The musings of author Christina Knowles
A voice whispers
A solution
The sound
Echoes
In this life
Echoes of thoughts
Of love
Of truth
Resounding and inspiring
Life
Starts over
Without fear
A perfect world
“Tomorrow,”
A voice whispers
—Christina Knowles (2006)
Photo via abduzeedo.com
An unexpected gift
Like waking up on Christmas morning
Brightly colored packages piled high by the tree
Sitting in the dim glow of the TV
The “Closed” message trails across the bottom of the screen
Outside, it’s still dark but with a mysterious glow
Surreal, as if lit from some unknown source
The white sky, a snow globe, shaken
Oversized and intricately detailed flakes
Drift gently to the ground
Forming a lumbering blanket of white
Mounds drift and roll and disappear
Into the fog, the thick, wet air
Not quite frozen, heavy with the promise
Of more to come
I turn on the lights of the Christmas tree
The undulating glow casts a soft pattern on the wall
The village lights reflect on the glittery surface of the snow
My own private scene suspended in time
I light the fire and sit, absorbing the moment
The gift
A day to do anything, my own suspension of time
Life does not go on without me
I’m not missing anything
When I emerge from my snowy haven
Life will be just as I left it
—Christina Knowles (2015)
I dance this pen across the world
and all I am is set free.
Words become separate
lives unto themselves,
free to roam and do as they please,
to be sucked up by thirsty souls
and to be tossed aside as waste by others.
Sometimes ignored, unread
but still looming, like ghosts
invisible but present
or taken and changed—
Emerging,
interpreted and reinterpreted.
Unrecognizable to their maker,
they stretch and encircle.
Sufficient to their purpose,
words don’t fail me.
Feelings impossible to quantify or understand
become tangible, ideas made substantial,
absorbed into the universe
yet marked as distinct.
Through words
I know and I am known
—Christina Knowles (2015)
On a cold November day, the family’s all at home
The young, the old, the in-between
Gathered ‘round the table where the love we feel is known
Elbow to elbow, at the table we’ve outgrown
We pass the traditional cuisine
On a cold November day with the family all at home
The clattering of the dishes, the warm chaotic tone
It’s always the same beautiful routine
Gathered ‘round the table where the love we feel is shown
The smell of sage and cinnamon, satiety we bemoan
Still we pass the dishes, endless fare it seems
On a cold November day when the family’s all at home
Napping on the sofa, Grandpa snores and groans
While a Christmas movie plays on the TV screen
We’ve gathered ‘round the fire where the love we feel is known
The bantering and the laughing, the joyful overtone
Grouping for a photo, capturing the scene
On a cold November day with the family all at home
Gathered ‘round the fire where the love is always known—Christina Knowles (2014)
Photo snagged from hdwallpapers
Do you mean to kill me slowly?
Breath by breath
Smothering me with every withheld word
Every silent occasion
Your absence screams
What you won’t say
Do you want to break me,
Utterly destroy me?
Do you even realize
Your words unspoken
Choked down and swallowed
Suck the air from the world?
Suffocating, desperate for relief
Sliding, grasping at anything
To assuage the pain that unexpectedly leaps
Into my consciousness
Pain that lies dull and dormant
Until the stillness arrives
Do you want to empty me?
Hollow me
Till I blow away in the wind?
Or turn me to vacant stone?
My slow transformation
Unexplained
In the darkness, I will the coldness to take over
Till I’m the tomb and not the body
—Christina Knowles (2015)
Cascading watercolor gravel
Winds and descends
‘round shady bends
Decaying pastel stones
Trip precariously over hills
The breeze
kisses the scented pines
Whispering clouds
Tell secrets
As the wind awakens
Russet leaves
Swoop and swirl in a mock tornado
While the maddening
Ticking
Of the insect population
Fades to silence
A dazzling autumn
Day in the country
Peaceful
and
Chaotic
–Christina Knowles
Photo snagged from wallpaperstock.net
A canvas
Colors vividly swirl
A painted sky
Cloud-swept and clean
A sharp and jagged mountain
Cut with a palette knife
The paint tells a story of its own
Not realistic but real
More real than nature
The truth underneath
Revealing
What the soul sees
What the heart knows
Life uncovered
Art shows the true story
A story so important
Not everyone can understand it
The unfortunate go blindly
Through mountains and meadows
By seascapes and down winding paths
Looking but never seeing
While the artist strips away the veil
And brightens the picture
Revealing what was there all along
Hidden from the ordinary
Knowing there is no such thing
The extraordinary is all around us
Hiding, pretending to be banal, bourgeois
Until the artist brushes truth
On a canvas.
–Christina Knowles (2009)
Image: PALETTE KNIFE Oil Painting On Canvas By Leonid Afremov
Sleeping through the everyday
Unconsciously conformed
Never noticing my malaise
When brewing there a storm
Dark skies block the rays
Clouds twist and deform
It’s hard to find my way
Asleep, but in the form
Pain penetrates the gray
In loss I am reformed
In presence I appraise
The life I’ve lived and ways
Ways, my anguish informs
And in the balance weighs
Surviving pain transforms
Illuminated, consciously ablaze
Awake and knowing I will mourn
But joy I hold in yesterday
And love today is warm
—Christina Knowles (2015)
Photo snagged from shutterstock.com
Did you ever wonder
About the trees, the flowers, and the seas?
Not just to use and plunder
Thinking we are so much more than these?
Did you ever wander
Through the forest of many creatures rife?
Did you stop to ponder
In the night, what animal builds his life?
Did you ever ponder
The living, the breathing of everything around,
The flutter of feathered wings, the sacred honor
Of crunching leaves of scarlet scattered on the ground?
Do you ever wonder
What the sleeping dog dreams?
Is he chasing squirrels in a field over yonder?
Or romping through crystal clear streams?
Does the elephant love her child
Stolen from her care?
Chained and defiled
She mourns her loss with a tear.
Did you ever wonder
Why humans feel superior?
Stripping lands and torturing under
The belief that all else is inferior.
Do you feel the need to plunder?
Destroying forests to supply
The cities of man; we tear asunder,
Building skyscrapers to pierce the sky?
Do we worship the ability to destroy?
We speak of intelligence;
It’s just a clever ploy
To justify our negligence and squander Earth’s inheritance.
Why do we build a pedestal, and climb into the seat,
Claiming we have a soul, and other beasts do not?
Privy to the secrets of an afterlife replete
In rewards for destruction with their blood we bought?
Do we ever wonder
Why we’re comfortable with our thoughts
Of eternal days unnumbered
While they turn to dust in their plots?
Did we ever consider
We are one and the same?
Energy reconfigured
Just another creature’s frame?
Born of the earth,
Siblings of the land
With no separate worth;
No destiny is planned.
Did you ever wonder
If it’s time to transcend?
Wake up from this slumber
And begin to comprehend?
We are all a part of another
So end the devastation, and instead defend
Those at our hands who suffer
And begin to make amends.
—Christina Knowles (2015)
Linear lives stumble past
each other
in blind obedience
to an unknown god—
money, possessions,
success.
Occasionally we meet—
our eyes, our bodies.
Rarely ourselves.
But today I am with you
and your delicate flesh gives way to my touch.
Entangling limbs,
need fuses us together.
Sweat drips like tears down our bodies,
cleansing our souls,
washing away rivers of indifference,
momentarily.
I am connected to you in this instant.
We seem to be one, our souls speaking a secret language.
Occasionally we meet—
our eyes, our flesh.
Sometimes ourselves.
Waves of sensation subside with the tide.
Relief flows evenly across our bodies like summer wind.
I emerge less than whole, transformed;
already retreating into my separate self.
Our bodies touch,
but there are miles between us.
Your heavy weight presses me down
smothering my humanity,
turning me into another
in an endless procession of animal-like
bodies, soulless.
Occasionally we meet—
our eyes, our flesh.
Why not ourselves?
We are separate
until
we once again find that common ground
with each other
or someone else.
This newly born awareness grows
while emotion fades
away—like an old man breathing his last.
Lingering
on the edge of bliss,
on the edge of emptiness
Until that day when we finally meet
Ourselves
–Christina Knowles (1998)
Photo snagged from transparentwithmyself.wordpress.com
Disturbing the Universe 
Recent Comments