Friday, February 26, 2010

Homebody.

Blankets
and a pile of messy hair
on my head;
the delicious smell
of coffee
beside my bed
(covered in polka dots),
and slippers on the floor,

where I trace my toes
imagining sand,
and look in the mirror,
the tool of events
I might attend;
a new exciting meet-greet
chance
(just once)
to dance;

a little dress;
or little dates spent
here (or there);
some evening affair
and a tinkling glass.
But I think

I'd rather wake up after
strings of pearls,
after ten hours' sleep
and the day's climbed the sky,
and peek out of my
squinty eyes
and find you curled up
by my side.

February 26, 2010

Thursday, February 25, 2010

(love.)

Love is a word so small,
made to slip into
the littlest space (a crack in our shell;
the mask we wear well)
and burst inward-out into bloom.

February 25, 2010

Roadside.

Start me over easy,
with a pale blue sky
and the sun that moves
its egg yolk eye
sliding up and down
the simmering sigh
of a Summer day gone hazy.

Let me down gently,
with a blacktop grey,
a dark radiator of
warmths that stay
long into the night
long after the day
under this trav'ler gone crazy.

Come to me safely,
cross the old white line
painted down the center
of your road and mine;
the one-way street
hangs a one-way sign
over a drive gone lazy.


February 25, 2010

Wednesday, February 24, 2010

What Writers Do. (?)

I have rewritten this beginning a few times over.

I hate that.

I hate having thoughts that are not words and feelings that are not thoughts.

But then again, I love it.

I love messing up my mind with things inside so much bigger than myself,
and having the opportunity to write, and rewrite, and rewrite again until
all (or most) has spilled out on the screen

and erased.


And then there are those few lines that make it. I'm sure they puzzle why,
like that lone survivor of a merciless crash or the furious swirl of a cyclone writer swift-
ly gnashing all the realities around to bits. . .

except that one,

like this.


Writers are curious people.

Even their words are baffled. 'Why me?' A writer's choice of content and word
is some crazed mystery only tucked in the tiny wrinkles of the author's brain,
untouched by probe or scope of why or how.

When crossed with such a question, it ruffles the writer
until he or she gives some stream of strange, but somehow intellectual sounding, answers
that crash into the reader's mind like a semi or burst out the top of the heart
like a green shoot busting into bloom.

Or

you get the dazed shake of the head;
the lost train of thought;
the distracted and disgusted

"Don't ask."


February 24, 2010

Tuesday, February 23, 2010

Paper Lantern.

If ever I stepped through the glass,
paper thin,
the darkly tinted mesh of
where I’m from and
what I’ve been,
I think it would tear
with ruffled seam;
me, a little flame within,
like a paper lantern,
seen;
the perforated edges
bloom’d,
with lick of tiny fire splayed,
a King’s face drawn
in shadowbox
against the wall of what
I’ve made;
the small light, tendered
and revealed,
peeking out behind His wings,
His Light in light
the one that’s seen;
His Shadow grown
by lesser things.


February 23, 2010

Sunday, February 14, 2010

Arielle.

Feather-light
and delicate,
her soft, soft skin
like Lamb's Ear.
My fingers feel too large;
I am afraid to touch
too much.

To brush her head of fuzz,
a little peach
of newborn pink,
I think if I would breathe
too deeply, she'd
blow away like
fairy dust.

Her sister's eyes
and puckered lips,
a two-year-old's sweet
adoration;
her baby teeth show
as she smiles
and nestles in to
cuddle up.

Soft miracles
come every day,
with little eyes afraid to open;
new light, and sound,
and sweet sensations
(like kisses)
form her baby world.

Something sacred fills
the room,
in hush-hush joys
of little people.
And though she isn't mine,
I thought I'd cry
for she is beautiful.

So fragile,
without words,
her little body moves
and settles.
Little Wonder;
Life's grown fonder,
and as she wakes,
a flower blooms.

February 13, 2010