Even the Devil got a Valentines Card what’s your problem?
All posts by Philip Wardlow
Claimed by Cupid, a Dark Turn
Do you believe to escape me oh beautieous one ?
You who seeks to think she can choose her own way.
My arrows fly faster than you could ever run think to run
Hide you say?
Escape from love’s sharp arrow is but a myth, whether it be unrequited, thrust upon, stumbled into, taken, or laid in siege, so shall you feel it’s thudding sting into you deep and anchored in full.
My arrows when flung seek only but the beat of the heart, so as long you shall live so shall it find you whether on the highest sunlit peak or the dankest deepest hole in the bowels of this dark earth.
I find you a prize worthy only unto me. You shall have no other I have decreed. Long have I sought such a consort for eons, for I have dwelt in perpetual solitude allowed only to offer love to the ingratitude of others
To be cursed and denied it my entire life is cruelty alongside the cruel.
I am done with all that.
So fly oh arrow, fly true.
Seek her heart, seek, seek, seek
Find my true love
For there is no where for her to run.
By Philip Wardlow February 10th, 2023
Sun Surfer
I'm a sun surfer, riding waves of fire and fusion, I graze the gravity wells on a board of pure energy, slicing through the primordial particles of plasma Burn baby burn! Do you feel it? Ain't nothing better when surfs up. I shoot the curl of a sun flare out into space and almost touch Mercury before I plummet flung back down the barrel as it spits me towards the sun's surface to finally kick out and to settle, just floating taking it all in, I smile inwardly as I drop in again and do it all over Ain't nothing better bro. Tomorrow isn't promised Nature's energy setting a plate for you to eat off of, so carve it my brother and sisters, eat those waves well, Wack, Hack, Crack, and Snap, your way through. Throw buckets of ions as you slam and jam on through. Ride, ride, ride do or die. That's the only way to catch the sun Truly. by Philip Wardlow February 7th, 2023
Some think they know her
She is a beauty.
Full of humor, wit and sarcasm with
a laughing smile that compels you to
smile in return.
When she invites you in she holds you close to her heart.
Her passion enthralls you, her empathy calls to you.
But do you know her like I do?
Do you see her open wounds
laid plainly on the table for all to see,
for ever has she been an open book
Stories of many a woe wound through her
various lives and lands she has traveled.
Read her story. See her.
Think her veneer made of steel, impervious
to your blows, constant and unrelenting?
She is fragile as any other soul in this world.
What battle is so important to be won that you
would scourge the field of her feelings til nary a blade
of grass stands underfoot.
Be warned, she is but a calm tempest
held at bay on the horizon that you invite in
with your callous words you sling so blindly.
I fear you would not survive her storm.
by Philip Wardlow January 16th, 2023
Noir Detective Story opening…Gun at the Head
There is a gun pointed at me by a woman in shadow right this very moment. Meager light from the street lamps fights it way through the blinds of my dark office as I sit behind my desk shrouded in nothingness.
Caught unaware I was, found with my left cheek upon my desk, asleep in a pool of my own drool alongside a bottle of rum sitting on its side with nary a drop to its name.
From my one eye that is allowed to see, light catches the barrel of the pistol firmly pressed, held by a well manicured stark white delicate hand. The pressure of the metal tube tight against my temple, which I’m sure, is creating a nice circular indentation upon my skin at this very moment.
I hear the rain outside pouring buckets of cats and dogs. I hear the cars cutting through the river that is the road as I sit immobile just two floors above this moving passive world.
I could die here tonight, brains sprayed all across my desk. The cops would have a hell of a time playing connect the dots in trying to figure out my face after the trigger was pulled. No opening of the casket for the wife and kids, or friends. If I had any of those.
She was itching to kill me. This was a woman who meant business.
I could tell she knew her business, knew her business well. She wasn’t breathing heavy, in fact she wasn’t breathing at all!
Well that’s peculiar.
A small, dithering of low laughter filled the darkened room around me. Who was with her? My one eyeball twirled to see.
“Don’t worry about them, they are the last thing you will need to worry about. Indeed the last.” Her voice crackled like burnt paper to my ear. I knew she was smiling eventhough I couldn’t see her.
“What do you want?” I asked, calmer than I felt. Perhaps I was already resigned to my fate.
“Your fate is in my hands is it? That has always been your mistake almost from the moment you drew air into this world. You are like so many I meet in this world.”
She pressed the gun harder against my skull. The metal bit deeper. I could feel the blood starting to flow down over my cheek near my eye.
“For fuck sakes! Stop! What do you mean!?”
“Think, you fucking moron. Why am I here. Right now. In this room. With you. Holding a gun to your head? Think hard before you speak another word.”
Think, think, think. I know if I said the right wrong thing she would pull the trigger.
“You got that right, stop telling yourself to think and actually do it.” Crinkle, crinkle went her papery voice.
She can hear what I’m thinking?
“Yes, for fuck sakes you are just now picking up on that, god I hate my job. Think.” I saw her grip tighten on the trigger.
So I thought. Quietly to myself. I thought. Then I knew.
“I know why you are here. I asked you to come. You are Death aren’t you? Actual Death.” I cringed in my own pool of drool just asking her, it? or what the fuck ever the correct pronoun was appropriate.
Suddenly the gun was removed from my head.
“Congratulations, now sit up, not much time left. Listen carefully. First, you are abysmal at killing yourself. I have presided over your almost corpse six times prior, waiting and waiting and you always seem to pull through. Now this seventh time you knock yet again on Death’s door. Do you know how rude it is to knock on someone’s door and then run away…..well do you!!” She yelled like a Banshee then, causing my overturned bottle of rum to shatter into a thousand pieces.
“Well?” she asked almost too quietly. I heard her tapping a foot on my hard wood floors.
“Oh, um, I’m sorry. I thought that was a rhetorical question….of course it’s rude. I didn’t know I was ah uh knocking in my defense. I never thought death was literal in the sense that you are… I uh mean standing in front of me like your are in the real sense of things….” my words dithered slowly to a mumble as she slowly leaned forward into the dim light over my desk.
I was struck by how beautiful Death was immediately as her/it face came into view.
“Why thank you, and I should be and I’m not an IT, she is the proper pronoun, and I need you to hire you for job” she said, replying immediately to my thoughts.
” A job, me, investigating for you, Death? What could I ever possibly help you with?
“My death, my very own death. You see, someone in precisely seven days, sixteen hours, three minutes and two seconds is going to kill me. I need you to find the killer before he, or she, or them, or it kills me.”
by Philip Wardlow Jan 16th, 2023
Caves,Tsunamis and Sand Castles
The lot of this world are mere cavemen, still fresh and immature in thought and nature from the hole they crawled out of…
Squirrelly in action, violently trying to get that nut, not knowing why the compulsion drives them, while many others sit on the beach sunning themselves as the tsunami(s) roll ashore, smiling as their children make sand castles in the grand shadows of the approaching waves.
Raven’s Keep
The Ravenprince
He will always know a certain darkness,
always dwell in it no matter how
light the days.
And that is all well and good.
By Philip Wardlow Nov 16th, 2022
Glass Heart
I am an imperfect man.
and she has a beautiful perfect
transparent heart
of which she lets me
hold in my rough hands.
Her heart is warm to the touch
never cold, for inside of it
it's full of fire, a fervor for life
I see burning bright, for her heart
is made of the most pristine glass
I see through it clearly
to the flickering flames within
that dance and dance
always before my eyes.
Yet I am flawed, and my
seeing leaves me sometimes blind
at the warmth and wonder of
her heart I hold in my hands.
I wish her heart to never break
nor the one to be the cause of
the breaking.
I hold it delicately lest to crush it,
yet not too firmly for it to slip
from my hands
I hold it with a willful assurance of self
as I marvel at the magical
glow that pervades from
within.
Her glass heart is stronger than it
seems, more than she even knows.
Tougher than any Titans mighty
blows could wrought asunder.
Her glass heart's unwavering
transparence
mesmerizes my eyes, for it is true,
so very true straight to
it's core.
and beckons for me to hold it
for all the rest of my days.
by Philip Wardlow , August 31st, 2022
The Adored and the Smitten
Which do you prefer to be? The Adored or the Smitten? Why, as the Adored must come all the rewards, Eyes upon you, an audience numbering from one to one million. Hell even the right one can pour it on thicker in one mere moment than a million. How can you lose. How can you not see all the pleasure that brings? As the Adored are you ever bored? The Smitten have always outnumbered the Adored. They keep coming and coming and coming. Literally they may be coming. But in all seriousness, let's just hope they don't knock upon your door as they can get quite obsessive I have heard. Gift upon gift, upon gift, just to catch a peek perhaps to see, if what they they sent fits. It does, Oh , it's divine! Oh, by the way I also like the white one. But the Smitten, oh the Smitten, they have their dreams manifested in flesh, and a smile, and words that are just for them. Oh, the attention....it's everything. To be seen, to know you affect their life in that one small moment To possess the power to push it up or down. They are allowed to live within the life of the Adored, sitting at the edge of them, just a hair's width away from their every movement. Keep those compliments coming though, never wary for the Adored do get bored as do the Smitten. It's a transaction, a give and take. A take and give. Did you think you were Special? You the Adored, do you think you are truly treasured? You the Smitten are you truly charmed? Do you think you see them as they truly are? If in this life we flow from Give and Take what is ever truly real, what is ever truly fake if all our dealings are ever based upon the transaction? by Philip Wardlow, August 31st 2022
If I Didn’t have her
If I didn't have her in my life I would be less than My days would be dim, and my smile would be less inclined. I would know loneliness, I would know isolation and I would cry the fool every night of my life if I didn't have this woman to hold on to when all the world swung from wrong to right and back again. She's a sweet one, my woman, she's a handful to, but she's grabbed a handful of my heart will all the strength she has in her, and I don't feel her ever wanting to let go anytime soon. If I didn't have her in my life, I would ask the Universe why But I don't have to ask that question. Because she's right here, right now, in my arms. By Philip Wardlow Aug 22nd 2022
Ain't no rest for the Wicked - Philip Wardlow - The real and the sensual sides to life in all its facets.. 