Poems and Prose

2014-05-25T21:10:00.001-07:00

Her head on a fluffed pillow of air,
her feet ungrounded.
Her jetstream eyes closed to the still scene:
a bureau,
a stack of books,
silhouettes with wilting faces,
hemlock flooring.

An inhalation
like a billows preparing to stoke a blaze,
a forest fire,
nearly makes her eyes blink.
She smells the spring,
flowers,
night,
sparklers racing to burn airborne letters.

She isolates herself
in memories and words
so she is not alone.
She dreads what may live and dwell
beyond the jetstream.
She exhales
and a poem falls out
and into the blaze
so as its burns
everyone can smell its charred words
like writing with sparklers.

She watches her own face wilt
in the mirror,
her body
bowing like a burdened stem.
Her mind
failing like a wrinkling petal,
moldy with regrets
born from a thousand spores.

All her novels line her eyes
and she tries not to forget
but you can't read every book at once.
And her clothes
are made of dying fire
she never wished to set.

She's trapped by the wind,
fueling self-consuming flames
and sparks
forming words
she never got to say.

Mass Ignorance

2014-04-08T19:25:00.001-07:00

Inspired by Elie Wiesel's Night

You've heard the stories.
You've read the script
    of men deprived of family,
    women stripped of safety,
    children led to death.

You know there was hatred.
You know the world stood by
    as clubs struck without discrimination,
    as ashes crumbled,
    as dull and hopeless eyes rolled back.

Just imagining the smell
of life becoming dust,
of charring flesh in gluttonous smoke,
chokes your breath and tears alike.

The thought of living in Hell itself
shackled by sweat and filth
makes incandescent light much darker
than a chilling winter night.

You've read the stories
You've seen the empty cells
    where death welcomes new strife
    where new lips meet new thirst
    where one birth means one death

You know you'd regret if you stood still
You'd try to protect their lives:
    you'd keep families happy,
    you'd comfort the lost,
    you'd make the weakest strong

The Nazi doctrine, to cleanse a race,
at least did find an end.
Though no excuse can soften their evil,
they thought they'd heal the Earth.

But today's doctrine, to feed a face,
has yet to find its end.
Satisfy their greedy hands,
they bruise our aching Earth.

Your gut clenches, thinking of cooking flesh?
You never want life to be all bad, no good?
You never would fund a Holocaust?

    Are you vegetarian?

In no way do I want to diminish the horror that occurred during the Holocaust. However, it needs to be considered that the same conditions and killing is inflicted on factory farm animals every day, here in the U.S., which is completely legal and funded by your tax dollars. Thank you for reading.

vegfriend.com
walmartcruelty.com

Treeline

2014-02-17T21:51:00.003-08:00

I've been writing a lot of poems about winter lately. Gosh, I wonder why!

This one was inspired by a ride past the setting sun alongside some stagnant and lonely-looking trees. I'm personally tired of winter, but I figure I'd better get my fair share of poems out of it first. Here's (hopefully) one of the last:

The trees,

Reduced to black silhouettes,

Barren as if not living,

Blank as if not loving,

As always from so far away.

In a cold light

Like the winter itself,

The sunset is dying,

Contained in a sunny spark

Sputtering on the horizon

And framed by trees.

The winter makes them look lonely,

Cold,

And sad,

But it is the sunset,

Reflecting off your own eyes,

That decides these trees.

"Tangerine Clouds"

Songs of Sunrise

2014-01-28T14:38:00.002-08:00

I'd like to share a short poem. It rhymes, which is odd since I usually write free verse, but this time the verse just seemed to come naturally. Don't you love it when that happens?

Songs of Sunrise

How many times I've thought of you
like a sunset on the trees:
magnificent, incredible,
and always out of reach.

How many times your voice has rung
that I wanted to sing back,
but silence left me with my shame,
waiting to pick up the slack.

I missed the sun at noontime,
as I sat alow the roof
of a house I'd built with you in mind,
hiding all the proof.

By now the sun has set beyond
the treeline full and green,
but I think I see it rising,
making half the dark world gleam.

Your song fills every space in me,
but I've already had my cry.
I don't deserve the sun and yet,
can't bear an empty sky.

"Larger than Life"

Wintry

2014-01-11T17:55:00.002-08:00

Sailing

2014-01-11T17:54:00.004-08:00

Flickering Out

2014-01-05T20:13:00.000-08:00

A flame is such a funny thing,

A disease of sorts, that catches quick,

And one so consuming that to find it

Is to find death itself in a beautiful way.

Only in nature has death any grace,

As the leaves fall red onto graying grass

And the warm sun sinks in a shower of pink

And a flame flickers out into ember.

What's left is dark and empty space.

What's left are empty, dull brown boughs

And night profound, windy, and cold.

What's left are muddy, brown-black coals.

And yet never truer or closer to heart

Is that ending of fall gives life to the snow,

That the moon can but rise as the sun does descend,

That a fire consumes to give warmth and light.

When left from a flame is a wick and hot wax

Remember the fire that so long did last

And look upon wicks as chance to give life

For other candles burn on in the night.

"Lone Lotus"

Snowfall

2013-12-19T13:36:00.002-08:00

They never stop falling, you know,
The watery drops that once were snow.
They burrow farther into the earth,
Leaving behind all thoughts of mirth
And seeping like tears into pillows of dirt.

The drops navigate between boulders and worms
And slide all around as the soil churns
Remember the days you were fragile and white?
Remember the view on that wintry night
When you fell towards the ground from a dizzying height?

Now you swim among dirt and breathe in the scent
Of the other snowflakes that have made their descents.
But there's something different about the underground
You can't tell if it's thought, sight, smell, or sound
But on the surface this is something you'd never have found.

There's a cave in this place, and a pool of pure water
That's been filtered by yards of dirt and fodder.
It's more beautiful than you'd ever have thought,
What lays beneath such a desolate plot.
And you think it may not have been for naught.

"Melt"

Dune

2013-12-16T19:45:00.003-08:00

This story is exactly 794 words on the life of a sand dune ~ inspired by a 794-page book called Dune which one might fear relays the life of a desert (but which is instead a science fiction story I don't have time to read). I hope to disprove, once and for all, the stereotype that sand is boring ~ so enjoy!

They say the Desert is lonely, that the heat and emptiness will boil your life into steam. They say the Desert is unlike all other Places, that hope and friendship are foreign. But we are neither lonely, nor thirsty, nor hopeless, nor takers of life. We who make up the Desert, we are the Dunes.

Every Dune is itself the entire Desert. Every bit of Desert dust and sand has touched me, whether for a moment or for an eternity. The connection between us is deeper than family or friendship, for we see and hear everything together, we reside side by side and hear the echoing thoughts of one another. However, we are not the same, though we are one; Wind shapes and changes each of us as the Current shapes each Wave.

Many a shoe has trod upon my back, and many roots have grown among my sandy bones. Though my definition of many is much different than the Ocean’s, the Beach’s, and the Grassland’s, it means the same as theirs. Beings traverse us lightly, moving or staying, though never for long; they cannot compete with our years. We are proud of our age, for the Desert is the oldest of the Places after the Sky and the Ocean. We have seen cold and hot, light and dark, wet and dry. We still know all of these, in night and in day, on the surface and in the deep, with and without the Wind.

All of us Dunes look to the Sky. Sky is a constant friend, sharing stories, jokes, and teachings of all he has seen. He is the oldest, the holder of the Sun and the Moon, who reaches all of the Places. We listen to him with intent, but cannot speak back, for so much air between us stifles the voices of us Dunes.

Besides one another, Wind is our closest friend. She is a Force, like the Fire and the Clouds, who helps us trade stories with other Places. She is the youngest of the Forces, but still older than the Desert, the Grassland, and the Forest. She knows much, whispers to us, and tousles our sandy hair, like an older sister.

Beings rarely understand the life of a Place. They are young, and only tread upon us and live within us. To a Place, a Being is dust, floating without aim or vitality, lonely and empty. We hear the Wind whisper that the Forest and the City have befriended the Beings; however, to us, dust is dust. Often a Being has lost itself among us and let the Sun kill it, and we have been forced to bury it, hiding our shame from the Sky and the Wind.

Most important to the Desert is itself. We Dunes are each other’s company under Sun and under Moon. We share sand and dust as the Icebergs share their Snow. Nothing can separate us, for we live in and among each other. No Being or Force, not even River, has the strength to split the sand of the Dunes. Only Sky and Ocean hold that strength, for no other Places could usurp us, and the Sky would harm no one. He is much too old and wise to do so. The Ocean, however, is our opposite.

Deep in the Desert, there resides sandy water that nourishes our Beings. Deep in the Ocean, watery sand is the foundation for its Beings. We are opposites, Desert and Ocean, and yet we are the same. The Current to her, the Ocean, is like Wind to the Desert, and we Dunes find our counterparts are the Waves. The Desert has never met the Ocean as it has often met Cities and watery Oases. The Wind tells one about the other, and bears messages both ways. She says the Waves would love to meet the Dunes someday, but the Desert would become the Ocean, if we were to meet. The Ocean has many years more than the Desert, and that makes her stronger. Though we have never met them, the Dunes fear the Waves wish only to conquer and plasmolyze all Places. The Wind brings us tales of Waves melting the Icebergs, and using it to overtake Cities and Beaches.

At this moment, a foot treads upon my back, so lightly I barely notice. The Being is so like dust that when it shouts, cursing the Desert, the Wind steals its voice. It reached neither the Oasis to the East or City to the west. Standing alongside dust, the Desert is huge. Even a Dune is so much more than a lone Being without age or wisdom, who can never hear the Wind’s speech or laugh at the Sky’s jokes.

They say the Desert is lonely.

"Upon the Wind and Sun"