Two Day Variance

Poems I wrote on Tuesday and Thursday last week. The weather provided quite the contrast:

Up before the sun
has tossed away his sheets
Awake as the day
climbs Tallahassee hills,
its muscles aching
in the dry chill of early
Fall,
Open eyes and thirsty ears
Absorbing the bird-song green
of morning.


The world is dim today
and I ponder the contrast
between the green fragrance of sunlit grass
and this earth enveloped in gray.

Because at the Beach

Because God personifies
glory
we revel in the sting
of sand
on our feet
Because he chose the
blustery scattering
of salt wind and
fall sea
we smile back at
nothing at all
Because we know that
the rainstick sings
for us and proclaims
a God who is
Glorious.

Spidery Offspring

Spidery offspring
scampering their beige
underbellies
winds in predatory pursuit
provoked by coal-lined clouds
immobilized
because they wonder at such beauty
sand stops in the crevice of
your Bible's cover
and traces the cracks
of a car-key pod
ancient glass filaments erode
synthetic plastics, rubbers, paints
and you're being stalked by a
digital camera chronicling today
in images that will always fail to
convey the experience.

Lost.

Cringe
as the crow
caws its fury
of burning defiance,
Your hand
inflamed.
The smoke stack mocking
common sense
and tea
and written language.
Cardboard glaring.
Don't judge me
I am real
I make sense.
Your hand
tribal dances,
spinning,
and evolution is lost.

This is me trying to be abstract for a class assignment.

Ziploc

Sealed fresh
in her ziploc bag
freezer ready, ready
to wait
since mortals do not favor
death
her dead muscles will
be preserved
like ice-hardened chicken
breast, long gone
in that ice chest under
six feet of earth and
worms and various
compost
until God takes her out,
check for freezer burn
and she thaws
alongside the wine
that toasts immortality.

Eating Alone

Here the mall is bright
Windows try to simulate
Authenticity

Camera flashes
Lightning bug in crisp fall air
Stagnant in the mall

Holiday desserts
Pumpkin chocolate sugared dough
Synthetic Starbucks

Dangerous lack of
My originality
Haiku in the mall.

My Lady Lover, Poetry

Where did she go,
her breath like melted chocolate
bittersweet
beckoning that flurry
of words to become
tangible emotion
how does noise create
apathy within this ballpoint
that blur of pulsing
bodies moves still
but I am still
and she is here
guilting me away from
bad habits
from coffee shops and
cookies
and she's silent when
all I hear is noise
carelessness, decay and
Hope
and she cannot leave me alone
again.

Retail Therapy

Since everyone either went out of town or made plans this weekend, I am left to entertain myself. That normally isn't difficult at all; there's always a thought or a song or a rhyme or a squirrel to harass. But the past few weeks have been such a whirlwind of social interaction, homework, papers, and movies, changes, and minor stress, it's hard to know exactly what to do when left to my own devices. I haven't written much poetry this week either. Its as if I've felt so much and worried so much and enjoyed so much, to such a degree, that I can't even make those emotions universal or transform them into words. But I had a little poetry party in the mall foodcourt today and got a bit of that spark back. I really love poetry. I honestly find it magical when I can honestly free myself to write, using imagery and experiences rather than grandiose abstractions. Those things have been a hindrance lately because I've been trying too hard.

In other news, this semester has been the strangest one of my life. Half the time I feel as if I'm in a dream, a happy one, but it makes things strange nonetheless. Time is moving slowly, but still weeks seem to sneak by and I only notice when they're over. There are really good people in my life, though. Really really good. And even though I feel like God hasn't been speaking in words I can understand or helping me become active or fulfill some specific task, I see the ways in which He is blessing me and changing my perspectives and holding me accountable and forcing me to work for what I want. And I see the ways He is strengthening those who are near to me.

"'But let him who boasts boast about this: that he understands and knows me, that I am the Lord, who exercises kindness, justice and righteousness on earth, for in these I delight,' declares the Lord." (Jer 9:24)