Friday, December 16, 2011

Floating Away on Words Unsaid


Floating Away on Words Unsaid

From his armchair isolation and remote recliner
his condescension and contempt ravaged the softest parts of her.
Silenced by her severed tongue, bitten off from holding back her words
she stared into years when happiness was cheap.

All those early years ago easy love lingered with sweet talk
until she gorged on thoughts unsaid and filled her belly with despair.
Youth and confidence made her pretty
before she grew fat and full with stifled words and stunted dreams,
and so filled, her caring floated away with the last of her hope.

He doesn't see, his head bowed with unconscious and unclaimed shame.
He averts his eyes to the damage done, and resents her absence,
condemns her silence and hates her with indifference.
The quiet speaks volumes of violence.

First Friends

Sometimes a flash of bare legs
dipped in water and always romanticized
in youthful black and white memories
slip behind my eyes before nightly dreams
usurp conscious thought.

That day, the sun played over rivulets of lake
that smiled in curves down child-sized calves
to return to its home cooling at our feet.
We dreamt of where these legs would take us
and swore about forever things
with newly learned spelling-list words.
I liked the way loyalty tasted on my tongue
and how it fit with infinity so well.

When our mothers called, back on the beach
we ran full of the knowing of first friendship.
So certain were we that it would outlast us all.
Time,though, breaks and cracks 
so that hours tumble on days and crush the years
and weathers this moment to memory.

Storyteller

Storyteller,
let words drop from your lips,
flow from collected memory
and weave us a tale from knowledge
born into your veins.

Culture keeper,
store the harvest of words, putting like with like
each basket full of years and ideas.
Carve up time and season to taste
with creation, myths, and tradition
to fill us on the past.

Grandmother,
decipher the sound of forgotten tongues
speak to our apathy as an artisan of language
as a master of remembrance.
Whisper to us the flow and ebb of time,
and sing of what we should be pleased to know.

Sisters

Let us each look our own way
and dream of directions to follow.
Our roads shall be perpendicular to one another
so that we will meet again when we are older
and more knowledgeable about love.

I envision us, these sisters,
as adults with disparate lives and lies,
cloaked in costumes of unshared memory
that reveal only a trace of maternal sameness
under all that is new.

Will we recognize each other,
when our paths come to crossroads distant?
Will the old familiaritities still linger
like the gentle scent
of our mother's perfumed neck?

Tchaikovsky Bliss

Rivulets
of cooling
maple syrup
glide through my veins
and I feel sticky with sound.
Notes dipped in honeyed beats
and caramelized tone engulf me.
A sugary sweetness
pours into my ears
and I crystallize
in this moment
of Tchaikovsky
bliss.

washing dishes

the plates are simple
washing them smoothly
hot water burns my hands
reaching into suds
thinking things
as I mechanically sweep
the wet cloth back and forth
rinsing clean
drying and putting away
staring out the window
at nothing and everything
pulling at the knives and forks
hating every moment
the intricacy of silverware
it is too tedious for me
rinsing them off
drying and putting away
staring at my neighbor's light
and then my own 
above my spotless sink
I sigh
drying my hands and
put myself away too


In a Sparkle

Outside the cafe window,
life paces itself with people
ebbing and flowing so much
like stormy ocean tide.
She thinks the moon must be over taxed
and will surely fall from the sky.
Waiting for the celestial downpour,
she views the reflected movement
caught in the smooth pane of glass.
Held still in a moment,
her breath tightens and
time stops in a sparkle.



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