Strong Child

For Nanny

Sitting on the playground swing,
all alone.
Shadows in the late afternoon.

Golden color spilling out on the ground. Orange-y. Getting darker, slowly.
Light is still escaping
from the clenched fist of the sun.
A feeling of dread at the base of your chest.
Your aching heart.

Soft breezes on the May green leaves.
You want to tell them how you feel, but there is no purpose in doing so.
Her words echo through the back of your head.
The endless footsteps of sadness sound, like rain on the rooftop.

The Part that's Missing

blinded, white-out.
gray words on black static.
i don't want to see or hear or feel all this crap,
all these useless images and sounds
filling my mind and body.
i don't want this life
a soft breeze touching my cheek,
or a raging wind;
i just don't want it.
all of the pretty words, the cheap condolences, the disappointing faces.
yeah, yeah.
i'll try to feel better.
as if that means anything.
as if that helps.

i just want to hear her voice.

Distracted

Rhythm schemes become tangled in the evening treetops,
and the sunlight is pretty, but it washes out our rhymes,
and the wind gently shakes our metaphors so that they become strange,

and do not fit into our mosaic masterpiece.

Oasis in the Desert

I miss you, and I am starved of your touch.
My need for your comforting words
is the dry back of my throat, the parched desert ground.

Your memory is a mirage, but a pleasant one, and
my dream of a life with you is an oasis.

The sands are hot, and the air
singes the hairs on my arms,
burns my feet.

I am dying, and time
has evaporated and left a riverbed.
I am dying, and lost
in the sweet insanity of my own loneliness.

The Other Side

I stare at that brightness
through a window.
It blinds my eyes, and I cannot reach it.

I want to be enveloped
by all of that light out there;
but it hurts my head, and now I cannot see it.

The afternoon is peaceful, and waiting on the other side...
static fills my ears and a sharp scent stings my nose;
in here is darkness.

I stretch out arm, underneath the crescent moon
glued to the ceiling, and receive a small taste of it...
I sit in this darkness, and I'm waiting, I'm waiting...

Waiting for these shadows to fall away,
and for the barrier to break...

until this side and the other side unite as one,
and in the place of this feeling comes normalcy, a happy glow.