Arbitration

Tonya....reading your poetry is like playing a game of chess. As one must comprehend the probability of moves far in advance based on a finite formation of chess pieces, your reader is required to apply every morsel of poetic knowledge to acquire the miriad of climactic possibilities your words have to offer. I have read this one again and again, and each time, I have arrived at a new destination. It takes tremendous skill on your part to unintentionally encourage the reader to find the key that unlocks that pretty head of yours...lol excellent PINT

No matter how long you sleep, or how long you stay awake.. No matter where you go...near or far, or what you do, you have only fleeting glimpses of sanity and love. The rest is filled with confusion and despair. But, there is something you need to tell a person or the world, and possibly, by so doing, would bring grave humiliation to yourself.... am i close? lol perhaps not!!! PINT

sharing in the sludge and blackened dreams moving in and out until the light holds meaning loved this Tonya... inspiring wordsmithing!!! Richard

Tonya, there's a ying-y yang-y battle for balance going on here for me, I like it! and there is a splattering of light and hope shining through definitely. Are you familiar with Snowflake Obsidian? a black crystal with snowflake patches? light through the darkness, your poem reminds me of it for some reason, light at the end of the tunnel stuff, or perhaps I'm reading today with my rose tinted specs lol :) Hope you're well dear woman, much love b xx

This poem is like a conversation on the merits of disclosure, of being known, of blowing away fear, of looking over the edge, up the mountain, through the looking-glass. And that very contemplation, that acknowledgment of something to contemplate, is the beginning of fearlessness, the start of disclosure, the first word of the sentence of an invitation to be known. I think that the importance of your poem comes from its universal subject: talking ourselves into a future that has more people, perhaps even more sharp points of woe, but less chronic loneliness - that feeling of being unknown by acquaintanceship. For we are the choosers of our woes and the half makers of our joys. And in the making, in the musing, in the risking, you have found such words: I whisper upon winds of need my misconceptions are hardly things universal sludge filled with the dead and undying sips of bloody longing that rages into the ebony of night dreams small scattered stars share their light in lost circumference of pale splotches smears of humanity struggling And you, trepidatious for the reach of reasons past, now imbue us all with a sometimes covert sometimes overt comfort, that we are all in the journey, our untethered connectedness pulls each up the next hillock on our way to peaks. Affectionately, Brian

Once again, Tonya, you have reached some other place that I can only wonder about, and do. The comments above have said most I would like to say; and say it so well. Sometimes I just feel so wordless--and so mindless--and so useless. I guess that is the tone of your poem that has me sighing. 'all is bright and black filled with the dead and undying' This is a thought I ponder often. There is nothing more than that, is there? 'bright and black, dead and undying' It's probably time for me to come back to bright. Always, Deelilah