How is having something like this
sneaking up on you GOOD?
I certainly didn’t’ expect it.
Are not these things
supposed to slam into you?
Instead, it sauntered up quietly
with a gentle hand
and wrap you carefully in his arms
until you suddenly realized–
Even though you are miles away
you feel like you have come home.
And you still feel the warmth of his embrace.
1998
(25 years old)
Enough.
I remember the protests of Vietnam.
Barely, but they resonated
in the conversations around me,
that I couldn’t read.
This, at the beginning of my life.
Democracy apparent as people
gathered to protest a
War that wasn’t called a war.
What is war, then?
This conflict of words that clashes with
expectations and fences
with our vision of a free and
powerful country seems to ignore
many of the responsibilities that power entails.
I remember standing at the steps of
City Hall in my hometown
protesting the Gulf War.
I was 18—
Straddling that life moment between
childhood and adulthood.
I remember the flash of cameras, the
press of bodies,
people shouting rhythmic rally cries, and I
remember feeling self-conscious
as words or protest left my own lips.
When the pushing and shoving started,
I let the movement propel me to the
fringe of the crowd and asked
“Why am I here?”,
“Why do I protest?”
I had no answer,
so, I quietly walked away and
back to my dorm room.
Sitting on my bed in silence
I pondered my freedom of choice.
When planes dove– like birds from the sky,
their targets not just our people, but
our sense of national security, too,
it left it bleeding away on the
the foundation of our country.
War took a more terrorizing and
sinister meaning than before.
The game has changed.
Life moved forward, though.
A different, less comfortable life,
But we adapted,
Secured ourselves with the mantle of power
And moved on.
And then, my world stopped.
Everything paused.
The pedestal of hope and security cracked.
Thirty-two lives gone,
One, gone, oh god—
There’s that bittersweet
memory of a past love,
shattered. The place in your mind that
past loved ones live, where you know they are safe,
goes quiet–
extinguished in an instant with
the sharp repeat of the gun echoing in the air.
The veil of security, that belief that
‘it couldn’t, wouldn’t happen’ to anyone you know
ripped away.
And all along with it, the echoes continue.
You can’t speak, for fear you might scream
and never stop.
The silence as the protests and outcries
are ignored slowly engulfs you.
And then more, and more, and so many more.
Children are dying.
Young lives cut to the ground
Before they ever had a chance to become–
Just a hook on the wall, where a
small coat still hangs, never to be worn again.
“Where is the War now?” we asked,
ready for battle.
“We must fight it, give me the enemy.”
And yet the world just kept turning
as the dust settled on the desks and in the
empty halls.
My son was born, and I let the love
of him wrap around me in a cocoon
of family and newness.
For a time, that sense of security returned.
And then it was time for him to go to school.
We have had wars and conflicts. We
proclaim to fight a never-ending
War on Drugs. Yet,
we quietly walk away as
war is waged by our citizens
…on our Children.
This is more insidious than war.
This is our children dying
while the government that
swears to protect us,
brandishes empty promises like a
sword missing its edge.
It protects our “freedom”, more than it protects our lives.
It protects the guns, more than our children.
We have to fight this internal
War of indifference.
As war is a battle between different powers,
the time to take back the
power of our country is now.
The power must shift and the
children of this country should be our first priority.
Our future depends on it.
This is a battle worth fighting.
This is why protests exist and
why compromise is king only when
progress is made
Again, hearts bleed on the day when it
Should be candy and flowers scattered across the floor,
not the crimson stains of horror and despair.
This time, the children are rising and calling for
change, because no one was listening.
Why is no one listening?
They keep dying and no one is
Heeding their screams.
They keep asking us for help,
to keep them safe, and
No one is heeding their call.
They keep praying and
no one is hearing their prayers over the
“Ching, ching” of political favors.
The children in Parkland stood up, though, and said,
“ENOUGH!”
Did you hear them?
Did you see them?
Do you understand that this is
the battle you need to fight today?
This is the stand you take?
And today, when nineteen more perish,
trapped in a room, no way out,
suddenly silenced.
Do you hear them?
Do you understand their sacrifice?
Can you continue to stomach your inaction?
Is it enough, yet?
Before more gentle voices are silenced…
Again.
-G. S. Skye 14 March,2018
Edited 26 July 2021 and 24 May 2022
I long to love you
And let you love me.
To have you so close… close enough to touch…
To wake up with you beside me
When dawn starts to appear.
The time has come, though,
Where night draws near.
And with the fading shadows
I think of you and my past
Haunts me…
My hope for us runs thin.
But, I won’t give up that small glimmer
That says we will continue together
To share our hopes and dreams again.
I want us to again to weep,
To cry, to rail against all, and…
To laugh together– experience joy.
I wish for this
Because life means nothing
Without love and trust, together with
A hope and a Dream…
*excerpt of longer 1989 version, revised 12/1992
Waves flood against my soul
Caressing the pounding of my heart.
As it beats to an ancient hymn,
I feel myself tumbling gently
Off a cliff.
Over I fall to the depths
Of an ocean where I have never been,
Or even glimpsed.
Falling down, tumbling really,
To the soft, welcoming ground.
The rhythm awaits me with open arms.
It wraps around me like gentle breeze
On a warm spring day,
Filtering through the realms of possibility
With nature’s sweet music singing.
Such songs barely compare, however, to
The music of my heart.
12/6/1992
(19 years old)
I hold the petal of soft velvet
between my fingers.
It possesses a fragrance that
stands still in time.
It takes me back to my childhood
with memories of my grandmother’s perfume.
Or forward I go to a walk along the paths
of a rose garden at a grand estate in full bloom.
Such a simple thing of beauty alone
becomes magical when
given by a new love;
almost as enchanting
as the feelings that bloom between two young souls.
2/16/1993 (BM)
(edited 8/4/2017)
So there is nothing quite so wonderful and daunting as discovering almost 20 poems that you don’t have typed up into your archive.
I picked up a journal last week that had many of the poems I wrote from the year 1990-1996 including about 2 dozen that I have never typed up. The poems were flagged, so at one point I planned to type them up, but I obviously never did.
Most of them are from my days at University. Several of them came out of my main relationship during that time. This, in fact, is probably why I didn’t type them up at the time I was going through the process. My boyfriend from those years was killed in 2007 and I did most of my poetry transcription in 2008-09. I can see choosing to not deal with these poems at that time, when the rawness of his death still existed.
I’m glad I have found my peace with things as much as I ever will, because I truly enjoyed reading and typing up these poems, and look forward (after some serious edits) to sharing some of them. The time when we are at University, in our early twenties, can be such a unique and tumultuous time in our lives, and watching the person I was grow slowly, and sometimes painfully, into the person I would eventually become, is fascinating now that over 20 years has passed.
It is interesting timing that I find these while my poetry book is on hold due to ‘stupid computer problems’ (because don’t we all love it when the processor cable of our laptops comes disconnected). I can take the next three weeks to work on them, and pick what I want to include in the book.
So, to those writers and poets out there, you never know what you’ll find your inspiration in, it could be an old journal you haven’t loked at in over a decade.
Galen
No
No, no, no no.
Oh God.
Shattering, crashing, rolling.
Dead…
Gone and gone and oh, God she is gone.
A friendship dies in a tangle of
Crushed and twisted metal in the dark.
Oh, how I hope you were not afraid, and
Yet, I know you were.
Alone and afraid and me so far away.
I dropped the phone when they told me.
I dropped to the ground and cried;
Tears falling, sobs wracking and
My mother’s heart breaking on the other end of the line.
So much time has passed.
Still the pain can slam into me
At the most unexpected time.
At my Wedding, I word a ring we picked out as children.
It was blue.
When my son was born, I introduced him to your parents
And for a moment you were there too, and we didn’t cry.
Well, not too much, anyway.
He will know you, if only through stories and pictures.
You are not forgotten.
30 November, 2016
Poet’s Notes: My childhood best friend and a dear friend well into adulthood was killed in a car accident at night on her Birthday in 2011. I do not traditionally write when I am in pain, so I wrote nothing at the time. However, the past couple of weeks, as I have been putting my first poetry book together, I have run across so many poems written about our friendship and upon reflection of her passing. It pulled a string of memories forward and this is the best way I know to describe the complicated emotions I have of a friendship that was cut too short by death.
A heightened warmth
Reaches the essence
Of the soul.
Flushed cheeks–
And excitement–
Together with serenity,
Contradictions,
Confusions,
And yet, a twinkling of
understanding.
11\5\92
Blades of grass bow low in the wind
As it sweeps down off the foothills into the valley.
A sense of peace and sorrow send
Me moving forward hesitantly.
Age-old woes of freedom rang
As the blood of brothers spilled.
Along the land of torment, with each deafening bang
Our country’s children fell upon this field.
The drum beats low, vibrating off the land
Each sound a warning of death to come.
As fate reaches down her exacting hand
Beckoning forward those far too young.
Sing a song of soft lament and
Feel this barren field’s old torment.
Walk along the path where blood ran cold
Sense the souls of warriors old.
Blades of grass bow so low
Touching the fields where long-ago tears were sown.
A peace is here so great in worth
Found on this battlefield turned to earth.
-1993
