Higher Learning

I am actually telling the truth in this poem. I went direct to science fiction from comic books in second or third grade. I was able to read and comprehend very early and in fact was in trouble in school for being so far ahead. They would often doubt I did my own work. I have had to find ways to fit in my whole life. I am not always good at it. In eighth grade it got serious and I had to deep study the fit in problem, what I was going to do and not do and how I was going to shackle my tendencies to shine without destroying my chances too. I desperately needed to not be noticed and my life was complicated by this process of being a self shackled high B student with my kind of brain.

I ended up calling in sick alot in my own life, learning to use a hot light bulb to generate a fever. This did two tasks, keeping me out of the way of those bastards at school, and also giving me more time for my real education from the authors of science fiction. Science fiction was my baby sitter and teacher, so much so that I would steal the latest stuff since I didn't have money. This was real work and I was good at it. I never got caught. My folks were too busy with complicated lives to check on why I had so many books.

Occasionally some project or class in high school grabbed me hard enough that I couldn't let go. Then I would get the high A I was capable of if I worked without fear of reprisal. I would be banged up by teachers as well as students in those times, like the history teacher who didn't think my college graduate school practicum level term paper on the Battle of Chancellorsville was my own work. Sigh. I was trained up very well in mediocrity. Most everyone hates a smart ass.

That was long ago, but the issues are still with me of course. Just about the moment I think I am in the clear someone like those guys in high school will jump ugly and prove to me once again that I am not free on this planet. I quit reading science fiction for the most part decades ago.

Higher Learning

I love pretending
I'm someone else somewhere else
believing I'm here.
That might feel like zen
but I get it from sci-fi
like everything
else I learned back then,
all those worm holes and light years
ago as my dad's
boy.

October 14, 2010 12:49 PM

Song To The Reaper

Evidently I was feeling my mortality back four years ago...

Song To The Reaper

Oh Lord Death, come here
and sit beside me, tell me
the secret to life
and I will revere
Your Holy Name, let it shine
in my soul, hey yeah.
Oh yeah treat me mean
and chain me to Your cold heart
so I'll hear the tick
of time sucking me
dry as I dance with Your love
meant to turn me to
dust. Oh yeah, hey yeah.

It's not the same here without
my old fantasies.

October 13, 2010 12:18 PM

I Drank The Cider

I Drank The Cider

I am not afraid,
no longer afraid of all
the posturing toads
who would be dragons.
In fact, bring me true dragons
and I will bop them,
drop them down and shut
their stinky mouths, sew them shut
with golden sinew.
That's the end of that.

October 12, 2010 2:23 PM

Remarkable. Have had a difficult day in many ways including my feeling good and at the end felt I needed to take the easiest way out posting to my blog. This showed up. It is a poem I wrote over four years ago but it fits my heart right now.

I guess I don't really think Keanu is a stinky dragon but his mouth is about right. Right now for me somebody else is. None of your business who.

Normally I would have posted on a site called Three Word Wednesday. I was not up to writing something new today.

This is happening more and more. I can see I am descending the slope a little over months and years. This is totally normal for older fellahs, which I am.

When I titled this poem, I was thinking of the American slang, "I drank the kool-aid" which of course refers to the Jim Jones debacle at Jonestown where the group suicide cyanide was administered by kool-aid. Hundreds died. This phrase then tries to identify how if others are trying to trick you, you help them by willingly taking the trick in. Or if they are not trying to trick you, then you are an even bigger fool.

The whole scene alludes to one of those "if only...then I would have been better off" deals as well. Keep your fricken mouth shut, Hileman! I will not ever go to the other alternative of censoring myself as I speak, at least not according to someone else's taste. But not speaking is do-able.

Mud Rolling

Mud Rolling

I know. It's damn hard
to follow those directions,
the ones to grow wings -
especially hard
when you have instincts to roll
in really grand mud.
Good for cooling blood
is what I heard about mud.

No need to miss me.
I am not thinking
of shooting off world
anytime between today
and twenty nineteen.

‎April ‎30, ‎2014 4:10 PM

Written in response to a poem by Irene on her Orange Is A Fruit blog on Wordpress back at the end of April this year.

The Abandoned Axe

I wrote this poem just over four years ago. I have no idea what I was thinking about and I don't remember having a horrible time in October four years ago. It is certainly not what is happening now unless I decide momentarily to throw a snit for some reason not yet in my face. Perhaps the cat will shit in my shoe or something, or has and she is waiting for me to find it so she can gloat. But I doubt it. I think this is a fiction about someone who is not happy, feeling abandoned and not right, twisted, with a dead life and a loss too big to swallow. Shit. Now I'm depressed enough to write it again.

See, that's the part that is true, at least for me. Even though I am not usually depressed, I can go there creatively in an easy manner and wallow around for real while I write and usually just come back. I will then look around at the carnage in an innocent way and say, "What?"

Writing something upbeat that is also genuine is much more difficult. What is remarkable, I don't think I am the only one. And in music it is the same... It is much easier to improvise in the minor keys than the major ones, in the sad music rather than the happy music. Again. I am not the only one. I am not sure why, though I can take several attitudes and opinions about it. I am not the only one again, I think.

It seems to be easier to be sad, to play sad music, to opine about sad things and feel genuine than it is to do the same about happy things and feel genuine. Hmmm.

The Abandoned Axe

I've become trashy
since I put down that cold axe.
I find I want trash
books, fast food. I've quit
work, want to be left alone.
I've left the axe out
in the fall weather
to rust in the rain and mud
broken, abandoned.

I am not right now,
twisted by my thoughts, twisted
at what I once was,
looking at the scars
and ashes where life burned out
and you I could not
save.

October 10, 2010 8:03 PM

Perhaps being genuine and happy and optimistic is more a practice than it is a feeling. I have already become convinced, have been convinced for years that true love is a practice.

Defiance

Damn. This hardly ever happens. A day off. I'm supposed to write possibly two poems today to keep up with Magpie Tales and Sunday Whirl. Not this week. Playing hooky on my own creativity calling. Reminds me of this:




Only the eagle is my own head and so is the mouse. Oh ho. Is that what they mean by "drinking weather"?

The Forest and the Far Far Hills

The Forest and the Far Far Hills

When I finally
found you I knew the singing
I had to do. Too,
I knew the flaming
wood I should place, the circle
to make and how to
open my curled ears
to your tales of some other
world and how you might
take me there one day.

When I found you the forest
started sussurrus
in the far far hills
and that sound travelled to me
voices added along
the way so it roared
at my feet though you did not
notice, so wrapped up
you were in your song.
Your concentration floors me.
My yearning does too.

October 25, 2014 2:52 PM

Stalking The Hermits

Stalking The Hermits

The world has swallowed
the best of me and of you
as we both well know.
It can't be any
other way for us after
all this time on point.

Walking point's been forced
on us, as if we might know
where the gray hermits
lurk, that we might, of
all the others, lure them out.
They are wanted so
we can plant the corn.

October 10, 2010 7:47 PM

Encouragement

Encouragement

Feel the elixir
ooze on your tongue, down your throat.
Try to hold it there
by your strength of will
alone and don't think sad, mad
or other dark thoughts.
This magic will not
work then, will not grow your wings
for you and your air
will be like cement
slurry and damn it - I can't
get these thoughts to stay
on their own right lines.

(At least this ended rightly
slowing to full stop.)

‎April ‎28, ‎2014 10:33 PM

First appeared as a comment to a poem Irene wrote and posted on her blog Orange Is A Fruit

The Request - Three Word Wednesday

Each week Thom offers a three word writing prompt at his site and a Mr. Linky setup to use so that all the participants can find each other. Anyone can participate or else just enjoy the creative work that others do. Perhaps the next world class master wordsmith is among us. Go here.

This week's words:
Defensive; Fertile; Needy.

The Request

Seems like years have passed
since you started your pleading
with me:

Stop all this
defensive blather
you lay down like fertilized
eggs in fertile rows,
expecting full bloom
ripe fungus among needy
matters of habit
strewn backstreet gardens.

I want peace between my teeth.
Would you just shut up?

October 22, 2014 2:13 PM

The Fire Mage

The Fire Mage
(The flame, the dirt, the wind, the rain)

I can no longer
hold to how right it is, not
in the face of you.
I took my axe, cut
you right out of the dusty
woodland of summer's
drying tangled maw.

Passion would have turned to flame.

I chopped you free as
I burned it all down
to renew the dead who called
to me in spirit.

October 9, 2010 3:49 PM

Typically we frown on people who set fires. In this day and age, the numbers of people happy to burn it down are far too heavy for the forests of the planet. In other times people would act as part of nature. There are places on the planet today where people practice slash and burn agriculture. There is a cycle they follow when they do it correctly and the result is a renewal of the forest. The forest is stronger for it. Again, these people act as agents for the biosphere, gaining for themselves but also giving to the forest in doing so.

Breaking Free - Wordle 183

Wordle 183 by Brenda Warren for this week's Sunday Whirl Click on the link, and then click on Mr. Lincky to find the others.

Breaking Free

The witchdoctor said
I'm crazy, not a martyr.
She called my soul out,
saying it should shine
bright white with stranger laughter
making your steel crack,
your childhood shake all
apart - its shadow turn gray -
your diamond dim
and change to drab sand.
I'm not shackled, prisoner
to your freaky whim
any longer, sport.
Just toddle off. Find your seer.
Tell him your secret.

‎October ‎19, ‎2014 1:02 PM

Zombie Mother - A Magpie Tale

Image offered by Tess for this Sunday's Magpie Tale. Click on the link to get access to more delightful work by this week's contributors. Not to say this work here is delightful. Sorry. There's a bad seed in me.

Zombie Mother

We had to add more
rocks as you keep digging out.
If you don't settle
down we will dig you
up and transport you further
up the alps and plant
you under really big
boulders. Even the old oak
we found won't keep you
peaceful and quiet.

Mother, you gave us pain in
real life and now
you claim unfinished
business. We say, so what?
You say, this is what!
It's just so tiresome
and embarassing.

Neighbors
tell us of chasing
you back out the door
with all your bad smells and groans
and ugly faces.
You can't even haunt
right - no better than how you
used to wash dishes.

‎October ‎19, ‎2014 11:46 AM

Encouragement

Encouragement

Feel the elixir
ooze on your tongue, down your throat.
Try to hold it there
by your strength of will
alone and don't think sad, mad
or other dark thoughts.
This magic will not
work then, will not grow your wings
for you and your air
will be like cement
slurry and damn it - I can't
get these thoughts to stay
on their own right lines.

(At least this ended rightly
slowing to full stop.)

‎April ‎28, ‎2014 10:33 PM

Written after reading Irene's poem eagle flies free and first posted as a comment there.

This poem appears as well as the second in the poetry pair on pages 73 and 74 in the Red Wolf Journal poetry collection Duet which can be downloaded from New Poetry Collections

Cyanide Leaves

This is not my house nor my street. It is just illustrative of the common usage of cherry laurel.

I introduce you to the toxic hazard of the chemical hydrogen cyanide, derived from the leaves of cherry laurel (Prunus laurocerasus). I have had this plant in my yard or near to it the whole time I have been in Oregon and have never considered it dangerous. Hmmm. It is easy to prune if you keep on it but it can grow to tree height if you let it. You can prune it to the ground and bare stumps with impunity. It will grow back. I pruned this stuff for years without a second thought. I have never been caught in a closed container with a bunch of crushed leaves however.

How Poisonous, How Harmful?

Prunus laurocerasus, cherry laurel

Prunus laurocerasus, cherry laurel

The leaves and fruit pips contain cyanolipids that are capable of releasing cyanide and benzaldehyde. The latter has the characteristic almond smell associated with cyanide.

1.5% cyanogenic glycosides are present in the leaves. During maceration, i.e. chewing, this becomes glucose, hydrogen cyanide (prussic acid), and benzaldehyde. Cyanide starves the central nervous system of oxygen and, thus, causes death.

The Prunus laurocerasus has enough of the poison in the leaves to be used by entymologists as a way of killing insect specimens without physical damage. They seal the live insects in a vessel containing the crushed leaves.

Confusing the two laurels and using the leaves of this plant as bay in cooking has resulted in poisoning. If this occurs prompt treatment is essential.

If I paid that kind
of attention, saw into
you as if my eyes
were new chain saw loud
and sharp as axes can be
when cared for like you
cared for me, if I
was willing to work that hard
then I could keep you.

I can hew your wood
and gather your cyanide
leaves into great piles.
I believe like that
but it might be true I can't
even if I try.

October 7, 2010 12:27 PM

Thursday Evening

Two hours before the time of the poem.

Thursday Evening

The screen glows a soft
light not white or blue but off
gray flickers, chases
my thoughts out the door
so I sit vacant waiting
for someone to say
the next meaningful
thing about this or that sale
or needful product.
I scratch at my nose.
I sneak a peek at your eyes
half open, aslant
as you rest your head
on the courdoroy couch back
despite the dust puffs
whenever someone
moves. My feet still ache after
walking home with you.

‎October ‎16, ‎2014 4:10 PM

Enough For Now - Three Word Wednesday

Somewhere near here something smells...

I wrote this poem to use the words Gifted; Intense; Rot. Thom offered these words as a writing prompt for his Three Word Wednesday site. Go here


Enough For Now

She said I'm gifted.
She said I come from good stock.
She said the world would
Love me and welcome
My accomplishments and pay
In praise and in pelf.

It's intense and strange
how rot may smell of roses.

I think of the things
have happened all down
the years to put me
on the verge like this, balanced
for now in obscure
light and falling leaves.
It rained today. I stayed in.
Come here and kiss me.

‎October ‎15, ‎2014 4:11 PM

Getting Away

This poem follows another poem I found to use as a prompt. It is not descriptive of that poem nor is it of my life. This poem is descriptive of how my imagination can go weird. It is, in short, a fiction through and through. I have no lumps nor bird traps.

The last time I crawled under barbed wire was in basic training. At that time they advised us that the machine gun fire overhead as we crawled along was live fire and that we should not stand up. I didn't know if they were lying but I sure know I kept my body flat. Live fire sounds different from in front of it. That was fifty years ago this last summer.

It was only a few weeks later I caught a severe meningitis and nearly died. I was not yet nineteen. I spent the month of August in the military hospital at Fort Ord, California.

Getting Away

You are the stone lump
beneath my bones, my dry skin
cracking in the cold.
I hold your bird trap.
The empty shiny talon
of it glints moonlight
while I hunker down
like a chipped wash pan that's dropped
on hard clattering
ground. The thin gravel
bites my unshod feet, dribbles
past my frayed collar
as I grate forward
under the low hung barbed wire
that cuts at my soul.

‎October ‎13, ‎2014 3:18 PM

Don't Ask Me - A Sunday Whirl Wordle

Written utilizing all fourteen words in Brenda's Wordle 182, this week's Sunday Whirl. When you get there, tap the Mr. Linky connecting link to find the list of this week's contributors.

Don't Ask Me 
What This Means

Don't tease the chickens.
I mean come back to the trains
but find some other
rube for your gimmick.
Girl, if you must use torture
at least add lotion
and for sure liquor.

You were in some uniform,
flesh colored, gritty
and smelling of brains
fried in oil, can you believe.
You said lust drives us
all. I guess that's right.

(Hey! How do I know what brains
fried in oil smells like?)

Girl, ride your machine.
I'll sure hear it when you come.
It's hypnotizing
rumble puts the starch
in my battle happy flag.
It must be true love.

‎October ‎12, ‎2014 12:33 PM

Wordle 182

The Photoshoot - A Magpie Tale

Self Portrait by Vivien Maier chosen by Tess for this week's Magpie Tales writing prompt.

Sometimes it is just hell to be hooked up to an art photographer.

The Photoshoot

Yes... she means to be
just this confounding, Mister
Man - just this bent light
strange and mirror bright
and you can go ponder dreams
of clear quadratic
nature, sing grand high
hymns to joy some other time.
She's got the bathroom
for the duration,
Bucko. The gas station's three
blocks, then to the left.

‎October ‎12, ‎2014 11:17 AM

The Library Of Alexandria

Wiki says (edited):

The Royal Library of Alexandria in Alexandria, Egypt, was one of the largest and most significant libraries of the ancient world. It was dedicated to the Muses, the nine goddesses of the arts. It functioned as a major center of scholarship from its construction in the 3rd century BC until the Roman conquest of Egypt in 30 BC. The library was part of a larger research institution called the Musaeum of Alexandria, where many of the most famous thinkers of the ancient world studied.

The library was created by Ptolemy I Soter, who was a Macedonian general and the successor of Alexander the Great. Most of the books were kept as papyrus scrolls, and though it is unknown how many such scrolls were housed at any given time, their combined value was incalculable.

Possible occasions for the partial or complete destruction of the Library of Alexandria include a fire set by Julius Caesar in 48 BC, an attack by Aurelian in the AD 270s, and the decree of Coptic Pope Theophilus in AD 391.

It is now impossible to determine the collection's size in any era with any certainty. Papyrus scrolls constituted the collection, and although codices were used after 300 BC, the Alexandrian Library is never documented as having switched to parchment codices, perhaps because of its strong links to the papyrus trade. (The Library of Alexandria in fact had an indirect cause in the creation of writing parchment — due to the library's critical need for papyrus, little was exported and thus an alternate source of copy material became essential.)

Julius Caesar Burns
The Library Of Alexandria

They did burn it all.
I didn't want to believe
a friend would screw me
like that but I know
it's true and my ninety odes
too, on sixteen scrolls.

They were there on loan
and I heard the main scholars
in residence would check
my style and my facts
quite often but the head man
wouldn't let the scrolls
leave the stacks because
I said not to. Now ashes,
just fucking ashes
and I don't know how
to recreate them.

Jules said
he was sorry. Right.

‎October ‎11, ‎2014 2:23 PM

I studied astrology, a serious student for a number of years and in truth I finished my degree in part by proving I had studied astrology with a disciplined eye toward advanced psychology and philosophically as a metaphysical system.  I am aware of the tradition that asserts the Library was a repository of serious work in the esoteric vein, a collection of the "wisdom of the ancients".  That is possible but it is also certain that the Christian burning of the Library was accusatory -- that the contents of the Library were decried as foul pagan work influenced by evil and demonic forces.  This can mean that the Library of Alexandria was falsely branded.  If you could find works on the study of Astrology and Alchemy and Magic in the library, you could also find by preponderance a great number of scrolls of poetry and science and mathematics and philosophy.  As for history, very few people ever wrote anything like history in those days.

I Have Stolen You

Let the mind be star,
you said, and let your heart be
lithe no matter what
your body might do.
No matter how I try to
form this up I grow
fur and snout and snort
into the easterly wind.
My velvet ears flare
and tremble. All four
legs push claw into the mulch.
Then I grip your soul
in mine and dash off,
headed toward my thieve's den
in the limestone rocks.

‎April ‎28, ‎2014 10:47 PM

Poem first appeared as a comment on Irene Toh's Orange Is A Fruit

The Veteran - A Red Wolf Poem

The front entrance of The Carnegie Center, once again the Oregon City Library. For a few years it was an art center and I actually performed poetry readings and once some music in the center with a local blues performer, Ellen Whyte, and a great pianist named Rich Turnoy. I was on Congas that day. They tried to move the library but money issues and politics scrambled the plans.

This poem is somewhat a story and somewhat a recall of the place I call home. Oregon City is the end of the Oregon Trail and Oregon essentially grew from here, but Stumptown down the river at it's confluence with the Columbia took over and is now Portland, the primary city in Oregon while Salem a bit south politicked its way to Oregon's State Capital. Corvallis and Eugene both snagged the main universities.

Now Oregon City is a midsized Portland commuter town, and a county seat for Clackamas County. It used to be a pretty big mill town for the local paper mill but that mill was landlocked and couldn't expand. It struggled and changed ownership several times trying to survive but just couldn't make the shifts that were required to survive. The mill made newsprint and in it's heyday was known as Publisher's Paper. Once in the sixties it was featured along with a house on Washington Street in an episode of a TV show called "Route 66" you can find on YouTube. I have no idea why they came here because the real Route 66 is nowhere near Oregon. But from time to time film crews do come to town.

I worked on contract to the engineering department of that mill for a number of months two times in the course of my career. Now it's a ghost mill.

The poem was written in response to suggestions given by Irene for Wordle #28 on Red Wolf Poems

The Veteran

It's not that I loved
that mournful sister nor her
illuminations
when they burst, stranger
lights all mudstreaked in the front
of the Carnegie
Library uptown
of the drunken swifts on Main.

In late October
in nineteen hundred
and froze to death some Eastern
messengers dropped flags
on our dumbstruck foes.

But now in two thousand and
fourteen I wonder
what it was all for,
the dreams and mud spilled across
the honor of all
the old boys who held
the borderline and adorned
the darkness with stars.

‎October 9, ‎2014 4:07 PM

Wordle 28

I should say I was listening to "When I Go" by Dave Carter on a loop while I wrote The Veteran.

"Mournful sister" is his and so are some other phrases. The drunken swifts refer to chimney swifts who use the stacks in downtown to roost in their season. We stand on the bluff above the town and watch them circle and descend to roost in the late evening's light.

Red Wolf

Name Calling-Three Word Wednesday

Name Calling

I will have to smack
your face - call me arrogant
again, you crude crust
on a festering
sore of some nameless disease.
And I can't believe
she goes for you, smiles
for you, caresses you like
you were some supple
and sleek carnivore
instead of the carrion
eater you still are.

‎October ‎8, ‎2014 5:03 PM

For Three Word Wednesday
Words for this week:

Arrogant; Crude; Supple.

Not In Kansas Any More

Rope Tornado,
image from NOAA

Not In Kansas Any More

Tornadoes should try
harder than they do to make
friends instead of jokes
with weird outcomes like
pieces of straw jammed point first
through telephone poles,
the poles themselves knocked
flat on some prairie hilltop
and some house - nothing
wrong but for landing
upside down and tilted left.

I should wave goodbye.

It's not far to go.
You will soon cross the state line
and this is no joke.

‎October ‎7, ‎2014 5:14 PM

It Won't Come Clear

Every girl loves
a coward - that's what she said.
We hid in the brush
behind the far edge
of the garden you keep so
tenderly and well.
She promised me
sweet moments and far more - but
she said that to me
and now I wonder
if she means to call me names
from here to the end.

‎October ‎6, ‎2014 3:08 PM

It's A Long Walk

Photo by Tom Chambers, provided as a writing prompt by Tess for Magpie Tales: Mag 240

It's A Long Walk
Back To The House

Broken poem, no
sense to the signs or the fence,
the rusted barb wire
strips still connected
to the posts -

and far away
you've hung your last name
and all those pewter
goblets.

I'm to think vital
thoughts and make a speech
in two days while you
hang yourself, hooked up
like sheets in the prairie wind
and fading, warble.

‎October ‎5, ‎2014 1:15 PM

I utilized all twelve words provided in Wordle 181 in Brenda Warren's Sunday Whirl

Collisions

I'm not listening
not anymore. The bad words,
the insanities,
the hidden motives,
all that from your smiling lips
as you take me down,
assuring me, oh
rest easy, easy does it,
take it just like that,
that is what you say
as I walk straight on into
that God rotted wall.

October 7, 2010 7:27 PM

My Second Attempt

The Death God Necros by Skinner, b. 1978

Skinner is a self-taught artist living in Oakland, California who has meticulously crafted a balance of extraordinary mural work, bizarre and antagonistic installations while maintaining a prolific commercial career. Influenced by 80’s pop culture, human struggle, myths and violence, dungeons and dragons and the heavy metal gods, Skinner’s mind is one of psycho social mayhem fueled by a calculated chaos. His work has been shown all over the world in various museums, universities and galleries. He has been an ambassador of the alternative arts movement in countries ranging from Russia, Cuba, Japan, Europe and all across the United States. Don't be surprised if you see one of his murals on a small side street in Scotland or some tiny village in Russia. Skinner has and continues to bring his own very specific weird art to anywhere in the world that can handle it. Skinner’s work has been celebrated in various publications including Blisss, Juxtapoz, Hi Fructose and Beautiful/Decay as well as numerous European publications. In the fall of 2012 Skinner launched his own art and apparel company called Critical Hit. Realizing that his art is better kept in the hands of people who appreciate it on a day to day basis, he applied his strange visions and humor to an affordable media where fans of his work can find giclee and silkscreen prints, his hardback book Every Man Is My Enemy, t-shirts featuring his one of a kind designs, custom toys and figures, patches, buttons, zines and more! Pay him a visit and see the chaos in action! http://shopcriticalhit.com/

My Second Attempt

I tried to rise up
and ended with a reject
and so here I am
confessing my shallow
heart – I have scrabbled my way
out of the hardpan
but need to dig dirt
out from under my broken
talons, shake the shit
off me and burnish
my gold leaf wings as I try
not to tear them up.

I wanted to call
God down from on high, something
like that, but all God
did was point at me
and titter gaseously
through my damp exhaust.
Damn.

‎April ‎26, ‎2014 8:18 AM

Written in response to a poem called You Speak Heart and posted on Orange Is A Fruit, Irene Toh's blog.

Water Flower

I feel damp and warm
but I know it's temporal
in nature. I'll be
colder than this soon.

But still. I will be damp still.

It's the way of things.
It's the way of us -
a flower in bloom, ever
unfolding color.

October 7, 2010 4:55 AM