on depression, and the repressed desire to stay connected -- how gray is this wall

The words of encouragement which you write
are a whispered song behind a wall so tall and wide, so tall and wide.

I see you through a fog, thick and dense. This place of isolation,
this bubble of unfeeling, is not my permanent residence.

(I tell myself this, with the sincere pat on the back)

I hold a knife to my own throat, I choke.

Oh, I've got something to share, believe you me.
(I laugh, as the words slip out my mouth, slide to the floor)

What a joke!

Just tell me this, how do you save yourself when the hole you've dug
is so comfortable and warm, and the wall so tall and wide, so tall and wide?


--bruised orange

fear and longing at river's edge

i stood apart under the weeping willow and looked out across this river of separation.
there you were, on the other side, lost in your own contemplation.

the wounding arrows of your youth held you fast to your bank,
and i cried alone, in the shadows of my yesterday.

weren't you always there on the other side wanting me to cross over to you?
and wasn't i always here on these banks, waiting to hear your call?


had we plunged bravely into the swirling eddies of these dark waters,
we would have found the safe passage of our journey,
the warm current of belonging to one another.


--bruised orange

i withdraw my application, my heart was never in it anyway

the joyful dancer of my youth
prances about my room, whispering
truths to my all but deafened ears.

'go away,' i respond. 'you belong to a time
i am no longer a part of.'


she takes my hand, but the skeleton of
my existence pulls away from her.

'did you think it would be so easy to get
me out to the dance floor again?'


i am a stubborn woman,
lost to the steps of dancing ways.

no, i choose now to sit here and watch.
the tango of life dances, her fluid body
pouring itself across the floor.

i am a poet, you see, and i set myself
here on these sidelines because observation
and reflection are the only things that keep my
heart beating.

participation? she speaks a language too foreign
to my ears for comprehension.


--bruised orange

she walks alone

she wanders alone down gritty streets
paved in the good intentions of her idealism.

these roads, marred with the holes of remorse
for all her failed attempts at living,
have led her,
in stumbling,
broken paced fashion,
to the realization that her life has
been a series of ineffective day trips.

she never had a destination in mind,
only bumbled along on a journey marked
simply by the passage of time,
and the graying of her hair.


--bruised orange

abandon

you would chase ghosts down a narrow corridor
seeking absolution from your own regrets.

don't think for a minute you'll find your answers there.
the love unfolds at whatever pace you are willing to set.

joy is reserved for the heart that forgives the past,
and beats itself wildly into the future.


--bruised orange

machete

before it is too late,
i want to speak to you from the tender places inside,
from my quiet islands that sing the lonely breezes when the moon shines in her fullness.

but, oh, these tangled vines of my interior keep me strangled in silence.

how can i break free, when my voice is stifled by these twisted branches of my past,
and my hands are bound by the overgrowth of too many neglected years?

i want to cut them out, to be free from their grasp,
to cultivate a new garden upon the fertile soil of these fallow fields.


--bruised orange