Blasphemy

All of the empty hallways.  Mile after mile of empty hallway.  The boy continues working on his own.  He doesn’t care if I know.  He doesn’t care if anyone knows.  He is a genius. 

We are all quietly sitting in an auditorium.  We are waiting for the presentation—for the balding man to come and turn on the projector and show us transparencies.  He will write on them in marker, circle the important bits, underline words, draw arrows.  We will all sit quietly but make no notes, because notes are not allowed.  We will just hear it again and again until his lecture is all we know.  And it is always the same lecture.  The same lecture, with the same arrows and underlined words.  I have heard it so many times the words mean nothing to me.  They just roll past me like tumbleweed on the road.  I will stare straight ahead and hear nothing as the boy turns written words into straws that represent intersecting hallways, each one leading somewhere I am not allowed to go.  

The Monster Within

I chose to come here.

But the sadness...

It crackles.

Undercover

“Why do they keep coming after you?” Kitty whispered, as she wrapped the strange, foreign coat more tightly around her.  If she'd had to stumble into another world, she wished it could have at least been a warmer one.

“Because,” the young man murmured, his eyes searching the dark forest around them, “I am the king of my people, and if they capture me, they can use me for negotiation purposes—or, should a certain element have their way, they can kill me to effect a new reign.”

“You’re a king?” Kitty hissed.  “You’re joking!”

“That is nothing I would joke about,” he answered, in such a way that Kitty got the impression he wasn’t exactly happy about being a king—if he even were one, that is.  While she didn’t expect kings in any world to run around wearing crowns or sable robes, she did expect something…well, less university student-ish.  Yet all those men in the camp had greeted him as if he were a rock star, and the two soldiers who found them in the ditch looked massively relieved to discover him safe. 

Could it be possible?  

Through the Mirror

Into words      into stars          into another dissection of who we are            who we were     who we long to be            I am still in that treehouse      still hiding in the leaves         if memory is my master     I am its dog          wouldn’t I be clever     if I could put it all together         wouldn’t I be the one calling the shots        mock me with riddles      ridicule me with rhymes                      you know I have no power                 that I am afraid to be alive

Waiting

February, 2005

I am trapped.  I can’t do this but I have to do this.  The Roman soldier is at the door: I must drink the hemlock, or be executed.  

Thanks for the email.

I’m surprised that you would think anything is wrong.

Nothing is wrong, I’ve just been taking time for myself to work on things.  But I appreciate your concern.  Everything is fine.   I hope you had a nice birthday.  Unfortunately I'm not having visitors right now, but thanks for the offer.

I hope your job’s going well.

Love, me

Cold

I have been thinking of you

Reminded it seems by

the presence of

something sadder than

you or me

How very long I held on

When now I knock against the

hollow inside

the abyss you left in each

part of my whole

So much and so completely ignored

ripping the hinges off of the doors

catapulting me into a world where

daydreams remember

How I would like nothing more than

to feel the cadence of your

pulsating love again

Nothing more than to know it is me who

you tried with your heartbreak

to protect

Instead I am left waiting on the hill

shaking with knowledge of

lost connections

I am left on the pier with memories of the dead

their sorrow pointed toward

the horizon

Postscript

I wonder who is listening

I am not

You close and you close and you

close

Because there is nowhere to go from here