Category: Ponderous Poetry

“Fool” by Christina Knowles

Barren path“Fool”

I wander through a garden

Tall and green and dripping with the dew

The twisting path, the hidden

The way I thought I knew

Petals, velvetly imbue

A facile façade of innocence

But the thorny branch is true

The Judas kiss equivalence

The truth I never knew

The Pathos of pretense

I was fooled through and through

Mired in the dense

Brush, I construe

The twisted path is lost

I fight to make it through

The symbols I have crossed

The signs were always there

The realization overdue

A switchback won’t repair

A road I never knew

I reconnect and reassess

The lies and the true

The despair that I suppress

Is the path I make anew

Through a barren garden

Trimmed a bit too low

I walk along disheartened

For the beauty I forego

–Christina Knowles

Photo: Barren Path | by H. Evan Miller

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Because of You by Christina Knowles

1524025_10202288016035929_699231179_oI’ve always looked up to you

It was so easy to do

My life is so wrapped up with you

You stayed home with me

When I was sick, you comforted me tenderly

You kept me quiet on Christmas mornings

With stories of Santa and gentle warnings

I remember late night stories on your bed

To Adventure Land you led

To a world of imagination

Your words an invitation

I read everything you gave me

A new world opened gaily

Science fiction, fantasy

Suspense, a genre tapestry

I always looked up to you

My life was so wrapped up in you

I listened to you play your flute

In your room, music took root

You gave me records that I still have

Tchaikovsky, Mozart, and Chopin

You introduced to me to culture I never would’ve had

It’s because of you, I’m who I am

You took to me to buy my first good skates

You listened all about my first dates

Listened to my teenage angst

Put up with all my juvenile pranks

You let me come and stay with you

Just what I needed; I guess you knew

It was so easy to do

Looking up to you

You bought my prom dress so I wouldn’t miss the event

Then you managed to get Mom’s consent

Always on my side it seems

You supported all my dreams

Tutored me, and never disdained

The hours, the concepts explained

You co-signed for my first credit

Trusted me, I’m forever indebted

When I went away, you took care of my dog

Every week, you read my blog

You went with me to Star Trek club meetings

Conventions, outings, and club proceedings

My entire life is intertwined with you

I am who I am because of you

All through our lives we’ve had such good times

Remember when we went to Disney and stood in those lines?

We screamed all the way down Splash Mountain

Took our picture in front of the fountain

Universal Studios was such a blast

That trip went way too fast

A Hawaiian luau, taking in the show

An earthquake, a flood, just Hollywood though

We haven’t taken a trip like that in a while

Now days, it’s more our style

Dinner and a movie on Friday nights

It’s still one of my favorite rites

It’s no wonder I look up to you

My life is so infused with you

The holidays we always share together

Thanksgiving at my house, no matter the weather

Christmas at yours, and candlelight service

The Living Christmas tree and your performance

Playing the bells on Christmas Eve

Christmas dinner, and after— a movie

Sometimes A Christmas Carol

Or we’d see The Nutcracker Ballet

In our finest apparel

A Christmas Story once again we’d replay

Our traditions are so special to me

Sisters, but friends, especially

My life is so wrapped up with you

It’s easy to look up to you

A chemist, a musician, an intellect to admire

An older sister, a height to aspire

A friend and a confidant

You went way beyond

What a sister should be

What a friend could see

I’ll always look up to you

It’s so easy to do

Because my life is wrapped up with you

And I am who I am because of you—Christina Knowles

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Married to You by Christina Knowles

img_1055Sun splashes across our bed.

We wake, slowly unwrapping our tangled selves,

Shifting, intertwining again in a different position.

Your eyes gradually open; the bluest eyes I’ve ever seen.

Your slow smile warms me, and I smile in return.

This is what it’s like to wake up with you.

 

At work, you leisurely stroll through my mind a thousand times.

You’re my favorite daydream.

My key turns in the lock after a busy day.

The smell of coffee and the music of your guitar

Greet me at the door.

This is what it’s like to come home to you.

 

You make a silly face, pull your pants up to your chest

Just to make me laugh.

Laughter and love always fill our home.

It feels like peace in your arms.

This is what it’s like to be home with you.

 

Honesty fills our home,

Acceptance is our style.

Being with you is serenity

Joy in who we are

Individually and together

Being ourselves in complete tranquility.

This is what it’s like to be married to you.–Christina Knowles

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Book Signing Event!

If you are in the Colorado Springs area on January 14th, please join me for a book signing party, celebrating my brand new release, Signs of Life, A Memoir in Poems! I’d love to meet you!

Copies of The Ezekiel Project and Signs of Life will be available for purchase, and I’ll be signing those and any you bring in. While you’re there, enjoy a wonderful homemade Mexican meal from the Hernandez family, featuring old family recipes from Señor Manuel, himself. You will receive a discount if you purchase a book or bring in one to get signed.

It’s sure to be lots of fun, so I hope to see you there at Señor Manuel Mexican Cuisine!

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Signs of Life, A Memoir in Poems

I have always wanted to write my memoirs, the story of how I got from there to here. Perhaps, I just need to explain it to myself or to those I love. Perhaps, I need to leave a legacy for those who knew me after I’m gone. At any rate, I find that whenever I try to express my deepest feelings and my most profound experiences, I do it through poetry, so here it is, my memoir in poems.

This collection of eighty-one poems is a series of reflections of moments throughout a life lived. Some are joyful, some tragic, but all are heartfelt and real.

“Christina Knowles is a poet who is not afraid of delving into the inner world of symbolism, emotion, and dream imagery. Signs of Life is a revealing journey into the soul, a look at the inner self to which we can all relate.”

Available in paperback and Kindle Edition on Amazon.com. 

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“No one can destroy you like a child” by Christina Knowles

anime-woman-cryingNo one can destroy you like a child

Born out of your flesh, birth of the sacred

Adored

Loved unconditionally, while

You stand spurned, shorn

Of all aspect of affection

Unjust deflection, dejection unending

Saturated, consumed, unbending

Rending nights of mourning

Hours of scorning

Heights of sorrow, teetering

On a glimmer of tomorrow

Tears adorning the lifeless

The helpless, bought and owned

By your own blood

How else could

You be destroyed by a child?

No one else can slice you in half

With a word or a smile, put you on trial

For trying

What’s left of you dying

Doomed to go on amending

Defending the right to hope

A press to tamp down the hurting

Until you’re cut fresh

Veins spurting, you lay broken

Crumpled in a heap, racked with grief

Burning hollows weep

No relief, no light

Appears, calling me to go

Forced to remain, it’s worse

Worse than you ever feared

Because who knew?

The pain you accrue

The depth of the blow

It’s an effort to stand and smile

When you’ve been destroyed by a child. —Christina Knowles (2015)

Photo via Pinterest

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Book Tribe by Christina Knowles

BookClubCabin (2)A collective of common interests

An intellectual pursuit

Brought together by the simplest

A shared attribute

But in our group we found

A complex amity

The thread by which we’re bound

Is not the latest read

An unexpected mingling

A mélange of fine wines

In laughter with glasses clinking

A friendship is forged over time

A kaleidoscope of voices

Diverse personalities

Apparent in our choices

Or when one disagrees

These differences don’t chill

Our friendship,

The warmth we feel is real

The kinship

The bond of our group

Is refreshingly compassionate

For such a varied troupe

Drama-free protagonists

Because conflict is no good

Encouragement is our shibboleth

Our alliance understood

Destroying the feminine myth

Trust is our apothegm

We’d rather spend our time

On worthier whims

Or expanding of the mind

Whether interpreting the written word

Or sunning by the pool

Companionship is served

Gathered by the Yule

In winter or mineral springs in fall

On a weekend trip to the cabin

Or a movie at the mall

Whatever may happen

Whatever fate may decide

I’m glad I have this motley crew I affectionately call my tribe (2016)

 

 

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Fickle by Christina Knowles

thinker-close“Fickle”

I’ve heard the shaming speech

“She’s fickle”

Because I am ever learning

Reading books and reaching

Thinking, incessantly they teach me

I talk it out with others

Explorers discovering

Ideas, vast and illuminating

Amassed in dusty volumes innumerable

The spectres of a thousand dead thinkers

They linger; searchers speak

They are my kin

I listen, the voices in them swirling

I examine each to each, intuit

every chasmic breach

Still I’m open to believing

Receiving, their insight

Perception, just a glimmer

In the blackness of the sky

It remembers the light

A million light years away

Does that make me fickle?

Easily led astray?

No, I am not gullible

but logical, rational in the extreme

Reasoning through the proofs

Evidence supreme while Wonder plays her part

Mysterious and elusive

Deleterious to the unknown

As the wisdom of the ancients

Mingles in the understanding of the present

A common endeavor—truth

So I may reconsider

I guess I am fickle

Or should I shut my mind up tight?

Refuse to see the light?

Hang on to a fantasy

And close my eyes after glimpsing reality?

Unswerving and blind

Comfortably stable

No, I’ll be fickle

Reliably capricious

Always acknowledging

For some, life is a path toward enlightenment

A journey that has no clear destination

No deterministic end

A winding path, a road with a bend

Even a switchback or two

Just a rest stop here and there

A place to catch your breath

To be aware

That knowledge is an adventure

Spreading out before me

A road measured in years rather than miles

And wisdom is a temporary state of mind

I won’t be shamed for being fickle

My mind is mine to change

And the path I choose so fine

 

 

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Stop the World by Christina Knowles

“Stop the World”

Earth orbit

You still my world and stop the turn

Of this manic swirl

Mesmerized and taciturn

Rescued from the tilt and whirl

The distractions of a life filled

To excess with nothingness

All at once is stilled

a quiet catalyst to reassess

the curious calm of standing still

You still my world and stop the turn

A gentle discovery of a pearl

Reflectively, I adjourn

From the spinning of the world

–Christina Knowles

Photo via all4desktop.com
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