Floating on Faith

Don't look down
You were floating 'til you did
Travelling 'round
'Til you hit the ground

Ever so soft
Now hard again
You're falling fast
With no place to crash

Have faith he says
Trust me
I'll be back again
Have faith he says
Love me
Wait for me

Float on clouds
'til you feel the air
Never trust what
you can't see

Wait for him
He'll save you now
He has the
Faith to believe

Have faith he says
Trust me
I'll be back again
Have faith he says
Love me
Wait for me

Faith he says
Trust
Belief
Faith he says
Trust in me
Just trust in me

Kyle Burning

I try to comfort him
Now burning against my cold skin
He curls into his desk
Attempting to find sleep
In the oblivion of his crossed arms
I rub his back and neck
Giving frigid comfort when he burns from fever
Him tan and warm
Needing white, cold relief as he sleeps
As I rub his back
Cloth both rough and smooth
Then circling around a mole
to scratch his spine
hair gelled down
rubbed from behind his ears
He waits for class to end
So he may play in the football game

Cafe Terrace

I stare. It has been my favorite painting and yet, this windy day during a Seattle summer, my ever-reverent heart is humbled at the first glimpse. The yellow of the lantern, so easily overlooked hanging above the Place du Forum, now strikes me, its texture almost hostile in its subtle intensity. The shutters, so forbidding in prints, serve only to keep light out, never noise. My fingers crawl toward the thatching of the roof, only to fall away at the stares of the other museum goers.
This, which I have poster-sized hanging with its brothers on my bedroom wall, seems so much smaller than my expectation and yet more spectacular and heart wrenching. The Café Terrace at Night, the English title affronts my senses as I quickly revert to French, Le Place du Forum a Nuit, more perfectly syllabic than its guttural English counterpart. Next to it is a Chair my grandmother studies carefully; spending hours more on a piece than I ever would, except his. I shake myself from the trance and race through the gallery finding boredom in modernism only to be caught again. In my haste, I have turned a circle and find myself caged lovingly in the arms of my inspiration.
My breath has been held fast for the years before this single painting hung facing me, trapped from the understanding of a man disturbed. So lonely, so quiet, and yet as I gaze half-worshiping this masterpiece, the common sounds of the streets come to me, chattering of people long dead. The cool French air bites my nose and I wrap my coat around me. The books, my art world catechism, never managed to make me cry.
Van Gogh volumes stand beside Dune and Thoreau, crowding the other art books into submission, wooing me with a name, "Vincent," to take comfort. Not in the optimistic reality of Vermeer or the fantastical Picasso who held me in my infancy but instead in the bleakly realistic subtlety of a distressed mind. The Cooper print I hold so dear, only serves to remind me of Casablanca and my father. I have never been one to relish Monet, whom my mother enjoys. The soft serenity plays a dim counterpoint to the onslaught of thoughts, about the progression of man, about my future, about everything that seems safely contained in Van Gogh's pieces. I needn't hear the thoughts of those milling in the painting, need not know why this evening in Arles was so beautiful. It is simply the passionate peace, content behind glass, which holds me fast.

Loosening Knot

They race past us
as we struggle to stay
tied together

Retying knots
loosened by tugging
too hard

Hampered by
3 legs where
2 used to be

Needing to not only
support the other

but remain intent
on their doings

We limp along
falling in every hole
and tripping on every molehill

Until, in frustration,
we untie the knot
and leave the field.

Sanctuary

Prints paper painted walls
Water hums through pipes
Watercolors ooze from over-squeezed tubes
(Diamonds in blue and red)

High E squeal of the wheel
While I watch children splash
Finger painted canvases
Lean on Van Gogh and Vermeer

Strings with a violin solo
Envelope laughter
I sit cross-legged
(A Navajo blanket)

Just a grain of sand
Among my kind
Pre-glass
Still rough before smooth

Shrieking [banshee]
Now tearing Picasso
From his black haven
Then gone (to reluctant parents' arms)

Wasabi and Soy
Next to eel and cucumber
Bowl of Jambalaya
(Spicy like the South)

"Thank god
I'm alone tonight"



** published in Creative Writing, Volume 2, 2005 Edition

Snore

That reassuring sound
That, in night, gives me freedom
Is the snore of my Father
as I stand in the darkness
outside his room

I steal softly down creaking stairs
to reach the main floor
Praying that the CLICK
of the door unlocking
doesn't awaken him

I open it ever so slowly
as to prevent the noisy
whine of its hinges
Push softly on the screen door
Pulling the door behind me
so he won't hear the creak of the latch

I tiptoe down the stairs
leading to the street
slipping the key into the ignition
I hope he doesn't wake up

I slide the car out of the street
Look behind me
reassuring myself that he isn't awake
I drive to that night's fun
Only to feel guilty until, on my return
I find that he is still asleep

Sweet Tea

We've lost you

never to see

the smiles and tears

that made you look angelic

Remember now

Southern porches

And Virginia creeper

Sipping sweet tea

On warm days

You are the empty glass

So sweet when tasted

Now gone

Left Behind

after the last right

when there should have been a tight

turn away from friends

who use you for ends

meet as feet stomp in time to

music in your head flies

in the air of belief, worry

through all this hurry

away from loneliness and struggle

from homeless people huddling

on the streets of New York city

always hated that town

how its gray, how i frown when

the brooklyn bridge sways then

i long for the green

of the country scene though

surburbia suits me best

I wish for Seattle or Texas

where the green is precious and

the desert is never there where

everyone hears the wind blown hair

of the girl in the seat next to you

sitting wondering what you're going to do

to her as you race along the high

way as she worries if she been left.

Unassuming Girlfriend

Pad prancing up the stairway
The ever-quiet spouse
Living second class
In your lovers house

Never let him know
That you still are here
Hiding in his basement
His concern insincere

Wait for him to want you
Ever there for him
He sleeps snoring in his bedroom
You, awake, are in his den

Beware his parents, neighbors
Wondering at the noise
When asked if you're together
Never raise your voice

Remain quiet, unassuming
Never asking recompense
Waiting always for him
Your heart, your last defense

Waiting For Divinity

Waiting for divinity
that never quite arrives
open the world
to unknown eyes
see bright color
in blinding spectrum
call your friends
as you pray to heaven
this contradiction of terms
waits for unnoticed proof
as you look to tomorrow
you lose today's truth