Sunday, December 12, 2010

The heart

She came home with a snow-white rose,
Its petals bleached of color and power and all that
there was left was flower, no scent, no memory,
just pallor.

She stole the thorns, whittled them down,
and placed them with a frown in a Valentine crown over her heart because,
because...she wanted someone to touch the rose,
the rose, and not her heart.

Then he arrived, and all he had were baskets of needles,
acupuncture needles, knitting needles, chopsticks sharpened
to killing needles,
And she was a ball of wool, a love-sick fool, and she let him,
No. She begged him to be a tool to knit
a tapestry, a travesty, a tragedy,
out of her,
and when he did,
she became
what he made.

They wore their creation, her and him.
They sat on in at their picnics and wrote on it in their dreams
and made love on it and wiped their mouths on it
after dinner,and sometimes used it when she shivered
and everytime she touched the cloth she lost a part
of herself that she'd sworn she'd protect
with the rose-thorns over her heart.

Over the years, the tapestry tore,
and their love wore out to a pout of a
rose bud when all its petals fell out and
she did not cry, did not cry
when the tapestry unraveled and
he drifted. He drifted, she stayed and replayed
the years of togetherness and oneness and wholeness and ownness
and when it all crumbled like the ashes of a burnt rose,
she smiled because she was safe,
she was safe.
He'd loved the tapestry, not her, she was still safe,
with the rose-thorn crown on her heart,
all he'd gotten was a part,
of her that she'd let him use,
the outer wool,
the shell,
but not her heart.

Sunday, December 5, 2010

Timothy runs

Timothy runs, he's ignorant, that child.
He's crisp white ice on a stained glass aisle,
He's the aimless banter of a thoughtless brain,
And he's lost in the canter of a mind untrained.

Timothy runs forward and the world runs back,
He's fast on the heels of faster facts,
They're colorless, tasteless, depth-less words,
But still, Timothy chases them for all they're worth.

Timothy runs through a gold-gray field,
A field of corn, a field of steel,
It's a man-made marvel, an acre of gold,
It's a yellow-gray field of heat and cold.

Timothy runs, and his shoulders scrape,
The gray-gold grass with the corn-steel blades,
His words have died in the oddball field,
And Timothy's sad--he's ignorant still.

"Where's my knowledge?" Timothy demands.
There's a dent in the earth where his still feet stand.
"It's that way," a source-less voice then says,
And Timothy runs in adamant chase.

Timothy's feet begin again to thunder,
And the once-dead words die again asunder.
But words don't matter, Timothy decrees,
He sees the shadow of running feet.

The shadow runs back to the field of steel,
And Timothy's as sore as his poor feet feel,
"There's your knowledge," says the gray-gold land,
And now there's one more dent where Timothy stands.

A lifetime later, Timothy's gray,
His gold has faded, and his feet have frayed,
But Timothy still runs and the field still stands,
And there's fifty thousand dents where his still feet stand.

And then one fine day Timothy sways,
And falls into the grave that his still feet made,
"You've found your knowledge," says the field to none,
But Timothy's happy, he no longer runs.