Category Archives: Inquiring Minds

My introduction page as a writer trying to get publsihed and a collection of posts showing who I am through ancetdotal musings about my life or how I am inspired to write or why I write and how I write in my own wierd little way.

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/Quote of the Week

Sometimes

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Sometimes I just miss punching stuff… that is all.

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, The EROTIC ZONE

What Primal Means To Me

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Wolves nip, Wolves bite, Wolves wrestle 
for domination or simply for the submission, 
two sides of the same coin to me
Don't think but react
Fall into the fight of lust with no limits
with the winner setting the terms for you,
with your head down in acceptance of the pleasure you are
about to receive.
Run with me in the night, match me
stride for stride, breath for
raging guttural breath.
Challenge me and I shall challenge you 
with us both the winner
for it.
So come crawl into bed 
for I am about to devour you
while you devour me.

By Philip Wardlow September 13th, 2023
Inquiring Minds, Poetry Work

No Other way

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She is a Lady, but never in waiting, she can be needy like a Princess, oh yes assuredly so, at times she can be blind as a bird in a blizzard, at others, attentive as a mother bear to her cubs, she can be sweet as the sweetest berry upon the branch, or sting like a bee if swatted at. She is a beautiful daydreaming creature of the most magical sort, and I am surprised most days what trickles from her mind out to her mouth. All I know is that I love this mish mosh of a beautiful girl and I wouldn’t want her any other way…

by Philip Wardlow August 31st, 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 Work

Fears

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If I think too much on losing her, my
body goes taunt and tight,
muscles as rigid as a high wire cable,
then  shaking like  a nervous  tightrope
walker traversing a great height. 

Why would I lose her?
Everything will work out fine.
Love conquers all.  Right?

"Love" did conquer all once and she 
left me.

I didn't seem to be mean too much to her at the end

Am I now?  Will I be in  a month, a year, a decade?

Will she give up on me?

Will I be to blame?
Does every past  failure 
play a part in a possible future one
or the success in
not  losing you.
With wisdom found.

What makes me special?

What makes her say to herself, 
I shall keep him for all my
days to come no matter what

I guess I do. 
I make her want say to herself,
I shall keep him
And so I shall always 
keep showing her
she wants to say
I shall keep you.

By Philip Wardlow August 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