knitting with scissors you run with.
will get you there. but you can't buy a house. i'm sorry.
you might, miiiiight get the Edwardian Tudor for a mansion in false claim
but you keep your gaze, your weary gaze ....and slumber not so sweet, my sweet.
knitting with false gods will get you everything
but  Not the Other Thing
that gnaws at the substance of your gut
where the heart resides like a lion
addicted to Aesop Fables -
and dry humors that decimate with bounty
flooding the bleak with our windmills !
you and i are regardless.

knitting with shopping carts and dead batteries. washing ashore.
lick your lips at the foam
of our hysterical event. pitch a ******* tent.
and eat more stars than you came in with.

sew the hole
with a hole and
answer the phone sometimes,
****.

i ain't got all day but you might take your time
like an aspirin.

Do you mean the ones who live on the other side?
Clear across the ocean, two miles in from the tide?

The ones that live with little means or the ones that live like we were meant to?
That work, play, stress, fear, and cry, just like we do?

The men who were created from the earth and the women from Adam's rib?
The ones who fall asleep staring at the same galaxies wondering if we're all there is?

Do you mean the ones in straw houses near dirt roads?
That learn how to survive on the land and wear the clothes that they sew?

Others and me,
I'm sorry, pardon me... I'm just slightly confused
Because when I think of them, I think of me
I can't separate the two.

I’m going through a phase where I put glitter on everything
I went to a craft store and I bought like five different colors
And some brushes and glues so I could just paint ******* everything with glitter.
I don’t want to just paint some pencils and notebooks or some shoes and headbands,
I want to paint my **** walls with glitter
I want to paint YOUR **** walls with glitter
I want to sew glitter into your clothes
I want to sew glitter into your skin
Get a bunch of sewing needles dripping with shiny blood
Get red and sunshine under my fingernails
I want to have *** with a boy
(in his car or wherever, I don’t care)
and when we’re done, I’ll throw the ****** away and then toss some glitter in the air and cover his torso with sparkles
Because then no matter how fast he moves on
He’ll have to deal with me for just a little bit longer
And he’ll have to give me just one more thought,
at least when he’s washing the glitter down the drain of his shower.

Misogyny,
The hatered, objectification, and sexualization of women

His hands were too big for my eight year old body
My stomach turned in ways I could only describe as "icky"
I screamed until I could no longer feel any breath left in my lungs
"Stop it! Please! I don't like this game. Daddy stop!"
Time slows
Seeming like an eternity
Every touch was like a sparkler
Burning while tracing the path his fingers left on my body
When he was finally done
I gathered my thoughts and prayed to God to save me
When I went to the bathroom to clean up
I saw his handwriting on the mirror
Scrawled across it was a verse saying Hell was my only destiny
My body is not a bag of bones for you to play with and the burry
Poisonous words foam from your mouth like rabid dogs You pick pieces of my pride from your teeth
You think it’s okay to mess with women
To make them feel vulnerable
Just because you have a Napoleon Bonaparte complex That does not give you the right to steal our self-esteem To make up for the lack of your own
You say “Well maybe YOU shouldn’t have worn those slutty heals,
Or that dress,
Or your hair that way.”
You say “Maybe YOU should have done something
to avoid being a target.”
You say “Stop being so disrespectful.
I just wanted to see your ****.”
You have a real flair for excuses
So excuse me when I tell you
You will regret messing with a woman like me
You see, I keep my heart strapped to my steel-toed combat boots
And an army of mistreated women of speed-dial
We will hold you captive and make our war paint from your blood
As ransom notes fall from your mouth
With the words “I’m sorry” scrawled across them I hate to break it to you
But those words won’t sew up the open wounds you left us with
When you came in to *** in and steal our innocence
The thing you don’t seem to realize is
You might have taken our innocence
But that’s not what we are made of
We consume strength for breakfast,
Courage for lunch,
Wisdom for dinner,
And guys like you for a midnight snack.
We’re not just warriors
Were survivors
What you do to us doesn't define us
Were not broken
Were beautiful
And the more I think about it
You’re just dogs chained to a tree
While I’m the person
Who’s going to put your treachery to sleep.

Your colors are so heavy, how dare I, I cannot sleep. Years inundated under, through skin coils, marigold fields. Yellow crocuses, orange California poppies. Moors of cattle ranchers, yokes of oxen. Plasticine uber-confidence, silky white-skinned testubular thrice people harmonies. Blisses of contagion, contagious bliss. Wrists and incisors, tying down in a bedroom, waking up to live harps and choruses. You dance like you're so alive, but I'm so alive I can't dance. Or breathe. Or knead my fists of earthen wears, or sell my soul completely. I drove off a cliff last night, but the four foot fall ended neatly. The plateau authors my chance to sew my bright, beyond- my fortunes. But the hour before I fall asleep, seems to be the greatest torture.

Alone she weaves her tangled web
Twisting, tying, all amiss
and she sees not the darkened threads
that twine about her wrists.

A single light in a darkened room
one window one mirror, little sight
to the world outside her bower wall
Blurred separation between day and night.

Her head swirls with tangled threads
forgotten thoughts and anguish low
the monotony of a thousand days
left to weave and wind and sew

Sighs escape now from her lips
those ruby lips, once known by kings
now known to only lament and sobs
for what she lost in love-lorn pining.

"Faithless have I been, O father."
she breathes at morning prayers
as pearl beads slip through milk white hands
and dust hangs about the air.

When all is done, and mass is sung
she retires to her cell
once again to sew and weave
her rich and long, sad, tale.

First she finds the pale while thread
and then she finds the blue
And quickly, with her shaking hands
weaves the face she once knew.

She weaves the gown of green she wore
on the fated wedding day
and adds the flaxen hair he praised
When laced with the flowers of May.

At last she finds the golden thread,
but pauses, silent, the room a mess
she lays the golden spool aside
and kneels before the long locked chest.

With trembling hands, and gleaming eyes
she lifts the lid, on the life she once had
A rush of air and dust and mould
and feeling, at once, joyful and sad.

First she takes the bright blue gown
and then she takes the green,
finds the jewels her mother wore
it's all where it should have been.

Within the dusty corner dark,
the twilight fading, sun going down
she sees the gleam of gold once more
and takes from the depths her golden crown.

In the flickers of the candlelight
the jewels they sparkle once again,
And all the memories come rushing back
From childhood days to the kingdom's end.

Tears are falling from her eyes
when again she takes the golden thread
and reverently she weaves the crown
upon the figure's head.

At last she's cut the final string
and takes a step back from the frame
she sees her life before her eyes,
and feels the tears come again.

There Arthur stands, in kingly garb
His soft eyes staring back at her
and in his arms, her younger self,
she remembers, how happy they once were.

To her left stands Lancelot
his shining armor gleaming bright
his pleading gaze finds her again
with the love that turned to blight.

Between these two men she still stands
Two heros, once in brotherhood bound
She chose the Knight above absent King
and three hearts were trampled into the ground.

Memories swirl about her head
as she takes the knife flashing flint,
and drives the blade into the silk
Till every thread once whole, lies rent.

I got a ruby secret
I keep it in my pocket
Only Zulu knows about it
So I put him in a prison
He thinks he's getting out soon
But he doesn't have a clue
He's just a little rodent
But he thinks he's a Raven!
He's in love with a prophet
So now he's on a conquest
But I planned his execution
He doesn't know know about it
He's always getting roasted
Thinks he's a stallion
He's really just a rodent
But he knows my little secret
I tried to sew his mouth shut
But he had an objection!
Thinks he's the president
Shh.. "He's really just a rodent"
I gave him a promotion...
So now he is my magician
He just keeps on escaping
He's drunk again, talking ****
Hey Zulu! Where are you running to?
Everybody is looking for you!

if i was a girl i wouldn’t shave i’d be a tomboy ballerina with upper body muscles maybe a **** or surfer girl smell a little subtle i’d be tough learn to take a punch but i’d also be fragile sensitive intelligent i’d dress down like female ducks gray beige brown yet wear thongs boots bikinis heals girl stuff if i was a girl i’d be freaked out by ******* and even more freaked out by menopause depressed i lost my wetness if i was a girl i’d flash *** crotch drive boys wild be a complete nymphomaniac **** until i found the right guy he’d be strong gentle patient caring with a cute ***** i don’t care how big if i was a girl i’d learn to give blow jobs really good acquire a taste for ***** and play that skill as my trump card if i was a girl i’d find a job roll up my sleeves be a hard worker impress my managers become a manager quit i would find another type of work maybe a writer painter if i was a girl i wouldn’t compete with men i’d simply be more creative smarter if i was a girl i’d want to give birth as scary profound as that might be i’d want to be a mom a nurturing loving attentive mom i’d garden cook sew clean stand by my man my children devoted to home and hearth if i was a girl i’d cry a lot but not in front of anyone if i was a girl i wouldn’t want to become an old woman surrounded by other old women taking care of sick old men or no old men if i was a girl i’d want to die instantly in an accident or in bed reaching ****** age 82 if i was a girl

I stroke your skin like a leaf
and hold it up to the light,
allowing fingertips

           to go slow from root to tip.
           to sew the lining where two unlike materials meet.
           to code this friction into tactile intuition...

And yet--

                                                      I am afraid.

With this and all acts of temptress divination.

                                                I, I...am afraid.

I want to read our intersection.

I want
            to see               in your life-line.
                        myself.


First, I will find the highways of your pulse-

watch as they
                           give way to country roads.

Dissecting life-ways into bi-ways

where I can go slow from

root                         to                             tip.

                                rise
Feel the land
                                                       and fall.

from grass
to hallowed knoll-

Throw me dirt and blow out your windows.
                           
Take me slow
                                        down the side roads.

Next, I consult
the creases of your open fist.

Gone are the fine blue lines
                                                         -the tomographic
Heat, and its rhizomatic
                                              beat.

Instead, you hold me in this underpass

[the clamminess and opposite-land of passion and speed]
                                          where
                             [shadows cling and relationships keep].

You hold my hand.

To leave, and blast!
                                                 - to stay, I will need a map.

Hide me here long enough to find beauty
in the fine etched lines
that paint the walls in broad swoops of graffiti:
those cryptic tag-lines that advertise your witty, poetic celebrity.

from finger to wrist

                   arc
             the      to the thumb

the pulse that could run
on and on.

[our] distant reflection
                            -a mirage in the rising sun.
where

the earth line cuts off the air line

to fuse the heart-              and the head
                                                            ­                    -line.

It is the will

The will to be
The will to give
The will to love
The will to live

That is all there is

Sew and lash
Are you the wind?
Sew and lash
Are you the sail?

You do not believe
You cannot see it

But neither can you see the wind

She dances without music
She can hear what she needs
She is so sure of being herself

But her sails beg for new seeds

The will to be loved
The will to be hurt
The will to cry once more

Whose sails will you fill today?

Sew and lash
Are you the wind?
Sew and lash
Are you the sail?

"
"nor is this a fact," nor is my syntax the 'true.'
i can't use quotations in the way i'd like to,
to allow the paradoxical to seep through
in the sly act of revising 'this' honestly--
merging truth with falsity, to silently see--
grammar become a means to shatter certitude

"i can't tell the 'truth' with these ["i can't tell the 'truth'
with these{...} very words"] very words"; i really can't...
it's somewhat unfair to communicants, this rant.
let me bolster your trust by not telling it slant:
in fact, it's not poetry, not from this angle.
maybe when you read, this 'this' will be poetic?
meh, i'm relying on telling, not showing. so...
quiet's often better than such entanglement

but this is not about value, it's about truth.
sincerely, i doubt i'll keep those two separate

perhaps... if you pretend i'm a prolix parrot,
who happened through some acosmic accident
to be the transmigrated daimon-soul of Sappho,
or Hypatia, Gertrude Stein or Plath even...
(yeah, i'm like a Cretan for going on): they weren't,
'your gobbledygoo,' or 'Sweet sweet sweet sweet sweet tea.'
stripped bare at the Caesareum, being murdered
for the crime of godlessness or female wisdom
spoken in the scapegoat-hungry rule of Rome...
this is not what they were, not the whole truth, at all
and though from winds of ****** she spoke in verse
that her vast poetic fame 'was no delusion:'
and that, 'dead, I won't be forgotten,' i fail,
painfully fail, to trace into a verbal womb
the seeds of those that transformed all, yet now entombed...
for to remember them in me is to revise,
reduce, sadly in that poetic untruth found...

"this" is a gestalt, i guess i'll have to say,
a "figure-ground," a floating 'shape' in some context,
one that you embody too, somehow, not in text;
even through a distant sharing, it's realized
(hold onto the random metaphors you find,
they're probably better than what's in my mind)
and to share this with you now, to hypocritize,
it's lunacy. i mean, the moon, the poetic moon
is not a meme, is not a custom, is not a poetic fact,
in fact, it's not in this poem, and if it were--
being televised with some authentic ontic pixel-space--
here between the lines augmented mOOn for you
it would prove how unpoetic the poem is, and how
very true the moon is, if it were here, right quoteunquote"here"
ineffably punctuated
            -- well, let me try
and fail again to make Erasmus proud:
the quotes would hang about romantic beams
parentheses to echo adjectival spectra streams,
an underscore horizonal and asterisks for stars.
but not these * asterisks,
or those_types of underscores--
better (parentheses) and far more "quothy" "quotes"--
the punctuation would literally ^punctuate^ the sky of my text.
time would stop.                                                            ­                   and that would be poetic.
you don't need to breathe, even; not this 'you,' in this moment
(the one i've failed to capture):
'i will put you on the moon' i say,
'and sit you buoyant by the buddha-astronaut, who,
in answer to the question sprinkles moondust in slow motion,
symbol-guiding realness, my "finger" for solution,
to present to you again, what is present to me now.
the Russian names, the rest of names, the 'face' some say cries, "sweetly,"
as if we could use the moon's sympathy,
or as if we should feel it for the white rock that elliptically defines us,
dances to our rhythm, (the tides, the ****** huntress)
the one that taught us to dance,
the one that taught us to yearn darkly in surreal eclipse
more hopefully for the chance of cataclysmic doom
some Greeks thought it was a disco ball, after enough *****, that Dionysian night,
some Greeks thought it was a disc,
like a coin that flipped just right
to match it's dance about our pearoid earth
in synchrony's anachronistic mirth.
i would lick each Bacchant clean to learn the mysteries of poem
i would lick each Bacchant clean. period. no music or noema known
this 'poem' is not a "poem"
in a very real sense
i did not make this,
nor did i compose or create it.
if you're not following it's ok, i'm barely there myself -- i'm trying to refer to...
the elliptical shape that certain publishers use
to refer to fundierung
the double-founding,
reversibility,
the flesh of passive
the flesh of active
enfleshed perceiving
the common meaning we contribute
but can't attribute to any source we express!
(however distorted) after the fact, yes! --
either all that, or the meaning you get from "this" act
doubly-enfolded, with two pairs of hands kneading the same dough,
two pairs of eyes weaving the same lOOm,
another Indra's net to sew,
in meaning you give now,
the techne of your reader's mind
and the meaning i'd wish to know,
if i were still writing what you are reading,
doing my best to ignore the title
and to write something worthwhile...

i do wish i could show it to you the way i love it in your own poetry,
but you would know that, already, without my love

without my unpoetic lack of facts, my rhymes.
free of poems, free to flout the literary sea.
free to be unwordly, and let the contradictions fly
"

Pieces
Fragments
So many shreds

Broken
Shattered
Rotten and dead

But if I take all these messes
and sew them together
Maybe I'll create something swell

My hate and my stresses
I've harbored forever
And my brain isn't feeling too well

If I collect all my sickness,
and tears that I've spilt
Petals of my heart
Fall apart
And they wilt
But I sew these along
with my fear
and my guilt
The friendships destroyed
right after they were built
All the scraps of my days
and my rotten ways
will be sewn into a terrible quilt

I am going to sew my soul with the trace of your voice that trembles inside the medulla of my dorsal spine.....

Climbing in the scorching heat of sun,
Sweat tickling down, I put my hair in a bun.
“I can do it, I have to do it!” , I kept chanting,
Bone tired, at every step was left panting.
There was no scope for looking back,
I had come a long way, with everything pack.
Still the destination was a long way from there,
Wondered what if it leads me nowhere?

Albeit being alone, it was a race,
All the obstacles, individually had to face.
Had been served betrayal and left wincing,
The shudder of rage and pain is still pinching.
But I have to complete this journey on my own,
For the incepting seed, I myself had sown.
The crooked and rough road bit my feet,
Still I ink what I feel on this little sheet.

When it is dark, I feel fear,
Slowly down the cheek comes the only tear.
Till miles away can hear just my voice,
Realisation dawns that this is the fruit of my choice.
I garner all the courage in me,
Up high my goal with a smile I then see.
If I am able to climb this one,
Maybe I don’t have to further run.

So with the morning a new hope comes,
Positivity dissolves the insignificant fear lumps.
I begin my journey once again,
With the faith that this time efforts won’t go in vain.
As I come closer to my ambition,
Travels in me a new alien sensation.
I feel lighter at heart as my soul relaxes,
For this view I’ll pay all kinds of taxes.

I have finally climbed this mountain of life,
I have achieved for what I had strife.
The view from up here takes my breath away,
As amongst the overwhelming emotions I sway.
Tears trickle down my face and then a full blown sob,
I have got it all back that was once from me rob!
The purity and serenity  of this white expanse,
Has finally provided me with the ultimate chance.


I able to comprehend the gospel truth of this place,
I wondered if below there is any such trace.
All the pathos one can aspire for,
Here you get, be it sweet or sour.
I see how the mountain stretch till the horizon,
It tells me how much today I have won.
The clear sky above gives room to my thought,
The dense forests below tell me of the battles I had fought.

Th altitude tells the worth of what I have achieved,
My breathing brings life to what I have never believed.
It all is actually in the mind,
You decide how you want your life to be bind.
Nobody can take your dreams from you,
Because this fabric you know how you sew.
Nobody else has the same information,
This is you and you are your creation.

After I live in the moment there,
Pops in my head the question, “Now where?”
Life is a climb, it is a mountain range,
You climb one up, comes another strange.
Ups and downs are part of life,
Flower at one end, other with a knife.
Nothing can take you down, so never whine,
Never stop climbing, and everyday you’ll shine!

-Jahanvi Goyal
10/05/2014

Wooden spool,
Machine carved sculpture,
Serpentine curves,
A **** shape, a strange stage,
For the the white cotton
Common thread
That binds all of us,
You to me specially.

Sew me a white glove,
I'll provide the finger.
Sew me a white shirt,
I'll supply beating rhythms of a
Bountiful, excited chest.

Sew me a white sailor hat,
White sailor tunic and pants,
Which I will hold with two hands,
On leave, dancing in Manhattan,
Returning to you

With that glove,
Cloaked in royal cotton white,
I will tie you to me by
Signing my name to a
Declaration of Forever Keep and Inter-
Dependence

Whisper
Drop peonies in my eardrums
Sew violets under my skin
Take all my fragrance in and
Exhale
Pave a path of fuchsia petals
We’ll share baths with chrysanthemums, lilies, hydrangeas
And crown ourselves in wreaths of all the roses.

Jealousy
Is hell
Because I do not enjoy
Myself,
And well
I enjoy all of you-
You
With your smooth moves
Perky and peachy attitudes
Teach me
To be as sweet
As you-

Beautiful
Can be cruel
Not like it is on tv,
Or beside me
Everyone shining,
Smiling,
While my smile feels
Like hiding
Under this wax mask
A painted canvus
Of pale and black
Don't look at me
I'm a heartattack
A bad act-
Broken glass
Of a painted doll

I am a leo lioness
Right?
Righteous-
Your hieness
Sparkles on my eyelids
But you see
I have enough pride
To hide it-
Its priceless,
Really hillarious
Sometimes I feel
Like a bad *****
But I'm none of this
I am the pray,
The gazelle in the grass
But I am also the lion
Waiting to attack myself

Because you see,

Jealousy
Is hell,
I am the lion
I am the gazelle
I am heaven and hell
In a vessle of myself
See what you will,
Your critiques are nothing
My only enemy is me
My only savior is me
I am a lion
But I am also
A sheep

Don't look at me

Sometimes I cry in the mirror
Blink my mascara tears,
Blurry mess-
Can't fit in my old dresses
Tearing apart at the seams,
Literally
Filthy
Famish
Crawled out of my skin
And made some bad habits
Declining wealth
Declining health
Laughing as the scales tip-
After all I am a person,
Not permanent
Why should I care

Oh,
But I do

I do when I look at you
You with your talented hands
With your spider lashes
And good moods
Teach me to feel
As good
As you
My lipstick smears and screams
As the paintings on my face mock me
So will my body,
My body thats bruised
And missused
Perfume to cover the *****
They'll see my cherry lips move
But they won't hear me talking
Its perfect,
The mask of confidence
My incompetence
Is a perfect fit

No, really

Its lovely
When I wear it,
People love me!
Because people think
I love myself
No
Jealousy
Is hell,
Beacuse I do not
Love myself
I love everybody else,
Even the ones who
Say I am full of it,
Selfish leo,
Selfish lion
Exaggerated ego-
Winking eyelids
Sparkle,
Wings to my forehead-
I flaunt
What I don't want,
Because you want me to
You want me
To love me
Like you do

All of you

I remember the words
From my mother,
Jealousy
Is not a pretty color-
Its crimson red,
Exposed
Like blood,
I've had to sew it up
No-
Don't look here
Not at my guts,
Look at my eyelids
Are these not enough?!?!
These cherry lips
Tell you to sush
Less of a lioness,
More of a cub
I know
I am my own predator
My own pray

I am

All of the above

you just took it.
like it was the last piece of gum
like you could return it if it didn't fit
or sew some cute buttons on it to make it look better.
but that was mine.
and I liked it just the way it was ,
it didn't need altering.
I didn't mind at the time because
I loved you.
I loved you.
I loved you.
loved.

you play
finger puppets
in the black sky
warm
unperturbed
little worms
eating
hot soil
and foot

“I’m going to
eat this star.
Actually, I’m going
to eat them all.
I’m awfully
hungry.”

you find the
nutella I hid
under the rock
and dip the
puppets in

“Did you know
I sew?
I sewed these
puppets.
Even
the little black
eyes and the
teensy red
buttons. All in
the patience
this sky taught
me.”

your mouth
is dry and
you search
for lake water

“I swear, it’s
so hard being
a fish in
Arizona.”

the desert
agrees

once
we prayed for
rain and danced
naked in
the sand
now it’s
night and
the sand went
to sleep
now it’s night
and the stars
are disks

“Lord, take
me now. I’m a
painter, a
painter without
color.”

the act is
over
the shield
put down
and the night
swallows
disks
as you lick
chocolate paint
from your
fingers

“Goodnight, friend.
Sleep well, fish.
Until tomorrow, moon.”

your body
fresh
black
the emerald
of color

they found him walking along the freeway
all red in
front
he had taken a rusty tin can
and cut off his ******
machinery
as if to say --
see what you've done to
me? you might as well have the
rest.

and he put part of him
in one pocket and
part of him in
another
and that's how they found him,
walking
along.

they gave him over to the
doctors
who tried to sew the parts
back
on
but the parts were
quite contented
the way they
were.

I think sometimes of all of the good
***
turned over to the
monsters of the
world.

maybe it was his protest against
this or
his protest
against
everything.

a one man
Freedom March
that never squeezed in
between
the concert reviews and the
baseball
scores.

God, or somebody,
bless
him.

She opened the door of the gallery and there it was, there it lay, before her, nearly perfect: her exhibition. The opening was an hour or so away and there were, naturally, a few adjustments to make, but in essence it was right, and as she walked to the middle of the rectangular space (to survey the full effect ) she felt held by the quiet wonder of it all; that she had made all this and with ‘the quality control of nature’s accidents’. He’d written those words some years previous when a solo show was but a dream she would enter between sleep and wakefulness, when she would think of the west coast of Scotland and the poetry of its seashore, the infinite variety in the seashore strand between sand and sea. It was such natural accidents of form and transformation by nature’s hand that had guided her imagination into rightness and towards this exhibition.

At breakfast that morning she had come to the table dressed to greet her audience, and for the first time as a featured artist in a festival of some repute. She had felt the quiet joy of choosing the right combination of clothes to be the public person she had now become. He had loved the new dress she had bought to clothe her gallery persona. She had been conscious of his eyes following the lines this frock so generously drew around her body’s shape and form, the way the material fell across her *******, lay smoothly on her thighs.  It was a very grownup frock and with the jacket and scarf made her look purposeful, confident. His looking made such confidence possible, his admiration and what she could tell was that coming together of love and passion that, her being dressed in this formal way, so often evoked.

In the gallery she had worried over the lighting, climbed up the metal ladder with the fluffy green glove thoughtfully provided to enable those small adjustments of direction to be made on a hot spotlight. There were four large pieces flanking a corner that had embossed lines running across their surfaces, lines that needed oblique light to reveal the shadowing of this effect of swirls and marks of a retreating tide on sand.  Two smaller pieces needed rearranging; she’d placed them, late the evening before, in the wrong sequence. Poster boards were to be filled with her poster and put outside on the pavement by the gallery entrance. She opened the main door, a very green door with its top and bottom bolts and black-painted handle ring. The street outside was a welcoming mix of 18th and 19th C buildings, hardly one the same, the sort of three storey buildings that had simple plaques prominently placed into the brickwork from a distant past when proud builders would describe a structure’s use or ownership with a title and date. By ten o'clock this one-way street was lined with parked cars, but now there was little traffic. It was a quiet sunny morning in a market town.

‘Don’t mind the dog, ‘ he said. ‘He’s used to coming in here.’ It was a long-haired verging on the side of scruffy sort of dog, used to keeping its own counsel, probably used to being taken to exhibitions. ‘Just popping in,’ he said, this man who, and she couldn’t help noticing this, seemed to hold much in common with his dog; the long, but retreating on the forehead, hair, slightly scruffy from the want of a comb or a good brush (like his dog), he had dressed without much thought (because who dressed thoughtfully to walk a dog?), and that’s what he was doing, walking the dog and, seeing the Gallery open, thought he ought to look in.

Giving him her brightest smile, she embarked on performing the artist’s music of conversation, that score holding gentle melodies and welcoming harmonies. Although she had become quite practised in talking to her audience there was always the challenging inquiry that would catch her off guard.

‘Well, are you finished with the seashore now?’ said the man with the look-alike dog. For a moment a half dozen possible answers seemed possible. ‘Could one ever finish with something so extraordinary and various as that hinterland between land and sea?’ No, that was seemed a mite critical and clever. ‘Oh, I’ve hardly started’ was tempting, but rather smug and too confident by half. ‘I just love the seaside’ would probably do, as no one else was listening. ‘Merleau-Ponty says the complexity of the seashore is a metaphor in the search for self-identity’. She did wonder what he’d make of that, but finally decided on ‘It’s such a rich source of ideas and images I’m sure there’s a lot more I want to do with the subject.’

”It’s all the same colour”. She’d had that one a few times. ‘When I’m on the beach I’m fascinated as much by the texture and shape of what I see  and feel than the colour. I like the subtlety of the colours in the sand. I think my pieces – and she waved her hand towards what she had titled her Sand Marks pieces – show so many of the different shades of colours you find on the seashore.’

Those Sand Marks, a collection of variously dyed and marked two metre plus linen-lengths, dominated one wall of the gallery. They floated a few centimetres from the white wall, and when people moved past them the slight shadows cast by the linen lengths seemed to ripple in the human-made breeze. She could never look at them without thinking how their very accidental making – binding a linen cloth with inner placed objects and using the natural dye of tea – could create such absorbing results. She would follow with her gaze one of the linen-lengths from bottom to top (or top to bottom) and find herself walking on the wet sand of a Scottish beach, overwhelmed by the clear light and space with only the sea sound surrounding. He would tell her, had told her often, how moved, how affected he had been when he first saw them hung. To him, these ‘marks’ carried an essence of this aesthetic she now owned and for which had become recognised.

Even on this, her first day, she had been visited by a small number of admirers and supporters, some travelling distances to see her work with the aura of the original, a truer view than that possible on the back-lit screen of their computer monitors. Ladies who loved textiles, the containment and privacy to sew and stitch secured in their busy lives. These friendly and smiley women (the comfortable side of sixty) understood something of what she was doing here, and perhaps imagined themselves as thirty-somethings walking Scottish beaches free from children and the relentless list-making of house and home and occupation, able to create imaginary worlds of marks and folds, pleats and textures. Full of enthusiasm for the medium, what they perhaps didn’t have was the skill of seeing, a skill she had grown up with, had always owned to some degree: found, fostered, honed, developed into a second-nature activity of always looking.

There would be the occasional brief lull when the gallery was empty or close to empty, as though needing the space to come up for breath after being occupied by people and their movement. She would then walk slowly around the long well-lit room viewing her pieces and her arrangements of pieces from different angles. She would look at his poems placed antiphonally between her work, commissioned for her catalogue, her book of images of the sea shore paired with, incorporating even, her made pieces. She’d chosen a favoured few she’d felt caught the essence of being in the sea’s company, in the sand and shore’s domain. Like everything he did it had been undertaken with the utmost intensity of purpose. She saw him now in her mind’s eye with his notebook sitting against rocks, paddling in the great shallow pools, walking head down along the tide line, those bright days on a Scottish island and before, before on that ellipse of beach by the fishing station.

He would tease out an idea formed from a little motif of words, perhaps like the very music that was his private territory: here, alone, apart we are marked by the tide’s turn. Yes, we are marked by being solitary in such unconfining space, the marks at our feet become the lines, the mounts, the fingers, those interruptions, breaks and blockages found in the tridents, chains and crosses of the art of palmistry. We read the seashore as a psychic oracle reads the hand, hoping, as Kathleen Jamie so rightly says, for the marvellous. And marvellous it so often is.

Standing in this gallery was like being gathered about by the seashore. It was a short jump in the imagination’s miracle to hear the soft breathing of the sea, the wind caressing the face, the warmth of the afternoon sun on the freckled cheek.

See how those we love are transformed
when the sea is their only boundary

a figure stands before a sand bar
in a crescent of water left by the tide
an affecting geometry of solitude
. . .

These words had always stopped her in her perambulating tracks. She thought of her son, far distant on the beach, at rest for once, still, motionless within the confluence of the elements of the beach, at the epicentre of her gaze, all things flowing to and from his tiny, far-away figure.

it's a lot harder than you think.

you have to be from the South, like me
or the North, like I want to be
or somewhere entirely more interesting than Dallas
and you have to have the ginger gene
(because there's no way I'm having
blonde children)
and you have to like aquariums
specifically the seahorses

don't wear too much cologne or
pastels and don't ever smell like
frat parties, barbecue, or beer
and DON'T ever say that ballet is stupid.

you have to ask before we choose
the restaurant because I don't eat Italian
or Thai or Greek or Subway
and you have to hold the door open for me
even if we're in my own room.

listen to my monologues for class
and rattled-off to-do lists
as you lazily push the basket
and I grab it from you because you're going too slow
and mockingly call you a princess

know that I am busy, VERY busy
in fact so busy that I may not see you
because I am an independent woman
and there are stories to be built, dragons to be slayed,
and there are things my hands must finish
before I can start on holding yours

make fun of my Crocs
and the way I hiccup out of nowhere
and the days that I don't have time to eat breakfast
so I bring a Fuzzy's cup to class
full of off-brand Cap'n Crunch
shoving handfuls into my mouth between
snide remarks about Morrison
while you laugh inside your eyes
about what a cynic I pretend to be

hate me when I tell you
that I don't need a hug
and that I'd rather be dating Hemingway
or that I have rehearsal
painting cities, building histories

ignore my comments about you needing to shave
or on how I think I'd rather I'd never get married
and live the rest of my days writing stories
with organic vegetables and rainy days and
walks in the Carolinas

call me a ***** when I'm being one
(because I know I am about 97% of the time)
and tell me you would help me
if I would ever let you
whether it be Christmas lights or
physics lab or the gnawing pain
of lonely lonely lonely

let me read my books, propped up on
my pillows and nestled into a glaze
and let me have my expectations
of Rochesters and Darcys
even though I say I don't
and when I have to sew a blanket for class
and I say the stitching looks awful
tell me no, it doesn't
because I desperately want you
to know that my favorite color is lavender
and I love watermelon and stationery and
online shopping at 2 am
and I desperately want to know
your elementary school, your favorite song,
your middle name
even though I pretend I don't

and sometimes when I say I'm right
and you know that I know I'm wrong
just pick up your spirals and turn to leave,
then stop and say
"my favorite book is Gatsby, too."

and smile and call me crazy.

it's a lot easier than you think.

consume us,
oh, pools of darkness around.
your bottomless ponds
look back at us,
don't they?

let us climb up your nest,
and sew your threads.
your golden crown
will never waver,
your highness.

use us,
destroy us,
make us your puppets, materials, playthings,
anything.

we are yours.

The sting of my verses will sew the woeful indiscretions
of what got curb bounced on the beat or the worst vocals
that you rhymed incoherently that were
                                                     collected in lyrical a doggy bag.

I will not fall on a sword of those that ignore my verse
that fall on the page, do you know why I write in diverse
motions? Do you know my demons the voices that verse
inwards on the white of my skull? my reflections reverse.

The sting of my verses will sew the woeful indiscretions
of what got curb bounced on the beat or the worst vocals
that you rhymed incoherently that were
                                                     collected in lyrical a doggy bag.

But excrement can be rhymed in free verse, I'm doing this
for me but I don't linger to impress! I word for my emotions
are a hurricane and I'm the eye calm but I swim in the abyss.

The sting of my verses will sew the woeful indiscretions
of what got curb bounced on the beat or the worst vocals
that you rhymed incoherently that were
                                                     collected in lyrical a doggy bag.

I'm vocalized to those that don't sniff the arses of poor vocals
linger on excellence not the excrement of poorly woven yokels.
Lyrics of verse are meant to move not stagnate silently,
they are meant to be lyrics that move the emotion violently.

*"Weave the best version of you, not the diluted verse,

So much time used up
On something I thought
Would be lifelong
That was murdered by the creation.

So much time used up
Filling my voids
Bandaging my wounds
And avoiding my heart.

So much time used up
Having sleepless dreams
Eating anxiety soup
and trying to break my mind.

So much time used up
Washing my face in tears
Putting on the makeup
That masked my dead face.

So much time just,
Used up.

Then you.

So much time used up
Listening to that voice
Soothing as the breeze
Scary as the ocean.

So much time used up
Letting our souls out
Talking about anxiety meals
And holes barely stitched together.

So much time used up
Learning all about your heart holes
Stitched with gut wretches
As she made every hole.

So much time used up
Grabbing your hands
And showing you how to sew
And we sewed each other up

So much time used up
After we realized we shared
The same string to sew our hearts
and now they connect forever.

So much time used up
Listening to our heart string tunes
Play a new song
Of soul love

So much time used up
Laying head on stomach
And afternoon laughs
Sprinkled with our breaths

So much time used up
On dreams of you
Anxiety soup isn’t
Served here anymore.

So much time used up
On never having enough
Time with you,
My love.

I wake up every morning with this feeling of dread
Can't escape this groggy feeling left in my head
So I continue to just lay here in my bed
I don't even get up to eat I just sleep here instead
I lay and decompose as my skin starts to shed
Wasting away all the blood that I have bled
My arms dangling off the side drenched in red
My existence is pointless I might as well be dead
I don't care about anything I'm unmotivated this feeling embed
Sew my eyes and my mouth shut with needle and thread
Tie me down and pump my stomach with meds
Take a gun to my skull and fill me with lead
My sin is sloth you haven't misheard and you havent misread
I'm not okay don't believe those lies you've been fed