More Poetry For You

“What would you have me do? O Great and Powerful Man?” 

nothing, I would have you do naught but that which you wish 

“What would you have me be?” 

nothing, I only want what you are, I have no desire for you to be anything but what you will 

“So, what’s the catch? Why do you seek this?” 

beloved, you ask the wrong questions, 

“What then should I ask?” 

what will I do for you? 

“Fine, my darling, beloved, he who knows my soul, what would you do for the one who has laid claim to your heart?” 

I would thread flowers in your hair and worship you as you lay in fields of golden grain, I would remove all barriers before you and watch as you fly chasing the breeze. I would be your wings. I would be your home. I would put the universe in your hands because I want to see you tear it down and rebuild it in your image. I would see you become all that you could be, terrifying and powerful. I would tremble at your sight, but not with fear. I would love you and all that you are were and shalt be. 

Where I am From (again)

I am from warm hugs

From sweet child O` mine lullabies and a star wars bedtime story

I am from rowdy boys crowded around a bridge ready to jump

I am from puppies in a bin baying and crowding around a mother basset

I am from apple pie dreams and hands older than me and stories spoken over

Laughter and the smell of food cooking in the oven

I am from the morning

Warm sunshine smiles and daisy chain afternoons

Brothers with too tall bodies and too small sensibilities

Confused and wonderful

I am from a garage

Alternative rock, the smell of grease and men and fixing the problem

Pieces clicking together like a puzzle

I am from a field

Scratches bug bites and high grass

Scrapes and bruises falling out of trees and into fun

I am from costuming

Bright sequin, improbable characters, and laudable performances

Lines not quite memorized but somehow funnier that way

I am from competition

Racing past a sibling or cousin to get through the kitchen first without being scolded by that one aunt

To

Racing through the air trying to get to a ball just beyond my fingertips so I can pound it into the ground before it’s blocked

I am from a kitchen

Smells that evoke nostalgia in every southern heart

All the sisters, cousins, aunts and grandmother gathered in the kitchen with bustling mouths laughing as they cook turkey, potatoes and cranberry jam and the menfolk watch football and the kids play a façade of the game of the day

I am from elegance

Being taught table manners, learning how to walk in 6"s and how to do my makeup from a favored aunt for the prom

Learning how to be a lady

I am from vibrancy

Spinning sepia-tinged memories filled with stars dreams and sadness

I am from a field lying between my parents learning Draco, the dippers, mars, and planets chasing the sisters and running from Orion’s bow

I am from the stars

A new adult wandering the earth

My head in the clouds with lofty ideas, hopes, and longing to be the cause of change

I am from a promise

A promise to learn

A promise to live

A promise to laugh

A promise to cry

A promise to succeed

A promise to fail

A promise to be me

The Red Backpack

What do you do when it hurts this much?

I don’t even know where the pain comes from. It’s a combination of loneliness and longing I think. But why? I thought I was perfectly happy, I have nothing to be this upset over! 

I am blessed, so why do I feel cursed?

Why do I feel like every person on the planet is mocking me? Why do I feel so alone? What’s wrong with me? am I really lying to myself that badly? will I end up like the man at the library talking to someone no longer there I imagine his story 

we invented and perfected the idiosyncrasies of the odd art, we are odd and we are not 

but are the vibrant dread, a constant antithesis of all we should be, we are alive truly yet floaters in a world we did not design and we deign to love 

the universe of our creation we are forced out of by the necessities of those who have and always will persecute that which they know not of and all are naught to understand 

Be not afraid

Be not afraid of that to come, for you are stronger than you think 

Be not satisfied with pictures of places, long to see them and be 

Be not afraid of success, that which opportunity affords those who risk 

Be not complacent in your life, but show your feelings and strive for the best 

Be not afraid of emotions, raw and powerful, but let yourself express and experience 

Be not who you were 

Be not afraid of who you could be 

But love who you are 

The Red Backpack

Time slipped away

        We knew, had known, will know

She had years, then months then days, then none.

She went first

Skipped into death like she had been waiting for it all her life and I suppose in some ways she had,

I couldn’t handle it

I sold the business, the house, the car, I lived out of my backpack                       She loved books so I hitchhiked from library to library always picking up ones we loved. Then we’d sit down at one of the tables, two old coots living out of a beat-up red backpack and read and talk about everything

We got some odd glances often funny stares. I didn’t care I had my beloved back then I’d come back to myself and realize that I was once again just a lonely old man talking to an empty chair

Then I’d pick up that old red backpack once more and search for her in the next dusty corner of the next dusty library in the next dusty town

Fall (in retrospective)

The leaves come falling down like lovers hearts and children’s knees

Everyones getting engaged and loving each other

People are preparing for the long cold winter

People are cuddling with loved ones and reaching out

Dress up as ghouls and ghosties to scare away the demons in our own minds, fall is a time for reflection, the leaves are changing color as is the people’s hair. The temperature lessens, the frost slides into the cold mornings and covers windshields in intricate crystalline tapestries. The rain falls down, the monotony of school starting is broken up by dreary rainstorms and brilliant shining brisk days full of cold sunshine. As the seasons change humanity is reminded of their own inability to control the world around them, photosynthesis and the water cycle and all of the wonderfully terrible things about fall remind you of all of the wonderfully terrible things about yourself.

Airports

There’s something romantic about airports

I don't mean romantic in the way of falling in love but in the way of how its an in between hub

airports are a stop from dream to reality

from sadness to joy

from missing to hugging

from chance to certainty

And as I sit in this airport, the day after the longest night I can’t help but wish I could sit in this moment forever 

This moment of chance, this moment of opportunity

I COULD get on the flight that I booked ahead of time and go to my planned destination

I COULD continue on with my life completely unchanged waltzing from plan to plan as some fall apart and some fall into place

Or I could not

I could follow my feet where they want to go

Pick a random gate, buy a ticket at the desk and board a plane to destinations unknown

See what I can make of life in this new place

If I wanted, the option is there for me to start completely over in a new place with a new name and a new purpose

Who would I be if I chose that? Would I still be me? Would a new name and a new place and a new job change me so completely that even those closest to this current version of the person I am wouldn’t recognize me?

Or would I surface the same? Would I have the same insecurities and personality? Would my music taste change or my the way I liked to dress? Or would I be even more me? Like a less watered down version of the me that I am currently?

Stars

And as she sailed across the plain,

The men awestruck stared at her wake.

The beauty of her grace so sweet,

Forever gone from his embrace.

The king so sad, destroyed was he,

Her life was once his great escape.

The prince distraught, his mother gone

He’d miss her touch tender yet strong.

The star she was shined brightly through.

The years she spent on earth now done.

The blessings of her days endure

While she ascends to take her place

Her place among the stars awaits.

I dont know if you can call it “coming of age” when you’re 25, coming into my own I guess. It when your body changes again, like it did ten years ago. Except now the joy you felt at the physical signs of womanhood, are replaced with disgust, fear and revulsion at the reminders of all the ways you are not what you want to be and all the ways that others see you merely as weapons, or tools to be used and abused.

I am coming into my own, into a series of fights that feel like I have entered the ring too late to win.

I am afraid

I am tired

I feel as if any fight that I had was long ago drained away

I want to want to fight, I want to want to resist

But if I am being honest with my self the only fight I have any energy for is the fight not to off myself

And in that moment of honesty is peace.

I want to lay down in the dry and brittle grass, I want to give up, I want to die I do I would rather die than continue to be stuck between what is and what I cannot have

I want to farm, and be at peace, and write and sleep soundly, and be held by those who love me and for my greatest enemies to be deer who eat my radishes and the rabbits stealing herbs from my garden

I want to drift away into oblivion, into the dark unknown of life after death or nothing after death at this point I don’t much care

But also I want to rage against the dying of the light

I want to fight fight fight

I want to try to make the world a better place for all

I want to try to create lands that are safe

but i just dont know how and I dont have the energy