Journal | Gelflings At Play

Author: Molli
Monday 21st May 2007 at 9:18 am
Category: Curiosity, Journal, Poetry, Screwing Up!

Tags: Dazed Kitsune, Fox, Poets, treasures

This morning I have been following links from fox’s page over at Chasing Shadows Again. Yes, I am incredibly lazy and having someone else do all of the hard work of finding good sites to visit! Fox wrote of the Poets Who Blog site and the latest post there is about a carnival they’re having. To be a part of it, you must send a link to your personal favourite poem on your blog and WriterWoman will list these links on her site on the 26th of May. The deadline for submissions is midnight of the 25th. It’s a wonderful way to gain readers for your poetry. Here are the details on entering.

The debate I am now having with myself is whether or not to submit a poem link and, if yes, which one. Given that I’m not writing anymore, it seems somewhat fraudulent to be asking anyone to come and read my poetry. My reason for even considering it is that I HAVE to do something to inspire myself. I realise nobody else is going to be able to prop up my ever-waning self-esteem but I’m not going to deny that it helps to think that SOMEBODY out there believes I can write. It’s a belief I no longer hold… never really did to begin with but now, definitely don’t! (Writing that, I just successfully talked myself OUT of submitting a link )

So, to every poet out there, Poets Who Blog are offering a shop window in which to show your wares Go to it! I know I, for one, will be checking back there on the 26th to follow all of the promised links back to their treasures.

(Which reminds me, if you’re anything like as lazy as I am, fox really does host a treasure trove of wonderful, interesting links… I won’t even mention the pirate underwear! )

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Author: Molli
Thursday 22nd March 2007 at 6:01 am
Category: Gelflings, Journal, Love, Poetry

Tags: beauty, consequences, Damien, impact, indifference, meaningful, meaningless, memory, touch

I want to know if my kisses sunk in,
if my touch hit bone, warmed your soul.
I want to know
if my fingerprints remained,
if you had them bronzed,
mounted in frame on your bedside table.
I want to know if I have been immortalised
in your world.

My hands lay undone before me
and I regret the impotency of my touch
upon page
and skin.

Sometimes I wonder
if I ever existed at all.

6:10pm Sunday
29.December.2002

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Author: Molli
Thursday 15th March 2007 at 4:01 am
Category: Angst, Gelflings, Journal, Love, Poetry, Relationships

Tags: belief, consequences, defences, faith, fear, impact, lies

We talk circles around each other
vultures hovering around carrion
terrified of disturbing the flies
and witnessing the rancid flesh which lies beneath.

We’d rather deal with the maggots -
slimy white in their thousands
than take too close a look
at the breeding ground.

We talk circles around each other
eagles at a great height
viewing cities as teeming anthills
insignificant, irrelevant
no harm to us.

We talk circles around each other
for fear a straight line
would carry across boundaries
into unknown territory;
for fear that landing
taking a stand
would commit us to a course
we cannot retreat from.

You talk circles around me
afraid to say, “This is who I am”
because the inaccuracies
might show as hypocrisy
or ignorance
and because the truth
might well reveal the lies
and you’re not sure
if you’re as beautiful
as you want me to believe.

I wish your faith
carried as far as mine
I wish you could see past
your own masks,
see beyond
the coating of lies,
the gathering of flies

I wish you could see yourself
neck deep in bullshit
you’re still a breeding ground
for butterflies

I wouldn’t be here
were you not.

6:01pm Monday
10.June.2003

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Author: Molli
Thursday 15th March 2007 at 3:39 am
Category: Journal, Just A Theory, Relationships

Tags: consequences, dreaming, holding on, letting go, lies, men, modern society, women

The thing with holding on is that we slowly forget what it is we’re holding onto. Or why. In the beginning, it’s because you were never happier than when you were with ‘him’. In the beginning, that’s possibly even true. We tell ourselves that he was the perfect person for us and that nobody could possibly compare favourably. Why move on when you believe there’s no place better to go? Everything he was to us keeps haunting us. His scent, his smile, his laughter….the touch of his hands. Everything is about him and how he made you feel.

The thing with holding on is that we slowly forget what it is we’re holding onto. Or why.

Two things. How many of us believe ourselves deserving of not one miracle, but two? If the miraculous has occurred once in our lives, we cherish it eternally. Nothing wrong with that. We hold it so deeply in our hearts and believe ourselves truly blessed to have known such love, such rapture, such perfection. But to put out our hands, asking for it again? Few of us believe ourselves deserving of it the first time around, let alone a second. Fact is, most of us probably sabotaged it the first time around for that very reason – our feelings of being unworthy.

We hold onto those crystal clear moments of absolute joy because we are terrified it will never come again. We hold onto those crystal clear moments of absolute joy because we don’t want to see where those moments led. Because where do they usually lead? To another heartbreak, another leavetaking, another eternity of tears. So, we hold onto the memory of joy because it is easier than dealing with the vacancy, with his absence…. with the fact that he left or cheated or wasn’t so superhumanly perfect after all. We deify him, setting him up on a pedestal and refuse to allow time or facts to sully our sweetest dreams. God forbid that he turned out to be human, with all of the fears, faults and weaknesses inherent in such a state. Or, worse still, god forbid that we were wrong!

If he was perfect for me, he’d be here, right? If he was so perfect for me, then how could he find perfection with someone else? I’m unique, as is he, as is she. He couldn’t possibly be the perfect match for BOTH of us….that wouldn’t fit into the fairytale scenario, would it? So, for one of us, it’s a lie, a fairytale not just in fiction but in fact also.

The other road to take is to lay the blame at the feet of the male species. It’s their nature to sow their wild oats, spread their seed…. right? Not his fault, he’s still perfect…he’s just following his basic instincts. Easily forgivable…. right?

Funny how we factor out those things which don’t fit neatly into our dream landscape. I’m fairly certain that, when I dreamed of a knight in shining armour, he wasn’t encumbered with a princess under his other arm as he reached out his hand to save me. I’m almost certain I never dreamed a hero who could tell the sweetest lies as easily as breathing. I know I never dreamed a prince who wasn’t sure who or what he was fighting for.

So, why do we idealise the poor creatures? Men can’t possibly live up to our expectations and yet, we make it THEIR fault when they fail to do so. We see the fairytale coming to life and we forget that his hand holds a pen also. We forget that he, also, will be penning in parts of the script and that, no matter how we might wish and dream, he’s not going to say or do EXACTLY as we want him to say or do. How utterly boring if he did. Who wants a puppet as a partner? Even Pinnochio became a REAL boy! For all we say that we find men predictable when they conform to our nastiest stereotypes, what is more to the point is that women become the nastiest of stereotypes within a relationship. So many of us say ‘hold me’ while pushing him away. We say “nothing” when asked what’s wrong. We expect them to be mind readers and are truly astonished when we discover they’re not.

Over and over again we expect men to be ‘human’ by our definition of humanity, when we ourselves so often fail to live up to that standard.

Not for one moment am I suggesting that men can’t be utter pigs… but, so can women. I am not saying that men don’t lie and cheat. So do some women. I am not saying that men won’t take the most expedient course of action in any given circumstance. So do some women. I am not denying that they seem to have no comprehension of consequences. I am not saying they don’t have one track minds and I am not saying that they fail to see beyond the moment. All of those things are quite often the case.

In the light of love, ‘being’ in the moment is an attribute. We applaud them their spontaneity, their carefree ways, their ability to see ‘us’ and nothing else. We find it charming when they decide that “screw work, let’s go on a picnic.” We think it romantic when they show up on the doorstep at 4am with claims of being unable to stay away.

…and two years down the track we call it irresponsibility and inconsideration.

Whose nature changed? Whose became the less attractive?

Back to the beginning. We hold onto our little pieces of perfection because we don’t want to admit that the honeymoon is over. We don’t want to see that our attraction has worn thin. We don’t want to see that they left us. Perhaps they didn’t leave. Maybe we did. That being the case, did they change or did we? Do we tell ourselves it was them because we don’t want to lose faith in our own judgement? If so, doesn’t running them into the ground, calling them bastards and saying ‘they’re all the same’ do that very thing? If we’re so blessed with perfect judgement, then surely if he truly was a bastard and they’re all the same, aren’t we the fools for wanting to believe otherwise?

Even when we tell ourselves we have no expectations of others, it’s impossible not to dream. Life is a very bleak place without dreams, without hope. There is nothing wrong with dreaming and every reason to continue doing so…. as long as we remember that we only have control over one voice in that dream, one set of actions, responses, reactions, motivations… our own. It’s when we start trying to tell the story solely to suit ourselves that we run into so much trouble. When we start denying his part in the play, his right to choose where he wants to be, how he wants to feel, how he wants to behave….when we deny him his very humanity we wind up with one of two things. Either he conforms and he becomes a puppet with nothing and no one to hold him up but the person manipulating the strings. In that case, we begin to despise him for being spineless, indecisive, co-dependent and weak. If he doesn’t conform, he has no choice but to walk away…. and then we hate him for abandoning us, for failing to live up to the promises of ‘and they lived happily ever after.’

It only works if you both want the same thing…. and how many of us want something for more than five minutes at a stretch these days? Some things are so important to us that we desire them for a lifetime and spend all of our time trying to attain them. Love, respect, trust, loyalty. Some things there can be no compromise on. So, if you have those things in common and you’re prepared to work at having them with and for each other…then lovely, enjoy. If you don’t hold those things in common…then walk away.

And here I am, still holding onto those things for someone, but not with him. And why am I holding onto them…… because I can’t believe I could possibly deserve that miracle twice.

So often I slip into bitterness and cynicism because I look back on that short period of time as a dream. My favourite dream…. and then I woke up. I tell myself that I could only have been so deluded by keeping my eyes closed, by deliberately shutting my eyes to everything I didn’t want to see.

I’m a female, ergo, I find it difficult to believe a moment ever happened at all if it doesn’t keep on happening. I’m a female, therefore I find promises of forever in a kiss, a look, a touch, a smile.

We often accuse men of being cold-hearted, almost clinical, when it comes to sex. How are women any better when we’re always so damn busy demanding proof of even just one moment’s happiness? What, if we can’t trace the dna on the sheets back to him, back to ourselves, it never happened? If he doesn’t leave teeth marks in our shoulder for us to admire the next morning, he wasn’t there the night before?

Because he is not here now, he was never there at all?

Honestly, I don’t know who’s got the better deal between men and women. On the one hand, I would truly love to simply be able to enjoy a moment without worrying about tomorrow…or worse, yesterday. That’s something I’ve tried (and failed) to learn from the few lovely men I’ve been up close and personal with. On the other hand, ‘and they lived happily ever after’ has never lost its charm.

I’m holding onto the dream for fear it will never come true again…. and because if I let go of it, I feel as though I’m negating it somehow. Sad but true.

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