A mile walk through muggy July woods
standing dead timber draws nearer
as we reach the marshy shore
of our flooded destination

We wade wearing tennis shoes and jeans
into water whose coolness is welcome
and whose familiar depths are known

One single voice cries in the night
Bless me Father for I have sinned
I’ve traded my soul
For one night of lust

Another answers
To whom do you pray
To save what is now mine

Amid the writhing creatures chants
The vile stench of the dead and dying
Permeates her nostrils
As gasps for air are heard
To what end have I come
All for the sake of wanting
Was it worth
This!

Incantations to the Dark One
Rise as I fall
Deeper and deeper

Full of dreams
becoming real,
her life reveals itself
in tiny gleaming wonders
sparkling jewel-like
from our talks,

for when doubt rises
from painful awareness
of adulthood new-acquired
I am whom she seeks
to find the answers
that she thinks
she needs,

and when she talks
I listen,
astonished at this woman
my child has become,
grateful she still asks
questions she already
has answers for,
and proud she still asks me.

Religiosity of Religion

This is neither
A poem nor is it prose
But a combination
I suppose
Let’s see how it goes.

The oldest religion was
Lord’s Krishna’s
Where he had specified
That he was Time
The sun was God
So Time is God.

Also Lord Rama gave
A sample of equality and love
To ones family
Obeisance to the elderly
Justice in reality
Even to ones very own family

.
shall I write of trees?
gorgeous, as foreground or backdrop
to visions of life
fueling imagination
and heartfire

or write of the sea?
drowning one in depth
of emotion and tears
hoping to add one more drop
to its enormity

or shall I write of the sky?
whew! the view!
endless endless endlessly
to leave you draining
into a puddle of
discombobulation

Drenched in heavy morning rain
Like an arctic soaking to the vein;
I just sat there stunned and wordless,
by the results of endless tests.

Only do I seek the scoffer's sympathy;
my litanies dot the bottom of this timpani.
No restaurant on high street offers...
Whoa! I found where my sanity rests:

A very comforting hand takes mine,
Her other hand held her child as well.
I draw dry ice sculptures in my mind,
While a hawk’s screech rings overhead.

poems get long
nobody’s fault but the poet's

who sings lyrics
with a half full pen for company
a loaded gun for support

gazing into a future no one else
may see
Russian roulette, the only game in town --

as words flow with percussion ease
tapped out while clock ticks beyond
its moments

on long road of living with ideas
searching for lost phrases
poet thinks are new
like they are his or hers alone

You stream through my veins

your words an elixir
soothing and razing
my blood in chorus

holding me spellbound;

breathless

in the sweetest pain
of undeniable necessity

would you withhold
my passionate cacophony

force a bitter resolve of
awkward discontent?

please, do not wander
too far away.

11.8.2010
© Tonya Greenlee

I feel your hopeless, endless grieving
and both our journeys you impede
there's reason in your remaining quick
and now, I with you, gently plead
to forgive me, let me go, allow me
move on and do what I have to do
my purpose over there is finished
apart, that is, from my love for you

Masculinity

He mourns the youth once owned
the smooth tanned skin , 
eyes so blue and dreamy, they could melt 
a thousand hearts. 

He longs for the taught muscular frame and
well defined chest that made,
grown women weep.

But youth has flown and left in it's stead an imposter.
Thinning hair greying at the temples.
Skin now lined and puckered.

Eyes still bright behind glasses. 
Oh he calls to  youth, but it has fled.