Maestro Fear

Maestro, 

Spinning your web among the shadows

Stringing present times with a skewed teenage me

My only accompaniment for too long

I've allowed your cacophony to cloud my view of the horizon

Anxious that a pastime of counting the hours of silence would return.

Thought a concert of tears past cried, I rise and suffer no more.

It's time to dampen your impact and await permeating melodies

No need for an encore

The coda has passed.

Tangerine Sun

Aiming forward through the suspended dew
Squinting at dawn's tangerine sun 
Chasing a state of mind where she can
Let go of familiar comforting fears

Philosophies are tested, 
and her pendulum oscillates too far
Soon, she will settle rhythmically 
On a new unexpected equilibrium

This year's Dave Matthews at the Gorge photo. AMAZING!

Haiku for Chet

Fashionable goof
Can camp 'n 'board like a star
And light up our days

Darkroom

Images captured

Her timeline has ticked forward

She’s been long sorting the negatives

By a dim red light

Irises just slivers here, well adjusted

To discerning depth in shadows

She’s choosing those worthy of keepsakes;

Though, not recognizing the players

Enlarging and exposing,

Washing away remnants before hanging

Allowing for frozen memories,

Knowing not what they will become

She emerges terrified,

Being deprived of light too long

Bodhisattva

Sit, enter the mind
Chase away that wind, those sighs
Focus, breathe, let go
The mind travels to where
A pyramid with glass walls rises
Into a dwelling to protect from the world, yet
observe it
He came in sight with pants frayed near the heal,
round pinky toes visible, and piercing insight intact
He's here by the expansive shade of a Bodhi tree
An embrace of thought conforts the soul
My lips rise in the corners
He promises a next time

Haiku for Rocio

Rocio or Pam

We kick balls; rock trivia;

Have heart and joke 'round

Day dreams

The gentle sounds of an acoustic guitar creep in

And brings its friendly message to a worldly wanderer

The brooding cello joins and swells;

Moody, but warmly content

Unapologetic snowflakes float and fall where they please

As high notes of a piano tickle his ears

Opera voices deepen his thoughts and take him away

Aperture

After erosion, a deep crevice remains
An arid wasteland surrounds,
Where tears flow, but do not nourish;
Logic is endangered here
Reason cannot triumph over Goliath-sized fears, lurking
A paltry self cowers in hidden spaces
Surveying the scene through wide aperture
Blurring the edges where the cacti may prick
Delusions that being an achromatic drone is safer, preferred,
To navigate from heart to mind
Vowing to let the extraneous turn to dust;
And to continue the odyssey

Self-talk (written Dec. 14, 2011)

Driving through crying eyes
Towards distracting pastimes
Knowing happiness is temporary
When your heart is this heavy
You'll face the dark again,
Sweet self,
until then, pray you abide

Fermented

Homogeneous, the soul is not,
Contaminants may surface
After being stirred
What has not been dealt with
Sinks to the bottom of the abyss
Waiting to ferment once again.
Facing a mass being more insurmountable
Than a slurry of rubble
Better to spread the hurt,
Break it into palatable remnants,
Boil them down, let the volatiles escape
Leave the gravities in the remains of the mind
And own them in every part of your being

Response to "Gravity"

I'm so excited! 

I wrote on a Psychology Today web article comment thread that was discussing grief and humor.  Read the article here.  http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/beautiful-grief/201107/twinkle-mirth-in-mourning  I shared my "Gravity" poem with author Cheryl Eckl, author of "A Beautiful Death: Facing the Future with Peace" and here is a link to my original poem and her comments:

http://braincloudmusings.blogspot.com/2011/07/gravity.html
(Background info - I lost my husband in April 2008 suddenly.  I am an engineer and new to poetry to help me process grief, but never considered myself any good at writing.  I was mentioning to her that maybe I should journal too.)

Your poem is exquisite.

"Her left hand weighs heavy with absent gold rings..."

So very powerful. I still look at my left hand or feel the absence of the gold ring I finally realized had to go...  I am convinced that the natural impetus to grieve and the natural urge to create are sister emotions that carry us through to whatever new normal eventually emerges from the process. For me, writing has been and remains my life-line.

You inspire me to become more poetic. I've needed to journal to gain more clarity. The engineers I know are very clear people already. To me, your poetry reflects a beautiful depth.

There are no "shoulds" in grief or creativity. Follow your heart in whatever mode it chooses at the moment. The key, as I have come to understand it, is to continue in the flow of expression because it is in that ongoing movement that we find healing.

Christmas morning

Java dreams wake me
Sparkly lights, mountains of gifts
Spell Christmas morning!

Corvallis

Grey skies misting down
On green mossy branches and
Kin forlorn and blue

Twisted

A hawk is perched on a twisted branch of winter’s tree
Peering into the eyes of what lies beyond
The sky crying atop surface objects, while an inner deeper
Thirst goes unacknowledged
Quenched for the moment, lying
Dormant and brooding
As a cello, singing my heart’s song

Savoir-Faire

The self-absorbed masses zipping by on bikes, on foot,
And in crowded rooms buzzing about nothing
My flesh is present; my mind hiding deep in dank catacombs
As a phantom puppeteer pulls my strings

Maneuvering in social circles as giraffe’s first steps
On knobby kneed stick legs willing them to balance
Fighting against gravity to stand tall
Urging every ounce of gumption to move forward

The underground labyrinth my safe haven,
Molasses speech dulled by the journey to the surface
My once polished persona suffers, though the soul cares not;
Only working to protect my pearl immersed within

Longing to belong, but will no longer melt myself
To fill and fit the mold, as Savoir-Faire girls do
Time passes, injunctively cave dwelling for now
A moratorium of me

Arborration

Satin, lace, and countless embraces fading as the seasons do
Mystical fog billows and envelopes, shrouding what’s light
Shadows cast, muddying everything in its path
Discernable not are the undulations and palette of her leaves
Roots fighting to sprawl wide beneath the earth
A patina encroaches upon the bark of yesterday
Yet she stands tall,
Biding her place, hoping again to be tickled by the sun

Orange striped dress

Across from an ink black river, watercolor palisades,
And hazy indigo gradient sunset,
Stands a girl in an orange striped dress
Fuzzy yellow rays reach out toward her from the horizon

Staccato drums, a zippy violin, and his gritty voice entrances
She loses herself singing every word to the melody
The candy dress swaying by the light of the sliver moon
All the while, a lone star watches over her

The sky retires to night,
Turning the crowd into a reflecting pool of the infinite twinkles from above
She finds a common neon thread that fades the loneliness
Of a sea of people upon that basaltic desert hillside

SOS

Forms complete, but never to be mailed
New contrived you can replace the old, just sign here;
Rite of passage of time.
Heritage overcame, fear of the future and
Perceived less independence;
Identity crisis denied.

Paths woven together in a perfect pattern
to be destroyed by an unconcerned beast.
Try to salvage what is left of life’s
Tapestry, with missing thread, a
Scant material to provide warmth at night.
Shiver yourself into countless dreamless slumbers.

No sense of self-less soul
Browsing memories down the mind’s corridors
Of towering stacks of scintilla,
Only accessible when provoked.
Resolving those of your former and latter characters,
To seek a new singularity.

Mahane

Friends he did not know,
I believe he'd love; I do. 
Daily, his loss grows.