I’ve figured out why

I am poetry:

Because poems are short,

half-veiled and fleeting,

full of meaning and mystery,

and show you but one face

of a whole life

at a time.

I think in muted colors

and in rain

and on cusps of possibility-

the Almosts, and the Maybes,

and the Might Haves.

You may call me a hopeless

dreamer (and I won’t deny

that I live mostly in my dreams),

but where did you ever get the idea

that I live without hope?

A quarter to autumn, the branches are bare

I reached out to touch you, but nothing was there

There’s only the wood and the cloud and the chill

And this time next autumn, I’ll think of you still

An actual short story from the writing class I took a couple semesters back.

—

It was eleven o’clock at night, and Mommy still wasn’t home. Mommy almost never came home anymore. When she did, she and old Mrs. McIntyre argued, Mommy sometimes tired and sometimes uproarious, and Mrs. McIntyre sometimes stern and sometimes pleading. Sometimes Mommy came into the living room where I sat on Mrs. McIntyre’s couch, took my hand, and walked me next door to our apartment. Sometimes Mommy had to barrel her way past Mrs. McIntyre to get to the living room, and she’d grab my arm and almost drag me away while Mrs. McIntyre begged her to stop, weeping. Sometimes, Mommy never came at all.

Read more …

Cut me off and set me to drift lonely seas,
To bask in the memory of people I’ve met before.
I’ll decline any rescue ships-
Who needs saving from a singular paradise?

There is enough here to last me a while,
Sustained by my own heart, multifaceted
And free to think and take joy in
Such secret things as myself

So I’ll laugh in my solitude, and dance, and glow,
Full of light from within; God knows
I need to feel it grow stronger,
Lest anyone stamp it out.

Leave me to ponder my lonely ways,
But understand I don’t mean to forsake you;
In this seeming isolation I have
A solace from the chaos of days.

I am loathe to lose you, but my leave
Is not a loss for me-
There is no pain for me in my parting,
For I know a real parting has not yet come to us

So wait for me by the lighthouse,
That when I emerge dripping from the brine
I can greet you with open arms, and
Whisper my love to you once more.

I was feeling my way into the tone for my nanonovel a couple of years ago when I wrote this. The story has been rethought since then, but the tone remains.

—

On lazy summer afternoons, Adamant could be any other town, Luc thought, staring out his bedroom window absently. The sun was throwing shadows of trees across the street and dappling lawns and sidewalks. No one was out (not that there were many people to be out, with only a little over a hundred residents in the entire town), so it was just the trees and the sun and the still, still air. Luc let his book rest forgotten in his lap and looked out upon the land, thinking.

Read more …

Houston has a smell
An old, lazy, perfumy waltz
Among the tall pine trees
And the taller city buildings;
Some part grandmotherly
And other parts rain and
Concrete and nearness to the sea, and
Skies that seem higher than at home;
Like the clear blue air comes down to
Wash out the tired from the
Graffiti’d parts of town.

This afternoon sees the birth of a very poorly thought-out blog, created mostly out of an aversion to government textbooks. As a general manifesto, I’ll be posting original works here, the vast majority of which will be short stories because that’s just what I do. Also be on the lookout for poetry- it’s known to happen from time to time.

That’s the plan, anyway. We can derail from there.