child-painter

Fingers dipped,
smearing the brilliant colors
into brown swirls of shit-stained mess.
Paints only vibrant in separation.
Instead the child’s digits,
are dripping wet
and poised for the kill.
Her mission: to blur lines.
Rainbow rouge-stained fingertips,
soiling frilly pink clothes,
white carpeted floors,
coloring book pages.
Former art and beauty,
of suburban tidy
transformed into soiled disorder
at the reach of the small hand.

She is still the same-- that little girl
now a grown woman in form alone.
Hands smoother, manicured and adorned.
Her world is the artists glossy dream,
Relationships beautiful--
Vibrant and lively
in their original separation.

Composed and collected,
packaged and presented.
But compelled by her own
feverishly inexplicable streak of
masochism-- she destroys the good.
Twisted and sickening
she bewilders them all.
Her mission: to blur the lines.
Overlapping and muddling,
Mixing and rejecting.
Toying with helplessly
trusting hearts,
sweaty grasping hands,
red swollen lips.
Until nothing is left, but
brown-shit colored pages.

emotional reallocation

It is always fascinating to me when those palpable memories of years gone by take that inevitable shift into a new place in your mind. A place that is marked by a welcomed acceptance of present moments or a genuine indifference for the past hurts that once felt so insurmountable. After the passage of time you can look into the eyes of a person you once loved, one who broke you into a thousand, seemingly unrepairable fractions of your former self, and a completely foreign feeling is evoked. Or sometimes there are no feelings at all. In those days past, your reason-voice told you that mending takes time. This, you knew all along, repeated over in the terrible cliché we all spout, time heals all wounds... But an aching heart never listens to reason, instead it sorrowfully acquiesces to the intense throbbing of the soul. As if someone took to it with a hammer, beating the bloody fist into a shredded and bruised pulp of mess. That pain, oh nothing stops that pain in the moment. No assuring words, or compassionate touches, no bitter tears or punches thrown can assuage the agony. But as the days, months, and years roll past, something changes inside the brokenhearted. Now, recollecting that moment when your world was shattered and you thought you could not endure, you stand in complete awe at the subtle entirety of the emotional reallocation. Our sentiments are fickle, they move about space and time without coercion or prompting. I consider the moments when my heart has been broken. They have been few, but no less excruciating, and I am struck now by a complete shrug of apathety. Those experiences and people have shaped me, yes, but they are nothing more than distant memories. I am no longer revisited by the sting of old wounds upon recollection, for my injuries have all completely healed. This astounds me. This provision of our heart; the resilience of our soul to learn to let go of what once was, and look onward. It is beautiful, and nearly certain. And that hope, the desire for a more perfect love, is what drives us to risk it all... again and again.

winter storm

I have lost my muse. Or the muse I thought I had. For it was really nothing more than a self-imposed direction for my thoughts, a purpose and meaning of my own creation in a blinded effort to corral the inexplicable emotions of the day. I genuinely miss this fallacy I constructed. The non-existent siren of my words has been replaced with a void of silence and emptiness and nothing. Only blank, open space where nouns, verbs, and adjectives used to roam freely, tripping off my tongue without restraint or compulsion. Now even when forced to materialize, I cannot will the words into being. They have become dormant in my mind, hibernating perhaps, till the next winter storm of sentimentality.

always worth it

It is exhausting, this daily grind. It wears on my bones. They ache and burn at menial motions, so weary of picking up trash and stacking chairs. My eyes, red upon wakening in these earliest morning hours. I sacrifice much. My immune system, and my social life. Hours of sleep, and possibly my sanity. But the rewards are great. For I smile daily. At the many stories told, and at the antics of these small clowns. Laughter assuaging my headache for just a moment, and that moment is beautifully sweet. I swell with pride. When I discover a budding artist or a hidden talent, for there are many. For in my room might be the dawn of a brilliant poet or a wizened philosopher. I feel accomplishment. When I walk to my car, lesson plans and textbooks juggled in my arms. Fuel for the next day’s journey. I grow. I develop a necessary patience and calm temperament, and I am no longer rattled easily. I learn. I watch and appreciate each childish individual for their unique soul. I study. Becoming a scholar in the art of people. So yes... It is exhausting, hardly glamorous, and I sacrifice much. But I would not trade these rewards for anything.