Friday, January 31, 2025

A Flame in the Dark

The knowing dances into me (gritty and wild) through open eyes and waiting tongue. I taste the veracity shards you try hiding under a shroud of not-so-silken lies (something is rotten). For a spell, my eyes consider weeping for the worms you boiled before they could morph into moths. Then I remember: liquid mourning cleanses, but rarely fixes a thing. So my soul sucks in sadden salts, crafts them into living fuel, lets them burn for a better day. I dont conceal what grows in me. I open my all, under the licks of moon and sun, and I let you watch.

a flame in the dark,
breeding everlasting bright,
rebirthing new hope



photo by Zoltan Tasi, on Unsplash

- this poem came to mind, after I overheard someone say, “I can’t watch the news without crying or wanting to hide. Are you alright?” Although the person wasn’t talking to me, I still thought, “Change ‘crying’ for ‘screaming’ and ‘hiding’ for ‘raging’, and you and I would feel exactly the same way about our society’s general state of crappiness.”


for Poets and Storytellers United (Friday Writings #162:Joy in Chaos)


12 comments:

  1. Wow! Powerful words - a sense of taking order and control over what chaos there may be

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  2. I'm not sure that I am convinced. 😟

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  3. liquid mourning cleanses, but rarely fixes a thing - true...except maybe prepares one for the battle ahead...either way that flame of hope needs to keep burning!

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  4. I love this heightened, fantastical language!

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  5. A flame in the night is desperately needed now.

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  6. I think you wrote this magic in a cauldron.

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  7. I do like the photograph you've used here.
    I enjoyed your words too.
    Many are struggling as they watch the news ...

    Sending good wishes.

    All the best Jan
    https://thelowcarbdiabetic.blogspot.com/

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  8. Feisty as ever....good way of combating society's crappiness caused by His Creepiness !

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  9. I know people that consume more and more news...then suffer anxiety. It can be hard to hear. Your poem is tight and catches the nature of chaos.

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  10. Your piece reminded me of something I read earlier today. So these aren't my words. They belong to Gabriel Valdez (and I find he's helpful to follow on social media in these troubled times):

    "The key isn't being unafraid. The key is to register fear, so that we can decide whether it's worth overcoming, or plugging it in where it's most useful. Fear can elucidate. It can throw the shapeless into form no matter how much it tries to hide. It helps us understand what we face. It enables us to understand possibilities ahead of time rather than avoiding them, so we aren't surprised and shocked and reeling when the cruelty comes, but prepared for it, so that we aren't left frozen by shapeless possibility, but readier and fiercer and more immediate than they expect."

    "We don't have fear in the first place so that we can ignore it, or so that we can be frozen by it. We have fear so that - like any other emotion - we can utilize it within ourselves and turn that into an action.

    Talk about how to use it. Overcome it together, with shared perspective, shared planning, shared actions. When they want to shock us most, be unshockable not because you're cold and numb, but because you've processed that fear into a plan already, into action, into what is useful for you and us. Fear makes companions of us all."

    Fear in these times is very normal. The question is, what are we going to do about it. I for one, plan to listen to the advice a wise friend gave me, "Survive out of spite".

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  11. I love how you put truth into words. How you manage magic with your writings.

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  12. "So my soul sucks in sadden salts, crafts them into living fuel, lets them burn for a better day."

    Stunning haibun. Quite powerful.

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