The Ministress' Black Veil

A veil to hide one’s face from view, is this not what I’ve done?

To make something appear as other than what it is?

Black, for the reflected objects thrown between the eyes beneath

And the veil before. Black, for the times they refused to shine.

Black. Because there was a time they could not see at all.

Redemption is the story in reverse, all tragedy so.

Once I was blind, but now I see. Once I could see, but now am blind.

How do you find your place in life when you aren’t sure of which direction you face?

One mind becomes another when we change it, but

Until it changes again, we can never know how it was wrong.

Any mind we are in is the right one, regardless of right,

Because any mind we are in is the only one we can see.

How could I, God, how could I have been so wrong?

Is the mantra of the blind made to see, or do they?

Change is the only constant; they will always see something more!

Or less, perhaps? Because who can tell, fickle humans?

Perhaps we are all always reaching toward the light, or at least ought to

And with each handful of earth we excavate as we crawl on hand and knee

We are apt to think, this is the one! The last barrier to my sight!

Only to find that mountains lay before us yet in their might, majesty

This clod of earth was childhood, this was high school, this

Was anorexia, this was depression, this was failure, this was

Illness, this was fear, this was those who stood in our way, they

Are behind us now. Because something is hard is never a reason to quit trying,

The opposite is true. For the child learning to walk, for the boy shrugging

Off the bully, for the girl cramming food down her unwelcoming throat,

If they were to stop trying, their struggles will have not only been fruitless

They will have been destructive. In this way, traveling toward the light

Is so closely related to delving in to the dark it is difficult to distinguish.

They are veiled, but not in iniquity. Only to shade their faces from the onslaught

Of dirt raining down upon them from before, the landslide

That threatens to push them back to the start. But these

Are the times, the times when holding on seems most impossible,

That it is most important. And maybe those of us who have it “easy”

Should spend a little less time kicking dirt behind us,

And a little more looking out for who is there. Which applies to all;

Behind every climber is another in the unending human chain

Behind every veil is another pair of eyes that long to see

The Love Song of _. ______ ________

“Why is every song a love song? It’s the only place where love is still alive and well. And why do we always sing along? Because these are our hymns”.

Hymns, we sing. By definition, obviously. We all sing. By nature, inevitably. Inevitably, we hymn. Sing –

to the untouchable, to the better, the highest. Sing – to the beautiful, the handsome, the hottest. Sing – to the only one we could ever want until one day they’re no longer wanted. Sing – because we have no choice. Sing – because emotion chokes us. Sing – when we can’t breathe, we can’t talk, we can’t see, we can
sing –

Because we can’t help it. Life is racing by us faster

And faster; at once it’s a rope that tugs you along, then

No sooner than you can get a good grip it’s a tumbling stream

Of water running through your hands. It gives me no end

Of aggravation, and you hear me scream and cuss because

Sometimes I just can’t hold on and that’s why I need YOUR hands.

That boy over there? He’s beginning to look like a man now

But on the inside he’s shaking, every day inching, closer

To graduation and he’s scared, scared stiff

To stare life in the face. Sometimes he swears there is no way

He will get on in life and that’s why he needs HER hands. That girl?

There’s no place she goes without her friend by her side, who

Has a kind word on her lips and an open heart always, who

Yesterday found a lump, and tomorrow will know how long and

Sometimes she swears nothing in life is fair, but if it had to be someone..

She knows she’ll have a hand to hold. There are women and men,

Who walk in and out of each other’s lives like specters in the broad daylight

And maybe they will never know what it has been like

To really live their lives? But that won’t be me in twenty years, I won’t

Be the one to lay back and be swept along, the current to comfortable chairs,

Luby’s lunches and early bedtimes, that won’t be me. I’ll be the one, you’ll see me,

Latching hands as I go, building a force to be reckoned with, leaving no one behind,

A wall of bobbing persons in the river, each one of them my friends, my loves,

I will latch hands with the lonely and the broken, the happy and the exultant,

The forgotten, the bothered, the busy, the mindful, my sisters,

My family, my darlings each, each and every one

Damming up Time until it must stand still, it simply must because

Until it does, we will.

The Story of 5th Hour

A heart trouble indeed – aren’t most troubles so?

Mine have always been. And how many times did I fly

Weeping into the arms of my women kin because some such had torn me apart?

Was I looking for comfort or camaraderie, or was the game in its entirety enough

To satisfy the intense and throbbing boredom of my soul,

Such screamingly painful monotony, that “please, God

Whatever you may do to me in this life else, just take away this cup;

Bring any other poison from the circles of Hell but don’t

Allow me to lay here on my bedroom floor, waves of emotionless

Pain wracking my body for any one second longer!”? Here lies the journal

I kept in those days, flopped open to a page that is doting and meek

At the start, but runs the blue gauntlet down to an entry

Scrawled in all capital letters as by some demon’s hand

“I HAVE ANTS IN MY BONES IN THE VERY MARROW OF MY BONES!!!”

What is it that has been done to me? I was a girl once, that is to say

I was when I met him. The past two years had proven so tumultuous,

My crash landing upon my eighteenth birthday found me very timidly

But startlingly a woman.  And it is that way that he died,

Symbol of the other life I led, the one

Before, that time helped me, without regret, leave far behind

He lies buried somewhere I know quite well

Beneath books and student loans, peeking through

Facebook posts I feel no longer his essence in the night when I lie

Alone, or in the day when I hum a tune, his presence is finally

Divorced from me. I smile now, a genuine smile, a braces-free

Bursting-with-self-confidence-the-sort-of-person-who-makes-friends

And-keeps-them-hello-how-are-you-good-morning-professor

Hey-girl-deadbolt-your-door-I’m-coming-right-back-did-you-hear

What-happened-over-the-weekend-let-us-strive-for-that-which-is

Honorable-beautiful-and-highest-smile. A happiness, contentedness,

Interest, passion, romance, spirit of youth, spiritual experience

Long island iced tea induced smile. A smile is a realization

Of what we have been missing, it is in surprise that our lips turn

And our mouths stretch, the same bodily chemicals that shoot upward

Must both shock and please us, pleasure being inherent surprise

One hand assaults the left chest in a misguided attempt to control

What races there beneath; we close our tired, world-cared eyes

For only a moment to breathe in sharply

Then once more to exhale slower and slower

Until we need not worry about the things of this world,

Until we need not even live any longer

An independent smile fills its purpose

The Empress of Ice-Cream

I dated someone once, who smoked cigars,

He and his friends. They were constantly setting the upstairs ablaze

Until none but them dare come near it

Shame, now they are lonely and I no longer

Have to smell like the death of my grandparents

It is a sad thing perhaps, but as a child I enjoyed funerals

I loved to sit in the silent dim, smell the rustling

Overabundance of flowers, feel the magnetism of far-away

Families toward no-where, Louisiana, and each other

Some credit is owed my brothers who played with me

Quietly and patiently, “I Spy” anything other than the great yawning box

And my mother’s tears. Is it possible that life can be so much like death?

That when I die they will shade my “mortal coil” in sheets so like

The ones under which here we lay together? That at that moment

(Or so I am told) when I rest my eyes I will know

True existence, such as that I truly feel alive

Only when I’m with you? Beauty also in its rawest nakedness

Shall I feel, beautiful?

Like I never felt before until I met you. As I slip beneath this burden of life, I grow cold,

Which hardly should alarm you any more than my ice-cube toes, snuggled up to you

In the small hours of the morning. My silence I am sure will not perturb you any more than the usual

Way that my answers to your questions are swallowed up into the night. But

One thing I know: There will be no bright light for me at my last –

Only your face and the light of the street lamp

As it falls through the blinds into your bedroom.

243

There is solace in alone-ness
a sort of lazy warmth
that fills this room in the evening
lent to it by the streetlamps outside
a mechanical hum breathes
into the walls and seems to
playfully rattle the windows
At home, dusk like this was not pleasant
silence and closed doors
held only old demons
forgotten nightmares, or worse
nothing at all
Here they are like promises
invitations, to be opened
to be filled
shadows sprawl across the floor
not to cover secrets and fears
but to remind you
to turn on the light

Lover's block

Oh where is my flowing fountain?
my pen seems to have run dry
like my mouth when you are near
tripping over words that once
were but pebbles in my babbling brook
the ink skips and runs
my splotchy conversation paints
my face red
my page black.

Detachment has bred contentedness,
but contentedness doesn't breed poetry.

The art of getting over it

I pretend.
I pretend it wasn't you,
it wasn't me, it wasn't us,
some other boy and girl,
another couple,
another time.
I read your letters as if
I was reading a story,
a novel, a passionate romance,
a tragedy.
On your image and mine
I place those masks of drama
so the play in my head finally ends
and I can sleep again.

Thursday morning

I dropped my contact down the sink this morning
which realization caused me to fume
groggy and bespectacled
down to the breakfast table
where little brother sat absently
eating toast through a chapped-lip smile
gazing from his throne
toward the morning sunlight beaming
through perfectly formed lenses
buried deep in blue-green irises.
A cheerful sight was I, then
that morning at the table
and later when I forsook the world
returning to my room regretful
to start the day over
when unassuming little brother
stopped in to say
"Mom told me to give this to you"
grasping in a small pink paw
a little round clear blue
piece of plastic

All aboard the quatrain

Dearest, do not be offended
by my crooked little rhymes;
hence, my mind has recommended
I jot down the fol'wing lines.

Here, the purpose of my journey
art, and pastime, that is true
but a third I'm quickly learning
to express my thoughts to you.

Sometimes it is trying, dear,
you know by now, to talk to you.
I say what I think and feel here,
when mere idle talk won't do.

I know you don't understand it,
dear, I don't expect you to.
Only know this, that He planned it
all, so I'll always love you.

The seagull's song

This is the breeze,
the one that will always blow this time of morning
as if it were the force to move the waves
like mountains in its path.
It calls to my family and they answer;
come and listen, it says,
hear the sea man's song.
I peer down my beak,
past the salt and sand
the wind has wedged there.

A man sits alone
swaying on the sand
with some great box
eyes closed
as if it were he
who makes the breeze blow.

The sounds that reach me are familiar
besides foreign origin;
with every string to pass his hand,
the rope of gravity release

Suddenly weightless
subject of the sound
several together, then apart
melody is the combination
sand, salt, and sky
thrown together
reaching, contracting
satyrs, nymphs
dance across the waves
alighting once and taking off
never somewhere, always everywhere
vibrations break across the hands of man.
This is the breeze,

the one that will always blow.

Hope

The light spilling over the windowsill
drenches everything in gold
and drowns me.
How many times I've thrown these curtains shut
to shiver in the cold and dark and still
it finds me.
I could transverse the Earth and it would follow.

Your love illuminates me,
it is the spotlight on me,
the attention that I didn't want
or didn't need
is now second-nature to me.
What more could you want
from someone who
could never hope to shine like you?
You are the Sun
and I am only the Moon.

To Forgiveness

Weary travellor come!
Rest your burden here,
let down your weighty pack
within these walls.
Long you have wandered
an exile to this land.
I have heard many a whisper
that somewhere you had lost your way.

But not so, dear friend,
for the sadness in your eyes;
you have so long trekked
not because it was a destination you lacked
but a willing soul to take you in.
With every door locked
and drawbridge drawn against you,
all manner of sordid things clung
to your cloak, making less
an appealing visitor day by day,
so that even the good and kind
must take pause.

But here, one heart is laid open for you.
Its humble walls have seen too much,
too soiled by secrets to turn down
such a welcome face for his dirty cloak.
You must excuse its simplicity;
in design unadorned, nearly rude.
But it is warm and swept often,
and its floor hums a tune that hopes
you will stay for a while.

The shoebox

Snap.
Golden sunlight streams
down upturned faces
arms outstretched
two kids
throw open their hearts
and embrace
the staggering enormity
of one summer day.

Snap.
A crowd seated in the dim
eyes locked on the little
colored tassels bobbing
over seas of black
for the last time before
they take their ascent.

Snap.
A dove as white as snow
flitters through the doors
thrown open wide
bearing fragrant beauty
and two hearts light
with love
eyes and hopes revolve
around her whose rest
as her arm on the raven-
black figure caught
in her gaze.

They smile.

The tardy bell

Here I am, seventeen years
another semester to pour my heart
into these pages,
just one. Just one semester,
just one and a whole new school,
a new city, a new life.

Here I sit, nervous,
but at the same time
there's a little voice inside
my head that says,
no matter what changes,
I'll still be in class,
this time, next year,
closing my eyes to the world,
opening my heart to a notebook.

A look

I love you to the depth
of the black of your eyes and back
love you to the width
of the fields of grain sown in the brown
love you to the length
that stretches round the circle there
which has no start
and so never stops

Reminiscence

It was sweet
each draw was long and smooth
at once its thick laziness would
cascade like a waterfall
even as it rushed, you gulped
for more.

At once you would find yourself
growing tired of the taste
until another sip recalled
the memories of what first
made it sweet.

It was bitter
it stung your tongue and still
you drank for the savor
that was better than a cup of sweetness
to know you could drink the bitter
and prevail.

A waltz

I know a girl who loves her shadow
she follows its every line
no imperfection she sees
for it's dark as can be
and dances in three-quarter time.

I know a boy who chases a shadow
declaring that she will be mine
but having no voice
he's no other choice
but to dance in three-quarter time.

I heard that the shadow-girl met this fellow
and finding him of the same design
on his knees he delighted
to hear she decided
to dance with him in three-quarter time.

Now you'll find the shadow-girl alongside her fellow
their children growing strong and fine
for they know that young hearts
as planned from the start
guide their owners in three-quarter time.

Just kids

A little boy mumbles, a little girl blushes
Their worlds seem to crumble in the rhythmic hushes
Of the hearts they possess within each other's chests
What pleasant pastime to steal each other's breath

What fun it is, sweet melodies suspending
To hold hands and dance as the earth is ending
The bridge will fall, the grave bears us all
Love is all we have left on which to call

So sing our song when doubt is prevailing
wandering through life, the relentless fear of failing
But refusing to try will never teach you to fly
Those who wont leave the ground never can touch the sky

The love that two share will never end
As long as we both shall live, my friend
not made for this mold, we'll transcend this world
That's all that I need, to have, to hold.