SUSAN JOYNER-STUMPF

SUSAN JOYNER-STUMPF

ELEMENT OF SKY

1.

When the overhead

Is beyond our

Timid imaginations

And touch

Too real of latent

Dream to rise

From reluctant birth ~ ~

We must peer inside

The unfathomableness

Of ourselves . . .

Tiny integers in the swirling

Soft glimmer of vacuumed space

Alas drag the wounded fears from

Their swollen pools,

Believe that we are as real

As the passions that

Define us,

The catalysts that

Embellish life forms of their own

From singular, lonely vision

Resting inert beneath

Self-conscious tunnels

Of undulation.

2.

A place and time when Silence was safer

Action more centered In its framework of minimal tears.

We’re only as close to Stars

As what brightness we

Allow to drape Our hidden darknessnes,

Silhouette forms     milky monograms

Of grayscale remnants

Of everything we ever tried to be but didn’t

And all we tried to feel

And yet were left empty Instead.

3.

How harmony is

Corralled

Or connections sealed

Is not merely the blend and scope

Of what once lay screaming, unearthed,

But how we finally step outside of cosmic boundaries,

The gulf of what we perceived

As limitations….

And realize

~ ~ Oh and realize . . .

That deep within the crevasses of

Us all,

Therein lies an infinite

And waiting

Element of

Sky.

Copyright ©Susan Joyner-Stumpf®

LANGUAGE OF MOON

There exist pieces of remnant, lost twilight forgettable echelons of ancient stars

where voices unfurled inside silvery wolves mysteries left hidden never ours to find.

We reached out, not out of basic need,

but more from wanton greed; dreamt what we knew

we could never hold onto; still never to grasp the language of moon.

How can you pride on this dance living forever flowers suspended in uninterrupted bloom

poems written by themselves across parchments of heart;

songs sung without passion’s lips, or chords bleeding without

Violins casting tenor croon still never to hear the language of moon.

Do you crash yourself against a garden of stones spill sedimentary sadness

silt-deep with granular tones listen to erosion turning beyond mortal bones

return to dust at death’s marble door still never breaking through the language of moon.

Man is jealous of this world how it evolved long before us

and shall go on, long after we’re gone even for one moment in utter stillness it just is; and doesn’t need us, what our dreams can’t forget

is what it chose not to remember.

Never were we the aching flow of a river’s wounded current,

nor could we predict the storm

in a prairie wind’s restless eye.

All we ever were was tiny seedlings caught in throats of ivory seagulls

warped cries fading on salty gulf breezes seeking distances never meant to reach;

vines growing wild, out of control from motherless roots;

shells shimmering like pearled-jewels

the ocean gave up and spit back upon an orphaned beach~

A silent cloud passed by once, long ago, in a sonnet rain, in the cry of a loon,

inside buffalo echoes, tried to explain

to passing deaf shadows to blind eyes of hearts

that closed all too soon~ and no one, nothing, heard the language of moon.

Copyright ©Susan Joyner-Stumpf®

IN THE RAVINE’S WIDE BREATH OF DAY

I feel this nameless dread in the neon after-glow

tantrum trail of perseverance

like a side-line prism refusing inertia

in the myriad gleam from melting snow-light.

What a cost to late Summer caught unaware

her wardrobe dressed in

lingering fuchsia and golds resisting the corduroy drape of heavy cold.

In the ravine’s wide breath of day

what will you do

with the soft breakage

of the world

as an ancient tree goes sadly limp swans float

across an inky toxic pond.

Now hear the grinding the constant stamping of twisted vine

and mutilated root

from the underbelly of hungry earth

her bowels too wounded to even give up what’s left of

stunned worms.

Fear cataracted in a wild stallion’s darting eyes sensing your every unspoken hatred

each and every

swing at mad air assuaged only by temporary displacement from sunken twilight.

Are modern minds so lobotomized

like an infant ripped too soon from

its shocked womb that even hearts have bled out kindness with

numb tendrils?

Ringlets of tears needled into

a vacuum of pity

torn from neglected edges down

the slope of extinction riding high an horizon sucked dry and

devoid of spectrum

seams.

There’s an arctic hare deceived into thinking the fox

is not as cunning as told

until it finds itself squeezed between

the meaningful fangs

death swift and sweet.

Mahogany seeks the austere silhouette of birch, aspen

in their regal prime

grasping that its

one shade shorter from acceptance and now weeps in vibrant disarray.

Where does one draw the invisible line

between placidity

and pain thirst or

monsoon rain?

Does oblivion live incognito reliving stolen memories from depleted dreams?

Tongue of meandering streams carve their vision

through the mountain’s sickened core

monotony buried in safe folds

of purple sage

and unforgiving stone.

Nature’s show plays out despite our tepid audience

yet its performance revels more when admiration sets in deeper and begs its pristine bow.

I taste the nectar left behind by

reckless bees

from the prey of amassing clouds raging hungrily for desert dust to drink and appreciate this

mighty gift of storm.

The way of the wild wants merely to tame the vigilance of unreceptive rigidity to break pieces

unwilling to bend

with yielding compatibility.

How is it lichen can thrive beside a rose

not feel the need

for competition

Alas! not be overwhelmed that beauty lies haunted

behind the swollen eyes of the fickle beholder?

Does it not seek its own

self-recognition?

In the mouth of space are we not all

swallowed by some cosmic script

adhered to yet

for now still unwritten staring at us

blind with loneliness

but confidant in our face?

How it dares mortality relinquishment of

burning, insatiable

desire for each eternal soul to be erased.

In the ravine’s wide breath of day in and out of

indigo blue

the last, great gray heron

with the soft breakage of the world

soars through its tortured sky

cutting the wind like a beautiful knife.

Copyright ©

SUSAN JOYNER-STUMPF®

SUSAN JOYNER-STUMPF is originally from New Orleans and now calls the Colorado Rockies her home with her husband and menagerie of animal friends.  She has been writing since the age of seven.  It started off as an escape mechanism for Susan, for she was suffering from Childhood Abuse.  After a while, it became a passion, and after 37 published books and still counting, and appearing in over 20 United States AND International Anthologies, the rest is history. Susan started her own Publishing Company three years ago called WILDFIRE PUBLICATIONS, having made her best friend, Deborah Brooks Langford, as Vice-President and Marketing Director.  Together, Deb and Susan are also starting up their own Live Blog Radio Show on Red River Radio Station called RHYTHM AND MUSE INTERVIEWS.  Also, they’ve extended the services of WILDFIRE PUBLICATIONS to include a monthly magazine entitled WILDFIRE PUBLICATIONS MONTHLY MAGAZINE, which is doing quite well. Susan feels that her writing career, spanning over MORE than half her life span thus far, has been a life-long journey of pleasure and pain into that great Unknown.  She writes to help herself as well as to help others heal.  It is Susan’s humble objective to keep the Arts alive as well as to help her readers find oneness in a driven, stressful world strewn with bits and pieces.