THE BEAUTY WITHIN 


Beauty, I’m told
comes from within
From the depth of the heart, 
not from the skin
From fierce independence 
softened by grace
From the splendor of hope, 
not just the face

I didn’t see this coming, 
yet I accept it as true
I was seeking my equal 
the day I found you
When I look in your eyes, 
my heart is inspired
And I think to myself, 
“She is filled with such fire!”

I was captured by beauty, 
but I’m held by respect
For what makes you strong 
makes you perfect
I’d gift you my heart 
and my soul, if you please
If you walk by my side, 
not to follow or lead

Perhaps one day 
we’ll share deep love and desire
Built not upon beauty, 
but these strengths I admire

ONE LAST DANCE by D.L.McHale


Lovers and Dancers

In Spring she danced with her true love
Each step in softness, lights descending
From the silver rays of moon above
Terpsichore's guidance never-ending.
Summer found her slightly winded
Though to her lover’s hand she held
And while this dance more quickly ended,
Within his arms all fears were quelled.
Upon a chilled wind Fall did follow
Fatigued, she cried, “No more to dance!”
He prayed to her beloved, Apollo,
“What price secures another chance?”
In Winter’s snow she found her rest
His tears upon her funeral pyre;
Now holding close within his chest
One final dance, his heart’s desire.

A BRIEF RFLECTION ON WHY I WRITE by D.L.McHale


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I’m not the best at writing. I’ll never be famous or widely read. But I’m okay with that. I spent years receiving no or sparse encouragement for my writing efforts. But still I wrote. Yet outside affirmation was never what I needed. What I needed all along was to listen with conviction to the compulsive inner voice that said, “write!”

Writing has alwas given me a sense of spiritual relief, a deep fulfillment of comfort and confidence. It reminds me that everything negative that happens in life has a sense of beauty in it; sometimes you just have to be patient and be willing to open your mind to it.

Of course, I also write to learn better techniques and improve upon my current style. .The more I write, the easier it is to find personal strengths and deliver the verse the way I want it to be interpreted.

As I said, I acknowledge that my writing is at best mediocre. But that is not the point.  The point is that I continue to write.

JUGGLING LIFE by D.L.McHale


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Consider for a moment that we are all jugglers. It is, afterall, what life demands of us; constant juggling – of time, relationships, our attention, responsibilities. We feel ourselves continually caught up in the demanding task of keeping many things up in the air simultaneously, smoothly rotating, round and round.

Suppose then, in our quest to be the best juggler possible, we see that we are juggling three balls: one rubber, one wooden, and one crystal.

In the course of our juggling, we slip and drop one ball. Let’s say it’s the rubber ball. What happens to it? No real damage done, right? It bounces. It comes back to you. This rubber ball might represent your education, your job, your contributions to the community in which you live. It is the decisions you make everyday that defines not the depth, but the breadth of living. In the course of your life you may drop this ball several times…you may change jobs, you advance, you are laid off, you make new friends, old ones slip away, you go back to school…it is constantly moving in new directions.

Do not overly concern yourself when this rubber ball slips and falls to the ground; it will retain its resiliency, bounce back, and everything will be fine.

Suppose now you lose your focus for a second, perhaps a day or two. You drop the wooden ball. What becomes of it? Well, it’s a bit noisier, true, but in all likelihood it will become scratched, perhaps chipped. In time, after a few falls, it may even take on a new shine, a new patina.

This wooden ball represents your health and your spirituality. It changes…constantly. It evolves.  It will not look the same today as it will tomorrow. That is its nature. Be mindful of keeping this one aloft, but do not distress if from time to time it slips your grasp. It, too, is resilient and in the long run, it endures.

But what then of the third ball? The crystal ball? What happens if you take your eye from it for a moment and it hits the floor? What becomes of it?

It shatters! It will not return to you for it is utterly destroyed.

This crystal ball represents your close, intimate relationships. Your husband, your wife. Your Mother and Father and sisters and brothers. It represents your children and their children, et. cetera, et. cetera. It represents family and all close and cherished relationships. It represents the giving and the receiving of love.

If you drop this ball, no amount of effort will repair it. It is lost forever. For this reason alone, you must be acutely and forever focused on keeping this ball in the air at all costs.

As you juggle life, keep this lesson in mind, and keep your priorities likewise aligned. Allow for mistakes in life (the rubber and the wooden balls), but never accept your life as the mistake (the crystal ball!)

PERFECTED in the FORGETTING by D.L. McHale


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Your softness courses through my fingertips
a single kiss pressed upon my parted lips
sweet soft words spoken in the dead of night
as you pull me closer, as you hold me tight

…fragments of a waking dream
nothing in the rising is as it seems
a whisper in the timeline of memory
perfected in the forgetting of you and me

You were never the one for me
and I was never the one for you

There are empty roads enough to walk
No feet at which to lay the final fault
I will find my way in the absence of you
Forgotten love is like morning dew
It melts away as the day grows longer
As pain subsides, as the heart grows stronger

You were never the one for me
and I was never the one for you

To have loved and lost is all we have done
We wagered so much, so little was won
A temporaray madness, a soft siren’s call
The best we could do was cushion the fall
Neither breathless desire or passionate embrace
Love was the wisdom to let go with grace

You were never the one for me
and I was never the one for you

There is light to cut through the darkest night
I may wander for awhile but I will be alright
Thoughts wander now to a bright new horizon
The weight of our failing has finally lightened
Each memory lost, false love then betrayed us
A thousand miles stretch forever between us

I wish you joy and the fulfillment of dreams
….perfected in the forgetting of you and me

You were never the one for me
and I was never the one for you

The Receding Tides of Love by D. L. McHale


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It is easy to say goodbye – to meet again is hard.
Love gone like rose petals fallen on flowing waters.

My thoughts of are like flowing waters, meandering toward the open sea on a hopeless journey.

In time, washed away over a burnt and fading orange horizon.

My hope, too!

The north wind blows! Oh, how it blows, mercilessly cutting with icy fingers into the quick of me…

Here on the ocean it’s endlessly cold!

My home is at the bend of a crumbling, salt-soaked pier. I watch a lone white sail at heavens’ end – like a waking dream, quickly gone – who can I ask where?

Darkness descends upon the endless sea.

We had often walked upon warmer, infinite sands, pressing our bare heels into the foaming wetness.

Your footprints were swept away too quickly…swallowed by the receding tides of love.

This cold empty beach was never what I wished; these scattered empty shells speak of inevitable ends.

The beauty of the ocean’s edge declines more year by year, memories pulled into the deep forgotten blue with each retreating wave.

As the sun goes down,  chilling lunar winds descend, whipping the sands, stinging my face.

With beauty comes inevitable pain!

To hear seagulls cry, or see pelicans on the fly makes me sorrow even more.

Oh, how I lack the courage for this day!

Wrapping solitude around me like vaporous veil, I turn for home – or what I once call home:

an empty room, a quiet room,
an empty bed, a quiet bed
my refuge from the darkness
my refuge from the light

In deep deception, imagining I’ve found a place that suits me..
I have made my home amidst this mighty shore, yet I can no longer bear the crashing of the ocean swells.

Outside my window, all the butterflies are white – a pair flitter over the dying garden’s light.

These damn reflections – they damage my heart!

Two tears trace two lines down my face, falling upon the ocean’s beaten coast.

Separated from the loving and the unloving: I have not often thought of her, but neither can I forget. We would not recognize each other even if we met again.

My face is covered with sand, my temples glazed with ocean foam.

In deepest darkness of night, a sudden dream returns me to her arms; we look at each other without a word, a thousand recriminations flow.

I know that this must have some deeper meaning. It must!

My muse lifts me from my sickly slumber, and smiling, asks me to write a poem, as though verse might somehow soothe this savage state!

I try to write the pain away, but there are no words.

Tonight, the ocean’s wind enters through the window. Torn gauze curtain starts to flutter and fly.

I turn slowly in my bed, looking up at the bright moon and send my prayers a thousand miles into light.

ABSTRACTIONS by D.L. McHale


abstractions

Her sexual abstraction takes even the most depraved of men by surprise.

She boasts of her conquests
     in morning’s breaking light
     as she brings her legs
     back together

How often she surprises even herself.

This is not a woman really known for her purity! Still, if you know the woman just from her sexual exploits, go immediately to the back of the class.

If you are foolishly tempted to label
     her, she’ll simply switch gears

An entire life of mythic proportions;
her world feels stage managed,
yet she deserves credit
as stage manager.

She likes to demurely deny
     that she even likes sex

As props go, men simply come cheap.  She revels in their adoration, devoting herself in putting them through their paces.

She has a love-hate relationship with her own myth, but both the love and the hate feeds her savage seduction.

When an image of herself becomes
      predictable, she throws it away and
      starts over

Before long she’ll present
abstractions as true love,
far from free offerings
of softness of flesh.

Uninvited overtures will snap shut all sexual overtones, presenting the cold indifference of virginal chastity.

She boasts that “nothing like me has
     ever come into this world before”

She seductively presents as a woman shaping and reflecting the male gaze, posing nude with her hair drawn tightly back from her classic bone structure.

When she tires of their perversities,
she silently re-emerges clothed,
with her hair down
and a soft pressed smile beneath –
pale eyes downward cast.

She’ ll move slow and with purpose
from empty room to empty room –
her dress hanging loose and full,
denying her sultry curves; as chaste
as a newly ripened peach.

Abstraction as revelation,
     shifting effortlessly
     from sultry siren
     to matronly madonna.

She is a mixture of soft pastels
and vibrant splashes of watercolors, with whiplash-inducing impulsiveness.

When she loves, her colors
     have sudden explosive intensity.

    When she hates, she progressively
    tightens and redefines herself.

The lack of any real separation
between reality and abstraction
is not to be carelessly measured
between sunrises and sunsets;
It is found in labored, tortured breaths
drawn between clenched teeth.

“Anything but flatness,”  she prays
as the darkness of night envelopes her
and carries her in its downward spiral.

By that time, it has become all but empty of feeling. The show opens with a dull if surprisingly contemporary picture of clouds,

After so many years
     of living in the eternal,
     Of loving in the abyss
     she has adopted a view
     from above the clouds.

Abstractions, her long and lonely hours
down to the bones and the wilted flowers.

Insidious Wrong


image

What joyful dreams while our summers seemed
To stretch forever beneath hopeful bending skies…
It was a a marvelous thing to watch love take wing
To feel ascedant and true, to hear the sparrow sing

But now decends the northern winds –
Icy reflections, the weather strong.
Alas! Alas! This night seems so long,
While I, because of my insidious wrong,
now grieve, and mourn, and fast.

Upon Awakening,…Vanishing Dreams


“Wisdom” by Derek del Barrio
Photo Courtesy of Derek del Barrio, 2015

I awoke to a kiss, a whispered taste
softly pressed upon my face,

and in that moment, my soul,  it wished
to know once more that soulful kiss!

Yet it was a vapor of a waking dream.
Nothing more; not what it seemed.

These wretched ghosts that find delight
in morning’s light, dancing and playing

betraying with the dust of sorrowed dreams
promises broken, and vows false spoken!

Violently shaken in the sudden waking
arms no more to hold me tight
through winter nights…I am awake. I am awake.

Where, gentle caress of morning rain?
that eases my pain; The merciful patter

that shatters my hold on false dreamt love
each drop above my window pane, slowly
washing in rivulets the memories set
under granite stone..I lie alone. I lie alone.

Enduring ink upon the page, how do I gauge
What’s real? What’s myst? What’s relevant?

Unlock the night, Release my dreams
silence the screams, and write for me
an ending poem, whereby I lie here not alone.

How sweet the dream that never ends?
Where love ascends and kisses dealt

are truly felt in dark of night.

An Eternal Sunrise


Sunrise

The sunrise is eternal.
Our measured days are not.
Yet still, somehow, in this moment now
I am lifted beyond mortality;
baptized by this burnished dawn
and set afire with daring possibility.

All too soon, the damp, cold earth
will grip us by the ankle
and pull us downward.

This morning is not that day.

Heaven ascends before my eyes
kissed by the reflection of amber rays;
my heartbeat echoing the foaming surf
while prayers dance among the murmuration
of winged clouds in dawn’s soft pastel light.

The world spins round.

This is my temple,
and my soul, shrouded in the rolling fog
of a new day, now lifted by salted winds.

I slip the bonds of my earthly servitude
and ascend upon the gilded rays of a new day –
lifted gently like a newborn in its mothers warm embrace.

The Receding Tides of Love


receding tide

It’s easy to say goodbye – to meet again is hard.
Love gone like rose petals fallen on flowing waters
My thoughts of her are like these flowing waters,
Meandering toward the open sea on their hopeless journey.
In time, washed away over a burnt orange horizon.

My hope, too!

The north wind blows; here on the ocean it’s cold.
My home is at the bend of a crumbling, salt-soaked pier.
I watch a lone white sail at heavens’ end;
Like a waking dream, quickly gone – who can I ask where?
Darkness falls beside the endless sea.

We had often walked upon warmer, infinite sands
Pressing our bare heels into the foaming wetness.
But one set of footprints are swept away too quickly
Swallowed by the receding tides of love.
This cold empty beach was never what I wished;
These scattered empty shells speak of inevitable ends.

The beauty of the ocean’s edge declines more year by year.

As the sun goes down, a chilling wind appears
Whipping the sands, stinging my face…a reminder
That with beauty comes inevitable pain –
To hear seagulls cry, or see pelicans on the fly
Makes me sorrow even more.

I lack the courage for this day.

Wrapping solitude around me like a mother’s arms
I turn for home – or what I now call home –
An empty room, a quiet room, an empty bed, a quiet bed;
My refuge from the darkness and the light.
Myself, I think I’ve found a place that suits me..
I have made my home amidst this mighty shore,
Yet I can no longer hear the crashing of the ocean swells.

Outside my window, all the butterflies are white,
A pair flitter over the dying garden’s grass.
They are damaging my heart!
Two tears trace two lines down my face,
I send them to the ocean’s beaten coast.

One full year now separates the loving and the unloving;
I have not often thought of her, but neither can I forget.
We would not recognize each other even if we met again,
My face is covered with sand, my temples glazed with ocean foam.
In deepest night, a sudden dream returns me to her arms,
We look at each other without a word, a thousand tears now flow.

I know that this must have some deeper meaning.
My muse lifts me from my sickly state,
And smiling, asks me to write a poem
I try to write the pain away, but cannot find the words.

Tonight, the ocean’s wind enters through the window,
The torn gauze curtain starts to flutter and fly.
I turn slowly in my bed, looking up at the bright moon,
And send my prayers a thousand miles in its light.

The Dying Sun


In the bitter waves of loss,
Thrashed and tossed about,
By the sullen winds of life that blow,
From the desolate shores of doubt,
Where the anchors of love once cast
In search of eternal purchase
Now dragging useless in sorrow’s gale.
I am quietly holding fast, holding alone
To the things that cannot fail.

Why?

That’s what I seek (although my heart knows full well)
The truth is, I may never be able to know for sure why.
But I do know that there is no single
“Should have done” or “could have done”
Or “did” or “didn’t do”
That would have changed that why.
All that love could do was left undone.
This shipwreck, my castaway life,
This endless frothing of cold, death-capped waves
Was due to my taking my eyes off the horizon
Where our dreams were setting with the dying sun.

Letting Go


It is human nature to become too attached to things or people.  Learn how to let go with grace.
It is human nature to become too attached to things or people.
Learn how to let go with grace.

Letting go of regrets is not some passive undertaking. 

Regret is a weight that anchors us in the past,
rendering the future as unobtainable.

Letting go takes courage and lots of sweat.
It takes a willingness to allow pain to run its course.
We are forever changed by the failures of yesterday.
Who we are today barely resembles who we were yesterday.

The heartaches and the pervasive sense of loss
can either pull us down into the morass of self-pity,
or it can catapult us from the depths of relentless sorrow
to the heights of new joy.

It all depends on upon a readiness to face the sun
as it rises upon a new day.
Upon how hungry we are to feed the possibility
that something more, something better
awaits us in the infinite possibilities of tomorrow.

Memories are like a cracked mirror;
they can only serve to offer us
a distorted reflection of our true selves.
Memories seduce us with useless thoughts and images
of what was, of what might have been.
But memories are a poor substitute
for imagination and hope.
If we are ever to break free from the shackles of our past,
we must first wean ourselves from our addiction to memories.
Our addictive behavior is the root of all suffering.

But much like the heroin addict
who struggles and writhes in agonizing pain
as he kicks his deadly habit,
we, too, must find  within ourselves
the strength and courage
to kick our dependence on self-recrimination
and useless reflection.

The soul is a restless being;
it is constantly expanding
and demanding room to grow
and to breathe.
Let’s be honest –
the air has been sucked from yesterday,
and when we exist with our hearts and our feet
planted in the past,
we deny our souls the essential life force
needed  to carry us further
toward our fullest potential.

In the very moment that we let go,
we invite a rapture that can feed and satisfy the soul.

Be brave. Face the emptiness.
Wrap yourself in self-love.

Breathe again.

Live once more.

Love Fulfilled Beneath a Dying Light


When the sun sets, when its dying rays
filters through my bedroom window
I get the full brunt of this powerful star.
It is beautiful and blinding.
I feel its warming fingers softly caressing
my cheek; it dries the last traces of my tears.

Today, as the sun came into its latitude
to be shining directly on me,
I closed my eyes beneath its warmth
remembering brighter days.
Was this the same sun that kissed us
on our first walks upon the beach?
Was this the same sun that cast
its light on our wedding day?

Many people have expressed their love
to both of us throughout this process,
and many people have let us know
that it may be God’s will this, or God’s will that.
And it may well be.
But I know one thing.
We were both born of this organic, living universe.
Star matter is within us. We are forever connected
beneath the arch of its healing light.

I have never felt more in the presence of the supernatural
than today, with this mighty being shining on us,
me here, in my thoughts, you, there, wherever you are.
I can almost see the last breaths of our togetherness
in the stardust that once showered the idea of “us”
being pulled back towards that Sun.
It is as if the Sun had decided to choose this moment,
to envelop the two of us in divergent beams of light,
and take us back, separately, back to the stars.

In a way, it is beautiful.
This Sun, our Sun, reminds me
to live more fully, more appreciatively, and more happily.
I won’t think of a marriage that has died.
I’ll think of those moments we had to dance in its light.
With much love and sadness.

She Will Come


I’ve spent my nights in silent yearning
For a beautiful love that will not perish

And she who will soon come to me
In the time of soft plum-blossoms

When the air is full of songbirds singing
When the sky is a delicate caress;

She will come
With a mist of stars about her

And great beckoning plumes of smoke
Upon her leaping horses.

And she will bend suddenly and clasp me;
She will clutch me with fierce arms

And stab me with a kiss like a wound
That bleeds slowly.

But though she will hurt me at first
In her strong gladness

She will soon soothe me gently
And cast upon me an unbreakable sleep

Softly forever.

 

 

 

Of Love Lost


 All the dreams I dreamt
Will vanish like the morning fog
When at last I awaken,
And something tells me that day is come.

Still that final goodbye echoes fresh—
Oh, how we, both she and I
First kissed as the sun went down.
Will she ever return? I cannot say.

The door creaks.
A sudden whiff of the lost and familiar…
A day with her lost among the days without.
Once more the door creaks.
Who is it?
I have no voice left;
The last candle is almost out.

Painting by Adrian Calin
Painting by Adrian Calin

Goodbye Beneath the Redwoods


The redwoods swayed softly;
their crowns in the planets,
toes tucked below soft earth
under carpets of wet needles
beneath our feet. 

This is how we said our soft goodbyes.

Our love, our forever love,
lay smoldering in the fire.
I could see the flames flickering
in her dampened eyes. 

I looked away, ashamed and afraid;
too much the coward to own her pain. 

She said it was the smoke –
one final lie to comfort me.

We speak in the soft, cordial tones of defeat
the air hanging heavy and silent between us.
Neither of us could hear the babbling brook
gently washing away the last remnants of hope. 

I will hold back my tears,
and the wrenching of my heart,
for the long, dark lonely nights ahead.  

Tonight, my love, my forever lost love,
let us wrest some comfort and warmth
from the dying embers of this bitter fire. 

Beneath these redwoods gently swaying
gather one last bouquet of memories
to set us on our separate ways.