Tumultuous tides of emotional distress -

Unrest, unease take root and prevail to conquer

Remnants of your fleeting sanity in a cascade of

Benign growth, displacing all hope and contentment and

Unfurling a storm of overwhelming doom and disarray whilst

Lingering amid manipulative deceit and deception on display.

Eager advancement as the sword’s hilt thrusts deep

Nudging all else save pending thoughts of despair,

Creating a space for the ultimate, uncertain demise

Encroaching ever on in the quest for its sheath.

The eighties? I was in my (roaring) twenties and on the cusp of life. What a splendid and precipitous time, marked by days on the beach, graduating college, a first job, big hair, shoulder pads, stirrup pants, watching MTV......

Music has been a consistent theme through my years, and the 80’s offered some of the best: Prince, Michael Jackson, Bowie, Springsteen, Madonna, Depeche Mode and so many I don’t have the words (literally) to mention.

Oh, but to return with what wisdom and experience I’ve since gleaned would be truly, undeniably, overwhelmingly……fucking horrific.....with the exception of the music, of course......

Love's visage is a most sacred and sagacious sound

Inspired by false credence in the tender night,

Unconsecrated devotions rise all around,

Enveloping faith surmounts then flails midst starlight

Pious, nonsacred streams of moonlight beams

Caress sweetly unsuspecting sanguine dreams

Woven with a guise of sanctimonious means.

Lingering labor of love, but a distant memory - a jaded, faded dream

Spreads particles of regret's remorse, scattered sand in a desert’s storm

Reverberating aftermath taunts, haunting with no chance to redeem

The wistful weep of ebullient emotion that will not be conformed

Let it lift to drift on the wind, scatter like sand amongst the ruins

For no stone edifice lingers here save residuals of the deepest frown

Love was nothing but deceitful dreams spun in idealistic illusion

Scarred shadows of a lascivious love are all that lingers to be found

(Still Remembrance)

Grieving the Living

Silence, a reckoning you brought and demanded, detonated to implode and deny a bond so wondrously created at your birth. I'll lament your choice to remove yourself from my world while missing your face, your joy, and your light for all of my existence. Daring to hang by a gossamer thread of hope, I'll navigate through this life, through days of longing for you amid depths of emptiness. I'll cry in the darkest nights, grieving the absence of you, my dear child, for evermore....until I breathe no more......and then from my desolate grave.

Silence is hushed yet deafening

Intrepid soliloquy to muted isolation

Lingering to nullify the crux of cause

Endless provocation of mindlessness

Numbing profundity of disassociation

Ceasing never to oust substantiality

Eagerly awaiting my demise.

Cindy Calder, 08.30.24

Sweltering, silence stirs and crickets abound

In darkness, moonlight quivers all around

Lingering, liquid sensations surpass to surround

Endlessness escalates, knowing no bounds;

Nestling, seeking nature's refuge thus entwined

Ceasing all else, lounging lazily 'neath tall pines

Enraptured by the essence of summer sublime.

Cynthia Calder, 08.29.24

Silent hatred resonates between us and imparts

Infectious seeds sown in minds long since filled with doubt

Love’s lost labors are exhausted, have departed, and fled our hearts

Ensconced now in faraway places, leaving us severely in a drought

Never the like to be shared betwixt us again, we’ve splintered apart.

Catapulted over Camelot to land in the reality of love's cruel ways;

Everlasting reality spreads anew like a frigid blast of arctic waves.

Cynthia Calder, 08.21.24