Tag Archives: life

Inquiring Minds, Poetry Work

Falling to Me

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This very day of days, six years ago, she fell, 
unprotected, falling fast
falling hard, 
but never did I think her destiny and I's were 
linked.

For what would a beauty such  as she want with a simple man like me?
As always, I was too blind to see.

Surely I was just a dalliance, a distraction, a small detour
on the road to a much bigger prize.

But there she was,  as soft as you please , entangled in my
arms, wanting the solace and the silence, not just my manly charms
in the sheets.

She wanted the comfort, the safety, the silence in her mind, all intertwined with a kiss and small caress.

She fell then , fell, fell like a stone into a welcoming well, and I enveloped her, 
her beautiful warmth permeating deep, deep, deep within me.

I was hers then, body and soul.

Hers alone.


by Philip Wardlow Dec 20th, 2023










Inquiring Minds, Poetry Work

My Hinterland

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~ Hinterland: an area lying beyond what is visible or known 

An area I wish to go,
to get lost in like a hermit
in the woods of nowhere,
that somewhere no one else goes to because it can not be found.

Not at dawn, nor dusk, nor the in-between times

It’s all my time, my time.
My adventure, my mind, my place in my head of heads
where I softly tread a Universe of my own discoveries and foundlys of unique thought.

Mine to wrestle and wrangle and comingle the depths of philosophical phrases.

No matter how crazy, cruel, lazy, kind, or neurotic, dare I say perhaps erotic.

Just let it be. Let me be.

Let me find the way, or get lost on the way to this Hinterland I wish to call my home.

By Philip Wardlow Nov, 2023

Inquiring Minds, Poetry Work

Great Expectations of the Souls

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What Soul have you?

Young and Impressionable, or Old and Jaded?

Both have their pitfalls.

The young one will put up with too much and wait too long to get out.

The old one will take a beautiful
moment and stomp it to death while crying into their pillow at night.

Expectations of the Impressionable Soul are racing, fun and fluid, chaotic and tragic in an instant of time

Expectations of a Jaded Soul is exhausting, impenetrable, and walled on all four sides with catapults launching flaming balls of fire.

Both want everything life has to offer, but the thing is, one is willing to give too much to get it, while the other doesn’t believe the offering of everything exists anymore, if it ever did.

So I ask, which one are you?

Hmm…or is there another option behind Door#3

By Philip Wardlow October, 2021

Inquiring Minds, Poetry Work

Melancholy Ebb and Flow

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At times the tides can be low with the seas pulled back from my shore, leaving an empty wet beach of flopping fish and half broken seashells and garbage mingling in the flotsam and jetsam amongst an almost barren terrain of foreign smells.

When in this low tide, I feel underwhelmed in life, not seen enough,  not heard enough, not understood enough, not known enough, not connected enough
not wanted enough. All the enoughs being never enough.

Then flip that, when the ocean is high and the waves are rugged and  crash hard with a splendor of driving  kinetic energy, when the universe seemingly has all its sights set upon me to thrive and live lively as a person could ever be, I live gloriously!

Life, throwing it all at me,  from the left , right, forward and behind, overwhelming me ,  surging, filling me full to bursting.
and then I do.

I think I have always had this rhythm in me, this cycling of not quite heaven and not quite hell and all the thoughts they bring.  A very fickle Melancholy

I don't want to feel sometimes because it all becomes too much to. One because I know it will end. That feeling.  It will  end, never to return and I will miss it.

At other times I want to feel it all, like a greedy child at a candy shop, mindful of all the sights, and feelings, and intimacies, soaking it in, in the moment, truly not a care for the future. I am filled with a  smile and laugh that lasts  forever in me in that moment..

I know I am a lucky man.  A very lucky man. So so lucky in my life compared to others.

So I hold to that thought.  That I am a lucky man.

The luckiest man that ever there was.

By Philip Wardlow September 12th, 2023
Inquiring Minds, Poetry Work

Bloody Car Load of Resentments

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I don't ever wish to come home and not truly see you or not want to.
I don't ever wish not to be truly seen by you or you not want to see me.
I don't ever wish for all our bloody car load of resentments to ever cause us
to drive off the road over a cliff into despair, anxiety, anger or despondence for each other.

I want contentment in one another to be our loadstone, to  pull us towards the mirth in life,  the tranquil moments, and to delight in the delving of what made us fall in love, and to always be ready to be jubilant with another without fear, judgement or reproach. 

I want you to fall into my arms and for me to fall into yours, lovely, tenderly,  for all the years down the road  together ahead, flinging resentments to the wind out the car window, and holding  fast to each others hands like new lovers on  a magical trip, seeking new discoveries around every bend.

by Philip Wardlow  August 21, 2023
Inquiring Minds, Poetry/Quote of the Week

Taking the Time

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That first date we road a Merry-Go-Round together because I wanted you to experience the magic of the world that I knew you sought inside yourself that had been so long denied.

I wanted to show you how cherished by me you already were and would be for all our days to come. I couldn’t tell you that just yet, but I felt all the feels for you and wanted to give you my world and share every adventure with you for the rest of our days together.

Five years on that feeling has not changed a bit.

Yet, I have let time steal many a precious moment from you and I. Many a magical moment that could have been, but never were.

Love is not enough, but being present with you, feeling you, knowing you, listening to you, connecting with you in all the ways that matter most like in the beginning is the magic you sought and need.

I let the days drain that magic away. I should have held on tighter, fought every day with my last breath for you in sustaining that enchantment.

Close to you is where I wish to be. Always

I am sorry I let time take that closeness.

It’s time to take it back.

By Philip Wardlow August 2nd , 2023

Inquiring Minds, Poetry/Quote of the Week

My Snowman

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Snowman

I find that I can sometimes be a slow learner at things pertaining to life in all its facets, my life has been much like building a snowman  where you have to make three sections to it.

The bottom comes first and by far the most arduous to make….at first, it starts as just a small snowball in your hands, then you slowly begin to pack more and more snow on to it, as it grows in size, you begin pushing it around  the yard to fill in any cavities around its circumference, now its getting even bigger,  you roll and roll again  to get it bigger until you get it to the size you want. You pat and pack, pat and pack, over and over to just the right rounded beautiful shape.  You take great care in its preordained geometry you see in your mind’s eye ahead, and you smile at your growing  conception.

But then, perhaps some asshole bully at this time walks by and  runs straight at you and then jumps as high as he can into the air to come down crashing on your  growing creation…destroying your nice round ball entirely…

You look  down at your mangled ball of nothingness, then up at the wide proud grin of the bully and you kick him in the
balls…. HARD.

****PAUSE LIFE****

Decision time….do you repeat the process all over again or say fuck it  and go inside for some hot chocolate?

You decide to forge ahead, but this time in the back yard away from all the asshole bullies in your fucked up neighborhood of hypocrites of mom’s and dad’s who created such a monster of a bastard.  Pissed off, you finish that bottom ball, righteously bitching the whole time and then move on to the second.

Then comes the middle portion and if you make it perfectly like the first  in shape but slightly less in size for it will compliment the bottom in proportion for the illusion of a very good looking snow-body.  Now,  if you were very ambitious and had rolled a very large bottom ball, then the second ball of snow will be very heavy  to lift on top of the bottom one. But you must lift it …. because you have to put the head on after this.. Because you need a head.

Well most people in life do anyways but some do seem fine without one. They must bump into a lot of walls on a daily basis for without eyes to see you cannot see. Never see.

So if you are strong, yet careful  it goes up easily,   but sometimes its just a bit too heavy and you drop it , or perhaps you hold it just a little bit too tight and the ball crumbles apart in your mittened hands. Now you have to start all over.

FUCK! you yell in the backyard to no one.

Your mother open’s up the back door and sticks her head out, “Did you say something dear?” she asks, clutching against the cold coming through the door.

“No, I did not mother. A raven flew by, yelling it’s opinions at me,” I said.

“Oh, that’s nice dear, have fun.” She said, and popped her head back inside and closed the door.

You smile inwardly. Because your mother can be an annoyance but she checked in on you and that makes you feel warm even on this cold day

So you finish your snowman, humming all the while, with no cussing at your mistakes or your misgivings of the process you just are building your snowman and having a good day.

By Philip Wardlow July 5th 2023

Inquiring Minds, Poetry Work

Forging

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I'm forging ahead into the far flung
burning like an ember running down a shadowed
trail just  past the witching hour.

Stars peak at me through the trees
as I traverse, curious at my passage whispering
amongst themselves at where I might be going.

I would like to know as well, for it's always been
a mystery to me,  I forge, and I forge, and I forge
always wondering where my beautiful 
failures and successes
will take me.

by Philip Wardlow June 2023