burning bright – Linda M. Crate

 

you wanted me to be seen not heard

to be a passive girl who hid behind

the beard of the sun and the skirts of

moonlight,

and to sit lonely perched on your pedestal

in the gilded cage of your love which

was really lust;

 

but i am the butterfly landing on clover

gentle yet still wild

refusing the confines and cages

of any net that would fall upon me because

i am not someone you’ll ever tame

where i prefer to be the butterfly i can also

be the unicorn or the wolf

 

i can be a harpy and a chimera

or the soft petals of persephone’s flowers

life is a matter of perspective,

and you refused to see the relevance of mine

rejecting what was not yours;

insisting that your reality must be mine,

too, but we were two different people looking

out to sea

 

you saw only dangers and threats

i saw only mermaids and love

wanted to swim beneath the jade sapphire

confines that knew no beginning or end

so deep they could understand

my intensity and depths but weak men

cannot handle the helm of strong women

we burn just a little too bright for their candles.

 

Linda M. Crate’s works have shown up in numerous magazines and anthologies both online and in print. She has four published poetry chapbooks the latest of which is If Tomorrow Never Comes (Scars Publications, August 2016). She is also the author of the Magic Series and two forthcoming chapbooks Wild Thing and My Wings Were Meant to Fly.

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September 20, 2017 by foxglovejournal Categories: PoetryTags: bright, butterfly, cages, creative, creativity, danger, fauna, flight, flora, legend, life, Linda M. Crate, love, mythology, nature, perspective, poem, Poetry, sun, wild, wolf, world, writing Leave a comment

keep your pomegranates – Linda M. Crate

 

i have no respect

for you

because you are a man

who shirks duty

and pretends love is a game,

running from his problems

as if mere demands that i be a stranger

will make it so;

a part of me will always love you

but i don’t want or need you—

you were the wolf that turned on me,

snarling and yowling like the wind you ripped

out my vital organs

leaving me to bleed in the snow beneath the pines;

i had to die to who i was to survive

acquire new feathers as i rose from the ashes

of your chaos

a white raven whose flames will never die—

i will not be defeated so easily

as that

will come back to haunt you like a ghost

since you have done this to me for many moons now

four years is enough time to torment me

especially since you’ve already moved on

i need not these memories of you because they’re more

bitter than sweet and i have never acquired the need

for pomegranates in my life.

 

Linda M. Crate’s works have shown up in numerous magazines and anthologies both online and in print. She has four published poetry chapbooks the latest of which is If Tomorrow Never Comes (Scars Publications, August 2016). She is also the author of the Magic Series and the forthcoming Phoenix Tears.

April 22, 2017April 22, 2017 by foxglovejournal Categories: PoetryTags: ashes, blood, body, chaos, creativity, duty, elements, flames, fruit, ghost, Linda M. Crate, love, memory, nature, poem, Poetry, pomegranates, relationship, senses, snow, survival, torment, writing 1 Comment