Maybe It Was The Wine
Maybe it was the wine
the way it went to my face and bloomed there
like a dragon’s kiss
maybe it was the way your eyes crinkled as you looked at me
like I was important to you.
Maybe it was the wine
or maybe it was the music
the songs we sang on the radio
that day we drove our sinking heels across the dunes
searching for the perfect sand dollar
and you counted the freckles on my nose and the seagulls in the sky
and it all added up to love.
Maybe it was the night
maybe it was the terrible night
when I cried
and cried
while you stared at me with the flat and lifeless eyes of a
gila monster
right before you went out the door
in a trail of expensive cologne and whisky
and my heart shook until the sun came up
shook and shook
then it finally ran down
and I never wound it again
just left it in its box cradled in tissue paper and some broken bits of shell
and then I opened a bottle and poured
and kept pouring until my mind finally stilled
and all I could taste were old tears
or maybe it was the wine…
The Climb
It’s a hard hike up into the misted mountains
and they say
that looking back down
if you gaze carefully
you can see
blending in among the rocks and obstinately gripping plants
those who came before you
those who fell before you
looking up
in warning?
in jealousy?
while the falcon and the goat make a mockery of your painful ascent.
You feel the wind blowing fresher, fiercer here
as if touching the earth causes it to act softer,
more restrained…
all the while the summit whispers your name
and the clouds bounce it to you.
Why do you climb? they ask
Why do you stay low? you wonder
for the closer to the sky you get
the less you weigh
until your last burden slips away
hitching a ride on one of those fiercer winds
like a kite snapping its tether
kicking free
and you feel the sun shining through you in your lightness
glowing like oiled paper.
As you reach the hard won pinnacle you stand tall
dizzy in the thinning flame bright air
then look up into the corridor of clouds
and know that you have not reached the end of your climb…
Jaye Tomas has been a ‘scribbler’ all her life; the internet provided a way to more easily share it. Creating her blog Chimera Poetry, in 2013 has been an incredible experience. That people read and appreciate what she writes Jaye finds a constant source of amazement and gratitude.
“I write a lot. There are times I am half blind with a sentence ricocheting off the walls of my stupid, cant be shut off to save my life, brain. I am miserable until I get it down on paper. Punch it up a bit. Usually cross out half of it. And then breathe. Relax. Only to do it all again…”
She has recently published her first book, Nocturnes, published through Amazon’s Create Space, and is hard at work on her next volume.
Her biggest obsession is books and her reading tastes are eclectic to say the least: Tolkien, Lovecraft, Gaiman, Plath, Ellison, Christie, Aaronovitch, Yeats, Blake, King, Barker, Straub, Lopez, Maugham, Poznansky, Funke, Taylor…to name a very few.
Originally from the suburbs of Chicago she now lives in the UK. Lately she has been dreaming of Italy, but hasn’t completely settled on that…yet. It may be back to the USA, it may be Edinburgh, it may be Gallifrey…
“The beauty of the story is in the journey, not the arrival,” Jaye says, and when asked, Why poetry? she becomes animated, and responds, “To be honest, I wasn’t a big fan of it for a long time. I still prefer to read ‘regular’ writing. But my brain works without my consent in this, as in so many other things. It seems to be how I am wired – to write in these bursts. I don’t think (although you never know) that I could sustain a novel.”
We can only be glad that the muse moves her.
You can explore moreof Jaye’s poetry, and some of the poetry that inspires her, on Chimera, and you can follow Jaye here on Facebook.
