April 5 : Dusky Rose

Her shoulders shone in the
elegant evening sitting-room light.
Her fingers were slender and still.
Her dress was the color of a dusky rose,
and her eyes were the grey of the sky.

They all saw her glide gracefully along
and pick out strawberries from large blue bowls.
She was quiet unless spoken to, and always
always said the right things. Her legs were long,
her knees not brown, her smile a perfect curve.

Her mind was beautiful, they said, trying
(unsuccessfully) to not talk about her arms.
Her hair was the color of the starless night
(the stars were all tucked up in her sight -
her beautiful, sky-grey eyes). Together,
all, they admired and envied her. Looked.

Her collarbones were splendid, majestic;
her cheekbones high and lovely. Her skin
was the brown of sleek, supple, waxed wood;
her mind, they said, was divine. Someday
she would be old; her wrinkles would stretch her
and command her fragility until the wood melted
into leather and the shine wore off. Someday.

Until then, she clasped her second glass
of pink-bubbled champagne, her feet poised
upon the floor (almost ready to perform).
Until then, she smiled absently at them,
Quiet in her blanket of many-petaled beauty.
Her eyes (sky-grey, with all the stars) slid
around the grand room. Never stopping.

Her mind was underwater, with the
colorful fish and the deafening silence
and the smooth rocks and drifting thoughts.
Her slender fingers (upon her starched dress)
were still. Collarbones out. Feet poised.

April 4 : The Long Dark Teatime Of The Soul

The clock ticks. The sun sits fatly in the still blue sky.

And I clutch my cup
swaying to the music
my mind meandering
through lanes and
untrimmed hedges
of sepia-toned memories
that I put away safely once
in shoeboxes and envelopes and drawers.

And there's nothing to do and
nowhere to be. There's no one
I want to say these things to,
                                least of all me.

So I pull the curtains on the world
and I pull the curtains on myself.
Leaving me in a dark, dark room
with nobody at all, nobody to be.

The music is slow and the music
is sad. The lamps are bright but
the light is still. Who knows
when the sun set? Who knows
when it will rise again?
My lamps are bright
and my light is still.

Happy memories,
of laughter and smiles
and being close, of
moments so precious
my glasses misted over
and I wanted to save it
(and I did but only in my head)
- they too fade. They too change.
Like roses, fat and red once,
now pale and limp and sad.

Now there's simply joy...
joy you had and left behind
and joy you would have had
but don't. Joy in his face and
joy in her face (unmirrored,
of course, in yours). Joy
that will never be yours
and joy that went it's own way
in the labyrinth of untrimmed hedges
and grey cement buildings, paths
that lead nowhere (and thus
lead everywhere - everywhere
that you will never be or know).

The clock ticks. The sun is gone.
It is that ambiguous time
of no light and no dark.
The curtains are thick
but I walk out of the room.
The sky is yours (clear
and still and painful), but
the sky is mine. I want to be
(and achieve and live) so much
but all I am is you. And all you
can ever hope to be
(and achieve and live)
                             am I.

April 3 : Chai with the Sky

The quiet happiness of the Night Time.

The secret smiles I smile
to the moon. The secret things
I say to it.

The way the skyline of hills, soft
(lit by a thousand lightbulbs
blinking confusedly at you
lit by a million hopes
and dreams and fears
of awake peoples)
is dark, darker even
than the dark night sky
(lit by the light of trillions of stars
and the shadows of planets and
things we will never ever know
or the infinite nothingness of the cosmos).

The silence of the moment
complete and perfect
in the white roadside flowers.
Pleasant conversation,
laughter, wonder,
joy at being alive.

Cars come. Bright lights
against the bright insides of our eyes.
Why are other people awake?
This is Our time of night.

An infinite number of constellations
sit in the sky. Bright balls of fire
(and hope and heat and hydrogen)
dot the dark, deep ocean
Above. Somewhere
a man with a white beard smiles
at what he made (or
thinks he did).
The trees are happy too.
And the stars smile
and the moon smiles
and I smile back
(secretly).

We drove. And when we found chai
and woke up the sleeping man
and I burnt my tongue and almost
dropped the glass and we talked
about how I scared people

I wasn't having chai with you.
I wasn't having chai with him.
Really, I was having my private Tea Party
with the forces of the universes.
I was having Chai with the Sky.
From my warm spot in the car.
But she knew, wise sky that She was.
She had tea with me too.
In Her own wise ways.

And we drove on.

April 2 : Monster

Dark and quiet, it sits.
It gives no reasons, no excuses.
And I always like to know
reasons. And excuses.
So I tell it not to exist.

Monsters do not listen, though,
Monsters live on. So I say
it doesn't exist if
I don't want it to.
Vainly presuming
that I have any control
over what happens inside of me.

I don't, of course.

And I'm afraid.
It's a silly little monster.
An unimportant insecurity.
That guides me and constricts me
and knows me and binds me.

I can't kill it and I can't ignore it,
I can't live with it and
(because, of course,
all it is is I, made up
of my fears and
hatreds and lies
and all the darknesses
of me that won't be
suppressed)
I can't live without it.

So, ever so often
I am reduced to hiding
from myself.
Hoping to win over
this thing
that is nothing
but myself.

And what if
(oh god I hope not)
it is a big part of me?
What if I think I am all sunshine
with some dark insides, but
really
all I am is dark insides, monstrous
with a sprinkle of sunshine on the edges?
What then?

April 1 : A Good Time

Beginnings.
It's a good time
for beginnings.

For somedays and forevers,
wrapped up in blankets.
For ifs and buts and nevers
to be quietly put away.

For typewriters and fairy lights,
pretty music - ah, all this joy.
For forgetting tear-tinted sad nights
and perhapses and marmalade.

Because Now is the Tomorrow that we muttered about
(although that
was in a far-off purple yesterday),
And who ever knows when it will come again?

So curl up (for now) under the stars
in your private clandestine sky.
Among the sunsmelling springtime flowers,
I'd say it's a good time for home.

It seems to be a good time for sleep,
and a good time for forgettingness
(let it, upon you, gently creep).
I'd say it's a good time to write.

Time

Time unfolds herself,


                            That precocious wide-eyed

                                                             wild child

                                                                       of the Universe.



She is an infinite


paradoxical sea


of Patience.


So still as she crashes


from rock to shore -


harsh, a hurricane on the horizon.






She is flawless, unflinching,


She is true.


Infinite in her silence,


in her ever-forgiving violence.


An Eternal Fool.


As innocent as she is cruel.






The sands of time


slip through her unassuming fingers.


The sense of falling


around her swells and lingers.






She treads gently,


For the soles of her delicate feet


step over the grains of times past.


Bruised by unfulfilled dreams,


Marked by a multitude of memories vast.






Unlike you, she is comfortable in your skin.


She finds all your fears, sees through every sin.


She knows you watch her warily;


She knows you, and she grins.

Restless Thoughts

I shall fold up my soul


And hand it to you,


For I trust you to take it


And teach me to be true.






And when is it ever time, really?


When is it okay to leave?


When is there love ever to spare?


When is it fair to believe?






That endless blue sky struggles,


Through the grey it breaks away.


But will my particular infinity


Be what you need today?






And the sun rests behind


The silhouettes dark;


Brilliantly bright, self-consciously white,


Impatient for darkness to alight.


And the birds fly around


The silhouettes dark;


Swiftly along, their hearts still strong,


Many a broken wing in the throng.






And the beast was always


Within. And it's shape was always


Yours. And all I am is you,


And all your suffering is true.

Dragonfly Wings

Vaguely she remembered his face.

His beautiful, chiseled face. His piercing eyes, twinkling like the stars. The smile-lines etched around his mouth. The shadow of a smile. It haunted her. He haunted her, and didn't he know it, the bastard. She stared at her spaghetti. It stared back at her. She twisted her fork around in it until there was enough of the raw-tasting noodles on the fork to make for a substantial bite. Then she brought it to her mouth and carefully enveloped the bunch of stringy noodles in her lipsticked lips, resting the fork back in the bowl.

She was a broken woman. He was an angry man. But it wasn't always like that, she told herself. She remembered the first time she noticed him. It wasn't the first time she met him, they were neighbors. But she never saw him before then, never really looked. It was in the supermarket, when she wore white clothes and lived in a run-down studio apartment, teaching yoga to a class of fourteen women and a cat. She was buying microwave popcorn, he was buying a blue-boxed bran-based cereal. She crashed into him, her long embroidered white skirt getting caught on his pointy black shoe, and they fell on to the shiny-plastic orange tiles in a pile. She laughed and apologized, and he watched her. They tried to get up together, and she hit her head on his elbow, and she fell to the floor again in a giggling heap, clutching her microwave popcorn to her chest. He held on to the rack on which there sat miles upon miles of super-soaking, rash-preventing, brightly colored diaper packets, and hauled himself up. He held out a hand, but noticed her holding on to her packets of popcorn, one in each hand (and one on the floor).

She felt a familiar tingle at the nape of her neck as she watched her spaghetti. He had leaned down, held her gently by the waist as if she were a were a fragile object, pristine but breakable, and picked her up. They didn't move for a while. She could feel his hands now, holding her gently, she could hear him breathing into her ear. Her hands shook as she pushed back her chair, her lower lip trembled as she put the half eaten spaghetti in the rusted sink. She tried to walk fast, move fast, think fast, and it frustrated her that she couldn't.

He was just a man. She had been with so many men. She had been with complete monsters, and they didn't scar her for life; she had been with angels, and she barely remembered them. But it was different with him. With him, it was meant to be. She felt it in her fingers when he held her hand. She felt it when she traced patterns (the leaf-like veins that you see on a dragonfly wing) on his untrimmed chest. She felt it in her lips when he kissed her. It was the kind of feeling that doesn't go away, the kind of throbbing inside you that floats along with you no matter where you try to go. She couldn't be without him, and he couldn't be without her, but it couldn't go on. They hurt each other. So he left, she reasoned. I know it was the right thing to do. I would have left sooner or later. This high-ceilinged apartment that was too big for one person, and too small for two.

It was a mature relationship.

Maybe those just aren't for me, she told the sink quietly. She eased herself down to the floor, and held her legs tightly to her chest, as if afraid they might try to escape. Maybe there's something wrong with me. Maybe I ask for intimacy but I can't really handle it. Maybe I was too immature for a relationship like that. But he was too. She remembered the forts they built out of pillows on the ridiculously large bed. How they walked next to the ocean and went into the water every single time they were there, no matter what clothes they were wearing, or what the weather was like, or where they had to go. She forced a smile out of herself remembering how they jigged in fancy restaurants and hid under the table if they encountered people they knew.

They were good together. Outside, in the real world, they needed each other to function. To eat with the right spoon and not make terrible a faux pas around his boss, he needed her. She couldn't cross a road. He couldn't buy condoms without going a delicate shade of pink and stuttering. She couldn't decide what cocktail to order in nightclubs, and she always hated whatever she chose. But when they were alone, they were quieter. They made more mistakes, and accepted them less. When they were alone, they cuddled, they kissed and they touched, they occupied little space together and told each other everything, everything that they could think of. They wiped each others' tears, and they made each other cry. He knew exactly where it hurt, and he drove the point home. She retaliated, silently but violently. She screamed. He muffled his own tears into a pillow. But he never lay a hand on her, never hurt her physically. She appreciated that. Still, she whispered into her knees. It had to end, she stressed. It couldn't possibly go on like that. It was killing me, she murmured, and her knees understood. They sympathized. She stood up, encouraged, and decided to wash her immaculately clean hands again.

Everything was slow. The water in the tap was slower than usual. The window behind the sink was grimy, and the single fly that rested on the ledge was slow. Too slow. Was it dead? She wondered if she should touch it. She decided against it, and put out a single finger, the nail bitten down brutally, to touch it. It buzzed with a start and fluttered around her head, confused. It upset her. I'm sorry, she said loudly to the fly. I'm sorry! She told it angrily, and walked out of the gloomy kitchen and dining area to her bedroom, a mere six steps away. She didn't bother to change out of her simple gray shirt, much too big for her now. She simply stepped out of the shabby pants she had been wearing for two days, and daintily stepped into her unmade bed. She stared at the beautiful painting of a dragonfly on the wall in front of her. She traced the intricate patterns she saw on the wings on her arm. It tickled her. She imagined drawing those patterns on his arm instead of her own. On his untrimmed chest. On his stubbly face. His regal neck. On his large feet. She loved him, but she had let him go. Honest to god, she had. As long as letting go could encompass dreaming of tracing dragonfly-wing tattoos on his awkwardly manly body.

She lay there, on the ridiculously large bed in the high-ceilinged apartment too big for a single person (but too small for two), and looked out of the grimy bedroom window. She looked for a long time. Eventually the stars came out, and one of them moved very fast. A shooting star! Her ends of her lipsticked lips curled up in the shadow of a smile. They had always wished on shooting stars. It was their thing. So she closed her eyes, and wished to herself that she could stop loving him, but wished to the star that he was thinking of her. She didn't want much, see.

Somewhere not too far away, a young man stopped his car on the side of a bustling, well-lit street. He had seen the shooting star too. He looked at the reddened skin on his wrist, gently touching a fairly recent tattoo, black upon his olive skin. A large dragonfly, with the most exquisite wings sat upon his hand. His cynical-looking eyes softened up for a minute. His trembling mouth curled up, a perfect match, the shadow of a smile that had been there often. He shut his eyes as the shooting star disappeared into the black folds of the night, and wished that she was thinking of him.

Moths

Small lies said in big words,

With a little quiver, a little jerk.

You always seem to be looking down,

It's like you've lost your quirk.

A certain emptiness of the eyes,

A certain hunch in your pretty back.

A pause when there is none required,

You talk with a little too much tact.

What's wrong, old friend?

Why won't you say?

Do you tell anybody?

Do you ever pray?

Your hair is immaculate,
Your glasses are clean;
But behind them your eyes
Seem to have lost their sheen.

Was it something I did?
Did I say something wrong?
Are you going to turn your head
From me all evening long?

The moths flit towards the light,
But you seem to shy away from it.
I lean towards you and touch you,
You seem to have your teeth grit.

Where's the sunshine? Where, I say?
Where's the bubbly parts of you?
Why won't you let me help, honey?
Are you lost, or have you just grew?

I feel like a stranger next to a friend,
This doesn't feel right, this isn't right.
Why have you given up? I sigh and look up,
In the gloom, the moths seem unnaturally bright.

Blinded

I realize and analyze, I just can't categorize,

Still, this inspiration is what I really prize.

Sometimes, I want to throw it all to the sky,

I'll give up and sit back, I won't explain why.

There's something new in the air today,

There's some sunshine in this winter day.

There's still some hope left in this cynic, it seems,

They're not getting bigger, just closer- my dreams.

Every day is different, every moment is a change,

But it's time to cherish all that seems so strange;

Do what you want to and stop holding back,

Walk away from the worn and battered track.

There's nothing like ever being truly free,

This earth and it's people, to me, are a mystery.

Bask in the joy of not knowing, but only if

The secrets excite you, and you're scared stiff.

Don't live in ignorance, don't live by common word,

There'll always be more to life than you're seen or heard.

Don't believe what they say, don't rebel for no cause,

If you're a radical, learn to live by your own laws.

There's so much in my gray matter, I'm in awe, I'm afraid,

But let every man know, I don't regret having stayed.

The intricacies of human nature often blind me,

My preconceptions and illusions often bind me.

Blinded and bound, I can't see all that I want,

Ignorance is bliss, but these cries will always haunt.