The Castle is Familiar

The castle is familiar but wasn’t my home

The farm is familiar but I no longer own

The job is now mastered but I cannot go back

The city is known but was used for its gain

The rivers are home but the world has been changed

The ocean was promising I just wet my feet

The desert is home but the network is gone

The RV was home but there was no fuel to go

The hot springs were healing now surrounded by crime

The paths were for hiking but drought burnt them up

The draw bridges raise up eventually

The moat keeps us out or in if it must

Home’s where you make it again and again

That’s just how it is even though it’s not just

There are no more castles, there is only us.

-Kelly Write Away

My Mind Has Meadows

My mind has meadows broad and quaint

I realized it from when I paint

The meadows show and grow by chance

A hike within relaxed in trance

They flow as if all land and sea

Were shown as one below one sky

The mind is hidden, deep and wide

My paintings show it to my eyes.

Kelly Write Away

Cradle Towards Grave

The pull to participate, scroll or research

Strengthens its lock on my eyes like a girth

Using my body and instincts to fleece

All of my focus and no longer brief.

I don't watch the TV I do not have cable

But these two also aim to disable

Each person from doing except to behave

Confined to recliners; the cradle towards grave.

Kelly Write Away

Yoga is Beauty and Inward Focus

Yoga is beauty and focus

Quiet and turned inward 

The Yogi* feeling their place

In Universal Design 

Swimming in the energy of life

Spreading, sorting all the senses

While the body heals

Dropping defenses

Relaxing into the standard harmony

We were gifted as rightful beings

Of goodness and light

Yoga makes the Yogi* feel

Like any beautiful creature formed

From purity's perfection born.

-Kelly Write Away

*Yogi - a person who practices Yoga

Yoga Has Lost It's Beauty

Yoga's name used everywhere

Marketing some person's wares

Losing meaning faster as

Fitness has breached its hands

Once brought down in prayer position*

Now omitted to prevent offense to

Some who wouldn't pay

If Yoga retained it's original ways

Scary to the dogmatic** crowd

Yoga has lost its beauty now

Just another sweaty competition

Designed for status, style and sales

Why use the name Yoga at all

If it's essence offends the masses so?

-Kelly Write Away

*prayer position - Real name: Anjali Mudra: The literal translation from Sanskrit is "salutation seal" or "offer/honor". It dates back thousands of years.

**Dogmatic - adjective that describes someone who states their opinions or beliefs as absolute facts, refusing to doubt them or listen to new evidence. It comes from the word dogma, which means an official set of beliefs or rules set by a group or church. 

Salutation seal - A salutation is a word, phrase, or physical action used to say hello or show respect.

Blackbird Nursery Rhyme

Blackbirds raucous

Gimme what you've got

Two young blackbirds

With their mamma out

Trailing, flailing

Gimme what you've got

What feeds blackbirds

Learning now what's what

Blackbirds raucous

Gimme what you've got.

~Kelly 

Dishonest Good Byes

For those who are drawn away

By duty, routine, adventure 

There remains those

Who assist in deed and say

Bon voyage, come what may

But in whose heart, quiet and earnest

Silently pleading, "Don't go, don't go"

Then a quickly silent, "Please don't go."

Then in private grieve your absence

For a moment they suffer some then come about

Dishonest good byes hide love and connection

Shocked, unplugged

Left with the truest friend inside

Solitude trusts you will confide.

Kelly Voelker

Alive With Grief

Would I rather be alive with grief

Or dead with indifference

Herein lies the obvious significance

My own continuance implies preference

To submitting myself raw

To the emotional world wounded

The billowing caws

Of a primal core me

Coloring red my everyday tea.

-Kelly Voelker

Static Equilibrium

When confusion is nothing, yet the subject at hand

Direction and meaning aren't safe to now land

Flux and its cousin, 'Doubt' were my guests

Waiting and showing me *static no less

Feeling the aggregate life I had planned

Hasn't found footing and isn't as grand

As those few horizons which popped into view

Thrilled and faded but then would accrue**

Now there's no fuel for my next brilliant move

Even though I haven't anything to prove.

-Kelly Write Away

*Static 

adjective

1. 1.

   lacking in movement, action, or change, especially in a way viewed as undesirable or uninteresting.
2. Physics

   2. concerned with bodies at rest or forces in equilibrium.

Equilibrium - a state in which opposing forces or influences are balanced.

**Accrue - accumulate, grow, or increase in value or amount over time

Time on a Loose Rein

Playing life on a strange new field

Getting used to what appealed

As the best advantage in my range

For new focus on a different stage

Waiting, saving, kept away

From what I've awaited and

What I've craved

Treading fine on simple taste

Recreating, avoiding waste

Except for time 

Which takes its liberty

On a loose rein it runs around

As I attempt to keep it bound

Rearranged outside my hand

Not revealing its new plan.

-Kelly Write Away

Two Introverts Meet

I rode my bike to get the mail

Then down the street just past the courts

I met a tortoise; my first, if truth tell

Here was a self sufficient being alive

Right near my age I could tell by his size

He was moving quite quickly towards where I had come

We watched each other coyly from the sides of our eyes

I hid my exuberance so as not to disturb

He crouched ever slightly just in case I changed course

We both are survivors with all that we need

He with his shell and me now with glee.

-Kelly Write Away

The Perfect Peach

The end of summer is surely reached

When one can enjoy the perfect peach.

Kelly Voelker