Shadow Tales

Three weeks later she awoke. Her head suddenly split with the screams of approximately seventy-three fairies, all begging to be heard. She slowed her zombie-like steps to a total standstill, grinding to a halt somewhere in the middle of a busy city street (for what better way to begin rebirth but with a stop?). One would think that instead of an awakening, the cessation of movement would be attributed to a slip into slumber. Not so in her case. Instead, the sudden awareness of being asleep for such a long time, and now falling back into life had left her shocked and at a complete and total…stop. The fairy voices suddenly are strangled by the interrupting screeches of approximately two cars, slamming on brakes and horns, sending her fragile world into an explosion of sound. She looked up, startled, and in an instant was back on the sidewalk. She had only stopped for a second, but that second w as enough to irritate the drivers of the half dozen cars that were by now, more than halfway to nothing. Time seemed so irrelevant now. She had once wanted time to stop completely, the seconds could have dragged on forever and she would have been happy. But now he was gone…and time was her enemy because it wouldn’t kill her fast enough. She thought of how men and women have a nasty habit of being attracted to one another, and wished that she had never fallen into this cliché. Nasty…there must be a better word. Her trouble a month ago was coming up with words to push the envelope of the other end of the spectrum.
She was awake now, and the funny thing was that she just now realized she had been asleep. She thought she had escaped him unscathed…like one of those balloons that doesn’t pop because of the piece of Scotch tape conveniently located at the point where the needle tears through the skin.
Funny thing #2: she had succeeded for three weeks in deluding herself into thinking that he had not left a mark on her heart…or was it his heart? Love had complicated everything so much…
Her eyes, that had once danced with laughter and love, now ran on auto-pilot. They saw…but only as necessity, only as a means of not running into the buildings and strangers that happened to occupy the empty world that she walked through. She took in her surroundings, not registering the beauty of the clear blue sky that supported the traffic of the sheep-like clouds. It all seemed black and white, without the insecurely added preface of “glorious”…like the end of The Wizard of Oz, though she still felt the longing for home. Could this have been what Dorothy felt like? She quickly threw the thought away, knowing that the classic heroin had never been so securely tethered to the fairy land…love made for a strong difference.
She felt the pull to do something, to end her misery by reclaiming happiness…
The fairies began their buzzing again…
She wanted to know if he was alive. She wanted to stop caring about whether or not he was. She wanted to know what he was feeling.

He was feeling pain.

Pain like the stabbing from a million burning swords, all administered by approximately one force of evil…and yet thousands of forces. This was much more complicated that in appeared on the surface…life tended to be that way. And where do the fairies fit in?

Taken From Absurdity

Sometimes people say things
And all I can do
Is verbalize a shrug:
“What can I say?”
And sometimes
She looks at me
With those dancing eyes
And I get lost
And I sadly wonder:
“What can I say?”

I could say pages of things
Enough to fill the landfill so wastefully full
Of Atari cartridges
And so much of it would be utter garbage
The perfect match to the things I decry.
But alas what am I
But that which is silent and instead,
Saying nothing,
I rob all of something?

But isn’t it easier
To choose silence?
To bow to the way things are?
Moving nowhere
Neither backward or forward
And pause,
Indefinitely at
“What can I say?”

I could say enough to fill pages
…
…
…
And rob all of something.

Does the between even matter?
I don’t know where to go.
I’m stuck in the mud of
“What can I say?”

Silent Movie

Sometimes I feel when I’m with you that I’m in a silent movie spinning by faster than the pace at which most pretend to live life and yet moving slower than thought possible because of the lack of sound but with you words are not necessary instead I simply drink in your smile the perfect curve of your lips speaking happiness as if the words were inserted into the film as subtly as a place card of text and at that moment as the action of the film speeds more players are introduced buzzing around all flighty and comical and plotting yet I still see nothing but your smile that makes me desire naught but the eternal watching of this film that is life while the people with their white hats and villainous moustaches all so obviously being who they are black and white just like the colors associated with the film the glorious black and white outshone by the glory of your laugh sparkling like the beautiful bells you will never hear in a silent movie

For the Critics (Not As An Insult)

Might I be me?
Or would you prefer you?
Perhaps I'm not good
At that which I do.
But who is the judge
And why do you do so?
You dance around words
And hid what you know.
This is the letter
Of silence and pause
As I ponder your enmity
That seems without cause.
Test me and weigh me
I'll sit here and smile
Through the memories of tears
And wretch'd taste of bile.
Boredom brings impishness
To the pen of this satire
I mean you no insult
It's not my desire.
Though I'm only sub-par
On this we agree
I suppose that my problem
Is that I am me.
How do I know
Or am I to guess?
Will you realize I am
Guilty? I confess.
Of being myself
Ever the crime
Smiling through hardship
Teething at time.
Here more confessions
Ever in doubt
Trusting in my safety
Enough to get out.
So do you approve?
Test me again
Is there hope of am I
Never to win?
Gather your data,
Enough to see,
Vote if you will, I'm still
Always me.
Now back to testing
?

Right eye open
Left eye blink
This,an aside for the critics,
A wink

Promising Past to Promise of Future

They walk through the past,
His hand in his pockets,
Instead of holding her hand
Of fire,
And instead of looking at him
She lets the lips of her gaze
Simply brush against the happiness around them,
Where everyone wears a smile,
Bought cheaply-
The world’s own clearance sale.
But she just walks,
And he just talks,
And oftentimes they switch roles
All the while sharing
The task of ignoring
The promise they walk with.
Distractions waltz in
Grasping the hands of fire
And the hands of ice
Pulling them into a dance
Til death.
She embraces memory
And he fondly looks to future
And oftentimes they switch roles.
Once-
In the future-
These two were one,
But then the present called them back,
Along with the fear
Of the future’s future:
Variable this
Variable that.
Their walk begins again.
As they try to remember
What happens next
The scene shifts to the past
And they walk through sandboxes
That they play(ed) in together
As children,
With child-like faith
In the promise that the leaving
Of this future past
Will bring these two children
Closer,
Just as the leaving
Of that sandbox
Brought the two hands
Almost to the point of
Touching
The future.
Now the memory of said future
Replaces said past
And they realize
That all the distraction
Was he and she
And then in the future
They shoved aside
Blindness
Their hands fell
The past-
Like a magnet-
Engaged,
And the two hands,
Like past, present, and future
Entwine

Emotional Way To Be

She dreamed of days of
Can-not-be’s
And wished for those that were
Have-not-only-see’s
In a world full of whispers
And shadows of talking
All that she wanted was
Do-not-leave-me.
Why are things always hardest
For the survivors
Of themselves?
And why is it so much easier
For her to forgive
And not think twice
At forgetting her sin
Enshrined in trendy phrases
She knows
As surely they do too
That it wasn’t love on her arms
But blood
Leaving trails of
Why-not-me’s?
And tears.
Life is all the better for the living
But perhaps worse
For those who want nothing but
Leave me be’s.
The true pain-
Agony-
Found both in God’s will
And God’s won’t
Left with the doubt
That she may be alone.
Thus another tragedy
To be despised by so many
For not realizing that all the shining armor
Hid dragons

Unfinished Thoughts of an Almost-Broken Mind

I’m like that third point
The one without which there is no triangle
Only a line
That is content to be
And be a line.
I reach out to different points
And hands reach back
Or don’t
Giving instead
MAYBE LATER's
And WHEN I'M NOT BUSY's
Or sometimes just
NO
Those are the times where I can’t see
Through the streaks of broken teardrops
That reflect
Everything I’m feeling
And also the nothing -
The numbness-
That I try to feel.
I instead write in italics
My natural hand lying
To all the fools who say
The slant to the right portrays confidence

Seesaw

I
Doubt myself
Wonder if the vision of me
That dwelled in your mind
Was shattered by who I am

You
Don’t push me away
And yet don’t beckon me forward
Love is no longer blind
It would rather look at you

He
Says wait
As he himself waits
And the silence of compromise
Turns to the sound of not helping

She
Smiles for the future
Hoping for her friend
Speaking from experience
And possibly overestimating

They
Think they know best
Think that it’s easy
Think that there is hope
Think the future is now

I
Embrace hope
Despite my reservations
And pray you will take it away
Unless hope is real

You
Prove that my heart is beating
Only very confused
Love screams to know
Are you lying to yourself too?

He
Knows much
And says little
And thus drives insanity
Into the room

She
Assumes the best
For a friend who wonders
If she is being too optimistic
But is anyways hopeful

They
Are where they want to be
And think there is room for more
But they shift from the spotlight
And are gone

I
Find a corner to crawl to
The better to defend myself
From a heart that needs
Her smile

You
Are point A
And now is point B
And the shortest path
May not be a straight line

I
Hate the silence
For it holds naught but faint hope
That someday silence will be shattered
By your laughter

You
Are the subject
Of prayers and poetry
And like me or not
A blessing

The May Day Child

Favored Child,
You who is destined for victory
Over greatness.
For if victory is the future
What harm can be held
In the present?

Set sail on a ship along with your peers
Sights toward the conquest
Launched by a king
Revered for once
Prophesied for the future
And what harm can come to you?

How beautiful the truth
That with April showers
Come sweet new May flowers.
And how harsh the reality
That by June
You all will be dead.

Torn from the womb
And the arms of your mother
Forced by a legend
Towards the arms of another:
Sir Death.
And the rocks shall rise up to greet you.

Doom on the cliff face
There’s blood in the water
And you alone
Shall embrace the morning
For sweet victory
Has not yet been yours.

Their blood on your hands
Along with your father’s
Once victory arrives
He’s dead at your feet
Your only inheritance
Despair

And the hatred
Of future generations
All aimed at you,
King of the May Day children
And only you may survive.
Are you really so favored, child?