Utah landscapes

lavender fields

shimmery-salt-dirty lake

golden stubble acres strewn with cows/llamas/sheep/horses

sagebrush studded     
       brown dirt
   desert juniper blessed miles
             hills

 Utah lake, Utah cloudscapes,
        inescapable sunset eyecandy

blue, bluest blushing brilliant
   sky, open freedom skies

altogether a little
  raw around the edges
  and under the surfaces
  shooting raw into our
  hearts, our veins, wrapping
  wild around our spines

dry dusted summer skin

cool windy wild canyons

lucid star slipstream towing a luminous hopeful moon

Moore, OK, 2:30 AM

too bright
too much light
asking unravelly yarn brain
snagged on my request
warm red winter sweater
cold grey metal fence
metal request
trying to furnish warmth
uncomfortable, itchy parallels
         don't do this, don't just
      no more patterns
17 and never even ever
wasting wishes on petty things
war in the world and
occupied with this?
focus on this?
too much. too much.

once upon a time
(when you are swallowed by despair and exhaustion
and stumble into waterflow)
when you can't see because of dark and blurred extrapolations
you will discover, perchance:

when your ability to will
 yourself to stand is overshadowed by despair
when your balance is broken
 down by the keen edge of too many hours alert 
you will lean into the tiled wall of your shower
    maybe you will slide down gently,
    (so-slight friction on so slick a surface)
    pretending that the wet on your face
    is water, just water, tap water
maybe you will not
    maybe you will just stand
    an abject angle
    slowly carefully recovering
because it is enough, a wall,
enough to have learned the simple generosity
the honest-undemanding support
offered by a wall
into which you are able to lean
   no questions or favors asked of you

In the same vein:

I feel whole,
better,
alltogether
    no wandering
    lost last pieces
    of me
        no chasing,
        no taming,
        no trying or timing


right as rain
bright like rainbow
bowl balancing
two feet down on the ground
but head
wrapped up in cool smooth clouds

“This is about my someday daughter, already stung stained with insecurity begging, ‘Mom, will I be pretty?’ I will wipe that question from your mouth like cheap listick and answer, ‘No, the word pretty is unworthy of everything you will be and no child of mine will be contained in five letters. You will be pretty intelligent, pretty creative, pretty amazing, but, you will never be merely pretty."


Katie Makkai

head tipped back
hands wrapped around rope
falling dreams
and summer things
  sun/shade
  light/leaves
metaphorically-allegorically
and how I want eternity

the things I want to say are crowding hidden in the air
hitting nerves and drawing sounds out
like a tight-tuned tinker's toy piano
and the beauty lost as fumbling past edges you glint on by
and how the joy you feel is never more than the pain
pain as currency, Pain as more alive
living lies in lieu
a debt we pay for happiness
I will not shun the scythe