We used to talk about
going
to Montana--escaping it all,
building a log cabin and
making a garden.  We were
going to hunt and fish for
food--make rugs and
hats from the fur.

But look at us now.
You live in the
city and drive a Volvo.
Goldfish in a glass bowl.
You even taught your
cat to walk on
a leash.
Can you see the
sky with all the smog?

I'm not any better.
Living under the bridge;
the only hunting I do is
for cans, the rare and
illusive
aluminum nickel, so that
I can buy *****.  

I walk down to the
river's edge and look up at
the expansive sky.
I close my eyes.
And when I open them, baby,
we're in Montana.

but I am old enough now
to have my fears comfort me;
and have the things I love
chain me in fear -

In "these days" I consider
it luck, if the the movie
I stream doesn't use F-word.

In the "good old days"
I'd get a back hand hit,
if I ever said S-word.

My grandma, would give a,
Biblical slam, if I muttered,
D-word.

Someone's fetching a switch.
if I called, my sister a B-word

Yet in the "old days" I
do recall my black
friend, braying like a
donkey, calling me H-word,
and we would snicker, when
I called him N-word.

I love him
I tell myself
I know that
We will be together forever
I don’t believe that
We could be separated
My thoughts tell me that
He’s the love of my life
Sometimes my heart lies and says
I could live an eternity
Without him
Like my friends say
“We’re perfect for each other”
And you can’t tell me
He’s not the one.

Now read from bottom to top.

Through the loop of time
Hereby I am disappearing
In here I am sinking
My death was a birth

I sat in a fly's eye
Like in a bathtub
Flew around waters
A quest for innocence

The walls were opening
Ancient voices talking
The fly buzzing day and night
I jumped out of her eye

To the bottom of a lake
Deep below all words
Where the ancients died
A death like a birth

I stay on that bottom
Among stubborn fishs
The light of life shines
In the color of innocence

Big moon is watching
as we are in each other’s arms.
Shining light on weeping willow,
our romantic hide away arms.
I lay down, look at you.
Hypnotized.
Big Charon is jealous of your view.
There are no ferrymen here
to cross souls over Pluto’s underworld rivers
Only surrounding loving moonlight’s auras.
Making our nights special.
Natural candlelight shivering with moving branches
as
Weeping willow sheds green tears.


Shell ✨🐚

On a falling leaf comes seasonal change, in the forest that grows in my imagination lives creativity. Here sadness inspires growth.

A stroke in time is a drop of
paint slowly dripping down the
canvas in my mind.

Memories breathe upon the shimmer of paint, my mind soaks up the details like a sponge as my hands bare the grind and process.

I can write what I paint, I can
paint what I write. No paint drop is forbidden and no poem is forgotten.

I have a river of ideas flowing free from my mind, I am a dreamer with a pencil in one hand and ideas in the other.

Sad me drifts on the Sea of dreams, as ideas fall like leaf's landing on the black mirror Sea, reflecting my thoughts as twinkling stars the shimmer underneath my boat is magical.

In a moment of vivid clarity
my reflection bursts into billions
of ideas, shooting across the endless sky like stars.

I woke.

©️ 2023 By Amanda Shelton