River's blog

Becoming Ophelia

. (Okay, I'm trying my hand at prose for once in my life. Feedback would be extra helpful this time around.)

. I had to run.
. Maybe you’ll understand— there were too many of them. There was nothing else I could do. Even if I had managed to fight them off, nothing would have changed. Sometimes you just have to decide it’s not worth it and walk away— or run.
Read more »

I am sitting watching
Men in suits argue about
Being able to see
Cars.
The system is
They bring in one witness at a time
And watch them stutter.
Everyone just wants this
To be over soon
One lawyer asks all the same questions
Over and over
While driving right over
Everyone else's points
He makes jokes that don't seem snide
We all pretend to laugh
But it's clear whenever we say something
He's just
Laughing us off
The judge looks bored
Sleepy even
No one can decide whether he's
Actually listening
The women complain of being cold
In their fancy useless jackets Read more »

Funny I should be thinking of you
So much lately
It's not your birthday
Or the anniversary of your death
Which is when we light your candles
And I feel the sting
Strongest
They took down the fountain
In downtown Des Moines
Where you had a dog and a wife
And a smile
It's one more memory of you
Demolished
Closed down
I can feel you're a little bit farther away
I still have the lake
And Joni Mitchell songs
And your grave
And the mix of colors
All blues and purples with 
Splashes of golden orange
The flower petals we sprinkled on the stone that
I'm supposed to call 
You Read more »

Theta

My body feels light
My mind exhausted
Times like this I'll 
Spend hours lying here thinking about 
How I want to sleep
But can't because my legs still want to run somewhere
And my arms ache from the embrace I didn't give
Today
I'm not done
A broken glass and a 
Broken will
Blood red thorns on the white rose stem
Everyone has to pay
Be it in blood or
Sweat
Or tears
Or our lives
I don't know when problems started 
Seeming real
But I can tell it's 
Too recently
Maybe three years, four
Time is a blur of 
Smeared colors and events Read more »

The pool is full of chlorine
My hair is thick with it
I go to buy books so I
Won't be lonely
I read of Ophelia
Who becomes Juliet by
Faking her death and tricking her love
And tricking the world
We go to coffee shops and
Buy gelato
The summer suffocates us
We melt
We run to the water for relief from
Heat and mosquitoes
My feet become calloused from the rough stones
I figure
They'll be better off that way in a fight
No part of me is elegant
Sunburn rules us
And bug bites
And water
And memories
And music
I am diminished to
A thought 
Of confusion
And a word Read more »

I saw a doe yesterday 
And she told me
Patience
I walked toward her
And she did not run
It's one of those moments
Beautiful and delicate
Where everything is a wonder
And everything
Falls into balance
So perfectly
Ready to fall apart at 
Any second
Like when he yells and she
Stands there waiting because it's only 
A matter of time
Before he turns around
Tears in his eyes
And says he's sorry
Life spins
We all need to find something to hold on to
Before we're swept away
Something to cling to
Something we trust not to
Break
Or just slip away Read more »

It's only natural
To not fully understand
For a while
Until it all comes flying in my face at once
I should have called this poem
Realization.
Because I'm finally accepting
That something amazing is happening
Something to wish for
And as always
The swinging stone was right
It's still a frightening new world
We've opened up
But now
At least
I can exhale.

As always
it's so easy
and so hard
to let the words come out
within a few minutes
I am depleted
but not
today

I watched your moments
slowly appear on paper
today

I hung my shadow on the wall
and made no phone calls
there weren't enough people at the pool
for me to want to swim
there were too many people there
today

I wrote too many poems
today
so now I'm worried that
you won't find the one
I want you to read
most

Now it's all quiet
the minute I watched for came
went
and nothing happened
I don't know what to do with the rest of
today Read more »

I know that giddy
Yet heavy
Feeling that accompanies exciting or
Emotional moments
My throat closes up partly
My heart beats fast and
Jumps
Every now and then.
It's like adrenaline
Surreal
I've had this feeling
For two days straight now
And it hasn't gone away
It's slightly painful
But wonderful.

You say we are fools
Trying to catch something impossible
You say I closed the door
And you're alone
(Zoom in camera
For a dramatic sweep around you
Focusing on you from all angles
Cinematic loneliness)
When you turn in a half circle
You don't realize I am Read more »

I have around me
Pieces of shattered blue glass
And a potted rose
They live by my heart
And play me songs to make me cry or laugh
Or both
I am clouds of dragonflies.

I’m going to prod
And you’re going to hate me
And we’re going to make this machine tick
Anyway
Because blue and grey
Are feather soft together
Like silk storms
And stones in the water
Our deepest conversations aren’t real
Like rain and ice, words are slippery things
Mine are snow
Invisible
Unfeelable
Until you read them
My snow words fall past the place where you were
Onto grey pavement
But I keep pouring out more
In the hope that
When there is enough water on the ground to
Make a mirror,
I will be able to see something of you
In my reflection. Read more »

I poured out my secrets
And asked to know yours
You were always more reserved, more careful
I rolled right over your sarcastic jabs
I pretended you were perfect
And even though I know you aren’t
Now
You’re still my salvation
My vent
Your comments hurt more now
I don’t know why
It feels like some of those old walls came up again
So I had to do the crazy thing
And you had to do what you always do
When I get emotional
You just pretend nothing happened
That everything’s normal and there’s no reason for you to
Let something slip
Even though I opened up my soul to you. Read more »

Let me take a moment
To remember
All the things we did
And the way you didn't laugh
Even though you were cracking up inside
And the way you didn't talk
If you didn't need to say it
I spilled everything out
Random thoughts and notions
And emotions
I bubbled
And you smiled
And that's the way things were
I was happy
Unless you were sad
When the bombs fell we could
Hold on
To the funny words you mimicked
From a videogame
That I never played again after I left
Sometimes you just have to
Wish
And then hope
And then wait
But other times
I need to charge ahead of the game Read more »

So many memories
So many colors
So many places I've been.
I can't organize them
My mind looks like my desk at home,
Clutter everywhere
Books, papers, seashells
Sprawled all over.
They're all mixed up
I can't find things when I want to
But random pictures come to me
Sometimes
Out of nowhere.
I can't well remember important things
Like leaving King Open
Or when my brother was born
But the little details stick–
Honeysuckle by the road
Cracker crumbs in the old car seat
The dog next door,
Posing for my camera like a movie star. Read more »

I see paper gardens
Well-trimmed lace gardens
Flowers in neat rows and
A view of the lake
Beautiful gardens
Someone must work very hard
To care for them
Gardens and glass greenhouses
Mixing in a modern twist
(White flowers, they say, are romantic)
Gardens built by people
With the time and money to spare
Nothing gets done
These days
Without time and money
They bought and built beauty
Lawns and beds of flowers
Perfectly shaped trees that
Hang overhead just enough
So you feel sheltered, but not stifled
Everything within boundaries
Everything elegant and contained. Read more »

When life was a mess
I said to God,
Give me a guardian angel
And God said,
Get your own.
I said to God,
Take me to Heaven
And God said,
Find it yourself.
So I found another Heaven
And I found a room full of angels
And I thought maybe
God helps those who help themselves
Was God's way of saying
Get a life.
So I did.

I've gone through so many lives
It's hard to remember
Just how many
I got some from Wal-Mart
Some from ebay
But the same thing happened
To each one in turn
A crack
A tear
And it all crumbles
My life crumbles
All around me
Leaving me standing Read more »

Sky blankets Earth
In cool blue flannel
Warm and soft and comforting
Clouds blanketing Sky
With white fleece
Luxurious and delicate
See the world
Turn
Turn the page as we weave
A story of love and laughter
Of life, and beauty, and challenge
Feel the cool metal of the pen in my hand
In your hand
Watch your own reflection in my eyes
Illuminate for me these pages that
Turn
Turn the universe
Spinning showing
Celestial light of shining colors
We can only ever dream of
Life that is infinite
And forever ending
Forever bending
Forever straining to
Turn
Turn again Read more »

I am looking for my self, the one that got lost in the woods when I ran too fast.

I am looking for my being, the one made of light, that light that I feel stirring when I run too fast.

I am looking for my wings, the ones that weren't supposed to come off but were torn away when I embraced mortality.

I am looking for a way to fly, even if I can't find wings that fit my shoulders.

I am looking for the silver lining, the one people keep telling me to see. Read more »

(Written while and after performing as Radio, a character in Colette Kelly's Serenata Of A Dream. Several references from the play, please don't sue.)

I was called Radio
Because the world lives in FM
And I live in AM
I do not hear the music
I move when no one else does
With my wagon
And my little-girl dress
And my little-girl hair
And my old-woman-like-Shakespearean-old mind
I hear the cat and the mask and the flame
I cannot hear the music except that which comes from the words that trickle from my mouth and echo into the theater that only seems big from up here. Read more »

We're not so different
You and I
As you would have me
Think
I take a kitten outside
Watch her chase snowflakes
Revel in her joy
You walk down a hill
Chat with strangers the way
I would never do.
You forget I'm there
Sometimes
So I walk behind you and
Whisper
To myself
Pretending you can hear me.
I compete too much
Sometimes
I say things I regret
And you take my jibes in silence
As they laugh
You make me guilty
I promised myself to do better
But it still happens
Sometimes.
I see you watching me
And I watch you
It becomes a game
My cards tear you to pieces Read more »

In school
They taught us
That we were going to war in Iraq
Because we were good
And they were bad.
They didn't say why.

At home, long ago
I once learned
That if I hit my brother after he pulls my hair
I am evil.

Did we vote for Obama
Because he is perfect?
I could have asked
Isn't there anything in between?

But
Instead I watched
Silently
As the grown-ups tossed everything in my life
Into two piles
Good
Bad
Black
White
Us
Them
There was no neutral ground
No middle place.

Can't we live in the middle?
Not just all at the ends of the spectrum Read more »

Somebody was wrong.
Somebody doesn't want to own up.
Someone's knocking on the back door
Someone just came in without asking
Someone's in the house
There's fear
Huddling in a corner
Waiting to kick in
There's courage
Off in the other corner
She stole the fire poker
She's waiting
They're waiting to be chosen but all I can
Feel
Is the heart in my chest that is pounding
Pounding
To get out
Somebody was wrong
Somebody miscalculated and
Left us in a little heap of scrap metal
Shredded our future
Like a tin can or four
And someone's in the house
There are mirrors Read more »