A Paco Lips

Oh, life's a ball and we're having it so
Always some sunshine, don'tcha well know...
Gotta have rain to make the flowers grow
I'll gather them, tie them up with a bow
And give them to you for when there is snow
When it's too cold in the day, we'll dance all the night
Not too old to play, young enough to be right
Our mountains and treetops become metaphors
While slipping and sliding on those hardwood floors
I tell you, I can't master those things in socks

And I love how we never have ends to our talks

When life becomes dreary, we'll splash in the puddles

And laugh hard enough to forget all our muddles

And then, as you know, sometimes things will be cheesy

But too many kittens just might make me sneezy

So all in all, as I've been trying to say

However we got here, I'd have it no other way

Just off the top of my head.... a very whoosh poem.

"You may tell me."
"Post it! Nao!"

A story.

We were better friends than we’d admit

Understood more than we let on

But less than we wished

Teasing, arguing, condemning

Neither ever backing down

New kids in class together

Fourth grade

You were the genius kid the girls nicknamed Fatman

Fifth grade

You knew how to make people laugh, although sometimes they didn’t and you laughed alone

Sixth grade

You didn’t cry at school anymore

Seventh grade

I didn’t like you because you teased and knew it all

Eighth grade

We discovered the power of letting ideas feed off each other

You gained reputation as the coolest student body president in the city

The girls liked you now because you were fit and had good hair

Ninth grade

You ran to catch up in the hallway and matched your stride to mine, silently

You'd grumble about your problems
And could talk your way into or out of anything

Then

After one last project

You never talked to me again

Not even on graduation day, when you sang for all of us

I looked you up on a whim

You were accepted to the best university in the country

And you have ugly hair now

Wrote this because of an idea Lisa gave me... one of a series. Remembering things forgotten for years... funny how unemotional one gets.

Chance of precipitation: 100%

 Have I ever told you
  The questions I would ask you
  If I were not afraid
 Listen, can you hear that music?
  Were I as forthright as it

 Have you ever wondered
  The question I would ask you
  Were you not so silent
  So many voices unrelenting
   I begin to lose track of the music

These days will change to tomorrow
  So they say
 And the dirges repeat and fade

When looking forward keeps you going
 What happens when you can't see?

Hear it now
 Rising falling we are
  Rising falling we fade


"What are you doing?"
"I'm transferring a poem... because it's rainy. And that's what you do on rainy days."

Wonder Wander Goose and Gander

We built our towers higher
As the clouds tumbled down around
The music
            it battered us
 Seeking that which we could not name

 The directions and maps of no one's making
   Or perhaps our own
 Forging a destination

 To save nowhere from being nothing

 Perhaps the air grows thinner

If we could but take off
  From the edge of uncertainty
Too cautious for wings
  We must reach it another way

  By our towers

Where shall we put the summit?

the number you have dialed phenomenon

I want to say Tell me

  Tell me it's not my head

 Tell me what you haven't said

Tell me why you won't 

          Speak

And then I fall asleep

   But even in my dreams

        You won't

I can't sleep

    My mind won't be still

You might know why

Don't ask me

     It tumbles like a machine

       Polishing stones with sand

  Over and over

 Until they become smooth and beautiful

    When will the words become beautiful?

  Over and over...

Fall

In daylights neverending
Speaking sometimes of love
Every successive moment taught me
Those things we knew nothing of

Like the silhouettes upon my wall
Dreaming beyond where I awaken
The only path we had
Was the one that's never taken

In words there is no sense left
There are songs that won't leave my head
I don't believe them anymore
Things aren't true just because they're said

Finding out a different way
New definitions for hastily placed rhymes
Try, let's see if we can make it
To that place we left all those times ago


This is what happens when I write while listening to music... I looked back at what I wrote and went "oh, really?" ... and I have half a feeling it isn't done.

Vanish Inside

Slipping and skidding
  In a choking rain
 As I stepped out into the dizziness
  Of flinging caution away
 And the world was about to dissolve
 In churning colors and thickening beats
 I heard something I recognized
  A song projected upon your voice
   So many times over
  Now again it clears the sky
   Now again my breath returns
The clouds have edges now

Making Perfect Nonsense

 In a time that shouldn't have been
    There was a reality that wasn't
      An unsymmetrical reflection
        And it all passed by
         But didn't
       Because it was never there to begin with
    And when it came again
  (But didn't, because it couldn't because it was never there back when it shouldn't have been even if it was, which it wasn't)
   I greeted it again.

Snippets of ZipCee™

“Do you think people will see us?” Cee wondered softly.

“I think if they look closely,” Zip replied.

More than 360,000 kilometers below, a young astronomer at Mauna Kea Observatory drew back sharply from the eye of his telescope and blinked. Girls? On the moon? Those alien world video games must be getting to him. He peered cautiously around the side of the telescope to double-check where it was pointed. Nope, it was directed smack at the moon as it should be. Drawing a deep breath, he looked into the eyepiece again. Nothing but craters and shadows. Very slowly he leaned back and gazed up at the softly glowing full moon above him. A quiet, still slightly puzzled smile spread across his face. Instinctively, his fingers started drumming out a beat on the arm of his chair.

Zip and Cee Go to the Moon

One night when the leaves were crinkly and the slate clouds reflected the reddish glow of a sleepless city, Zip and Cee decided to go to the moon.  Zip had never been to the moon, but Cee had gone almost halfway once and knew a bit about the process.

“We have to walk around backwards first to erase our footprints so the moonbeams don’t get dusty. It wouldn’t be nice manners,” Cee said solemnly.

                “But how will we find our way home without footprints?” Zip looked slightly worried.

                “We’ll leave them in the most important places,” Cee said. She handed Zip a small potted rose with a single furled bud. “I have one too. We’ll meet back here when they begin to blossom.”

                The girls started slowly walking away from each other backward, picking up speed as they grew more confident.

                “It’s easier to go fast if you stay on your tiptoes!” Zip called to Cee who was disappearing into the dark, determinedly matching her foot to each footprint.

A little while later, Zip thought she heard a shout and far-off “ooph” but ignored them as she was busy trying to figure out how to leave a footprint on top of a rock. She finally gathered some nearby moss and arranged it to look like a sole and five toes. Satisfied, she straightened up and saw that her rose was almost open. She climbed down and made her way back to the small clearing, well-lit now by the rising moon.

This place where I find lostness
 Where too much and not enough coincide

    Let me not fall
  
    Let me not lose sight

    Let me not lose what I must hold tightly

      There is a further world from here
     Their reality is not mine
        It will not will be
         I will not let it
  
  I cast away the lostness

Rock

Once hinted at magic

     Now overcast memories

   Words run together against the beating 

      Of heads, of hearts, of palms on walls

  Sought to read the sameness imagined

 Breaking against stubborn unmatterings

Let’s fly to a warmer part of sky

 Forget the cities we dreamed of

  Forget the pathways we marked

 See the clouds as mountains

  We could climb them, I think

Perhaps

 If voices grew wings

ZIP

There’s enough of this world

Of who I am not

Cannot be

Hide behind twice-folded truth

Turn around, about face

Repeat until you believe

Let the sun lamps blind you

Burn you

Warm you with the pain

'Til it trickles down your arms

Like so many storms of rain

And finds itself another mould

Until then

Until then it turns the pages black

The mirror can’t turn back

Have you broken your walls?

They bear your nailprints

Until it not matters

Come back to the remembrance

There’s more to see than this

Waking Haunts

I dreamt we were running

I dreamt you were there

But when I awoke

My fingers felt air

I saw walls of blue

A small wooden chair

She left to keep searching

All minds were made bare

In no small confusion

A face as though dreaming

Knelt somehow beside it

No trace of a meaning

Touched once, tracing tears

On your cheek though repressed

By windows of gray

I kissed emptiness

Undefinitions

A page
A look
A spoken sigh
A sage
Some books
An undetermined lie
We search
We find
And think we're right
A lurch
Defined
Beware a time of night
The sun
It flies
In spirals without corners
Alone
Reside
In your mind as a foreigner



I think words live invisibly in my journal. I scrawl at the page with my pen, and when I turn around I discover poems I've never seen before.

Rambo

There's a funny sort of world
We might have found again
A leaf, a word, a thought unfurled
Beyond our little ken

We keep our hands preoccupied
To keep our hearts from shaking
Because although I've tricked and tried
Sometimes things won't stop breaking

Return again, familiar face
My signs I cannot see
The once-lived truths in an embrace
Now fray the seams of me

So suddenly, the space is gone
No nothings more to fill
But when it's all out in the sun
Shadows keep moving still


I ramble... Don't know why... words keep tumbling out of my head every so often. Please stop.

Piel

Your words wrap around me
   Seek the sky with new vantage
 How we flicker, rise and light

          So many broken... parallel lines

    Searching out a celestial sight
      
      But I am still more of earth

           Riding along your flight
     Marvel at captivations
        A circling dance, snipping together and apart
                                                       pieces of sunlight
          You will find a whole



"Why does hurt of heart inspire so much?"
"Because you're bleeding... letting out."

Piece of Eternity

I met someone today
Heard him talking away
Somehow I knew he meant me
Before I ever saw his face
He ran away when I looked
But felt bolder when a bit fatter
Momentarily distracted
When I looked up next, he was standing there
I fell into his eyes
Asking just one question
Once, again, then silently
But so completely taken
I could not think to answer
And he went away
Leaving me wishing to follow
Never even told me his name
So I call him Mr. Bushykins

Gray Musics

The rain hushing softly
Are you picking up where my heart left off
Yet not beating
Gentler, please we are
  So the petals of the rosebud don't bruise
                                     And the wings of the hummingbird won't tire

The last of a generation
               Sings a forgotten song to furry ears
   So familiar

          But my lips cannot find the words

    For this minute, I am quiet

                      Stirring, stirring
     There is no recipe
           When life becomes nothing more but onions steaming

  Forget your questions for a moment

         All too soon they'll return

    No longer  can  I  write  in  rigid  lines

          They grow akin to raindrops

                   Here and there

               Hushing, hushing


This is almost exactly how it ended up in my journal (do you see your influence, Cearra? Forgive me for seeming to imitate... but it could take no other format.)
Speaking of which, my journal! I bought a new journal at Borders, finally. After muddling and musing and giving up, on my way out... I spotted it. It's not pretty to look at, or perfectly lined, but it is mine. Big, black and unlined. Because one cannot ramble in small spaces.

Fourth Wall

The air is alive
The ropes quiver under damp fingers
Catch your breath, one one thousand, two one thousand, three
Get away from the curtains, fool
Violins starting up, there's the cue
Take one last look
Our world is about to be born once more
Curtain

See how productive I am in field service? For some reason this came to me as we were driving between calls.

Takes

Spinning words into cobwebs

I thought we’d passed that junction

But the artificial smiles under the artificial lights

Still sing their happy songs with sad eyes

So we get up and dance

‘Cause this music that keeps filling me

It also might be killing me

Just a little bit

Slip out of time, slide out of tune

Start all over again

We’ve lost sight of the beginning

So we’ll make up a new one

This was true, that was real

Clinging to the courtyard walls

When my feet can no longer find the ground

The wind’s going nowhere and back again

Somewhere my mind is turning

In time with your breaths

It’s a flickering connection

And the world isn’t over yet

Riding Kaleidoscopes

Inside another insanity

Been falling in circles so long

So long, so long

That waking moment of dreams

Counting sleep in raindrops

Perhaps to find myself a day

When sunshine gets another name

And our voices touch

I’ll sink down between the cobblestones

And listen to their stories

Until I can see the sky again

For the first time, so many times

Over there, turn around

Told it to myself

Now you smile, of course you would

I’ll be fine if it kills me

Switchback

Gravity's catching up with me
I've forgotten how to fall
Watch the clouds coming together
My feet have grown too small

By himself, against a window
There's a jester playing rhymes
People walking down the street
Pull their raincoats up to their eyes

A girl's playing games
With a stranger she knows
Hardly know the rules
But they call each other names

Not his bus, the plaid absorbed in Russian lit.
I might as well just walk
Who knows what time will see
I'll burn that bridge when I get to it

Lead me round the bricks, won'tcha?
I recognize your song
Hating won't change that it's in you
We've been staring for too long

One more Thursday, one more mask
Maybe more or less today
Maybe there's another way
Yet I don't know how to ask

Fictional Revolution

I was cleaning out my room and found this in my world history binder from 10th grade. We were assigned to make up a revolution. I marveled at my knowledge of government, and wondered what possessed me to write like this. But I'm starting to see a pattern of writing about monarchs...

-----------------------------------------------------

1. Seventeen year-old child of conqueror ascends throne of absolute monarchy. Suspected IQ is the same number as his age. Young monarch spends his days throwing costly balls and gambling. To please the king, any courtier playing against him must tactfully and consistently lose. Government is grossly neglected, and corrupt nobles are left to do as they please. Prices rise, wages drop, and law enforcement declines. All intellectuals who speak out are imprisoned, and nobles and commoners alike suffer. The king loses support, and those against him gain number. All are suffering economically, some are fueled by the idea that the youth is not the rightful ruler, his father having conquered the country. Resentment grows.

2. Enraged population deposits manure into all rivers and wells supplying the palace. General chaos ensues.

3. Moderates attempt a program of reform, and pass an order to register all male citizens in a revolt agreement that states all men as having equal rights and privileges.

4. Nobles protest against moderates, claiming that their social ranks should be maintained. Neighboring countries also send words of warning as the king is a close relation, and a revolution could cause changes in their own countries.

5. The extremists take over and begin throwing all opposers of the revolution to lions. Lions grow healthy and breed. Economy temporarily receives boost from export of lions. Young king becomes officially insane, and throws self to lions.

6. As all resistance is eliminated and the lion trend drops, the terror decreases. It rises briefly when the lions are replaced with wolves, but the major crisis is over.

7. As no power in the monarchy remains, an intelligent revolter rises up and gathers followers with promises of peace and security. Becomes dictator and promptly makes gambling legal. As the lions and wolves have lost their previous jobs, the losers are eaten.

8. People support government because idiots gamble and are eaten and their fortunes are collected as taxes, so taxes in general decrease. Intellectuals survive and the arts flourish due to economical stability and the weeding out of the intellectually disinclined.

Digs

Once upon a time, there was a pebble.
The pebble did not remember where it came from, but it did know where it was at the moment. It was lodged  between the toes of King Louis XIV, because the king had decided to wear his very fashionable open-top high heels to a garden party. There have been very few instances in history where a monarch and a pebble agree, but that day both the pebble and the king wished to be elsewhere. At the moment, the king was greeting one of the prominent and particularly foppish members of his court. This particular fellow stood at a galling 6'1”, forcing the king to keep his shoes on, for he would have endured a thousand pebbles before he consented to stand lower than such a simpering fool. Indeed, at the moment he rather wished to be a pebble himself, and slip his shoes off unnoticed. The pebble on the other hand, was reflecting that he would much rather be greeting boring courtiers than sitting in the dark between someone's toes, even those of a very famous monarch. King or not, toes never smelled very nice, and these were especially poor specimens, tortured from years of being forced into uncomfortable heels.
At length, the pebble heard the king excuse himself and walk very quickly to the nearest chamber pot, which was set around the corner of a hedge. He grunted and snorted as he reached around his billowing skirts to reach his foot, and tugged awkwardly at the shoe. The pebble felt the stiff fabric compress and snag on the royal bunions. The king swore softly and peeked around the edge of the hedge. At a gesture, an attendant came swiftly and bowed low.
“M'Lord?”
Louis XIV cleared his throat and drew himself up to his full height, wincing as the pebble dug deeper.
“My shoe is bothering me. Remove it.”
The attendant was well-trained, and only inwardly did he smirk as he thought of the laugh he and the chamber maid would have later.
The pebble felt a cool breeze, and sighed with relief as he was turned over onto the ground.
“Insolent thing,” the king muttered as he wriggled his way back into the shoe.
The pebble did not care for the opinions of the king, for it is very hard to lower the self-esteem of a pebble. It lay in the dirt and enjoyed the feel of fresh open air and the diffused light of the overcast sky.

dentist therapist frumpy villainous potato mongoose

Creative Writing - Fiction. Assignment #?

Incorporate the provided vocabulary into a short story.

I'm a dentist, usually the person standing over the patient. Lying on my back and having someone else examine me makes me nervous. Plus, this lady gives me the creeps.
“Sooo how do you feel today, Christopher?”
How she became the most successful therapist this side of the bridge is beyond me. She's every cat-hair covered, mouth-breathing fifth grade teacher that still gives you nightmares about missing homework when you're 30. Open the dictionary to “frumpy” and you'd find a picture of her.
“I'm...”
I found out fast that telling her I'm fine only leads to deep psychoanalysis of how I carry hidden scars and suppressed fears and desires. Well, I probably will after the time I'm done with this therapy. Seriously, why did Madeline have to get the latex and non-latex gloves mixed up on the one Monday last month when I overslept my alarm, the Starbucks drive-through was closed for repairs, and the Prius broke down two blocks from the office? Still, I shouldn't have blown up at her like that... how was I to know that Doc Rossen would send me to therapy for it?
“I'm feeling....”
What's an empty, deep-sounding word?
“I'm confused about my... purpose.”
My purpose? Since when?
“I've been having strange dreams lately.” At least that was somewhat true.
Her face crackled open into a gray-toothed grin, not unlike the look on a child's face when he discovers the power of sunlight and a magnifying glass over an anthill. Her solidly penciled-in eyebrows rose into almost villainous arcs.
“Descriiiibe yourrr dreaaammm” she said, somewhere between a croak and a croon.
I swear, she is possessed.
“It seemed familiar, but ominous. Like reading a book you know the ending to, but somehow fearing that this time it won't turn out the same way.”
An intrigued murmur escaped her, and she scribbled something on her pad.
“I was eating my mom's potato salad... in the middle of a large cornfield. The stalks rose around me, and the sun was beating down... it seemed peaceful, but the air carried a heavy, unsettling feel.”
Unexpectedly, I could feel myself slipping back into the story-telling mindset, and my voice became low and relaxed. How long had it been since I'd spun such tales? I used to do it all the time with Jules.
“Suddenly, I noticed the slow hissing sound that had slowly been crescendoing behind me. My hands felt clammy, despite the heat.”
My eyes were closed, and the therapist and her cackles were somewhere in a forgotten dimension. I could feel the sun on my back; hear the rustling of the corn.
“The King Cobra... the master of the garden... whose only fear is the chatter of the mongoose.”
Jules and I used to read Rudyard Kipling to each other for hours.

Creative Writing -Fiction, assignment #1.

"This world knows nothing of success. These people they worship, success stories they call 'em. Bah. What's their money gonna do for 'em when they die, ey? Give 'em ten years, twenty if they're lucky, and all they gonna be is another name on a shut-up inheritance claim."
Len had a habit of talking to the grayed dish towel he always slung over his shoulder whenever he went into the kitchen. I could hear him in there, twisting the stove knob just so because if you didn't turn it right all you got was the smell of propane, filling the speckled, dented pot, and rummaging in the cupboard above his head for the Oolong that he got from one of the thousand tiny shops in Chinatown.
"Ya want milk, son?"
"No thanks Len, just tea is fine."
I leaned back on the sagging couch and picked at the bits of stuffing coming through. It smelled faintly of linseed oil and was gray, like everything else in Len's apartment.
Except his paintings.