The Obsidian Stallion

When I started trying to find a really cool name for my blog I googled all the names I came up with to make sure I wasn't stepping on anyone's little bloggy toes.

I thought about using "The Obsidian Stallion." It is the name of one of my well known poems and at one time, a book I was working on.

When I googled it, this came up.

http://joetutalo.com/stallion.html

(I will post the poem at the end of my blog so you can read it in its normal format)

I clicked on the link and instantly went from 0 to 60 and came off my chair.

HEY!! SOMEONE IS TRYING TO STEAL MY WORK!!

I sat down and patted my hackles back down and read on. It didn't take long to see that he gave me full credit, cited where he got it and spelled out what he was doing with it.

He wasn't mass producing it or anything like that, just simply it was a poem that got under his skin and he used it to show case his massive talent.

I was blown away. I am STILL blown away.

I know the power of my writing. I use it all the time on the message boards I haunt. I use it to ease others pain. To help others on their healing journeys. To try to reach and heal others pain, with the knowledge I have gained over my lifetime. Some things I have written are just so powerful that it boggles my mind that they came out of me. TOS is one of those poems that came from the deep well of compassion and the part of me that yearns to heal others.

Writers write for others. Our work isn't for US, we write for YOU. In a strange way, everything I write belongs to my readers. I can take credit for assembling the words and typing them in, but how they affect you and what you do with them is beyond my control.

What Joe went through to illustrate my book is fascinating to me. First he had to like it and be taken with it enough to want to start his project. Then he had to climb inside my mind and decipher my words and take the unseen musical pattern that I write to and translate it to drawings.

I can imagine him, sitting alone at his desk, rolling the words over and over in his head trying to sync up with my thoughts. Sight unseen he had to understand where I was coming from.

Quite the task since I don't even understand myselves.

Either he deciphered it or my writing style explained it to him. Because he got it. His book accurately captures the feel/intent of my work.

When I have done poetry critiques in school I have done the same thing. But those were great works of art, not some poem about SIV that lives in cyberspace. It is strange-creepy-flattering-giddy-feeling to have it done to me.

I emailed Joe that night I found his site, but have never received a reply.  He remains a sweet mystery, adding a new element to the strangeness that is my life.

Some people have internet stalkers, and some have trolls, I have an internet illustrator!! How cool is that!!


The Obsidian Stallion

You would never know it by her dance.
You would never know it by her smile.
You would never know it by the peace that surrounds her in a soft glow.

You would never know that she once danced with the obsidian stallion.

A beast so huge and dark that those who dared to ride him clung to his back with great fear.

She met him when she was little.
so very little

She had wandered to the edge of a great meadow, (for lack of proper adult supervision)

and there was a field of horses.

She rode them all.

They were docile tame and kind and gentle. Each one giving her a loving kiss on the forhead.

These horses made her nervous and scared. For no one ever treated her with such kindness and respect.

As she was leaving the pasture she caught sight of the obsidian stallion.

His angry steel trap eyes froze her in her tracks.

His teeth were razor shrap and ready to cut.

His mane was burning flames, rising straight up from his shiny ebony neck.

His shadow, like hot oozing tar, crept her way.

but she wasn't afraid.

She had danced with monsters all her life.  She knew pain no child should know.  All she had been through had severed her soul from her heart.

She walked over to him...drawn by the emotionless silence he cast off.

"You can't hurt me" she said to him.

His neck arched and his muscles rippled as he tucked his head and looked at her.

"little one, many choose to ride me. I buck off all my riders. I hurt everyone who rides me."

"You can't hurt me" she said to him again, and flung herself unto his back.

His gallop had a frightening pace, eratic and lurching.

The icy wind numbed her skin.

Her legs grew weary of clutching his slippery belly. Her hands seared by the hot flame of his mane.

But she didn't let go. She held on and let herself think she was in control.

She rode and rode and rode. The years slipping past...she grew more comfortable in her place on his back.

She never looked up.

If she had she would have seen the fence as it approached.

He tucked and set his haunches and for a moment

(just a moment)

froze

before he vaulted them aloft.

She opened her eyes, her blood slicked hands, unable to keep there hold on his neck, started to slip.

"You will fall!" the obsidian stallion shouted. "you will get hurt, I buck all my riders off"

"No" she replied. "You can't hurt me"

"You are falling!" he called.

"NO" she responded, "I am getting down."

and she did.

Her landing wasn't graceful or pretty and she tore her shirt.

But she got down.

She glanced around and saw she was miles and miles and miles from home.

So she stared walking. It took time for the strength to return to her muscles.

Soon she was jogging.

She found others along the way and she found it comforting to know she was not alone in her journey.

Before long her legs healed and she was running, heading back to find her place.

She found it and she no longer has to run. She rebuilt her life and reclaimed all the lost power that was taken from her.

You would never know it by her dance.
You would never know it by her smile.
You would never know it by the peace that surrounds her in a soft glow.

You would never know that she once danced with the obsidian stallion.

Her scars are all that remain of her ride.

A road map of her journey.

They show where she has been...not where she is going.

thend

(c) PR 4-16-2005 - all rights reserved.