Color Blending

Green thoughts...
Black fears...
Red passions...
Blue tears...

Orange is my joy. 
Purple - my pain.
I've sepia memories
through bright silver rain.

The cool brown earth,
it wants me to stay.
But the golden horizon
begs me away.

Rekindled

I did tremble

under your long absent and familiar caress.

Purple fire seared my forgetful veins

and spiraled toward my naked and solicitous heart.

Flowers blossomed from my barren lips

and feasted happily on your sunshine.

They bloomed for a long vermillion moment

before wilting in the heat of our unquenched desire,

which I banked,

like a simmering coal

against the Winter of your indecision.



I tremble now you’ve returned to me -

to my heart laid bare,

my open hearth.

That brilliant ember blazes anew,

and I tremble.

I quake.



Do fan the fire,

Love,

but not to ash.

Fan the fire, my Love,

but make it last.

Aha! Moment

It occurred to me in one of my spare half-moments this chilly morning as I hurried and hustled 3 kids out of the door to catch the school bus at 7:37, that there is a reason that most of what little creative writing I've done in the past 10 years has been poetry.  I know it should be obvious, but it's time - or the lack of it.

I only have time for poems!  Poems are quicker for a number of reasons, not just because they are often short.  (At least mine are.)  It's also easy to build out the structure of a poem. I have no problem jotting down a word or two that falls from my psyche and build that out into a more complex, but still concise expression of  thought and feeling - even at a later point.  I only need a few words to get going.  I play with those words -linking them and adding others, turning them around and exchanging them - until I find I'm expressing my heart's intent. 

Poetry can be so elegant.  I think it's because of the flexibility of the form.  You aren't tied to grammar conventions or traditional meanings.  Word combinations can explode on the page in way not seen in prose - distilling the essence of powerful emotions and thought.  You're essentially bottling meaning right there on the page. 

Because with poetry I'm freer also from the conventions of linear thought, I can hold on to the stream of consciousness, even when my 6 year old drills into my ear with a staccato "Mom...Mom...Mom...MOM!  I'm trying to ask you something!  OK...Can I have a cookie?"  After yet another sugar negotiation with this persistant little badger, which can sometimesgo on for the better part of at least a half hour - I can still come back to my jumble of portent words and phrasings, and pick up where I left off, because they immediately evoke what made me want to write in the first place.  I get back fast.  If I were working on an essay or novel, I'd be done for the day.  I just don't have the stretches of uninterrupted time I personally need for that kind of plotting and planning!

Maybe if I keep after this, writing what I can, when I can, I'll get to the point where I can get a flow of ideas onto the page.  I'll keep writing, even when I hate what I see, because I know that's the only way to oil the gears.  Someday, I may find that I'm several pages into some idea, and turn around looking for that little cookie wrangler, only to find I have time to spare.  I'm in no hurry.

Consumption

Blinded with delusions,
you lash and cling with
grasping tentacles of greedy
inadequacy,
unsatiated want.

Standing ignorantly on our tongues, unconcerned
with how you crush or what
you destroy,
you mangle the truth.
You murder your own soul.
You wonder why
you hurt.

You hurt.

Turning away,
I shield my eyes from
your personal devastation.
Your desperate, insatiable longing
consumes you
violently,
like a ravenous fire.

Love,
suffocated and piteous,
shivering
and wretched from your thrashings,
is afraid to come near.

Walking Up

Step over step

Breathe in

Breathe out

Heartbeat after beat

Rise higher

Go deep

Mist whispers thin

Mossy tendrils

Moist heat

Stirring the sky

Planting my feet