Jesse stillwater

Nov 2018

Melissa Rose

Release me into the bluest of skies
and rejoice as my soul takes flight
Do not grieve our separation
We are all merely a dusting of creation

11/6/18

Jesse stillwater Nov 2018

Stillwater in the wind

The wind roars —
then stills to listen
to the spoken grandeur
from the soul of the
angry autumn sky
Its quickly moving grandeur
moving  way beyond
a trailing moment's wake

   Change often goes voiceless —
the autumn wind
needs not consent
to bare the trees;
disguising all symmetry
of yesterdays fleeting glance

Overarching that which
can no longer be
   as it once was —
A  bitter cold gust preys
on this aging bark
stirring to the roots
of my soul

Will true nature’s
powerful essence
ever reshape the scars
these wind-whipped
human feather's
mask ?

   The wind roars —
   then stills to listen ,...

and I wonder why
I can’t be the change
I see

Stillwater in the wind

Jesse Stillwater ... November 2nd, 2018

#change #stillwater

Jesse stillwater Nov 2018

As Autumn Bares the Trees

It's telling looking through
the window’s eyes ;
a room with a paling grey glass view
befogs the clouds reign inside the storm
Often feeling misbegotten regret
for the unfiltered passing glimpses,
whetstone honed and splayed ;
raw hues of a latent life exposed

There's an uncertain hidden shame
in the unheard truth
starving out in the cold;
dwelling in a petrifying silence
of a common hunger
the lonely do ache

Merciless hunger pangs
manifest and shake
with an unrelenting bitter taste ;
loneliness grapples and grips
like a silent earth quake
rattling a rib caged heart — writhing
as Autumn bares the trees

A jagged ambiguous fault line
ripples through the hollow echo ;
a bolt of lightning caught in a bottle
strikes — silently contained
swallowing the unspoken words
in a greater good

This broken merry-go-round
keeps turning round and round;
the great mandala spinning on
like a worn out hamster-wheel
without a conscious trace
of going anywhere out there

The place you come from
is gone when you leave it —
even if you really never
feel you were from anywhere
but a thousand unmarked mileposts
from out here somewhere adrift;
a pilgrimage towards understanding
why sometimes I don’t know
if I know who I am — or could have been —
waiting on a threadbare prayer

One-day the winds of change
will shapeshift — bye and bye ...

"When the light that's lost within us
reaches the sky"

Jesse Stillwater

November 2018

"When the light that's lost within us reaches the sky"
from: "Before The Deluge" written by: Jackson Browne

#seasonalaffectivedisorder #sad #daylight #purging #darkness #stillwater

Jesse stillwater Oct 2018

I don't know a thing about forever

Love is more
    than a ballet—

beyond gestures,
steps and poses;
more than a passing
summer breeze
soon forgotten;
a twirling pirouette
in an ever changing
season's  fleeting dream

To really SEE,

— turn a blind eye
to the incantations
of what we're looking at
— lose sight of all
    we preconceive —

FEEL the music
dance inside the note,
swimming deeply
inside the rivers
   of its soul —
listen searchingly
to the fomenting breeze
as it fans the
smoldering flame
in your heart

   Love is —
an erupted moment;
an enveloping
burst of flames
enkindling
an uncontainable wildfire

an unfolding chrysalis,
butterfly kisses wafting
in the halo around the moon

a thundering heartbeat
a fiery burning
    ring enrobes —

an enchanted sunset
vanishing into an
evanescent afterglow

The downward spiral
of a burning ember
erupting in a rising moon;
climbing the rungs
of the twilight horizon

Words may sing a sad song
of love and misery;
some say: “love is forever”..,
a hesitant reminder —
your pretty words
and sweet lies
still linger where
sleeping memories lie:
you never really saw
my world straightaway
peering out through
the corner of your eyes

Looking heart to heart
through the glass reflection
within the window
of a poet’s pages,
when nobody else
in sight seems to care,
gazing right past you
like you're not even there;
only posing words
amongst the untamed
waves of emotional depth

Lying to myself
won't ever make
the truth go away
when you hear
whispered words
      grow silent —

Love is more than a ballet ...
but I don't know a thing about "forever"

Jesse Stillwater ... October 20, 2018

"That love is all there is, is all we know of love" Emily Dickinson

#stillwater

Jesse stillwater Sep 2018

purging poetry

a poet's simple truth:

' the only thing that makes you live
is silently killing you trying to let it go '

—

Just thinking out loud: parsing the raw truth veiled in a poet's blood —
*will* to be creative has abandoned at the moment; unable to rejuvenate as light lessens daily, prompting to take some time away from whatever it is i've been doing here ... for now, i'll just be listening
through the window of the silent pages ...
Jesse Stillwater

#truism #indifference #purging #poetry #darkness #stillwater

Jesse stillwater Sep 2018

Most of the time

Not many people know
where the old road goes
I’m older now and it seems
there are more and more
       paved roads
that lead to nowhere —
   most of the time

As a kid, living miles up
  a rough potholed,
country road — a hike away
from the edge a small town
  out in the sticks,..
you come to know onliness,
blind to a journey alone

   I never stepped on
cracks in a town sidewalk —
  never learned what
  "superstitious" was,
    like the other kids
        from town

It wasn't the cracks
  in the sidewalk
I feared to tread;
steppin' on 'em breaks nothing
  already broken —

It was just all so different
than the long walk home
where that old road goes —
grandma always said:
"follow the creek upstream;
it'll always lead you back
  where you belong"

   The washboards
in the steep narrow road
up the hill, were like
  muddy stair steps
in the rainy season

Sometimes I followed
on up the creek below
to the upper log bridge
     swimmin' hole,..
where I learned to listen
to the sweet melody
of unclouded days;
and for a moment
I thought I belonged

     I still haven't
found my way out
  of this memory
I’m holding onto —
because life is just
an unstoppable
season, passing by
    on its own;
   like the way
     rainwater
  in the swollen
creek bed flows:

   And I'm just
another passing September
no one will remember —

   most of the time

Jesse Stillwater ... September 2018

#mylife #thoughts #yesterday #stillwater

Sep 2018

Melissa Rose

Becoming the ripples

I have felt the ripples
of predestined change
Some crashing like tidal waves
upon my desolate plane

Others a delicate trickle
through this narrowing gorge;
complex and understated
in its methodical purge

Both deliberate in the upheaval
and churning of the soil
change that brings inner balance
to mind, body and soul

I’ve swum against their current
dragged to murky waters below
tumbling in the turmoil
of my urgent need for control

Now cast upon this rocky shore
panicked and alone
I must surrender to the journey
to find my way back home

I welcome the soaking of soles
as I intend to surf each wave
Immersing myself into its flow
I become the ripples of change

9/24/18