Stupid GPS doesn't have a clue.

"N
     o;"

she said, slowly,
the word dropping from her lips like the gentle uncorking
of a stopped-up bottle.

"No,
Maybe I won't do a great job.

I’ll do a
FINE job,
a
GOOD job,
a
~decent~ job,
an O-KAY JOB, an
ac
cep
table/ job.”

(First, she enunciated. Then, she spat.)

"Maybe--"
--she paused, for breath or consideration
as an overdue gleam
found it's way into her countenance--

"Maybe I'll do a MEDIOCRE
job. An AVERAGE job.
A /much-to-be-desired/ job.
Perhaps
I'll
do
a
SAD job, a SLOW job, a HACKNEYED job, a ~pathetic~ job!

MAYBE..."

...here, she paused again, as one should always do when giving a proclamation...

"...I'll do a BAD job.

And THAT'S O KAY."



Speech complete,
she sat--heaving--with her knees pulled into her chest.
After a good while
and a few kicked clumpfuls of grass,
she rose
and returned to her life,
doing just about as well
what she had done
before.

A shuddered sigh, then some hope inhaled.
A wince of distrust, yet a heart unveiled.
A cautious smile leaves a little too late.
And a hopeful look rises to the bait.
A tensed up brow begins to relax,
For peace and joy have been too long taxed.
Sorrow still lurks in the back of the mind,
But reluctantly it is left behind.
A cautious faith is restored anew
And I open myself
back up
to you.

“A veil!” someone shouted.  I remember the cry.  Agreement surged from gasping elders and wide-eyed youths alike.  The first man to move snatched a scarf from his startled daughter and threw it at me to wrap over your head.  He couldn’t imagine touching you himself.

We needed that veil for the shining face of yours.  Radiation, of course, must be contained.  We couldn't have anyone blinded or infected.  The double fold of linen stuck to your forehead at first, your sweat thick like dew the cold morning after a thunderstorm.  Wrinkles whiskered in is fibers as your face strained into expressions few mortals have had cause to make.

That mountain was saturated in every form of electromagnetic radiation and energies unknown. It bludgeons the heart.  Melts the eyes.  The people could not bear the sight of anyone who had come so close to such a power.  I think their hearts needed a good bludgeoning.

The wind streaked your hair for a micro-eternity.  It retained the swept-up form for nearly an hour, though no one could tell once you put on the veil.  Have you touched it to see if it is still cold?

Your fingers—what was on them?  Smoke, or earth?  Melted stone?  Incinerated atmosphere? Pure carbon, black as the abyss and under nearly enough pressure to crystalize into diamonds rarer than hope? When you grabbed my arm with those fingers, I nearly screamed.  You left black marks everywhere.

What does the veil cover now?  It's edges are no longer like the cracks beneath Heaven's doors.  What is it you wish to hide?  Isn’t it time for this mask to be cleft by a seraph's sword?

The princess was big, but not big enough to know
that the sickly, temperamental hound dog had posed no real threat to her health or safety.
Nor did she realize that none of her private adventures through the overgrown castle courtyard were as unsupervised as they appeared.
But she did know, when she recounted the events to her father, wide eyes and flapping hands, that he was proud of her for being so brave.

Some people claim that special intuition
to know another person's thoughts and mind.
I do not.

I did not read her like a book, so I read her like a poem.
Her words did not arrange a neat picture of who she was.
So I listened.
I felt
and I paused
straining to hear every moment.
Envisioning.
I reflected, then I listened some more.

I saw patterns repeated,
the strain
and the wince
and I tested hire they felt on my own face

After learning a bit of backstory I flipped back through
what she had said and let the context take effect.

I saw stanzas, couplets, and rhythm

I did not analyze,
I felt,
Hearing her song-story.

I might be wrong.  I might have projected too much of myself, or glanced over a detail.

I can not recite her story or show you her heart,
but I listened to her poem and that is all that I can do.

I am stamped with an image I can not comprehend.

Superheroes hiding their tortured inner lives behind primary colored-masks and hilarious one-liner comebacks.
Normal girls who were actually princesses, but didn’t act like other girls (or other princesses). Space wizards with stupid haircuts.

No one understood them, but I did.

I knew all their tragic backstories,
their hearts’ deepest desires,
the ways that they were, like, rejected by society and stuff.  
I gushed over their bonds of friendship that could never be broken, not by intergalactic politics, ancient feuds between magical species, or the infinite varieties of mind control.
I totally supported them when no one else could.

I reread the most heart-wrenching pages over and over again,
my fingers bubbling the plastic dust jackets and my toes clenching in my mismatched socks.
I couldn’t just wade in these worlds—I baptized myself into them, staying under the shallow water for hours without taking a breath.
I could never quite feel enough.  I squished my eyelids shut, trying to conjure up the tears that my heroes deserved.

Behind my wrinkled brow, they lived.
Danced.
Morphed themselves together into an ever-present consciousness, answering the questions I asked to no one.
I talked to it out loud some days, when I was especially alone.

Sometimes, I would see these friends out in public,
on a graphic tee in the hallway,
or a backpack in the classroom.
I would always greet them enthusiastically.
“I love your t-shirt!  Book four is the best!”
(With a warm, sweaty face way too much nervous laughter)
“That’s such a cool water bottle!  Which Avenger is your favorite?”
(Hands clutching hair, leg bouncing)
“I… like your sketchbook!”
(Hopeful smile, averted eyes)

And we would talk to each other (!)
About our shared interest and have a fun conversation (!)
For a few minutes.
I’d talk to them  the next time I saw them, too.
And every time we were in class together.
Then I hatched a daring plan.

My mom offered permission and a date,
my dad offered pizzas and the basement TV,
and I extended to my friends
an invitation.

No one came.

I beg that her innocent eyes do not conceal the same pain that lurks within my own.
She is life and she is beauty
Joy
Love
Please let me believe only that.
Please,
She shows from her heart kindness, pure.
Happy hope.

That is what they say about me.
That I know only hope and joy.
That innocence is my clothing
But they do not see the pain in my infected heart
And I did not see it in her.

Oh, do not let it be.

She truly is kindness and hope and...

So am I.
The light is real, only tired
And hurt.
It shines through the cracks in our hearts, all divided.
It shines through dullness and sin

But as I halfway expose my shame, I see her do the same.
In throwaway lines wry admissions.
A casual mention dulls the pain
I see her do the same.

I wish we could be pure
All the way honest, even in our blackness
And let our pain and goodness show alike in truth, rather than letting the infection spread.

Please don't conform to the mass of us hurting and hiding it.
Bleed in your open way
Outside
And let the stain be washed away
And stand wide awake and clean
With innocent eyes

Anything can
look like a poem
and sound philosophical
simply by moving
the words on
different lines.

Am I doing it right?
Is this
really
talent?
Art?
Effort?

I think I am trying.
Really, I am
I go back and change the order
and I break lines
where it sounds right
But it does not take me long.
Not at all.

I try to be
intentional
and call it natural rhythm.
Instinct and style taking over
I alternate between
agonizing every detail
like When to Capitalize
and publishing free form poems without looking over them twice.

How is writing supposed to feel?
Should I labor?
or should it flow?
Or do I get to decide?

I think the things I talk of
mean something
at least.

But am I just
pretentious?

fooling myself into thinking that
using common poetry formats
somehow makes my work worthwhile?

A torch.

My torch.

The yellow and orange dance in my eyes and on the gleaming rocks, water droplets phasing in and out of existence as they slowly shape the cave, as they have over centuries.  I feel my smirk broaden into a full-on grin.

Just once.

My fingers stroke gingerly, in respect for the centuries and lives these walls have claimed.  My heart ****** at every imperfection.  Every crevasse could be a clue.  But every one isn't.

Just one.

I pull back the curtain of moss, ducking and picking out a treacherous path.  Another curtain blocks my view, a veil of spiderwebs.  I flick them away with the tip of my saber.

Or cutlass.

Or spear.

Or even a vaguely cool-looking stick, I don't really care about that part so much.  Forget the treasure and even the clues.  No secret codes or Nazis are necessary.  I don't even need a cool jacket.  All I really want to do is carry a torch though a cave.  Just once.

It doesn't necessarily have to be a cave, either.  I'm flexible.  Abandoned mine shafts, secret tunnels, castle dungeons.  It all works.

But the torch is a non-negotiable.  A real, live, wooden torch.  Not what the Brits call flashlights, a torch-torch.  With fire, please.

please.

Just once.

Lightning.  
Brutally shocking, burning, destroying.
A sudden flash, out of nowhere with striking speed and power.  

Then thunder.  
A rumble,
low, distant, and spine-tingling; a hovering fear, a looming threat.  
Or a crackle--
fierce, sharp, wild, unpredictable.  
A jolt.  
A deafening, heat-stopping jolt.  
Not just near you, but inside you.  
Burning in your chest, pulsing through your blood, freezing on your skin, screaming in your mind.

It ends, but it doesn't leave.  It remains, hovering in the air and burned into your soul.  It echoes.  It fades, but it remains.

When it flashes, I can't speak, except
   in      fra c tu
r   ed  gas p in
       g
(I should be able to withstand the shocks much better than I do)

The vibrations, the detachment lasts for several minute after
the power has been discharged and
I can't think.

Emergency situations call for
level-headed judgement,
but the jolting of the volts is difficult to disregard.

My heat resets itself somehow each time
even though the rhythm is interrupted
time and over again with every blast my power creates.

I want to pull within myself every time I use it,
embrace the sense of power, the sensation,
without reaching out.

Brain activity,
heart activity, muscle spasmatic ripples,
and I can't see past sporadic sparking up my face.

Victims, villains, friends of mine
and all your detailed instructions,
please survive in spite of me.

They say I'm strongest on the team
in strength, and that is hard to say.
I'll stay with you and fight but my mind
can't live on another day.

squirming, swimming, still
bubbles beneath your footsteps
life in ev’ry inch

Maybe

i'm not as dead
or tired
or old
or boring

as i thought i was.

No, i'm not as dead as i thought.

Right now I am
thinking in poetry

line breaks

word shapes

stack sounds in strange ways

Is this how it is meant to look?

Maybe it would look better
feel nicer
sound clearer
if i put in fewer spaces.

Do I want all punctuation?
Properly formatted sentences
can be difficult
to rhymatize.

Is rhymatize a word?
I think so.
Red squiggles underline.
Wait...
Google says no.
I still say yes.

Now I digress.
But does that work?
Should the flow of ideas be neatly outlined, or come freely as my thoughts?  Perhaps I should spill the words out all as one in unbroken strings of color and thought the way they feel in my head unsaid
occasional rhymes and occasional beats and breaks keep changing

is this poetry?

Do
random line breaks
really take
prose
and
make it poetic
or
do
I
need to do actual
work
and find a form and stick with it?

For now today
I'll lilt and play
around.

Every poem a new experiment, another chance to try something new.

To play with rhythm, feelings, and sounds, to meticulously arrange language into a perfect unbroken form,

Or to simply see where the thoughts take me.
Should my real point be what is said, or how I
am saying it?

Sometimes the saying itself is the point.

My heart is heavy.
A little bit heavy.
Not like lead
or rocks
or ice.

It is one too many blankets, starting to sweat;
overthink socks, starting to itch;
cold caramels refusing to soften. It is

one too many blankets and
just a little bit comforting.

I bought myself a kite to fly
I ran through sunny fields
And tried to urge it to the sky
But it skipped at my heels

I leaped and danced for childish years
It never left the ground
I noticed through my childish tears
What's left of it was brown

It was torn in the mud, so it was mangled, it was done
And thus concludes the tragedy of the kite I numbered one.

My second kite was stronger, though.
It caught a mighty gale
my heart flew with it in the yellow
Rainbow sky it sailed

I smiled.  My kite, it seemed to me,
Would always stay as mine
But the sting slipped and I lost my grip
I lost it to the sky

It joined with bubbles and balloons, whatever else is there
In the *****, lonely cloudland in the out-of-picture air.

I still had hope and so I bought
My final silken bird
I told myself that I would soon
Unleash it to the word.

I planned that on a weekend soon  
I’d make it to the field.
The colors all would show again
Just once my schedule cleared

The kite's debut date got pushed back and further back until
It found a final resting place untested in its skill.

I bought myself three kites to fly
The first two meet ill fates
The third one has a dusty shelf
Where it keeps very safe.

I dare not listen to the news.
I squeeze my eyes shut and refuse.

Torrential cries and senseless violence
I look past to hold my silence.

Is this so wrong?
It's not as if
My worrying the world will shift.

I do not know if it is right,
But I will skip the news tonight.

"I like... the idea of people,"
the woman replied, gazing at herself in the lamplit garden pool.
She idly flicked in a pebble.

"Flighty things, aren't they?"
Her reflection dissolved into ripples
as she turned,
swiftly,
and left.

why must time progress??
i need to take a rest
each falt'ring sentence brings
me closer to my death

"Praise be,"
I whisper with unclean lips
The blood and tears held barely back
"Oh, save,"
I plead, with nothing but dust to give

The blue squares were safe.
The white squares were lava.
The cool kids huddled in their corners were irrelevant.

It didn't matter where I was going
or what I was exploring.
Maybe ancient pyramids,
perhaps a dinosaur dig.
Probably "the jungle," wherever that was.
I always changed my mind half-a-dozen times.
It didn't matter where I went
because I could handle every adventure
all by myself.

The benches were safe.
The wood chips were lava.
The crawl space under the rock wall was my escape pod.

My crew both was and wasn't imaginary.
If they had names, they had the names of real people.
Just versions of those people who were
around a little more often.

The loud days were safe.
The quiet was lava.
Then the quiet was safe,
and loudness was lava,
and then I never could tell what was safe anymore,
really.

But, oh, I'm so glad I found You again.

Your embrace is safe.
Your heart is lava,
and every day is a quiet adventure.

I catch glimpses and pieces of a story I need to be a part of
A word or an image will hit
a particular spot in my heart
and strangely resound
Ideas skip through my head that suddenly click.
I come alive
I bolt upright
"Yes!"
but then it is gone.  Upon closer examination,
nothing was there.
I don't even know what brought me to this train of thought in the first place.
A second ago it felt very important.

I shake myself off and try to fall back asleep.

“Will you barter for your garden?”
the familiar stranger taunted.

His haunting talk caught on a loose thread in my heart,
recalling time and battles fought.

Make no mistake about the fae.
I must admit I was afraid, for I have seen my adversary

tear out the grass’s screaming hair,
poison the soil with atmosphere arid,
strip the baby branches baren,
shave the landscape clear.

I need not obey him.  
I have in my hands a *****
and around this place an angry hedge.
He can not prevail unless I show him the way.

“No,” say I,
“No bartering in my garden today.”

There's a reason why I'm doing this
Somewhere, somehow
I set off with a passion and a purpose
That seems so long ago.
I decided it was worth it, not to wither into a selfish nothing
To surge on, keep on grappling
but I've almost had enough
and I'm
just
so
tired
.
When will I find the spark again?
I have some faith that
an ember of the passion I lost
still exists
somewhere between my lungs and beneath my ribs
Can my faith be ever enough?
May I find out.

I don't mean to only express myself
Let's turn our gaze outward to something else
Because really, we're nothing
reflections and vapors
our lives seem so long to us then as time tapers
down to the end
it's
getting faster again
and it's time that, my friend
in this time that you spend
looking out for yourself realize your wealth and your life and your thoughts they are
just
so
small.
I'm nothing at all but a freckle of dust
but looking around there are millions of us
there's a picture out there taking shape so we must
have courage and dare to strip off all our lust for
our own affirmation
our self-presentation
must find a foundation in something much bigger than us.
As you cry to be heard pause and listen to hear
for when long you have listened the Light will draw near
and you'll find all the words that you cannot deserve
so please gather the nerve discontent to preserve
And climb outside and point out to the stars over hills
and from you the joy and the knowledge will spill
For expression is best when it's not just for you
My confession is this, let it always be true.

“Will you barter for your garden?”
the familiar stranger taunted.

His haunting talk caught on a loose thread in my heart,
recalling time and battles fought.

Make no mistake about the fae.
I must admit I was afraid, for I have seen my adversary

tear out the grass’s screaming hair,
poison the soil with atmosphere arid,
strip the baby branches barren,
shave the landscape clear.

I need not obey him.  
I have in my hands a *****
and around this place an angry hedge.
He can not prevail unless I show him the way.

“No,” say I,
“No bartering in my garden today.”