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crystal rondeaux Mar 2013
For years I have waded in plenty, fingers
Wrinkled with the evidence of fulfillment.  Belly
gross with abundance, I birthed discontent
again and again.

I became blinded, eyes watery with
With  surplus, reflecting only quantity.  
I praised commerce heartily ad infinitum
Bending my knees in supplication to
its institutions. The Mall, The Supermarket,
were holy ground.  

I have lost my faith, and think, sacrilegiously,
of summer afternoons in the mountains.
There is no text beneath the painted dusk.
Twilight falls without a sponsor.  I do not
Enjoy Coke.  I look, furtively, for places
Visa isn’t, and drink tap water
when no one is looking.  I remind
myself that rainbows don’t taste of candy
and that M&M;’s have melted in my hand

smudges of color I can’t seem to wash away.
crystal rondeaux Mar 2013
For years I have waded in plenty, fingers
Wrinkled with the evidence of fulfillment.  Belly
gross with abundance, I birthed discontent
again and again.

I became blinded, eyes watery with
With  surplus, reflecting only quantity.  
I praised commerce heartily ad infinitum
Bending my knees in supplication to
its institutions. The Mall, The Supermarket,
were holy ground.  

I have lost my faith, and think, sacrilegiously,
of summer afternoons in the mountains.
There is no text beneath the painted dusk.
Twilight falls without a sponsor.  I do not
Enjoy Coke.  I look, furtively, for places
Visa isn’t, and drink tap water
when no one is looking.  I remind
myself that rainbows don’t taste of candy
and that M&M;’s have melted in my hand

smudges of color I can’t seem to wash away.
crystal rondeaux Mar 2013
Some days I am a small blue thing
crushed in the palm of your hand;
smeared on the soil, beneath your careless heel.
...
I strain toward the light, toward you;
caught between staying and becoming.
Lost in shadows, disappeared in the
language of your indifference,
a theory you entertain, but briefly.
Like when you pause, let loose your breath
...not quite a sigh.
...
Your hand opens and I will,
for that moment, shine,
gaining substance from your gaze;
I spin, sparkle; captivate you...
...
in a moment's distraction
you will always reach for me,
and I will be there waiting,
your small blue thing.
crystal rondeaux Mar 2013
Today I feel the cool blue of reflection.  Wrapped up tight inside myself, tucked in at all the corners, I am made smooth...absorbing, then tossing back, the images surrounding me.  In my daily life I strive for reason, adhering to the strict rules of polite society.  But occasionally...when the night gets inside my breath and steals sleep from me...the poet escapes.
She lives in the night.  In the stillness.  Where the light does not grab expression from her eyes...dark bruised oceans, churning...they toss moonlight into the air; shadows like silver.  In the night she can keep them to herself.
She creeps, like Janet behind the yellow wallpaper, but she will not rattle the pattern, instead...
...she stands in the twilight and lets the night slip into her breath, stealing into her blood.  She will write, words frenzied, but not her. She will calm them, tame them, sing them into shapes, trick them into lying still before the dawn comes and tugs the night away.
She will shower, press her slacks and meet the right people for lunch at the right restaurant.
Later, when the twilight won't claim her, she will squeeze what remains of the ocean from her eyes, and promise herself she will not to wait in the dusk anymore.
crystal rondeaux Mar 2013
I despise this melancholy
that gathers in a hot lump
at the back of my throat,
scorching my forehead
burnt like violet.
A spotted, brown bird
spirals upward, until there
is only shining.
I ache to disappear in a
grandmother's braids,
wrapped up tight like
infancy and shaken loose
in the night, or to fall into
the valley's sunset breeze
climbing like summer dust
towards immensity
to paint brilliant
the horizon.
crystal rondeaux Mar 2013
I despise this melancholy
that gathers in a hot lump
at the back of my throat,
scorching my forehead
burnt like violet.
A spotted, brown bird
spirals upward, until there
is only shining.
I ache to disappear in a
grandmother's braids,
wrapped up tight like
infancy and shaken loose
in the night, or to fall into
the valley's sunset breeze
climbing like summer dust
towards immensity
to paint brilliant
the horizon.
crystal rondeaux Mar 2013
Once, I was told by a by a writing instructor that if I could only write in fragments, I should write in fragments.  It was good advice.  I never really finished anything I began during that time period, but I've become attached to these tiny bits of scratching that take up odd space in my journals.
...
Certainty, like invocation of the spirits of thunder, gather in my eyes, my voice, in the purpose of my movement.  Economical, efficient, effective motion will prove my intent where my heart fails.  Only the stilled wind would guess my fear, my timorous uncertainty.  You would not.  You must not
...
I would smear you on my lips, like berries in July.  You would taste sweet, like sticky and cool; smooth against my uneven breath, linger like the scent of lilacs in april.  I'm sure of it.
...
Leaving.  Somewhere between Casper & Cheyenne Olympus in the sky with Luck Dragons and owls.  Patrick, do you see them from Billings?  Earth that flows, rolls, folding itself over and over, mountains curving upward into claws of earth tearing at the sky.  Silence deeper than sound, hair in my face and rain that smells of heat and wet, green things mingling with smell of hot pavement cooling in the prairie.  These are leaving things.
...
What I know.  I know how to breathe.  The trillion ways of moving air into these lungs.  I know the quick easy breath of near slumber; the short rasped breath of barely concealed fear; I know the shallow breath afriad to break love spells and the flooding breath of relief.  I know the sharp inhale of being hurt, and the deliberate letting go of defeat...
....
I crave words, like chocolate, creamy-sweet on my tongue, giving way to teeth that press too hard.
...
Impossible things everyday occur outside the continent of myself.  I am not so busy with my own universal truths to consider this impossible raindrop that will linger on my fingertip in spite of the autumn wind.
...
When it hurts the world makes sense.  Resolution absovles me from inaction and the momentum carries me forward with purpose.
...
Something about the feel of pencil on paper... of scratching out meaning from possibility.  No more permanent than graphite on wood pulp ~ the soft friction has it's own truth, a burning of sorts, heat of substance on substance, from mind to paper, consuming all that it is not, internal regions to external realities; commitment at it's subtle best, fleeting and impermanent as time.
...
Sometimes you don't think, or won't, or something like that, something crzy like that.  Sometimes a stone is just a rock, a lone flower in a vast field of scrub and brush is just a mislaid seed.  Sometimes a sunset fire on a sloping hill is simply a star behind a revolving planet.  Occasionally, going home is nothing more than a twelve year old economy car and a bad road.
...
Today I miss you.  You are lodged firmly in a small, hard lump at the back of my throat ~ encased tears aching to explode into empty space, where you are not.  Not here next to me, where skin on skin might reassure me of your definitive existence.  Not here, where I am certain of you.
some off these fragments have since grown into whole Poems of their own, but I like the collective bits !   :-)
crystal rondeaux Mar 2013
Our story began in the middle; between the spaces in our lives and minds and heart s
Where we spin out possibility.   A quiet spot in a busy place;
there I stumbled upon you while lost inside my own dreaming
There I was, drifting through my days in a flurry of verbs; winding through calendars laden with intent
And then this quiet spot in a busy place
Full of intention and designation.
I may have simply smiled absently, politely turning aside to give you privacy to sift
Through your own potentialities but for the expression of kindness in your features
And as my eyes flashed to yours in acknowledgement of a space briefly shared.
I was made curious b
y the simple audacity that would challenge convention
With such a smile.

Our story began in the middle; in spaces between points of interest in our separate lives.
Began in the interstices, the borderlands, outside time and in the margin;. Left of center.
In between destinations and intentions and within the flux of other, more prominent plots.
In a quiet spot, in a busy place, I recognized you when you smiled.
crystal rondeaux Mar 2013
I get lost in you
Its true
Drifting through your multitudes
Trailing fingers lightly, tenderly
along walls in the shadowy labrythinth
Of your mind
memorizing the textures
Nearer your heart ;
Dancing in your darkness to
The heat and thrum of your passions.
Drifting along within you, like your own blood
You are endless, infinite.
This ceaselessness intrigues me
And I am compelled by each new turn
to stay a bit longer, wander a bit farther
unfolding myself in the discovery of you.
But I am weary
And I long for a place to rest.
crystal rondeaux Mar 2013
Last night I caught the full moon in my eyes
where it  spun  into a universe of shooting stars.
falling into restless dreams, too full of sleep,
that moon, that blue-white, too full moon,
that night-other light, spinning in to a whisper
across  a spider's web between the glass and screen.
Trailing night behind her in globules of silver light,
she twirled on each single strand and slid over sill
down wall across crumpled  linen sheets
and slipped into my sleeping hair
dancing  tangles of cool night breezes;
whirling away at dawn across my sleep-flushed cheek
crystal rondeaux Mar 2013
The space you’ve left behind
Has shrunk into tight corners;
Into the deeper shadows of a darkened room.
The absence of you is an occasion, now,
And not the state of every space I occupy.
But there are parts of you, like partial ghosts,
That slips into my thoughts, my day;
Disembodied attributes that hover
Like the persistent grin of Alice’s Cheshire Cat.

I know your chuckle perches on my armoire,
Just behind the green ceramic bowl, waiting
For the right instance or thought—like when
I’m startled by my reflection, or when
I’ve suddenly remembered something I’d forgotten
And start, then stop, and start again,
All in a mad sort of twirl.

You’re ghost-chuckle descends, then
Like the sun breaking through clouds
I’ve stopped noticing.  It is gone just as quickly,
Dissipating into air, into atoms that are not
Separate from any part of me, or you; or
The space you’ve left behind.
crystal rondeaux Mar 2013
There are secrets like pale
ghosts floating on your tongue.
The curve of your eye rolls past
my gaze and its green gets
tangled in dark of my hair.
...
The silence in your words is still,
like your hand reaching for me;
my breath is caught by its
measured movement
and I am crushed by your need.
...
My skin will not beg your heat,
but crumple, bruised beneath
your cool blue passion.
crystal rondeaux Mar 2013
We know this table has been a fire pit in days long past,
a flat-topped boulder, a grassy river bank,
a row of seats along side a highschool ball game.
It is the gathering place of women who
know their history and the names of their ancestors,
who tell one another in stories that live
among the words they use.  Stories that keep them breathing.
This table, with it's polished oak surface, kept shining
with canned wax has been the heart-place home of the
people through ages.  It is the place
where the circle is widened, children are raised
and  Warriors seek council, leave reverent.
This table has woven whole societies, birthed legends;
dreaming the life of family/clan/band/tribe
into beads, quills and brain-tanned hides, sewing
them into the skins of daughters with the sinew of survival.
This place is strong like the August sun on the high plains,
and January winds on the prairie, enduring as the work of knives,
awls and the love that are used as tools here in this sacred place.
Here divinity smells of new sage bundles, green braids of
sweetgrass, fry-bread and venison stew.  It is warm
as a summer thunderstorm, a mother's arms or a lover's
lingering kiss.  This table has existed in a thousand
forms through centuries of stories.  This table, this
talk, this knowledge, this way of keeping real history.
crystal rondeaux Mar 2013
When you come each night to me,
you make this space our world
Then what was stilled is overfilled,
my soul by love unfurled

Then every night you leave me
you leave without a trace;
the things you bring you take away
and leave less in its place.

I yearn for all those nights you stayed;
you held me in your glow
hands to skins and tangled limbs
spīritūs and soul.

But longing veils the Spirit,
such yearning taints the soul,
obscuring us from purest love
we lose sight of The Goal

Tonight I wish my heart were free;
that your leaving me was done.
I crave our ending,
Hearts transcending,
what wrongly was begun
crystal rondeaux Mar 2013
A soul unfolds in light
petals seeking warmth are met
sometimes with thunderstorms
raging winds or desert heat
how delicate are they
to survive each element
and bloom again
and again
seeking always to unfold

— The End —