My Cup Runneth Over (Just Not with Ink)

I don’t know how to write this.
My muse is at a loss.
She’s used to painting things much heavier
and darker, with backdrops a black splash of storm
or grey with murky depths.
And this,
calling for light and air and cloudless skies -
I can’t use her for this;
this is completely outside her palette.
A small part of me will mourn
as she gathers dust in a corner,
motes sparkling in the sunlight
she cannot translate.
But most of me will be out basking,
spinning circles in the grass,
not wishing it any other way.

Repose

It’s an odd mix, this feeling,
caught halfway between numb shock
and exhausted relief,
the abiding tension finally burnt out,
the resolution both dreaded and expected.

I find that even through my tears
there’s a core of calm acceptance,
simply knowing that I can rest,
no longer pouring my spirit and energy
into something so draining,
so futile,
and so one-sided.

The question now is whether I can remember
how it feels to live
any other way,

how it feels to be at peace.

April Poetry Project

April is National Poetry Month, and for 2009 I thought I would do a special project for it: write one poem every day for the entire month. I’ll be posting a poem every day over at my library on Pathetic Poets Society, and the ones I think are particularly good will get blog facetime here at Myths & Memoirs.

Follow my project here: http://pathetic.org/library.php?i_memberid=613&mode=folder&i_folderid=1238648613

Home

A new poem I wrote just today, after looking at a dozen different apartment complexes and contemplating what makes the place you live ‘home’ instead of just the place you live.

Home

I want a place inviolate,

where I can lounge in solitary quietude
or dance naked in the hall at whim,
free to keep strange hours or stranger company. 

A place where I can color the walls with my quirks,
create an ever-changing puzzle of my own designing. 

I want a place of sanctuary
and belonging, 
of cozy bliss.

Above all, I want to share it, eventually,
belonging to you as much as we belong to it,
your face a solid cornerstone
to the sanctity of its walls, 

And your arms around me a bastion against the dark,
my dreams secure
with that soft breath against my neck.

I wish I was there.
I wish you were here.

I wish I knew who you were.

Drowning

It feels like drowning,
thrown suddenly into the middle of raging water,
death-run rapids, a hurricane whirlpool,
and the mind just keeps going round and round
circles, back in upon itself,
coming to the same end again and again,
but never out, never clear,
never clawing the way up to where there’s air
and light and familiar space,
where it isn’t such an effort just to keep existing,
where things make sense still
and there isn’t a torrent of tears
pouring themselves into the empty hole inside
that threatens each second to drag everything back under
and suffocate it, slowly killing.

Drowning, dying, a bit more each day.
Swimming, saving self? If it was clear which way is up,
which way is out. But the sky is the same as the storm,
all dark, all directions, and the lifeguard has given up
his post for more important things inside his head.

Sinking, mind and body scoured away by time and life.
If he ever thinks to come back, what would be left?
Weighted, empty bones, half-buried in sand, slimed over with seaweed,
a mile beneath the endless waves.