“What a relief” – a broken heart revives!

“Fictional hearts can be broken,
Real ones don’t heal all that well.
Amazing to still be here
And what a relief”

My search for songs to heal a broken heart goes on. Yesterday the CD of December Songsfinally arrived – and although I don’t like the singer’s voice much (an odd mix of harsh and breathy sounds), I love the songs! And the sheet music arrived this morning, so all I need now is a bit of time to sit down and learn them!

Here’s a recording of the last song, called “what a relief”. I love its combination of sadness and strength:

What a relief

And here’s the text:

Nothing left but the shouting
Nothing left but the pain
Nothing left but the doubting
Nothing raining but rain
I should be feeling despondent
I should be lost in my grief
But all that I feel inside is
What a relief – what a relief….

My life’s not a short story
My life’s more than pretend
My life has its tomorrows
Stories come to an end
Fictional hearts can be broken
Real ones don’t heal all that well.
Amazing to still be here
And what a relief

No, I don’t regret the day
That I first met you
No, there’ll never be a time
When I’ll forget you
Oh, if only half the things I’ve lived and planned for
Turn out for the best

This will take getting used to
Something new on my mind
Somehow making a new start
Somehow hoping I’ll find
Those moments we can advance to
Moments we have a chance to
Turn a new leaf
Those moments are few
And always too brief
But what a relief!

Tag poem 2 from poets who blog – back again

Tag Poem Two

Gasping for breath
like this is the end
Losing the light
Now I can’t pretend
Fireflies don’t fear
a glass jar deadend.
Beating on the glass
my silent aria rends
the doubtful mist

Mariacristina and I are having fun playing poetry tag and adding a line at a time – does nobody else want to play?

If you want to add a line, here’s what to do:
Be the first to post TAG in the comments. Then take these lines and add one, in a post on your own blog, along with these instructions. Whoever adds the nineteenth line then takes the poem to Poets Who Blog and puts the whole poem in the comment section there. Each person who plays need to also mention what site you were at when you found the poem so that other bloggers can follow the breadcrumbs back to this poem. You can play more than once but not twice in a row.

Taking a risk 2 – anger

I take a risk when I write about anger.

Indeed even thinking about anger feels profoundly dangerous. And yet it’s there, like a fire deep down, blazing, licking around the corners of my mind. Ready to lash out in my defence like a terrible angel.

I am afraid of my anger. Of the power of it, the lash of it. The strength of it. What it might do if I ever let it free. I see myself in a nimbus of flame, like a demoness. Powerful, beautiful and terrible. Destroying those who have hurt me.

An elemental force that I keep on a tight leash. And yet I know it is there. And I don’t keep it quite as caged as I used to. A long time ago I would have denied that there was anger in me at all. I had been taught not to let it out, as a child, as a young woman. As a Buddhist I was told not even to give it mind space.

It is a fire.

It is destructive, but it gives warmth and life. It feels like it will hurt me – but perhaps that is because I have kept it caged, anger turning in against myself and hurting myself because I am afraid of what harm it will do if I let it out.

Self help books say that letting out anger is helpful. Psychology says that often the opposite is true. How do I tell?

I only know that sometimes the voice that speaks from the fire tells me what I need to know. It tells me when I must take action to protect myself. It is no less true than the voice of water that tells me that I should not harm those around me, but often I let the water drown the flames. Except that the flames still smoulder.

I think of seeing my ex again and the murmur of the flames builds to a roar. I can feel the power of the wish to lash out, to hurt, to make him feel the wounds that I felt at his hands.

I know it would solve nothing, but I want to be in a space where I don’t care about solving things.

I know it would be unfair, but I want to be in a space where I don’t worry about fairness.

A space where I don’t care about anything but myself and the need to express the feeling of rage that blazes when I think of how he hurt me. I want to be irresponsible. To run amok.

I am less myself if I deny or ignore that voice. I am also vulnerable. But if I let it out, I fear that there will be no end to it, that my rage will consume the good person that I want to believe that I am. That there will be no compassion, no kindness, no respect left in me. Just flame.

I don’t like that view of myself. I don’t want to hurt others. And yet the fire has a siren call to me. How can I resist its power without, in doing so, resisting part of myself? I’d be a fool to ignore it entirely. But I’d be just as stupid to let it control me.

So we live in an uneasy truce. A gentle soul with a flame blazing within. No, smouldering. Embers ready to leap into life if I need the energy of the flame to protect me. One day I will call it.

I want to learn to make it a precise tool, like an acetylene torch that cuts precisely and cleanly, destroying only to create, melting to make solid, dividing to make whole in a better form. Not a wildfire. And yet the flame of anger will always want to be wilder.

Will I ever dare to take the risk of setting it free?

This is another 15minute writing practice on the theme “Taking a risk” from Red Ravine. The first one I did was here – but I felt I wanted to write about a topic that actually felt risky to me, rather than about the idea of taking a risk. And this was the result.