#51: anna

She arrives to sit and try
Solving riddles, asking why
She takes breaths while others sigh
Piling their excuses high
She has dreams and builds a sky
Gives them space to occupy
Numbers, vectors, ratios
Symbols stacked in columns, rows
Fractions that might decompose
She finds doors that never close
Tackles puzzles, stretches, grows
She arrives and finds she knows
When she’s done, she rises, glows

#52: shadowstone

Instead of going towards the light
I find myself inside the night
At times, I feel, the safest place to be

The clock should tell me what to do
It’s something I don’t listen to
I break apart in little bits of me

My body seems divisible
Is this why I’m invisible
In sunlight, when it’s possible to see?

In broken bits, each bit too small,
At times it’s hard to sum them all
Put myself together, all of me

I’m trapped inside a hole somewhere
It’s dark but I’ll find something there
And build the better human I can be

#53: escape

Psychobabble from the kings
And queens of screens I view
Traps my head inside of things
That keep me far from you
I ignore the ticks and tocks
That tell me what to do,
Silence those demanding clocks
And hold a brush or two,
Dream and try to paint the light
As beautiful as you
Always fail to get it right
The yellow, green, the blue
Soul is of the heavy skies
That thunderstorms contain
Painting is an exercise
In coloring the rain
Yesterday, I hid an hour,
Maybe two or three,
What started as a tiny flower
Finished as a tree

#54: thinkingback

Take off the walls from the pictures
Take all the rock from a stone
Try, if you must, to forget her
Hang with the truth when alone
I once erased an eraser
Tried prying days from a year
From a few letters, the paper,
Some things will not disappear
You hope an ocean leaves water
Spend time predicting the past
I see you crafting the story
Writing its chapters too fast

#55: teaching tree

Friday nights aren’t making sense
With hours I am keeping
Saturdays are never tense
The weekend is for sleeping

But weekdays?

Learn to sleep while standing up
And meditate more often
Morning in a coffee cup
Vacation in a coffin

Learn to run a thousand miles
With buildings on your shoulders
Don’t complain while juveniles
Demand you lift the boulders

Outside bruised, we fade to blue
But inside, we’re fluorescent
Questioning the leaders, too,
If leadership is present:

Who sustains a life like this,
Uneven in the middle?
Why do you expect so much
When you provide so little?

#56: alien

you have no borderline
searching alone
she is a fire kind
one of your own
who you are looking for
might not exist
doors have all closed before
yet you persist
lucky discoverer
you’ll see her soon
there is just one of her
under the moon

#57: stand and stretch

Yes, I disappeared before
I slipped away unnoticed
Lost what I was looking for
But somehow forward focused
Gone forever, gone for good
No more turpentine,
No more eating glass or wood,
You were never mine
Was I worth a kind goodbye
I try to like the cold
I turn around and trust the sky
She’s watching me grow old
I marvel at the trees I’ve seen
That somehow shine alone
Winter might erase the green
But not the strength they own

#58: apathyclass

The silver bones and brains of phones and bytes to taste, devour,
The walking dead before me spread, apocalyptic hour,
In all the eyes a drop in size of wonder in a spiral
Did I just age, or miss the stage at which a thing went viral?
I saw no care while standing there, some teacher on a mission,
Explaining why you multiply before you do addition

#59: covenant

For my Mother made of sun,
Winter’s comfort, Summer’s fun,
This is from your eldest one
Most have leaves but I have none
Underneath the stars and comets
Lights reserved for any goddess
I will make that kind of promise
I’ll be there to bring you solace
I’ll be there to help you stand
Offer you a helping hand
As you are, what leaves are showing,
Hanging on, no longer growing,
Let them go, they’re almost falling
Days to celebrate are calling
All the life and love from you
I will keep my promise true

#60: brickmind

Triangle towers and rectangle stones
He arises and questions the trees
Linear hours and frivolous zones
And he harnesses social disease
Modular hours and holes in his bones
His reflection is all that he sees