Lost Dreams: Chapter 2 (Shame)

Caleb looked down.  His own bare feet on the hardwood floor.  Waiting.

But Bernard was silent.

Caleb felt his face flush with heat.  His head throbbed.

Caleb heard him get up out of the chair, the weight easing off the wood.  He looked up.  The hands on desk clock, a round metal face inset in lucite, read 9:05 PM.

His father was standing in front of the desk, close to him. Tears wet his eyes.  He was torn between reaching to embrace his son and losing himself completely in sadness.  They stood about three feet apart, but a great space stretched between them.

And then he was squeezing his son's shoulders.  "It's alright. She wasn't yet meant to be found, then."
He took Caleb's face in his hands, and then wrapped his arms around him.  "It's alright." He felt Caleb's body loosen and give in the hug, the point of Caleb's chin rested on his shoulder.

Caleb began sobbing. He felt his whole body heaving, a torrential release.  He couldn't stop.

"It's going to be OK.  We'll figure it out.  Tell me what happened. Caleb?"

Lost Dreams: Chapter 1 (A Failure)

The man sat in his chair, very still, like someone had hit the pause button. He'd been there for hours, and the mid-afternoon sunlight now stretched across the lower half of his face. The rest of him remained in the shadows. 

Caleb hesitated inside of the doorway for a full beat.

To say the very least, it had not been a good day. And Caleb usually wasn't a "say the very least" kind of kid.

He did not want to be here. But Caleb continued his approach to his father's office. He needed to tell him. He hadn't found her. Worse still, he couldn't look anymore.

Bernard saw the boy padding in with his head down, droopy. He shifted his weight in the chair and softly asked: "What is it Caleb?" He did not get up.

"I came to tell you," the boy began, "I just can't; I can't do it anymore."

But What To Write About?

I See The Moon (And The Moon Sees Me)

"Don't look to the sky for help. There's nothing up there but the moon."

Yesterday, I cupped the moon between my hands.
I ate up its moonbeams,
                                  until I had my fill.

Tonight, the moon split wide open.
And the stars spilled out, streaking downwards,
                                  until they burned and scarred my waiting hands.

Some nights, it's a bright eyehole on a wall of darkness. If you close one eye and press the other against it, you can see right in.

But on others, like tonight, the darkness consumes it.

       Light devoured by wolves, by gray shapeshifting clouds.
      A hand that reaches around the back of your head, and closes tightly over your mouth.

Every Writer Hurts

Good Poems

“A good poem is a contribution to reality. The world is never the same once a good poem has been added to it. A good poem helps to change the shape of the universe, helps to extend everyone's knowledge of himself and the world around him.”

                                                                             - Dylan Thomas

(Poem by Christopher Poindexter, whose collection is here.)

(Poem by Finn Butler, whose collection is here.)

Worms Roxanne. Worms.

"In the end, it is my belief, words are the only things that can construct a world that makes sense." - 

                                                                                       - Kate Atkinson

Writing: Burn It Out

“Let the world burn through you. Throw the prism light, white hot, on paper.”
                                                                                     —Ray Bradbury, WD

Counting Sheep - Redux

A poem dreamed of me.
But I was left, forgotten, by the morning.



I escaped,
Slipped away.


My poem is haunted by this.


What meaning did I have, now lost?


It closes its eyes, retracing into darkness, trying to call back my face.
It's not there.  Gone for good, but for that maddening tug of the missing.

As curiosity folds over into frustration, it closes its eyes again, digging for what I felt like.
But it finds nothing.
I didn't leave that sort of a mark.

Only thing you can tell is that I was there - I was really there.
But now,

               I'm not there anymore.

Counting Sheep

I dreamed of poetry.

Lying on the grass, after a cool drizzling rain.

A taste in my mouth like buttered sunshine.