Halloween Poem by Sabra McGovern

Mummies, ghouls, haunts and spirits-
They got nothing, compared to you.
You make my heart beat;
You make my knees weak;
You may my poor hands shake too!

When you climbed into my life I tried not to fight
This feeling of unexplainable dread
But now I can't stop
My eyes want to pop
And now I'm on top of my bed.

Please, I'll do anything, just go away
Stop crawling on top of my mat
I guess I will stay here
Shaking with fear,
All just because of a rat!

Sabra's Poetry

The character for my new novel, Witch, has started to write poetry... in my head.  And so I'm going to leave these here to just.. be.

Beauty

by Sabra McGovern

Beauty walks on glass

The careful steps to make it right

The painful process where we

straighten something curly

Curl something straight, 

Oil something dry, 

Use potions to try out

Prick and poke and pluck and paint

Just to feel

That things can make us perfect

Without realizing perfection

Is just the way we are

And beauty is attitude

Not skin.

Prayer

by Sabra McGovern

I pray that you give me strength

to not kill the moron who

sits in front of me in English; 

to overcome that feeling that

I get where my hand tightens,

and my fist curls, and my body

tenses as he guffaws at the

moron who has stuck an "I'm

gay" sign to the back of a friend

in front of him.

I pray that you give me bravery to

stand up in front of the class

and instead of assaulting this

pudgy faced moron in front of me

with hands

I can assault them with words; 

words that will shame him and blame him

for making the kid who sits in the corner

squirm with embarrassment

because he's too offended to say "Hey, I'm gay

and that shouldn't be an insult."

I pray that you give me peace

to take on the chorus of 

voices that cry out against my opinions

that say it is just a word

that say it is just a word that

we use in fun..."It just means happy....right?

Right, in the same way that  nigger just means 

black person and WOP is just an Italian guy.

A slur is a slur, sir, and words can hurt.

I pray that you give me the wisdom to show that

while a knife or a gun

can break my skin

a word is a weapon

that breaks the spirit

which can be even more deadly.

Poem: The Room I knew

I was walking in the dark
Barely moving, afraid to stub my toes
Or trip over furniture
I couldn't see.

I could not see around me
But focused on myself
And then a candle
Brought a beautiful light.

I could see-
But only in shadow-
Everything was broken
A world shattered beyond.

If I had tried to move
there- in the dark-
The blood would trail the room
Leaving a passage of despair.

But this light came
Casting shadows long and deep
Showing the way
Through the broken bloody path

I began to move
slowly, then with more speed
And as confidence was gained
The path was left behind.

Pushing past the problems,
Pushing past the pain,
Pushing past despair
Until I found your light.

5/26/13

The Artist's Way

Starting up the Artist's Way again. I plan on putting my responses here to the exercises, but still hand writing my Morning Pages, like a good girl.  At least this way I will have something to post in this blog.  I will put the more "personal" stuff in my morning pages, but if you want to come along, or join me, the program is called "The Artist's Way" by Julia Cameron and I'm re-doing the first book for like.. the third time, but I need to make this my own program.  It's a 12 week long program about finding your creativity and your spirituality.  It should be fun.

Anyway.. here goes nothing.  I also plan on keeping up my blog at Weighting in the Deep End, which will be about weight loss and food and diets and yummy stuff that I find that is healthy (and not so healthy).

Now that I have the summer off, I should start doing this daily. Maybe.  I can dedicate a couple hours (or less probably) of the day to myself.  And hey, maybe I'll have more actual creative writing to post here as well!

Love to all,

ToryLynn

Garbage

Garbage by ToryLynn

I moved in here months ago
But I couldn't bear to do this
Go through the old memories
Throwing you away.

It has taken me this long
To settle into acceptance
That my life has utterly changed
And I am rid of you.

I tuck away a few precious things
But in bulk, things must go away
And I have moved on
And so must the things I have accumulated.

The bag of stuffed animals,
The old clothes that no longer fit
The papers, the dust, the accountrement,
The meanings that no longer mean anything,

And here I sit,
In the middle of the mess
that you left behind.
Throwing away memories

To make new ones better.

Moving Day- a poem by ToryLynn

Backsore and armtired
And this empty room echoes
With a tinny vibration
How did it get this far?

Love loomed in these rooms
And now the silence sings
A different tale.
One of loss and hurt.

Close the door
And let the hum die down
Of a marriage lost to time
Leaving behind only

Two golden bands,
together on the counter
And two hearts
Going seperate ways.

Through the Screen

We use Skype. It's a comfort thing for us and sometimes we will talk into the night, or just sit and watch videos. Most of the time, we don't use the webcam, but sometimes we do, and we did, last night.  He laid down, and I laid down, and we talked, our heads sideways on our screens, matching eye for eye, lip for lip.  He reached out his hand as if to touch me, and I reached my hand is if to touch his, touching my screen, which was enlarged to full size so that he was nearly life size.  I sat like that, my hand on his, through the screen, wishing it could be our lips pressed together, our skin touching each other, when suddenly... I felt a give.

It wasn't anything that I could truly describe.  I remember wishing that I could touch him, and then there was a push and my hand slid forward, as if through the thin plastic barrier of my screen.  It almost felt a little bit like pushing through a really cold wall of butter. A lot of resistance, but once my fingers first went through, I knew that I could get through. There was no flash, no light, no sound of trumpets. Just a slight pop, and my hand was through the screen, and my fingers were met with warm, soft flesh. His eyes got big and his mouth formed a surprised O at this, but then he simply smiled, and tangled his fingers into mine, dragging them to his lips and kissing the tips of each finger.  My forearm gave a funny jolt and I could feel this though he was nearly three thousand miles away.  

I gave a tug, not separating our fingers, and there were two pops, one as my my hand returned to California, and one as his hand crossed over from New Jersey.  It was my turn to kiss fingertips and I suckled on one.  His smile widened and his eyes became dreamy and peaceful.  I tugged a little bit more, and his arm to the shoulder pulled through the screen.  I rewarded this with a kiss to his elbow and, though his face was obscured from me, I could hear a happy little noise escape him on the other side.  He pulled back against me, and, while keeping our hand still connected, contemplated me through the screen.

"Can you fit?" he asked.

I contemplated my wide hips and my large breasts and my expanse of shoulders and shook my head sadly.  "Can you?"

He pushed me back, our fingers still laced, and pressed his shoulder into the screen.  My monitor had always been pretty big. I liked to watch movies and it was the best thing for it, but his was small, just a tiny little netbook. He pressed his whole body forward and into the screen, up to his shoulder and stopped, releasing my hand and trailing his fingers up to my elbow to give a little squeeze.  I backed up and wrapped my fingers around his forearm (he was a little taller than me) and began to pull.  His scapula fit through, and the he pressed his head to his chest and I watched the top of his head crown through the screen, his face becoming distorted with the pressure.  I continued to pull and his arm wrapped around my waist as his head popped through and he looked a little bit dazed, but he was smiling, parts of him stuck through my screen. One arm in Jersey, the other in California, wrapped around my waist.  I kissed him, testing out the feel of lips on lips, and smiled when I found him warm and willing.  It only took a moment, and it was blissful, and then I was backing up again, pulling now with all of my might, as the other shoulder popped through and now his whole upper torso was in California.  Both hands grasped my waist, and I was afraid to let go of the physical connection, worried that if I did not anchor him here, he would slip back through the screen again.  So, with his hands on my waist, I began to push the monitor away from him, pulling through stomach, and back, wiggling the space around his hips, which stuck a bit and had to be forced, like a fat girl getting into years-old jeans, pushing flesh through the screen, pulling on the bits.  Once the hips were through, and he was laying on my keyboard, it was just a tug and a matter of slide as he his knees and feet popped through my screen, and he laid, face down, across my bed. 

I pulled him to a sitting position, still not wanting skin to release skin, and kissed him full and hard on the lips, even as we smiled around this sudden coupling.  He was here... and I was happy.  

I was worried that he would disappear if I let him go, that he would pop back to Jersey or just pop into non-existence, so many laws of physics and space and time had been broken.  He sat in front of me and he was here. His hands on my waist.  I wrapped my arms around his neck and pressed my whole body into him, and then slowly, incrementally, backed away, until my fingers were touching his and no other contact.  I took away one hand first, my left from his right, and then looked into his eyes and quickly, only for a fraction of a second, broke the contact between. He was still there.  I closed my eyes, and counted to three, not willing to believe in this good fortune, and when I opened them, he was still there.  I threw myself into his arms with a laugh, and his surprised, happy face met mine at lips and smile.  He was here.

We looked at the monitor, and the empty room on the other side, and laughed. He pressed his fingers against the plastic screen and there was a resistance there that was normal, the screen laid back. He couldn't get through it now, and my laptop laid there like a laptop does.

He asked "How am I going to get back?"

"Who cares?" I answered, and kissed him again.

We would worry about that in the morning.