Riddles

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

The dragon is in the fireplace

I see his glowing eyes

this time I cannot be afraid

he hears the dog howl too

if only I could howl along

there are no clues only riddles

they whisper riddles to me

to be kooky is not to be crazy

the dog only wants to be home

The dragon smoulders for me

so near the butterflies

but they do not mind

Goodbye to All This

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

Survival skills

I woke up as a fairy in the empty restaurant next to the woods.  I suppose I always knew when I wanted to live in the dollhouse in the attic that my hopes and dreams beat inside of a tiny heart.  But not until I opened my eyes and found myself crouching in the furthest corner of the kitchen pantry did I know for certain.

            I had been gone for a year—where, I couldn’t say.  But I did know I’d been very ill, and that during this illness some industrious housekeeper within had thrown huge dust covers over much of my memory.  I wasn’t sure I minded.  Something about the twilight endlessly falling over the woods told me that the last good day had been long ago.

            The restaurant, however, I remembered.  Quietly elegant, its white tablecloths, spotless place settings, and crystal water glasses spoke of another time.  Windows ran the length of the entire outside wall:  restless trees and half-lit sky filled the view as far as the eye could see.  In the cramped kitchen, steel gray units and panelled cabinets housed the pots, pans, and other cooking items.  And then there was the pantry, nearly empty, where I now found myself.  I had never seen anyone cooking in that kitchen.  Save one, I had never seen another soul in the restaurant at all.

            In this endless sunset that enveloped the restaurant, no customers ever came.  Instead, my friend Marietta, the hostess, usually sat at one of the perfectly made tables by herself, doing paperwork of a kind we never discussed.  Only the fading light that rippled through those whispering trees dared enter the large T-shaped room.  Why were there no customers?  On my previous visits I’d only seen Marietta in that hushed hour of solitude.  Like so many other questions I must have forgotten to ask her this one, too.

                                              

Beautiful disguise

Because

this is your sickness

infecting my awareness

triumph is for dreamers

I cannot sleep another second

Losing faith

“I want a divorce.”

 Jonah looked up from the sports page.

“It’s obvious this marriage isn’t working,” Debbie said.  She had that pinched look on her face, the kind she wore whenever she knew she’d spent far too much for some article of clothing but was prepared to defend it to the death.  “I’ve tried everything I can to make you interested in me, and you never will be.  You just want to live in your own little world.  Well, there’s no place for me there, so I’m leaving.  I hope you won’t make it ugly.”

Jonah stared at her. 

Debbie stood up.  “And once again you have nothing to say.  I don’t know why I’m surprised.”

If you run away

did you run away

I will not rejoice at your

falling

run away again

your life is your prison

The Unknowing

I was one fear closer to here

lost in a night too dark for sleeping

was it me on the ledge        or was it you

whispering

                                                               

                                                                 

                                do not give up too soon

do not give up

too soon                                                                                                                                                                                           

when I am breaking           

I am a fool

where do I stand

I am a piece of stone mixed in

with all this sand

                                                               

yet full of proof

of what died         with you

                               

                why did you bring me here to my cyclone second

when rage engulfs this bridge from earth to heaven                    

cinder through and through                                                                                                                                                                                           

you ask too much                               you do

                                                               

                                               

for one whisper like the hint of water splashed on embers

for one storybook of dreams with its message tethered 

to the fading metal moon             

the sun  it can  be cruel

now that I gave too much                 too soon                                                                                               

                                                                               

                                                Is this your plan  

               

is this your one    

your great             

your smoky last demand  

or

my intention

my blue-flame doom

because

burned across my heart your forgotten message

the language lost in time with the words rewritten

resuscitate the girl she is out of breathing

collapsed under the hope she could not believe in

the soot was in her eyes she could only cry

was this my one great truth

did I give up

                too soon?

                

The disappearing path

April 28, 2013

I don’t really get what’s going on.  This is all pretty weird.  I wish I could just settle on being crazy.  It’s my insistence on sanity that’s the problem.  Woo hoo, who cares what the truth is, because look at me, I’m Princess Leia!  Sadly, I just can’t pull it off.  So I’m stuck in half-crazy, half-sane limbo land where I’m not sure which part of what I say is nuts and which isn’t, if any of it is either.  If that makes sense.  Which I don’t think it does.