My name is Heather Mirassou, I come from America’s Oldest Winemaking Family, I have been writing poetry since I was twelve years old. My favorite poet at the time was Leo Buscaglia, who writes about love. I sent him a letter and a few of my poems and he wrote back rewarding me with a signed book of poetry and an inspirational letter. He said I was a NATURAL POET and I should continue writing poetry and learn and practice as much as I could. I will always remember his influence on my writing and my will to follow in his footsteps.
The symbolic interpretation of my last name, Mirassou is:
Mirror of the soul
One who reflects within
The watcher of light
A woman who sees truth beneath the surface
It came from moments of stillness, from breath slowing down, from the quiet awareness that lives inside sensation. These poems were not forced into being; they arrived when I learned how to listen to my body, to my longing, to the subtle truth that moves through touch and restraint.
The Sensual Soul Poet was written from a place beneath language.
The Sensual Soul Poet does not attempt to define love or desire. It explores them. It allows intimacy to unfold without rushing toward conclusions or explanations. These poems live in the space between anticipation and arrival, where eroticism is felt rather than named. Where sensuality is honored as something intelligent and sacred.
Eroticism here is carried through metaphors, imagery, breath, and silence. Pleasure is treated as a language; one the body speaks fluently when it is allowed to remain honest. Love is explored not only as heat, but as devotion, as courage, as the willingness to stay open without disappearing.
The night exhales along the breathing shore, tide loosening its silvered seams. Salt rocks remember older names than those we give to longing. This sea that bares her bosom to the moon holds nothing back. Light drifts across her skin in slow devotion, a hush taught only by distance. Stars hover, while clouds learn restraint. I stand emptied by the listening dark, heart tuned to the pull and release. Foam speaks once, then repeats itself. Morning waits, patient and undone.
Hershey, black satin, length of my torso, Diamond green, serene eyes. Velveteen curious nose, Tongue like a pumice stone. Her elegant but waddling stride. Powerful, confident and territorial. Sitting like a queen on her throne. Cat of mine, mother to be.
Tuxedo, black and white, bow tie and all. White sock covered feet, satin gloves, Long white elderly whiskers, He reminds me of Fred Astaire. Quick, calculated, light on his feet, Shy yet debonair. Patient, watchful and full of pride, Cat of mine, Father to be
Oreo, friend and foe. Black face and tail. Her body, white as snow. Fearless fence and roof climber. Mischievous youngster on the prowl. Paws in the air, tummy exposed, Purring loud vibrations. Kitty of mine.
**If you are a Cat Lover and live in the Central Valley, California, zip 95361. I have 11 outside cats that need homes. I just moved off a ranch into a 33 foot fifth-wheel with three pop-outs (thank goodness). The owner at the ranch, is taking care of my cats. She is wonderful woman, but I have left a big chore for her.**
Under foxfur dusk, ponds seal shut with glass, lungs of soil exhale frost and iron sleep. We hibernate, embers cupped in ash and silence through wintered veins. Listening for sap, for bones, for snow-drifted hours, slow heated dark inside earth.
Choose one of these three artworks and let it take you wherever it wants. Write whatever it stirs in you — a memory, a question, a scene, a poem. All images are open-use selections from the National Gallery of Art website.
They lean against the angle of the street, bodies balancing where the buildings bend like tired backs under invisible weight.
A man pauses at the corner, hand brushing the brick, as if it might steady him, hat tipped, eyes following a line that refuses to be level.
Two children chase each other up the slope of the stoop, zigzagging with the crooked geometry of the wall.
A woman's coat flutters in the wind that sneaks between eaves and rooftops, as if even air is leaning to walk sideways.
The couple leaning under the roof hands on each other's necks - hold each other in the insanity in the imperfect city of calamities.
Every figure finds a rhythm with the tilt of the city, steps and shoulders aside angles of habitation the poetry of imbalance where life refuses to be flat.
The city breathes steel, street and human endurance Pittsburgh People.
The granite and schists of my dark and stubborn country loomed ahead like a grumpy old giant, arms crossed and refusing to budge. I had packed only a backpack, a dubious map, and an overinflated sense of bravery. Rocks jutted like teeth, trails twisted like pretzels, and every squirrel seemed to judge my clumsy feet. Somewhere a goat - or was it a wild-eyed hermit?, bleated a warning. I slipped, tumbled, and somehow ended up dangling from a cliff by my shoelaces, like a confused marionette. Yet, through sheer luck, stubbornness, and an embarrassing amount of swearing, I found the summit, triumphant. From up there, the land glared back at me, granite and schists unyielding, as if saying, " So you've survived. For now"
The first line, “The granite and schists of my dark and stubborn country.” is
Some mornings I wake in a world stitched shut. Sound sealed, behind a frosted window. Other days, a thin crack opens slightly. It's just enough for a murmur of living to slip in. It sneaks in like, a timid animal.
I read people's lips the way others read the weather. The slight curve of a vowel, the storm-glint of a consonant. Mouths flicker like the lanterns in the fog, lighting the path to meaning one pulse at a time.
But behind me that is where fear lives. The space that lives there, I cannot name, I cannot hear. I don't know how to react.
A stranger stepping close,. a loved one calling my name. Danger whispering its arrival, all of it becomes the same A silent ghost at my back.
Music is different, If I turn it up, as loud as possible, I can hear all of the instruments. I inherit each sound, each rhythm, each word. Drums rumble through my bones, like tectonic secrets..
Loved ones speak and I watch their words unfurl into soft architecture of their lips, their breath shaping meanings. I gather them like fallen petals, Sometimes I miss a few.
I live in the hinge between silence and almost sound, between what I feel and what I can't reach. Some days I vanish into quiet completely. Some days I wear hearing like a veil.
But I keep moving, through light, through lips, through walls, through music.
In a world that speaks whether I heard it or not, and a body that listens, in every way that I can.
Zero is a shutter of untouched light, a polished loop that holds the breath of all beginnings. It waits like an unclaimed PIN code, humming with invisible charge. Framing the crisp threshold where possibility gathers before stepping into form from quiet core to nothing.
This week’s challenge is to write a piece of “musical poetry” inspired by an instrumental guitar track. Listen to “Canción Triste” by Jesse Cook from the album Vertigo: If you can’t listen to this track, choose any instrumental piece (with no lyrics) you like — preferably one featuring guitar — and mention the piece you chose in your post. Your poem can be in any form, but should be no more than 20 lines.
I have written two different poems for this prompt:
Poem #1 Reflection of Instruments
The guitar opens a portal, a blue flame wavering in air. Notes drift out like wandering spirits searching old paths. A silver tremor circles the room - ghost-light on water. Shadows lean forward, learning the language of dusk.
Minor chords rise like smoke from an unseen alter. Each vibration unfurls a forgotten constellation. The melody glides in loops, a moth orbiting moon-fire. Soft pulses shimmer - etched in disappearing sand.
Bass tones echo like footsteps across ancient stones. A warm wind stirs, though every window is closed. The strings glow faintly, as if touched by star-hands. Notes fall slow as opal rain, blessing the dark.
A tremolo flickers - lightning within cedar wood. The room inhales, drawn into a deeper dream. The tune rises winged, a bird sculpted from candle smoke. It hovers, trembling, between sorrow and prophecy.
Silence gathers in rings haloed and luminous. The final chord drifts upward like a soul released. It lingers - thin gold dust swirling in midnight air. And the world tilts slightly enchanted by echo.
Poem #2Reflection of How the Music Made Me Feel
Breath drifts, endless carried on invisible tides. The world hums beneath my skin, soft and infinite. Time bends and folds, a river curling around itself. I am weightless, sinking into a sea of feeling.
Currents of longing ripple through my chest slow and luminous. Shadows lean in, gentle, like the hush before dawn. Light trembles in the corners of thought, quiet and unclaimed I dissolve and dissolve again, yet remain.
Joy flickers, a pulse within the deepening dark Echoes spiral infinite, spinning threads I cannot follow. Sorrow hums, warm, a tide I float upon. My mind expands, porous receiving vibrations.
I drift through corridors of quiet that shimmers like water. Silence folds around me, like falling stars Each moment stretches, elastic with unseen light. I move, unmarked, along the curve of something eternal.
Heartbeat and breath and longing merge into one small wave. I am lifted, carried, unmade, and remade in the same instant. The world dissolves and reforms in a wild pulse. When it ends, I remain suspended, echoing the music within.
She tells me in whispers the secrets I want to know. She shows by example the way I want to care for others. She rests peacefully in ways I wish to be still. She breaths in the air of life as do I, with great passion. She has become timeless and never far.
I usually write Free Verse poetry but after thirty years of writing poetry, I have decided to start writing some strict Forms of poetry. What has kept me from writing poetry in Form? Fear! Fear of failure. Fear of acceptance. Just fearing I am not good enough. Well here is another poem I have written that is not Free Verse. It is in the Quadrille Format. It includes 44 words and centers around the word “Whirl.”
Here we go!
Whirl and twirl, the twilight streams,
Twist of color, woven dreams.
Whirl again, the soft winds sighs,
Twirl of stars across the sky.
Whirl of heartbeat, wild and free,
Twirl of moonlight on the sea.
Whirl and twirl till dawn's unfurl
Endless dance, eternal swirl.
Smoke curls over shattered walls, the sky bruised in shades of sorrow, yet beneath the rubble, a flower presses through stone, tiny and defiant.
Gunfire writes its harsh rhythm, shattering windows and hearts alike, but in quiet corners, laughter spills like warm tea, soft as unbroken promises.
Soldiers march with boots of thunder, and children trace chalk rivers on cracked streets, their songs ripple across trenches, a fragile bridge over molten hatred.
War rages with all its teeth, but peace waits in the spaces in between, in hands clasped, in eyes meeting across ruined fields, in stubborn pulses of hope.
You come to me like a midnight orchid, unfurling only in shadows where my name trembles on the edge of your petals
Your words brush my skin, soft as rose-silk, dangerous as thorns. I lean closer, letting your breath trace the rim of my longing like a fingertip circling the mouth of a lily.
You open slowly, deliberately, as though revealing color. An act of devotion, and I ache to touch your secret garden you guard with a whisper.
Between us, desire rises like heat from a field of night-blooming flowers, each pulse a new blossom, each sigh a deeper shade, until we are nothing but two wild blooms tangled in darkness.
Some days silence seals me tight, a locked-glass world, a vanished night. Other days, sound threads its way through thin cracks, of half-lit days.
I read your lips – each curve, each flare, a cloud mouth shaping fragile air. Your words bloom open, soft and slow; I catch the ones that choose to grow.
But behind me waits the quiet fear – footsteps quiet and near. A whisper brushing at my spine, a shadow crossing into mine.
Music hums through skin and bones – a deep pulse, only I can own. Drums rolls under the floor a thunder waking me from within. Guitar strings spark beneath my ribs, a trembling chorus no one fibs.
Loved ones speak, and light unfurls light ribbons pearls. Sometimes I catch each shining tone. Sometimes the meaning alone.
I walk the line from deaf to hear, some days to dust, some days clear. A flicker of sound, a swallowed call, a world, I grasp not at all.
Yet, still I rise, through beat and breath, through half-heard life and borrowed depth. A body listening, fierce and true, in every way it’s learned to hear you.
He tells me I am as precious as a gem I am like a brilliant star in the sky Shinning bright and full of life That my soul shimmers And that I am full of delight I am his beloved And his treasure He is blessed beyond measure This love enlightens my soul And makes me feel whole That I am a graceful lady And he a strong man We spend each day anew And love each other as best we can Making a future together With a promise to love one another
1967 hums like a vinyl worn groove, a year stitched in paisley, drifting into it's move, tie-dye dreams blooming wild in summer heat, sandals slapping freedom down every sun-washed street.
It smells of sage smoke spiraling into the sky, a caravaning wanderers learning how to fly; guitars ringing truths no textbooks ever knew, voiced braided together in a rainbow heaven.
1967 is a lantern lit in dusk's soft hold, a peace sign carved on the bark and being bold; a constellation of minds refusing to resign; their thoughts drifting upward like incense.
It's the river of long hair catching wind like sails, the hush of midnight drumming in dessert trails; love painted on faces with a expert hand., a promise chaos can understand.
And now 1967 rests like a faded patch on a vest, worn smooth by time, but still beating in the chest; a whispered rebellion that somehow survives steady in the pulse of every life revives.
The hills breath amber whispers through the day, as drifting leaves rhythms play; the maples hang their lanterns low and sway, then hush the light at dusk collects its grey.
A river mirrors skies molten gold, its ripples slow, obedient and cold; each stone reveals a tale the currents told, each reed leans in like monks serene and old.
The wind becomes a painter, soft and wide, brushing bronze calm beneath the paling skies; the sun retreats with weary, embered eyes, and wields its warmth before the evening dies.
The twilight quilts the orchards into rest, violet folds laid gently on each crest; the branches sigh, releasing fruit they blessed, their quiet offerings drifting from the nest.
And in dusk, the slender deer appear, their shapes like wandering thoughts that venture near; they pause as though the fading world were dear, then fades away as nights intent grows clear.
The stars ascend and stitch the dark with light, their lullabies unspooling through the night; the night exhales, surrendering to sleep's invite while Autumn folds the earth in silken quiet.
Well I am too LATE to submit for the prompt. But, here is my Quatrain, 12 line poem.
I roll across the floor without a command, I catch what drifts, accept what lands. I move when pushed, I stay when still, I gather weight without a will.
I spin through corners, rest in light, I shrink and grow without delight. No thought informs the shape I take, I simply am, for movements sake.
I settle under tables, drift near walls, I answer neither reason nor calls. I exist without start or end, I am a thing, alone, unpenned.
She knelt where night and dawn entwines the water cold, the air like wine. The lake lay still, a breathing glass, where souls of old and shadows pass.
Her face appeared, yet not her own, a younger ghost, in silver tone. The girl, she began to rise, with moonlight burning in her eyes.
"Why do you call me from the deep?" the spirit asked, "why do you weep? The years you lost are not your chain, they bloom as lilies after the rain.'
Her hair once gold, like Autumn fire, now wove the wind's lyre. Her hands, pale sails on aging seas, released her life with trembling ease.
Beneath the knotted boughs, a veiled breath whispers secrets trees cradle old ghosts, their root's clutching shadow's dark heart, where silent horrors grow.
Owls with hallow eyes, chant wisdom from abyss, their calls as lips tremor, a warning in feathered sound the dark knows what we hide.
She saw her childhood face fade, her laughter though rippled, played. The voice below began to sing, of birth, of death, of everything.
The lake drew close, a mirror's kiss, a hush, a pull, a drowning bliss, and when the dawn rose, soft and slow, the shore was still, no face below.
Yet every wave that met the sky still hummed and hummed her name as it passed by. A whispered vow that will not die.
I am the breath that holds her sigh, the dream beneath the earth and sky. She came to me, with mortal grace, and left her tears upon my face.
Tears slip to the lake - her older self gazes back breaking, then blooming.
Ember of the Heart Love burns in silence, soft as candle flame, It flickers low yet never fades away, A breath a glance, and nothing stays the same, The night turns gold beneath its tender sway Through storm and shadow hearts will lose their way, Yet still they circle back, by unseen thread, To where the first sweet whisper stirred the air, Love's voice us both the wound and balm it shed, It breaks us open, teaches how to care, A fire we fear, yet crave yet crave the heat to bear.
The dizain is a 10-line French poetic form, traditionally composed of a single stanza. It follows a strict rhyme scheme of ABABBCCDCD and typically uses 10 syllables per line. Popularized by French poets in the 15th and 16th centuries, it has also been adapted by English writers.
Structure and characteristics Stanza: The poem consists of one 10-line stanza.
Syllables: Each line typically contains 10 syllables, often in iambic pentameter. In some instances, poets have used eight syllables per line.
Rhyme scheme: The standard rhyme scheme is ABABBCCDCD, creating a distinct pattern. The second half of the poem (CCDCD) is sometimes noted as a reversal of the first half’s pattern (ABABB), though with new rhyme sounds.
Origin: The dizain originated in France and was embraced by French poets during the 15th and 16th centuries.
Disillusioned Smoking cigarettes Drunk at 3:00 a.m. Spinning into nothingness With whiskey in my hand Hookers walk strange Yellow streets Women who fear intimacy Or falling in love Depraved Depressed mannequins Are consumed Guilt and shame asunder They dance in their Tangerine slippers Under a hopeless Moonlight
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Mirror to My Soul by Heather Mirassou 