Dropping Keys

A poem from my favorite Persian poet, Hafiz:

The small man
Builds cages for everyone
He
Knows
While the sage
Who has to duck his head
When the moon is low,
Keeps dropping keys all night long
For the
Beautiful
Rowdy
Prisoners.

desensitized

we are desensitized
blinded
finding and losing
throwing away
tin-rust dreams
eaten by time
and sighs of surrender
cut into the dough and yeast
of a moonless life--

where do you go when you lose the force
that pulls the tides from under your feet,
the certainty and surrender of direction?

we cease our belief
in fairies and dragons
while secretly wishing for heart-pounding mysteries
to fold us into complete abandon,
transform us into shepherds
and sheperdesses
with magic residing under our fingernails.

we pound ourselves out on rocks,
never broken,
only molded
with time and movement
and the hottest fire,
we are smooth
and fiercesome, at the same time,

if we could only see.

failing and building
failing and inventing
new life.
we are fallible and infallible
darkness and light
The beams in our eyes
are always stronger than we know.

Our only true failure
is the thought
that we have failed at all.

A Twinge in My Heart

I am participating in an online initiative and 30-day writing challenge that encourages you to look within and trust yourself.

“I hate quotations. Tell me what you know.” - Ralph Waldo Emerson

What message is yearning inside you? What is something you know deep in your soul? Don’t look for someone else to describe it. You do it. Write it down. Write it as a poem, a sentence or even just a string of words. Just make sure you get it to paper.

***UPDATE***
I actually wrote and posted this short poem earlier this morning, before I looked to see what the prompt today was. It seems to have answered the above question before I even knew what it would be.

A sudden thought, a twinge in my heart:
I want what you want for me God.
Because your ways are Beautiful
and Mighty
and Glorious
and I marvel at your Majesty
working in my life
all around me
the way you speak to me
your Spirit moving within my heart and Soul
causing me to want more
of You
and like a bird
I rise higher and higher
on the gusts of wind
you send my way.

Fifefly

I wasn't sure how to go about it,
or what to ask,
or if you'd even answer.
The blue in your eyes throws me off every time,
and I'm left hanging on the space in between
watching the words from your lips
and pretending that I really am on the ground.

I couldn't be sure what to say
or why my hands were shaking,
my words stuck in my throat like a fat rabbit
in a tiny hole,
or why my heart beat faster than
bolts of lightning crashing down trees.

Your voice, it lifts me every time,
and my soul tries to catch it
like a butterfly in a net
or a firefly in my hands,
but instead it catches me
and throws me to the place
of never knowing
where I stay
in the middle,
the air beneath the air.
And there, I am content.

The Forgotten

Count the bumps
One – two – three
Braille across the arm

Silver Salamander,
hunger left alone,
you cry the unknown.

Probe the swamp,
brown, murky sludge
untapped memories
lay forgotten

heavy rocks deep in gritty sand
Trail tired fingers across the surface
Empty bubbles percolate,
answer your call.

Four – five – six

It would take strong chains
to haul forgotten fears
from churning depths,
raise the tide,

overflow everything but the source.
So it may seem—the waters are at fault.
They wash away to nothing.

Hummingbird

I want to fill my mind with music: angry loud passionate
while I speed over country roads, accelerating hills,

every window sending wind to whip my face.

I want to face the thunderstorm, arms raised to churning clouds,
pulling lightning from the sky, lips tasting the rain mixed with my tears.

Screaming, crying, moaning, that music in my head;
I want to dance to it, feet lashing grass and dirt,

kicking up dust and flowers, stirring the wind, the air,
the heart of God with the movements of my body, its ceaseless energy.

I want to run.

I bury my hands in moist earth kissed by rain, by me, soaking into my fingernails,
the crevices of my skin, my toes, staining my knees dark as midnight shadows.

I pull weeds, baby trees, uprooting the vines that choke my treasures.

I want to fly, like the forgotten eagle, the hated crow, suspend myself in air,
a hummingbird—still, despite the rapid beat of my wings.

I want to move like a river, plunge like a waterfall, pulse like the ocean
dancing with the turbulent sky.

I consume the sun’s rays until my skin glows
from the ball of fire raging in my soul.

I will stand like a magnolia, powerful, majestic,
even after my flowers have fallen.

Threads

One thing I miss about college is the creative writing classes I would take. I miss sitting in a circle, passing around copies of my new poem, reading the poetry written by my classmates, being challenged on what a poem is. I miss the critique, the praise, the shameless bashing, all of it. I wondered, as I graduated, if my growth as a writer would slow now that I don't have such an audience for my work, an audience that will tell me their exact opinion, softened or not.

Threads

Silence splits your ears
pulls at tiny molecules
oxygen in the buff
spins it, wraps it, contorts it
like it owns the air between me and you

And I never knew you liked words so much
the way they see you, into you, around you
thread you inside out
the way they sew the rips and tears that
rend bitter-silence air

But even more
connecting me to the best part of you
that wants to love, to take words
wave them into spring trees
blossoming from cracked earth

And you rain cold words on me
that sizzle hot on my skin
make me run for shelter, the cave, the hole in the ground
I bury myself in the dirt, but there is never enough
Until you reel me out on your fishing line

strung with sunlight to blind darkness to submission

Fire

I want
someone
to touch the spots
that ignite my fire
to flip the switch
that turns me on
to stand in front of me
holding himself up
as a mirror to see through
to flare my anger and desire
into one vessel
and to not step back
from the river
that crashes down
the barricades of my being.

Indian Song: Survival

I think this is a beautiful poem written by Leslie Marmon Silko.

Indian Song: Survival

We went north

to escape winter

climbing pale cliffs

we paused to sleep at the river.

Cold water river cold from the north

I sink my body in the shallow

sink into sand and cold river water.

You sleep in the branches of

pale river willows above me.

I smell you in the silver leaves, mountain lion man

green willows aren’t sweet enough to hide you.

I have slept with the river and

he is warmer than any man.

At sunrise

I heard ice on the cattails.

Mountain lion, with dark yellow eyes

you nibble moonflowers

while we wait.

I don’t ask why do you come

on this desperate journey north.

I am hunted for my feathers

I hide in spider’s web

hanging in a thin gray tree

above the river.

In the night I hear music

song of branches dry leaves scraping the moon.

Green spotted frogs sing to the river

and I know he is waiting.

Mountain lion shows me the way

path of mountain wind

climbing higer

up

up to Cloudy Mountain

It is only a matter of time, Indian

you can’t sleep with the river forever.

Smell winter and know.

I swallow black mountain dirt

while you catch hummingbirds

trap them with wildflowers

pollen and petals

fallen from the Milky Way.

You lie beside me in the sunlight

warmth around us and

you ask me if I still smell winter.

Mountain forest wind travels east and I answer:

taste me,

I am the wind

touch me,

I am the lean gray deer

running on the edge of the rainbow.

Winding Roads

Here is a poem that I wrote a while ago...about a guy...that doesn't mean anything to me anymore. But I still like the poem.

It's funny how a poem can capture a feeling, a moment, that was so real at the time, but as time passes, is no longer ours to feel. When I read this poem, it is like I am looking at a different person, not who I am now, but who I was in that moment in time, a blip of time quicker than the open and close of a butterfly's wings. A speck, really.

Winding Roads

The firefly beat from your car speakers
drums my heart, slow and sure,
flickering on and on
never off
circling insistent rivulets in my ears
incessant prods at my heart
melding with raindrops on the windshield
as you drive down country roads
passing rust-wire fences
shivering grass fields reflecting
the sky's cloudy dullness.

And your car smells so good
like you
and your scent intoxicates
creates
makes
its own music around my head
pricking pinpoints in my spirit
never before touched, never understood,
never knew existed
to burst their wrappings and
dance
become
live

The road winds past houses hidden in thickets
sheep grazing the rain's goodness
and the music intensifies
flies
underlies
builds upon itself growing stronger
the way I want us to be.
Keep driving, never stop.
If circles encompass our lives,
we never need go back.