I put on my best, and I stick out my chest, and I'm off to the races again!

And here are more poems!
I like them all (mostly)!
Possibly I am overconfident, but inspiration struck way more than lightning.  And luckily, less painfully.


Perhaps
I began, perhaps,
to love you
to hold you in my heart
closer than a thought
to let my mind marvel
over (maybe)
you, looking at me-
looking for me
only, across a room
crowded with
curves and smiles for you
that you didn't notice
because your eyes were full
of me.

I began to hope,
perhaps,
that someday I would
stop wondering
and start walking towards
you looking
not maybe, but surely
at me-
move away from
across
and toward near
and hold you in my heart
closer than air
in my lungs.


Paper Doll
I am not this collection of
worn pasts and
hopeful futures
you try to press on me
like a paper doll-
fitting, from memories,
ill made costumes
that even in your dreaming eyes
only hang loosely from my
thin shoulders.

I am not a play thing,
I have grown beyond
dolls and dress-ups
and into something quite new-
you are angry
not at me, but at the cardboard cut out
you hold up in front of my
flesh and blood self
so that you don't have to find out
what I have become.

Momma,
put away your fears
pack them away with the paper dresses
because I am something you began-
the fulfillment of a prayer
you made years ago
that you didn't really understand-
look at me standing, not propped up by
other hands, but standing
on my own, cutting carefully
my own patterns out of life
sturdy and free.

I will never be torn by careless hands
or tossed away into the wind.


Rose
The truest part of a rose
is the thorn.

The soft, purring petals
that lure
the thick, waltzing scent
that beckons
the eloquent, opulent colors
that enchant.

Soft, fragrant, lush
charming, disarming
in a word: breathtaking
Helen, Juliet,Venus
passion, innocence, love
every desire held
in one sweet symbol.

But, the true soul of the rose
is its' thorn.

Victory
Victory came late.
At sunset, beneath star shadows
emerging slowly from ebbing embers
of monumental blazes
she stepped forward, head high
white arms raised to salute the champion.

He had already fallen.
feet framed in flames,
roses of blood wreathing his body
his eyes staring upwards, hands clasping his sword
in one last prayer for Victory,
who came late to his battle.


Daisy

holding only today
only this moment
breathing only now-
one instant
is all
the daisy
carries
in
her
soul.

This one's for the girls! (well, the depressed dead writting ones anyway)

So I haven't made it out of the sad poem phase yet, but next week we have a new administrative assistant coming, and maybe that will cheer things up.  At the very least I'll be out of this silly office and back to a room with windows.  The word of the month is sunrise, and I'm hoping I can hold onto it long enough to make it warmer than what I've felt like writing lately.  But for now, here's what I've got.  Willow is because I haven't written anything fall-ish this year, and Woolf, Plath, & Parker is because I've been reading the work of several female authors (Vindication of the Rights of Women anyone? ) and I found a remark by Margaret Atwood to be true, and both funny and sad at the same time - "Like all twenty-one-year-old poets, I thought I would be dead by thirty, and Sylvia Plath had not set a helpful example. For a while there, you were made to feel that, if a poet and female, you could not really be serious about it unless you'd made a least one suicide attempt. So I felt I was running out of time." -Margaret Atwood.   So I wrote a poem for the girls, but I'm glad we have the Atwoods, Giovannis and Angelous to keep our spirits high these days :)


Willow

It was late September
and all her leaves were
dropping like tears-
cried for cold remembered
wept for pain to come
and if she had knees
they would have bent
to pray the winds would leave
and if she had arms
they would have reached
for the sun's last warming touch
but all she had was silence
thick as the forest floor
to break with the sound of falling
till she had nothing left to lose.


Woolf, Plath, & Parker
A thousand ways to die
each day, at least
I see them fall -
white, luminous snowflakes
and I stick out my tongue
waiting to catch just one
of the flakes falling
between heaven and hell
turning softly, seductively
moments suspended
in a pounding heartbeat
a peripheral glance
or a subconscious chill
a thousand ways to die, each day-
at least! But none of them
has, yet, chosen
to fall
on me.