Feel My Own Heartbeat Again

My blood runs through the vines 

draped over the walls of mother’s house;

it runs deeper in the stems and the purple flowers

that rose with each sunlight, each morning,

greeting me with a certain subtlety and grace

that took my heart to places I could never

conjure up on my own.

My heart is in the red rose bushes

spread about the yard in no perfect order;

I miss their intoxicating smell.

My memory of youth is held within their scent,

as are the stings of thorns that bit my little hands

always careful not to leave a permanent mark.

I want to lay in the thousand leaves of grass,
spread my bare hands into the dirt and

feel their hearts beat against my fingertips--

feel my own heartbeat again.

I want to listen to the long necked calla lilies

whisper love and sway with song,

as the sun dances upon my eyelids.

© 2011 Helena Malheur

Childhood Dreams

Look up!
My childhood dreams
are floating in the sky,
hovering beside the moon,
holding the edge of a falling star;
any minute now,
they’ll come tumbling down
like a shower of fireflies
and turn into a ball of ash
when they land.

2010 Helena Malheur

the irony of venting my mind

Expert I am of my feelings and
I have mastered their release;
but the great irony of venting my mind
in search of catharsis
is like opening a window to air out a stuffy house
and inadvertently letting in a burglar
to steal my most prized possession:
my sanity!

2010 Helena Malheur

I breathe it in

I found it waiting for me
by the side of the road,
hovering over yellow grass
and patches of snow
peppered on the mountains beyond
and the valleys below--
the peace that left me years ago--:
I breathe it in like the crisp air and
let it pull me closer to the horizon's peak.

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One Stop Poetry picture prompt challenge.

The World Lays Silent

Shipwrecked by the seductive lull of greed’s sirens,
the world lays silent, face down, on a rocky shore
deserted by kindness. Its corrupted heart is
cracked open, leaking conscience into the sea,
quenching a crimson moon thirsty for bloodshed.

It slumbers, covered in perpetual night,
immune to the piecing rays of humanity’s light
till even the sun admits defeat, powerless
against the indolence of a narcoleptic world;

its paralyzed under a shaded tree rooted in ignorance,
indifferent to hungry children watering the earth
with tear drops, and deaf to the virtuous songs of
good-willed men and the wakening cries of mourning.

Helena Malheur  2010

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This is an old one but thought I'd submit it to:  

One Shot Wednesday: week23 at One Stop Poetry - Where Poets, Writers and Artists Meet.