Warrior Chi


She strives

Tested, time and again.

Blood spilled just as readily asWarriorChi

her own tears.

A woman.  Just a woman? Never.

A warrior,

A leader with  a heart laid bare

A protector…

keen of mind,

going in

with innate skills

As death places its deal

upon her table and

she answers back

in kind.

For she was forged in a lifetime

of sacrifice.

Do you hear that?

A soft whisk,

a honing of a blade to

a sharpness like none

other.

Delicate, determined, Beautiful.

Yet, who holds those warrior hands

As the light dims on her day?

Who holds her heart?

and brushes

her tears her away?

Stay strong.

Stay strong Warrior Chi.

 

by Philip Wardlow 2016

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Bloody Ballet


 

 

 

Ballet.png

Bloody Ballet~

She pirouettes

adorned in a dress

of black gossamer,

Spinning with blade

in hand to music only

she hears.

Flame red hair sweeps the air,

flinging outward, as

drops of crimson

drip from the tip

to the cold hard floor;

knives held tight by

delicate fingers.

Her hands move with

the intensity of the allegro.

Alive, brisk, and deadly.

The sharpness of her tools

keep up with her demands

of dissection and delving.

The other dancers

fall before her

as if in silent repose.

Arabesque to glissade,

her strong legs coupe

across the floor,

she cuts and cuts and cuts

and does a sourbresaut

like a cat jumping

onto her final partner

in this ensemble of now

only two.

She seeks his heart

as the point punches through.

Death follows

Yet still it beats

as she holds it,

Still it beats

as she takes a bite.

Still it beats

as she rises from

her grand plie.

and takes a bow

to the crowd

from

center stage.

By Philip Wardlow 2013

She tries


image

I am at a lost
to fathom the depths
and heights of the walls
of her.

The precarious walk
she takes in the lofts
of the upper reaches
must be harrowing.

Her balance must be precise
leveled on the balls of feet
which tread a path where
a head floats in the clouds
never looking down.

At me.
The Flea.

Such is she.

That ignores me.
For who am I
but who laid his heart bare
for her.

It seems I have always known my place in her heart was but a vault
for another key to release
her from a prison.
That I could never see.

But she tries.
This girl. This woman.
She still tries
for me.

By Philip Wardlow 2016

Hiddin Within


Shadows-and-Fog

 

Hidden Within~

He watches her. She watches him.

The dog , he watches nothing.

Their eyes can’t hide what lies beneath.

A tilt of the head, a downcast look tells

me all I need to know about their inner

Lives.

They hate. They love.  They lust. They  laugh at

Life.

Is there sadness behind that smile they

Give.

Some hide from each other.

Some hide from themselves.

Some hide simply because they can.

I wish I could see all the dreams buried

deep within their heads.

Dreams which they’ve never fed;

maybe a doctor, a lawyer, or a whore,

maybe a pretentious pious little bore.

Their thoughts are hidden;

a landscape of dark shadows and fog banks hung

Low.

I watch it all unfold.

They can’t keep it hidden long,

for like a cauldron bubbles, spews, and spits so

does their mind emit a gurgling of regret, a wisp of

weakness, or a hiss of  hysteria in its’ attempt to lament.

I watch and I wait for it all to unfold,

for the hidden to be found and the found to be told.

I’m a spectator to the grand affair which is hidden within.

So know that when I look at you or you at me,

I will see you, see you indeed.

By   Philip Wardlow

Desolate Dame


grabbingbreast

Desolate Dame~

 

 

You give him a grin

and forget it all when he

grabs a breast.

He smiles that same stellar smile

that trapped you so long

ago.

You sweat it all out through sexual labors

and forget…

all the moments meandering

constant in the frontal lobe of your brain that aches

to cut him loose and send him downstream

to go cascading off a cliff.

Yet you play the martyr to his Mussolini,

tied up and tortured in the town square,

while all the passerby’s look the other way.

Weakness.

Doesn’t become you.

Defiance should rule.

But yet you grin all over again

when he grabs your breast.

 

 

Philip Wardlow

The Incident – a Story


Going to attempt to write  a long poem or  short story within 10 minutes and just let my mind flow. I will correct all typos and grammatical mistakes after so that is not slowing me down… I will attempt a story  as I have written enough poems as of late and  want to change it up.

So here goes.  Keep in mind, if it sucks, I wrote it in  10 minutes okay….so go easy on me. Thanks!  🙂

The Incident

She held the boy’s head tight in  a death grip.  He was squirming but he wasn’t going anywhere.

The other boy’s friend had run to get the teacher on the other side of  the playground. The sun was high….sheesh, it was fucking hot, she thought.  The boy’s head was getting slippery with sweat, she was gonna lose him, so she kicked the back of his knees and sent him to the ground and put her knees between his shoulders bearing her full weight on him, which was a lot, considering the boy was a toothpick, a scrawny toothpick at  that. Why did he think he think he could get away with it?

She imagined his mouth was full of grass. Good. She smiled inside at the thought of him having a green tongue later when he got home.

She was surrounded by what must have been  thirty kids chanting to punch the boy she held onto.  Wasn’t this enough. Animals, she thought, all of them.  They probably  didn’t even why know she was fighting him.

“You okay Rick?”  she asked as she continued to kneel on him, her knees still pressing firmly in to his back. She actually really did want to know if he was okay. She was like that, even with a boy like Rick.

“Mmmmm,” was all she heard. Oh Shit, he really was eating grass. She let up a little with her knees. But not much.

“Get the fuck  off of me!”  He yelled, the side of his face a mask of wet grass clippings along with probably his own spit mingled in with the dew of the day. He squirmed and  he squirmed but  no progress was made to remove the weight that was her.

“Now you know the magic words, we have been over this already.  Let go of your  ego. It won’t hurt too much,” she asked him politely.

“Fuck, you Rachel, you bitch!”   was the only thing he said,  inciting ooh and aahs, and laughs from the other kids surrounding them.

Then the seas parted and the teacher arrived with the boy’s friend in tow behind.

“Get off that boy, right now young lady!”  said Miss.Moore, who was a younger teacher newly hired,  who had probably drawn the short straw for monitoring the students during lunch,  a nice enough woman, but a little too happy for her own good. Rachel never trusted anyone that was ever too happy.

“Can’t do that, Miss Moore. Little Ricky has been a bad boy. Haven’t you Ricky?”  She looked down at him ..pressing a little harder on his back for emphasis with the last sentence.

Rick, took the Fifth, like soo many before throughout history,  knowing the full cost of having to think too much in high pressure situations might damn them altogether.

“Ah, silence. The great arbiter!”   Rachel said to the crowd turning around to finally settle her gaze upon the teacher. By the funny look Miss Moore had upon her face, Rachel doubted she knew what the word arbiter meant.

“I don’t care what he did, get off him now. Don’t let me tell you again….” Miss Moore started to say.

“Or what?  You don’t care what he did?  You don’t care what he did?  My sitting on him doesn’t wrangle a  question out of that little head of yours?  Duress or not, I will have justice or by the fickle fucking gods above I will snap his neck in front of you and everyone else here and now!”  Rachel said in all the  fury she could muster. She idly caught the muted whimpering of Rick below in her ear. She was a nice girl but she was quite sure she had meant what she had just said. And it didn’t scare her in the slightest.

“What, what, did he do? ” Mrs. Moore murmured, asking tentatively. The crowd was silent . A pen could have dropped (but in the grass you wouldn’t have heard it)

“Tell her,  tell them all Ricky, now, and in the form of an apology as I won’t hear a lie from your lips speaking of it.”  Rachel let up the pressure but laid her both hands to his head very hard into the ground.

Ricky inhaled slowly.

“I am sorry for pulling  you behind the school into the woods and throwing you to ground and pulling your skirt above your head and threatening to fuck you while holding you down.”

“Tell them Ricky, tell them why it only went that far.” Rachel said in a flat quiet tone.

“Because you kicked me in the balls  and then punched me in my damn throat. I’m sorry Rachel. I’m really sorry.”  and then Ricky began to cry and blubber like a baby.

“I think we are done, here. Apology not accepted btw..not even until you are a hundred and two and fuck you,”  she said just as quietly, as she got up from kneeling on him and simply walked away.

The End

by Philip Wardlow 2016

tough

The Fox – Quote of the Week


“And the fox said to you, I am nothing more than a fox like a hundred thousand other foxes. But if you tame me, then we shall need each other. To me, you will be unique in all the world. To you, I shall be unique in all the world… One only understands the things that one tames, said the fox.” ~ Antoine de Saint-Exupery

 

FOXandMe

 

The Marvel of a Marble


marblerolling

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Marvel of a Marble~

 

 

Your  body, so lithe and light;

it floats effortlessly,

like a  ghost lightly traversing an open  space.

Pirouetting, arms flung, delicate hands in pose

All for show; for  your spirit is not sovereign.

It wears a weighted vest, zipped tight.

Gravity bears down, in its

responsibility to do its part

in the relativity of all things

of keeping that piece of you

controlled….limited….reduced

and compliant.

Structure, and rules

and useless fears need not apply,  yet they

do with you.

A marble rolling along a curve

may call its path predetermined

unless it chooses to jump the ledge

it glides upon.

So jump, oh glorious marble

Jump!

And find that distinctive dance

where vests are flung, and feet move of a volition

not prescribed by a choreography

found strange to your mind’s eye.

Jump!  oh glorious marble,  Jump!

And find where you might

finally land.

 

 

by Philip Wardlow 2016

 

 

 

 

A Storm of Crows


 stormofcrows

 A Storm of Crows ~    

 

Death has visited you, a hair’s breath of a fingertip;

yet a caress not placed.

She stared longingly and then flitted away.

You felt her. Didn’t you?

Now, where ignorance was once rooted,

fear remains fixed.

Where a true smile did reside,

now only a tumultuous dark blue sea.

For you see, you think that is all for you to see.

Push, push, push it down.

But it bubbles up and it makes you wonder why.

Will there be pain? A forever Darkness ?

A release? The End of ends? Where will I go?

Anywhere? Nowhere?

Shall I just dissolve into nothing?

Death came, it did indeed.

In a storm of crows she rode on the winds of fate.

Neither bleak nor sweet.

That has always been her way.

No malice or malcontent.

For her duty is simply to carry you away.

Not to think of things of nonsense.

In a life yet here and now.

 

by Philip Wardlow 2016