Words scratched like rust
Corroding a silver silence
Degrading everything
Until all that is left is the image
Words creak like old fences
Clop like patent pumps down a humming hallway
Crescent of yellow-pencil moon
X-rays and plaid make a velveteen forest
Striking some perspective with blind strokes
White and green and blue
Words fold up into little origami boxes
As the locust swarm or honey's viscous spurt
Of paint warms and jello-ifies the brain
Not paint like vinegarmaltedrottingmarshmallow wall paint
But the paint of silver tubes and white containers
Nail polish, plastic, oil, mind glue paint.
Paint me something beautiful.
Write me something beautiful.
Talking to my hands
With my heart
Not giving my head any credit (I love you too, Mr. Cranium ... Miss?)
'Tis how I'd choose to live.
This wonderful way.
Creative and alive.

This feeling

Sometimes all I want to do is write nonsense and then make something out of it. There is so much nonsense in this world to be decoded and delivered - so much to think about - that making your own nonsense is like a continuation of normal.

poetic debris

Life is a paradox

Has Mother Nature disowned us?
Everything a squirrel does is natural,
But we - we struggle.
We are human through and through
As cats are cats and bats are bats,
But why can we not eat, drink, sleep, or breathe,
Without the risk of being unnatural?
When did we give up that bond,
With all other life,
For this human truth?
Things only exist with the conceivability that they might not (the imagination of their lacking).
Nature, then, would not exist without us.
Do we bring Nature's crystal streams and downy fields,
To be exalted as they deserve,
With destruction,
With the essence of "unnatural?"
By being human?
Oh, how life is a paradox.

Love

A single petal,
So mystical,
I must reach out to touch it,
And all at once,
It unfolds in a million directions,
Filling my life with a cascade of petals,
That never land,
But *blink*
And I have swallowed them,
And there they are,
Lying gently on my heart,
Folded so beautifully,
Fluttering gently,
Unfolding in a million directions from within,
With every beat of my heart.

Time

My life is a past of uncertain futures,
Like everyone else's.
And filled with ignorance of passing time.
What an illusion it is,
To think we can govern our lives,
With such carelessness,
That we are granted.
Time magnifies and curves,
Out of proportion.
It moves like a zipper,
Uniting the sides of cloth as it goes,
Sliding towards a universal future,
Leaving behind a universal past.

Grandpa

He lies there like he is sleeping,
Grandma sits in the corner like she is dying,
I am sixteen,
But I am a child,
Hand grasped by my father’s,
Unable to grasp anything,
But such a tender pain.

I do not yet understand,
That I will never,
Forever,
See him again.
Hear him again.
Indoor shoes, white cane, tie and hat,
My mother is calm.

I am the only one crying,
Shuddering softly in my stiff, black coat.
Shuddering softly.
My voice comes out shaky,
Like the “wobbly” vibrato
My grandpa objects to.
And when we leave,
I stop outside,
Dark and cold,
And stare at the casement of soft light,
Sharing a second that grabs his hand,
And walks on by.
He lies in a room,
Stacked upon, beside, beneath
So many others.

I know that he is leaving just as I am,
Know he will never be again,
Know I will go on being.
Know he will always be
In the wings of my opera
And every uncertain step my grandmother takes,
Him in the back of my mind,
With his square glasses,
Along with all those other glasses.
Every life says the same thing.

He showed me how make sunshine,
Out of tears,
Like squinting wet lashes in light,
He showed me what I do not yet understand,
What I may not ever understand.

Every life says the same thing,
Yes, he showed me that everything,
Is opera,
And we cannot sing strongly enough.
We cannot sing strongly enough.

Metaphor for Life

We emerge from an ebbing womb over a shallow beach,
As adults,
And as we walk away from the ocean –
Where we were conceived,
And I speak of conception as our childhood,
A murky past that isn't a part of us –
As adults,

We become younger and younger until we can't walk any further,
And we die.
Some of us die at high tide,
Others make it to the rocks,
Some venture into the woods.
Life is not linear,
Instead we circle about,
Some of us whirling out of control,
Some being dragged to the bottom of the ocean,
Sadly, only some washing to the shore.
And then the illusion of a linear life begins and ends.