Atomic rage

I surrendered my travel book centuries ago

burned the forest where you were 

my favorite tree

You are the reality I cannot close in on 

the dream I mistook for 

permanency

A World Away

The shimmering patch of air was now positively beckoning her. 

“What’s the worst that could happen?” Kitty asked out loud.  As long as she took care not to run into the cactus lurking just behind this potential hallucination, the answered seemed to be nothing, other than a few wasted moments of her life.  And it wasn’t as if Kitty had something better to do.  Her existence was so devoid of excitement that it seemed a shame to ignore even this smidgeon of potential.  So she said brightly to herself, “Well, here goes!” and feeling more than a little stupid, marched straight into the shimmering light.

Kitty felt herself gasp as a blast of frigid air blow through her—air colder than anything she’d ever experienced during a Wisconsin winter, including the January when the temperature failed to rise above zero degrees.  Just when she thought she would never feel warm again, however, the sensation passed.  And then Kitty stumbled and promptly fell down onto her knees.

Embarrassed, she stood up and brushed herself off.  At least no one had been around to see her make a fool of herself—and, more importantly, she had avoided the cactus.   Kitty didn’t even want to think what it would have felt like to fall into that.

She was still flicking bits of dirt off of her clothes, imagining herself covered in cactus needles, when she noticed a battered pair of black riding boots just a few feet in front of her.  

Kitty looked up.  A man stood in front of her.

*From my upcoming serialized YA fantasy novel, A Window to the World, coming to https://channillo.com/ soon!

            

Silence

I hear riddles all day long

words but not in English

no one wants me to know

My heart is a tinder box I

am not allowed to open

Illusions

And when I choose to come here again                                                                     

will it snow how it did in my dreams

                        will I be

a story worth telling

                                    because the sadness—

it crackles in the night

           

for you           

the mistake worth regretting

                                                the faraway voice        filled with belonging

do you see where eternity ends

did you know that you were my friend

this planet a box that holds me

when she could not worship the sun               for so long she yearned to sleep         

but the storm came rolling in

                        the storm came rolling in

a million miles of prairie grass

and your golden-haired girl                            exposed once again

unsure how the course of right became the final turn wrong

how her rabbit-hole time for falling   

                                    just      gone

gone

gone

a triumph but for you 

my one truth worth deceiving

a child’s dream for tomorrow so good           it deserved to be buried

behind the wall a red she had never seen                  

           

if I had                        discovered

yet not been found

would your golden-haired girl           

be six feet underground

I guess this was why you had to go

maybe I should have known

but the sadness—

no one told me it would come with the leaving

especially not you

my last hope worth believing

The Open Door

January 2005

Dream Journal

Dreamt I went back to school and I was in algebra class.  Unlike in my other dreams I was actually having fun, thinking I might be able to catch up and not fail the course, when suddenly one of my classmates shouted that someone had a gun.  Everyone started to scream and run.  In the hallway I saw the guy with a gun.  He was from another high school, a football player.  The room we all escaped into had a telephone, but when I dialed 911 they put me on hold.  The football player came into the room and we all ran again, panicking.

Everyone got ahead of me and went outside, in a direction they knew he wouldn’t think to follow.  I was trying to follow but suddenly I couldn’t run at all--it was massive effort to lift my feet.  The football player came outside with another guy and a girl, and they were all laughing together, like they were having fun killing people and scaring us.  I climbed a brick wall and tried to hide in a drainage ditch, but they’d seen me.  As I was climbing the wall the girl took the gun and shot me in the foot.  When I then crouched in the gutter she shot at me again and just missed my stomach.  Somehow I knew I would have died had that bullet been even half an inch closer.

Finally I managed to jump out of the gutter despite my wounded foot.  I ran through a cemetery full of huge holes in the ground, down side streets, even through people’s houses, as I followed signs to a road that I knew would lead me home.  But when I reached the road I looked over, and the girl with the gun was walking alongside me.  She seemed very queer and scary.  Although she wasn’t holding the gun I knew she was still dangerous.  I tried to pacify her with small talk. 

When we reached my house I managed to go down to the basement without her.  Although people were home no one in the house was helping me.  I grabbed the phone in my brother’s room and called the police, but the police wouldn’t let me tell them what was going on.  They just kept blathering on about how they knew the shooting had taken place and they were looking for the suspect.  I couldn’t get a word in edgewise to tell them the suspect was in my house! 

Then all at once the girl was standing in the doorway to my brother’s room. She accused me of calling the police.  I shook my head and tried to say things into the phone that made it sound like I was just having some random phone call.  She obviously didn’t believe me.  In a somber tone, she told me, “Think of all the lives you’re going to ruin.”  

Secrets

Whisper it to me while no one is listening

tell me I am a fool

tell me I am not

tell me something that makes sense

and then prove it

Drowning

Let me tell you what I know about

my broken heart

this is the rhythm of it falling apart

toss the stones in the river because

we are

we are coming up for air again

What did I even know about

guilt and sin

all of the dreams that

I was dying in

it was a curse it was a blessing it

was utter nothingness

until it skidded and came crashing

home

No telling how the earth will

record this disaster

whistling dixie in the wind

as if I had the answer

            ballet with fractured form

tripped up by vengeful rapture

the hammer flung against

the wall

Dismantled piece by piece into

a million parts

buried back with Santa at

the Christmas tree farm

what is dead is what is real to

the falling apart

we heard the siren but not the

alarm

I wonder how I will know when

the sky becomes my master

when dreams of yesterday stop

mocking me with laughter

tomorrow is today tornadoes

circling my trailer

I was wrong over

and over again

Now I whisper to the wind about

my broken heart

failing in slow motion

not a subtle art

toss the stones in the river because

I am

I am here alone at the end

Innocence

With a belligerent expression on his smug entitled face, Adam told me, “I love her."

“I’m sure you do.”

“Why are you so cynical?”

“I think realistic might be more apt," I replied.  I tried to get the bartender's attention, but he ignored me in favor of a trio of giggly college girls.  "You aren't the type to stick around."

“I’ve been with her for almost three years--long before you and her deadbeat father showed up on the scene.”

“I know,” I said, bored now with this conversation.  “Are you going to get the beer, or should I?”

“Dude, you’d better get used to me,” Adam snarled, “because I’m not going anywhere.”

“I guess that’s you volunteering, then,” I answered, and fighting back the urge to punch him, I returned to the table.  “Adam’s getting the beer,” I told Angie.  “He’ll be right back.”

“Great,” she said with a big smile.  But I didn’t care if she thought she loved him.  Soon enough his useless ass would be bouncing straight out the door.

Unprepared

                the place you fell down from

  was the air so pure up there

                                that before you could warn me I

might find you

                  in the rustling of the trees  

you lost your breath

                and I was trapped

             under this avalanche of 

leaves        

                               

Wisdom lost

And nothing is more obvious to
my existence than this raging
internal war,
who is fighting and who is winning,
irrelevant so far.

Misplaced

Dream Journal, February 2, 2005

Had a dream that I went with two people to my grandparents’ house.  The house was empty; we were just checking up on it.  Everyone who lived there had disappeared, except for my grandfather, who we knew had died.  Although the door to the living room was supposed to be closed, a little dog with us ran out of the room and down to the basement.  We went to the basement door and called for the dog.  As he came back up the stairs, a young woman followed him.

Well, I nearly had a heart attack.  She had been one of the missing people we’d assumed was dead--other than that I didn’t know exactly who she was.  I asked her where she’d been. She said she didn’t know, only that she'd been gone for three years.  Whoever had taken her had arranged for her life upon her return.  She had a strange air of contentment about the fact that she’d lost three years of her life.

She told us she intended to stay in the house.  I was scared and I wanted to leave, so she told me to call her whenever I needed her, which didn’t seem very likely.  Other people were staying with her at the house, although I could just see some shadows hovering around her. 

Only then did I realize that everyone who had disappeared were members of my family, not just random people.  Terror overcame me that whoever was taking them would come for me, too, and I didn’t want that.  I didn’t want to disappear and not know what happened to me for such a long stretch of time. 

When I woke up it was the middle of the night and I felt very, very afraid.  I thought to myself that maybe I didn’t want to remember after all.  I didn’t feel so brave anymore.

After that I had another dream.  In it is someone whispered to me, “Be quiet, Megan,” as if they were right in bed next to me.  I woke up with a start.  

Not a good night.

Dry

you want to cry

but you have been dry for so long

that despair has cut a dirt rock river

through the canyons of 

your lungs

Unraveling

With an anxious sigh, Polly Wiggle-Waggle scanned her family’s account books, looking for good news that simply was not there.  Poor Polly was running out of ideas.  Try as she might to persuade them otherwise, her parents refused to admit that the family was in a financial crisis.  “The Wiggle-Waggles,” her father had intoned, after Polly waved the account books under his nose, “do not have financial crises!” 

If only that were true.  Yes, Lord and Lady Wiggle-Waggle, Polly’s parents, still lived in the great manor that had been the family seat for the last 37 generations.  And yes, they still gave the most glamorous garden parties in the county.  But with the family’s income drying up, and her parents’ complete inability to grasp reality, Polly was at her wits’ end for ways to raise funds for the summer fete her mother insisted on hosting.

In desperation Polly looked around the living room, searching for an old vase or painting her parents wouldn’t miss if she pawned it off a London antiques shop.  It was, she knew, a hopeless cause.  Thanks to such raids in the past Polly’s parents were beginning to notice that the manor seemed a bit emptier than usual, even though it was still crammed full of family heirlooms.  

And of course Polly could forget about suggesting to her father that he get a job.  Lord Wiggle-Waggle’s face had gone beet red the last time she’d dared to raise the subject. “The Wiggle-Waggles,” he’d boomed, “do not have jobs!”  Nor had Lady Wiggle-Waggle been of much help when Polly had approached her after dinner yesterday.  “Darling,” she’d sniffed to Polly, “how many times do I have to tell you?  It’s vulgar for a lady to discuss matters of finance!”

Polly just did not know what to do.  With her brother Alfred even more clueless than her parents—he was incapable of any conversation not concerning lawn tennis or his London gentleman’s club—Polly felt utterly alone.  If only she could think of a way to make some money…

Happily Ever After

Time to sharpen the needle of this thorn

to watch the destruction of

what I never knew to be true

The volcano erupted underneath the trees

I felt it 

I felt it as I expanded and shrank and dissolved

into the nothing I pretended

was you.

Atomic pain

you found my horses runnning bare

shivering in the wind with

frozen hair

it broke to the touch 

as you whispered goodbye goodbye

goodbye...

The Light in the Dark

They found it, separately.  Sometimes one at a time, sometimes in small groups.  They all instinctively shied away from each other, accepted without argument that certain hallways would remain locked to them.  What did they want to see each other for, anyway?  They didn’t.  They didn’t, and they wouldn’t.

Once they had all arrived and found themselves their own shadowy corners, the teenage boy appeared.  He went to a courtyard in the middle, surrounded on all sides by brick walls with windows that opened from the inside.  On a white sheet spread out on the concrete ground he very deliberately started placing red plastic drinking straws.  No one watched him and he paid no one else any attention.

Over time the straws began to form an intricate pattern.  Those hiding in the brick building did not want to look at it, and when they did, they pretended not to understand.  Was it a formula, they asked?  The kind you needed to be a math genius to understand, perhaps?  They were not math geniuses, so they would never understand it.  Satisfied, they slid away from the windows. 

But the group of pirate boys living in the trees overhead did not leave.  They watched from the tree house they built high in the branches.  They knew what the red straws on the white sheet meant.  They knew it was a key.  A key to a map that would lead everyone in the building to the one place no one wanted to go. 

No one, that is, but them.

Hidden

But the peace which comes my love
there is no lock on the door
And now you can shut out nothing
let alone the memory of
        the war
Some kind of peace now
one hell of a peace now
All bruised and tattered and sore
as long as it hurts less than the no-peace
you were forever crashing through
before
Because this is your peace now
This is your peace now
and in the end what you will find
is the quiet absence of any power you
once believed built a castle in the sky
hidden in his golden palace in the sky
cringing on the cloud throne
playing blindman's buff with time
his hands reaching for you
his hands reaching for you
but even the unbroken must learn 
how to cry
alone

The war against hope

“You were my friend,” I said sadly. 

For an answer Marietta just turned away, her eyes downcast. 

“Enough of that,” the witch told us.  “Now come along.  I have plans for the both of you.”

Grief

Fool for waiting

Fooled into waiting 

for something 

more

Far Away

When you are a vanishing star

a galaxy stuffed into my little heart

Acceptance

“I like your t-shirt,” I told her.

The girl smiled at me.  It was a relief to realize she couldn’t quite talk yet.  But when she gave me a little wave and turned to go with the dogs, I knew what she was saying.  She would be seeing me again soon.

            

I did not want to see her.  I did not want to know her.  But none of that mattered anymore.  The girl in the cage belonged to me now. 

My heart hurt.  Thinking about the little dog in the woods, I lifted my hand to my nose. 

It smelled like cake.

Bonfires

Stretch me across your rack, my love

turn tight the wheels

I will not cry

I will not cry since I have

been dry for too long

I should have known

I should have known that

the moment I found the heart to 

bring you here

I would be so much more alone.

Escape

Tell the little girl the devil is pounding

on the gates,

salivating,

waiting.

God reserves a special place for you

it is where the clouds burst and bang

the loudest.

It is his business to forgive,

not mine.

His.

Frozen

Ursula sent Andy a long email, in which she denounced him as an emotional cripple.  She also compared him to her father, who had never loved anything but the family dog, and said neither one of them (Andy and her father, not the dog) had no idea what emotional intimacy was.   I’m sure you’ve already stopped reading by now, she sniffed at the end, but she was wrong.  Andy read the whole thing.   He even showed it to Jake, who had a good chuckle over it.  “Women,” Jake laughed.  “Always so damn superior.  Talk about needing a psychiatrist, huh?”

“Yeah.”

“Well, whadya want with a chick named Ursula?  I’m telling you—stick to the women with normal names.  The ones who sound like they should be in a Bond movie are always psychopaths.” 

“I’ll keep that in mind,” Andy answered.  But he wasn’t smiling.

Let go

The defense has become the obstacle
I cannot give it up
it is giving me up
it is waving goodbye
it has become boring
please please please
I look out of the bus window and I see
houses and a golf course
not ready
it keeps rattling at the gate
let me kiss you goodbye

just wait
just wait
just not ready yet

The defense has become the obstacle
there is no turning back.

Delusions of Grandeur

“She thinks she’s so special,” Scott scoffed.  “Well,” Dirk answered, in drowsy voice, “she does have an engineering degree from MIT.”

“Dime a dozen,” Scott returned.  “Actually,” Dirk began, only for Scott to noisily push his chair back so that it drowned out the rest of Dirk’s comment.  “I’m getting a soda,” he announced.  “Who’s coming with me?”  Joel and Jenson leapt to their feet and followed a few paces behind Scott.  “They better have Pepsi,” Matt heard Scott say, “or there will be hell to pay.”

“He’s a very angry man,” Dirk remarked to Matt.  He then closed his eyes and went back to sleep.

November 1991

I see a man
at the top of a hill underneath a tree
I turn to face him
we stand there for a while
the grass is green from the rain
he does not know my name
I turn to him
I open my mouth and nothing gags
he listens
I turn to run I run run run
down the hill my arms stretched wide
I dive between the tall grass
the grass is tall from the rain
he calls for the daydreamer but I am gone
I am back laying in my bed
hating myself for the telling
it is too late
he does not know my name but he knows
there is no turning back

Fare thee well

Where are you tonight?

I see you sitting on the low-backed blue sofa

only a cat could love

complaining about me and 

discussing Jung and astrology in 

the same breath.

I see you you are so unknowable

I hate one person more and that is

myself.