ELSE

Cast aside all delusions,
All royalty of brown, murky thought
Swamped in wanting, starving want,
To the token marble statues
Fawning in the well.

Beautiful, are you, where
Phrases should be full, curved,
Naturally dangling, or perhaps not,
Running fast and dark, dark blue.

You are someone, not like them,
Or anyone who might say such-
Not even you, then!
You are something completely, entirely
ELSE.

Mourning

What secrets lay forbidden and smiling,
Says the far back, the heart of hearts,
Spread, arms wide and clumsy,
So lushly open, yet mysterious?

A shy, shy matter- just eager
Running with the fount of life even
As it overflowed and gave
This all her bold, bold pleasure.

Now, to apologize,
To be shy, quiet
Once more.
The phantom of that happy
Place, she isn't ready to run away.

Becoming, Permanently

I live- but a ghostly reflection,
A phantom body
Of what I could be (and am).

I thrive- but an endless struggle
Beneath the clearest understanding,
The sheer clarity,
Like a sky on the sky.

I search- but a puzzling treat
To what I already know-
To savor, to redraw the choices.

I am a moving magic,
An ongoing revolution- to define,
Redefine my change, I say!

I am not perfect, but I,
I am to stay this way.

Chattering Essay

Spices-the magicians pieced
All the sensations, left as keys
To a sister of the soul-
Thrown in arcs, circumventing
What seems to be a point.

Concentric? A bit accented
In the illusion particular,
The allusion circulating-
One of the old breed.

Yet, so far from the origin
We sit and watch,
Stand and clap
For one of ours- at best
A collector, magpie-plumed.

Exposed

Right at my hands,
My mind has two halves
Pulled open- to rust, to mingle,
To suffocate each other (briefly).

The mysteries only tantalize,
Tempt at some endless possibility
Reveling in a dance of the dark.

In the light, all is quiet,
The chandelier still swings
A melancholy creak-
Another closed door lost.

Cold Journey

These questions were once answers
As answers, again, become questions-
Infinite knowledge confines- lost
In small boxes, one by one.

The divine leap is far away-
To dream beyond a plotted field,
Beyond the milky river, leaking
Such intricacies, fancies
Need not, yet needed- we follow.

Soon, we are beyond the doubters,
Lost voices calling us back, darkly
To the endless circles, the company
Of mirrors in right and wrong.

Infinity

When the designated end is lost,
A simple vagary misplaced,
Beginnings begin, and
Endings end, in between.

At the last of the light,
Of the true, thin, black line-
Between is's(and "is not"'s)-
Yet another start.

Lady in the Moon

Sweet Lady, that muse
Who wears no shoes,
Yet tiptoes the clouds
Upon soft rains;

She comes with tides
And coldest day,
When twinkling stars
Are led astray.

She longs to swim the salty sea,
To tread the furthest shore,
Far away from the end of sky,
Far from her front door.

The tallest waves but grace her gate,
The highest peaks but pins,
Her gown of midnight, breath of dew
Sigh as our world spins.

There, the stories, ours to hold,
And rarely, Lady sees
Such a tale in her night sky
And minds so bright as these.

They are ours, here below,
Waiting, just the same,
Like Lady, like you
Who turns this page,
To give a tale a name.

Lady, the muse for many a pen
Shares a mortal's dream:
In this world of endless sights,
Hold all days in esteem.

Where Ideas Begin

No leaves do dance upon my palm,
I hold no song of elves.
Yet human voices rouse it sing;
(They let go of themselves).

The silk thread sky, the marble moon
Empty of their glow.
Only dreams do whispers fill
Of sunsets staining slow.

(This world of magic,
Our world of lore.
And all I've told,
I've seen before.)

Coral sunrise, the murky seas
Where no fish blinks an eye,
Feeding on the broken tap
At the end of sky.

(I've seen this happen,
It's happened before.
Perhaps each day,
Perhaps of yore.)

This tap, it dries upon the sun,
And then they'll wake and see.
On a bed of fading rose,
There the riches be.

"This is the song I've heard before.
These lines known, there will be more."

Implied Exchange

A picture buys a thousand words,
A purchase made with pride.
To find a struggle, left and right
For the image framed inside!

For words do run so far away
Once they leave the mind,
Gluing themselves to broken hearts
And promises to find.

At last, each word:
A collage,
And its own to rearrange.
Why buy words, a pictureful
When all the world exchange?

Great Spirit

Stride the world with humble tread
That shadows all your woe,
The moon does shine in deepest night
That arms a broken bow.

Your troubles are those far ahead,
So far, they fall behind.
Follow those that plead your path
Like bitter melon rind.

Touch, then, touch our lives,
Your pride upon the sash.
That window of the darkest soul,
That shard among the ash.

Half the Brilliance

Those silly notions,
Dancing upon old drums
To mere rhythms that slap
On the fine mesh air!

Fancy did finger, surely,
Strum the wisps of will
Til they frayed and waxed
Like old sailor's knots.

If only, if only
They were smooth
And not splintered,
Like all the other planks
Where I chanced a plunge.

Volumes of Fantasy

A traveling friend from long ago
Came bound with cotton thread.
Full of words, he spoke of spells
And left with gold instead.

Still, I wandered, still half blind
To where he'd really gone.
It wasn't he that I looked for,
But what he'd come upon:

A world where people lived for love
And died for what was good,
Where money came with silly names
As silly treasures should.

Where evil found a second chance
If it looked hard enough,
Where homes were built on love alone
And fairy tales were tough.

How hard I looked,
How free I felt
To be bound by magic spells!
To wash the hand that fate had dealt
And all the wishing wells!

The traveler came bounding back,
Still bound, but painted bold.
Telling me this place to be
If dreams were turned to gold.

*Inspired by my Harry Potter reading experience

On of the Shoulders of Giants

Standing on the slopes of boulders,
Spirits heavy and minds long gone,
The sun becomes a measured shadow,
I wonder what I stand upon.

Beauty beyond and pleasure close,
I look, entranced by the musty view
From the silent peace of heroes left
Exhaustion with their present spew.

And what of my day, then?
Just beyond their critique, their swerving eye.
What am I to capture in this widest world
When the past is all I pry?

[Read the post titled Journal Entry for an introduction to this series]