Consider me Dorothy,
Disjointed and disoriented
In a land unfamiliar.
Dazed that there could be any one,
A single one,
Who has seen you Who has known you Who has loved you
And does not presently find themselves
Laying the marble stonework
To the temple with which to worship you.
Instead,
They must find themselves
At the center of the tornado
Oblivious to the differentially pressured air
Threatening to destroy it all.
Unaware that you are the holy calm
Between them and the entropy.
How it would all collapse
If you dared to take a breath.
Have you counted the minutes
Since you last drew air in?
Or are you afraid the knowing
Would tear this world open?
Author Archives: pjoak
lost
When does a thing become lost?
Is it the moment when you lose sight of it
And it comes to rest in an unfamiliar space?
The moment when sight passes through and no value is assigned?
Has the universe sentenced it at that point to the mist of unbelonging?
But what if a soul stops for a second look…
Does it then become found?
Is ‘lost’ the moment when panic overcomes your body
Your heart races
Lungs twitch
The search ignites.
The moments domino until the reality (not to be believed) has settled into resignation.
You caused this.
Does the blame prescribe its status?
Is ‘lost’ the moment you say goodbye?
But what if hands somewhere are designing its escape, and orchestrating its return to you?
Or, is it lost the moment it is forgotten?
When no one remembers what it meant
Sitting, dormant, surrounded by other things.
Meaning nucleated in a closet, on a shelf, with a thousand little threads reaching for a longing far away..
Each thread, snapping, as the memory of its existence and the hope for its return scatter like ashes over an ocean it once flew.
Once lost, can it ever be found?
a self-fulfilling should
I thought of you today
And I wondered what you’d see
My tired eyes
My frizzy hair
Or the tattoo flowing free
I thought of you today
And I wondered if you’d see
Three million mistakes
Plus one
And the temper inside of me
I thought of you today
And I wondered what I heard
How much was said
When you were tired, broken, healing
And how much I say to her
I felt a bit of you today
In the way she calmed me down
There’s a crinkle in her eye
Always there
Behind a frown
.
In the way that we hold hands
In the way she sings a song
Something bright and crisp and cutting
Through the bullshit of the fog
.
Your soul is not beside us
But a fragment still remains
And I wonder if you’d know her
If I offered up her name
I think you’d see the softness
I hid for all my life
I think you’d see the dreams we had
Beginning to take flight
.
I think that you saw more
Than I ever thought you could
Because a mother sees forever
Past a self-fulfilling should
it was you
I gave you too much of me.
Every thread, every string
I foolishly thought you would care for.
But I frayed and I singed
By the fire of your whispers
Repeated again
.
I did not see
How much of my tapestry lay whole.
While you overtook the edges,
Behind me I had proof of the grand design
I had woven in your absence
If only I had looked.
But I stared too long at the chisel
Scraping me away
Scattering every grain of courage
I had the strength to gather.
I thought I was sand
Dripping through your fingers.
.
But I forgot
I am a fortress towering over the shadow
You’ve cast around your life.
I am not one, but I am many
And though you are many, you are not one
Of me.
When will I remember
To remember
I was forged in silence
In a cave
Gently forgotten.
It was there
.
I conjured magic
before you
Played with fire.
I was incandescent
before you
Ever dared to look.
.
It was you who cracked me open
Never knowing
I’d find jewels.
Frog Pose
I lay on my belly in Frog pose, leaning into the juicy stretch across my inner hips.
The moment feels so peaceful that my mind begins to wander.
She wanders to the filing cabinets of thought and towards the job that has taken up so many hours of my life.
Did that email get sent - did I have to get that done today, tonight, or tomorrow?
Will they be disappointed in me?
Am I messing everything up?
And then the yoga fairy, with her tutu made of Arabian bells, and her wand of a sparkling dust, marches steadfast through my ear and into my brain.
Stopping to get a handle on all the thoughts, she rounds them all up.
Like a professional swatting flies, she swishes each thought out of my brain, proclaiming in a bold stance,
“You did not pay admission for this yoga class.”
- a random musing
his last breath
his last breath
took no more than a moment,
when his lungs blew a silent cry into the air
the breath held his soul
as it glided along the face of his mother:
a portrait of suffering, over the body of her child
it swept through the beard
of his broken father,
mingling with the tears he didn’t know had fallen
the soul swam through the thin air
around two brothers,
and they sucked in
a tightness which strangled their hearts,
gripping tightly for an eternity
it left the dusty street of a no longer town,
joining the souls of the others
who left their bones behind.
it travelled across the breeze,
over no longer cities,
over no longer fields,
over no longer trees.
it merged with the soul of a people,
gathering in skies
which once held no fear
and in a sigh, the souls blew away
a shadow of a restless dream,
a gust of memory across the world
this soul travelled far
along cloud and rain and sea
until the soul came down and fell unto me
and it glided down the face of this mother,
into the lungs of another
child
where He became We became Me became Her
for the breath of a babe is the soul of this world
you could be me
I think I’ll be a story,
scored by a melody
moving and gentle
wild with rhythm
bellowing at the moon.
Eyes will be following,
as I skip down every street
gilded with daisies
tarnished and crumbling
slowing my step
to pause
as I sob with every tear
and let the storms tear apart
all the fragments of sorrow
to clear a path through.
You are the stranger
walking by
flipping channels
through my tale
and others’.
Throw your jests and your jeers.
For you are not my audience.
I think I’ll be a story
every dream, an urgent whisper
an iridescent mist of words
taking shape into something real.
Ears will be listening
as I act
react
revolt.
My voice will be heard
by the small
but never weak
and their atomic collisions.
I think I’ll be a story,
for you could be me;
and I’ll try to be a story,
one you’d like to be.
to my little girl
too late
a sprout sees above the earth
the roots entangled below
lives lived a thousand times
he gets his turn to grow
light and hope within his eyes
he seeks out his nesting place
but now he finds the food is gone
a child arrived too late
gentle words from strangers
rise up the well again
he seeks the sun for warmth
to find shadows there instead
they all expect an ending
mother and all she bore
for peace and home and some future
they arrived too late once more
the wall
She was ivy.
Growing between the weeds,
grasping for a hold.
They clipped her leaves,
one by one.
But another tendril reached out.
She grew in so many directions
they couldn’t find her.
The sun guided her to rise.
The shadows pulled her to safety.
Survival lay at the
crest of the wall.
There she could see it all.
But as she looked over the edge,
there was only rubble.
and she knew then
her blood was poison after all.
Healing
At birth, they presented me with a mirror.
The subtle reflection haunted me with the design of a shadowed life.
There was the ancestry to which I was bound,
There was the homeland from which I had been broken,
There were my parents, waiting expectantly.
This looking glass forged ahead – steering my path.
Any crack that appeared, the world told me was fine.
Any small stumble – I should find my way back.
Every moment scratched the surface, etching my hurt and my joy and my expectations.
I thought I was following a masterpiece,
Until it shattered.
I stare at the pieces beneath my feet,
Cutting myself while sifting through the wreckage.
Every shard – a piece of the story that I had written.
Or was it written for me?
I pause, wanting to leave it all behind.
But instead I stay.
Instead, I paint.
Over time, one piece shimmers,
Another one glows,
And before my eyes, the colors of the rainbow appear
Between the ragged fractures of the past.
I rearrange, I recreate.
I place these stained glass fragments and build something new.
And moment by moment, I begin to see;
This is the beauty that I am willing to fight for.
Penelope J Oak 