Roof

the roof, the roof, the roof is on fire.

My hair, the flaming roof of my brain, engulfs my thoughts with a red tinged subtlety that few understand.

My fellow gingers know, when you see a flaming roof...

You don't run away.

You dive inside to see what is bubbling just underneath the inferno.

We don't need no water let the mother fucker burn.

oneword: disconnect

the keyboard seems foreign to me. i feel like i might have lost my voice.

i think he took part of it.

oneword: provide

The granite is gray and cold to the touch. It is strange to be standing here, staring across at your name, my fingers tracing the etching of the lily and the cross. My knees cramp from the weight of my torso leaning over to brush off the grass and debris from the winds this weekend.

I am sorry that it has taken seven years to say this, to come back here.

To be honest, the guilt was too much. I should have been there, given you my hand to take and hold onto while the world spun out of control into what I hope was a warm and inviting light.

What kind of granddaughter was I to not provide for you in your last years? Visiting you became a weekend chore, and I let the lure of friends pull me from enjoying what little time I could with you.

My mom talks a lot about butterflies, how they land on her when she comes here, even in the dead of winter. I want desperately to see and feel that, to know that even though I wasn't there for you, a part of you is still there for me.

oneword: blackout

Strange how oneword can sum up my entire junior year of college. I should be poetic. I should be able to relate this word to some sort of haughty metaphor, and then swing back and implicitly tie it back to my life, all the while maintaining a distance in tone that will let me attack myself as if I were someone else.

The only memories I have left are, sadly, the early morning phone calls to someone who would understand. And the crying. There was a lot of that.

And still, there are times when I find it hard to drink and stop myself. I don't make as many stupid mistakes because I can't let myself go back to what I was.

But the truth is, I am terrified. Every time I hold a beer in my hand, or I take a shot, I am just scared.

One word: Grid

hardened corners, small squares filled with air. an endless maze of right angles that attempt to fill the void of space. a place for everything and everything in its place. but whose face in this space can place a smile on mine?

(this is my first attempt. be gentle :) )

oneword: grid

oh you splendidly sweet blocks of cold air and open space... waiting - begging me to fill you in with pencil-scribbled mistakes...

stage blocking that leaves clocks tick, tock- tocking... outlining time in smooth, cubicle lines... a marching band formation just waiting to be the climax of my geometrical masturbation...

marking spots with x's and dots... stacking up shapes like bricks layered in between superhero capes...

cold and empty, my graph paper pleasure box... pardon me... i've gotta go get my rocks off.

oneword: specific

How strange to move from those dance-floor grinds and daytime rewinds with friends to this specific moment when I look over at you and feel like I might actually have found everything I've wanted and fought for so long to find. I believe again.

oneword: believe

hand fried and deep picked i believe in that slow-mo d r i p,
d r i p,
d rrrrrrrrrrrr i p...

down the sides of ripe, red fruit and the inner thighs of tight leather boots.

wanna-be beatnik poetry pricks...

if i were a boy you'd be sucking on MY dick.

oneword: keypad

my fingers are like ghosts as they float over these keys. haunting what i used to love and who i used to be.

"too concerned with the worlds on the outside..." is he right? has the inside of me died? did i kill it just like he killed my love for him?

without water we do not grow. without practice we lose muscle memory. without activity we grow soft. lazy. boring.

oh these keys that used to bleed for me now only dance for facebook and online dating. i am embarrassed. i am ashamed. but i am not dead yet.

oneword: keypad

Looms before me; projects and inspirations await. It remains eternally patient until I get my ass in gear.

oneword: vulture

There is an ever present something hovering up above me, above us all. Hunched over, knobby, scaly, strange. Always searching for its "in," its opportunity to feed. It hangs there in limbo, looking for someone else's success, someone else's love, someone else's life. It is a cheater. It is hopelessness. It is the constant nagging that nothing is permanent, that if you don't take care and protect the life you're leading, it might be taken away from you forever.

oneword: sprout

Peeking up through the crust of winter, I see the promise of relief showing its pretty little face. And with it will come warmth, flip-flops, summer dresses, and a breath of fresh air. A much needed breath of fresh air.

oneword: middle

She stands in the middle of the room.  But it is not just any room.  It is a room, like so many other rooms, that has defined so many moments in her life.  

She stands there in the pit, the lowest point of the whole place, the point where a piece of the magic begins.  She turns to the back of the room, looking upwards over hundreds of battered, worn seats, seeing shifty figures and faces that have occupied them through the years.  She sees the tears and the laughter, the intense attention and the restless boredom, the family, the friends, the faces of people who made a regular moment wholly unique and irreplaceable, never to be found exactly as it was again.

Her eyes travel up past those seats to the doors which welcomed those faces in, to the booth which controls other pieces of the magic.  She lets her eyes travel across the high ceilings and up to the catwalk, caging in streams of light which illuminate and inform the magic, hanging from above the pieces that will bring people and moments to life.

Then, ever so slowly, she allows her body to turn, facing a gaping hole--dimly lit, empty.  The floor gouged, splintered, worn.  Remnants of tape and paint and blood, sweat, and tears sprinkle the surface which so many have occupied before her.  Remnants of successes and failures haunt the space before her.  

And she is not sure she belongs in this room, like she has in others from before.  The pieces of the past do not speak to her here, the pieces of this room are still foreign, strange.  She stands there looking, questioning, hoping, that before too long that strangeness will disappear.  She stands there hoping that the various pieces of the magic she knows so well will come together for her here.  

Because then, standing in the middle of things will feel less daunting.

oneword: change

Whipped through my world and knocked me on my ass. I was preoccupied at the time, and was taken aback. But the thing is...this change, this shift in my life...it's been a long time coming. And part of me knew it was on its way all along.

oneword: dance

This is the stuff that pulses its way through my veins. It flits and flurries, it leaps and crashes around my life. And the further away I get from a life centered around dance, the unhappier I get.

oneword: dance

first dance. last chance. quick ro-mance.

story of my life.

oneword: favorite

These are a few of my favorite things: winter night skies, the moon in any or all of its stages, the stars, the smell of the seasons, the breeze that envelops me, telling me that there is more in the world, the wisdom of ocean waves, laughter of all kinds and at all times, seeing love in someone's eyes, being silly and being serious, knowing that I am there for people just as they are for me, knowing that I am needed and relied upon, words, notes, movements, creative expression, the cosmic quiet occurring when it snows, the melting of a New England winter into spring, getting manicures with my girlfriends, dressing up and dressing down, going out on the town, being crazy and calm, wacky sarcastic interchanges, late night lucubrations and mad creations...

But my most favoritest thing of all...

Not knowing all of my favorite things until they take my breath right out of my lungs.

oneword: now

Now is the time for honesty, for coming clean, for moving forward. I cannot change what has happened. And I can no longer dwell in the past. I have to accept the decisions, the mistakes, and the hurts so that now will be haunted no longer--and a new now can step in, the real thing, the now I've been waiting for.  I must burn those bridges that keep me perpetually linked to a past wrought with drama and pain, filled with questions and unnecessary naysaying.  

Now has possibility and hope written all over it. But I have to grab it. I have to take this opportunity, own it.

Here and now. No excuses.

oneword: meant

what that meant was the end of an era. and even though i consciously never meant for it to happen, we will never be able to look at each other in the same way ever again. of all the things i've done that i am supposed to regret, i think this is the thing i am the most sorry for.

oneword: gloss

my sticky sweet shield leaves traces of myself behind on all of my mistakes. i wonder if they ever think about me.