Blasting sparkling blizzards
White skies suffocating;
A ****** of crows hiding.
Chattering from treebark
Petrified little rodents (final)
Serenity in personified wind
Given shape through fog and flake
A symphony of schools of tiny pearly fish
Slamdancing in steam from generators
Perspiring the only heat (miles)

Needles on branches leaking natural
******, made by contrast of mother-of-pearl
Glistening from coral made in woodland;
Empires of organic respiration
Evolved into perfect lungs.
Let the Big Fish gather!
Stalagtites from shed-ceiling
Melting slowly. Cones sprouting
From ground of perfectly smooth rest
Nesting in honeycombs of golden hashish
Leaves falling from stems busted
Water filling up airlocks long since rusted
And the rooftops of cars and homes are dusted

A shroud of grey cloud, nothing comes in
No one goes out. Fortress, sanctuary,
Harmony, charm. Schools stop worrying.
No sharks, no wolves.
Only lonely, shivering coyotes.
And nestled cubs in bedspreads
Let your tongue out, divulge, reel in...
Partake...
Ingest.

(Authors note: I realize this is more short story than poem. I hope you find it poetic as well. Apologies in advance if this is not an appropriate forum.)

Have You Seen This Girl ?

I sat sleepy eyed one morning enduring yet another cardboard and treebark bran flavored bowl of breakfast with milk, 2 percent of course, and I stared at the carton.

First I reviewed the measures of various fat content, and nutritional values listed as a matter of law. And as usual, I thought of you. This time by way of pondering the plight of the American Dairy Farmer and remembering it was the “corporatizing” of the independent dairy farms which led your family to other uses for the land they had raised dairy cows on for over a century. And I missed you terribly.

To quickly shake the associated feelings of loneliness, and your face from my mind, I was drawn to the deep dark eyes of the child who was missing and apparently exploited on the other side of the carton. She had innocent, kind eyes that indicated she wouldn't even harm an insect. Curious eyes that would watch an insect for hours as it munched on grasses and leaves she fed it.

She would be two years grown and two years older since last seen in blue jeans and a t-shirt in Amarillo, Texas, in the company of her biological father who was possibly armed, dangerous, and driving a pickup truck towards Mexico. Or Canada.

And it struck me. You needed to be on the side of a milk carton. 2 percent of course. At some point in our life together, you had been kidnapped. Whoever was responsible had gone to a lot of trouble to replace you, to carefully drop you right back into my life. It was a great attempt but finally my belief that the real you would never do the things you did to me were validated. You had the misfortune of actually having an “evil twin” and corporatized or not, it seemed only the Dairy Council could help, since there is no Center For Missing and Exploited Adults.

Big red letters screaming “Have You Seen This Girl ? ” were what we needed now. God knows I had recent photos, and could describe all of your features-distinguishing or not.

I think tomorrow, I'll have French Toast.

Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License. Based on my work at www.emotionalorphan.net.

I have been silent.
I have been silent not for loss
Or mourning
For those drag words from me
With or without my consent.
I have been silent because I am trying to be
Gentle
In love
When I am a thunderstorm made flesh,
A hurricane,
A seismic wave of passion and pain.
Inside
I burn
And it has been a long time
Since I have loved so deeply
As to press my sizzling hands to my own stomach
Just to keep another person from burning their fingers on the love I hold beneath my skin.
I have been silent
But I have not been extinguished-
Far from it, I have risen.
I have gone blue and white with heat.
I have wandered through the blackened trees in the ghostly calm of the night
And kindled them to flames with my palms.
I have left embers
Shifting and sighing in my footprints
And the earth has learned a new name to score into its stone and treebark when I travel through the darkness
Searching for a rest I will not find.
And there is joy in this,
There is such joy!
Although the heat presses,
Although the light licks at my ankles when I wade too far into my own heart's dreams.
I leave joy in these silent places, black and velvety and slumbering in the night-
I wake them
I wake them because I have been woken
And my heart has become something that melts
Something that burns
Something that hungers and consumes
And glows with shimmering reds and golds no matter how tightly I curl around it and hush its hissing whispers.
I leave joy because I can't contain it
And it reaches roots into the ground with every step I take-
A fearful joy,
A joy that knows its hunger
Will be its starvation.
A joy that breathes light and grasps at shadows
Because that is all it knows how to do.
A joy that turns its face up to the rain
To feel a moment's peace and cooling clarity.

Oh, I may have been silent
But I have not been quiet.