Tag Archives: lesfic literature

Careful Flowers

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  • Careful Flowers

It is my love letter to three generations of women.

It includes many varieties of love, as well as of hatred. It is the story of both valiant and villainous hearts.carefulflowers4

Careful Flowers by Kieran York is about a woman whose life has been careful. She finds that nothing is as she believed it to be. Life suddenly becomes an unknown.

Fleur Hamilton is botanist with an important project and a pending grant. She’s in a relationship facing a crossroad. Her love for the woman in her life has taken a critical turn. As she enters her fourth decade, she finds not only her relationship being topsy-turvy – but everything in her life has capsized. She has lost her beloved great aunt.

Ever the scientist, she becomes obsessed with discovering the truth about her aunt, and about her own roots. It takes an examination of many lives for her to locate her own historical truth.

As she slowly uncovers her parents’ Hippie Era and their lives, she also discovers more about her Great Aunt Golda’s life as a prisoner of the Holocaust. Fleur is forced to make a horrific decision. Her unearthed heritage strengthens her as it directs her.

Love, hatred, kindness, and evil overwhelm her once tranquil life. It is the flowering of a  treatise of what went before. Fleur’s emotional journey comes with not only a tour of history, but it includes the by-stories of each era.

Her odyssey to San Francisco is where she first discovers both her personal past, as well as her unique humanity. She unlocks her background by unwrapping her parent’s Hippie Era. She uncovers her beloved aunt’s understanding of both love and hatred. She sees the world of a Holocaust survivor as it unfolds.

Her adventure becomes Fleur’s own history. As the stories are layered, they converge for Fleur to discover herself. She can then deal with not only her broken relationship – but her future.

It is today’s story of yesterday.

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Careful Flowers is available in book from through www.bluefeatherbooks.com. Or order through Bella Book Distribution for books or e-books. Books and Kindle e-books are also available through Amazon.

Kieran York’s romance, Appointment with a Smile, a 2013 Lambda Literary Award Finalist, is also available through Blue Feather Books, Bella Book Distribution and Amazon.

If you’re interested in poetry, check out her poetry in the best-selling Sappho’s Corner Poetry Series: Wet Violets, Volume 2; and Roses Read, Volume 3. , and Delectable Daisies, Volume 4.-isThe collections are edited by Beth Mitchum. They are available through http://ultravioletlove.com and Amazon. Also available through ultravioletlove.com/ and Amazon is the book of poetry by Kieran York Blushing Aspen, Sappho’s Corner Solo Poetry’s Series, Volume 4, edited by Beth Mitchum.

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Lighthearted Yesteryear

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Childhood should be a time of lighthearted days. This is often the case, and sometimes not. But I invite you to take a rhyming journey with me – for a feel-good glance back.

LIGHTHEARTED YESTERYEAR

All aboard for yesteryear land.
If you wish to go, please take my hand.
We’ll wander along to distant treasure.
We’ll journey back to homespun pleasure.
Close your eyes, dream of skies
blue and clear, have no fear.
You’re the captain of your ship.
And off we’ll go on our little trip.
Hang on tight with all your might.
We’re going right to see the sight.
Huge balloons and candy canes,
sugar dolls on gumdrop lanes.
Kids on parade drink pink lemonade.
Bright blue bicycles race gleaming red tricycles.
Hop aboard a merry-go-round.
Listen to the hurdy-gurdy sound.
A Jumping Jack has licorice in a sack.
A tiny red fox plays in a sand box.
With candy bars and toy cars,
and a kaleidoscope for color’s design,
and a giggle says that all is fine.
Animal crackers eat jelly beans.
Lollypop signs point to silly scenes.
Inside castles there are kings and queens
celebrating Christmases and Halloweens.
We’ll have great times in this place I know.
We’re all captains and we can row
across the sea of make-believe we’ll go.
With court jesters, and acrobats
we’ll all wear special funny hats.
Hoist away, spread the sails.
We shall wait for husky gales.
They’ll float our ship across the blue.
We’ll travel ever and ever anew.
When we arrive at our own special land
we’ll wiggle our toes in glittering sand.
There will be gifts galore
inside a huge toy store.
We’ll hear music and song
and know we belong.
Here comes the cake
hear the squeals we’ll make.
Now comes the shakes, malts, and soda pop.
If we spill, whoops, here comes the mop.
Candy will sprinkle out from the sky.
Paper airplanes swirl as they fly.
Chocolate, gingersnaps and laughing we are.
We’ll charge up a mountain to touch a star.
After all, it isn’t that high.
Not if we reach and really try.
We’ll run in the meadow, then climb a hill.
We’ll eat Cracker Jacks until we get our fill.
We’ll jump and run; then waltz with the sun.
When night has come and day is done,
we’ll wander on home and hop in our beds.
We’ll pull up the covers and then the spread.
Tucked into bed by kind, gentle hands
we’ll return to our own special lands.
We’ll wake blurry-eyed to wait for our friends.
And off we’ll travel around twisting bends.
Back to our place,
we’ll hasten to race.
Hear the train coming, clickety-clack –
coming down the well-worn track.
It will pick us up to take us shipside.
We’ll ready our departure to take a ride.
There are flowers with colors all aglow.
The hills ahead spread like a huge rainbow.
We’ll pluck new petals each as they bloom
from a magical flower in our playroom.
Childhood is bright as all the sun’s rays.
So let’s recall the best of our sweet days.
A childhood with love and without fear
is the best kind of lighthearted yesteryear.

COPYRIGHT: Kieran York 2013

 

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Please check out my poetry in the best-selling poetry collections, Sappho’s Corner Poetry Series: Roses Read, Volume 3; and Wet Violets, Volume 2. Edited by the award-winning poet, Beth Mitchum. These books and other wonderful books and music are available through http://ultravioletlove.com and Amazon.

If you’re interested in romantic fiction, please check out Appointment with a Smile, the 2013 Lambda Finalist in the Romance category, by Kieran York. A new book is scheduled for release in autumn of 2013, titled Careful Flowers. Books are available through www.bluefeatherbooks.com. Or order through Bella Book Distribution for books or e-books. Books and Kindle e-books available through Amazon. 

Rocky Mountain Intimacy

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ROCKY MOUNTAIN INTIMACY

High country, and our Rocky Mountain intimacy,
belong exclusively to us.
We amble between stony curtains.
Wildlife squeaks, bugles, rustles, warbles, and chirps.
Before us is our meadow of lush grasses,
delicate flowers, jutting chunks of granite,
and an assortment of brush and leaning trees.
A blanket we spread fits the ground perfectly.
Edges lift from the soft plant clumps beneath it.
As we relax, and stretch out upon the quilt,
we inhale the loam, the pine, and the sweetness
of thin, clean mountain air.
Harmony infuses us with all the love in the world.
Tranquility is an intrinsic pleasure of the moment.
Clouds trick us with their tender metaphoric language.
We savor one another’s joy.
For each time I gaze at you,
silly infatuation converts to love.
And our intimacy captivates me.
Our mountain picnic is in the midst of perfection.
Color dresses up the trees with new growth.
Echoing is a nearby stream’s melodious voice.
From that gentlest of all brooks,
trickling waters splash as they bounce over polished rocks.
A cool forest breeze is crooning a scat song
known to all eternity.
Our hearts make us wayward Bohemians.
We are trekkers on an impromptu mission.
Looking into one another’s eyes,
we become aware of our place.
We are no longer estranged spirits.
Nor is ours the evangelized ardor
of an idyllic script too often spoken.
This moment, and this monument
becomes the contour of us.
Our smiles are within the enormity of a universe.
Our embrace is between rock layers of protection.
We are extemporaneous, and our laughter proves it.
I slip a columbine, that matches your eye’s color,
into your outstretched hand.
You grin your approval.
There is some euphoric cohesiveness
I’ve never felt before.
And perhaps shall never feel again.
Love’s imprint is much greater
than a sparsely uttered slice of rhetoric.
Wilderness is a song sung only for us.
I would rather not return to civilization.
Hiking down the trail, we’ll promise to return.
Although it will be then, not now.
It will still and forever remain ours.
It will be another time and another place
of our Rocky mountain intimacy.

COPYRIGHT: Kieran York 2013

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Please check out my love poetry in the best-selling poetry collection, Sappho’s Corner Poetry Series: Roses Read, Volume 3; and Wet Violets, Volume 2. Edited by the award-winning poet, Beth Mitchum. These books are available through http://ultravioletlove.com and Amazon.

If you’re interested in romantic fiction, please check out Appointment with a Smile, the 2013 Lambda Finalist in the Romance category, by Kieran York. A new book is scheduled for release in 2013, titled Careful Flowers. Books are available through www.bluefeatherbooks.com. Or order through Bella books Distribution for books or e-books. Books and Kindle e-books available through Amazon.

Mockingbird Stolen

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MOCKINGBIRD STOLEN

The tragedy of a stolen mockingbird saddens me. I recently read about Harper Lee.

Most everyone knows that Harper Lee wrote a book called “To Kill a Mockingbird” half a century ago. A Pulitzer Prize winner, the classic has been one most of us have read more than once, and seen the movie.

It was successful fifty years ago, and is still required reading. Royalties for books sold in 2009 were over a million and a half dollars. Ms. Lee lived modestly over the years. She suffered a stroke a few years ago. Her rights were signed away during a time when she was experiencing a multitude of problems – vision and short-term memory among them.

By the time she recently turned 87, what royalties she received had been depleted. A law suit was filed in May. Charges were that her literary agent, an attorney, took advantage of the ailing Ms. Lee. The benchmark story was written by Mark Seal, and appears in the August issue of Vanity Fair. It is titled, “To Steal a Mockingbird” and explains the legal charges against the agent, as well as updated information.

Over the years numerous writers have been victimized by unscrupulous agents, publishers, and lawyers. Funds have been siphoned away from many of our literary giants. Such a sad commentary that the aging author of a masterpiece was treated unfairly.

Throughout the ages agents and publishers have encouraged and protected the struggling writer, and the treasury of literature. Diligently the agent presents the work to publishers. They try to find a home for a manuscript. Publishers produce books, and are champions of the writer. They work tirelessly to make the best possible product for the reader.

Mostly, both agent and publisher make herculean efforts on behalf of the continuation of fine literature.

I commend honorable, ethical agents and publisher – and thank them. They are often the unsung and under-appreciated heroes. They understand trust is a very elusive quality, and when in place, there is an eloquence between two people who love the written word.

I think I’ll reread Ms. Lee’s gift. And be thankful for those honorable folks in the field of publishing. These are people we trust to tend our words.

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Please check out my romantic fiction, Appointment with a Smile, the 2013 Lambda Finalist in the Romance Category, by Kieran York. A new book is scheduled for release in the summer of 2013, titled, Careful Flowers. Books are available through www.bluefeatherbooks.com. Or order books and Kindle e-books available through Amazon.

 

Kansas Dreams

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KANSAS DREAMS

Fireflies swarmed the shrubbery near my grandmother’s doorstep.
Fireflies – lightning bugs – by the time I was seven-years old,
I loved their descriptive names.
They seemed like miraculous events rather than insects.
They knew how to work a crowd.
Their brightly dotted tails sparkled with bursts of light.
As if they were pantomimic dancing – a graceful motion known only to them,
fireflies helped to shut down the day with their antics.
And they knew they could close tightly the evening with their mystery.
One of those Kansas nights forever beams back to my memory.
A storm betrayed tranquility.
The weather forecast included a steamy soaking.
Night’s pewter clouds began to seal away moonlight.
An uneasiness – a restlessness, was setting in.
Farm folks are aware of the fine line of fate.
One gentle rain shower is a healthy dousing.
And the other rain was a storm pounding stalks of green grain buds.
Wheat stalk, hulls – the gold of bread, would be embedded in soggy soil.
Midsummer night storms are often accompanied by destruction.
Once planted, what is to become of wheat fields?
They rely on both earth’s nutrients, and weather.
The kernels invite moisture, but not downpours.
On this night the sky’s face glared with ugliness.
No harvest is a chronicler of its own fortune.
Thankfully, this was a cooperating storm.
It flushed the vast sky of moisture, then waters turned to mist.
Thunder’s shriek drifted away into the night.
Worrying about the few lightning bugs my cousin had captured,
I hoped they had been spared, and found their way home.
Released from a Mason jar prison, they’d flown away quickly.
Their brief time as a faint lantern ended.
Their glow was too dim to usher a path for me to follow.
Perhaps they were beacons for my dreams.
When those dreams brought morning’s sunrise,
I woke with optimism.
The day of sweltering sun
dried remnants of last evening’s drenching.
So quickly through the day the landscape baked.
In the shade, I leaned against the oak tree’s bark.
Imprints were indenting my back with decoration.
Dried grasses crinkled and crumpled under my bare feet.
My mind shifted back and forth
from my library books to dripping Popsicles.
Would my life hold up against the world’s stormy agenda?
I’d never wanted the flash and cash of fame and fortune.
My dreams were not complicated, nor intricate.
I’d dreamed of the whispers of a thousand fireflies.
What would become of me when I grew up?
I vowed never to blink at earth’s loveliness.
I promised never to ignore kindness and love.
My Kansas dreams were never grandiose.
I wanted my own release from a Mason jar.
For I needed to light a moment of night.
I wanted nothing more than to place words together.
I needed only to write my heart’s language.

COPYRIGHT: Kieran York

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Please check out my love poetry in the best-selling poetry collection, Sappho’s Corner Poetry Series: Roses Read, Volume 3; and Wet Violets, Volume 2. Edited by Beth Mitchum. These books are available through http://ultravioletlove.com and Amazon.

If you’re interested in romantic fiction, please check out Appointment with a Smile, the 2013 Lambda Finalist in the Romance category, by Kieran York. A new books is scheduled for release in the summer of 2013, title Careful Flowers. Books are available through www.bluefeatherbooks.com. Or order through Bella Books Distribution for books or e-books. Books and Kindle e-books are also available through Amazon.

Listening In

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LISTENING IN ON EQUALITY

Any moment a ruling will be uttered or muttered, or shouted, or whispered. It will have to do with equality. Am I good enough to have the rights that all Americans should have? You be the judge. Well, actually, there are robed Justices doing the judging. Beyond that there are the American people.

LISTENING IN ON EQUALITY

I listen in on equality.
Superficial music blooms with an unrelenting promise.
Across the airways, love happens or it is being gutted.
Long ago forgotten, the subject plagues me.
As if it has become lightning’s jagged tongue, it blares.
I squint to see where decency might be.
I recognize the lyrics, for the song is titled Insta-Bully.
It talks trash.
The lead singer was just released from hatred’s lockdown.
Legislation is bait and switch.
As if words are souvenirs tossed into the barrenness,
musical notes wane.
Theoretical concepts have their own atmosphere.
Artificial emptiness has never impressed me.
Cascading volcanos of spewing intolerance burns.
Brains filled with ego do not entreat my sympathy.
Sludge brags as it paints injustice.
I overhear crud as it splats against clean walls.
Lucidity is sacred, and has flocked to the streets.
Bigotry sound exactly like cringe-worthy shouts.
Once impelled toward hatred, smarmy words fade.
Hearts locked in dark silence begin their histrionics.
Their authorship hides beneath shame.
The font of harm prints only litter.
If love is seeped in culture, I hope to soon hear its roar.
I wander the byways of eternity.
My shoulders sag, folding with age.
Ravaged, I march on.
For my torrent of energy hears the drums of equality.
An answer becomes my destiny – my ballad.
My choir garb is frayed by disappointment.
With rusty shovels, I excavate, and examine fate.
With tight-fisted heart, I search and hope.
Does a human heart have nerves?
Who owns eternity?

Copyright Kieran York

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Please check out my poetry in the best-selling poetry collection, Sappho’s Corner Poetry Series: Roses Read, Volume 3; and Web Violets, Volume 2. Edited by Beth Mitchum. These books are available through http://ultravioletlove.com and Amazon.

If you’re interested in romantic fiction, please check out the 2013 Lambda Finalist in the Romance category, Appointment with a Smile by Kieran York. Books are available through www.bluefeatherbooks.com. Or order through Bella Books Distribution for books or e-books. Books and e-books are also available through Amazon.

A Cautious Lover’s Mumblings

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The following poem was written when I was in my mid-twenties. Although I’ve changed, many of my mumblings have not. It’s always interesting to return to early roads, and past beliefs. Crossroads. This is from an early volume of my published poetry and the copyright is 1974. A very long time ago.

A CAUTIOUS LOVER’S MUMBLINGS

Rushing up and out against reason, and no optimism is worth the slam you are aware is hiding, just waiting to leap out of the dark and tangle itself into your deepest secrets.

Spread out into a layered slip-cover, the moment that beckons you greets the un-understandable.

Ok, say it to life. Say it all. Reach into you and pull out a fistful of truth – your own brand of truth. Touch that finely tune, precision instrument of you, and try not to be impressed.

I’m going to grab a few blades of grass in my hand and pretend that the green represents my soul. No bull about plain old grass for grasses sake. I’ll run my hand over the grass, the uneven, unplanned, stretching grasses.

I feel the shade, a sleeping coolness of shade. How much of life crosses over us, how indifferent we are to the shade. And yet, we weave our meaning together.

When I smile, you know what I mean. We mash our thoughts, tears, and smiles and we watch the leaves drop and become pounded into cement and as we watch the streaming, palpitating stars hanging on and knitting together a universe.

Ok, try to comprehend a comet or a smile. But first, I’m asking you to empty yourself out and show me your underneath fears and doubts. Scrape off crust, exterior, and let me touch the deep you that is so well-hidden.

Collars and yokes are never shrugged off without a struggle. So show me the inside. I’ve seen the rest. Nestled between the pews of church, within the partitions of office talk, trickling sweat between lovers in seedy motel rooms – never deep enough.

I’ve heard the rest. The sounds you make over coffee, against a spray of gin, all designed to tell me what  I want to hear, what you want me to hear.

Stop impressing me a minute. Allow me to stop impressing you. Peel away the layer, the skin of the drum and tell me the beat, where it originates – its womb. Allow it to trickle out and into me. Don’t pull back. Let the noise of you spill out and capture me.

Let the touch we share agree with what ingredients we are made up of. Don’t give me the tree’s bark, I want the roots. The veins, sinew, marrow of the very heart. Carve away the part I view and allow me to feel the tickling truth that is you. And don’t be afraid, I’ll also be discarding my armor.

Allow the breathing that once pretended to be a windstorm blowing against my center core. Overcome me with you. Penetrate into me and allow me to penetrate you. Don’t button out your meaning. Please don’t zipper off your mind from me. Don’t reject my pleas as if they were lonely words emerging from tonight. Take them up and work them into a pliable communique. Barter with me, challenge me, threaten me, and finally allow us to submit to one another – both victorious. Seeking not to destroy nor to be destroyed.

Walk into me, allow me to walk into you, grabbing up all of what makes us whole and complete. Holding one another’s beliefs and values in both hands to be closely examined and held with care. And as I pass through and into you, remember how we are all one. How very one we all are.

Green lights shimmering and telling us that it’s alright to pass into one another await us. Swim into my current, fly freely into the brightness of my light. Hammer your confidence and your secret you into me. Allow me to shatter the bricks and mortar and gain entry into you.

Don’t polish your exterior, don’t paint your interior. Slot me straight into you. No detours, no bull. Just tell me where you are. Don’t leash me to you, but allow me to pull myself into you. Come not against me, but into me. Allow us to intertwine and become one another.

We touch the grasses together, we become the universe. And when we become ourselves within the universe, and within one another – we make love.
Copyright 1974 Kieran York

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Please check out my poetry in the best-selling poetry collection, Sappho’s Corner Poetry Series: Roses Read, Volume 3; and Wet Violets, Volume 2. Edited by Beth Mitchum. These books are available through http://ultravioletlove.com and Amazon.

If you’re interested in romantic fiction, Please check out the 2013 Lambda Finalist in the Romance category, Appointment with a Smile by Kieran York. Books are available through www.bluefeatherbooks.com. Or order though Bella Book Distribution for Books or e-books. Books and Kindle e-books are also available through Amazon 

Etiquette and Elegy

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ETIQUETTE OF MORNING

The etiquette of morning exists within tame hearts.
Luminosity’s candor is the fresh smell of daybreak.
We are inspired by the gentle waking of earth.
As each roll of our orb shrugs us to light, we begin.
From synthetic dreams, we languish with contentment.
Trees, grasses, and flowers have a debonair strut as they grow.
Midmorning’s hesitancy bring new exhilaration.
It isn’t over, the graciousness of morning.
Unfiltered sunbeams have time before midday’s arrival.
Rays cultivate, regenerating warmth.
Even clouds give a diaphanous glow.
Mosses and lichens are encrusted upon staunch granite.
We have neared them as we walk.
Sprouting sprigs of blooming twiggy plants brush our legs.
Feathery leaves, with gentle touches, protrude.
Tufted petals open to swallow down sunlight.
They fail to recognize that they are life’s inducements.
Other breathing species crouch, and sprawl.
Mornings make us venturesome.
Propriety allows kindness.
Etiquette requires concern for others.
Romance is our greatest reason.
It is so like the gentleness of daybreak.

ELEGY OF A DAY

What is our private elegy of a day?
Are we here to take the pulse of meteors and magic?
We are humanity, and believe ourselves life’s linchpin.
Existence idles its way to become Homo sapiens adrift.
Our minds empower us with capability.
Wisdom is our resource.
Nudged by kindred concern, we attempt to please one another.
Yet we require stop-signs and fences.
Trapped by earth’s gravity, be banish one another.
But also, we covet the humanness we share.
Our mission – could it be learning the world?
Understanding our bounty, as well as our hazards?
Or living with the vicious nature of an earth searching mischief?
Our planet’s divine and disheveled moments are everywhere.
There are magnificent plundering experiments – yet we remain.
Our inscription is a riddle of antique messages.
Time has welded many clues within earth’s crusty quarry.
Nature has been compressed by carved ditches, and sprawling waters.
Outside our periphery are whirling gigantic marbles.
Within our own is a strident exchange of arctic blasts and blistering lava.
There is a mystical research of nature long ago sealed away.
Life’s residue reminds us of our value.
Nudged from rock and soil, we migrate.
We learn our world and ourselves – if we are fortunate.
We come to know another heart – if we are blessed.
Our elegy is the day we spend here together.

COPYRIGHT: Kieran York

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Please check out my poetry in the best-selling poetry collection, Sappho’s Corner Poetry Series: Roses Read, Volume 3; and Wet Violets, Volume 2. Edited by Beth Mitchum. These books are available through http://ultravioletlove.com and Amazon.

If you are interested in romantic fiction, please check out the 2013 Lambda Finalist in the Romance category, Appointment with a Smile by Kieran York. Books are available through www.bluefeatherbooks.com. Or order through Bella Books Distribution for books or e-books. Books and Kindle e-books are also available through Amazon.

My latest book, Careful Flowers is scheduled for release mid-Summer.

Lace and Denim

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LACE AND DENIM

Lace and denim – I wear them both.
As I’ve aged with the splendor of lace and the durability of denim,
I’ve inserted both inside my poetry and prose.
My youth has faded into after-hours times.
Tarnish may have built up, but patina is well-layered.
Yet my heart is never far from being center.
I’m in the middle of a tranquil and wondrous life.
I chuckle when admitting that my emotion
compares to a well-ridden horse.
Much of my life I’ve been a stray mustang.
I’ve galloped lighted paths enamored with all.
My mainstay has been interior peace.
I belong to a once-hidden sisterhood.
We are now in clear sight, and proudly so.
Our love is mostly a generous guardianship.
Shakespeare had written about black vesper’s pageants.
Okay, over the years I’ve had wounds,
but they became my heart’s foster care.
Sappho mentions her heart has been shaken by love.
My winter song is unshaken.
I wrap my skin with lace, and then slip into denim.
Perhaps we women exist within our own revolution.
We share healing psalms, and the embrace of reverence.
Sonnets are written when exuberance throws off sorrow.
Romance is an ego massage kneading another’s heartbeat.
Indoctrinated by homespun philosophy,
my epigram is nearly always visible.
Genet speaks of love’s worst traps;
Whitman asks if self can be given.
I know very little about the fabric of humanity,
other than the moments I love.
Youth recognizes odes to ovaries.
Age knows the edit by heart.
And I’ve learned the kiss of a sunrise is magnificent.
Just as the embrace of moonlight warms me.
So many patches cover my ancient soul.
I believe in words spoken by wisdom through letters.
Compositions speak to all ages, all through the ages.
My existence has been a song only time can best sing.
Romance and friendship are the handrails of living.
Lace and denim are my armor – I wear them both.

COPYRIGHT: Kieran York

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Please check out my poetry in the best-selling poetry collection, Sappho’s Corner Poetry Series: Roses Read, Volume 3; and Wet Violets, Volume 2. Edited by Beth Mitchum. The books are available through http://ultravioletlove.com and Amazon.

If you’re interested in romantic fiction, please check out the 2013 Lambda Finalist in the romance category, Appointment with a Smile by Kieran York. Books are available  through www.bluefetherbooks.com. Or order through Bella Books Distribution for books or e-books. Books and Kindle e-books are also available through Amazon.

WAR CLOUD WORDS

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At times it seems that we are surrounded by war. Explosions rob us of one another. Countries, with mad posturing, aim their threats across the world. And I go along with little-to-no understanding of war.

I caught the flowing thoughts that stampeded through my mind. War Cloud Words is written with pain, with hurt, and with ingredients I admit not to know how to decipher. My vision of a world filled with war cloud words has a flip side. I can also hope for humanity’s long reach to finally hold a sky filled with love and peace.

WAR CLOUD WORDS

Words, no louder than a wasp emits, were sighed.
Vividly detailed hatred shouted its message.
Each nation’s declaration was galvanized with stealthy resolve.
When trepidation converted to fear –
terror became a shiver announcing there was no way back.
Such a small deed was required – barely a blemish.
Watchdogs suffered from the violent feeding frenzy.
A veiled cradle had been leavened into time’s mud.
Metal twisted stick-figures.
Uncoiled trinkets were barely identifiable as they
anonymously cascaded to earth.
Hollowed-out lands, homes, people were estranged
from their mission of life.
Death remnants of pungent air, and hovering souls
were reinvented.
Exalted, vile, and evil laughter claimed sad victory.
A desolate calendar continued digging earth.
Naked flame of once bright ceremony
duplicated blisters of excruciating agony.
Life was haunted by love converging
in a cobwebbed corner.
Delusion invaded destiny.
Rushing away was the fake charisma
of a well-armed circus barker.
All songs smashed into their own silent stone of anguish.
No one had truly conquered the darkest day ever created.
War exploded – while love imploded.
Emotions were folded between crease of flesh.
Drills scratched the globe to find the depths of blood.
Hate’s taste had forever fouled the air.
Yet perfumed trails of love curled toward heaven.
If we pressed our lips to kindness,
would unkindness not hide?
Such a searing microcosm had ushered in disruption.
The clasp of love could assuredly will peace with simplicity
and with the majesty of perfect care.
Yet villainy intruded with deliberate intent
to scar that very decency and carve it away
Hostilities, so chaotic and cruel seemed ever-present.
So honorable was trust and benign hearts.
Prayer from the sky above sent utterances of charity.
And war cloud words were shrieking ever louder.
At least until the world became weary of listening.
And then without contrition,
without pseudo-justice,
yet with compassion for victim, and not villain –
reason lived.
The sky cleared.

COPYRIGHT: Kieran York

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Please check out my poetry in the best-selling poetry collection, Sappho’s Corner Poetry Series: Roses Read, Volume 3; and Wet Violets, Volume 2. Edited by Beth Mitchum, the books are available through http://ultravioletlove.com and Amazon.

If you are interested in romantic fiction, please consider the 2013 Lambda Award Finalist, Appointment with a Smile, by Kieran York. Books are available through www.bluefeatherbooks.com. Or order through Bella Books Distribution for books or e-books. Books and Kindle e-books are available through Amazon. York’s latest book is titled Careful Flowers, and will soon be released by Blue Feather Books.