Met you first at the edge of town
Where parallel lives converge
Too close to see the reality
Too close to see the merge
Entrained & double stranded
Twice abandoned
Forged in fire
Etched in stone,
Dressed in a serious tone

Divide:
The divine definition
Served over coffee, wine, and repetition
The overhead sign flashed
Standby Alert

Never one to heed the warning
You were looking straight ahead
On an outward bound,
Dopplered red
Journey

The local doesn’t stop there anymore.

The stranger that you were seeing
Detached from all-mighty reason
Feeling tracts of the weatherworn
Like leather shorn
Shattered by resistance  
Battered by time and insistence
A legacy of perfectionism
Bestowed on you by dogmatism
Stirred by criticism
Seen through a prism schism
From standing on your head
Judging yourself upside down
Perspective’s reflection
Ism prison
Makes perfect sense
A hole in groundism


Storied teller without a soundism
Rhythm or such
Downtown, cafed, solitary lunch bunch
Saying no to this, no to that
So comfortable
When there’s something to defend
And there always something to defend

The exonerated accused of insanity
Righteous indignation abomination nation
To the guilty acquitted by reason of sanity
For strategizing one side
Side Lies
Channel changing and codified


The chips are played and unafraid
Free-floating on a reclining cloud
Hovering above the unavowed
Unbuckled crowd
Without blame or explanation


The hand that binds, rewinds
Will eventually set you free


The tracks began to dance
A lazy sideways glance
Carving a figure eight
Keeping time
With a measured gate
Pausing as they crossed
Hand over hand
In infinity seeing speck
An aspect
Dancing on ice
They spin
So without
So within
Pirouette going around and around
Everyone stepped aside
Later they all took a side

“Never saw it coming.

You know, he never should have left.

Yes but, how do you know it was him?

I heard she was bereft.”

The moment was tenuous
Always slipping from grasp
Always a handout for help
Always a mask
The mask it
Fell from where it was hanging and
Broke in half              
You were off autopilot
Without a staff


Yes, to whatever you say
I’m that way
You must first introduce yourself
Forgive yourself
For all the isms’
They were never ever you
The isms aren’t all bad
They just embody the essence
Of all that is had.

Distracting yourself with all the things of your doing
Little time left for beauty  
The people, the places, the problems,
The gardens below the deep blue sea
What next,
What to do
But not me
God spoke to you your divine mission
But you had other plans
Prophesizing was not your ambition
Accused of sedition
Your shipmates up roared
Threw you overboard
For refusing to obey the lord
Jonah in the whale chasing his own tail
Swallowed whole
It was a dark night of the soul
Dark nights don’t last forever
I’m hoping
The whale took pity
Spit you from nit-picky
Onto a sandy shore
It was there you saw her
A damsel in distress
Rapunzel in a Versace dress
You are in
Survival a la mode

Tell me
What is real
What fantasy

Danger lurking in your own backyard
Disguised as femininity
You swing from to and fro and
When push comes to show
All the things you know
While you row upstream
Adrenalin coursing like rain
Tendrils rooted in pain
You’re a ******
Just the same
Chemically constructed
but that
Keeps you on the safe track.

You’ve come a long way
Some would say full circle
Where endings are beginnings
Beginnings endings
Never endings
Never beginnings

Before
Birth to Mother Earth
Before
There was a thought to come
Before
Staging had begun
Before
The veiled curtain parted
Where you danced as one
then departed

Destinations gleamed
Slates wiped clean
A lot going on behind the scene

Spiraling in hyper-space
Crash landing
Somewhere in time-space
It didn’t quite fit
It was
A loosely knit counterfeit

You
They named you
Cloaked you in shrink-wrap
Sheltered you in familiarity
Bagged and boxed you in
Taught you what they knew
Until you believed it to

You
Wanderer of the dichotomous night
Was It black before it was white?
Was it dark before the light?
Was it doubt before insight?
Have we come to reconcile the night?
Or for the sheer afternoon delight?

Chance is an orchestrated dance
Like puppets on a string unseen
Strung and scripted
Playing parts unrehearsed
Puppeteers will cheer
When you come undone
To yourself

Who is it about perfection?
That requires us to sow
Seeds of imperfection
A baptism by fire
Until all that is left
Is emptiness
And experience
You.

Standing naked before your creation
Too close to the ragged and shadowy edge
Where Metaphor and What the Hell is it All For
Made a ceremonial pledge

Not to Tell

“Embracing the edge is the only sensible thing to do.
Cliff hangers are not for cereal killers
Who take their cereal without a crunch.
Captain, you don’t play well with others.
I’m going on a hunch.”

“I have no idea what the hell your talking about, replied What the Hell is it All For” You talk in riddles and followed him out the door.

Why does the night cry?
Beneath a char colored marshmallow sky
Perfectly fitting the black-tied blind eyed
Soireed
Night by
Bye and bye

As an angry sky decried
Stratified and moody clouds pass by
They ask you to
Not ask why
Knowing you need to cry
Saw you hunch your shoulders
You were so very tense
You started to roar
Electric fly-by outcry

Then you tensely
Cocked your head to one side
Felt as empty as summer days
Where the light was so bright
You thought you would vanish
In a summer haze
Eminently either a flood or a roar
Helplessly, unpredictably more and more
And nothing more.  
And then-
It happened
It started to pour.

And  
As morning dawned
You understood why.
But it was too late
To reinstate
Bye and bye.

Once upon a time
On a fence in a garden somewhere
Worse than Mary’s lamb lost in the woods
She hasn’t slaughtered the poor lamb
And fed it to the wolves
As she’s been rumored to
I lied when I said
Fairytales don’t come true
Why would Mary be so cruel
To make them eat gruel
If my poem doesn’t rhyme
Must be a bad sign
Because my hearts on the line
Because you left me behind
I need to read between the lines
But all I think about is you
So, in the same way they shoot horses
Tell me it’s not true
Save me from playing the fool
Because I’ve never been here before
And I don’t know what to do
Without you.

This must be a fantasy
Because I no longer need you to be
I made you real
Carved you out of wood
I’m a master carver
I love what I do
I love my creations
You can fill in the last line
If you want to.

Don’t believe what I say
Because I’m still on the fence
Telling Lies
It’s not true
This is me pouring my heart out
First, it’s yes
Then it’s no
Then go away
Then stay

Now wouldn’t it be so unlike Mary
To slaughter the poor lamb
She’s not that cruel

I know I’m waffling
The fence is narrow
And I can’t stay here forever
But don’t send the sirens just yet
I only meant
I’m coming down from the fence
The end.

Andrea, here’s the update

Snow-white has run off with Happy after the Charming Prince to jail he went for kissing the girl without consent.

Wicked stepmother has cleared her name. The apple was a honey crisp, ate it herself, she couldn’t resist.
  
They rushed her to the ER. Pumped her stomach, sent her home in an Uber car.

Andrea Remember

how we rode our bicycles to the park on warm summer days. Mine a dull shade of green, clunky with fat tires. I think my father paid five dollars for it. You with a sleeker younger model. Didn’t matter. We were young, hopeful and complete with the moment.

how long has it been since we walked those hollowed high school halls, poofed hair, poofed pride, poofed egos? We thought we were something back then. The age of innocence, incense, and nonsense.

remember how we dutifully attended religious instruction every Thursday afternoon at Corpus Christi Church. Funny how some things stay with you and some things are on the fence.

remember the crowded lunchroom where our little clique met regularly at 11. I ate ice cream sandwiches every single day. I was size 9, you maybe no size at all, maybe zero or four.

remember the guy on the radio would say “especially you size nine.” No way would he get away with that today.  

you were always impeccably dressed.  A fashionista before anyone had ever heard the word. I especially remember that soft orange sweater you wore that looked so adorable on you.

Andrea Remember

all the boys we loved and left.

all the boys who left and broke our hearts. I remember you crying in the backseat of the car.

will we ever forget?

I remember the day you told me he had gotten her pregnant and they were getting married. Years later I met his son and he looked so much like him. Years later I met him, but it wasn’t the same.

we made a great team, you and me. You outgoing, gregarious and fun. Me quiet and shy. You were Penn and I was Teller. You always led the way and I always followed. I perhaps wanted to be you and you perhaps wanted to be me.

I almost didn’t pick up the day you called, not because I didn’t still love you. But a lifetime has happened since. How was I to fill you in, where was I to begin?

like a treasured yet comfortable keepsake, I had tucked you away. Distant memories flashed a do not disturb sign in my unsettled mind.

a snapshot, you were frozen frames in the reel of life. Young, long black hair flowing, petite and always from frame to frame in perpetual motion.

you often returned to me in dreams like the words to some lost but once favorite song.

we believed in fairytales then. We believed in love stories and happy endings. We believed we’d find our Prince Charming one day and live happily ever after.

perhaps my hesitation was a refusal to accept life’s changing seasons. You belonged to the spring not winter, the past not the future. Perhaps something more. Perhaps I knew in a split second my life would be changed forever.

perhaps I knew I would need to tell you how fairytales don’t always come true and you would need to tell me too.