Be comfortable, creature, and ride the wind

He spun as if a child beneath the twilight of darkened lights, mixed between north and south, doused in yellow. Back and forth he moved. Cars raced on either side of him, yet he danced in tribal ceremony. The fire to his left, people caked in reds, blues, green paints to his right. His loved ones, his people, united, he, himself, merged in symphony. Great lunges. It didn’t matter that cars raced by, that plastic bags circled his figure with great speed, that people smiled in condescension, that they laughed, that he danced. He smiled great, and he was there in that moment with the wind, the colors, the life that dimmed in so many. He was a child spinning beneath yellow sunlight and he smiled great. And he was home.

Ciel

Spin me around

Fly in a wind of film

Dance in the sky of blue and white.

As a little girl, I would dream and twirl, a life of cushioning clouds crowded my mind.

In the cramped car, with the windows rolled down, my hand swam through the current of sweet, warm air. 

It threaded through my fingers, pushing my hand up, pushing my hand down.  Strands of blond danced around my head, as I struggled to push wisps out of my eyes. 

Strings of guitar, beats of drums, and a husky voice sang out through the small speakers; the tune of days gone and past, a forgotten decade. 

Up above, pink mixed with orange, orange mixed with red, red mixed with purple, purple splashed with yellow. 

Cream, fluffy clouds invaded the canvas.  There I ran and played.  I jumped from cloud to cloud.  I spun and twirled.  I danced in the sky of raspberries and cream.

An angel of the heavens, my passed family haven. My own paradise of the gone and forgotten.

My childhood, I float.  My youth, I stay. 

Weeping Willow

A world so bright.  A world fading.

A time of highs.  A time of lows.

Chaos encircling.  Chaos goes unnoticed.

Am I the only one to realize this doomsday penance?

All we do is lie.

We lie on our beds; always alone, maybe together, perhaps with another’s arms encircled around our own lonely bodies. 

We lie to each other, we lie to ourselves.

We lie to the world, to authority, to the curious, knowing children.

And we hide from the sorrow pouring, seeping from the clouds above.

Can you feel the earth moving below your feet?  Can you feel it?

The earth moves in slow waves, but as time quickens its pace, the slow waves have turned violent. 

I feel it; So here I stand, scared of what the future brings, scared of the present, grasping for the past, shaking with the fury buried within thousands.

Move, we must move. Listen, open and listen. Peel away the painted facade of a world that does not pay for ignorance and your still voice.

You turn your head, away from the oncoming disaster of days draped in dark.

Away, only concerned with our own life and unfolding story, stuck in a fog of hallucinations.

And you run, around and around you go as the world unravels behind your heels.

The water bleeds over the edge, into the space of night and stars.

Fetch boy, like a dog on his hands and knees.

Crumble like a wall built so tall. Look. Watch. Understand. Forget. Repeat.

Can you feel the poison burning through your veins? 

Can you feel it bubbling to your mouth as you lie to yourself, to me, to our fragile, tired world?

Don't listen for the quake of oncoming change.

This world has gone flat like the light of crystal ships and the strong wolves howling, crying to their white guardian, suspended high in time. 

It cries for the terrible pain beholden upon us all, finally disappearing below the horizon of earth meeting sun, and leaving us amidst gray ashes floating placidly from the sky above to the ground surrounding us. 

And the gray ashes of all the untold secrets rains over the land of fading evergreen, over you.

Wash your hands clean of any lingering remorse.  

Caught in a waking dream

Hide and Seek. Marco, Polo.

Where are you? Hey, hello?

Inside and outside, you haunt my every being.

My soul stirs restlessly for your touch, your words that graze my cheek so softly. 

My lips tremble for remembrance.  My eyes, your starstruck acknowledgment. 

Along a path of burning coals, I walk.  I close my eyes squeezing back the pain. 

Steadily I balance, arms in flight, listening to the gunshots quiver past my ears.

Battle upon battle, bullets narrowly miss the mark.

Unscathed, with a hole in my heart?

The shadows of my subconscious, their medical hands stained blood red, are shattered as it bursts in crimson rain overhead.  

Part the waves of the red sea, here I come, look away. 

Both towering walls of still water breaks through my force field of domain.  I feel the first drops of red rain before I am awash in blue tides. 

With open eyes I am turned around, upside down; My sense of direction floats about my gasps for air.

You flash through my mind all calm and fine.  You tend to your next 'sweet thing', not witness to my burnt feet, or the scars of bullets that cut me into Swiss cheese.  

You cannot see me drowning beneath the waves of the sea. 

In a flash of white light I am asleep in a field of billowing, tall green grass.

I awake to sunflowers and roses and clear blue skies.  

I try to remember something, anything, but I am washed clean.

I try to remember your touch, and the way your words would softly graze my cheek.

My lips do not tremble, nor do my eyes look for those starry skies.  

Down the center, slightly to the left, a tiny stitch marks my beating heart.

I am back to the beginning.

Hide and Seek.  This time I am searching for me. 1, 2, 3. 

The lightness above us, heavy upon us

Light swirls above us, heavy above us, heavy upon us.

We question, we wonder aloud to the silence above us, upon us:

"Who am i?"

We whisper to the wind, the light, the darkness that shields the seekers in the midnight hour.

"Who am I?"

We scream, we yell, we cry. No answer from the chilled wind, fading light, and steady darkness that shields the speakers in the midnight hour.

We are alone to ponder the stained red question.

We see the light swirling above us, upon us, yet featherlike caressing our butter cream cheeks.

As children we skip and dance, for we are the light that swirls above us.

We run with radiant lightness through the emerald green fields, racing the clouds.

The bees whisper honeyed secrets in our young, naive ears.

Sprouting like the flowers in their beds of earth, we blossom into adolescence. 

The light grows heavier, the bees buzz grows fainter, the green grass is left to tickle our calves. 

We are young, naive. But we notice on another, and we love.

It's in the cool moments beneath the oak tree, book in hand where we yearn for adventures we will never have; we yearn for love and another's arms, eyes, sweet cherry caress.

Our sun kissed skin ignites under the heavy light of the sun.

Our first kiss, so instinctual, yet new. 

Everything seems to fade away in that one moment: the light above us, the wind, the bees and emerald green fields with the high grass and chasing clouds.

Our solitude fades, and we feel as one. Our previous fears dissolve into honeyed kisses--our newfound speech.

That's the first moment where we wished we would forget that question:

"Who am I?"

The days drift by heavy in light, chilled with the wind, dark as the darkness that shields the seekers in the midnight hour.

And as our skin ripens, we are fallen apples, bruised; our youthful lightness weighs heavier and heavier.

We no longer hear the bees buzz in our naive ears or skip and dance as the lightness above us.  

We no longer kiss under the oak tree.

We are bruised, heavy with the answer to the question that haunts us.

At last our rattled breath heaves a heavy sigh:

"Ah, death we are the lightness above us. We are heavy, yet as light as a feather."

So we dance and skip in fields of emerald green, chasing the clouds. 

Bees whisper honeyed secrets in our aged ears, and the grass tickles our feet.

We read of adventures never had, and love in another's sweet cherry caress.

We kiss the light, the wind, the darkness of the midnight hour.

So as we take our final breath, do not ask us that burdened question, "who am I?"

Fo we are the lightness above us, heavy yet as light as a feather.

Three Wishes

All I hear anymore is the rustle of leaves, the rustle of leaves and the secrets of the wind.

I see you there.

I know you are there.

But I am too scared to present you, you mysterious wind of secrets and sins.

Though I could love you. 

I could give you my all.

But I'm scared. Have you heard? I'm scared of those three words that so many speak in a flutter of overflowing fluster.

I walk alone, my companion, wishing, oh wishing, to release myself, free myself to the secrets of the wind.

Secrets of the wind.

Instead I prefer to be condemned inside a lamp, a genie some say, subject to the wishes of others, chained, restrained. "Three wishes you hear?"

Recoil, retreat.

No one can touch me here. No one can find me here.

Safe as the secrets in the wind, whose only listener is the girl who sways to the rustle of leaves, and grants three wishes to the controllers of the fates.

The girl, that quiet girl who watches a candle flame melt the surrounding wax, barrier of life and memory, and wishes for nothing more than to melt with it all.

The wind. The leaves. The quiet girl. 

Three wishes. Three secrets. Three loves.

One me.

No me, to melt with it all.

Destinations breathe, Homesick release

Days come, go, stay, slow.

As kids, we would look above, to the weighing, suspended black canvas and whisper as summer-dew crickets: “There’s the North Star! There’s the light!”

We’re found.

Found and safe and sure of a rising sun and midnight cookie dipped in white—our guardians, keeper of secrets.

Pinky swear, cross our heart and hope to die.

Repetition chains a figure so torn and ready. Everything is sure and steady, no questions, no tarnished gaze.

But the rules did not know you or me.

And jumping like the wind that presses our scribbled skin, we skip the cold ground, our feet lift and glide and we are off, unaware of the interrupted game of hopscotch, jump rope and double-dutch. 

Where are the lines so many struggled to stray? The lines that haunt, that speak to something, anything.

Across that stage, name called, robe falls, and we’re left, bare and cold and unsure.

The paparazzi snap, snap, snap photos restore in still!

Our eyes, burnt in a ring of light, the North Star faded from sight.

Our map gone in a cloud of ash,

Fog stretches across the universe, wrapping our skin in silk streams.

If only we could lie in a field, so green, so gold;

A sun, a moon, a star that points to home.

The wind that whisks in circles, cold.

Flowers rustle in a struggle to hold together this world, together a time that flies in a light that shatters, fractures in shards of painted glass. 

Ceased to be remembered,

Time calls, it knocks, it beats.

Alive. Alive. Alive. A lie.

To walk, to run, to sprint. We walk, we run, we sprint, and then we are finished.

Finished when the golden light meets the white wash.

Finished when the clouds morph into one, and the North Star shines directly above as lightning strikes the tallest tree, the tallest light that bathes in a cooling, crashing sea of people, lives, cries and keys. 

Cold, and broken,

And hallelujah.

It’s over. It’s just begun.