I was a believer
Long after the other girls got interested in parties and boys

I would sit on my heels on the floor of the school library
And stare at the musty shelves of stories, searching for my next fantasy

I was a true believer
It seemed strange to me that while all of these characters, my friends,
kept finding magic in their worlds
mine was devoid and empty
I kept wondering, Why not me?

I was sure the magic was just hiding from me
Waiting for the right time to show itself
Waiting until I was ready to become the heroine
Every windy night, every walk into the woods,
I would think
This time, it will come for me
But it never did

I had a book on forest faeries and how to find them
After waiting and waiting all of those years
Clinging to my last hope, I decided I would give the magic one more chance
I went out to my back yard
To the perfect faery tree, with all the knots and holes in its trunk
And deep red berries stirring gently with the warm breeze
I stood under it, hands clasped, eyes closed
And waited one last time
Please I begged Please

And that was the day I stopped believing

From then on, I was determined to be a rationalist
An evidence-only type of girl
I switched to kneeling before the science fiction shelves
Followed the inventions of today's great tech scape
It was magic in its own sort of way

But my metaphoric heart has never quite given up on the romance of true magic
It loves it in a tragic, primal sort of way
It wants to make my life into a hero journey of fate and destiny
It wants there to be something more to this world
A something mysterious, a something beautiful
All my head and heart seem to do is contradict

A long time ago, I used to be a believer
But ever since I decided to give up on magic
It seems that magic has refused to set me free.

At the back of the stage in a gloomy wee room
Where the cockroaches eat what the rats don’t consume
There’s a table enveloped in paper and grime
On a carpet now lost to a happier time
With a cast iron typewriter, rusted with age
In the gloomy wee room at the back of the stage

And under a lampshade of nicotine brown
Sits a comical legend of zero renown
How he plugs at the keys of his rattling beast
The years of persistence have left him decreased
Now he’s stuck in the shade of his hovering doom
At the back of the stage in a gloomy wee room

His words are for others and too, the applause
Though a standing ovation might cause him to pause
He hasn’t the courage to speak them aloud
For he’s lacking the bottle and shy of a crowd
So he captures the laughter in lines on his page
In a gloomy wee room at the back of the stage

It's a plan in itself,
Not an open invitation for suggestions
To go on long walks, or dancing,
Or paint-balling, or take a drive
Down to the beach.

It doesn't mean I am free
To do one of the hundreds of tasks
You decide are more important,
In an attempt to fill my day
With a different kind of meaning.

Today I am doing nothing,
Because I have become lost,
In a world where doing something, anything
Is so expected of ourselves and each other
That simply doing nothing is viewed
As a waste of time.

We so rarely have opportunity
To have the conversations in our heads
That determine who we really are,
As we watch the moments floating past,
Lying under the stars.

Today I am doing nothing,
Please understand that what I desire,
Is silent doorbells, unknocked doors
And that the phone doesn't ring
As I curl up by the fire.

Child of mine please know

All things have a season

All things have a time

If stars can fall, then crash and burn

Humans fight and fail to learn

Then time has nought to teach

The blind will never learn to see

And the deaf will fail to hear

Even mighty rivers run dry

And seas can also die

Today

my heart stopped beating

But time has taught me this...

Love is where you find it

Follow joy wherever you can

Hope can spring eternal

Fellowship remains in man

I know how it was in that time
sixty years ago when roads seen
from above were little more than
two thin tracks through grass.

My mind has heard the noiseless roads
cutting unfenced fields, passing cherry groves,
skirting steepest hills and flat lakes,
making settled burgs where roads cross.

I know how it was in that time
when many-handed harvests,  
sweet smells and back breaking work
were wrenched away without referendum.

Wrenched away by Ford's cast iron.
Wrenched away without option of staying
to enjoy the scale of day-long trips
on foot, in wagon or buggy.  

Our innocent grandfathers too,
wrenched away, not unwillingly, from plowfields,
to be told by newspaper and newfangled radio  
of the one-day Atlantic crossing.

I know how it was in that time.
I've seen it from three or five hundred feet;
the quick shadow and lake-mirrored
image of fabric covered wood and wire.

I've gently flown, pocketa, pocketa,
in that time; in a ship as much a product
of those shifting decades as of its tinkerer/
designer, builder, pilot, Pietenpol.

He just sits there day after day,
A pensive expression and an ash tray.
His car of blue now smells of smoke,
His lungs are black and coughs are chokes.

He just sits there day after day,
A pensive expression and an ash tray.
Has no family so he works all the time,
And he always looks knackered but he says he's fine.

He just sits there day after day,
A pensive expression and an ash tray.
He finally got a promotion for working so hard,
Too bad it was made up of cigarettes and cards.

He just sits there day after day,
A pensive expression and an ash tray.
As he takes his final puff and teeth decay,
He just sits there day after day.

I hung myself today. Hanged? Whatever, point is I hanged myself today and I'm still hanging.

I feel fine. Just bored. I keep hoping that someone will come home and cut me down but then I keep remembering that if i knew someone like that I wouldn't be up here. Bit ironic, right? Or is that not ironic? I read somewhere that, like, anything funny is, in some way, ironic. But I don't know if it's funny or not. I don't think my brain owns "funny," you know?

I feel taller. I like that.

I've never been away from my shadow for this long. It had always clung to my feet, parting momentarily for a quick dive into the swimming pool. But never for five hours. I like it. There's three feet of space between my two and the floor.

I wanted something this morning. I may be stuck. But at least I'm three feet closer to it.

The Squares lived happily,
in their square houses,
in their square yards,
in their square town.

One day, a family of Circles
moved in from the west.

"Get out of here, roundies!" shouted one of the Squares.
"Why?" asked one of the Circles.
"Because this is a metaphor for racism!"

Don't tell me how it works, sir,
I like to watch
And be amazed at the display.
The inner workings, wiring, switches,
all, are unnecessary details.
Miracles deflated.
Don't explain the rainbow,
or the sunshine,
or brain waves.
Child-like
in my comprehension
I want to smile
and clap my hands
at the wonder
of it all.