A Question About Direction

Composed 8/7/17
Description: Inspired by today’s Daily Prompt: Amble. Do you have a good answer?

How do people just wander
Swerving, spinning, circling
Like a lazy water dancer
Drifting around in endless space
When this world and its people are expert demanders
And my life is a carefully managed bullet point list
At best a flowchart, 90s magazine quiz
Where choices are ample if you do not think
Outside of the box
I was born with a compulsion for convention
Is it good I feel such need for direction?
Or is finding purpose less important
Than the freedom that comes from ambling along?

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Under the Moon

Composed 4/15/15
Description: For Day 14 of NaPoWriMo. (Yes, you will get two poems today!) Technically, I wrote a poem yesterday, but this is about the same thing… and is much better. One of those cases where God (via my Bible study) confronted me pretty solidly about something I’d been struggling with over the last few days.

Under a grinning moon that hints of blood
Is the turbulent channel of my days
A panting, gruesome, groaning sea
That swallows me, tossing endlessly
I’m free to swim
Bound in waves
I yearn to drown
To roll, thrown about
Feel the high before my death
But to be free I must swim
I must fight
I must reach the other side

Summer Feels

Composed 8/27/14
Description: It was one of those days that just started right.

Today’s about the joy
Of your favorite pair of shorts
And that t-shirt that feels just right
Well-worn cons tied tight on your feet
Like you could run one hundred miles
And laugh in the lights of a brand new town

It’s about feeling right in your own skin
After trying to slough it off for so long
Silky cool legs in the hot summer sun
Soft feather hair blowing ‘round

About grinnin’ and racing
Letting it all fall away

Finally Free: The Sensations of Spring

Composed 3/11/14
Description: WDBWP’s poetry prompt came at the perfect time. It’s theme? Mood.

Yesterday I was in a good mood. In such a good mood that I wrote about it. And then I saw the prompt. Fate.

Yesterday I got what felt like the first taste of spring. Instead of twenty, teens, or below with patches of snow (which has been the average over the last few weeks), we had sunny and seventy. I felt like a different person. I could go outside without a jacket? I enjoyed my walks to class? Had sixty, seventy degrees always been this warm? It was culture shock. But a very, very welcome shock.

The day was so beautiful and glorious I knew I had to capture it in writing somehow. The result is found below.

How can I capture the beauty of this day?
I could run through the field
Stripping off clothes in laughter
Until I was free in my skin
And I would dance through the valleys for hours more
Unashamed
Just warm in the sun
Just
Free

You took my home
And made my haven my prison
And then you opened the door
And whispered
Run
Run!
And I dashed
Tossing chains
And dawning leaf-flower crowns

I could leap through tall grasses
And chase dust in the wind
I could climb every tree
Satisfy all desires
No one to hold me
No sword to smite me
Just my own body falling
Elated
To earth

Confidant

Composed 3/3/14
Description: I started this in mid-February, but I finished it today. Simply, this is the importance of writing.

The pen my true voice
The page my sole confidant

When I must hide my thoughts from the eyes of the world you remain
To contain my soul in the hearts of trees
And bury my worries in pixel sleeves

You drain the pain of my mind through my fingertips
Without the burden of worry and regret
But you preserve the raw so I won’t forget

The true identity of my soul
The lessons of a life lived

Dreaming of Freedom

Composed 12/5/13
Description: This was originally composed for wdbwp’s poetry prompt Dream States. This prompt told us to pay attention to our dreams that week and to compose a poem based on what we remember. Though I composed this piece on time, I am horribly, horribly late in posting it. (Thank you, college.) Nonetheless, I was impressed by the imagery and symbolism my dream contained.

I think this dream says much about my current attitude toward romantic relationships.  I have recently been noting how draining  romantic relationships are.  Honestly, being single is just so much easier.  There’s not as much emotional strain — you don’t have the stress of wondering if he’s “the one” or if you’re doing things right — and you don’t have the time commitment! Your life is just so much more flexible.

Though I think this poem contains a deeper element as well, perhaps illustrating how I view my romantic past, the decisions I’ve made, and how I’ve coped.

He holds out a contract to sign
Marry me he says
Robot body guards hold me in place
And I almost consent

But flashbacks bring reality
And I crash my fist
Into the robot’s glass head
And wrap my fingers around the crucial chip
Ripping it free

The robot crumbles
And I flee in the chaos

I load up my escape pod
And use the chip to power up
Launch
And out into space I fly
Smiling
Truly smiling
For the first time in awhile

And I land
On a planet of Japanese gardens
And polished wood bathhouse floors
And I rest
Satisfied
In the beauty of sunshine
Peering in
Through sliding screen doors