Striated

It’s a day of subtle perfection...
The water’s slow, steady roll from the leaves of the oak
Augments the unchanging static sky in its glare;
Forks of lightning are stabbing questions, and
The answers roll in on the thunder amid new queries.
I could spend all day shivering in the semi-light
And dreaming of a place where the silence is the storm --
Where children dread the sky turned blue,
And staring into the calm makes my eyes buzz.

I blame only the quiet for bringing the noise,
And I exalt the wind only because it is the sigh of the tempest.

Plea

“Plea” – 6/19/05
The morning shuddered to a halt outside my bedroom window.
Light, slipped from the hands of a careless sun,
Fell in slatted lines through the blinds and across my eyes.
Thought pounced.
Pain was clawing at the throat of purpose,
And memories scrambled to the surface
As drowning men, each trying to save himself.

God, don’t make me face the day.

Hey.

I see that Easter's accepted the invitation. Silence.
But hey, I'm at an internet cafe on a ship in the middle of the ocean. Be back Sunday, if the weather's good to fly back. Really logged on to see if Snider emailed me back about my final grade. I was worried there for a while. Anyway.
When I get back, I get to plunge into sixteendom. With the rest of you older-than-me people.
Happy summer. I demand more poetry posting.
Jessie

Beginnings.

Okay, so Mitch got his own blog. Remember, though, that if you do get your own blog, you still have to open that e-mail which was sent to you and follow the link to be a part of this blog.
So I'll start the posting of poetry, shall I? It's very strange. I mean, very strange.
I'll miss everybody's voices.


“In Possibility” – 6/08/05
Sometimes, I hear the wind rasping and wonder where it begins and ends,
And if those places are the same place.
If maybe, in that place,
I can walk by and know the planks of the fence are leaning together to gossip.
And when the leaves rustle, they’re asking their Question aloud: Why?
There, the sun consumes the stars by Day, and in the Night they’re freed again
And their freedom is written in the eyes of those who seek to find it.
The moon is engulfed in the mouth of a leaping silver fish, which falls monthly into a blue abyss.
In the skies of this place, where fighting jets pursue the moon-swallowing, renegade fish,
They leave Alexander Hamilton’s face shining in their jet streams.
He nods and winks and uses the ten dollar bill for his mirror...
And he is wafted away to nothingness by Aaron Burr on a passing hot air balloon.
In the place where the wind ends and begins and ends,
The towering oak loses bitterly in the race against the spread of rippling fescue
And entirely new worlds spring from leaky garden hoses, only to be seen by children.
At the end of the beginning, and the beginning of the wind, chance is a catalyst for change.
I know I’m not in that place. But that place exists in me.