Category: Collaboration

Butterfly Love, The Origin of Love

Reading of two poems: Butterfly Love by Jeff Flesh; The Origin of Love by Cassa Bassa

Butterfly Love

I rise from the ashes of past
circumstances

with a ladle of love in my right hand
and butterflies alighting on my left

thinking about the trees dwelling within me,
how they do always seem

lost in times of chaos, yet they
keep me warm

tangled emotions
cutting deep within, where love and pain
are perfect twins

and life is lived beneath the texture of your skin


The Origin of Love

I sit in the quiet
underneath the white oak
watch the rain rolling from my left
edging the sun towards my right

Isn’t that what grief does to us
chipping away the simple things we enjoy

I remain sitting under the tangled arms
unshaken, unmoved, undisturbed

Here is my sanctuary
and centre of gravity
where we once hid from the world’s chaos
and found each other
locked gaze
in awe

Thesaurus of Blank Pages

When I asked Bree to write together, she generously shared with me a poem she’d already crafted. I wrote in with her effortlessly like a little leaf floating along a river.


It’s difficult to find the words some days
I’m a thesaurus full of blank pages
Trying to dig between the emptiness
old stories stare back at me
characters having a banter party
without me
There must be unfinished business with those ghosts of my past
They invade my waking moments
eating up my creativity
thieving all the phrases that used to live inside my mind

I gather my strength
focus my weary mind
willing the words to come back
Surely if I shake the past hard enough
they’ll release all they hold captive
and start falling like cherry blossoms covering every crevice and crack of the page

Words

Writing with others are both inspiring and fun. I hope you enjoy this collaboration between me and Bree. Reading Bree’s work is like walking into her garden in every season.  Secret Thoughts Within

An exhausted heart,
asking no more for rain
A shameful shadow
deserving no reprieve from disdain

A drip,
running down from the heavens to my soul
A refreshment,
replenishing the drought within me

A book,
doing just that to rescue me
A story,
unfolding before my eyes
making my heart sing again

Friendship

This is another collaboration with Bree. Do check out her written and audio poetry, you will be sated:  Secret Thoughts Within 

I see you sitting here all alone 
wondering if your worries
will keep you up again tonight

I hate seeing you break
watching the light draining
from your sunken eyes

Let it wash away
you were never meant
to carry a burden so laden   

Tell me your troubles 
pour them out into my open heart
and together we’ll break the chains of despair

Beach Bliss

This is a collaboration between Bree and Cassa. It’s so much fun to write with a fellow Aussie. Check out Bree’s blog for more of her mystery Secret Thoughts Within.

Let me be the sea breeze caress your sun bleached hair
My urging breath dances on your bronzing shoulders and coats your lips with a crystalline salty kiss

Let me be the fine sand between your thighs like a wayward soul seeking paradise
I’ll warm up your skin to bring a pink blush to your cheeks as I explore every inch of your summer soaked body

It's the Pacific sun burning my mind
You are making me hungry, thirsty and possessive
I become a predator roaming for my prey till twilight

Let me overtake your senses with my crashing passion as the moon pulls in the tide
My every neuron charging along the ebb and flow of your sinew body
Breaking into your veins and crevices over and over till eternity

The night owl hides in the blackwood
The moon blushes into wattle flakes
Our naked souls lace in the orange sand 
The waves blossom into our ferocious moans as we drift into a blissful trance

Indecent

This is a collaborative piece by Bree and Cassa. Do check out Bree’s blog Secret Thoughts Within for more of her wonder.

My love for you is indecent
it doesn’t fit neatly into the mould
I am an outlier in every book of sin
No amount of purity resists my passion

Offer me your vigour
and I will return it ten-fold
You have never known a love like mine
I’m a wildfire and raging storm

Come! Count me in
Let me be your intoxication and Sunday regret
We’ll be each other’s forbidden fruit
and feast on a love so indecent

Dim Romance

This is a prose collaboration between Cassa and SecretWriter.

She writes by the candle light in pitch black nights. The thought of his scents and words flames the wick burning in her lukewarm heart.

He lies down, stiff and exhausted from a day’s hard work, covered by the darkness of night. His mind wanders, and he dreams of her as the wax drips down the candle light. There is always this great distance dividing them, just as the milky way joining their imagination and fantasy. He spreads out the oils that collected her perfumes, reminisces of smoothing it across her shadowed skin. Light and dark that makes tiny lit hairs back when they explored galaxies within.

She writes love affair as she lives through every word and punctuation between their exchange where energy takes off in wings of imagination and fantasy. Their story is safely told as the storyteller becomes more and more tangled in the story she so vividly crafts.

Fighting A Different Battle

This is the most recent collaboration piece with Benjamin Grossman. It has always been a joy and encouragement to work with Ben. Please do check out his work, you won’t be disappointed.

Two millennia ago
I would’ve cried
Stony tears
Like the stoics of legends

Today
For the injustices raging
Against shared truth
I scream in silence
Like a fallen knight

There are no more
Heroic battles
On a field of dirt and dust
Where men were once raised
To die for future honor

We hide behind
Neuro electro defenses
Attacking lives
Without sounding
The trumpet

Am I a departed
Clutching the white flag
Crippled by reality
Or my own fatal mind?

The Lesser of Two Evils

This is the recent collaboration with Benjamin Grossman which helped me greatly in breaking my writing ‘numbness’. Please check out Ben’s blog if you have not already read his amazing work. 

The glacial battle begins in our heads
Face pressed to the sun-pierced windowpane
January snow in recession, the signs of regression 
Half hidden like an iceberg in the arctic water 
And where once a soft glow illuminated the surface 
Only the placement of desolation remains
Reverberating silent screams 
  
There is no one way of knowing cold
The stages are fluid and transient
Its meaning bitterly ambiguous 
Yet in rare lucid moments, I see husks
An empty bed, scarred skin, chattered teeth
Spirit-numbed mind, missed meals, vacant smiles

There is no one way of knowing cold
Its symptoms appear to have no rhyme or reason
Although they move with wintry doom
From person to person increasing in aggression 
Till you understand the meaning of icy
Which unbeknownst to us creeps in succession 

There is no one way of knowing cold 
Though maybe it’s always the same
Emotional and physical reaction 
A state of feeling dangerously low
Struggling to survive between cold and colder
The very same polar opposites: Arctic and Antarctica

 

Tasteless

This is a collaboration piece with Spirited Soul based on a Poetic Duets Prompt – “Pick any of the 5 senses. Now, imagine your life without it, and describe it poetically.” This prompt came from Instagram @PoeticDuets

Beautiful green and orange chunks weaved through the spongy dough.
Aromatic toasted nuts gave that firm structure
like the solid brick work in an architecture piece.
When the baking oven timer went off like a diner bell,
my nose was overwhelmed by the healthy wholesomeness.
My mouth salivated in great anticipation.

As I slide the fork from in between my lustrous lips,
I feel the thick, coarse lump in my mouth.
Swirling around like dry sand when I chew.
Feeling like a handful of moving bugs as I try to swallow.
The kind that land inside your mouth after an enjoyable motorbike ride.

%d bloggers like this: