Shall We Dance?

No oil to heal, no suture to bind
No bandage to seal, no surgeon I find
No clinic to enter, no place to escape
No medical center, no refuge seems safe
Empty and sad, my heart feels misplaced
But deep from within, His voice whispers “Grace”

Remember, dear loved one, I hear His voice say
In my love you’ll make it, so trust me today
The storm you now walk in, is not a mistake
It’s from my own hand and it’s all for my sake
It’s my invitation to dance with your King
For you are my bride. You wear my ring

I see where you’re wounded; I know you’re in pain
You don’t understand this is all for your gain
To you it is dark, no clearing in sight
But it’s our true love story illumined in light
I’m truly your hero and so very near
My right hand is on you, there’s no need to fear

I’m your mightiest refuge; I’m all that you need
The only true healing for which you now plead
I seal, bind, and heal; I’m your place of retreat
Bring all of your sorrow and all your defeat
We’ll sit here together, just you and I
I’ll bring my face close and for a while we’ll cry

When we're together with faces so near
You take in my breath, and your mind starts to clear
My truth brings you comfort, as lies are replaced
Hope is renewed, doom is erased
Though still you may sorrow, you’ll find a deep peace
I’m giving it to you. It’s for you to keep

In sanctified silence, when it’s just us two
I’ll tell you secrets and what you should do
Your deepest desire you don’t really know
It’s hidden within you, but I see it glow
As I see what is hidden beginning to shine
I whirl round in joy! You want to be mine!

And if you could see how my heart beats inside
How I dance as I look at my beautiful bride
You’d reach out your hand and place it in mine
We’d waltz ‘round together, forgetting the time
You'd find your home and I'd have your heart
So, Bride, shall we dance? It’s a good time to start.

Lori Visser
Unpublished work ©2012

I love this, it would be called a non-standard sestina or sextain. Meaning it has six-line stanzas with no fewer than 39 lines. I love the warmth that you put into this one. It wraps around you like a big hug. The message and the writing is awesome. You have a classical style. One good thing to do to improve your work is try reading the classics. They aren't classics for nothing. There was something about them that kept them popular through the ages. For example, here's a famous sestina by Elizabeth Bishop:


September rain falls on the house.
In the failing light, the old grandmother
sits in the kitchen with the child
beside the Little Marvel Stove,
reading the jokes from the almanac,
laughing and talking to hide her tears.

She thinks that her equinoctial tears
and the rain that beats on the roof of the house
were both foretold by the almanac,
but only known to a grandmother.
The iron kettle sings on the stove.
She cuts some bread and says to the child,

It's time for tea now; but the child
is watching the teakettle's small hard tears
dance like mad on the hot black stove,
the way the rain must dance on the house.
Tidying up, the old grandmother
hangs up the clever almanac

on its string. Birdlike, the almanac
hovers half open above the child,
hovers above the old grandmother
and her teacup full of dark brown tears.
She shivers and says she thinks the house
feels chilly, and puts more wood in the stove.

It was to be, says the Marvel Stove.
I know what I know, says the almanac.
With crayons the child draws a rigid house
and a winding pathway. Then the child
puts in a man with buttons like tears
and shows it proudly to the grandmother.

But secretly, while the grandmother
busies herself about the stove,
the little moons fall down like tears
from between the pages of the almanac
into the flower bed the child
has carefully placed in the front of the house.

Time to plant tears, says the almanac.
The grandmother sings to the marvelous stove
and the child draws another inscrutable house.



She threw everything into this one, color, imagery, symbolism, etc.

what's to critique?
it's awesome!
Each stanza is a short poem that can stand on it's own.

Sorry, I hit the send button too soon on accident.

Thanks for the input. I'm going to go to the library. Any suggestions? ( I imagine I could find something on the www, but there is something I like about holding a book....)


I was looking over the poetry that I have written, and I realized that almost everything I've written is straight from my experiences. I am going to try to see if I can just sit down and write something about nature or grocery shopping... and not make it rhyme!! (even though I love rhyming!) Somehow things that don't rhyme seem so sophisticated to me. For instance, OEW, your poems are awesome! The way they are written is really, really cool! The message in them almost seem like a secret code to me, but when I am finished reading them, I understand what you are saying. (Sometimes it takes me more than one time however) I can't imagine my brain thinking like that! Do you have to work at creating your work, or does it just flow out of you that way? The things I write sort of seem to flow out of me. I only have a few things that don't have rhyme, and I feel like they wouldn't make sense to anyone else. I'll post one and see what you think.

Random things:
*My two favorite poets of all time are King David and Dr. Seuss. No kidding about Dr. Seuss. I love his stuff! I hope he is in heaven, because I want to hang out with him.
*I am writing this post at 9:00 in the morning. You all are probably still in bed!!
*One of my sons lives in L.A.
*LORA...where is your poetry?????? Am I missing it somehow?

i had the privilege of being around the spoken word (slam) scene.
i was very influenced by the freestyle of writing, rhyming was silently frowned upon.
everything i wrote rhymed but i liked the boldness and freedom of expression of the freestyle and one day it just clicked. After the first one i used a mixture of both.
the first freestyle i wrote came at me very fast and that is how it happens now all the time (stream of consciousness) i visualize what i'm writing in my mind as if being handwritten. sometimes by the time i'm done physically writing a completed piece, it has been memorized. i did some readings by invitation years ago and found that i could read two hours or more of my own material completely off-book (from memory), probably couldn't to that degree now. there was a period of about fourteen years when i did not write, in fact i loathed it. It was a guilty pleasure that took control of me and led me down some very dark paths. i was being led by the Spirit but in my ignorance rebelled in the opposite direction, my story is a long one i can send it to you in a p.m. if you'd like. i removed it from here because the bizarre reality i lived might be very confusing to many, i know it was to me. Basically it took many trials before submission and i fully understood the meaning of "if you are ashamed of me then I shall be ashamed of you" i didn't think i was but quite frankly i was denying the very voice inside of me that sought to guide me. How stupid was i? Some of things i write, i panic after reading, i write here (compose) i feel inspired when i do. just last night i saved close to twenty or more poems to my computer, if this site had crashed they'd have been gone forever. i used to measure myself against those "free-stylers", there is nothing wrong with rhyming if it is not forced, cramming in a word out of context just to complete a rhyme scheme. Ryhma rhyma and miss thena write almost exclusively that way quite effectively and powerfully. don't limit yourself you have natural talent, however you're comfortable.

Gahhhhhh! about if the site had crashed! Did you just SAVE twenty things that you had posted on this site, or did you compose twenty things last night! If you composed twenty things... AND why do you panic? (If you don't mind my asking...

I'd like to know your story, so send it. I have two sons who are currently "ignorantly rebelling" against God's direction, and I always like to hear stories of someone who came "home". One son in LA another in Nashville. Both very talented musicians... We (my husband, daughter, and family) keep praying and waiting. Although they have walked away from God, they have not walked away from us, and for that we are so thankful.

I sat in the Dr.s office this morning, and while I waited I wrote something non-rhymy,(I made up that term since i don't know any cool proper terms) to see what would come out. It doesn't follow any rules that I am aware of, just wrote what I saw in my mind.

i've found that if i panic it's because it's not yet finished but it took a long time to learn that.
And i have to ask myself if this is something i really want to share or not?
And if i do share it, is it in any way to the detriment of someone else's beliefs and Faith by influence?
They can just choose to ignore it i guess.

It was closer to thirty or so things and i managed to save them but in the past if i didn't like something i'd written or got a bad vibe from it I'd delete it for good without hestation.
there are many things i've written that garnered many views that are simple gone and gone from conscious memory as well but i tend to repeat myself anyway. Sometimes a theme can stick very stubbornly.

Can't expect everything i write to be well received, sometimes yes sometimes no but that's not my motivation for writing.
I will always write as long as i'm allowed to whether i share or not.
I read poetry to the Lord all the time, especially after prayer.

Believe it or not, Lori, I'm not a poet. My brain doesn't operate that way for some reason. The reason I know so much about it is because I have a double Bachelor's degree in which I majored in English (with an emphasis in creative writing) and I majored in Psychology. I have read, critiqued, and studied mounds of poetry for years. I've also studied just as much drama, non-fiction lit, and fiction lit. So, you could say I'm extremely well read. I'm actually a non-fiction writer. All my work is in non-fiction and memoirs, and it's under the names Lora and Wordsmith. I also have my salvation story in the "Share Your Salvation Story" section.

As for great classical poets to study, here's a few to start with (My favorites are marked with asterisks):

**Langston Hughes
Shel Silverstein
Pablo Neruda
May Angelou
Edgar Allan Poe
**Robert Frost
**Emily Dickinson
**Elizabeth Barrett Browning
E. E. Cummings
**Walt Whitman
**William Worsworth
Allen Ginsberg
**Sylvia Plath
Jack Prelutsky
**William Butler Yeats
Thomas Hardy
Robert Hayden

Amy Lowell
Oscar Wilde
**Theodore Roethke

I've recognize many of these authors and have read more than I thought! I have a couple of Shel Silverstein's books. Love em'. I'll take the list with me to the library. Now I am going to go and read some of your work!

And, any good skits/plays/drama that you know of or happen upon for church drama teams I'd love to know about! We are always looking for good stuff, which seems hard to come by. The Skit Guys are good, but we're always looking for new good stuff. ....I bet you've written some.

Unfortunately, I've only read secular drama since I had studied it alongside other academics. It was actually my least favorite area to study while I was in school, and, boy, did they make you read a lot of it. Thankfully that's over, but there were a few plays that I did enjoy and I kept them. They're still collecting dust on my poor, over burdened book shelves.

I love your first stanza, the words, the rhythm. It could stand alone.
Brenda Fox