Mandala's Divine Love SwingFor my assignment from Mama Kat this week, I chose to tackle the prompt she deemed hardest. Not because I love a challenge (which I do), but because the poem from which I am stealing the last line touched my life.
While living in Fort Worth after my marriage failed, the concept of a loving relationship was lost to me. I floated in and out of a long distance relationship which also failed and I was pretty down on the whole idea that I might find someone special to me that would find me special to them. I was having a hard time coming to grips with my belief about what love should be and encompass. Eventually I stumbled across a book of love poems written by Nikki Giovanni. I read most of it in one sitting in the nearest Barnes & Nobles to my house, and I purchased it before leaving the store. I still have it and reread it on occasion. Her style of writing, as well as her vivid depictions of how deeply she loved those who she was writing to and about tuned my heart strings in again so that I could make wonderful music within myself and feel once more the possibility that I might love again. As Diane says, it was a defining moment in my life. One particular poem reminded me just how innocent and light headed love could make me feel. Here is her poem that touched me in just the right spot in my heart to jump start me again.
I WROTE A GOOD OMELET
I wrote a good omelet...and ate a hot poem...
after loving you
Buttoned my car...and drove my coat home...in the rain...
after loving you
I goed on red...and stopped on green....floating somewhere in between...
being here and being there...
after loving you
I rolled my bed...turned down my hair...slightly confused but...I don't care...
Laid out my teeth...and gargled my gown...then I stood ...and laid me down...
to sleep...
after loving you
--Nikki Giovanni
After Loving You
After loving you.....
what else was there left to do?
All I could smell and taste and hear
could not ease or abate my fear
that true love wouldn't visit again
as prolonged penance for my sin.
Things that used to make me smile
no longer held power to beguile,
and the things once pleasing to my touch
chaffed and chapped as if much too rough.
At first the gaping wounds felt so deep
as if doomed to ooze and forever seep,
as a festering wound is known to rot
viler my disposition towards love got.
But as time would slowly tell it's tale
my anger ebbed and gradually fell.
I found myself with book in hand
at one lone stop in wandered land.
Twas a book of odes to love was writ
that my melancholy made me forget.
I bought the cute little hard back tome
and many days, reading I did roam.
And the joy and exuberance of words within
my forlornness and gloom helped do in.
And free once more my feelings flew
and the hope to love grew anew.
My spirit climbed and rose so high
cartwheeled, flipped and danced through sky.
Once more the feelings of possible love
let my heart barrel-roll above.
And as I free fall from skies of blue,
to Nikki I say, "God bless and keep you."
This time I know what not and to do
To give me a chance at loving.....who?
Who knows?? It may even be you.
Stu Pidasso 14Jan2009
what else was there left to do?
All I could smell and taste and hear
could not ease or abate my fear
that true love wouldn't visit again
as prolonged penance for my sin.
Things that used to make me smile
no longer held power to beguile,
and the things once pleasing to my touch
chaffed and chapped as if much too rough.
At first the gaping wounds felt so deep
as if doomed to ooze and forever seep,
as a festering wound is known to rot
viler my disposition towards love got.
But as time would slowly tell it's tale
my anger ebbed and gradually fell.
I found myself with book in hand
at one lone stop in wandered land.
Twas a book of odes to love was writ
that my melancholy made me forget.
I bought the cute little hard back tome
and many days, reading I did roam.
And the joy and exuberance of words within
my forlornness and gloom helped do in.
And free once more my feelings flew
and the hope to love grew anew.
My spirit climbed and rose so high
cartwheeled, flipped and danced through sky.
Once more the feelings of possible love
let my heart barrel-roll above.
And as I free fall from skies of blue,
to Nikki I say, "God bless and keep you."
This time I know what not and to do
To give me a chance at loving.....who?
Who knows?? It may even be you.
Stu Pidasso 14Jan2009
11 comments:
I'm glad you found her poem. I'm glad it managed to scale the wall you'd built and sneak up on you. And I'm glad you wrote yours... it's beautiful.
please pass the tissues.
Nikki's poem captures the dizzy bliss of falling in love, while yours is the perfect follow-up... sort of sadder and wiser "been there, done that" and want to return again... Artfully written and thoughtful. I enjoyed it a lot.
You did a beautiful job with the poem and I'm so glad the book you found that day and that it spoke to you in the way it did.
Oh, this was great! It reminds me of one of those poems that is in the shape of a diamond (don't know what they're called). The ones that start as one thing and end as another! Cuz yours stared as despair, and ended as hope! Well...to me anyway! I loved it!
That dizzy bliss, the innocent fear, the goofy feeling we all get inside when we are almost afraid to offend by touching or doing something wrong;but wish, so badly, to dare to touch and share and open ourselves up to another is exactly what I felt again when I first read her poem. Experiencing that feeling, that sense of vertigo, by reading mere words, it was then that I came to my senses and knew that I could either dwell in the dark of my bitterness or step back into the warm lighting of love's amorous glow. I feel I am a hopeless romantic trapped in a cynical self-centered world. I find that we are surrounded by a multitude of people who think "Me first" instead of "Any and all for you, love." Few are the ones who stroke and caress and care for others out of sheer concern for the well-being of someone other than themselves. And yes, it was a point in my life where my feelings morphed over a period of time, not back to where I was before my failed marriage, but to something better than what I was before.
Nah, wont be me. But a lovely, heartfelt poem.
I'm impressed.
You never know J Cosmo Newberry...you just never know.
I loved this! It's amazing how people work can inspire us without them even knowing we exist. Great work!
Bravo, well and beautifully crafted.
Love me some Nikki Giovanni. She actually started out as a very pro-black, anti-white kind of poet, but mellowed in her later years and turned out some of the best love poems ever.
I just had to give you a big thank you for your comment today. Brad waliking "uninhibited by wisdom" is such a perfect way to describe him right now. Left to his own devices. I did not leave---I was willing to work till my dying day to save my marriage--just like I wouldn't ever give up on saving a sick child. He left, overcome by his own guilt and desire to just "be free". It is a hard thing--but not so hard it can't be done.
I appreciate you sharing part of your story with me. I wish you all good things Stu. There is a level of divine joy for all of us to obtain in this life and beyond--some of us just have to work a little harder than others to find it :).
~Curl Girl
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