Saturday, February 28, 2009

Ode to a Seatbelt

Amid the crunch of
collision, such a small
thing wards off death in
the moment of slow-motion
crash, protecting from
the reckless hand of fate,
but not without cost.
Sighing in the instant
before impact, it warns,
"This might hurt a little."
Then steels itself for
the inevitable task--its
created purpose--and
when released from duty
bemoans the necessary
bruises it left behind.
Such a little thing, really,
yet with so great a job.
A small strip, narrow but
strong, the very reason
I am still alive.

Tuesday, February 24, 2009

this silence is killing me

Words crowd into my mouth,
burning my tongue,
pushing against lips sealed
shut by fear--the paranoid,
paralyzing kind.

To rid the acrid taste
I swallow back each
incendiary noun,
verb, and adjective, though
the action scalds my throat.

Before the pain can
subside my stomach
retches them up again
to begin anew
their acidic onslaught.

Why do I not speak?
How can speaking out
possibly cost me more
than the turmoil
of keeping silent?

No answer. For the
questions never leave my
head. Afraid to speak yet
tortured for not doing so,
this silence is killing me.

Saturday, February 14, 2009

To Day From Night

O Apollo,
blazing golden in the sky,
ruling day from a chariot of fire,
think of me,
Artemis, pale goddess of night.

Imagine me
waiting in a shadowy glade.
Silver arms outstretched,
beckoning you
to my wild embrace.

O Apollo,
meet me in the dusky
hues of evening
and in the first,
gray light of dawn,

Where we--
twin halves of one soul--
can unite
and once again
be whole.

Tuesday, February 10, 2009

Media

I wish I could
slash anger across a canvas
that shrieks to be seen.
Or draw bare lines
whispering of loneliness
so that all who look
turn away with wet eyes.

I wish I could
paint joy in colors of the sun
with laughter pealing
from the end of the brush
so that hearts and the corners
of mouths are lifted.

But my paint-by-numbers hands
only copy laboriously
images conceived by another.

I content myself with words
and brush them across the page--
the only canvas I will ever paint.