A Writer’s Prayer

Composed 1/4/17
Description: For me and (maybe) for you too.

Give me peace tonight
So the words may start
Give me peace tonight
To make a fresh start

Let calm descend like the fresh falling snow
So that all the worlds and realms may know
That an artist breathes within these bones
And that she lives and that she grows

Let the outside voices quiver and shake
And stop at the lips of those who hate
While the voice within speaks and flies
Beyond the heights and beyond time

Give me peace tonight
So the words may start
Give me peace tonight
To show the fire in my heart

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From Within

Composed 1/2/16
Description: I like having prompts sometimes, especially when they speak to me. But other times I feel like this only just gets me writing. The things I really love I practically throw onto the page… I just wish I knew how to force up those strong emotions and thoughts at will!

Words can be snatched at random
From the air like fireflies
Put them in a jar
And they swim around in
A glowing paragraph

But what is a jar
Full of pretty words?

The subtext only speaks of death
The lights fade and fizzle
Ashes fall to the bottom
They are gone
Soon forgotten

Show me a field of fireflies
I am frozen
I want them to roam free
And explore the things that speak to me
Don’t force me with a net
To snatch at empty words
I will huddle away
And write of my own heart

New Old Days

Composed 6/29/14
Description: After I moved back home after completing my last semester of college, I began to have a hard time writing. I feel like this has something to do with the change in atmosphere. All the things that inspired me as I truly began writing poetry are now gone. I’m much more isolated here in my small town than I was in a larger city amidst a college campus (obviously), and everything is just so… routine. So quiet. So familiar.  And yet I don’t belong in it like I’m supposed to.  And somehow this has robbed me of my words. Even this poem came out with a lot more work than my poems usually do.

My muse let go on the ribbon road
And clings to pink leaves and iced cotton snow
It hides in phantom walks and rains
Sleeping in joys and old heart pains

Now vibrant colors halt at my eyes
While silence surrounds these small town country skies
And even as storms blow gray and wild
My voice shrivels up as a weak frightened child’s

I cannot speak in this peaceful calm
In the lull of unknowing I write no songs
There’s nothing to see, nothing to say
I’m alone and muted in these new old days

In solitude I think myself blind
And meaning hides in the shadows’ bind
It’s all too familiar and a tad amiss
Like a soon ex-lover’s first sweetly forced kiss

This place drains life from my body and words
So I sit, a stunned and silenced bird
And like the red leaves that showered me
So too my words have been crushed to seed

I cannot speak in this peaceful calm
In the lull of unknowing I write no songs
There’s nothing to see, nothing to say
I’m alone and muted in these new old days

Walking Home

Composed 10/13/13
Description: Something short and sweet for Sunday. A thought I had last night.

I admire your caring
I really do
But you presence is infringing on my solitude
My restless thoughts
My nighttime muse

The Psychology of Muse

Composed 5/17/13
Description: Another personal piece.

Freud believed
That our deepest
Most forbidden desires
Reside in the ice burg of unconscious
Leaking through in
Physical malfunctions

While Lacan
Emphasized
What preoccupies us most
Slips out our mouths
In phonemes
In tricks of language

My desires
Reside in both
In my muse
Manifesting in
My poetry and how
It flies from my
Restless fingertips

For truly I find
I cannot write of
Anything
But you