Willow

They laid her in the tall willowy grass. Off yellow in color, the grass and her hair. She had a smile on her face, peaceful and forgiving, as if all that had come to ruin was just then gelled back together. Broken hearts, shattered minds, itching psyches all restored, returned, realigned. People remember her sitting at a table staring out over a thousand puzzle pieces, a cup of tea always in reach, Patsy Cline in the background bringing sour and sweet together. ‘We are all angels before we die’ she used to say, as if she had been there and seen it already. As if she knew what she would be like the instant before she slipped away. It was all hearsay and gossip now. Her voice was merely the wind, blowing the blades from side to side as if communicating to us in some form of silent gesture. What can be taken from this day, so silent and still. Nothing can be taken, just as nothing can be given. It all is, as is and isn’t. She was here and now she is gone and yet she was never here and will someday be back. Heads bowed, in a circle, everyone was silent. Only the smoke rising from a man’s cigarette circled and motioned upward as if to say a final goodbye. 

cracks

Beats on barrels leaking old brew. Corn brooms sweeping into cracks their filth. They were toothless wonders with muscles like a plow-horse and the determination of the desperate. But it wasn’t desperation that moved them it was alienation. The sneers motivated them to dig deeper into their creepiness. We have no grounds for judgement when we too tread perilously on the fence of normalcy, of decency. The courage to exist at odds with the world in the world is to be admired. They had voices no one heard for we couldn’t get past their appearance; smeared in shit. The stench of them sent us screaming back into our cinnamon houses; sweet and classically unforgiving. So much easier on this side of the glass.

lark

Have I waited in vain?

Have I sloshed through puddles, dampened my pant cuffs, endured the icy sting of the cool autumn breeze, only to realize it was a lark? Only to arrive, sodden and befuddled for absolutely nothing. Will I have to swallow what I thought to be true like some fatalistic pill, sending me to the other side to wallow in my own self-pity?

Here, under the sulking Oak, I realize I am crazy, out of my mind insane, for thinking it would materialize, you, would materialize, out of thin air, dropped from the sky, or burst through the earth, below my shiny, wet, muddy rubber boots, to stand before me, real and perfect.

I am destined to be suspended, torturously, in a room created by myself, with no doors but with endless life. I will hang about uninjured, unharmed other than the cerebral infliction run deep and rampant. I will realize it is here, I am, within these four walls, and not where I think I am, slowly sinking into the sloshed-out ground at the corner of Mink and Mint.

Soon time will tire of me, will give up entirely, stop, and pin upon my damp lapel a little name badge scribbled with the words, never was.

If you do appear then, out of nowhere, you’ll read it and scatter, flee and run for your life, cause you yourself just became something and are not about to throw it away for this soggy girl standing lost-like in the rain.

winged

The season is brown and the trees naked. A few flies emerge from the entrapment of winter. I watch and wait for the flight of the winged, the songs of their cycles humming amidst the encroachment of summer. Life emerging yet already existing. Perfection amidst the blandness. All in its place and me, too, rightfully, yet the odd man out. Part of it all, yet in no way obvious or certain. Will and free thought making things distinctly less instinctual, yet increasingly more unproductive and benign.