floating this time (not flying)

the white light shining
on the wet
of eyes,
the clenched lips
and flown hands
of non-knowledge,
the open mouth smile
and emphatic nod
of connection,
the squinting corners
that look behind or beyond
of understanding.

i want to hold it,
all of it,
absorb it through my skin,
store it in my knuckles,
and crack its release
on a quiet
or sad
day.

i miss the whim
and commitment
to not committing.
i fantasize about
the passivity
of flowing down a saline
stream
and disappearing from your lists
and dissolving mine
into the salty water
where soggy
and illegible remnants
of a prior sense
of false necessity
rub softly against my bare skin,
lightly closed lids
and helplessly upturned lips.
just me, i
will be
floating
atop the water.

and that water will be saturated
with voices and laughs and thoughts,
bubbles of moments
(somewhere, sometime)
lulling me with underwater sounds
downstream,
leading me nowhere,
or at least nowhere i know

DLS

fill in the blank

speak to me.
not necessarily
in words,
but speak to me all the same.
speak to me in the language
of your spirit
and tell me its every utterance.
tell me your first inclination in the morning,
and not the first thought
you use your speech to form.
what color do you see
when your eyes shut,
what moves you
from your sheets,
what voice reigns
when your logic fails?
speak to me
not about the mundane
motions you fulfill in each
passing day,
but in the magic of the days
you envision
and the light of those to come.
speak to me
not in reference to
a love long lost,
but of the love
which continually
fills your being
when the sun
coats your eyelids
with that sinking-in
warmth.
speak to me
of all of this
to fill my being
with all beings,
to fill it with the wonders of the world
and the love of its inhabitants.
speak to me
to fill
the emptiness
that sneaks into this stagnant
loneliness
and echoes back
its own silence
with something
beautiful.

DLS

A Muzzle of Bees

You cut off all of your hair
Got heavy
Real life'd for a while

Come "home" soon
Or else I'm scared we'll all float

apart

Find me. I found you already
And there's not much more I can say
or do

Taste the switches in the air
positive
negative
More negative than positive:
It will probably storm soon.

But you knew that already--
there's not much I can tell you about anymore
Without sounding like a stranger
Did you push me away on purpose?
Let me loose, grow me up?
Sometimes I worry that if we stop talking, for just one second,
It will all fade into the past
A sentence,
A phrase,
"What once was, and is now no longer."

silly illy nilly

I want the
zingy comfort of
hastily-grabbed hands
waving
-

in the rush of
a down hill
you had the
same look on your
face/mind

a
little bit
I want,

let's swim in
dusky explor
ation of coastline
for also
I want always
to feel like a
ten year old
climbing (falling?)
magnolia
trees.

the divine feminine

beauty, she told me,

wasn't something you could try for.

what is it then?

i whispered.

it's like a bird, she uttered,

speaking into my eyes.

it lingers above us,

and most of the time we don't notice

its fluttering wings

or brilliant colors

or modest chirps of sunshine

or even that it's there.

but when we do

notice, she said,

we stop.

we stop breathing

and blinking

and thinking

for that

one

moment.

it captures every sense

as it soars above,

sometimes i even taste

its beauty.

how can i get that, then,

if i can't try for it?

i asked, in wonder.

take notice, she said,

always take notice

of the part of you

which soars.

DLS

taking/ticking time

it feels silly,

trying to funnel

the thoughts,feelings,ideas,intuitions

into little words.

it's a feeling

of being foreign,

and not speaking the language.

the communication

doesn't suffice.

the nuances get lost.

the hand gestures may get me

to the metro,

or the train, but not into my

own being.

the wavering lines

straighten

and the beauty

loses its wonder

as it's encoded

in order to be understood.

(the smile

becomes dopamine,

the magic

becomes probability

of compatibility

and the symphony

becomes a sum

of its mechanically

moving parts.)

the words--

just cut

and fill the air.

the melodic trinity

leaves me wondering,

and its absence

leaves my

brain in an ineffable

--buzz.

DLS

Excuses/Promises

La-da-dada-da-da-da-dum

I still taste like you. Even after
All that, all those breaths
Sniffs
Shuffles
Strides
Bumbles
But no one knows,
Except for me, and the wind,
It doesn't exactly rush in as I spread my lips to whisper
More like a saunter, swirling around and leaving
Daintily

Those people looking at each other in the car
His resting awkwardly possessive on the armrest
She looked at me for a second, then
Back.

"I can't help thinking we grew up too fast"
Are we too old now? Is everyone passing us by? Full
of the "vigor of youth,"
That holy protestant work-ethic
That your mother alternately encourages and dis-
Are we old? Or am I just fucking lazy?

Did you even notice me, car lady?

I hope the guys yelling in front of that bar stopped yelling.
Their girlfriends looked pretty pissed and scared.
The chilled air felt good though, and I don't really care
Didn't rob me of anything (the wind)
Felt like rolling over onto the cold side of bed,
right before you get up to leave.

"The end is near"
I'm leaving, and then I'm coming back.
And for the first time, I'm not
scared.

i see no acuter quite.

your departure

has wrung my body

of tears

like a wet dish towel.

your sadness

has weighed on my being

like a foot

pressing down

on my brain.

your life

has cluttered my thoughts

with questions

like a web so tangled

it's opaque.

but it's not

like

anything.

it is, you were, now you aren't.

i never even knew you;

i struggle to picture your face

or hear your voice

or place you in a filled room.

i feel your presence, though.

i feel it in me,

(the intensity, the love, the compassion, the will, the drive)

and it terrifies me.

for the world

will always be too much with us

and i will always want to carry it,

just as i am trying to carry you on.

DLS

(look up)

walking at dusk

an invisible

young

artist

splatters the sky

with

silvery, glittery

globs of

paint.

walking at dawn

the serious sun

emanates

broad strokes

from a bucket

of morning colors

to fill the corners of the horizon

with an outpouring

of light.

walking at the twelves

the sky

sits transiently stagnant.

the window of stillness lasts

long enough for me

to dash

and grab a mini brush

to reach

and streak a line

from end to end,

like the trail of a plane

flying around the universe

or world.

DLS

Revolution: Write a Poem (instead of a paper)

Spring makes sense

now,

a row of

Gatorade green

traffic lights

on Whitney

matchmaking with

the everywhere leaves,

set against the

blue raspberry sky,

overlapping maps,

the world

in front of

me.

CVP

the first step outside, on a sunny day.

a good morning

to you,

world.

__

diana

you too,

a good morning.

(March 30th) An Ode to Grace

Grace

You sound like an elephant

When you move about the room in

the morning

-BHN

geometry class in the sky

it's the lines of light

(those immeasurable,illuminated

rectangles

that reach longingly

towards the horizon,

they glisten

on the edges

of magnolia trees

and outline

the many wings in a flock of birds

and highlight

a space

along the cookie cutter

mold of the wavy horizon.

the light appears

to have broken free

of the sky,clouds,

even its source

[the sun]

and infinite abyss of space

above

to connect

two worlds

[so far away],

drawing a simple line

to show they are not planes,

infinitely

apart)

that make me think

maybe

there's

something

someone

some()

more.

DLS

circles

( i find

light

in

the

space

of

a cart

wheel's

arc,

the

redolent

center

of

each

yellow

daffodil )

c v p
love to e e cummings

let the beat build

a definite retreat of
much to ponder
many laughs
between sky and sand
headstands and half of
moby dick
under the ocean's
reflectionate
blue counterpart
flipping horseshoe
crabs (writhing bending
prehistoric muscles)
a rescue, we hope
soul meets body
whoops that inspection's
expired two years ago
but the "reverb's
connected to this chord"
she exclaimed
bouncing and
the music building
driving in a
bubble of sound.

we were that car,
blasting anthems
strangely timeless
at street corners

CVP

Skip the Youth

The air is fresh and crisp
Even though it's no longer early
Still in shadow
But not for long.

Kiss your sun-drenched feet
Forget about everything,
Remember it a second too late
And fuck it all up again

We'll be ok,
Because we always are.
Our inability to do wrong
Is not a cripple, not a curse
The dust on our wings always comes back
So shine on, girl, shine on

a singing/flying you, a thinking/being me

bum hum dum
dum da dee dum dum dum

you sing your song
as i am walking by
you sing it all day
no matter the passerby
i wish to sing
with all the constancy that is you
and engage the sky with wings that soar as high.

all this i wish and long for
with my flightless feet
and piercing voice.
never will i have
rolling wings
and never will i sing
flowing melodies,
but alas
maybe it is enough
to be
and just
be.

how crazy a thought
(with birds flying and all)
but today i think i may have found
happiness within me.

DLS

Happy National Poetry Month!

On Reading Chinese Painted Scrolls

You must read Chinese painted scrolls from right to left, from up to down,
As if the scene were written itself, a poem in the most
Elaborate calligraphy. For in Chinese, tree is written,
Or drawn, as a tree, and some say, when read
(From right to left, from up to down) sounds like a tree sounds.

From the right—the beginning—the hills are covered with grass
And there are a few trees colored by distance.
The homes of the small mountain villages are simple: only
Black ink and paper. The beams are thin one-stroke lines
To raise the white roofs. These next trees however
Are wrought in detail to the frozen waves of bark, to the uneven leaves,
(Some are light and smooth and others are dark brush strokes dashed on the silk).
But as the painting continues and the hills and trees focus in fore

And backgrounds, you realize that even the town was empty.
There was no one. Suddenly, rapids, with their rocks
And tiny waterfalls split the earth; a river breaks
Through the painting and emerges from inland pressures.
The river calms, the story changes now for
A solitary sailor pushes his small boat with the painting
From right to left and looks ahead at—beyond a small island—
The inky black waves which thicken into the pale horizon.

-EWW

breakfast words

we stood
with flickering wicks
watching
the departing light
from whom
we sought to
"see acuter quite"

we imagined,
with eyes closed
terraced foreheads
and briny sockets,
"somewhere [we] have never traveled"
(sorrowfully beyond
any experience
whose smile had its silence)

we touched
fingers
at the tips of our beings
reaching for those
whose hands
had covered their mouths
to keep their breath
from running
wondering
"how shall we gather what griefs destroy?"

we walked
-away-
into the bustle,
with a sorrow.
"oh the things [we] may learn from her
when sorrow walks with [us]"

(but is it time to learn
yet?
or does the shadow
-from his beaming light-
still have that potential energy
from above?
is it time to look
to strings of words
to explain
the woe
which is not wisdom,
but the
"woe
that is madness?"

i will learn
one day,
maybe tomorrow.
but today
i still want to

cry
for his sister
smile
for his legacy

and fail

to understand

his tragedy.)

DLS