song for midnight

let's fly away
take my hand, boy, and don't look down
let's run away
take all our treasure and get out of this town

the wind on our weary backs
sail like ships above the ground
let's go north on the night until we reach the sea

starlight like diamonds
how rich we'll be to travel among them
i'm wonderstruck at the scene
the black ink sky, the moon, the stars, and you and me

take my hand, boy, and don't look down
let's run away
take all our treasure and get out of this town

i just had the most beautiful dream i've ever had.

nap dreams are the best.

i dreamt that i was in a pub/restaurant and didn't have enough money
so i went outside on the stone sidewalk and did something for money, sang or did music or something
and came back inside with just enough to pay.
and i saw this handsome man i know, speaking and a circle was around him,
he was speaking about a girl and i sat behind him,
just wanting to listen.

and he looked at me and he said, "sam, i have one question for you"
i was smiling because i love him.
and he said "are you the kind of person with a lot of money, and you just don't know how to handle it?"
my countenance dropped.
"no." i said. "i'm the kind of person with no money, and i don't know how to handle it. i'm ashamed."

then we were on a school bus, a crowded school bus, and he sat in front of me in the front seat with our mutual friend, a handsome boy who was a little younger. everyone was talking, i was trying to listen to my friends, and we all noticed the incredible and dangerous increasing speed of the bus.

apparently part of the bus' normal route was to drive off of a ledge over some things and to land on the remaining part of the road, a little like the magic school bus. the driver took the wrong angle off of the ledge, and we were headed hurling into a warehouse or a jiffy lube or something else incredibly industrial looking.

while in the air there were screams and i grabbed for my handsome man-friend's hand, which he took and held tightly as if knowing we had little chance of survival. the bus driver was standing, screaming with joy, and appeared in all ways to be going insane. He had a gun.

we landed and things fell apart around me. i was trying to find his hand. i was hurt, but not dead. i was lying on my back and heard the bus driver screaming above me "if you try to run away for help i will shoot you dead!"
i heard people scurrying through the rubble and then shots.
i covered my eyes with my arm, realizing how vulnerable my whole body was, but i just didn't want to see him.
he was right over me, and was screaming at me, knowing i was alive and trapped, pointing his gun wildly.
i cannot express the intense, raw fear which came over me and strangled every muscle like a disease.
in my head i imagined he shot me in the stomach over and over again.

when i came to, i was fully dressed and in a stone courtyard. there was a dull gray haze of fog, and ivy clinging to the walls everywhere. i was at a funeral. a mourning. i saw the handsome boy and looked at him, my hopeful face inquiring of the handsome man's survival.
he simply shook his head no, eyes to the ground. i wept.

the boy took my hand and he lead my purposefully through the courtyard towards a wedding reception. fog, gray stone, mild air, green ivy. he had invitations in his other hand, which were small globes made of edible daisies. to enter the reception, we took the globes on our fingertips and ate.

entering was not the end goal, though. he walked straight to the bride and groom, her bouquet a large replica of the small daisy globe, but with sunflowers instead. it was heavy. she looked at us as if she knew that we were there to tell her something of great importance. the handsome boy led, with my hand still in his hand, and she followed me in her white wedding gown.

we were outside in the courtyard, the boy was walking slowly now with a bow and arrow in one hand, pointing to the ground.
"that is where he fell" , he said, pointing to stone. i was still weeping and pressed his hand to my heart, so he could feel it breaking beneath my chest.

we were decades from when the bus had crashed and somehow, the world we were in aged in appearance like it was going back in time. the boy was now wearing a tricorne.

he kept walking and leading us, the bride and me, through fields and ruins and fogs and greens. while he was discoursing, it came to me that he was the beginnings of a famous author, telling us his story that he was to write, using this place and time and travesty as inspiration. in my dream he was thomas wolfe.

from jenna to jeffery, 5 am

if i were the last girl
standing
on a sea of ice and foam,
if my skin were a flame,
if the dirt on my fingers
was so evident and obvious
and ugly and terrible,
would you dare to call me
beautiful?

if i was one of many women knocking
on the wooden cross of
your midnight door
my tremble voice just one of many voices who,
sounding like water boiling in the kitchen
spilling over onto the stove,
whispered your name sweet into your ear,
would you look at me different,
because i can't?

if i am one body
entertained on hazy streets
on certain nights of the week
at certain times of the night,
if mine is one of many bodies
held so tight like you mean it
please do not touch me,
or if you must,
please just call me beautiful.
and pretend like it's true.

tuesday, 406

i am not alone, today
i look around and it is
copied and pasted, every few seats,
those of us who made it here.

ragamuffin, mis-matched,
hair is ashen spectrums,
mid-morning coffee breath
from mid-temperature coffee.

i am tired, sunken eyes
half-mast, fixed on one tile
of the old linoleum floor,
contemplating the cloud at my back.

it is so gray in 406, a fog
like the hue in between bed-sheets.
i wish i wasn't wearing mascara, or
blush, powder, paints.

i wish that guy wasn't wearing a suit
because he has bed-head and pink eyes,
one finger to his moustache lip
in between intermittent yawning.

i wish that girl wasn't wearing a bedazzled hat
or those oversized silver-plated earrings,
hiding her watercolor face, smears,
i wish she would just show it.

i wish we were all dressed
together in tan and cream cotton blends
draping over form, with our
hair and skin in pink and soot tones.

i don't know, i just think it'd be beautiful,
like a choir, or angels, or a family.
i just realized, i'm probably being used as an example
in a college classroom, somewhere

that hard-headed girl who "saved" my friend
at the kitchen table one afternoon,
and how to date i'm helping people think,
"stupid Christians, ragamuffin and mis-matched"

i wonder if anyone else is listening
to the professor, or smelling his
coffee breath. i wonder what they're thinking,
if it's anything like what i'm thinking.

pantoum revision

Recollection
Centennial Park


I recall the last time
I saw him and walked
around Centennial Park
with a loaf of Wonder bread.

I saw him and walked with him
in the rhythm of his stride
with a loaf of Wonder Bread
in my hand for the ducks.

The rhythm of his stride
like notes swirling in crescendo
and the wonder of it all, the bread,
the birds, my absent head,

all swirling around in crescendo cloud.
I could have said so much then,
but for the birds, my head, and him
just sitting there so beautifully.

And I could have said so much more
when we sat there by the pond,
him sitting there so beautifully
me wishing I could stay.

We sat beside the pond
in a park in Tennessee.
I wish I could have stayed as
I recall when last I saw him.

sink

in the fertile green between sleeping and awake
i feel my body rise in
deep breaths
and sink heavy,
exhaling.
the descent into
the mattresses
through springs
sifting out skin and
muscles,
then bones
leaving only pools of
soul, blood,
and dreams.

dr. reck

words words words
spinning circles in the air
from his lips up to my ears
but i do not let them in
i deny their diffusion
because i am wonderstruck
from the window scenes.

the drone, drone, droning of this bass drum voice
is a steady soundtrack
to the winter inside my head. there,
i am lying on a bed of evergreen braches
on some handsome, cotton-colored hill
frozen
i am not listening to what you say!

potato couch
one, two, three pillows barricade
the cold from my skin
barricade the reminders
i have not been touched in so many days
so i sink into the
tan, brown, pink and blue
blankets and cushions
further and further out of reach.

you are a good man
cracked hands, black oil stains soaked
with hard days work
under wide and cold gray skies,
it sits heavy on your back.
how i'd like to make your burden light,
a petal kiss on neck pulse,
sheer florals on button-up dress.