-finished sentences and paragraphs of words intended for someone else. Often they appear as incoherent thought, or accurate accounts of a moment. True, and purposeful, but never released. Now just a remembrance, or a reminder.

The further back I’ve gone, the harder it is to remember who the words were written for, when, or why I bothered scribbling them down.

Words express our worth. Language is used to soothe the soul or sort out details. This is why, mainly, we keep a journal as a map of where we’ve been. These are the skid marks on the road we travel.

Communication the root of all language, but it goes deeper. So much of the time we are trying to keep in touch with our self. There is liberation in letting words out. When you are no longer held hostage by thought, or limited by perspective, you can find calm or comfort.

During the month of March, I am exploring words I have passed over or let sit on the rough pages. There are so many things I’ve got to say, but perhaps these phrases, passages, or poems, have to be said before I can move further.

I’m also opening up this site and have invited other writers to contribute to the theme. These are writers I have come to know over the past couple of years, writers I am associated with in one form or another, and writers I respect. Each writer I have invited has written something that has previously caught my eye, or captured my emotions in one way or another. Though their words I have witnessed madness and frustration, but also solace, and melancholic self-reflection.

Each writer has their own tone of expression. As submissions arrive I have enjoyed reading words for someone else, written by someone else.

Last week, after receiving the rough draft of a story, I was further reminded how we all keep things inside. The words were raw, the topic was close, and the piece so authentic. Despite the cathartic nature of going through the process, the writer could not take the work where it was intended to go, and will submit another piece.

I totally understand. I have a letter, a couple of essays, and two poems I struggle with off and on. I know what should happen, am often encouraged with the progress, and still I cannot take them where I want to.

Reading over this one piece in particular, I see too many sentences deleted, or altered. I’m not quite sure when the revisions happened, but they are real. Corrections. Still, through the eraser’s smudge, you can still see the meaning, the feelings, and the intention.

Not everything comes out like you want. Not everything will be received as expected.
You slowly learn, and maybe that is what holds you back from saying what still needs to be said.

Oftentimes words need to wait for another day.