Long Stop Through Nowhere

Chapter one.

The only thing that the red truck in front of her wasn’t going to do was kill her. Maybe cars in this side of town went slow, you know, like that phrase–slower than molasses in January? Yeah, that’s the one. No, It definitely wasn’t going to kill her. But she had heard her mother say very distinctly that the world was much more stark and scary when you went out into it’s clutches, and cars were one of the things you had to look out for.

“I told you. Practically no one drives here Cornelia, it’s a dead zone. Nobody lives here.” said Peter.
“Then why’s he stoppin’?” drawled Cornelia vacantly.
“Because we were just about gettin’ ready to cross the street, that’s why. Didn’t nobody ever tell you ’bout such a thing as driving rules?”
“Uh…no” Cornelia admitted defeatedly.
“Well then, what are you waiting for? That truck ain’t gonna wait for us any longer! go on, git!”
“You sure, I?…”
“Git! go on ahead, that driver ain’t got all day!”
The brisk morning air suddenly struck the two young travelers as they flittered across the narrow dirt road. Pine trees ran along it’s whole length; an endless wood ran on either side of the mountain highway like a secret hideaway into the endless mystery of nature. But that wasn’t their focus anymore. They were almost on their way to a city, and this was just where civilization had begun to turn up.
A twisted grin began to play on peter’s sun burnt face as they continued walking along the road.
“What’s so funny?” whined Cornelia, who was just about through with her brother’s pointless games.
“You don’t know about the pedestrian’s right of way, Corny. It’s like knowin’ the world goes around the sun. Common knowlage.”
She hated it when he called her that stupid nickname. And she hated how he knew more big words than her, since he was in the tenth grade.
“What’s a ped-est-rian?” Asked the bewildered girl carefully, who was now at her wit’s end. This question only made Peter laugh harder, snorting through his nostrils and cackling like a hyena, which made Cornelia even more outraged. At least, thought Cornelia,we only have ten more miles to go. It was a comforting thought at best.

If seen from above, the whole journey would have seemed startlingly picturesque; A young girl with shockingly red hair walking down a mountain path along side a much older, very red and tan boy dripping in sweat, looking as if they were on some secret spy mission to save the world, hold up the one car traffic of a huge scarlet truck in the middle of the day.

Copyright 2014 Golden Star Poetry
I do not own this photo

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The Empty Ears of a Stranger

The first musing

Finally, a door opens on a busy city street,
and the faint sound of a billowing streetcar on the run
leaves my hands
a sweaty mess
and a picture of you
steps into my quivering mind.

It appears as no man might see it
lips there,
eyes a set frame
from there to the strand of hair that lies
so precariously on your cheek
mirroring the things you say
offhand
out of the blue
and as bold as the day is new.

In a dream

(She is the camera’s dark-eyed ghost,
faded and half-captured before the lens could flash.
I see all of her
and yet
I can’t
describe her.

She’s a winning horse eh?
I’d bet on her yet, had I even an ounce of courage
which
so far
has been the only thing
I seem to lack.
yes, she is the camera’s dark-eyed ghost
she is the camera’s dark-eyed ghost
she is the camera’s dark-eyed ghost…),

the second musing

Then there is also that strange fascination I have with
WORDS
WORDS
WHICH WE SEEM TO HAVE
A LOT OF.
Tell me, dear,
why you seem to lack the ability
to keep your promises to the other side?
I can certainly stand the game
but not if you weren’t even allowed to play.
If something held you back that
didn’t even have to do with me, I mean
What of it then? Would it be any fun?
Would I even
laugh like it was some sort of taunting joke,
a rhetorical question which you so obviously know the answer to?
no, no….
I’ll answer, in my own good time,
but-
the answer’s not the point, is it?
The answer, perhaps,
is
to lie in your arms
while somewhere in the distance
my insides let out a scream so well muffled
that it’s vibration would only cause a slight tremor
in the ripples of the air.
Now you bat at it,
and the sound of me wafts through the open window.
take a look at it, you say
that is the true
you.
but In reality
the only sound we can emit
is stone cold
silent
electricity.

the third musing

Perhaps I can deceive myself into believing
that when the music sings of you
you were simply
whispering a song
into the empty ears of a stranger
or to me
as I lie thinking
in the late, late abandoned hours of the night.

Copyright 2014 Golden Star Poetry

At the End of the Day

just before we begine, meditation:

uncharted island
of somewhere in-between the
right and wrong

where can I find you,
queen mystery of it all
that hides, unseen?

don’t find me a fire
a berating sun-drenched love
who follows my tracks

don’t find me the steel
or windy night time blue,
but some cool temperate:

I think I’ll just bathe
in the medicinal sway
of unfailing breath.

xxx x x x x x

an afterthought

yes, that’s it
she eases into a chair
her bones ache and she
finds that the view is not as lovely
as she thought it would
be.

A ticket or the house key
is misplaced
but the train station still finds a way
to make it’s contents drip in an empty thickness
depositing the worker and civillian,
the unceasing drama that
plays at the day like a child with baloons,
too soon bought then let out of grasp
floating higher and higher
and up to the sky:
watch it fly
watch it fly
watch it fly
watch it fly
At the end of the day,
And it passed me by

Copyright 2014 Golden Star Poetry

Penelope At Sea

her mouth
gaping wide
over the side
of the sea

as they tossed
from the crash
and the softening knees.

and
afloat with sieves
she gapes
at her own state.

his kisses like missiles
all the while and
firing and
cr
ash
ing
on the
side
of
t
h
e shore an
d
the
bo
at,
her tongue so
wide as to hide the
missing song inside
and-
where?

where will you take me?

When, on the evening
will the pale crayfish
who are stalking the sea road
see a woman embracing her husband
like she has never seen him before?

Copyright 2014 Golden Star Poetry

The smell of rain

Bernard, a free spirited man in his forties is with his wife, Amy, a close- minded woman in her mid-thirties. On their balcony. It’s about to rain.

Bernard: doesn’t it feel like rain?

Amy: looks like it, yeah

B: I was just wondering, do you, maybe…like, can you SMELL it?

A: rain has a scent?

B I don’t know, it gets kind of moist…sorta invigorating, but i don’t know how to put a finger on the smell…

A: its the smell of imagination. I have no clue what you are talking about, Berny.

B: neither do you, apparently.

A: oh really?

B: Yeah, I know plenty of people who can smell rain. its like another sense, Amy. Hey, have some fun, will you? you’re so uptight all of the time. Maybe it’s limiting you’re sense of imagination. Maybe you’re forgetting what freedom’s like. Come on, it’s rain! Have some fun!

A: Bernard James Patrickson, just because you earned a degree in psychology fifteen years ago does not mean you can try to be my shrink.

B: I’m not trying to be anything, Amy,I”m trying to be alive!

A: (looking away. Long pause.) do you want to go back inside and watch tv?

B: What?

A: Never mind. Do you want some ice-cream? some toast? I have Bryers ice cream in the fridge.

B: What are you talking about? Ames. I don’t want ice cream. I want you.

A: no, bern-

B: I want you, amy, I want you.

A: Stop saying that, berny, stop saying that!

B: But ames-

A: (shouting) stop saying that, just stop! ( lowering her voice). Can you just come back into the house, bern?

B: why- why are you always changing the subject?

AMY exits stage right.

B: Ames…

BERNARD burries his face in his hands.

Copyright 2013 Golden Star Poetry

Music religion

The religion of the banjo player:
The gourd
Is my Lord

Copyright 2013 Golden Star Poetry

Update, Real apology, and a Poem

I just got my official Scholastic award diplomas this week!!!! it was amazing 🙂

Apology for not posting…

here is the poem: it is one that I submitted to the awards, which unfortunately was not awarded anything….oh god….I can’t go into all that all over agian….the pain….the searing pain of loss and realization and heavy disappointment all at once!

sorry for the over dramatic touch, I guess I’ve had a silly day.

OH! my story!

today I walked out of school to take the public bus home, when, to my surprise, I saw that the street had been newly paved. “Golly!” I thought excitedly “now It won’t feel like I’m stuck on some unfinished road in Nebraska when we come to school in the morning!”.

In an attempt at sarcasm, I got to the end of the street, rolling my wheeled backpack to and fro over the cement and said, dumbfounded “IT’S A ROAD!” as if to say ” ITS AN ACTUAL ROAD NOW, CAN YOU BELIEVE IT? BEFORE, IT WAS JUST POTHOLES!” . But of course, silly me, I didn’t say that. I soon realized how  loony I sounded. To make it worse  a lady who was passing by gave me the strangest look as she went past me and it was hard not to have  a laugh attack after she left!

and here is the poem, seriously this time:

BAYOU WATCH 

at the television we sit

a bayou watch

towers above heaven like a storm cloud

juxtaposing the atmosphere of earth with the falling rain

the sunrays sighing

and a dripping drain

the bayou watch

sitting, quietly, sucking his thumbs

crying for attention

he hogs up your electricity bill

and you throw him out.

nervously you are sucking your own thumbs

unaware of your deprivation.

Copyright 2013 Golden Star Poetry

The Gobi Desert Cycle-VOICE

VOICE

a hilly valley of sound,

not quite up or down

but both, I think, one crack following another

that has it’s own sort of  vain charm.

 

hoarse and high pitched at the same sound plateaus

nothing more than laughs and question marks

that edge at the air just for the sake of respect, without real sencerity

“I don’t know” seems to be you’re favorite line (what a pity).

 

I can clearly remember a conversation I heard on the bus

some uneducated minor

talking on the phone  about how he was going to get drunk at the end of the day

and then, sadly, it made me think about how much that sounded like you.

 

“Tear apart all the words!”

The protesters make it clear of the human condition-

now I want to mangle your grammar and contort all your sentences

until they land right side up on my ears, clean and poetic, and then I will smile and say:

“son, NOW you’re making some sense”

but it doesn’t help a bit.

Copyright 2013 Golden Star Poetry

The Gobi Desert Cycle-SKIN

SKIN

I ran into

an abandoned olive grove

and pressed out their skins

to make yours.

I took nine green olives and

painted them onto you,

each detail

perfectly  softened.

I daubed a dot of black on your

right cheek, near your eye

and created starry symmetry

on the geometry of your face.

I stopped and then glanced at it all

a blended self-satisfied color

rich and full, yet one that seemed

fitting. You climbed over these rocks

and stood

self satisfied and steady.

That’s it, easy and steady,

yes, a bit like your first flying lesson,

when you soared over the burnt umber dunes,

 tart and sweet, like a fist kiss!

I wandered on the ground then

pondering your disappearance:

Then I find you

as I look upwards:

a line of burgundy, and a sliver of your

dark penetrating profile.

Copyright 2013 Golden Star Poetry

The Gobi Desert Cycle-DISCOBOLUS

DISCOBOLUS

he  rakes leaves with his chest like statues might in a Discobolus.

he would always cast down his eye on everything.

 

he had led a small-ish life so far, but consequentially,

or, because of it actually, he could hold onto a tiger and not bear down at all.

 

he whispered a fervent prayer and was surprised when his voice was engulfed

into a pandemic-like sea of other voices; this one nodding, that one cautiously still.

 

but, musing,

as any

girl would,

I can

only remember,

of course,

the faint

pressing outline

of his

backbone protruding

from his

white collared

cotton shirt

and a

questioning neck,

leaning out

only to

ask a

pointless question.

Copyright 2013 Golden Star Poetry