Silver and Iron

Silver chain through an iron ring,
Why cherish such an ugly thing?

You hold it dear and hold it close,
Neglect the one that matters most.

Circling your neck and down your chest
Caress, that you would like it best.

Those delicate links through hardened black
Will cry the tears your closed eyes lack.

---------------------------------------
1/1/2011

This is about people who choose to cherish something of little or no value over something of much, much greater value. They do not see what is in front of them. Why put an iron ring on a silver chain? Which is of greater value?

The Things I Leave Behind

These are the things I leave behind.
Good memories, hard lessons.
Bonds, loves, people,
Joy and pain often as one.

The one with the silver soul.
It hurts as I pull and clings to my heart,
In a place of cherished memories.
And I sigh with loss as I watch it fade into the distance
Behind me on that road that carries me forward.

I must wrest it from my affections,
For the memory of what it was is far fonder
Than the reality of what it has become.
This I leave behind,
To be a memory that glistens with sweet nostalgia
And not a tragedy; A sorrow, to see the tarnish of age and abuse
On something I cherished for its purity.

These memories.
These are the things I leave behind.

Puzzled though I was,
I leaped at the chance to be seen by one as a companion.
The one with the golden voice, object of my admiration and rivalry.
A warm, wanting closet of my heart nurtured through all these years
A hope that I had had some worth to you at any point.
A small gesture now, since these long years have passed,
and now I realize the naïve romanticism of my remembrance,
The naivety of the hope I harbored that perhaps you had thought of me,
Fleetingly, in a kind and reminiscent way.
This thing… I release into the air from outstretched palm,
Belief in a thing that never even existed at all.

These thoughts.
These are the things I leave behind.


---------------------
Rose Erifnosi
12/17/2010

For all the ones I've left behind.

Humanity

Humanity (In Prose)

I saw you walking. With that damned gun in your hand. I knew you had come. For me. With that look of savagery I knew would one day turn on me, like a rabid dog that had ran out of rabbits to tear apart. Your chain broke long ago. It was only a matter of time. You didn't need the gun, and you knew it. Only chose it because you knew how I loathed the thing. Could have done it with your own hands, and relished it all the more. But this one wasn't about your lust, was it. It was about my suffering. All the others you slaughtered and I watched, watched as you laughed heinously, full of life as you took theirs because I was too afraid. I gave myself into the ridiculous delusion that it would keep me safe. But not this time. You want to eradicate the last thing that makes you still feel human. The solitary tie to a humanity that trembles questionably deep in your core. I, your Humanity. Hand grimed with blood and dirt, wrapped around that despicable metal demon; I know you won't be quick. Torture awaits me, but also you. I'll tear at your face and leave you with scars, make you howl with loathing every time you look in the mirror. A reminder, an inescapable remnant of a Humanity you sought to forget you ever had. All I can leave you with, the seeds of a guilt and conscience that will destroy you, in the end. Ever so more slowly than my end. . .

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
8/10/2010
Pretty dark, I know. Not really much explanation for this one other than I had been reading some other people's works which happened to be also somewhat macabre and it got my creativity going in that area. I let my imagination wander as far as it could, leaving bread crumbs behind of course ;), and let it paint it's own very expansive scenario that this prose only scratched the surface of. Just kinda interesting I though.

The Flame

A spark in the darkness and she is born.
Wary at first;
slow,
gentle,
frail.

Though soon she is confident and eager,
thirsty for life.

She begins to dance;
mesmerizing,
tempestuous,
sultry.

Fascination bars your exit
and the dance commands your heart.
Her ravenous intensity flashes across your skin,
mirrored in eyes that are only for her.

The heat of her passion brings salty sweat,
and you gaze, fixated, into her blazing red depths
with a hunger of your own;
moving closer though you feel her delicious burn.

A blinding flare and they are one,
a explosion of heat and fire and light,
then out.

Nothing but glowing embers
to paint orange against the night sky for hours.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Another old poem from 2007, originally written in a text message. It took some time to tweak with the lines and make it look like a real poem.

I began writing this poem because I love fire. I find it really beautiful and entrancing. So I lit a candle, watched it, and wrote. Then I imagined (so as not to burn my house down xD) its change in behavior once it starts getting bigger.

I took all these observations and then personified my subject. It may appear that I did it the other way around, as in took a woman and gaze her the qualities of fire, but the intent when I first started was taking fire and "making" it a woman >.> I guess I got a little carried away with the secondary aspect towards the end but oh well, still came out nice and I still like my last line the best ^.^.

Hope you like it. Was very shy about releasing this one.

Only a Writer

"Only a Writer"

I can't paint you a portrait,
like an artist who can reflect your beauty.
But I can write you a portrait,
yes, my interpretation of your heart's beauty
One that cannot lie.

This is my small gift,
and I have no others to share
My soul is my brush
and my words are my paint

I can't play you a song
like a pianist could do
All I can do is use words
to make music of you.
Instead of cord changes
I'll transition the mood
and instead of vibrado
I can rhyme for you, too.

But I will write for you, dear
anything that you want me to
Anytime that you want me to
Anywhere that you want me to.
Because I want to show you
how much I adore you.

You can have this small thing,
this small piece of me.

Because I am only a Writer.

(April 20, 2010)
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
I wrote this one spontaneously. I was kinda sad because I have no flashy talents like painting, or drawing, or playing the piano or violin. Unfortunately all I have is this small, unimpressive writing ability. But I will share it nonetheless ^_^

Ode to a Song

"Ode to a Song"

O sweet song,
How you soothe my soul.
Such gentle cradling within your arms, rocking
My mind back and forth to sleep.

Calming chords caress
the soft peach fuzz
of my heart:
4th chord, the 5th,
Minor fall, major lift
In the hands of this great mother
Who coos me softly to sleep.
A gentle smile in the delicate piano
And with eyes closed I see
The soft white glow in her pure skin,
The ivory keys,
A comforting melodic voice to lull me into peace.
She rocks me forward, rocks me back
As I'm cradled in her lap

You speak to me in feelings
Consoling me like nothing else can
You smooth away my fears
Encourage my tears to fall
And when I'm done
There is what there always was
The same tender, rhythmic,
faithful rocking
Forward, back, forward, back.

(2005)

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
I wrote this when I was a student at UCR as a Creative Writing major. I submitted this as one of my finals. Enjoy!

Midnight Oil

"Midnight Oil"

Bent over your desk while the window's light fades,
The shadows crawl down the walls.
The only light left is the light from the screen
shining bright in the dim, empty halls.

The creases that line your stress-covered face
make me miss that smile from before,
You sit and you work late into the night
though the hour is hard to ignore.

Frowning and tapping away at the keys,
Hands run over your hair.
Empty offices, the rest have gone home
left you with this burden to bare.

I will sit here is well, and keep you company at least
After all, what more can I do?
I will try to bring back that smile that I love,
and burn midnight oil with you.

By Kristen Stacy
5/3/2010

Nameless

At night
When there is no moon
To shine light
On my Nonexistence
I come to you
Gliding along as smoothly
As your life flows without me

You sit up in your bed
Yawning in the dim room
That is lit only by your quiet bedside lamp
Unwinding from the hard day's stress

How I envy those troubles

I scour through your belongings
Searching
For some trace of myself that perhaps you still hold dear
Hoping
That a part of you is sharing in the stagnation of my existence.

I pilfer through your drawers
Desperate
To find a photograph of me that you
Cherish
And that makes your heart ache with loss

To find the locket of hair you took
With trembling hands from my wake--
You kept it on your nightstand
Giving it a ceremonious caress every night before bed
For a full year

But all I find are signs
Of your smoothly progressing life and shudder
From a fear that freezes me to my ghostly, transparent core:

Have you forgotten me?

Copyright Kristen Stacy (RoseErifnosi)
-----------------------------

Hahaha I called this one nameless because I was thinking "Hey, I don't have a name for this one..." LOL Anyway, I wrote this in 2006 for my creative writing class at UCR as a final. One of my favorite poems I have written.

The Waiting Room

At some point in my life
I found myself in an enormous room.
Little plastic fold-out chairs were lined against the walls
and clustered in haphazard bunches across the floor,
and were filled with hundreds of people sitting,
standing, leaning against the walls.

So many people.

I looked down at the paper slip in my hand.
A set of simple yet elegantly written digits
were scrawled there.
My number was quite high.
What number were they on?

I took an unoccupied seat
next to a patient, pleasant-looking old man.

I fiddled with my fingers,
quickly lost interest in observing the other inhabitants-
who also, I noticed, all carried slips of paper with their numbers.

Anxious for clarity, I ask him,
"What are we waiting for?"
"Don't know." He replied.
"Are they calling out numbers?"
"I suppose they are."

Feeling as though he was of little help,
I quietly waited., observing so as to gain more insight.
A few times, a single, solitary door
would open on the far side of the room,
held wide by some figure who's face I could not distinguish.
As though called, though no sound nor beckon was made,
A person would immediately disengage from their conversation
or idle fidgeting, or reading, or pacing,
and would turn promptly to the door and walk through it.
Passage made, the door would close and would return to appearing
extraordinarily inconspicuous again.

Growing restless,
I prodded conversation again.

"What number are they on?" I asked.
"Not sure." He replied pleasantly without turning to look at me.
Annoyance increased, and for some reason, anxiety.

"How long have you been waiting?"
His expression became somewhat vacant,
his eyes glazing as though watching something
inside their lens'.
"Oh," he murmured, "Quite some time."
"Um, what number are you?" I inquired,
determined to find something about the nature of my circumstances.
He lifted his hand and exposed his slip of paper.
It was significantly lower than mine.
"Yours is very low! It must be close to your turn."
He did not reply.

I looked again around the room.
Some were pacing anxiously,
others clutched their number tightly
and cast terrified looks at the innocent door,
these same people had turned pale with fright each time the door had opened.
Others, though few, were conversing loudly and with much laughter,
with their number sticking partially out of their pocket, forgotten.
These individuals had looked up curiously, perhaps expectantly even,
when the distant door had opened.

Absorbing the general attitude of the room,
I turned to my "companion".
"Do you know what's through the door?"
"Do you?" He looked at me now, and his mild, sincere expression took me aback.
"N-no. Of course not I just got here." Slightly rattled, I looked away.
"How can I know whats beyond it if I'm still here?"
I gaped at him for the sheer sensibility in his argument.
After a moment, I pressed on. "Are you nervous?"
"Of what?" He asked, perfectly calm.
"Going through the door." I said flatly, somewhat irritated.
"Why should I be?"
"Because you don't know whats beyond it
and it might be your turn soon!"
I exclaimed, exasperated.

He did not answer and looked hardly phased at all.
He then looked down at his number again,
with a vacant face, and said plainly,
"I suppose my number is quite low.
All the others that came here with me have already gone."
"So you should be going soon too!" I reasoned.
"Yes," He replied, "My number should be called very soon."
"And then you'll be going through the door."
He turned in his seat and looked at me
with a mixture of surprise and skepticism.
He examined me thus for a few moments
then smiled mildly, and shook his head.
Turning back in his seat he resumed his patient
sitting, and staring, detached from his environment.
"So... so you're not afraid?" I asked again, this time my voice hushed and solemn.

"Of what?"



Kristen Stacy
"Rose Erifnosi"

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Kristen Stacy 2/12/2010

Copyright Kristen Stacy

Detached

There was a solemn leaf,
The last leaf on the tree.
The others had already gone,
They had already gone.

Beauty past, so crisp and green,
With winter's coming death.
So many lost, these friends of mine
That left me to go last.

The last leaf on the tree,
Dry and fragile he,
The others had already gone,
They had already gone.

Forgotten or Forsaken,
The last leaf on the tree.
Dry and staunch and bare
The cold wind doesn't care;
No leaf before had ever known
Just this kind of grief.

For with a chilling breeze
Plucked that last leaf from the tree.
The others had already gone,
They had already gone.


No will left to care
As it flutters through the air
Comes to rest on icy earth.

Time is done, the setting sun,
Brittle little thing.

Unfeeling, cold, no one was told,
Too late and now detached.


Copyright Kristen Stacy (aka RoseErifnosi) 2009

Remembrance

I smile, softly, the kind you always loved;
The kind that reaches my eyes.
Though deeper in those eyes,
deeper than you noticed,
A quiet sadness gazes from beneath the surface.

I mean my smile, I mean it.
I smile at the memory.
I smile at the thought of what used to be.
Because my heart remembers
More profoundly than my mind,
More deeply the emotions than the details.

My heart remembers so much that the memory spills from it,
Pouring into my veins, tingling down my spine.
It seizes my stomach into knots of remembrance.
Muscles reject this non-reality, and deny it in quivers.
Feelings that have passed, turned to ashes and blown away,
Fill my entire body as wholly and vibrantly as when first they were born.

I can’t reconstruct the scene of every intimate moment.
I can’t paint the picture of every memory that fills my heart.
I can’t tell you where, or when, or what you wore, or what you said.

Because my heart remembers
More profoundly than my mind,
More deeply the emotions than the details.


Copyright Kristen Stacy (aka RoseErifnosi) 2009
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

If this one seems to take an unexpected turn halfway through that's because I started writing about one thing and then suddenly it turned into something completely different, and I had to try and bring it back :P haha short attention span or maybe inspiration just changed its mind.

Ballet de le Descente

"Ballet de le Descente"

Red rose petals float on the wind.

They dance their ballet of graceful twirls and flutters,
wrapped in the tender embrace of the warm breeze
before their wings fail them
and they come to rest on the glassy water's surface.

Soft ripples born from their kiss
break the flawless complexion
and echo into eternity;
A memory of grace and beauty.

Copyright Kristen Stacy (aka RoseErifnosi) 2009

Charming

This is just a little blurb I speed-scribbled without any forethought. But still :P

"Charming"

I saw you through the window,
Through the smudgy glass panes into the garden.
Your profiled face was looking up into a tree
When you didn’t know anyone was watching.
I saw the gentle curve come to your lips
As you watched a cat on a limb, licking its paw with an air of royalty.
I saw your lips mouth silent words
And you reached up and scratched its head kindly.
Then you turned and began to walk away,
and I was saddened to see you go
But to my surprise you turned back, whimsically,
And bent over a rosebush, touching your nose to a flower on the side of the path.
Another gentle grin brushed your face before your back turned to me
And you continued on your way.
I will never forget that face, though if only I knew your name
Then I would know who to blame for melting my heart without even knowing it.
Well at least now I can put a face to charming.

-Copyright Kristen Stacy (aka RoseErifnosi) 2009-

Broken Bonds

"Broken Bonds"

It's drawing near.
The time to depart from each other,
Bonds broken though newly formed
Some stronger than steel
Some fragile to begin with
Some stronger on one end than another
Though all broken nonetheless
All by the same little things
But only one left alone that laments the loss.

Copyright Kristen Stacy (aka RoseErifnosi)2009

Gold and Grey

"Gold and Grey"

I sit at the park waiting for you.
I watch the sun set behind the chainlink fence.

The light breeze passes through us all:
Dry grass, tired branches, fragile leaves,
Huddled form with knees drawn to my chest.
Stray strands of hair graze my face, tickling my nose.

The horizontal rays coat the tips of leaves, backs of trees,
and paint golden diamonds on the ground through the entwined metal links;
The deep orange an acute contrast to the encroaching nightfall.

These biased, aureate rays;
That bestow a touch of Midas to some,
and abandon all others to the ashy grey of dusk.



©Kristen Stacy (a.k.a RoseErifnosi) 2009

Light my Path

"Light my Path"

As I begin my journey I realize:
I tread my pilgrimage in darkness
Along a road I cannot see;
No light to guide me,
No hope of adhering to my path.

I know my destination,
Though I do not know my way.

And yet through the blackness,
I see your candle’s flame from afar.
I gravitate towards you, my only marker,
Drawn by the hope of guidance.

Your heart is kind,
Your flame bright and confident.
I am compelled against my nature to trust.

With humility I implore you,
For mine is a course you know well,
Walk with me and illumine my path
Until I am able to illumine my own.

Copyright Kristen Stacy (aka RoseErifnosi) 2009

A poem in winter

"A Poem in Winter"

Angel tears,
tiny glimmering crystals,
fall and pool.
A silver mirror of my sorrows.

The worn wet path,
a trail of loss and pain,
marks my cheeks.
A river never running dry.

Cold breath lingers in midair,
white and shrouding,
afraid to leave this world
like a spirit forever wandering.

Copyright Kristen Stacy (aka RoseErifnosi)2009

Enchanted

"Enchanted"

Only you
Could look down upon this wilted,
trampled flower with a loving gaze.

Your gentle soul caresses my torn petals.
Kiss me and I'm suddenly whole;
a mirror of your heart:
so beautiful and pure.

Rough hands on silk,
I flourish for only you.

Set me down and I become,
once again,
a fallen blossom
awaiting your sweet enchantment.

Copyright Kristen Stacy (aka RoseErifnosi) 2009

All Eyes

"All Eyes"

All eyes on it.
Little white ball amongst solids and stripes.

All eyes on it.
The cue drawn back slowly, deliberately.

All eyes on the green felt.
Waiting. Expecting.

All eyes, except mine.
Which are on you.

Immersed in those eyes that are
sharp,
intense,
concentrated.

Only I see the bothersome lock of curls
that falls forward,
flirting at the corner of your eye.

A sharp flick.
The shot is cast.
I don't look to see if it made it or not.

Your eyes meet mine,
and grace me with a wink.

Copyright Kristen Stacy (aka RoseErifnosi) 2009