7 minutes rushwrite

So out of practice but feeling like I need to start this gig up again somehow. In the hours before you were born I had several lines running through my head and sometimes coming out of my mouth.

May angels guide you home.

Lead me, guide me.

O my o (no skazono po russki.)

Je peux le faire.

Andrew.

Andrew Clyde.

And the waves crested and fell. Euphemism for the pain which intensified and then fell as my body worked to bring you outside of me.

And now you are here. Have been here. Three and a half weeks now. In the broad large huge eternal scope of things that is barely a blip of a blip.  But your presence has been like a constant. Like you've always been mine.

You snore as a write these words--a congested, adorable little snore. And I would hold you all day long if there weren't other things and others to attend to.  I would.

Angels did guide you home. I believe in angels. Seen and unseen.

we all fall down

As long as smoke rushed out the chimney,
I would hold my breath.
No gumdrops lined the windows.
No candy canes stood guard as fencing.
A witch’s house, yes,
But no Hansel nor Gretel
To make the tale full of fairies.

I don’t know how to tell you
My heart feels confused.
I don’t know if there’s a secret lock somewhere
Because my hands are empty
Without any key.

You stretch great sheets of paper
Up to the top of the two story building
And proclaim it won’t be enough.
Disaster rolls in with the rain,
Making the paper cry with wetness.
Falling apart.

I fall apart with your arms nowhere to be found.
No big deal,
But I'm doing it alone.

Far and gone.
Gone and far.
You cannot come out
Come out wherever you are.
Where have you gone so far?

I imagine mountains alive

good luck charm.

when you have the mountains,
never show them your back.
keep facing them,
even when you find yourself
back in bed
on sleep's verge.
they relish your visage
as much as you admire their majestic height.

they want to know you haven't abandoned them.

others they're fine without.
those who take no pause as they descend.
those who leave the debris you'll pick up, next time.

so face the mountains
unashamed
because you help heal their wounds.



My writing is so rusty, but I'm trying to work on it some more. Don't know how much of it I'll post on here, but here's a lil' bit for now.

missing Céline

One thought,
Of the oh so many after finding out:
And what of the milk?

I wake some mornings
Waiting for my baby to rouse
And release the ache
Of the milk ready to come.

But my pin-drop of pain
Is nothing contrasted with
Morning stretching into
Daytime,
Afternoon,
Evening,
Nighttime.
Weighty.
Full for too long.

In addition to the heartache,
To the arms missing the warm load,
A cuddly bundle of baby,
To the seeing her clothes piled up softly,
To the holding her sister,
To the crying,
The sighs,
The kneeling in prayer.

All
This
Plus
The milk
That will no longer sustain.

previously she had powers to do anything and everything.

now she's not so sure.

the troublesome part,
the bit that confuses her head and her heart,
is the invisibility and intangibility of the moment--
the WHEN.

the
when-did-this-all-of-a-sudden happen to me?
the
when-did-the-former-me cease to be?

previously she was.
then she became.
now she is.

right?

it should all add up.
nicely.
smoothly.
succinctly.
without a hitch.
sans any sort of hiccup.

but the trouble remains.
disturbing the peace.

moment by moment, though, she gains.
she wins tranquility and normalcy.

she basks in the whole holy present.
she breathes without a glance back.
she closes her eyes without any forethought.

and rests.

keep asking

Will you? Will you be? Will you be there? Will you be there tomorrow? Will you be ready there tomorrow? Will you be there tomorrow ready to catch me? Will you be there tomorrow ready to catch me when I fall? Will you be there tomorrow ready to catch me when I fall hard and fast? I will be there. I'll be coming from the cliff on high and I ask you these questions now because there will be no spitting them out as I rush through the air into, hopefully, your arms.

a start?

The hem had come undone and she fingered the frayed threads. She'd sat down ten minutes earlier, waiting for the bus. Once a week she took the twenty minute bus ride south. The volunteer opportunity had piqued her interest when she heard about if from one of her teachers. Now she searched inside her bag for the safety pin she'd been carrying around for months. Her hand scrabbled around in her bag before coming to a resting stop as she remembered the safety pin was gone; she'd given it to the little boy with the runny nose.

They'd drawn a blue dinosaur together. Blue with orange spots. And they'd named him Ralph. Well, they was a generous term because, really, she'd suggested at least a dozen names while he stared blankly at her. It took awhile before she hit upon Ralph. His silent smile after her utterance spoke of his approval. He handed her the blue crayon, and she slowly wrote each letter above his own self-scrawled name.

She had opened the safety pin, pushed it through his overalls' strap, stuck it through the paper Ralph, and closed it. The boy had rubbed his eyes and looked up at her with another smile, this time opening his mouth slightly as if he was actually going to let words escape. He didn't, though. She, in turn, had patted his head and told him goodbye as his mother grabbed his hand and whisked him away.

nostalgia

Some days I find myself walking down streets that stretch so far away from here. Sunny days and ice cream bought from a vendor asking me if I have five kopek to make perfect change. Days like today that start with visible air and end with rain freezing to road tops. Days when snow turns to slush turns to mud. Faces begin to appear in no magical order. Alla's mother stumbles out on the street and presses both her hands against the outside of the apartment. The little boy whose name I've forgotten--he sits on my lap as we ride the bus to his house. We share a pomegranate while he talks of cars and guns in an excited voice. We leave his house to find ourselves covered and almost coated with a gorgeously sparkling sky, uninhibited by streetlight camagflogue. Some days. I have to pull myself back to reality and focus on the task at hand. But I welcome the respite. The small escape into my heart's memories. Shura and her full-cheeked, smiling face. The new scab on her chin from her latest trip on the path. I miss her smile's warmth.

sea sparkle

We sprinkled sea water
Upon your hair,
So when it dried
We could see it
Sparkling in the sun.

heart close

I want my heart to pound next to yours. You'd left it at that, and then we stood chest to chest in a hug as our hearts continued their beating of blood, if only a bit more rapidly than before.

I know the words you said didn't signify one distinct moment of heart pounding because we'd stood like this before. Held each other like this before. And, yet, it was different because this was the first time I'd heard you say I want in anything related to the future.

Your eyes met mine and you said I want my heart to pound next to yours. And that's what made me want to hold on to forever.

before the sun woke you up

Before the sun woke you up, I had already been to the river. I dipped in my toes. Hushing the automatic shocked gasp, I rocked back on my heels. I didn't want to startle you or the deer that grazed but one hundred yards away.

The butterflies began unfurling their wings to the warming rays as you fluttered open your eyes. Too bad we can't take flight with them and skim the surface to search out the source of this icy water.

But not always too bad because here we gaze with our eyes closed. We figure out their flight patterns and follow them even while moored solidly to the rock upon which we crouch.

not of the rain

I run through the rain.
Wish it would soak through my skin,
Rather than slide off,
Leaving me by myself again.

summer praise

caught between the lines drawn with two thick black pieces of chalk. there's dust in the air and i find it hard to inhale and then i have nothing at all to exhale. it's just a cough and i feel as if there are hands on my throat. the fingers dig into my skin and I close my eyes. it doesn't have to be so violent, though. we can run through fields on blue sky, yellow sun, pink flower days. we can fall on our backs and wish on a cloud. yes, this is called day-time desiring. it's not a nighttime ritual where stars get wishes shoved upon them. it's just a cloud. maybe the whitest. maybe the puffiest. maybe the one that's moving the fastest and we can stop it long enough to cast our wish upon it, before we lose sight of it to the brown mountain. our wish. we share. it's not a mine nor a yours thing. it's simply simple and all the colors make us smile and shine. we've forgotten the snow-cold winter days when we wore nothing but frost on our faces. for now is the time for freckles. the time for blonding of hair.

a year ago (rushwrite)

Hopes too high.
Come crashing down like a kite cut from the sky.
Failure to fly
Creates a crumpled figure
Crushed into dirty snow.
My nose bleeds through my fingers.
I wipe my hands on my pants
Then raise them to catch the blood again.
There's no stopping it.
The legs of my pants cling to me with wet.
The patches where I knelt
Have turned a shade of icy, bloody brown.

instant magic

at least that's what it felt like

because at first
there was nothing

and then in a flash
everything existed

let's

Because I haven't writtten on here in ages and I haven't really written much creatively of late, I looked back to something I wrote this February and modified it. See below...(yay for lunchtime to give me time to eat, listen to a Conference talk, and write a little bit...one more class to go for the day.)



You'd never guess my greatest fear.
You'd never guess the things so dear to me.
You'd never guess all this about me,
And I, in turn, would never guess as much about you.

That's why there's talk,
No?

That's why we need to talk.

I would like to try to
Get around
All the
Guessing,
Conjecturing,
Supposing.

Things aren't always what they seem to be.
Isn't that a saying?
Well, same with people.

So let's talk.
Because you'd never guess all I want you to know,
Need you to know.
And I'd never guess the same.

orbs

My dreams miss me.

I startled awake,
And left them weeping their weaving tale.

I almost cried

When I stepped outside.
The moon globed in the west.

But with no glasses gracing my face,
I couldn't make out its detail.

Is it the same with you sometimes?

You step away from me,
And tires spinning have crushed the lenses

Which bring things into focus.

I can see the oval of your face,

But can't distinguish
Between the way your mouth moves
To make an 'O' sound
And the way it slowly

comes to a sad close.

pause

Waves crash upon the sand. I search for rounded sea glass amid the pebbles that stick to the bottom of my feet. We sink into sand and sea water kisses our knees. I kneel and fill my hands with sand. I move and mound it into the shape of a dome. You remain standing, so, with more sand, I cover your feet. Moments later you crouch down, breaking through your feet's fetters, and add to the dome. But your eyes stretch out to the horizon and don't focus on this moment. My eyes on yours, I can't see where you've gone, although you're still very literally and physically here. I'm not with you, wherever you are. I stand and step a few more paces into the water until it hits me hip-high. I raise my arms and look up at the white clouds turning pink. I sway my hands in the water and bring some to my face. I start back towards you. Looking at my feet, I place them on the bigger rocks. I don't want to slip. And then. Underwater. I choke because the force of you pushing me under has left me without air. The abruptness of submersion incites me to laughter, not aiding the choking situation much. I grab your waist. I laugh. You smile. I quiet down, regain the ability to breathe again, and it's just us standing there. Heaving breaths towards the horizon and wet with water, we pause. Together.

already

She couldn't bring back the way he said her name,
Despite the ringing in her ears.

Her memory echoed with his voice--

I don't know,

Wait and see,

and

Oh my goodness.

Her name, though,

No.

She would think.
She would wonder.

How did you say my name?
Was it always with a hint of a smile?
Why did I rarely lock eyes with you in that moment?
Was it out of fear?
Or out of too much heedless love?
Did you ever say my name happily?
Or was it always already soaked with regret?

Always already,
Her name
Gone.

set to "Dance Theme of the 80's"

last night.
sun down.
street lights.
drive round.

song loud.
chlorine sting.
perfect crowd.
voices sing.

pull in.
one more.
perfect grins.
sweet core.