If you could spend a day with me,
I wonder what we'd do,
Go to see the pyramids,
Or the barrier reef so blue,

Maybe trek the Inca trail,
Or fish the largest seas,
Sit in wild flower meadows,
Or climb sequoia trees,

Make a jungle tree house,
Roll down dunes of sand,
Or tiptoe on the mountain range,
Walking hand in hand,

Visit all the castles,
Relive their history,
Sit on top of the empire state,
Drinking English tea,

Paddle in the paddy fields,
Explore the deepest cave,
Jump in with the great white shark,
Surf  a giant wave,

Ski down mount Everest,
Skydive from a plane,
Cycle down route sixty six,
Dance in the monsoon rain,

If you could spend the day with me,
I know just what we'd do,
Sit and plan a future life,
A life for me and you.

I want to run.
I want to see the dust hover between my feet and the earth as I glide over everything that matters in life.
I want my hands to catch every star in the sky and re-paint them all over the mountains.
I want the breeze to tie my hair in knots like grass dancing with its neighbors in a hurricane.
The air I breath being fresh,
rolling in my lungs like the tide.
I will take the road less traveled by.
I will dance in the darkness with the trees as my audience.
The rustle of the leaves will be my music with no tune.
I will watch the sun advance from the horizon and brighten the world, absorbing every bit of darkness.
I want to take a leap of faith, but build my wings on the way down with whatever falls with me.
I want to be lost,
but found in myself.
I want to wake up but still be in a dream.
I want to be fearless.
The monsters will never chase me again.
Their shadows won’t lurk in on the sidelines.
I will swim along the bottom of every lake,
looking up at the sun dancing across the ripples of water.
I will be the lion at the top of the mountain,
the breeze blowing my mane in my eyes,
I shall not fear.
I am the king of the jungle.
All because I want to run.
I want to run,
but where?
Where is everything that I yearn for?
I want to run
so I will
I will run with no directions
no maps
no worries
I will run.

Erin Holston---June 2014

I have done it again.
One year in every ten
I manage it----

A sort of walking miracle, my skin
Bright as a **** lampshade,
My right foot

A paperweight,
My face a featureless, fine
Jew linen.

Peel off the napkin
0 my enemy.
Do I terrify?----

The nose, the eye pits, the full set of teeth?
The sour breath
Will vanish in a day.

Soon, soon the flesh
The grave cave ate will be
At home on me

And I a smiling woman.
I am only thirty.
And like the cat I have nine times to die.

This is Number Three.
What a trash
To annihilate each decade.

What a million filaments.
The peanut-crunching crowd
Shoves in to see

Them unwrap me hand and foot
The big strip tease.
Gentlemen, ladies

These are my hands
My knees.
I may be skin and bone,

Nevertheless, I am the same, identical woman.
The first time it happened I was ten.
It was an accident.

The second time I meant
To last it out and not come back at all.
I rocked shut

As a seashell.
They had to call and call
And pick the worms off me like sticky pearls.

Dying
Is an art, like everything else,
I do it exceptionally well.

I do it so it feels like hell.
I do it so it feels real.
I guess you could say I've a call.

It's easy enough to do it in a cell.
It's easy enough to do it and stay put.
It's the theatrical

Comeback in broad day
To the same place, the same face, the same brute
Amused shout:

'A miracle!'
That knocks me out.
There is a charge

For the eyeing of my scars, there is a charge
For the hearing of my heart----
It really goes.

And there is a charge, a very large charge
For a word or a touch
Or a bit of blood

Or a piece of my hair or my clothes.
So, so, Herr Doktor.
So, Herr Enemy.

I am your opus,
I am your valuable,
The pure gold baby

That melts to a shriek.
I turn and burn.
Do not think I underestimate your great concern.

Ash, ash ---
You poke and stir.
Flesh, bone, there is nothing there----

A cake of soap,
A wedding ring,
A gold filling.

Herr God, Herr Lucifer
Beware
Beware.

Out of the ash
I rise with my red hair
And I eat men like air.

Jamie wakes up
A gunshot from within
Eyelids crash into the cage

Jamie gets up
The heavy shadow also rises
The unwanted, only company

Jamie takes a shower
Water pouring hot and clean as angry man's blood
The bars cannot be washed nor melted

Jamie, the golden child
Jamie's gold is turning into stone

Jamie takes a bus ride
Circumventing the forever nameless faces
Are their shields up too?

Jamie gets to school
Nails buried deep within the palms
A secret buried deep within it's ugliest of kingdoms

Jamie laughs much too loudly
For it takes an earthquake to cover the storm
It's relentless shivers just won't die

Jamie, the martyr
The crown of thorns restlessly resting on Jamie's head

Jamie walks back
Way back
Yesterday's sun - today's dark cloud

Jamie listens to a song
Swimming in the pool of ease
A pool much too shallow for Jamie's big fat shadow

Jamie stops to smell the flowers
But finds none
Only a concrete meadow swallows Jamie's feet

Nobody ever considers Jamie
But this evening Jamie is considering

Jamie comes back home
And finds all hopes lay fast asleep
Or is it the reek of death?

Jamie undresses, and then some more
The essence without thick skin collapses
It's tortured and it tortures
It's weak and it weakens
It's broken and it brakes

The menacing trigger
The blood flow
The bare images of hot white pain
It all drifts away
As Jamie drifts into sleep

Jamie, the divine soul tainted
Much too used to taking bullets

Jamie, the heart that bravely fought

Jamie, for who would have thought so many demons
could live within an angel?

Blessed by a curse
The devil chose me as his bride
His claim for me perverse
My shame banished by a ***** tide

They say I've got fifth ace up my sleeve
But it cannot be, for I am bare
Lying, waiting, dying to receive
The most exquisite nightmare

I paint my lips with his bane
His seed of pitch black dread
My master and I will reign
And prove the blood is indeed red

I've misplaced my last thought to resist
As my yearning grew to strong
Taste me, master, I insist
You'll find I taste so wrong