Posts for June 22, 2022 (page 3)

The world is one thing, earth another.
You might think, two sides of the same coin.

        There are always two sides of a coin.
        Have you ever dreamed of getting rich?

Many people dream of getting rich.
Ambition can become your master.

        Ambition becomes a hard master.
        In my heart there are always blue skies,

Blue skies and cotton clouds in my heart.
In the world there are backstabbers and liars.

        The world is full of backstabbers and liars.
        Earth is filled with grass and lovely trees.

I love the earth with its lovely trees.
The world is one thing, earth another.

and I have them, but this is the wrong place. I can’t do this; I can’t say them; I can’t do that. The car: Why did we get out of the car? That wasn’t the right place either, even though it was while we were there, or at least the idea of the right place. Lost. Lost. Lost, the landscape so exquisitely familiar, but navigating it was something else. I wanted you, but you didn’t want to be wanted that way, the only way I had then and there. All that was in the dream, and as I left the dream with only the dream of you left in this real place I couldn’t remember your name. Every name I conjure is someone else’s, not your name. We sat in my car on the side of the road, and the cars kept passing, and we kept sinking lower in our seats, not wanting to be seen by anybody else. Then we went into the room, and it was crowded and filled with arguments. I wanted (there’s that word again). I wanted to be alone with you again in our flash of nakedness, but instead we walked around the offices in the building so you could leave presents. When we talked, it was about my grandmother’s needlework and a cat we were giving, or you were giving and I was just along for the walk: Giving this kitten to someone without even knowing if they wanted it, like I didn’t know if you wanted me to love you, or if the love I wanted to give you was the love you wanted. We tried to get back to the car, which was right there right, across a snowy field, but we couldn’t agree how to get to it, and you said this wasn’t what you wanted, not what you wanted my wanting to be or where you wanted it. There were other people around us again, and I woke, but I still don’t know your name, and I’m losing what you looked like, which would have been the key, or maybe I’m afraid to know because then I’d have to doubt it all over again.

Grass ripples in verdant waves
as if sharp-toothed sirens
lurked beneath the turbulent surface.
Tree limbs flail like the tentacles
of a bloodthirsty kraken.
Windblown leaves whip
through thick humidity, shrapnel
from a capsized ship roiling
underneath shark’s skin gray sky.
Peals of thunder fire cannonballs 
into the storm’s hushed din.

As rain pelts in a shanty melody
we live a pirate’s life without the sea.

Water’s clear caress
padder drop ping

veiled birds call
chip! chip! sing

as rain makes
greener green

white cracks grey sky
thunder colors boom

shoot dog and me inside
to peer from window’s room

leaves curl
trees bend
blooms kiss ground

we retire
inside

smoldering poison words
stab and wound – no remorse
shredded lives, broken soul

-Sue Neufarth Howard

(after Jeremy Paden)

the modern world
in which we live
is colonized territory

where power justifies
the things it does
as it always does

Night winds whisper softly at my window 
as a slideshow winds up in my mind
of that one time in seventh grade 
when I heard the voice that wasn’t real
telling me to “be a good girl and go upstairs.”
In the furious torrent of background noise
that was a state marching band competition 
in the stands of Commonwealth Stadium,
the sudden chilling fear I felt still stops me 
tonight as the slides play over and over again,
louder than the cicadas outside, and I wonder
even now what might have happened 
had I been alone that day, twelve years old,
convinced by phantom audio 
that I was supposed to leave a safe place
and venture toward the unknown.

Night winds whisper at my window now and then,
and each time I let a memory tape
run on a loop in my brain, the only thing
that comforts me is that these days,
I hear no voices in the wind. 

tender feet
tiptoe in delicate fashion

Clouds shape themselves into origami all day,
a nagging pantomime of shadows of the wall —
hours & minutes expand, contract as stray
clouds shape themselves into origami. All day

their symbols crash & echo in a noiseless display —
up the slopes and over the hilltop, even small
clouds shape themselves into origami all day.
A pantomime! Shadows on the wall.