Honor: 174 [ Give / Take ]
7 entries this month
PRIVATE ENTRY
02:27 Oct 29 2008
Times Read: 1,313
• • • • PRIVATE JOURNAL ENTRY • • • •
Tuesday Pilgrim
13:39 Oct 28 2008
Times Read: 1,341
Infinity is the taste of every answer I cannot attain,
Like the saltwater taffy waves of the Painted Desert
Where trees bake until they are stones,
Dotting the rolling land as far as the eye can see.
I am the last weathered sign along the road.
Torn fabric frays and flutters against a rusted nail,
Teased by the dry wind, just another flightless one
Wishing the horizon near.
Wind chimes hang from a saguaro cactus,
Palace and symphony for the king, who shelters there.
A dusty collie with three good legs pants the cadence
For the music of my feverish need to know.
New Orleans Haunt
07:11 Oct 23 2008
Times Read: 1,389
Wrought iron lace and her porcelain face
Entwined with finials and fleur de lis.
Circle within circle,
A medallion set like a jewel
In the arched doorway of her stately home
On St. Charles Avenue.
Craft and form beguile and charm
And metal vines become hairs that wind
Round the ancient screen.
Her fierce black curls
Swirl and twirl in the haunted screen
Like the scented steam rising from my tub.
Against my will, against my wall,
It leans there now,
Keeping watch and a lock of hair
To weave more lace around her face
As fair as my evening prayer.
Touch
00:44 Oct 17 2008
Times Read: 1,470
I still cannot wipe away your fingerprints. Your hand is clearly preserved against the shining hull of the boat, as though it was only a moment since you leaned there, and not these many months grown into years. How have I continued to breathe when you have stopped? I cried myself dry. Did you hear?
I still whip around at times, certain that you were just there...so certain that I felt your hand against my shoulder. But there are no visible prints left on me. Detectives use special lighting to find evidence that the naked eyes cannot see. I wish there were such lighting to show the places where you have left your evidence upon my flesh.
I broke your glasses. I found them casually laid by, on a window sill months later. I don't know where the anger was stored that welled up and out of me at that moment. The glasses you always carried and forgot on mantels, counters, and window sills. It was too cruel to find them there when I was learning not to look for you.
I smashed the lenses and crushed the frames beneath my garden shoes. It was satisfying so I kept going, no tears, just madness and smashing. I stopped when I heard an unhealthy sound, like wheezing, asthmatic breathing very near. I didn't want anyone to see the spectacle spectacle...shame burned across my cheeks before I realized it was my own exaggerated and exhausted breathing, the sound amplified between my own ears.
I crept back into the garden late that night and picked up every shard and twisted piece of plastic, searching for the shine of moonlight on them. I placed them into a ziplock bag and tucked them into the bottom drawer of my jewelry box. I'm sorry. I'm so sorry that I was angry. I'm not now, not any more...but I'm not completely me anymore, either. Wherever you are, you have that missing piece of me with you. I'm not sorry for that, either. I'd give you more if you asked.
It's the aching, now...the constant aching. I used to resent the ache and want it to lighten, lift and float away. But not now. I own the ache and embrace the pain which belongs to a wound which will never heal completely. I don't want it to completely heal. This ache reminds me that I walk and breathe in a world without you. That should never feel perfectly comfortable to me.
Are you lonely for me where you are? Can you feel? Is there more than the earth where you lay? I wish you would come to me. And if you already do, help me to know that you are there. I wonder if you'd laugh at my follies, if you see me reading Wuthering Heights. I can picture in my mind's eye the lines of your face and the crinkling beside your eyes as you would tease me for such a romantic choice in reading materials. Remembering the feel of the planes of your face beneath my fingertips...a knife would hurt less. I wonder...are my prints still on you? I will believe that they are, that they must still be.
Stop laughing for a moment, and when Heathcliff calls after Catherine, out through the window on a lonely night when he feels lost, hear my voice:
"Haunt me...Be with me always - take any form - drive me mad! only do not leave me in this abyss, where I cannot find you!"
Homogeny
22:36 Oct 16 2008
Times Read: 1,490
A single drop, unsolicited.
No need to shake or stir.
Random and constant,
Motion and pushing
At the deepest levels of me
To accept the changes
You engender,
As though there is still a choice.
Spreading evenly.
Soon, I am no longer me.
Loss and Perspective
18:55 Oct 15 2008
Times Read: 1,544
I lost something dear to me along the side of the road. I had been careless, not cherishing it as I should have. There had clearly been another choice, but I was foolish. I didn't even notice the absence right away, but when I needed it, I was horrified to find what I had done. Only gone had its value crystallized for me. But it was too late. Someone had spirited it away, lost to me forever.
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My feet are bare and I am in the middle of the ocean, my toes are just touching the water and I am enjoying the cool sensation as the small boat sails quietly along at a slow clip.
Something is dark below the water and I am curious and excited, believing it to be a great fish. When it surfaces, I see that it is a beautiful woman, dark as night. She is stunning and I cannot take my eyes from her, each movement she makes is more angel than human. I am enchanted. A few more surface, each as graceful and mesmerizing as the first and I feel my heart swell at a world that can have such beauty. I experience the purest joy at this gift I have been trusted with, this heavenly vision.
It is not long before I notice that the water is teeming with the dark angels. Above and below the surface, the black shapes flit back and forth, around and below the boat. They swim closer and their motion is fast and takes on a sinister feel. I am afraid that they will touch my skin and I pull my feet out of the water and scoot back from the edge. The original few stroke their hair and smile at me and I become the prisoner of cold, wet terror. All that brought me joy circles, anticipating the moment that I shall be devoured.
Framework
08:26 Oct 14 2008
Times Read: 1,604
“Standards, ledgers, transoms, and battens.”
The rhythm of the words, themselves, comfort me.
Scaffolding, beautifully engineered armor
Between myself and the world, worn cap-a-pe.
Under construction
Read the sign
Come back later.
Nearly permanent, this temporary structure
That keeps me from losing my foothold
Or suspends me above the ground
To swing and kick at my fears
Riding high in the saddle.
This scaffold, overwrought and over adorned.
Only I would add flying buttresses
Where braces will do.
Sinking slowly
Weighted down
Show's over.
COMMENTS
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birra
14:08 Oct 28 2008
What a beautiful way to start my morning...
...now I can face the four days of ignored emails. :)
Beastt17
16:20 Oct 28 2008
A postcard image of the dry, dusty and forgotten. Or was it just a photo -- a fragment of an advertisement, leafed over by most, which caught your eye and tickled your mind?
Beastt17
16:22 Oct 28 2008
Did I mention "brilliant"? Such a word should never become mundane. But in my feeble stumblings to find the right adjective, I tend to trip over the tired, the fatigued and the thoroughly appropriate.
ChasingTheGhost
17:27 Oct 28 2008
I started my morning with this as well...to smile before noon is a gift. You dazzle.
STABB666
18:01 Oct 28 2008
I love these weaving story-like words. I always want you to continue on, into an epic...
BLOODLIFE
00:24 Oct 29 2008
A gift to come home to .. thank you.
StoneCrow
09:49 Oct 29 2008
I like how textural this is, gritty and real. Awesome piece Jo.
Beastt17
22:28 Oct 29 2008
(Not really. I loved it. But your comments needed some contrast.)
;-)
Angelus
15:13 Oct 30 2008
BLOODY MARVELLOUS!