Fourfold by One

I sit cross-legged at my window, staring through the glass and into the night. The houses are ghosts, eerily lit by the warm glow of the streetlamps. The light overflows from its source, spilling onto the street, giving it a depthless effect. The unforgiving wood of the wall behind me digs into the side of my back. I sense my own shadow in the transparency of the window. The lit-up screen of my monitor is now a bright reflection hanging from the modest leaves of our tree in the front yard.

I follow the light back to my actual monitor with my eyes, then get up and relocate to my battered desk chair. The music, so familiar, soothing, and beautiful, fills my ears. I breathe through my nose and sense the freshness of the air after the rain, although my allergies have completely masked my perception of scent. The fluorescence of the screen gives an electric look to the room.

From the door the lit computer monitor stands out against the cool ocean hues of the walls, and the street lamps’ illumination stands out beyond my bedroom windows. The song is heartbreaking, now, and the lilt of Marketa Irglova’s voice is hauntingly melancholy but still beautiful. The floor is only half-visible under the mess of discarded clothes and papers. My dog lies under the glass desk and rests with her ears perked up. She is in no doubt listening to the music.

I lie sideways on the ground, resting my head gently on my dearest sister dog Penny, her soft fur against my cheek. This perspective is different than all other vantages. The song is now Coldplay, and we are six inches away from the speakers, and it is as if we are inside the music. My head rises and falls with the slight movement of Penny’s chest as she breathes steadily, in and out. The sound of her breathing becomes the beating of her heart. I am on the brink of dreams. The room fades into darkness as my monitor powers off, and the music continues as we fall asleep.

Zzzzzzzzzz

Electric
pulsing
blinking
psychedelic
optics
reflection
light
trippy
waves
cloud
mist
iridescent
caffeinated
haze.

It's there but it's not;
It's not but there

Nowhere
Everywhere

Like the river
racing
across an empty

v o i d.

I must say
today
I don't have a brain.

ring-a-ling

I don't know you,
    and you certainly don't know me
but somehow there's a sense of familiarity
in the crackling of the phone line
over the 500-mile distance.

There's only one thing
that could bring us together on this April evening
only one thing
and as of now it's perhaps more effective
in these circumstances
than I ever could have imagined.

I invite you to extract your guess from
the cool night air - it by no means
will be hard to name.

It's the one word that encapsulates them all;
it is not vague;
and it should never be underestimated.

Music.
I tell you, my friend, it is music.

35mm polaroid

The room is decrepit, the skeleton of what it once was. The walls are crumbling, charred marks running from the ceiling to floor, sheetrock gaping from its burned innards. The floor is covered in a thin sheet of shattered glass which catches the faint light, and there is a fragility to this light so that it could not be called real illumination. The wall is a marred mirror opposite the ruin of the staircase, and in its warped contours an image lingers in perfect clarity: a girl with flaxen hair tucked behind her ears, balanced on her toes, holding her arms both backward and forward with a still precision countered only by the stillness of the room, melting into sateen that discloses the grace of her lithe figure.

She sits in the rubble and watches her own reflection from her wheelchair.

hopefully, the end of a lapse

My dearest Courtney,

Thank you for today - for the few hours in a cramped sunlit space where your laugh made it impossible to actually feel cramped. Thank you for sharing with me the music on the air, plastic-knife batons, psycho, flannel shirts, dresses, shoes, cell-phones, again, your laugh, and dreams, the present abstraction of our very futures. Two o'clock on a Sunday; orchestra rehearsal; such a beautiful day spent in such a simple way.
But in all truthfulness, I would like to thank you for your inquiry on the matter of fact none other than my writing. In doing so you have in all hope set this rusty pendulum back into motion - something much needed and certainly not overlooked.
Pretty sure I've told you before, but you're kind of amazing.

Love
Christine

St. Patty

rain rain rain rain
the shamrocks
must be waterlogged
on this passionately gray
St. Patty's day.

It's ceaseless
this torrential downpour
on the rooftops drumming

oh, to have recorded the sound of rain if only for a minute
in my memory...

the earth is soaked
but most definitely green
as literally green as attired me

the roast is ready
and if you squint
you can see the leprechauns out dancing
in the middle of the street...

My favorite day of the year.

don't ask why it's that
may be the green
(an excuse to dress
in its every shade)
pinching (who doesn't
like pinching, besides
the one getting pinched?)
rainbows (or the end of
them, anyway)
and four-leaf clovers
(the best luck around)
or perchance it's that my blood
is Irish;
but however
whenever
whatever why,
my spirits today could travel high
up and up to light the sky.

eyelashes

the sound of rain in present memory
the crackle of the radio
and the wavering of streaming thought
hum of an engine
splashing through puddles
warm exchanges
the fist punches
a downpour through glass
the first pad thai
and two loves,
the first unexpected but the latter
already held close and dear
to the heart.
but then also
the burn to those
who are perfectly content
in flaunting what to me
is an absence, while to them
most easily and readily accessible,
although they would never know
they were doing so;
and of course the glares
of those whose eyes cannot
withstand the fluorescent lights;
and those who are
 distasteful (there really is no
other word to describe it);
and most devastating of all
the cold passivity of time
and closeness
in her queenship's acquaintance
(although it should really be
in her regard, as reactions
can of times be bitter.)

No, I should brush it away,
like a clod of mascera off my lashes
but really and truly
I sometimes lose faith in humanity.