My fiance, James Anthony Ellis, is an amazingly talented writer.  He published two new books last year, Breadcrumbs:  Poems and Prose Designed to Lead You Home and The Honor Book:  Reclaiming the Honorable Life for Your Power Success and Freedom.  I am going to include an excerpt from each book here.  This first one is from Breadcrumbs: 

The Saga of a Dream

This one almost got away. It’s a good one, and it doesn’t even rhyme. It captures the torture and glory of the search for love. Thanks Jennifer for making sure this one made it in the book.

Mesmerized by my own indifference

I’m the captain of this broken vessel

Blistered by the rumbling, tumbling waves

I search for calm on the storm-drenched pier

And I look for you

For you … for you…

Past this pier’s falling railings, through footing unsure and slippery, I still search

For you

Beyond the markers, out of sight, stolen by a wicked sea

You flail and wail

Lost in the tornadoes of shoes and sharks and bloody, broken hearts

Our hearts a lie, our lies a path, our path a prison, our prison a safety

Our safety a death

As we await demolition, like burned out cars atop the rusty heap

Dreams once dreamed are torn and tattered like flags left too long in the wind

Numb and dumb

We speak no more, and dreams dissolve into the salty sea – a messy mix of withered words gone unheard, warning signals passed on by, hopeful voices drowned by our deaf carelessness

Alone again, I’m seduced by the lullaby sleep, hypnotized by the vacuous stares, betrayed by my own lack of faith…

… And yet

Slumbering beneath my own disbelief

Dreams still hover

In color

Vibrant, alive, fresh and fragrant, with the sparkle of backyard pool parties

In color

Blues and greens and stripes and streams

Of yellow-hue ribbons, with perfectly sewn seams

The hopes hold on, like the grasp of a child’s hand as we cross the big street

The dreams – they remain, they sustain, and they go unnamed

Untouched by the clutch of storms, fear and fate

Though tornado winds may blow and blister

Though surface waves may crash and burn

And darkness drown the pure and new

The dreams – they sing, they call, they yearn

For me

For you

 

 

And from The Honor Book (one of the few books out there written for men only!):

It’s at this time, we say our greetings to the gods, and bow to our own brothers as ourselves. Not in some fanciful new age curtsy, but a true acknowledgement of the power and actions that arise in a collective aligned with a higher purpose. It’s at this time we greet our sacred honor on the highest shelf it can be placed – with the awareness that our best is needed not just for our own sake but also for the needs of a community and humanity pulling for our return. It’s at this time we can make our amends and pay our consequences, without a debilitating shame or guilt, but with a high-minded nod to our true identity of honor, in faithful actions as natural and balanced as the in- and out-breath.

For information on how to purchase Jim's books:  www.legacyproductions.org