Importance (a Musing)

corinthian columns vs
ionian vs
dorian and
you said the historians
poured over the stories like they were
pieces of
botticelli fragments,

but they stopped in their tracks
when you said that
maybe your stopping to get
coffee that morning
or the lovers who
stopped to whisper by the streetcorner
was just as important

as plato at his desk in the
early evenings, looking out of his
open window, just thinking,
or the blood stained battlefields of
napoleon,
glinting in the
fading orange sunlight

Copyright 2015 Golden Star Poetry

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A Letter I Wrote to Sam Last Fall

doe eye
wanted to find her way back to her camp on the hillside
she said yes, I’ll take your dollar
she said yes, I’ll make a holler

doe eye
made her way back to the hillside
she was worn out from being upset
with the neighbors, but she was blessed
she tiptoed on my wooden floorboards
and as they creaked,
she sauntered over to me

doe eye
was sleeping on the hillside
she was living by a ramshackle ten feet wide
but she rarely ever stepped inside
even if she needed to hide

doe eye-

make a prayer for the sweet no-county girl
make sure she’s heard
for she’s sweeter than me,

she has to be somewhere for others to see,
but that’s beside the point:

I wanna see her huddled up to you, sam
I wanna see her feeling like the pearl inside a clam
I wanna see her leave the cities inside her head
I want her to know it’s better to be alive than dead

(please, please sam
please please, please
sam please I’m tellin’ ya please sam
I’m pleadin’ please please sam)

Copyright 2015 Golden Star Poetry

Gleaming September

Having an AP English class changes your vocabulary a lot so this is yet again another style. It sounds all fancy-like.

gleaming September
in her crisp linen dress
was the mesmerizing angel
I longed to posses

she tugged at my sweater with a smile
and she stayed for a while
while my guile was untied
in the church spire of her mind

we met singing hymns
in the hall of the Carolingian kings
for sweet September’s breath
has breathed me in:

she is presumed to be royalty
or a guest of high authority
followed by October’s wrath
a looming beast that withheld his blast

and I shiver to remember her grace
her unassuming face
her lingering presence at my doorstep
felt only by the residuals of my poor verses

dear gleaming September,
remember me.
and find it in your heart to decipher my screen
that hides the unfettered stream of our two means
which fit so perfectly at their uneven seams
and the fleeing sense of my reality that you turned into dreams.

Copyright 2015 Golden Star Poetry

Clueless Vs. Real Highscool Living

Welll, I saw Clueless for the first time. Thought I’d write up something Ironic because, frankly, I’m a bit upset the main character was never seen doing any actual schoolwork on camera.

“you sit around, waiting for the phone to pick up

and you know you were going to pick it up yesterday-”

the movies are all cha cha

while you sit around, dreaming on your bed,

a kaleidoscope picture from some hazy memory

from the movies that are so blase`

“when are we going to find out what Cheryl has to say?

she’s out at a movie!

doesn’t everybody go?”

I’m still surprised

because the fact is I’ve been sitting here with my

diary and my quasi- problems,

my days going past me and I’m hanging close to the walls

so close

just taking in deep breaths like I can’t

stand it anymore,

lie down on the bed and you

pretend that it’s all cha cha

it’s all cha cha–

“we’re at the movies, cheryl brings a coke and we’re all

snuggled up and we’re fashion plates, living under ferns and fronds”

meanwhile me and my diary in the real world are having nights out on our own

and I’m playing mind games with myself

and I’m getting stuck by the walls,

and in the shower stalls

and everything seems stuck for closeness

even without anything or anyone

being

remotely there

Copyright 2015 Golden Star Poetry

June Fever Song

yet another new style; a more descriptive one, and I like it. I’m going to try to emulate this more. Written in my day planner on the bus as I saw a woman eating blackberries.

I want blackberries
when they sit and sleep beside me in the sunlight,
tearful and present,
standing in their own protected corner of the universe.

I eat them.
It doesn’t feel like a crime to.
It feels like tasting sweet oblivion,
like walking around in a silent wood with the sweet earth beneath you, in the nightfall
it feels like sharing a secret.

we will meet at the garden gate,
and you will eat blackberries in the sparkling sunlight
and we will spell out the secrets to each other,
and it will be good.

Backsides extending on the lawn,
covers drawn,
blue and a purple-staining juice,
flowing mouth, the river,

we face,
face-to-face with our dear selves,
as sweet as rotting blackberries;
who’d want it any other way?

Copyright 2015 Golden Star Poetry

Scene in a City With You in It

Childhood Expectation Versus the Real Life;

when you were still young,
you’d see a pastel forest in her,
that weak-in-the-knees beauty
or share a little smile,
a little tangible gift.

when you entered the scene
though a bit distraught,
you were caught
in a dead dream of never-tomorrow
and the smooth dark wool blanket dreams
you’d prepared for so long only to have them

smothered out by some smaller
little pet part of your heart,
bubbling slowly along with her-
you thought you could wait it out
you thought you could wait it out

you were living under a fear-cloud
singed by romantic off-yellow lights and the city around you dark
you were huddled in an
oversized dark wool coat, yours or someone else’s
because you had never tried,
even though you had.

winter-bitten, you saw the man
who should have been waiting up for you
who lacked the good mystique
who lacked everything,
who tasted of bitter mellon and
two vermilion cheeks,
and you knew it, just as you did when you
held her hand
those many years before,
that love was a long way’d around,
love was a long, long, long way’d round
and long still yet:

too late to show up, too late to care
you say, as you cradle your own arms
drink in your own breath,
sigh in your own poetry
sing your own nighttime lullaby.

(the chilly air seems cozy,
you say
it’s time at last, to rest,)
and you are a small dot on the park bench
in the snowy city, alone.

Copyright 2015 Golden Star Poetry

Musings and Doubts About Myself

who are we
to say she
was not wonderful
in this day god made her so sweet?

who are we
to say she
could not be,
sitting side by side with me
in the afternoon breeze?

(when I see the future
I don’t see her in wonderful colors
but I do see a nestling spot
a resting spot
a holy little shrine, to find my peace
where to pray, where to breathe.)

I love this new part of myself
a delicate, shy unfurling,
from the curling stem to the pink petal;

and though I dont like
putting myself into a tight worded box,
it makes sense, and
its what you do when
everything else around you
is slipping.
So I put my feelings away to where they should be,
and ask myself
what is the true religious meaning of
expressive relief?

Copyright 2015 Golden Star Poetry 

Sarah, She’s Still In the Womb: Short Story

I dont know how long its been since I last saw vacant car lots filled up with cars. Has everybody moved away? Am I a singularity, a lone youth wolf out in the wild, separated from the pack? Will I return to school only to see the hallways and staircases emptied?

 The parks are filled only with shadows and empty benches. One little girl is playing on the swing, but I don’t see her parents. I have an urge to go up and talk to her, but something tells me she knows what to do. Her bright chestnut hair is long and plaited, with big pink bows at the ends. I thought she was smiling, but it was just my imagination. I think she wants to think to herself.

I walk to the street up ahead and buy an ice cream. I’ve taken my camera so I can go to the thrift store later and see if there’s anything pretty around to take a picture of. There is. It’s a little worn book of hymns the size of my palm. It’s brown and leather with little gold lettering. The lady at the counter says no pictures. I snap one anyway when she’s not looking. 

The next day is the first day of school. Trouble is, I’ve forgotten how to wear clothes. What looks good. What is acceptable to wear in public. I wear an old plaid dress from my uniformed schoolgirl days with a forest green cardigan on top. Something about it seems wrong, but I don’t quite know what it is. I keep it on anyway, drawing on a line of kohl pencil on my eyelids. Is that how people do it? Unsure of myself, I scarf down a bowl of cereal and grab a banana as I head out the door, kissing my mother goodbye before heading out the old worn secret path I took to school. 

Something stops me from taking a back-alley route though, and I swerve back onto the main road and bump into an old acquaintance from school. He’s supposed to be a year older than me. Black greasy hair and tall; he’s thin, with big, green-blue eyes. He looks depressed, a little sunken into his body, his frame isn’t necessarily  bony but out of shape. He manages to smile as i shyly reintroduce myself.

“Sarah” I say say, my voice soft, hardly there.
“Peter” he replies, with the same reticent tone.
I shrug it off. everybody’s anxious on the first day, right? 

Math and Biology are a bore.  All the teachers are handing out their syllabus papers in various colors: pink, yellow, blue, green, orange. I guess the school still hasn’t gotten enough money for real school office supplies. Peter is in every one of my classes. I think he was held back a grade, he’s supposed to be in college. But he hardly notices me, looking down at his feet or rolling his pencil back and forth over and over again on his desk, humming to himself, doodling, or staring blankly at the wall, the window, the blackboard. 

Time runs endlessly like this, slow and unvaried, and I find myself falling into a strange rhythmic oblivion. I should have left this town two months ago with the rest of them, I decide mournfully, my thoughts turning once again to peter. He suddenly stares back at me, his gaze intense and long, eyes like flashing rivets in his skull. I don’t know whether I ‘m dreaming or if I’m ever awake, for that matter. All I know is that I might as well disappear into the wall where he’s staring. I think peter smokes cigarettes. I think maybe nobody is going to amount to anything, especially on this town, and even me-I think I might dissipate or self-combust and it would’t make a bit of difference.

Copyright 2015 Golden Star Poetry 

Streetcorner Daymare

you know it gets to you when they ask you for your number
or with shoulders heaving a suggestion,
and you walk home zipping your jacket up, smoothing down your skirt.

where do I get to breathe,
wanting to be breathing?

when do all the pretenders walk away home to leave
the real truth ones reveiled,
to honeysilk and the ones the bees have in store for me,
their radient comb queen?

I was waiting for the bus again or in the library
and the flittering flies caught me again, taunting where I was but
(flattering as it sometimes is)
I never made sense of the howdy-do’s of it,
of the where’s your sister at,
of the what’s your house smell like when it’s late at night.

I’d recoil as far as i could in my chair
but sometimes I just feel calm enough to sit and stare
sit and stare
sit and—-

Copyright 2015 Golden Star Poetry

Gothic Midwestern Folktale

I read a scary story and now i need to get out the scary feelings so i wrote a poem and im feeling a little better now
–GSP

you’re not sure
if I’m scared
or if my hands are just shaking under the moon
are my hands shaking, under the moon?
(believe in whom,
believe in whom?)

these gazelles, for hands, will take things for you
try to run after them!
what can they consume?
do you have the room?

I am sure
that I am scared
my hands can remember shaking under the moon
are my hands shaking, under a pale blue moon?
(cry to whom,
cry to whom?)

Copyright 2015 Golden Star Poetry