raw

I was going to say you should have been a dancer, you were born with too much fire in your veins, but you stopped me cold somewhere, ice cracking behind yellow-green cat eyes like so many suns, like that July morning or maybe it was afternoon all that time ago when you walked away and left me wondering what it was I had done. And I was going to say, I was going to say you shouldn’t apologize because it didn’t matter anyway because they clipped my wings and I think the fire cooled in your veins, so no, you probably shouldn’t be a dancer, and I think they ought to end this song.

               You think we’re dancing still?

               Well, that’s all we’ve ever done.

I was going to say it’s okay, and I hope you find your veins somewhere, because somehow your eyes seem so much flatter without the sun behind them. 

(Note: this is an unedited improvisation from my ENG-W303 class. It will probably appear later in a much more polished form.)

shantih

A dead mouse south
of the Caspian sea- blood
red sea and no peace between
where the headless mock
the Christ with song (where
are your saints now; buried
beneath the places where
the paint cracks?) and where
the phoenix births
a dove called Shahada in the
morning, and Memento Mori
once Friday fades black.
Catch water in your
color-carved jar and close
your fingers on your
flute, weave tight the lid
on your jar of holy men.

jaded

What I want more than anything right now is to throw everything away and start over again. If I could, I would drop my whole life right now and make up a new one. I would move- move to New York or California or maybe even London- somewhere nobody knew me and I could have a clean slate. I think I would miss this life terribly, but I'm aching for something new.