Of Pure Love

A Guest Post

My name is Rachel and am a Nigerian. Am a wife  and a mother of three. I have tried to participate in this challenge but failed. This may be my only contribution to this challenge (sorry B I tried). I don’t have a blog so am sending this by e-mail. I don’t consider myself a writer, but I love to read, well it’s worth mentioning that Big B, as i like to call him has put in two of something I wrote on his blog as a guest: (Coffee With A Musing Stranger and Blessed woman)

I love acting especially in Church; smiles :). I have written a few gospel stage plays and I acted in one film. Two of my poems were published in my department news paper during my university days. But I love to  read, even though I need to revive my  reading culture ( being a mother is not easy) that brings me to the main story,  sorry for the long intro…. .

AWKWARD CONVERSATION AND PARENTING.

“How are you mummy?” l always answered “am fine“.

I remember an incident with my elder son “Jojo”. We had traveled home to my grandparents place, he was about four years old. At night we all went to bed and he was all so sleepy, but insisted on the ” how are you mummy” question he always poses at me. He loves saying that a lot and I do my best to answer him each time “fine dear“, I answered, but  this time he kept repeating it and each time I answered  “am fine”, then he said, “Mummy say how are me” meaning I should also ask him how he is,   “how are you dear“, I said, immediately after he answered fine and was already asleep soon after.

It is my younger son ” Isy” that made me realize what it all really meant, it means “I love you mummy”. So whenever they tell me Mummy how are you, my answer will always be. “I LOVE YOU TOO“.

THE JOY OF BEING A MUM. “You get paid with pure love”

Day 24 blog everyday challenge.. A special guest post by Rachel

~B

 

PS Thank you Rachel ♥♥

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Of My Selfish Love

being loved by a writer;

Dear Muse;

When I say I’m in love with you,
I mean I am selfishly in love with you
I love myself through you.
I love seeing myself through your eyes,
I love seeing myself through my eyes,
imagining how I look through your eyes
I love watching you read the words I wrote
and secretly knowing that they are for your eyes only,
although the whole world can read them too,
When I say I am in love with you;
I mean I love to see you listening to all the stories I have to share,
I love having you to express to;
my opinions,
my profound theories and beliefs,
Especially the silliest things,
along with the important things in my life.
I love hearing myself say these things as I imagine how they sound to you,
and how enthralled I imagine you are with me as I am;
With me.

When I say I’m in love with you,
I mean I love having;
Someone beautiful to wear,
like a favourite outfit.
I love the way you feel on me.
I love the way I feel about me when you are with me.
When I say I am love with you I mean I love how familiar you feel,
like I have known you forever,
in a place without time or in another life,
somewhere between my past life and my next life.
When I say I’m in love with you, I mean I love not being alone.
I love not being that tree falling in the forest that no one heard;
That book that has never been read.
I love having you as my full-time personal audience.
When I say I’m in love with you,
I mean I want you to give me all of your most precious gift;
Your Undivided Attention.
I want to be the reason your world lights up,
as you watch the fire that is me,
Burn.
I mean would burn down to the ground for you;
so you could watch me from its ashes rise like a phoenix.
When I say I’m in love with you, I mean I’m in love with being your sun,
monopolizing your orbit, being your gravity,
keeping you drawn back to me no matter how hard you try to jump or fly,
keeping you down.
Keeping you mine.
Lighting up your world
When I say I’m in love with you what I mean is I love staring at myself in the mirror only to see you standing behind me smiling
When I say I’m in love with you I mean I love
being your mystery,
your riddle,
being what keeps you up at night,
your addiction,
your obsession.
I love being your altar,
your sacrament,
your icon,
your miracle.
I love being your answer.
I love being the object of your sacrifice.
I love being your pain.
When I say I’m in love with you, I mean that if I had to write down what gives me joy in one word it would be your name,
I love your voice,
When you say my mine,
Your lips,
When you smile at me.
Your eyes,
When you looking at me,
And when you do all three at the same time;
For an instant; time stops.
When I say I’m in love with you, I mean I’m in love with breathing your air, eating your dreams.
I’m in love with being your drug,
your drug dealer
your dagger
your lil secret
Your Joy
When I say I’m in love with you, I mean I love the story I can tell to my next love,
about my ex-love,
About how they will never compare to you or understand me like you do
about how beautiful things were,
How crazy,
How intense,
How storybook,
What a couple we were,
and how you gradually, inexplicably,
Bit by bit,
Disappeared.
How I still wait for you like the man who can not be moved;
When I say I’m in love with you,
What I really mean is that
only you make me Me,
and all the stories I have yet to write;
You Are My Muse.

~B

Of FITTING

Fitting by Josie Mills

You and Me
walking down the beach
just after dawn

The old people
walk up the beach into old age
you say
while we walk the other way
eternally young
eternally holding the hour
of walking down the beach
just after dawn

A woman
wrinkled dark and beautiful from the sun
picks up trash
you bend pick up some plastic
put it in her bag
and rinse your hands in the sea

You smile and greet each passerby
while I keep within our world together
and the evolution of beach animals
marks on the sand

You dart and chatter
while I walk quiet and straight
content just to have your hand
so fitting in mine

♥♥♥♥♥

Bio:
I’m Josie Mills, and I’ve been writing poetry since I was around 10 years old. I have a degree in creative writing with a focus on poetry writing. I teach writing now at a community college. I’ve had poems published in the journals Snakeskin and Mantis among others.I live in Denver, Colorado, with my husband, two sons, and our cat Moe :-). I write the blog Open Mind Fashion (OMF) for fun: http://www.openmindfashion.com or http://www.facebook.com/openmindfashion

 

~B

..and it happens to be her birthday today, Happy BIRTHDAY ♥♥♥ she wrote this piece awhile ago and I felt it had that je ne sais quois  for a birthday month and also February month of love ♥♥♥♥♥ 

also find her on Twitter for an interesting look at fashion tips for people without a closet full of money…

PS forever young ☻☺ 

Of My Father’s Watch

My Father’s Watch

My father had a watch, a Seiko Kinetic automatic watch, stainless steel with 17 jewels. You know the kind you don’t wind up, and as long as you wear it regularly, somehow it self-winds, and ticks on and on and on…. It came in a black velvet box with a warranty card that declared a lifetime guarantee, I have always wondered how long a life time guarantee lasts, whose lifetime do they mean when they say lifetime guarantee…….

My father had a watch a Seiko Kinetic; he wore it every day from the day he got it, a Christmas present from some duty-free shop at some airport somewhere. I do not know how much it cost but I am sure it wasn’t a price one sneezed at… He wore it so much that the skin beneath it was lighter toned than the rest of his arm. When I try to remember him, I remember him wearing that watch. He never did but  I can imagine him saying to me “Son, a gentleman must always know what time it is, you do what needs to be done, on time, when it needs to be done, in time, and then after,  you can do what you want with all the time you have left , but first you do what needs to be done…”

The only time he was without that watch, was when my little hands were throwing dust to dust and everyone was crying.

My father had a watch a Seiko Kinetic, he made me a promise that when I could tell the time like a grown-up he would get me one for my birthday. But death, the untimely visitor came knocking, knocking down even the best laid plans, just like that….. If he could have given me a last present he would have given me that watch for my birthday; I dont remember if he was the sort of man to give grand speeches, maybe I was simply too young to have really known him or had proper father to son talk but if he could he would have said

“My son, we have only life, love and time in this world, The Creator gave you life, you can find love all by yourself and as for time I didn’t start the clock, no one can turn it back, I cannot give it you, only this clock to watch it tick away……..”

I have a watch, a Seiko Kinetic, it used to be father’s now I have it and I watch it ticking. The hands of every watch, are clippers, trimming us away tick tock tick tock. The hands of time an illusion lulling us into believing we can tame time, control it even, but every second used is discarded,

Discarded

rushing off

slipping from my palms,

through the gaps

in my fingers like a leaky jar…..

TIME

never stopping in this moment

 

What happens

to all the seconds

tipped into the bin of the past?

Discarded

then gathered up into a tapestry of memories and history……  

I have this watch, a Seiko Kinetic, I don’t know if they still make them like this because today marks the day I have watched it tick for 21 years, before that it was my father’s watch. I look at it and I ask myself how much time do we have, not how many hours or seconds in a day but how much time, do we have….

……The watch keeps on ticking and it doesn’t care how much time we think we have because in the end, it is never enough, it always runs out….. That’s what gives life meaning to know that time runs out…….

My father had this watch, this Seiko Kinetic, I have it now, I watch it tick and I make every moment count………….

~B

Of The Silent Treatment

Love

She was Stubborn,

He was Patient,

Or maybe he was Obstinate,

And she was Persistent;

Yet back to back they sat,

And neither said a word,

Only silence,

An invisible wall

Too flimsy to see

until with time it was an unbreakable barrier,

and the price of silence;

regret……©

~B

PS inspired by the image**

**The image is of a sculpture titled Love by Alexander Milov from Odessa, Ukraine exhibited at the Burning Man Festival.

“The outer and inner expression of human nature….. Their inner selves are executed in the form of transparent children, who are holding out their hands through the grating. As it’s getting dark (night falls) the children start to shine. This shining is a symbol of purity and sincerity that brings people together and gives a chance of making up when the dark time arrives.”

~Alexander Milov

Photo: credit Dust to ashes©

Of coffee and Sleeping Pools

If you are having coffee with me, I would say “Happy Heart day” to you and serve you a tray of heart-shaped biscuits to have with your coffee or tea. “How are you doing this month of love?” I would ask you. “Have you written any love themed stuff, do point it out to me. Would love to read it.  Me? Oh? Nothing special, I do not need one day out of the year as an excuse to be loving I do that all the time.”

If you having coffee with me I would tell you I just came from a trip to the Chinhoyi Caves (Zimbabwe) It’s really an awe inspiring and mysterious place to visit. Do not be fooled by the nice friendly sign that greets you and points the way:

To get to the Sleeping Pool you have to descent a long flight of steps carved from stone.

 

The first thing that strikes you is the brilliant cobalt blue colour of the water below, which you can see before you even start your descent into what feels like the bowls of the very Earth. I won’t lie and say it is not a touch spooky. It’s eerily quiet and all you hear are your footprints echoing on the walls, and oh yes the bats, lots and lots of bats. One of the caves is even called Bat Cave.As you walk deep into the caves, your pulse will definitely kick up a notch, and when you speak you will notice, how everyone speaks in just above a whisper, as if by some unspoken agreement, no one wants to disturb the serenity of the Sleeping Pool or wake the sleepers. The pool is called the Sleeping Pool or Chirorodziva which means The Pool Of The Fallen because it is believed that at the bottom of the pool, lies bodies of people, who were flung there, to sleep for all eternity. Did you just get goosebumps I most certainly did.

The Sleeping Pool is blue not because it reflects the sky, it is always blue; it’s blue on a cloudy day, it’s blue in the shade and in the sun, it’s blue because… it is just blue, I guess, in the same way the sky is blue.

Legend has it you cannot throw a stone across the width of the pool, without suffering the wrath of the ancestors, as they will throw the stone back at you, and so curse you. Anyway a sign prohibits you from throwing any form of projectiles into the pool and I always follow the rules except when I break them.

 

The actual depth is unknown but an old sign claims 315 feet (96m) although divers have successfully gotten to 136m (446feet) and one was never seen again.

If you were having coffee with me I would tell you how I went to the Dark Cave.

There is nothing to see there, just dark caves, its pretty unnerving.

Good thing for electricity the place is lit up like its Christmas but you can tell that if someone switched off the lights it would be darker than the darkest moonless night… I am sure Batman would totally love that labyrinth of underground passages. Oral tradition has it that during the liberation war, our guerrilla fighters would hide in these caves for days on end.

By the time you climb all the granite stairs back to the top you will be breathing faster from not only exhilaration but exercise. It is quite a workout session climbing those steep stairs and if you are in bad shape it would be pure torture; fortunately I am not, I jogged all the way up because I really really wanted to get back to sunshine and life. No worries if you need to stop and rest, there are little alcoves carved into the granite where you can sit and rest.

I practically blew a kiss to the sun and wanted to hug the wide blue sky when I finally got back out from under the ground.

If you were having coffee with me I would say yes that was an exhilarating experience and I wish to do it again, I have pictures but they just don’t capture the experience.

Thank you for visiting with me and have a happy heart day

~B

 

 

 

Of The Flower In My Garden

There’s a flower in my garden,
more special than a rose,
with sweet beauty it grows,
from where my happiness looms,
in the light of my smile it blooms,
breathtaking to see it from above,
entrancing like a waking dove,
wings of petals unfolding, rising in the warmth of my love,
in perfect blossom,
cheerful and buxom,
I am its Sun,
nourishing its growth,
appreciating its worth,
in a dreamy haze,
it basks in my rays,
delighting in the attention of my affection,
blushing,
dancing to the breeze of my motion,
swishing,
I blow it a gentle kiss to lightly caress each leaf,
shyly waves back at me with a touch of mischief,
a little gesture but enough,
to make me smile and laugh,
my love
my flower,
my joy,
the flower in my garden,
it may not be the most beautiful flower,
but it is mine to cherish and shower,
praises and treasure,
watching it grow in my garden,
if I am not near,
somewhere far not here,
dew shaped teardrops appear,
shedding a silent tear,
wilting with each passing moment of my absence,
only to be revitalised by my presence,
soòn as I lavish my attention,
melting away the tension,
the teardrops disappear just like dew vanishes in the morning light,
mist in the departing night,
leaving wet sparkling spots,
inkblots on colorful thoughts,
it seems to glow with a shimmering radiance,
scenting the air with a lingering radaiance,
its supple stem bends to the breeze
but never breaks ,
proudly holding up its petals in quiet dignity,
tribute to its gentle beauty,
I reach out and with caution,
hold it as i would a droplet from the ocean ,
the delicate stem rests snuggly in my hand in complete trust and abandon,
of the innocent maiden,
I could pluck it from the ground,
twist it around
or snap its stem just as a child can snap a blade of grass,
fragile like shard of glass,
without a thought,
but I would never do the sort,
to the treasure in my garden,
it grows just for me,
just as I live to see,
the color it adds to my life.

Plant your own garden and decorate your own soul

Of when the music stops

Genre: Romance

We were dancers, trapped in a timeless ritual, the distance between us always constant; when she took a step towards me, I took a step back, when I moved towards her, she moved back the exact distance, choreographed symmetry.

And now the song was coming to an end, what happens when the music stopped, I wondered to myself. We had always maintained the cliched space between us, more than friends but less than, less than, what’s more than friends. See, even out loud I never thought of what came after, except when I was dreaming then the music never stopped, dancing always.

“We need to talk” we had said to each other at the same time, having come to the same inevitable conclusion.
“You go first” I said.
“Someone asked me out on a date.”
“I know.”
She looked at me, I could read the question in her eyes.
“He came to me, asked me, if I would mind terribly, if he asked you to dance and if I thought you would say yes, seeing as, you and I, we are like best of friends__”
I trailed off, she hadn’t said a word, she did not need to, I could read her like a book, so I went ahead and answered her next unspoken question.
“I told him that I would not be so presumptuous as to speak your mind……And yes, I would mind, terribly”
The last part I spoke barely above a whisper.
There was a moment of uneasy silence and then she answered,
“I wonder about that, sometimes, of all my talents mind reading is not one of them.”
“You are in luck, today I am wearing my heart on my sleeve. ” I said, as I rolled my shirt sleeve, to reveal a tattoo of a heart with her name in it.
“You got a tat?”
“Like it? It’s not really a tattoo I borrowed a marker from the studio and I guess those art lessons do come in handy. You are you know, in my heart. It will come off, when I bath, but if you want, I could never take another bath, ever.”
She laughed, I loved watching her laugh, I could get used to listening to her laughter, for the rest of my life, especially if I was the one who made her laugh.

“You are impossible”

“No if I was impossible, I would not exist, I am simply improbable”

She laughed again.

I moved towards her, she did not step back, I put my hand round her and she accepted, easily, she even laid her hand over mine as if to keep me there.
“Hang on, one question what did you say, when he asked you, for that dance?”
“If I had said anything else, I would not be still here, with you now, would I?”
She moved towards me, closing the gap between us.

The music stopped but everyone kept on dancing until another melody started.

~~~The end

This week’s entry #BlogBattle

Put on your dancing shoes and twirl the day away, I tried my hand at a little romance, it takes two to tango ^_^

~B

PhotoCredit: salsa-licious

Of A Mother’s love

Happy Father’s day to my mother for being the best father a mother could be.

My father rest his soul passed away when I was a young boy. I don’t remember him half as much as I would like but from the memories of those who were older to have known the man he was I learnt that he left some impressive shoes to fill and my mum manned up continued from where he left phenomenally, to raise three boys and two girls single handedly, to be kids our father would be proud to call his.

It was not the easiest of journeys made mistakes, may have fallen and scraped my knees a couple of times, but I learnt to ride a bicycle, eventually, just like I might have cut myself the first few times but I figured out the art of shaving, I haven’t ever been a fight because my mum taught me violence is never a solution, I am a lover not a fighter (and also no one ever taught me how to throw a decent punch *hides*)

If I put my mind to it I can cook just as well or better than my sisters and apparently chicks dig this.. (erm if you reading this what I mean is the chickens when you grill them properly, you know in a humane way and not just burn to crisp) from awkward birds and bees conversations to life lessons to laughter, life and everything else you handled it and I think we turned ok, better than ok, awesome and maybe a lil crazy, too it rubbed on it’s a good thing its strength, yes and faith.

Happy Father’s Day you are the man mum!

A Mother’s Love

I am,

I live,

I love,

Because you loved me.

You loved me,

Before I was even here.

You held me,

Before I even had a name,

And I was never the same.

You claimed me,

With a gentle touch,

You raised me,

To be whom I am today.

With your love,

Selfless and endless,

Unconditional and unlimited,

And patient,

Enduring and everlasting,

An angel without wings,

With a hug and a kiss,

Straightening life’s curves,

Brightening the world,

With the simplest things,

I am,

I live,

I love,

Because of your love,

Your hands,

They held me.

Your hands,

They fed me.

Your hands,

They warmed me.

Your hands,

They clothed me.

Your hands,

They taught me.

Your hands,

They held mine in prayer.

Your hands,

They give without taking.

All that sacrifice and pain,

It’s a feeling I can’t explain.

A mother’s love,

for you I have,

an appreciation that knows no measure.

I am,

I live,

I love,

Because you loved me,

by you I am Blessed.