Category: growth

Without the Rainbow Pieces.

Photo courtesy of Walter E. Gantt. ©2016

‘Pieces of a Rainbow.’

waltergannt

I feel a vast emptiness inside of me,

spreading through the black storm

clouds, I search for my Rainbow and

I recall you gave it away.

And I search  for my love

and I remember you gave it away.

And I wonder where is my passion

and I recall you gave up that too.

And I ponder the way we once connected,

perfectly synchronized

and I don’t even try as you gave that away…

And now I wonder what is left…

A future?

A future without love

without passion

without soul

…is a slow and torturous death.

Karen Hayward ©2016

Image used with permission ©Walter E. Gantt. 2016

Please see more of his amazing photography here on g+

His wonderful photography can also be

viewed and brought here at Fine Art America.

Narcicist .

I recently had the pleasure of sharing private messages with a narcissist. By pleasure I mean soul destroying energy draining horror. I wouldn’t normally choose to communicate with such a person but in this case my eye was off the ball and before I knew it he was under my skin. I blocked him. Yet his presence has continued to annoy me. The fault lays entirely with me my intuition screamed at me that there was something wrong about this person, but this clashed with my beliefs that we shouldn’t judge a person on first impressions….what the fucking hell was I thinking!  I communicated with him for just under a week and in that time he shared anger, gas lighting, manipulation, obsessiveness, a desire for power and control as well as an ability to wield that power and control. All of these emotions convert to energy as an empath I pick up on that frequency of energy….the problem with this is that most other people can’t , so his public posts just appeared to them as harmless, quirky as us writers are, but harmless. Of course in his pm’s he was able to explore my vulnerabilities with more vigour, but it was also there in his public posts and replies. I should have been able to shake him off but the reality is his clear disrespect toward me has highlighted my vulnerabilities and taken me into a place of questioning. Amazing how quickly a narcissist can get in and fuck with your head. In short he disrespected me as a female writer, us females are already fighting enough stereotypical crap as it is we don’t need individuals to play along too. He did this in a number of ways, covertly communicating in such a way that he expected me to not notice. I did notice. The vulnerabilities he highlighted have been dominating my mind and pushing me into a corner to clearly stand up and define who it is I am as both a person and a writer. I guess in a way the situation has made me question whether he didn’t take me seriously as a writer, because up until this point I haven’t taken myself seriously as a writer.

Over the next few weeks I plan to explore the different ways in which this person was able to disrespect me as a writer. I could of course sweep it under the rug, shrug it off and pretend it never happened, but why the fuck should I, my writing style pushes the boundaries and I often explore topics that allows society to stereotypically label me. This is the problem.. I am who I am, I am not the words on page I am the spaces between them and for that alone I deserve respect.

Karen Hayward ©2016.

A karmic lesson in truth.

image

Poem is based on over hearing an entire conversation in detail, in public.

Dear…your name is not important, not now,
For a brief moment your choices created a void inside my mind that threatened to drag me in and devour me whole.
The lies you wore rolled up and stuffed beneath your heartless sleeve created a vortex of self doubt deep within my heart. The lies you whispered, the fractured fantasies you created. Romanticised in a one sided fantasy, i’d say the dreams you created, but they were an Italian masquerade ball of the past, characters playing an elaborate role flaunting stories pieced together with the guts of a thousand gnats.

Your reflection was a knight in shining armour your mirror an egotistical looped image of self importance, and for every second your heart beat you could not comprehend that I never desired to be saved. I never required you. Never have I met a soul so scared of intimacy, for every step forward you danced back to the beat of an inaudible song that played out across a tannoy in your world of fairytales and waiting wolves. You created an entangled web of manipulation, curious observations filled with empty holes and torn out patches. Your heart a fluttering mess of curdled blood when reality and fantasy played out indifferently and I had the honour of front row seats.

Dear….your name never really mattered, you were always a karmic lesson in truth.

Karen Hayward ©2016 (Words and image)

If people knew what they leak.

If people could see what they leak,
the way their emotions flow through
the atmosphere. The tears they
refuse to cry.
The lies.
The pain they lock away for
a darker day.
It all leaks.
It skips across the breath of some,
dances through the mind of others.
Seeps into me.
If people could hear what their eyes say,
what the pause between their words tells me.
If people knew what they leak.
The excitement that flutters in my stomach with an unknown cause,
The heart that breaks over and over,
pain caught in my throat.
The fear, oh the fear that fills our souls that seeps from the psych invisible to
the naked eye.
If people knew what they leak.
They’d understand why I seek solitude,
why my mind is so very open
to the possibilities.
If people knew what they leak they would know why it is I am open and closed in a single heart beat.

Karen Hayward © 2016.

When I cannot be found.

When my voice is but a whisper,

when my days are very long.

When I retreat into my place

when I’m not feeling very strong.

When you look and cannot find.

When the page is looking bare

when you question if I care…

please know that I am there.

I’m looking in the shadows

for a moment spent alone.

I’m searching for the silence

in which I hope to own.

I’m staying out of sight

to watch the world go by

whilst I lay upon the floor

and watch a dying sky.

 

Karen Hayward © 2016

 

 

 

 

Deceit of a poet.

Emerald skies of burning blue as white tufts of wisdom float past on the rays of a flaming sun. Inspiration woke me before my eyelids fluttered and this mattered not for my eyes have not seen, truly seen since the last time my soul screamed from the other side to look. Ownership is the materialistic economy of a rich mans world and I am poor in possessions and rich in ownership. Floating particles of death shimmering in the morning light, freely rising, freely falling unaware of any fear. Words caught on the tip of my tongue that beg and beg to be spoken and if destiny is true if our map is drawn out in blotted ink before our soul even contemplates this life, then why fear unsaid words? If all of life’s fine events happen for a reason then I am free to utter thoughts of fantasy and reality and own my day. I am free to own these intrinsic words I splatter across the page that I pull from the empty wardrobe of lost hope covered in webs and crawling with spiders. Hearts break on the beating of the roach’s wings and shattered dreams are scuttled onto a breeze of dark shores. A poets self deceit cuts deeper than any mans lies. The creation of a story based upon a false prophecy stretched beyond the realms of reality searching for the nicks, nooks, crannies something to hold, to grab to elevate the soul toward the summit. The glorious summit, and I wonder why it is that I fight this need for the summit. A thousand definitions can be formed from the utterance of thoughts based upon chemicals. A million different ways to be and I have never been A typical. Blue is red, red is green and all the colours need to be seen and my heart beats. My heart beats and beats my stomach flutters as a swarm of bee’s buzz through my soul and I am okay with this. I do not fear living. Personal autonomy and the thought tank of morality hand in hand coding for that predestined reality. Free me. Put a label on this box and clarify the meaning of interactions. Thoughts, a maze of indifference in a storm of magma a molten mass of dissected words, cut and pasted letters, broken images from a a black and white stills devoid of colours that will one day become igneous. Rocks of life. Beaten down beneath the feet a thousand life soldiers, ground into the dust of oblivion and lost deep in the outer realms of space among the dying lights. But some, some have the power to become, to be the flattened stones skimmed across an ebbing tide, to be the crystals held close to our hearts, to be the stone we never throw and never look at that attracts dust the way it attracted you, in multitude in broken thoughts and fears of unknown origins.

 

Karen Hayward ©2016