Monday, March 22, 2010

Endless Monotony

Complex technology meant to make our tasks easier in fact has only made our lifestyles more complicated. What was wrong with the rising and setting of the sun, the highs and lows of the ocean, and the living cycles flowing beautifully with the natural order of Nature? There isn’t an I-Pod application that will ever come close to replicating what is real and alive. The tick-tock clock tells me another minute has come to pass and I feel as though I am watching a broken humanity from a high vantage point; treetop, mountain top, or perhaps the moon. I am staring down into a perplexing micro-machine world in a kind of delusional detached, fog-like state. People are such strange creatures, day in and day out, they scurry about like rats trapped in a cat’s cage, doing this, doing that, doing each other in a deadbeat routine. They call themselves “alive” but I mustn’t be able to see the “alive” part from this vantage point. I suffocate slightly as I swallow that thought and I shut tight my eyes to hold back tears on the verge of falling and I see a word etched deeply into the back of my eyelids, two word actually- ENDLESS MONOTONY…
©2010 L.Warren

Saturday, March 20, 2010

Barefoot and Tomorrows

70 degrees today finds me in a tiny tank top and short shorts, my feet barefoot against the newly awakened ground, and the birds are orchestrating a song to announce the arrival of Spring at last. New shoots of twirling onion grass and Kentucky blue curl between my toes as I take a seat in a familiar spot by a favorite tree. The images painting pictures in my head are pure poetry but I can’t quite get them out and upon the virgin white canvases I have ready in my studio, so for now I bleed words loudly onto paper to heal the hurt in my heart and head.

A view of the cemetery across the way reminds me those collective granite and marble stones commemorate those mortal tomorrows that have already come to pass for some people and where they are now is known only to them, but I know their souls are somewhere. A new spring yellow daffodil blooms in an unbeautiful location right next to an air conditioning unit. Her brilliant bright yellow petals are a blaze with new life and promise which contrasts sharply against the stark grey cold manmade thing she grows next to. The metaphorical meaning all these things hold for me is almost breath-taking and powerful-I feel slightly rejuvenated and less depressed. I feel hopeful.

The cemetery, the daffodil, the birds, and spring all serve to remind me of the promise of new beginnings, new life, new hope, and new possibility. We are but a moment so we must not be afraid to live a moment. I have a second chance, in fact it must be realized that life is full of second chances and we mustn’t be afraid to take them, to live them, and to hold them tightly in our hearts. There is no certainty what the tomorrows could bring except promises of new possibilities, promises of awakening, and promises of a fresh start. A tomorrow could bring me the possibility of a new pair of arms to lose myself in. A tomorrow could bring me a new smile to turn my strung-bow lips upside down and fill my heart with warmth. I know for sure that in the tomorrows to come I want to live fully.

Today is a beautiful day and tomorrow even more so. Tomorrow I may find myself with a paintbrush in my hand once again, but today the words satisfy me enough. In between the blue flat lines of cheap notebook paper I lose myself with my thoughts and emotions. The descriptive words I write are cleverly designed to bury your eyes in my dark inks. Writers design words for intrigue because reality often times paints a different picture of our physical presence, sometimes rendering us in the cool dull colors of boring. On the outside we all look the same even if we look different because on the outside we are all human.

Tomorrow reminded me today that we are more than just that, so much more. My words and my artwork are the real pieces of me. My art and writing are creations born from something found in the very core of my being, my soul. Our skin is just the sheath that holds our soul and sometimes we forget to look more than skin deep when looking at other people. Though our surface flesh may at sometimes be sewn together rather rudimentary, we have to remember that there is so much more there than just want we see on the surface.

I know my outside may be seen as pretty to some but my outside is also far more boring than my inside. While walking barefoot and thinking about tomorrow today I realized that I exist in the same way you do, as a human soul trapped inside a layer of flesh hoping there are other people out there who can really see me, for me. We exist like a pebble in a brook that no one knows is there until they step on it. No one knows you are there until they see you, feel you, breathe you, and connect with you. My words and my artwork serve that purpose for me, they connect you to me, and they allow you to see me truly as I am meant to be seen, from the inside, not the outside. It is a concept that too many people don’t consider today in this fast paced world and blinded world.

I have also realized today that tomorrow reminds me that we are all living just to die into immortality, and mortal tomorrows remind us that the bones and flesh fall away so we may never truly vanish from the whispering winds of time. We die and are always reborn into something new, what that means to me may be entirely different to you, but in one way or another tomorrow reminds us all that we all have one thing in common…tomorrow , no matter how different our vision tomorrow may be!©2010 L.Warren

Thursday, March 18, 2010

A Matter of Time

Tick-tock time is the creator of change and Tick-tock time is a clever thief; a silent weaver and bleeder of our mind and our life. Time swallows times, devours itself continually like Ouroboros. The first day for us will always and infinitely be our last day because all things begin in order so they can end in order. Time reminds us that just as there is a beginning and an end, there also is not either of both and DNA is the time piece of Eternity-forever-always, growing, changing, and evolving with tick-tock time.

time
once remembered
now forgotten
initially praised,
insulted later
hopes eternal
suffering longer
only change is certain
up and down go together
just as
right and wrong
dark and light
day and night
good and evil
male and female
alive and dead
it is only a matter of time
wait awhile longer
only change is certain
rocks of ages
deserts only
sand and mountains all the same
monuments erected
ruins now crumbled
from dirt return to dirt
man lives to die
only to live again
ashes to ashes
dust to dust
birth to death
death to birth
all over again
only change is certain
in an eternal life
tick-tock time reminds us all
it is only a matter of time
wait a little longer
©2010 L.Warren

The Truth is the Lie Vice Versa

We create lies to make ourselves feel better, we devour them like junk food on blue mood days and pop them like pills to satisfy our need for emotional protection, to shield us from what hurts us so terribly-the real whole truth. We are not emotionally equipped to handle full blown truth or real hard pain. If we were the world would be a terribly cruel cold place. We live because we love and we lie because deep down we hate to hurt others and selfishly we hate to hurt ourselves.

My truth is, I find it hard to lie to others but I am great at lying to myself. I continually tell myself that “everything will be alright,” when really it isn’t, but there is comfort in the protection someone perceives to feel during the act of telling a lie-even to one’s self. My lies become the pillow fluff of the clouds cloaking the stars that are waiting to receive my wishes. Wishes made from vaporous desires, ethereal dreams, and secret hopes.

The truth is, I am terrified right now, I am totally alone without many friends I trust enough to count on. I miss home and I miss my family and I am stuck in a place where there is little left for me. Stuck in a house I bought before the housing bubble burst, stuck in a reality that is a far cry from the one I thought I would be living. I am thirty and that damn clock is tick-tocking away with my life right before my very eyes and there is nothing I can do to slow it down.

When you are thirty, forty comes quickly and the last thing I want to be is a single crotchety old cougar hag vying for the fleeting attentions of younger men or some cat collector without a real family of her own. I want to start over, I need to start over and I want to get my next relationship right but I am terrified of getting hurt. I don’t want to feel the sting of hurt and emotional torment anymore. It is suffocating and tormenting and I have had enough. I was told recently that settling for nothing is a lot better than settling for anything but how do you stop the ache your soul has for something when you settle for nothing?

I am so afraid…

It is spring, the season of new beginnings, the season of blooming promise and prosperity. The blossoms shade my red brimmed eyes with their soft thin edges just enough that no one but me can see the tears that I refuse to relinquish. Their soft thin edges are razor sharp with truth, a truth that cuts my heart in two like the harsh angry words I wish to scream loud enough for the world to hear but my throat is paralyzed by fear and will not open, except to swallow the whole real truth that suffocates my being.

My wishes are mingled with the blossoms that hang from the trees, wishes looking like marrow-sucked hollowed bleached bones… each unfolding petal, like pillow fluff clouds, grows to hide a certain truth, falsely promising me that everything will be okay.

everything will be okay...

©2010 L.Warren
Is it self-deception or is it self-deprecation? Perhaps reckless caring? What is it about humans that make change so hard for them to accept?
Viscerally I am aware of my own unsettling metamorphosis
Changes over time
cruel time
tick-tock, tick-tock, tick-tock
I change, people change, nature changes, the world changes with every passing second
Real change is slow
tick-tock, tick-tock, tick-tockdrip-drop, drip-drop, drip-drop
water collaborates patiently with time
against the surface of a stone
in its end, the stone loses to change
By imperceptible fractions a slow
alteration in a river's course is created by time.
The night sky fissures and rain falls
drip-drip, drip-drop, drip-droptick-tock, tick-tock, tick-tock
against the surface of this earth
raindrops fat and milky white in the lightof the full moon cascade in infinite numbers
from blue-black sky bringing change in every droplet
Thunder as violent as any shift in the San Andreas
rumbles with forever's truth
Humans deceive themselves in by believing they can control that which is beyond their control
Change is out of their control
Forever's Truth
Nature is time, time is Nature, Nature is God, God is truth
©2010 L.Warren

Want to Forget

Wolves born of contemplation
nipping at the heels of emotion
emotions saturated in
hurt and shades of blue
wolves chasing feelings from heart to mind
cruelly
whereupon I shall dwell on truth
truth stings my mind
I want to forget
thinking is a dangerous sort of
torment
I want to forget
ease the torment
of thinking born from
emotions and feelings
I want to grow numb…
©2010 L.Warren

Monday, March 15, 2010

Ecstasy

I want to wander beyond
the reach of mankind
capturing rhythms of time in a jar;
tick-tock fireflies
bioluminescent emotions
born of
yesterdays,
todays,
tomorrows,
and forevers…
bioluminescent emotions
lighting the way
to that special place
a special world
so different, so untouched
a world reached only through thought,
only through shared emotion
only by the joining of
two hearts,
two minds,
two souls,
two people…
a secret world found only through love

I would die to know such a place;
If only just once...

I would die to find you
the one who can take me there…
©2010 L.Warren

Creative Healing

The music sings. And the world changes.
The paints blend. And happiness is colored.
sad hearts grow warm
rejuvenated by lovely melodies
a smile momentarily hides frowning lips
and I hear them laugh
for the first time
laughter drowns tears
sad eyes glow
little feet tap
little hands capture
a paintbrush saturated with color
and images dance
across a once blank page
in rythme with the tunes
the music, the art, the mind, the heart
come together in creative dance
for a single moment
troubles melt away
they escape the darkness
that clouds their regular days
days no child should ever suffer through
creative sound, creative mind, creative heart
the creative dance
HEALING SOUNDS
HEALING COLORS
HEALING MINDS
HEALING HEARTS
©2010 L.Warren

Catch

cleverly weave your words into a shining net
eight lines, two rhymes, one tripling
is all you get
your one chance to catch me if you so dare...
weave your great lines into a shining net
weave them into a perfected triolet
catch me if you can
catch me if you want
I dare you
weave your words cleverly
silent poetry boy
I dare you

©2010 L. Warren

Static Noise

too loud
static noise

bothersome

i hate it
swallowing the sanity of my mind
what little is left of it

static noise
looks like people
sounds like people

i am tired of people
and their
twisted ways
delusional thoughts
crooked points-of-view
tired, tired, tired
of
this static noise
tired of
people

©2010 L.Warren

Porcelain

Like porcelain
my heart breaks
spider-veining fissures
grow to consume its last
rythmic beat
of hope...
the knife of reality
stabs at me palyfully
toying with me
a sick game
never taking hold
completely
never finishing the kill
a sea of confusion
washes through my brain
sucking me under
drowning me in fear
my heart's shattered
illusions crash a my feet
destroying the reflections
of broken dreams
and echoed once more
in the dying beat of my heart
before it completely succumbs
to the despair
crimson droplets of tears
streak down my face
staining red
my reality...
©2010 L.Warren

My Heart's Nightmare

A blooming golden sunrise
chases a daydream to the sky
a daydream colored red
like love, like passion
a daydream of what
I have not
I don't chase chase dreams
anymore
especially dreams of love
love fades away
down the road in twilight
becoming vanished thoughts
perplexing my yesterdays
haunting my tomorrows
while, today, I am left
still contemplating
what love was,
is,
is not
perhaps never will be
for me
my daydream
is
my heart's nightmare
©2010 L.Warren

Storm is Over

The night storm, over at last
the sky becomes starry and cloudless
I noticed the birth of dawn
slowly crowning the horizon.
Daylight flooded the sky
I can consider it now...
the birth of something new
the night storm over at last
the nightmare finished
my new beginning
starting over
©2010 L.Warren

Monday, March 8, 2010

48. Ode on Melancholy

John Keats (1795–1821). The Poetical Works of John Keats. 1884.

NO, no, go not to Lethe, neither twist
Wolfs-bane, tight-rooted, for its poisonous wine;
Nor suffer thy pale forehead to be kiss’d
By nightshade, ruby grape of Proserpine;
Make not your rosary of yew-berries,
Nor let the beetle, nor the death-moth be
Your mournful Psyche, nor the downy owl
A partner in your sorrow’s mysteries;
For shade to shade will come too drowsily,
And drown the wakeful anguish of the soul.

But when the melancholy fit shall fall
Sudden from heaven like a weeping cloud,
That fosters the droop-headed flowers all,
And hides the green hill in an April shroud;
Then glut thy sorrow on a morning rose,
Or on the rainbow of the salt sand-wave,
Or on the wealth of globed peonies;
Or if thy mistress some rich anger shows,
Emprison her soft hand, and let her rave,
And feed deep, deep upon her peerless eyes.

She dwells with Beauty—Beauty that must die;
And Joy, whose hand is ever at his lips
Bidding adieu; and aching Pleasure nigh,
Turning to poison while the bee-mouth sips:
Ay, in the very temple of Delight
Veil’d Melancholy has her sovran shrine,
Though seen of none save him whose strenuous tongue
Can burst Joy’s grape against his palate fine;
His soul shall taste the sadness of her might,
And be among her cloudy trophies hung.