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 Feb 2015
Dorothy A
Do you ever feel like you're missing the boat, that your life is like a ship floating on by but you're not in it?

Do you ever feel like your watching others live their lives, like on a big, pretend movie screen, but you are not a participant of your own?  

Does reality sometimes bite you in the **** and the pain drive you to rethink: Where the hell am I going with this?

I don't want a cheap, imitation life
I want more than just getting by
I'm not saying I'm cashing in my chips
I "m not saying all is lost
I just want to tear it all down
The paper scenario of the facade
It's doable because I've done it before
I had to in order to thrive

I don't want a cheap, imitation life
 Feb 2015
Dorothy A
It cannot put pen to paper
But all a flower has to do
Is open up its delicate petals
Unfolding like a noble lady's fan
Broadening to blossom into a lovely jewel
Poetry without any word

A spider weaves its web
Like an author spins tales
It's intentions upon its survival, but
Its intricate home of threads and strings
Like a gossamer harp
Is enchanting to perceive
A make and design of fragile strength

The oceans and seas
Mighty and commanding
They roar and display their majesty
With crashing waves and splashy bravado
They spare few prisoners
And graveyards of sunken ships
Whisper of stories untold

Birds chirp and warble
With songs that humans long to know
For they travel through the air
In simplistic freedom
Their chorus of communication
Is a poetic symphony just as entertaining
As any band of musicians or artists

The winds blow and whistle
Though they have no mouths
If you listen close enough
You can hear their secrets
Their breath of life in the
Ever flowing
Breezes that enfold us

You'd swear the mountains
Were painted that way
Brawny and broad, peaked high above
Against the grand canvas we call the sky
Yes, paintings are poems, too
For a picture speaks a thousand words
But no mere man can make a mountain

You see
We are merely students
Taught by God's natural, creative genius
We are merely imitators
Of what nature displays
We are not originals
For we are not the first poets
Nor the first storytellers
 Feb 2015
Dorothy A
They ran so far, ran so much that the soles of her feet were stained with blood. His hand never lost its grip while hers was bathed in oil, her cheeks blushing with shock and excitement. To think they had pulled it off! She never felt so crazy in her whole, bland, little life!

The couple ran across streets. They ran across fields. The night smelled like a child's perfume. The flowers mixed their aroma with the grass to tempt any lover to imagine what their worth was. Only a sliver moon revealed itself, so they were blind to nearly everything, just as they were so blindly in love. It was an eerie night, but a captivating one.

They whisked past trees as if the tree boughs and twigs would swoop down  like a skeleton's arms and fingers, trapping them into a thorny grip. They dodged cars like they were alien outlaws from another realm. They ran like there was no tomorrow, and the whole world would explode in a moment.

She did not care what anyone would have thought of her. To have hung herself would have made more sense to her parents than to be so impulsive and take off with this man, this stranger. They would have insisted she was out of my mind--and she was--but she never felt so sure sure of herself.

She never knew who she was, but maybe she was about to know and it would be wonderful. The cares of her world seemed to melt, at least they did in the cool of the night as she gathered the courage to run free.

All was going well, as the wind kissed her cheeks and her mind felt eased of her burdens. Yet, for one brief moment, the desire to rip her hand away from his overtook her, a failed moment of self-doubt.

It did not seem like it was really her pulling her hand away. As she yanked free from his firm grip, she froze in her tracks, panting from sheer exhaustion. All the courage had sudenly drained out of her just as mysteriously as it had consumed her.

In the failing moonlight, the shadows played upon his face in ghoulish distortion. The chiseled, calm features seemed to transform. Suddenly, fear rose up in her and she wanted to deny what seemed so obviously grotesque. She rubbed her eyes. Were they playing tricks on her? She gasped.

Inbetween the shadows, his face looked demonic, like death. What was happening? For a second or two, she could not distinguish a man from a monster, who it was she was really following after.  It had to be an illusion!

His lips were formed out of putty and burnt rubber, seriously twisted out of shape. His teeth appeared busted and broken into jagged pieces of rotten glass. His eyes seemed to glow and slowly narrowed at her in frustration, his skin rough and embedded into hardened cheekbones.   She continued to rub her eyes and blinked hard a few times to erase that ugly, horrific  image.

A swirl of clouds veiled the moon, but they soon moved on to give her eyes some clarity again. Her perplexed lover was staring at her, his face fair again, well-proportioned and handsome.  So why couldn't she budge? She convinced herself that her eyes must have been playing tricks on her. She knew he was waiting for her to make a move, but she couldn't find the strength to respond to his wishes .

"Come on", he called out to her. Once again, he reached out his hand to beckon her to place her hand in his.

She now was not so sure of what she was doing. She stood there, dumbfounded, and so ashamed of herself. The leaves rustled in the wind as if they had lost their patience with her, too. Just a few moments ago, she had such courage. Now all the excitement and madness had abandoned her all at once, and she felt so small and powerless to the night, as if it was engulfing her in its darkness.

"Come on!", he repeated. The tone in his voice was angry now, and it sounded unnatural, gutteral. She dared not to look at him for fear the scary image of him would return. The minutes felt like they were ticking away in sludge, and the desire to run was creeping back into her, but not to run with him.

Soon, her lungs were stinging from the chill air of the night. "No", she feebly replied, "I can't do it".  Those few words took the last bit of energy she had.

He started trying to convince her to go on, but quickly the firm calmness in his voice had disappeared as his voice grew threatening. Before long it reached a crescendo of profanity and perversity, again sounding unnatural and more otherworldly than ever.

She began to cry in her helplessness. He mocked her. He shamed her. His words were punitive and cruel. She was nothing.  She was better off dead. She disgusted him and her presense degraded him. There was nothing good about her, nothing at all.  She was ugly, ignorant and usless. Fearful that he may hit her, she took it all in,  frozen with fear. But he did not touch her, yet it would have probably have hurt much less if he had. She shut her eyes to try to erase his image, and she covered her ears to drown out his cruel words and his harsh voice.

It may have been just a few minutes of him taunting her, but it seemed like eternity. She let him rage on instead of fighting back to defend herself. Fighting back seemed so futile, as she felt so cowardly and small next to him.  She could not find her voice even if she wanted to, but soon he had slipped off into the shadows, his footsteps sounding away from her upon the pavement on dirt road they had been running down together.

She was trembling now, more from cold than from fright. She now believed the threat was over. That was it. It was finished. As surely as it started, it was over. He was gone.

No, she was not going to run away that night. No prince or knight in shining armor was not going to rescue her to whisk her away to safety.  Nor was anyone going to take her away to a happier place that she often dreamed about.

So she slowly turned around to head back to her old existence. The hurt she felt was now turning into numbness, but that was nothing new in her life. She was used to it. She knew I did not have the life she had wanted, but she began to realize that it could have been much worse. Maybe she was nothing, like he had told her, but she was walking away and she was free. Yes, she was free from that nightmare that could have been the end of her.

She did not feel alive anymore, not like she did earlier, but she was able to put one foot in front the other take herself away from what had now become "nowhere".  She was confused at first to which way was which, but she  eventually found her way back to her familiar surroundings and headed home.
done in the 1990s but improved upon in 2010
 Feb 2015
Dorothy A
One that's been loved
Can survive a cold world
A despised soul cannot
 Feb 2015
Dorothy A
Always chasing happiness
Seldom to stick around
Summer--it's too hot
Winter--it's too cold
Childhood--it's too long
Adulthood--it's too short and hectic
My aching brain can go in feverish circles
Longing, trying to find if happiness really exists
Or it just gives up in complacent surrender
Growing numb with doubt that it ever was real
After all, I belong to a society
That thinks we are forever entitled to happiness
Every minute of every day

But happiness isn't over there somewhere
Nor is it this or that thing that can be gone tomorrow
Too often becoming what really did not make us happy anyhow
Surely, happiness was never designed to heed all our demands
Never to be controlled or schemed  
No, happiness is a journey of the soul  
The ability to receive and to give love and kindness
It's discovery when you think you have nothing else to learn
It's letting go of the stones to throw
Not an easy road, for sure...but worth it
It's discovering what you can do verses what you cannot
It's connecting to a sloppy, messy world
And not expecting its perfection in order to live in it
It's the Divine touch beyond your limited comprehension
It's connecting and reconnecting with yourself
And being at peace with the being that you are
 Feb 2015
Dorothy A
There's no place like home. There's no place like home. There's no place like home. Dorothy's Kansas never looked so comforting, her black and white world never so safe--never so flat, so barren.

Didn't she learn her lessons? She caused such trouble! She gave Auntie Emm such a fright! That bump on the head must have caused her brain damage. After the "big storm" was only a memory, and the terrible twister only a town tale, Dorothy did it again.

She ventured out on her own.

Yet Mrs. Gulch was still a witch. And Dorothy's "nasty, little dog" still got into the garden. The sheriff was ready to track her down and clamp down on her for good! Running home frantically for help, Dorothy realized that Auntie Emm was still too busy ******* at her shiftless farmhands, henpecking tired, old Uncle Henry,
and he was just too cranky to care. The farmhands were supposed to be her friends, but they just started crabbing at her again.

They soon gave her what for. "Dot, didn't you learn a thing in life?" "Didn't we rescue you once from a pigpen?" "That heart of yours leads you in the wrong direction! " "Where are your brains, anyway?"

Heartbroken, naive Dorothy realized something that was quite profound. Her heart was always in the right place--she just needed the courage, the courage to know she was smart enough to make it on her own. So Dorothy packed her bags, especially remembering her red ruby slippers. She would never forget her loyal friend and sidekick, her beloved pooch, Toto. If she was going, he was going with her.

So there she stood, suitcases in hand, in her bleak, little, colorless world. Terrified, she stood upon the precipice. Fear or faith? And all of a sudden she was noticed again! Just what was she doing? Who did she think she was fooling? Was she crazy!?

"You'll never make it!", they all warned. "You don't know the first thing about how to live in a Technicolor world!"

"Sorry, I do love you", Dorothy answered back. "But I disagree and I will forward you my new address". So off she went finding the path down the yellow brick road.
c. 2010

— The End —