Tag: Character Sketches

Flotation Device

Reality’s not what she wants it to be,
And so she makes her own
In the virtual pages she fills each night
In her study, all alone,

At a place and a time and with people there
Who speak to the ears of the wise;
For the thoughts that she spills through her fingers and hands
Serve as a flotation device.

For everyone learns that this world is a swirl,
And each day, and undertow —
That the ropes we may don when we’re very young
Can keep us from where we want to go.

So she casts her words widely, for anyone
Who may read to cling on to:
For kindness, it seems, is in short supply
In a world that misvalues the true.

  At a tiny old desk and a darkening room,
  In a “you’d-pass-by” surrounding —
  Comes a world that serves as flotation device
  For all of us
 
  Who’re drowning

… just a stretch

It’s just a stretch of road, whereon
They sat in silence as they drove,
Detaching all their dreams
To place on others

A snowy bit of wide expanse,
A blank and empty canvas, where
Each painted, with their thoughts,
A different pairing

Through Colorado, long and cold,
Hostility in tacitness,
Imaginations running free
And wild

How simple all of it could be,
So perfect in simplicity,
It is right there, in reach, it’s
Just a stretch

love // autumn

she didn't agree with their solution, so
she was said to 
                misunderstand the problem.

but hers was not a problem of understanding,
- or sympathy -
but rather of an
                 excess
                         of
                              both.

                           for her,
                   only individuals
               had any real meaning,

other things being

                   sort of 
                             hypothetical.

a life can be a welter of confusion,
but a heart pure, as was hers.

she loved her friends
she loved her enemies, and

she loved the autumn because

                    of the smell of 

               fallen leaves and

    wood burning in fireplaces

and

                       new spelling books

 

Almost

When she was almost young, she slept
Next to the fields of pure delight;
When she went almost out, she heard
Of secret pleasures in the night

When she felt almost love, she dreamed
Of freedom found in ecstasy —
Yes, when she almost lived, she lived
Just two doors down
From me

 

(“Almost” – 5-21-2017)

My friend Lisa knows the song of secret stars…

My friend Lisa knows the song of secret stars
And the hidden dances of the winds
Out upon the shores of sand and chocolate bars
Up and to the lithesome cosmic twins

Lisa sings the song so low, the waves have stopped
Moving from desire now to hear
Through celestial channels, heaven’s tears are dropped
Lisa stands among it without fear

Now the winds have come and swaying everything
As a breath that moves across the sea
Open to the lights, a dance, a song to sing
Now she sees the secret heart
Of me

The Fallen Prince

If he was everything they thought he’d be,
He’d be a better man than he turned out:
A waste of such potentiality,
So many demons never put to rout

So lade with talent, yet so much unused,
He’s satisfied himself with merely some;
A garden that’s neglected, or abused,
A summer promised that will never come

And if upon this earth you stumble on
Him, as he goes, be-slouched along his way;
You’ll catch the whiff of something almost gone,
Of distant hopes that long since had their day

So virtue is its own reward, they tell:
And vice is its own punishment, as well