Day Break

All the things I want to say
play musical chairs
in my frontal lobe.
Questions older than dirt
 swirl as though
 typhoon swept,
 landing here, there,
 places hard to reach,
 yet always easy
 to hear
 in the dying wind.
Is it, did we,
 when, if,
 maybe?
 Surely time will tell
 when light returns
 and day breaks.

  ©Peggy Eldridge-Love 2013

A Widow's Whisper

I used to be

the most important person

in the world

to someone.

Not anymore.

Now I am

a fleeting thought perhaps

on an otherwise

unhurried day

once in a while.

I used to think

I’d grow accustom

to knowing that.

Now I realize

I was really,

really, really

wrong.

©Peggy Eldridge-Love 2013 
Photo Credits: Peggy Love

Real Pulp

Letters splattered across sacrificed trees
Pressed down, squeezed to pulp
Bear the stains of the pains
That claw forth in single syllables,
Four letter cries for mercy.

Peggy Eldridge-Love 2013

Here's the key to The Trilogy!

 

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HIS WIFE'S DIARY

Was he really so callous he was getting it on 

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dying... 

THE JEWEL THIEF

What's the real story behind the gorgeous TV anchor

she's depending on to help launch her career

and the intriguing man who is determined

to force his way into her life...

THE VIEW FROM SUITE 2100 

Some dark secrets aren't secrets at all, especially

if they get into the hands of the one person

who hates you most, the same person who is closest 

 to the man you are just about to marry...

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How to Feel Better about Yourself in 5 Seconds!

How to Feel Better about Yourself in 5 Seconds!

Inhale and exhale. There's nothing more relevant to feeling alive than breathing...Enjoy! 

 

This started off as a quirky little wake-up I posted to Facebook this morning, but the more I thought about it the more it resonated with me. How easily we take for granted the gift of breath, the wonder of life, and the joy of living. How amazing that we do.

 

If we are plugged in to any form of media, whether TV, radio or the Internet, we are bombarded with the heart wrenching news of how many of our fellow human beings aren't able to exercise this privilege any longer, often due to unexpected circumstances, far too frequently due to tragedy or crime. How are we processing those realities? Where are we filing that knowledge away? Do we really know?

 

Is our grant of a brand new day something that truly penetrates our inner levels of gratitude, a fact that we recognize for some unique reason we have again been privileged, or that we understand is a wondrous continuous opportunity to do something that will improve our own life, the life of those we know and love, and the world we still abide in? It should be.

Do it. Inhale and then exhale gratitude for your 'now'. If you feel the rush of that knowledge make each one you find yourself aware of today a memorable contribution to your being. It uniquely belongs to you and you uniquely belong to life.

©Peggy Eldridge-Love 2013

DE-SEN-SI-TIZE

de·sen·si·tize

Moments circle
the mantel clock
tick by tick
yet it stutters,
hesitates like a comedian
skilled at timing
for shock value
when truth is funny
only because its pain
dangles like long blond
tendrils on a tie-dyed
brunette in a rewound
nightmare with staring
roles played by men
with gavels, women
with high pitched voices
staring down hope
with dead blue eyes
on a Dali canvass.

©Peggy Eldridge-Love 2013

Photo Credit: Image credit: wavebreakmediamicro / 123RF Stock Photo

Want to buy, find, or order works, interview or contact the poet? Email requests HERE.

TRIBUTE TO 9/11

Two poems from 9/11

No Thought of Surrender

(Written September 11, 2001)

Anguish spreads blood red

across heart and mind

numb with inability to

comprehend the unrightable

written eternally

on our national psyche.

Never began today with

blue sky and warm

smiles and no thought

of nightmares raining

ash and cinder,

no thought of surrender

of all we once knew

as norm.

Our knees bend with

involuntary motion, while

our souls roil in

anguish,

and blood red images

of all we hold sacred, dear,

safe, secure

spreads across our broken hearts

and minds and the cry rises

in unity:

dear God help us.

Peggy Eldridge-Love

YOU BECKON

 

For This Purpose

(Written in response to September 11, 2001)

We grapple, of the opinion

there are answers buried deep

in the inner linings of

our experience.

We are humbled, broken into

shards of the humanity

we had almost forgotten

was the purpose

of our being here.

Peggy Eldridge-Love

YOU BECKON

These two poems I included in my first poetry collection, "You Beckon". They were a direct response and reaction to September 11, 2001. Thank you for allowing me to revisit and share them with you today on this twelfth anniversary of that horrific event. We are still searching for the same answers we found ourselves asking that first day.

NOTE: If you have a problem ordering "You Beckon" from the link provided please EMAIL REQUEST HERE and we will handle your order directly. Thank you!

Never Mind the Castle

Never Mind the Castle

We are this we are living

it is our watch now

we are the guards in the tower

the protectors of

the moat.

If it gets in we allow it

it is ours to own

whether we cower

or slept

at our post.

Neither the left

nor the right

block our center view,

if we’re conquered

it rests with me

with you.

©Peggy Eldridge-Love 2013

Photo Credit: 

Image credit: sahua / 123RF Stock Photo

"The Butler" - My personal processing of it begins...

I saw Lee Daniel's tremendous film "The Butler" yesterday. As a baby boomer it was a very poignant review of the advents of history that were the underpinnings of my own life. Stepping into that time machine the film unfolded was not an easy, comfortable journey, but one I am so glad to have made. If one can accept it, it answers many of the recent impatient, intolerant, hand on hip, finger waging scoldings of  "why don't you people just get over it". Wish it were as simple as that sounds. Wish all it would take is the wave of a magic wane of forgetfulness to erase the anguish etched on heart, soul, and mind of those truths we lived.

A Facebook friend asked what I thought of the film when I mentioned I'd seen it. I was candidly honest in saying it was going to take some time to process those thoughts and feelings. She asked if I'd share that processing along the way. I wasn't sure I wanted to, but decided that I would share at least this first step in that journey. 

One major incident that came spiraling to the forefront for me while watching that film was that of being in the fourth grade in a Kansas classroom, one of the first spattering of black children integrating schools following the passage of the landmark decision of Brown vs Board of Education. A memory of being jerked out of my chair suddenly by my white teacher, following about 15 minutes of humiliation and accusations in front of my 98% white class of having stolen another child's - a white child's - pencil box, being drug from the classroom literally by my pigtail into the bathroom where my mouth was washed out with lye soap until it was raw. Memory of my mother's horror as she saw my raw splitting tongue and had to comb my hair carefully for the next month due to the blistering from the pulling. Memory of my mother's terror as she sought to (and succeeded in) hide the incident from my father whom she knew would have in all likelihood reacted in a way that would have resulted in him going to prison. A memory of the principal's reaction when proof of purchase was provided and the accusation disproved...the reaction being that "well, you shouldn't have gotten one the same color as the one that the other child in her class had."

I had forgotten that I stuttered quite often after that for the next couple of years or that my grades went from straight As to barely passing. But above all I didn't forget that it was in the midst of these circumstances and conditions (no need to regurgitate the numerous heartless insults and belittling we endured at the hands of our teachers those first two years ... those are graves I refuse to exhume) that I ultimately found how strong and capable I really was, how truly fearless my parents were, in particular my mother who became an active part of every program the school had from PTA onward no matter how she was discouraged or who tried to block her, to ensure the fairest treatment for her own and the other handful of black children in that hell-hole elementary school, and how our faith and our church body encircled us on day in and day out basis to support and confront both in prayer and in action what it took to survive and ultimately thrive.

So, the processing begins of remembering what the reality, not the theory behind the struggle for civil rights has been. This is day one.

A Poem Before Dawn

Daydreams wiggle free of their harness,
kicking heels, prancing, promenading
before the filled arena
of startled hopes
held at rapt attention
by the amazement in my mind.

Peggy Eldridge-Love c2013

Photo Credit: Copyright : Viktoria Makarova

A Coward's Epiphany

I think of all the last names I prayed for
I think of all the last names I got
Think of the near misses
The grand slams
The rain outs
I think of the full circle
I think of the starting gate
I think of you.

©Peggy Eldridge-Love 2013





Photo Credit: Copyright : Simone Van Den Berg

Back Ups

Never been one to be concerned
 about leaving footprints
 in the atmosphere
 if I've backed myself
 into a corner.
 I'm coming out,
 need be,
 tracks proof
 printed on time
 where I once stood
 before landing
 here.

©Peggy Eldridge-Love 2013

 Photo Credits: Image credit: tiero / 123RF Stock Photo

...miny, moe

Bark against back comforts

lean against tree

positioned right at the fork

of the next road.

©Peggy Eldridge-Love 2013

Photo credit: Image credit: egorr / 123RF Stock Photo