Little Brothers Say the Sweetest Things

I came across this quote in a journal entry about Homecoming. "I'm just imagining it (my dress) on you and my imagining is beautiful because you're beautiful and it's beautiful." -Richard Tyler Peck

This is one I did several years ago. It needs to be de-cheesefied, but the idea is good. Eternity sounds so distant/ Years conflict with dreams/ The future is a mystery/ We know what's right, for now/ I place my heart in God's hands/ and pray he'll give it back to you

The Rose Dance

Golden light from the window
Silence, the sweet sound
In this peaceful scene
the rose dance begins
A row of beauty lines the room
dead petals hardened with age
but full of inhuman life
the rose waltz will start
An unheard music
sets the mood
Listen without your ears
Can you hear it?
It begins quietly
the boldest beauties
start with gradual swaying
If you are still you may watch
The dance becomes wilder
leaves sway and stems are merry
Cobwebs join in
Adding their mysterious, slender grace
Tossing, spinning
Faster and more intense
The slightest sound in unheard
over the roar of the motion
Solemnly it calms
swaying choreography ends
the air remains charged
with the energy of the dancers
Can you feel it?
Come join the rose dance

Self-esteem

A fire in my head/ burns reason to rage./ Thoughts, like embers,/ spark and crackle in the wind./ Sometimes, a flaming ash escapes/ and scorches; / but more commonly/ it burns itself,/ kills itself,/ just as my thoughts/ burn my reason.

It's a lie, what they say, that the Sprit goes to bed at midnight. He's with me now, at 4 am, as I cry, alone, in a bed that's not my own, in a house that's not home. He soothes my heartache that makes it difficult for me to take the deep breaths nessisary for peaceful sleep. He sorts the thoughts that speed through my consciousness, causing a traffic jam to rival downtown NYC. He sends me dreams that calm the confusion of daily life, and gives me answers to my most complex questions. Even now, at 4:30 am, he knows who I am. He knows that I am trying to fix what I've done wrong, and prevent future sins. He knows how much I want to love him and be loved. He sends His spirit to protect me from myself; from the hate and degregation that comes from being excessivly self-critical. And now, at 5 o'clock in the morning, he rests my soul, and my body. He blesses me with a world of dreams where everything happens the way my most purely natural mind imagines it. No, the Spirit doesn't sleep so that I can. Thank you, God, that I can have thy Spirit with me always. Amen.

Oops

I dropped it lost it.
It was so hard to find
in the first place,
and now
I have to find it
all over again.

Train Whistles

I am pulled from a sleep with no dreams by a sound that woke me many other nights of my 19 years. I don't open my eyes. I feel the familiar room surrounding me. My books overflow their shelves; my books that hold a code that might unravel my thoughts because it was from their pages that such thinking leaked, one idea from this writer, another idea from that one. The books, however, are closed, still. I sense the presence of the beautiful desk. A birthday surprise when I was a teenager. It is magical, literally. It is all covered with papers from school, unfinished projects and more books, but I pull the rolling cover down and my room looks tidy again. The wardrobe bears down on the room, a haunting mass of darkness. Too big to belong, I try to disguise its bulk with posters and a hand drawn world map. In the darkness, these coverings further distort the giant, multiplying the ghostly shadows and random spots of light. I sleep with my face toward the wall to keep these images out of my dreams. The presence of the room has sound, too; the low hiss of the air vent above my head. The air moves my hair as I lie with my eyes closed. It tickles my neck. I twitch because it feels like a spider. I will dream about spiders again tonight, big ones that won't die. Sounds produce memories. The growling furnace outside my door reminds me of playful fear. I try, sometimes, to scare my siblings. They screech. We all laugh. Dad pounds on the cealing from above us. He yells at us to go to bed, but later, he'll hide in behind the furnace and make me scream. He'll laugh more than I do. My sister, on the bed below me, snores loudly. I think, momentarily, about smothering her. She smells, too. Like a young teenager, she smells, the way they do before they master the art of deoderant and clean clothes. I love her. I hate having her in my bedroom. The train whistle blows again. It's later than usual. It's beautiful. Sounds bring back memories. An old memory seduces me back to slumber. The rising sun greets me as I sit on a porch. The backyared in front of me is not large. The fence at the end of it is. I hear the whistle and come to the porch. I count the train cars. They don't have trains like this at home, I think. I am too young to know that trains are everywhere, not just at Great-grandma's house in Canada. One last time, the train whistle blows from some distant track ouside my window. The brief dream disappears, leaving only the blackness of the back of my eyelids. I can feel the winter cold finding cracks in the seal of the window frame. I pull my blankets back on top of me. They fall off when I sleep. I must not hold still while I sleep. I open my eye for just a moment, accidentally, really. The wall in front of my face is white, but it is not mine. The familiar presence flees. It is replaced by college books, bills, rent checks, car and health insurance, food plans, jobs and budgeting. I am abandoned in this place that feels and sounds like my room. Real home is not far away, but far enough. Even now, when I'm half asleep, I forget that train whistles blow everywhere, not just at home.