A foot atop a step
A bent knee
A stretch
And I’m there

I’m lifted and unsurely shifted
The wood underneath, I question
Integrity
Is there truth?

It holds a thousand stories
It seeps a thousand words
It’s seen a thousand faces

A traced tree
A swing set
A front porch

If it could utter the words
Oh, do speak softly
I want to learn
Learn of the hurt and of the happy
Oh, tell me about that tree
How you’ve seen it grow
Walk me through the story of
The heart-broken girl who
Wrote of a love that
Left her lost and disillusioned

Speak of the boy who came here everyday,
Desperately awaiting an answer
Whisper the tale of two lovers
Whose love was torn apart

Or maybe just the friends,
Just dreamers who stopped to read

I’m sorry
What must I expect?
Just my fickle mind at it again

I paint this picture
Of a lapse of beauty
And time
And cold hearts
And rough stone
And bulbs and vines
A towering wall of rock
And a stiff shift of air
Three steps that lead
Two lovers nowhere

Broken minds and
Shameless crimes and
Vivid skies and
Written lies

If my legs make it to the other end,
Just south around the bend,
Tell me what’s there to find
You’ve acquired enough knowledge to know

Prop a pen, its tip seeps in
Forever a word
Who will it show its face to?
Who will want to listen?

Maybe not the next or the next
For  ten whole years
But it doesn’t matter when
The truth of the mark will capture
The singer
Or the actor
Or the painter
Or the lover
Or the poet
Or the boy
Or the girl
Or the friends
Who feel lost
Standing here today
Or tomorrow

What ghosts
Haunt the beyond
Do they sing?
Do they run?

I saw them holding hands
He laughed and
She smiled
Then they quickly crossed
Right past me
I look above
Shield my eyes
Let them adjust to a light
That leaks through green
And spills upon me

You’re wise
The etched lines in the wood
Are the lines on the face of
An Iroquois chief

He knows of what we yearn for,
What we need
Am I too quick to search for it?
Is it written in time?

I’ll allow a soul to search
And I’ll wander through
The creek, up the steep soil
Feeling its tingle upon my fingertips
And almost understanding
But grasping at it to no avail
Do we really swing?
Or are we controlled like
Some sort of human marionette?
Are my decisions mine?
Or are they brought down to me
From the sky?

Must we reach out our arms
And stretch to finally understand?
Or will it calmly walk towards me
Carrying truth in a basket?
Is climbing the tallest tree up
The only way out?

Or will I be given wings to take me there?
Why can’t this beauty be forever?

If I could spend a life content
In this very spot,
I’d be just like you
I’d know all the answers
And see all the truth
With each stroke of a word,
More is gained

And maybe there’d be an angel
That came by every night
To dance and play
I’d be simply content
To witness the innocence

Dawn is fast approaching though
Goodbye child

She’d disappear to the other end
And I’d be left to wonder where
She dances next when the sun is back
And the clouds dot the blue

And I’d be left with perfect patterns
On my base, made from delicate toes
They’d line the planks
And dust the shallow water

But they’d be forgotten by noon
When it all but washed back into the river

I’m tall and I no longer need to jump
To reach the ceiling
But who said I can’t imagine?

Why can’t the trees out here house fairies?
Why can’t I swing from vine to vine
To catch up to my adventurous love?
I’m tall
But I’m in here
And I’m knocking,
Desperately knocking
To escape
What I have always wanted
If only I had known

Oh, well I must go
It’s almost dusk again,
I know

Thank you for listening
Where did it all go though?
Where’d you put it?

Did it seep into the wood?
Or fall upon the grass?

I shouldn’t question
I will trust
I’ll return soon

Remember to watch that angel for me
And let me imagine its beauty even further
Tomorrow and the next day and the next

What a dream
My knees are weak
But I stand and pick up my bag,
Leave, I don’t look back

I leave a trail of soul in my path
My spirit is afloat, washing over the atmosphere
Layering the souls of all the rest

Am I the girl with the shiny curls
All tangled and unaware?
Of the real world I reign
With no inhibitions
Only love and what feels right

Doesn’t she feel like she’s flying?
Like she’s floating,  like there’s no wind
To resist the pain of feeling
What this world has to give

She thinks she knows this world
All is light, just light that sweeps her cheeks
Flushed pink with youth
All is wind, just gusts
That brush her hair for her
All is effortless, effortlessly
Beginning and ending
And beginning again
Does she wonder about the rest?
Aspiring to slip through to find what lies ahead
Yes
But ask if she’s knows of the real hurt
And she’d confidently utter
The truth she thought she knew

We are taught by the trusted,
Swept under their wings,
Atop their earth
It is bliss and nothing else is known,
All else is shielded
With armor of might and mail

So I go one day
After the wing is lifted
And this world, this world of mine
This world of mine I thought I knew
Is not that world at all
Dancing past swinging doors
With air that forces her,
She turns but there’s no turning back
The doors have been closed on the past
She accepts the truth of fleeting youth
And letting down her hair
Shoes of pink satin are now deeply rooted
But not in ground of fertile touch
But in piles of unstable sands

Sinking, falling no!
Please let her out

“I’m okay, I’m surviving,”
She utters the words through someone else’s tongue
They roll past her teeth falsely

Walk impassively, she thinks
Kiss the breath of the ******
But why?

Why walk being led by unfamiliar feet?
Why run past a group of truth?
Why wish for what’s not truly wished?
Why not listen?
Why not listen to your own cherubic voice,
Innocent pitch and sweet intentions
Why not trust?
Use the trust that’s kindly offered often
Why tangle in senseless strings?
It’s petty and lacks virtue
Why?

Because she’s alive
We’re alive and we live and we die
And travels prove arduous

And she’s little
In a little body, little is contained
Little wants to be contained

Growth
Growth in a body brings growth to the mind,
Seeps up the spine and I know

So it takes some time
To fill the mind
And time also carries pain
All in all, you can’t just call the name
It calls you, it reckons you
And it stabs you till you’re almost
At your end
But it’s funny
It never quite hurts you enough
To knock you down completely
It rests inside

So now she stands tall
Stoic like the Chief that’s
In my blood

Wrapped in that petticoat
With polka dots and
A pair of red shoes

It took some time, granted
Tumbling a bit every moment
Standing up

Regret?
Yeah
She peers through the window
That cannot be shattered
To stop; omit all
Try, she tries and tries but

She can’t
She amazes herself though
Every time those strings are strummed
Or every time her senses are numbed
From all the petty rest

She knows a lot,
But not at all
But what beauty lies
In the potential
To bring herself up
Just to fall again and again
Every fall holds strength
To begin all over

In through the nose
Breathe out from the mouth,
Breath the same as the air that surrounds

Warmth lines my throat,
My feet lead the way
The doors at the end seem a mile away

Sleepy eyes and weak shoulders
I lean to the right,
Re-balance my weight
To the other side

June blows through my hair
Oh, how freedom feels close
I breathe it in again,
Take in the finality of the end
Just how many days?
Only ten

To think back to a time
In the recent past
I was young and
I was wrong and
I was going way too fast

I do recall the door that
I slammed upon the past
And how the future was contained
In honey comb window glass

To take the first steps in
On uneven pavement,
Just walking was
A balancing act of
Who I was and
Who I thought I should be

In through the nose
Breathe out from the mouth
Breath a lot warmer
Than the air that surrounds

Crisp leaves are starting to fall by,
Little did I know, so was I

The year it did pass
I’m baffled as to how
This small, naïve girl
Grew into who she is now
Frail and fragile she was
And a little bit pale
Wrapped in a small, blue dress
With surrounding wind so stale

With big eyes full of wonder
Yet taken down by influence
Straight hair and summer
And a loss of innocence

And it’s lost against her will
And taken by the influential acts of all
How could someone live
In such a big world and not at least feel small?

Trace the patterns of the year
That lie beyond horizon and fear
Try to plan what happens next
And think how much better
Things will get

In through the nose
Breathe out from the mouth
Breath is scalding hot
Against the air that surrounds

Her mind swims with
Confusion and doubt
But somehow she lives
Through the year and gets out

She’s changed by the boy
With the tattoos and blonde hair
And hurt by the girls who
Pretended she wasn’t there

She grins and she bears it
And is still tied together
But the freezing and the thawing
Is beginning to weather

The knots in the rope
That bind herself as a whole
It starts breaking apart
As she breaks the mold

Her mother still assures her
The whole entire truth
Yet she’s still trapped
Among the tangled bindings of youth

Nothing anyone could say
Would make her change her mind
Cause she was so enveloped
That she didn’t realize
She was wasting precious time

In through the nose
Breathe out from the mouth
Breath is just a bit warmer
Than the air that surrounds

At this point
It seems as though all of this is right
She can’t believe the strides she’s made,
How she’s managed every night

Of falling into bed
With a pillow damp from tears
Picking up an old guitar
And tearing down her fears

Yet still scared to show that boy
What she really thinks
He moves on and so does she
But her feelings still pour
Atop lined paper
In melodies and blue ink

Summer flies by in a flash of sun
And so does all of a year
Until it all hits her in March
And she starts to release
Her remaining fear

Don’t get her wrong
Fear still lies at the base
Of her very being,
But she shakes it off
Through merely song
And she’s home,
Back to the beginning

She no longer senses
A need to try
When she finds herself in that home
The others enable her to fly

They lift her spirits
With honesty
And the idea of
I don’t care,
So she takes a plunge into the water
And lets down her long hair

She tucks a pink flower
Behind her ear
And listens to their stories
Of glory and pain and triumph
And plain and utter fear

What’s so beautiful about this is
The fact that the same is done for her
With a feeling of true acceptance
Comes the healing of the burns
And the scars that were left
By the pain of days darker than
The darkest sky

She’s through with all the questions
That incessantly ask why

There’s fear for the future
And some regret from the past
But you have to live now
To make it all last
It goes fast

In through the nose
Breathe out from the mouth
Breath is perfectly aligned
With the air that surrounds

She glances to the left
And squints to see
The people who knew all along,
The people that guided her to be free

Straight up ahead,
As far as the eye can see,
Staggered blue and white
And scurrying, young feet

Anticipation for her name
To be called
And the slightest fear that
She just might fall

They hand her the scroll with
A shake and a smile
And those past years she’s lived
Race through her mind for miles

She’s dumbfounded and exuberant,
Yet sad to get out,
But amazed at her strength
In overcoming the doubt

Rows and rows of the people
Blue white, white blue
That feel all the same emotions as you
Her eyes are wide and bright at the sight
Of the white square
And dangling tassel
Floating past the sunlight

In through the nose
Breathe out from the mouth
Breath of relief
Pushes through the air that surrounds

She walks on the same pavement
That held her up back then
But it’s sturdier
And makes more sense
And won’t let her fall in

Tonight she dances
In a dress,
A dress that suits her well
And she feels this sense
Of everything is going to be okay,
She can tell.

It’s funny when back to reality strikes
You return to mediocrity and mundane days
That’s just life

We make our own misery, create our own pain
Simply slip through
Day by day

All I want to do is tear it all down
All in one fell swoop
Plant a tree in its place and watch it roots
Spread and its branches reach
North to south, west to east

We are taught to believe
That dreams are just that
We are raised with the notion
That one must settle where they’re at

“Why?” one might ask,
It’s just a part of human flaw
You doubt yourself, as do I
But don’t we all?
But I’ve lived through certain moments,
Some of the best I’ve ever lived
And when the clock strikes midnight,
I have to go back to it

To the routine, to a tired, old place,
Back to the same old
But I’m done with hiding my face,
Through with trying to fit the mold

Break it, just break it
Break it all down
And when it falls
The tall, stone walls will
Leave way to show what surrounds

And what you’ll find is nothing short
Of brilliance at its best
But don’t be scared, just be prepared
That the brilliance is a test

The brilliance both hurts and
Makes you feel like you’re back in time again
Back when you’re running through fields
With nothing but you
And your innocence at hand
I’m telling you, just run
And spin and love and fall into chance
Stare into his eyes and kiss him
And when it rains and storms,
Then dance

Don’t think at all but think about it all
And when you fall just let yourself fall

But remember what you do now
And how it can hurt another then
Cause what’s the difference if
You didn’t mean harm but
You harmed them in the end?

Open them up, your eyes
There’s brilliance all around us
In disguise

You’ll be surprised
And I promise there will be
Much beauty, love carefree
There she is, I found her
I found me

So now she stands a beauty,
Average in stature
Yet extraordinary in strength

To find
Within the pores of the fragile bones
Of a sweet youth
The armour, the wisdom,
The experience, the might,
The hurt, the resilience
Of a Spartan soldier

She stands to support
The line she comprises
And will fall down with valor
With a sword towards the sky

Hazel is the eye
Through which she used to
Squint to find
An answer to the unkind
Cards shuffled and dealt
Out to her one at time

Toy with me some more
Mess with my mind
Shake the ground on which I stand
And watch my eyes go blind

Tear the petals one by one,
Ruin the beauty that once stood

Drive me, drive me back,
Watch me, watch me cry,
I knew the rose would blacken
I am taking back what’s mine

For two whole years
An empty vase
Sat impassive,
Barren of dreams
And stripped of passion

Naked was my body,
Open were the wounds,
Fresh was the ****,
Slowly healing were tattoos

Depicting a devastating tale of a mother,
A mother who couldn’t find reason,
Simply struggled for the why
Of a life she had constructed over decades
Through a brutal, shattered mind

Watch me laugh
And flash my face up to the light
Of a sweltering day,
Beads of sweat dot my nose
I worry not, just wipe them away

Yet the tears are what
I can’t seem to simply rid myself of
The air is cold,
They freeze and thaw
Mamma listen, I’m in love

I’m perched on the edge
Of something finite,
One wrong move and I can’t defy
The lines traced on the way down,
No ropes or swinging vines

I contemplated moving though,
Maybe I could find you

But I remain standing in this very spot,
I couldn’t jump
Because this spot is all knew

I take the all of what this is
For everything it’s worth
Because I know the answers
To what now means

I don’t know where you are
I’d very much be pleased to venture

But leave now and I know
I’d be mistaken

I’ve got a lot to do,
I may not know it all
But the assignment must be complete
Before I take the fall

For now I live
For now I cry
For now I breathe
And fear and die

For now I sleep
With pictures of you
And I always awake with them too

For now the cerulean dreams
Are posted upon walls,
Like graffiti faded in a day
And I still sit and wonder
Why you got away.

Fingers stained green and blue
With oil paint
Almost as to taint and tempt

Still
As the white streams down
Over the caverns of her hands
Wait as the last of it
Ends up back in the ground
Continue with your lack of plans

A free streak across a canvas
A quick glance over the sky
Initiates inspiration
As she shields her eyes

From the sun and its beating rays
Take a breath and gaze
She’s amazed at all the beauty
And is taken into song
Transforms it into art
As she hums along

Infusion into limbs
Engrained into her mind
She feels tremendous solace
In simply forming shapes from lines

Counting down the days
From the beginning of a year
Documenting in remembrance
To recall both joy and tears

Bike handlebars and fish
And shifting snow and sun
She thinks what will become of her
When all of this is done

She’ll study the mind
And dance through the days
As the last are just beyond
And on the rise
She’ll find the fear in the unknown
In which beauty is disguised

Splash the feeling on a sheet
And see what will become
Snap a photo
Blinded flash
She’s immersed in love

And life and everything
And what all of it means
She’s confused and unenthused
Yet simultaneously intrigued

Among the gifted
Swimming in a fountain
Of insecurity and time
Wrapped up in a blue, knit sweater
As to isolate the mind

To see it all, all of what this is
Through her almond eyes
Is to inspire a kaleidoscope
Of colors that flash across
A blank sky

Although intermittent
It all ties end to end
She’s up and down and back again

So fly girl, fly
I know you well
And your wings will be lined
With stories to tell

She’ll grow and change
Because she’s beautiful
In a way that’s all her own
Rooted deeply in a haven
Herself her home

“Hi love,” she calls, “let’s dance!”
Make patterns with tiny feet
And prance
Atop the carpet, across a room
Until I retire to bed

“Don’t think about tomorrow love,
Just listen to my words,
Just dance until you tire
And forget about the hurt.

Cause you are young today
And wise enough tomorrow,
So reserve the pain and suffering
And the crying and the sorrow

For the latter days of life
Because with more age and more days
Comes more strife

Love me now and love me then
Cause there’s just no way to know
Just when
A solitary moment evolves into a day
Where you suffer through
Tears and unimaginable pain

I look at you and see hope and future
In your hazel eyes
As the colors change with the clothes you wear
And the seasons of your life

Precious face, the darkest hair
I’m right here, so don’t be scared
I know you, I know you want to,
But do not hide
Don’t mask your pain with smiles
But rather wear the pain with pride

Stand on the edge a little further
And breathe the scent of sea
I’m there you don’t know where
But dear I tell you,
That wind you feel is me.”

Over three years time
Oh how you left me
In this state of sheer shock
Standing barefoot and empty

Feel a bruise
And let it be
Tear the skin
And watch it bleed

Read a book
And rip a page
Doused with word upon word
Of bitter rage

Oh well that was then
I was in such a state
That if you touched my skin
I’d turn to glass and break

Unearth my shattered surface
And reveal my war-torn mind
My soul has been tarnished
My core crushed in violent crime

To look through is to witness
A façade of a long, red braid
A rope of stone and hazel eyes
Housed behind a stained-glass window pane

I don’t show much, no
But I seldom showcase pain
My body’s a vessel in which
My broken soul’s contained

Shed a light that leaves my body
A translucent haze
My all, my everything
Will be left for you to gaze
And watch and learn and yearn
For my soul to be saved

But that light will never be cast
For I reside in a darkness
With a cloud so gray
And a wind so pained
And an aura of sheer silence

I had a hunch that you were leaving
But never had I thought that soon,
You left the air so thick and pained
All your tropies still sit in your room

The picture of you from when you were young
Spans prominent on the wall
And every thime I scale the stairs
The weight of you is so heavy
I could fall

October replays incessantly
Across a shifting wall
Flashes of happy
And whips of winter
And splashes of summer and fall

Chairs aligned
With people behind
Unknowingly awaiting a fate,
Unfairly tossed to them,
You get what you get,
Luck and happy have to wait

You come back to me from time to time
In a movement or a smile
But it’s transient though
And you quickly return
Goodbye love for a while

Sprinting on a runway
Gaining my momentum
I’m going to need it to fly
I can no longer do what I’ve done
For so long
I just can’t live a lie

The sun's rays permeate
the ever so tiny angular pores
of the cascading white
that shields the window pane
blows a cool blanketed, billowing wave

My glassy eyes adjust to light
so new yet so familiar
brings about such squared shapes
with jagged edges

Let me follow words
words to a warm, orange center
words to a core
words to my soul
shown like a film upon
a wrinkled screen
hazy, yet somehow clear to me

Wisps of wind travel through
the thin cracks exposed
swiftly shifting the white
so slight

It dances almost parallel
to the old glass
dusted with faint film
of a dried yesterday

Turn the body
adjust the mind
remember what has been

Turn over again,
perhaps again
until enough strength
is gained to begin

Tangled cerulean petals
toe by tiny toe
slightly frozen
kick them away to reach
what my feet know

Other days I question
if my knees will let me rise
sunny Sunday is quite different
because its sunrise
enables my limbs and
strengthens my bones
and deeper than that
awakens my soul

It moves me
to a movement to
create a page of script
and dwindling notes
fall upon my scalp
and like a leak in the ceiling
they drip

They seep through the bone
upon wispy strands and
knotted ends
fingers surf to straighten

What will be?
I question what will become of me

It's like we're born
into something cool and crisp
when an opportunity rests
potential lies next to me
lift the sheets to set it free

Turn the body
adjust the mind
think of what will be

There’s silence outside the walls
And it’s something we don’t realize
Sound-proof they are
As unbreakable as they seem,
Inescapable they stand
In the way of all their dreams

I left the walls to meet my mother
At the doors one day
Only to find that she wasn’t there
I was left to sit alone,
Left with the openness of my mind
And drifting words carried by air

A metaphor of senseless drama
Isolated in pores of stone
And I just cross my legs
And laugh,
I know what they don’t

But pity is also sensed
For the innocent of the souls
I do recall being trapped in the place
Where all that surrounded were walls
There’s silence outside the walls
I know, but I’m still learning
When they finally fall
Down around me
It will feel like I’m earning
The ultimate release of
Everything I’ve ever come to learn
Among these walls
The silence falls
And time heals the burns

The thought is real and it’s alive
But physical’s just the illusion
So why is it that something
Materialized by man
Is the root of all delusion

It holds us back
Keeps us trapped
We don’t even gain consciousness
Of what’s beyond
It was in that day
I sat out there
All by myself in silence and solace
And true alignment and sun
That peace was reached

And the silence and I became one

I pity the souls enclosed in the halls
Among these walls
The silence falls

These days are like a clock
They tick and they tock and
The ticking never seems to cease

A day will darken
A night will end
There’s always some sort of limit

A song around a fire
Or a laugh that hurts
In all the right places

Time tears it down
Time takes away a friendship
That grew so fast

Gone
Gone across a county
And into the woods
Faster than it was created

It wastes years away
And it’s all realized
When the air is warm
For the final time
And that new clock is ticking
For him to create a new path

I’m always chasing it
I’m so close
My fingertips are just barely reaching
A desperate reach
But no one
Will ever have the strength to stop it

Just one of the innumerable things
Here that is unattainable

But really, what is happy?
It seems to sit in a room
Amongst four friends
Then it abrubtly decides to slip out
Like a polite visitor
Staying only for a bit
A sign
It’s told us to stop

This clock has malicious intentions
It seems
It even drives happy away

It yells at the actor
Saying his final line
It screams at the singer
Grasping the neck of her guitar
Taking a heartfelt bow
It rushes a moment

But maybe rushing a moment
Isn’t all that bad
Perhaps it’s in the moments
You want to last forever

Time cuts them off
To frame them
And hang them on the wall
To show you how sweet
It actually was
How sweet it is here now

I danced throughout a year
With grace and changing tides
With every passing minute
A new powerful surprise

With truth and revelations
And thoughts often subdued
I’ve learned to shift my values
And transform a mood

To question every month
Up until this hour
To take it day by day
And wonder how I had the power

To fake a smile and show my teeth
To people so untrue,
It infuses love into my bones
To know I now have you

Finality
It’s commonplace way down here

We learn from the moment
We’re capable to comprehend
That not all is perennial
All has an inception and an end

The way a day shifts
From light to dark
The demise of an artist
And the last beat of a beating heart

A beautiful night that
You don’t want to forget
That moment you lose all ties
With a friend

The breath you breathe
Of the last of summer air
And the patterns of lace
Draped across a bride’s hair
We’re human so we’re afraid
Of something we don’t know
So we reach to an unnecessarily
Dark place just to find an answer
To what we’re looking for

Whatever’s beyond
Is beyond our capacity
So we must not search
For an answer
And that’s beauty enough
Isn’t it?

Stretch it out, stretch it wide
And slave away just to
Desperately find a miracle
To stay alive forever

But to live till two-hundred-and two
Is to suffer through something unnatural to you
There’s a reason this life
Has an expiration date
We mustn’t question
Because we’d waste away
A clock
That never ceases to tick
We have to take time to seize it

To clench that clock close to our hearts
And transform each and every experience
Into art

Once the paint on the canvas
Has all but dried
You, the painter will take a step back
To find
Astonishing beauty at the mere sight
And when you reach it
You’ll accept the fall of night

Pull out a book and read all night
And see how it changes you
Drive down a road that you’ve never been
And see where it leads you

Tell a story and change someone else
Give away the love you yearn for
And it’ll find its way back to you
Run across an open field
With no shoes and forget,
Just get caught up in the wind
Laugh until you find yourself
Curled up on the floor

Forget it all with the people
Who know you best,
Who pull you up
Everything will just finally make sense

It’s in the moments that are impossible
For one to repeat
That make the all of everything
So bittersweet

Don’t milk a miserable life
Just to say you’ve made it through
What’s it matter if they care?
You have to love and lose yourself in you
And hold the love you receive
Dear to everything you are
Authentic and inventive
Innovative is your art
One day everything that breathes now
Will cease to breathe again
So what can you do to change
The world to be remembered in the end?