Poetry

INEFFABLE

Lovers and haters,
I recorded them.
Beautiful songs and silent screams
Flowed from my head to the paper
I caught a summer sunrise
and "penned" it down with words.
When I met you, I had no doubt
that I could tie you down as well
with adjectives and clichés.
But when we touched, the pen fell from my hand
ashamed.


THE BODY

Just an anonymous body in space
I could be Nobody, or Somebody,
Or Anybody.
I'm Nobody
when nobody cares.
I'm Somebody
when you need somebody.
I'm Anybody, when you scream
"Is anybody there?"
Just a body-shaped space among millions,
but you can fill that space with your dreams----
and I'll be any body you want me to be.


HEART BEAT

Black is the color of no resistance,
Fading to grey with a sigh of despair:
     The world is monochromatic.
Emotions forced out by pain
Sharp pangs or dull throbs
Always present.
It reminds us that we are alive----
Tears dropping on the absent shoulder.


FLAME

Why are moths drawn to fire?
To them, it is everything ----
Life and death combined.
Thrilling their senses
   by fluttering on the edge.
Why am I drawn to you?
To you, I am nothing.
You could lift me with a smile…
   or kill me with a glance.
And neither you nor the flame
will notice our passing.


STATE OF ACQUIESCENCE

Falling.
A hand reached out----
    it was a mirage
They're laughing at me
Falling…
From the vacuuum
Into the void.
I fall fast and slow
Through wine and molasses
Loosened rocks strike me
    from all directions
A cacophony of silence
gently assaults my closed and listening ears

I look into my eyes
then turn away
   No panic.   No fear.


FLUX

Colors in motion
Flowing, melding, changing
Polychrome dancing
Rainbow embrace

Chords of emotion
Screaming, crying, laughing
Vacuous smiling
Tear-stricken face


LOVE

Bird
Flying, Flitting
Teasing, Taunting me with its Promise
Lazily spinning on breezes high above my reach
Nesting on the highest branch,
     The only branch
Sleeping…
Stealing my peace
Pushing insomnia down my throat
Stealing my dreams, waking my nightmares
     Making them breathe


WAKING

Life is like stepping from a hot shower
It feels so much colder
   after a momentary warmth.
I think God is sadistic.
He teases with rainbows and unicorns
   things that show how it should be,
then slams us back to reality
with pain
  and betrayal
    and loneliness
      and cold.
Nothing is colder than a vacuum.
The opposite of love rather than the absence of it.
Or is the absence,
and the emptiness
worse?


ANOTHER

Hello?
No one can hear me
I'm trapped in this body
    dragging it with me wherever I go

It muffles my voice
The "head" is so thick, I have trouble hearing
    and the flesh so weary,
My efforts are weak and ineffectual

Only my eyes protrude
    so when I walk through crowds
I watch the other bodies
Looking for someone
    trapped like me
Watching the bodies
    and looking for me


HUMAN

Sometimes I dream
	of life, of love
	of happiness.
I can hear the voices, and feel the water surround me,
	and see these long, ungainly limbs
merge in the surf.
When I wake
When I feel my hair limp on my shoulders,
	and the knives beneath my feet----
sand courses down my cheeks.


NEVER

Never let your feelings go
Never love and let it show
Never speak of what you know

Never let them see you cry
Never let them know you lie
Never turn to say goodbye

Never take a second chance
Never give in to romance
Never let the circumstance
	weaken you


VIOLATED

Pain
Blinding, Shocking
Running, Falling, Screaming
This can't last…
Pain


TEMPORARY WARMTH

The room upstairs
The storm
The bed
The writhing, sliding smile
The salt of sweat and tears
The chill of separation


PETITE MORTE

Swallow
Sinks
Down

Black
Waves
Wash
Over

Leaving
Bleached
Bones
Behind


BATTLE CRIES

Lassie, hie thee home this night
The stars, they burn sae fierce.
Laddies, mount and ride to fight
Lest gentle hearts they pierce.
Mothers, hold thy wee bairns close
Daughters, guard 'gainst fright,
Sweet Jesu watch over you
We'll not be home this night.
     Fathers, sons alike go forth
     O'er treacherous plain and field.
     With hope aflame in every breast
     With pride their weapons wield.
Wives, bestill your beating hearts
Swallow down your pain
When men come marching home again----
Carrying the slain.


A GIVEN MORTALITY

Gallows
the noose 'round my neck
no waiver this time
sickly green tendrils
	uncurl in my veins
slowing… stopping.
crescent moons open
weeping blood.
twin rivulets wax----
	then wane.


STOP

Sometimes
When I'm alone
I try
To stop my heart.
It pumps the blood
Through my eyes
My heart
Out of my wrists
But it's never enough,
The pain's never enough,
And my heart is too strong.


ROSES

They appeared last spring,
     smiling and nodding in the wind.
Their skin as soft as the newly budded roses.
Everyone loved them,
     and praised them with their flower cousins.

Summer came,
     and the roses bloomed
     and the children blossomed.
They grew tall and strong
     and pink and healthy.
Their beauty astonished the world
and they were tended with kindness and admiration.

Now in the turning of autumn,
the roses hang withered on their stems
and the old women sit ignored on their porches,
     remembering the past----
and waiting with trepidation
	for winter.



Short sensory bits

CLOSET
The door swung open on its rusty hinges.  The air displacement set off
an immense cloud of dust.  The only light came from a recessed skylight,
and the dust motes came to life in that light, dancing and spinning
away from a floor covered in papers and old magazines.  The dust is one
of the only things I remember.  The shelves are the other:  an entire wall
of shelves next to the door, looming like a benign giant with millions of
pockets, full of things for me to play with.  The smallest held needles, 
nuts, bolts.  Larger held yarn and felt.  Larger still held how-to books
and wood and glue.  Largest I could never reach, but I always wondered
what they contained.  Guns, or music boxes, or old clothes, or merely
piles of dust.  There was a moth on the floor, quiet and still... but I knew
that when I closed the door behind me, the moth would rise up like a wraith
and dance with the dust motes in the fading sunlight.