Creative Writing
Hello dears. I'm in a creative writing course. If you care to read something.. I'm going to post my stories and my poems here... If you have any suggestions please share. But please don't be too mean.. because I'm fragile and may never write again.... but do say if something needs better explaining... needs revision.. because as of now, everything is in revision status.
I'll put everything under cuts because they are long. If you are going to pick and choose... I suggest the Fat Lady, Oil Painting.. maybe heart of stone... and maybe Pierogis... The rest I'm not too very impressed with...
I Remember the Fat Lady
Breathe in. Breathe out.
Why is my breathing so loud?
It’s echoing.
Shuffling of feet. Creaking of metal folding chairs. Crinkle. A candy wrapper. Cough. Bleep Bleep. A cell phone being turned down. Whispers. Sniffle. Someone must have a cold. It is that time of year.
Did I drink soda before this? Milk? Have I cleared my throat? I can’t do it now. My back hurts. God, I feel so old. Ironically.
Shoes... Tights... Dress... Brooch… Ring, can’t forget that one, that one is important… Wrinkles… Hair… Makeup… Teacup and teakettle are in my hands.
Tinkling. Someone’s keys? No, too high-pitched, and much closer. The Teacup and saucer. Oh God, stay in my hands. The butterflies have taken steroids and grown to three times their size. Just a few more minutes, hands. Then the lights will come back. Then it’s only a matter of time.
Trust yourself, trust your memory, trust them. But don’t look at them, not now. They’re waiting too. It’s just a big empty room with stage pieces. No curtains. They can see you. You aren’t allowed to watch them. That’s their job. Darkness lingers. We all just wait. We are united in that. Those in the metal chairs, those behind the painted walls, and those here with me. We all wait.
But “What if..?” That horrible stillness, cold that seeps into the very pit of your soul. The painful eruption of warmth that assaults the very tips of your fingers. Three months of hard work. Then “What if..?” just disappointment? It’s full. Over full. We sold out and then some. Tickets were being scalped outside. We broke the fire codes. We’ll break them again tomorrow. We can’t let them down. I can’t let them down. What about the fat lady?
“Let’s do it for the fat lady.” The one that Seymour told us about. The one that sits “on an awful wicker chair” and “had the radio going full-blast all day.[1]” We are united through the fat lady. We, “The crazy ones”. “Round pegs in square holes”. We create, we make a difference, we change the world because we are crazy enough to try[2]. Thin line between genius and insanity. Leap[3]. We are a different breed of people. We take on a-whole-nother persona every day. We become someone else, their wants, their dreams, their desires, their faults. We make others believe us. We make others believe in us. We have to. It is how we live. It is how we escape. We have to come together for this one common goal and make it great. We make it great for those that need us. Those that need to believe in us. Those that need to escape through us to something smaller, something simpler, something different than their lives. We need to make them smile, make them scream, make them gasp, and laugh. We need to take them away with us. If only for a moment. If only we can help them for a moment.
No more thoughts. Sudden brightness. Not yet. Sudden warmth. I need more time. Still trembling. One more unsteady breath. The beginning of the end. Hoping the voice that follows will not be as rickety as the rest of me, well, not any more than the old woman’s should be. For now until the lights fade, I am an old woman. I’ll do it for the fat lady. I must do it for the fat lady.
[1] From JD Salinger’s Franny and Zooey
[2] From “Here’s to the Crazy Ones…” Anonymous
[3] “When in doubt, make a fool of yourself. There is a microscopically thin line between brilliantly creative and acting like the most gigantic idiot on earth. So what the hell, leap!”
Cynthia Heimel
Pierogis
We get to help Grandma make “pa-do-gis” for Christmas.
“Can we help yet, Grandma?”
“Not yet.”
Grandma is the best cook. She’s Italian, that’s why. She’s got her apron on. She brings out the big bowl with a picture of a big red tomato and a recipe for salad, which she has never made, on it. Next she gets out the cutting board. The one you can kinda see the counter through, and has red lines and circles so you can make dough the right shape and size for pie. But it’s not for pies today. It’s for pierogis. It’s so she can mix and kneed the dough. Next she goes to the fridge and gets sour cream, and eggs, and takes out flour from the corner in a container. The big one with the wooden knob on the top. The smaller ones have sugar, brown sugar, and powdered sugar in them. We lean our chins on the counter smelling familiar kitchen smells. Grandma shoos us off the counter.
“Whatcha gonna do with that stuff?”
“You’ll see.”
And we saw. She puts them all in the bowl and mixes it around. With her hands of course. That’s how real cooks do it. It gets all clumpy and she presses it together, her arms jiggling. She turns the bowl over onto the cutting board and all the clumps fall out into a pile. It looks like a pile of really fat leaves all creamy colored. Grandma smashes the leaves together and they lose their pointy edges and all come together to form a ball the size of my head.
“All that stuff made the dough?”
“Yep.”
Grandma tastes the dough, raw egg and everything. My sister, Emily, and I make a face. Grandma always tastes everything she makes before it is cooked. Even the meatloaf. She says that’s how you know if it is good. She begins to roll the pillow of dough into small balls and stacks them like cannon balls in the tomato bowl. Once she makes all of the cannon balls she can make she flattens them with her rolling pin. A big marble one that looks like a steamroller. Now she makes a bunch of Frisbees out of the cannon balls. But when my sister and I pick one up she shoos us away again.
“Can we help yet, Grandma?”
“Not yet.”
Grandma moves over to the pot on the stove. It smells kinda cheesy and is filled with my favorite part. The potatoes. Grandma sets up. The spoon in potatoes, dough Frisbees lined up in neat lines, and a cookie sheet all empty and ready to be filled with the best part of the meal. Grandma starts. Spoon full of potatoes in one hand, dough disk in the other. She puts the potatoes in the middle of the disk.
“That’s never gonna close, Grandma.”
“Just wait.”
And Grandma pulls and stretches and pokes and pinches the pierogi closed, without a single bit of dough breaking or a bit of potato poking out. She does another and another, and lines up about five half moons of them before she beckons to us.
“Now you can help”
Emily and I jump up and go to see our task. Grandma brings us a glass of water and we are to pinch the pierogis so they don’t pop open when we boil them. The water makes the dough stick. Don’t pinch too hard or you’ll tear the dough. Just hard enough. Good. A half hour and a hundred pierogis later our job is done. Grandma helped us finish of course. Now we boil them until they float. Fry them in butter and they are ready to eat.
Emily and I like the mushy ones. The ones that didn’t get too crispy and hard in the pan. They smell so buttery and salty and cheesy. Our mouths water. I get them first. I cut along the pinches with a butter knife, giving the half moon a mouth. Then opening the flap I just made, take my fork and in a few bites devour the delicious soft, mushy, cheesy, salty, potatoes. Then I pass the empty shell to my sister for her favorite part. She loves the chewy, buttery, salty, skin. Together we make a good team. My sister and I. We smile at my grandma. And the three of us, make some wonderful pa-do-gies.
Swimming in the Chlorine Cesspool
The hotel’s geometrical patterned carpet is soft under my thong sandals. The flip flopping noise with every step allowed Aunt Kris to walk ahead of me without having me on her arm. With a swipe of our room key, we were admitted into the indoor pool as I vaguely wondered why they would make us walk through the lobby to get to the pool. It seemed rather cruel to make self-conscious people in their bathing suits pass so many wandering eyes. But the moment is over when the glass door squeaks open and the stifling heat engulfed us, choking me a moment before I adjusted. Perhaps it wasn’t the heat that choked me, for the chlorine smell seemed extraordinarily potent. It clung to me, filling my pores, burning my nostrils. I could taste it from the air.
I immediately kick off my flip flops. I would not be tied down by shoes. Any kind of shoes. I still refuse to wear them unless required by law. There is simply something comforting of feet on earth, the feeling of being grounded and connected. Being a little bit closer to the things from which all life springs. I’m not sure that I made that connection then, or was just somehow aware of the sensations I was missing by having shoes on. Then again, maybe I just didn’t like shoes. Either way the shoes came off, the towel found its place on one of the deck chairs and I made my way toward the deep end of the water.
My mother says that I could swim before I could walk. I believe her. Small pebbles mixed with cement make up the deck around the pool. Each year a few more pebbles come loose and are kicked around the deck and eventually into the pool. The rogue pebbles somehow always make it under my feet as well, poking through their soft soles and causing me little shots of pain. That was never enough to stop me though. I crouch by the side of the pool, my face closer yet to the chlorine filled water, my eyes burning.
Crouching, for I knew in my young age to dive shallow in pools, I put my goggles on, pushed them against my face so they suctioned to my eye sockets, and raised my arms straight as an arrow. Leaning toward the translucent bluish green water, which took on a purple tint through my goggles, I held my breath and used one leg against the scratchy deck to push myself head first into the element in which I felt most at home. The water swallowed me, warming me to my very core. I pulled my arms back, creating little whirlpools that rolled down the side of my body and pushed me forward. My goggles sprung a leak and as water began to trickle in, I closed my eyes, cutting off my vision, but attempting to save my eyes from the pain of the chemicals. I drifted to the surface and lifted my head out of the water, finding myself most of the way across the pool already.
Closing my eyes apparently hadn’t had the preventative power that I was hoping, for they began to burn, feeling dry as if they had just been blown by a hair dryer instead of soaked in a pool. Again, that wasn’t enough to stop me from swimming. I continued to swim keeping my legs together like a mermaid, and retrieving pennies like a pearl diver. My aunt wasn’t as persistent as I. To my dismay, we went back to our hotel room in a matter of fifteen minutes.
I was told to take a shower, which I obeyed. I found, however, that my black and dark green bathing suit had faded immensely. It now possessed a brown and yellow coloring and was considerably thinner than it was when I traveled down to the pool at the beginning. My previously soft and braided hair had taken on the texture of straw and could not be unbraided much less brushed through without unbearable pain as if someone were trying to tear off my skin. My Aunt Kris and I did the best we could do with my hair and after my shower, I settled down to sleep. The toxic smell still in my hair and pores, my eyes still burning.
The next morning when awakened, I found I was unable to open my eyes. I was afraid, thinking that I had perhaps gone blind from the chemical cesspool. But when I reached to my eyes I found that they were glued shut. My Aunt found a washcloth and some warm water which managed, after some coaxing, to soften my eyes and we could pull off the sleep that caused my eyes to remain closed. Needless to say, I was not allowed to swim again that trip. Though I was taken out to find a new bathing suit.
Frogs
They sing through the night,
The orchestra of sound.
Singing me to sleep.
Calling to each other
Filling the night with mysterious noise.
Birds sleep. Crickets do not resonate so.
They speak tales of woe
As the listeners cry.
They tell tales of bravery
As the audience exclaims praise.
They are the creatures
Waking in day and night,
Exploring the water and the land.
Pausing to bask and absorb sun
Into the camouflaged skin.
Allowing refuge in foliage
Underbrush or upon tree bark.
Skin that allows them to breathe,
Like a sponge immersed when dry,
Breathes the water instantaneously.
Sticky tongues that ensnare their prey
And eyeballs retracting, pushing,
Goading the once free flying, now dinner
Into digestion.
Throats that expand as a balloon
Expelling the song unlike any other
But mistaken for so much.
Skin bumped and flawed deceivingly
Softness lies there instead.
Many times have I chased them,
Finding where they hide and play.
But one must be quick,
Having been seen they will be gone
In a blink of an eye
A step forward
A hand reached.
I have caught my friends,
Though I meant them no harm.
They are too incredible
To keep in a jar.
Seasons of the Trees
Green lips of new life
Burst forth from dismal mothers
Thus begins our spring,
Limp green clothing hangs
Begs rest of unyielding sun
It stifles and drags.
Winds disrupt fire.
Tongues of flame break free and float.
Leaves fall peacefully.
Frostbitten fingers
Crystal coated, grow heavy
And bests the blizzard.
Heart of Stone
A heart of stone, shined, shaped, polished
Rounded, so when moved or bumped
Wobbles before resting again,
And when spun, will twirl relentlessly
Until gravity and friction regain their sovereignty.
As emotions are stirred until reticent and
As a child dances until corrected.
Black and brown when in shadows
Light reveals its true face.
Blue, green, yellow, opalescent
Dance in the sunlight,
Capturing eyes
And attention.
A paperweight perhaps,
A memento of forgotten origins
Discovered in the endless abyss of an unkempt room.
Moved to a place of honor,
Yet
Still unseen, until searched for.
The untapped talent
Buried under years of training
Forgotten in the midst of structure
Tossed to the wayside to make room for
What “must be done.”
What is lost cannot be developed.
Time has ignored the mind,
Imagination has been repressed,
Talent may still be there, but the will may not.
Once known as an artist
Now known as a Mathematician.
Neither worse, but one regretfully lost
Hidden beneath the piles of theorems and structures.
Still existent but masked,
Waiting for sun to uncover the shrouded gift.
Yet tiny imperfections crack throughout
Marring the surface of the already obscure perfection.
Must we always be torn down in our element?
Oil Painting
Oil paint takes forever to dry.
That is the reason I like to work with it.
The promise of something lingering.
The flexibility of the medium.
Permanent stains upon canvas,
Wet to allow for adjustments.
Random strokes of colors entwine together
Begin to take shape,
Smoothing edges
Creating shadows.
Turpentine burning my nose,
Evoking memories
Of your presence as I paint,
Your eyes upon me,
A smile on your lips.
A self-portrait
Began before I knew you,
Continued while you knew me,
Left unfinished.
Oil paint takes commitment.
Once began, a break would mean
Dry paint and
Unmatched colors.
But breaks were had,
Things were broken.
Portrait unfinished.
Paint dried.
Forever not as long as it seemed.
Canvas is tucked away.
So as to not remind me
Of how things were,
Of how we were,
Of how I was,
When I was still
Painting.
And that's all thus far... I've somehow gotten the bold on and can't get it off... sorry
Thank you to those who take the time to read... Have a beautiful day.
Love,
Meaghan
I'll put everything under cuts because they are long. If you are going to pick and choose... I suggest the Fat Lady, Oil Painting.. maybe heart of stone... and maybe Pierogis... The rest I'm not too very impressed with...
I Remember the Fat Lady
Breathe in. Breathe out.
Why is my breathing so loud?
It’s echoing.
Shuffling of feet. Creaking of metal folding chairs. Crinkle. A candy wrapper. Cough. Bleep Bleep. A cell phone being turned down. Whispers. Sniffle. Someone must have a cold. It is that time of year.
Did I drink soda before this? Milk? Have I cleared my throat? I can’t do it now. My back hurts. God, I feel so old. Ironically.
Shoes... Tights... Dress... Brooch… Ring, can’t forget that one, that one is important… Wrinkles… Hair… Makeup… Teacup and teakettle are in my hands.
Tinkling. Someone’s keys? No, too high-pitched, and much closer. The Teacup and saucer. Oh God, stay in my hands. The butterflies have taken steroids and grown to three times their size. Just a few more minutes, hands. Then the lights will come back. Then it’s only a matter of time.
Trust yourself, trust your memory, trust them. But don’t look at them, not now. They’re waiting too. It’s just a big empty room with stage pieces. No curtains. They can see you. You aren’t allowed to watch them. That’s their job. Darkness lingers. We all just wait. We are united in that. Those in the metal chairs, those behind the painted walls, and those here with me. We all wait.
But “What if..?” That horrible stillness, cold that seeps into the very pit of your soul. The painful eruption of warmth that assaults the very tips of your fingers. Three months of hard work. Then “What if..?” just disappointment? It’s full. Over full. We sold out and then some. Tickets were being scalped outside. We broke the fire codes. We’ll break them again tomorrow. We can’t let them down. I can’t let them down. What about the fat lady?
“Let’s do it for the fat lady.” The one that Seymour told us about. The one that sits “on an awful wicker chair” and “had the radio going full-blast all day.[1]” We are united through the fat lady. We, “The crazy ones”. “Round pegs in square holes”. We create, we make a difference, we change the world because we are crazy enough to try[2]. Thin line between genius and insanity. Leap[3]. We are a different breed of people. We take on a-whole-nother persona every day. We become someone else, their wants, their dreams, their desires, their faults. We make others believe us. We make others believe in us. We have to. It is how we live. It is how we escape. We have to come together for this one common goal and make it great. We make it great for those that need us. Those that need to believe in us. Those that need to escape through us to something smaller, something simpler, something different than their lives. We need to make them smile, make them scream, make them gasp, and laugh. We need to take them away with us. If only for a moment. If only we can help them for a moment.
No more thoughts. Sudden brightness. Not yet. Sudden warmth. I need more time. Still trembling. One more unsteady breath. The beginning of the end. Hoping the voice that follows will not be as rickety as the rest of me, well, not any more than the old woman’s should be. For now until the lights fade, I am an old woman. I’ll do it for the fat lady. I must do it for the fat lady.
[1] From JD Salinger’s Franny and Zooey
[2] From “Here’s to the Crazy Ones…” Anonymous
[3] “When in doubt, make a fool of yourself. There is a microscopically thin line between brilliantly creative and acting like the most gigantic idiot on earth. So what the hell, leap!”
Cynthia Heimel
Pierogis
We get to help Grandma make “pa-do-gis” for Christmas.
“Can we help yet, Grandma?”
“Not yet.”
Grandma is the best cook. She’s Italian, that’s why. She’s got her apron on. She brings out the big bowl with a picture of a big red tomato and a recipe for salad, which she has never made, on it. Next she gets out the cutting board. The one you can kinda see the counter through, and has red lines and circles so you can make dough the right shape and size for pie. But it’s not for pies today. It’s for pierogis. It’s so she can mix and kneed the dough. Next she goes to the fridge and gets sour cream, and eggs, and takes out flour from the corner in a container. The big one with the wooden knob on the top. The smaller ones have sugar, brown sugar, and powdered sugar in them. We lean our chins on the counter smelling familiar kitchen smells. Grandma shoos us off the counter.
“Whatcha gonna do with that stuff?”
“You’ll see.”
And we saw. She puts them all in the bowl and mixes it around. With her hands of course. That’s how real cooks do it. It gets all clumpy and she presses it together, her arms jiggling. She turns the bowl over onto the cutting board and all the clumps fall out into a pile. It looks like a pile of really fat leaves all creamy colored. Grandma smashes the leaves together and they lose their pointy edges and all come together to form a ball the size of my head.
“All that stuff made the dough?”
“Yep.”
Grandma tastes the dough, raw egg and everything. My sister, Emily, and I make a face. Grandma always tastes everything she makes before it is cooked. Even the meatloaf. She says that’s how you know if it is good. She begins to roll the pillow of dough into small balls and stacks them like cannon balls in the tomato bowl. Once she makes all of the cannon balls she can make she flattens them with her rolling pin. A big marble one that looks like a steamroller. Now she makes a bunch of Frisbees out of the cannon balls. But when my sister and I pick one up she shoos us away again.
“Can we help yet, Grandma?”
“Not yet.”
Grandma moves over to the pot on the stove. It smells kinda cheesy and is filled with my favorite part. The potatoes. Grandma sets up. The spoon in potatoes, dough Frisbees lined up in neat lines, and a cookie sheet all empty and ready to be filled with the best part of the meal. Grandma starts. Spoon full of potatoes in one hand, dough disk in the other. She puts the potatoes in the middle of the disk.
“That’s never gonna close, Grandma.”
“Just wait.”
And Grandma pulls and stretches and pokes and pinches the pierogi closed, without a single bit of dough breaking or a bit of potato poking out. She does another and another, and lines up about five half moons of them before she beckons to us.
“Now you can help”
Emily and I jump up and go to see our task. Grandma brings us a glass of water and we are to pinch the pierogis so they don’t pop open when we boil them. The water makes the dough stick. Don’t pinch too hard or you’ll tear the dough. Just hard enough. Good. A half hour and a hundred pierogis later our job is done. Grandma helped us finish of course. Now we boil them until they float. Fry them in butter and they are ready to eat.
Emily and I like the mushy ones. The ones that didn’t get too crispy and hard in the pan. They smell so buttery and salty and cheesy. Our mouths water. I get them first. I cut along the pinches with a butter knife, giving the half moon a mouth. Then opening the flap I just made, take my fork and in a few bites devour the delicious soft, mushy, cheesy, salty, potatoes. Then I pass the empty shell to my sister for her favorite part. She loves the chewy, buttery, salty, skin. Together we make a good team. My sister and I. We smile at my grandma. And the three of us, make some wonderful pa-do-gies.
Swimming in the Chlorine Cesspool
The hotel’s geometrical patterned carpet is soft under my thong sandals. The flip flopping noise with every step allowed Aunt Kris to walk ahead of me without having me on her arm. With a swipe of our room key, we were admitted into the indoor pool as I vaguely wondered why they would make us walk through the lobby to get to the pool. It seemed rather cruel to make self-conscious people in their bathing suits pass so many wandering eyes. But the moment is over when the glass door squeaks open and the stifling heat engulfed us, choking me a moment before I adjusted. Perhaps it wasn’t the heat that choked me, for the chlorine smell seemed extraordinarily potent. It clung to me, filling my pores, burning my nostrils. I could taste it from the air.
I immediately kick off my flip flops. I would not be tied down by shoes. Any kind of shoes. I still refuse to wear them unless required by law. There is simply something comforting of feet on earth, the feeling of being grounded and connected. Being a little bit closer to the things from which all life springs. I’m not sure that I made that connection then, or was just somehow aware of the sensations I was missing by having shoes on. Then again, maybe I just didn’t like shoes. Either way the shoes came off, the towel found its place on one of the deck chairs and I made my way toward the deep end of the water.
My mother says that I could swim before I could walk. I believe her. Small pebbles mixed with cement make up the deck around the pool. Each year a few more pebbles come loose and are kicked around the deck and eventually into the pool. The rogue pebbles somehow always make it under my feet as well, poking through their soft soles and causing me little shots of pain. That was never enough to stop me though. I crouch by the side of the pool, my face closer yet to the chlorine filled water, my eyes burning.
Crouching, for I knew in my young age to dive shallow in pools, I put my goggles on, pushed them against my face so they suctioned to my eye sockets, and raised my arms straight as an arrow. Leaning toward the translucent bluish green water, which took on a purple tint through my goggles, I held my breath and used one leg against the scratchy deck to push myself head first into the element in which I felt most at home. The water swallowed me, warming me to my very core. I pulled my arms back, creating little whirlpools that rolled down the side of my body and pushed me forward. My goggles sprung a leak and as water began to trickle in, I closed my eyes, cutting off my vision, but attempting to save my eyes from the pain of the chemicals. I drifted to the surface and lifted my head out of the water, finding myself most of the way across the pool already.
Closing my eyes apparently hadn’t had the preventative power that I was hoping, for they began to burn, feeling dry as if they had just been blown by a hair dryer instead of soaked in a pool. Again, that wasn’t enough to stop me from swimming. I continued to swim keeping my legs together like a mermaid, and retrieving pennies like a pearl diver. My aunt wasn’t as persistent as I. To my dismay, we went back to our hotel room in a matter of fifteen minutes.
I was told to take a shower, which I obeyed. I found, however, that my black and dark green bathing suit had faded immensely. It now possessed a brown and yellow coloring and was considerably thinner than it was when I traveled down to the pool at the beginning. My previously soft and braided hair had taken on the texture of straw and could not be unbraided much less brushed through without unbearable pain as if someone were trying to tear off my skin. My Aunt Kris and I did the best we could do with my hair and after my shower, I settled down to sleep. The toxic smell still in my hair and pores, my eyes still burning.
The next morning when awakened, I found I was unable to open my eyes. I was afraid, thinking that I had perhaps gone blind from the chemical cesspool. But when I reached to my eyes I found that they were glued shut. My Aunt found a washcloth and some warm water which managed, after some coaxing, to soften my eyes and we could pull off the sleep that caused my eyes to remain closed. Needless to say, I was not allowed to swim again that trip. Though I was taken out to find a new bathing suit.
Frogs
They sing through the night,
The orchestra of sound.
Singing me to sleep.
Calling to each other
Filling the night with mysterious noise.
Birds sleep. Crickets do not resonate so.
They speak tales of woe
As the listeners cry.
They tell tales of bravery
As the audience exclaims praise.
They are the creatures
Waking in day and night,
Exploring the water and the land.
Pausing to bask and absorb sun
Into the camouflaged skin.
Allowing refuge in foliage
Underbrush or upon tree bark.
Skin that allows them to breathe,
Like a sponge immersed when dry,
Breathes the water instantaneously.
Sticky tongues that ensnare their prey
And eyeballs retracting, pushing,
Goading the once free flying, now dinner
Into digestion.
Throats that expand as a balloon
Expelling the song unlike any other
But mistaken for so much.
Skin bumped and flawed deceivingly
Softness lies there instead.
Many times have I chased them,
Finding where they hide and play.
But one must be quick,
Having been seen they will be gone
In a blink of an eye
A step forward
A hand reached.
I have caught my friends,
Though I meant them no harm.
They are too incredible
To keep in a jar.
Seasons of the Trees
Green lips of new life
Burst forth from dismal mothers
Thus begins our spring,
Limp green clothing hangs
Begs rest of unyielding sun
It stifles and drags.
Winds disrupt fire.
Tongues of flame break free and float.
Leaves fall peacefully.
Frostbitten fingers
Crystal coated, grow heavy
And bests the blizzard.
Heart of Stone
A heart of stone, shined, shaped, polished
Rounded, so when moved or bumped
Wobbles before resting again,
And when spun, will twirl relentlessly
Until gravity and friction regain their sovereignty.
As emotions are stirred until reticent and
As a child dances until corrected.
Black and brown when in shadows
Light reveals its true face.
Blue, green, yellow, opalescent
Dance in the sunlight,
Capturing eyes
And attention.
A paperweight perhaps,
A memento of forgotten origins
Discovered in the endless abyss of an unkempt room.
Moved to a place of honor,
Yet
Still unseen, until searched for.
The untapped talent
Buried under years of training
Forgotten in the midst of structure
Tossed to the wayside to make room for
What “must be done.”
What is lost cannot be developed.
Time has ignored the mind,
Imagination has been repressed,
Talent may still be there, but the will may not.
Once known as an artist
Now known as a Mathematician.
Neither worse, but one regretfully lost
Hidden beneath the piles of theorems and structures.
Still existent but masked,
Waiting for sun to uncover the shrouded gift.
Yet tiny imperfections crack throughout
Marring the surface of the already obscure perfection.
Must we always be torn down in our element?
Oil Painting
Oil paint takes forever to dry.
That is the reason I like to work with it.
The promise of something lingering.
The flexibility of the medium.
Permanent stains upon canvas,
Wet to allow for adjustments.
Random strokes of colors entwine together
Begin to take shape,
Smoothing edges
Creating shadows.
Turpentine burning my nose,
Evoking memories
Of your presence as I paint,
Your eyes upon me,
A smile on your lips.
A self-portrait
Began before I knew you,
Continued while you knew me,
Left unfinished.
Oil paint takes commitment.
Once began, a break would mean
Dry paint and
Unmatched colors.
But breaks were had,
Things were broken.
Portrait unfinished.
Paint dried.
Forever not as long as it seemed.
Canvas is tucked away.
So as to not remind me
Of how things were,
Of how we were,
Of how I was,
When I was still
Painting.
And that's all thus far... I've somehow gotten the bold on and can't get it off... sorry
Thank you to those who take the time to read... Have a beautiful day.
Love,
Meaghan