All states of a relationship
are a stirring of agony and bliss.
The dinner was a menu for creation,
a place for taste and consumption --
no moment allowed to be a waste.
Pour out the red for marinara,
the strains of purple twisted,
until all the steam begins to hiss.
Be still, in waiting, as you move
along the tracks, the morning
has a way of bleeding
into all the cracks.
Curse of clouded
thinking awash in emotion’s
clatter, what was Freud thinking
when he said it was a parental matter?
Love calibrated in hormones,
tattled on in a poem, provoked
by neural synapses, a drought
in the bottom of a bottle so you
don’t have to spell alone.
Touch is claws covered in velvet,
rabbit’s fur drawn along the cheek,
the tatters of the night tossed
with ashes waiting for the blue ice --
a tear to streak. Caught with a match
book memory, numbered with a dial
tone’s bleak remarks. Thought
the most important part:
beginning a relationship
can be how hard you play to be caught.
10:33 PM
11/05/08
Alexandria, VA 22030
Author notes
Prompt: ~~"So scream you, out from behind the bitter ache...
still want love, ugly, smooth and delicate" ~ Matchbox Twenty
Truth be known, I love this album and I am kind of cheating to be only saying its a line. When I love the way their words start competing when they rumble through my mind -- I could talk in tongues and dance with snakes or just this poem with hidden rhymes. 
Please tell me what you think, what it makes you feel, how you are moved.
Comments
1 - 45 of 45
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Mmm...
All states of a relationship are a stirring of agony and bliss, beginning a relationship can be how hard you play to be caught; it endures if love dances with same level of thought from two as they tango else there's the emptiness, the duress, of all for nought...
...Tom " no moment allowed to be a waste" resonated with me, it speaks to me of putting yesterdays troubles to bed in togetherness and meeting tomorrows highs and lows wearing matching hats...
...match book memory...caught with the dial tone...yes...how we remember what to say and what not to say and what we remember to forget forges an alliance or acts as camoflague...
...getting the first date is easy...it's finding the differing days and ways and still wanting to celebrate that first date year in and year out and not letting go of the taste of longing that is not as easy...
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It is all a matter of how much we are willing to be realistic and how much we see the risk. Trust is easily given and the first light tells how good are the words and how firm the commitment to discover what wealth and richness can be formed between two strangers and the evening opens its doors. We all have our fears and they are often partnered with dreams in the same breath.
I opened with my epigram to allow me to explore the field of play as well as set the tone for what I was going to say. As always you have seen deeply into the wonder of my words. Thank you for visiting. May this holiday season be one of joy unwrapping itself in your heart.
Love,
Tom B.
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aw such a great write you have here! very well pend keep up the good work.
best of luck to you in the future and with your writing.
andi
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Thanks for the compliment. Glad you enjoyed.
Peace & Light,
Tom B.
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Wow! I liked this. It was very deep & it caught my attention from the start. I never lost sight in it. For this I say thank you for sharing. In Love & Light... Blessed Be! ~~Iridessa MoonFlower~~
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Thanks. Good to know that my words spun magic for the entire course of the poem.
May your days dance with delight.
Peace & Light,
Tom B.
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i rarely click on featured poems, i'm happy i clicked on this.
Totally enjoyed this read, esp ..to where this poem takes the reader to with the bleak remarks of a dial tone and these lines:
"beginning a relationship
can be how hard you play to be caught." lololol
creative & wonderful, i enjoyed your tone of voice - best of luck in the contest
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Thanks for stopping by. I think you would find that the marjority of my poems are this good or better. I like to as one of my friends puts it "take note of the mundane and miniscule and show what a difference it makes." You are welcome to stop by anytime.
Peace & Light,
Tom B.
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rich with imagery
Rich with imagery and provocative,
I like these lines:
"Love calibrated in hormones,
tattled on in a poem, provoked
by neural synapses, a drought
in the bottom of a bottle so you
don’t have to spell alone."
Poignant.
It was interesting to read,
Thanks for sharing,
Best wishes,
Isabella
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I am prone to drenching a poem with images to tantatlize and provoke my reader as much as I can. Thank you for enjoying my dance of images enough to comment.
Peace & Light,
Tom B.
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No Shit
Sorry for the crudeness, but really....
All states of a relationship
are a stirring of agony and bliss.
Perfectly said.
Much Love,
Harper
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I thought that opening line was like an epigraph for the entire poem. People fanatasize about everything being hunky-dory without effort or pain. Totally unreal expectations. Glad you caught the line. I was beginning to wonder if I was so far off base when I said it that it made no sense. Glad you stopped by.
Love, Tom B.
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"Be still, in waiting, as you move
along the tracks, the morning
has a way of bleeding
into all the cracks."
I love this. I don't think you've written quite like this before...I think it's good to step outside comfort and you've done well here in doing so. Love, Lane
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Funny thing is: it is a way of returning to an earlier style with a lot more maturity and understanding of how to pull it off. Poetry for me has always been about reaching for feelings. I have always liked jive and its influences show in how I use rhyme and beat. I think I am finally dancing the music more often than it dances me.
Love, Tom B.
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Ugly, smooth and delicate...
you give such personification of these as they
strain to love. I got very involved in this read;
the slant rhyme~excellent. The mundane items
readied as emotion~potent. "emotion" mentioned
is anti-climatic...you don't have to name that which you have drawn vividly. Blue
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Thank you. This was a little outside my box but playing with a full palate of technics and images. It was fun.
My favorite lines in here are about the match book. I have seen so many numbers given and so many of them nothing but a promised lie. We, humans, want so much honesty from our partners while we play with the truth.
Given my education, I couldn't resist the chance to throw a little mud Freuds direction.
Love,
Tom B.
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touch is claws wrapped up in velvet
Rabbits fur drawn along the cheek
what remarkable poetry, this is a real treat, so ,m uch rich language, i felt like a kid in a sweetie shop
thanks for sharing
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I always felt poetry was about exciting the senses and tantalizing the mind by using all the tools available to catch and refine. I am glad to find you like to dine at my table.
Love, Tom B.
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"the strains of purple twisted,
until all the steam begins to hiss."
Love those words. Unique and interesting turn of phrase. Nice work on this prompt. ~Pamela
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I wanted to catch a multitude of things and this seemed the best way. I could talk about where it would of all come from but it would give too much away.
Thanks for stopping by, I allways appreciate the visit.
Love,
Tom B.
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Touch is claws covered in velvet,
rabbit’s fur drawn along the cheek,
the tatters of the night tossed
with ashes waiting for the blue ice --
a tear to streak.
Fantastic.
How can you say I wouldn't like this?
There's so much reality here, I feel embarrassed to be eavesdropping. I think you took this prompt and you molded it to you, perfectly. You never fail to amaze me wih your insight into the human heart, male and female.
Best wishes in this contest, my friend, and much love to you and your family,
jin
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I was playfully teasing.
I knew you would understand the innuendos and subtlties of this extravaganza. I liked the fact that this piece pushed open doors I hadn't explored before from this angle. It is fun to find a new run of images and symbols.
Love, Tom B.
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Very powerful versification .
Favored lines of impact for me were-
"Curse of clouded thinking awash in emotion’s
clatter, what was Freud thinking?"
"When he said it was a parental matter?"
"Love calibrated in hormones,
Tattled on in a poem, provoked
by neural synapses, a drought
in the bottom of a bottle so you
don't have to spell alone." "Touch is claws covered in velvet,rabbit’s fur drawn along the cheek,
the tatters of the night tossed
with ashes waiting for the blue ice --
a tear to streak."And in summing it up-,
" Thought the most important part:
beginning a relationship .Can be how hard you play to be caught.
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It's always a dance. It is never the steps or the music but what you create out of them.
Love,
Tom B.
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"Touch is claws covered in velvet,"
"beginning a relationship can be how hard you play to be caught"
I'm sure your poem brought back bitter sweet memories of dancing the mating game at some point in our collective experience causing the occasional memory shudder as well as the smile. Thank you for returning us to these memories in you unmatched style.
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There are many things that the distance and depth of fifty-eight now allows me to touch. Part is understanding, part is knowing how much of the angst and drama was self created. We spend too much of the time in the dance looking at our partner. We would, perhaps, do better to learn to dance fluently.
Thanks,
Tom B.
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You have said it all for me in this read of pure spirit, I just adored it.....what we don't do to get caught can be beyond words...smile...novy
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In the game of tag and tag back, often it is all the fun that is found in the chase.
You might call the a pre-quel to my earlier poems.
Love, Tom B.
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I will just leave clappies, tip toe out the room and close the door quietly. Bookmarked to read again
oh & you can have a
too
Love
Juls
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I'll take the with
's as I ask this question of all. What does a man have to do to get a night out around here?
Love,
Tom B. -
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ok, here are the and the answer to your question is... next year
Love
Juls
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holy shit.. you have no idea how much this resonates.. 'Pour out the red for marinara,
the strains of puple twisted,
until all the steam begins to hiss.' i'm almost creeped out ha just had one interesting beginning of nothing myself.. i'm having trouble writing it all down, there's so much.. everyday is wrapped around me.. i'm reading at my University in a week, don't know what i want to say.. you are a saucy force!
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I just try to speak to the moment. I drank to much coffee this evening and I am paying the price. Don't let the event get in the way of your good sense. Events come and go but you got to live with yourself. I am still tired from working the polls and I am still high from Obama winning. I am kind of crazy right now, and I have to go to bed, but that was three hours ago when I should of gone down.
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A matchbox Twenty fan lol *chuckles...well who'd have thunk it C
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You say the least but give me bunnies, much appreciated you should believe. I would shower you with kiss and hug you like there is no end to eternity. But instead you will have to accept, for the present, the acts in dreaming which grow old quickly, I do believe.
Love, Tom B. -
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Hugs and kisses never grow old in dreaming they just grow stronger you will get yours when I get there next year
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I have watched from the Serengeti (sp?) to the local football match. Seen you standing watching whales and cursed a few of the men you have met.
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*chuckles* And you keep cursing all you like, I have a magnetic disposition, I drag all sorts of flotsam and jetsam into the mouths of whales and then dispose of them via the head in a jetstream...I only keep a hold of the good ones
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I leave the fire in the cannon and the barrels too hot. Place grape shot across the foc'sle to take the wind from the sails and to show what I have got.
When the wind stopped and the night had been swept behind the hills, my kiss on the soft terrrain of eye lids brought the light awake in your eyes. Caffine aromas wafted from the kitchen and warmth was but a hand full away.
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This was a very interesting write; you portrayed your message in a very though provoking way. I love how you worked good ole Sigmund in there though I always thought his theory that every man wants to have sex with his mom and kill his dad was a bit far fetched.
It almost seemed like you words were strewn from the parking lot of a 60's drive in movie theater to the present where kids just drive around all night.
Lovely write - very moving -
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At least with drive in's you didn't have to go far to make out.
Remember, I am fifty-eight and I cover just about all of the time you mention.
From Ike and Adlai to Barrack and John, I have watched us go from interstates to really have a man in the moon look down upon us all. We don't do ourselves any favors when we think we shouldn't have a relationship with pain. "Sucide is painless. It brings on many changes." I am in the beginning of a new job and my mind is a crisis of newness.
Love, Tom B.
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beautiful. i love the hidden rhyme scheme and the way the words bleed into one another. you've captured perfectly the feeling of anxiety and the vibrancy of life experienced through nervous hope, the sensations of fumbling for the right things to spark romance. i particularly love your descriptions of touch, the animalistic clothed and obscured behind the cultured. "claws covered in velvet" indeed.
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I figure, maybe it is only a passing stage, I have played with writing exquisite super positive sensual poetry. These are more about catching the quandries of hope against habit, of the way we play with ourselves while we think no one is looking and we are haveing a impish bad spell.
Love, Tom B.
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I love this tom!!!
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Congratulaions!!! For the first comment you win the grand prize of all the nothing you can hold for the greatest length your heart desires. I am fired up in these recent celebrations of great success. We have come a long way, baby, from silent protest. It is all about how you duplicate yourself. Thank you. thank you. Thank you. Saying it three times it supposed to make it real and I would love to have this be real for you.
Love, Tom B.
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