A New and Wiser Time

I remember the sound

Of footsteps travelling

Down white antiseptic

Scented hall ways,

And the deafening

Drone in my head

Of an urgent need to flee.

I, a prisoner, of course

Sat faithfully at the shrine

Of the skeleton ghost

Of the person I was

Trying to force myself to be.

At the time I did not know

Any other way.

Put it aside and put it away.

Your youth has become a page

In a scrapbook of memories.

This is the here and now.

No longer imagine yourself

As that clever girl with

The secrets in her eyes.

Those days have passed,

As time's steady current

Pulls us along to the future.

You have to learn new ways

To weave the sunlight in your hair.

Find new hiding places for the

Secrets you kept in your eyes,

But it's not the end, my friend.

This is a new chapter of life.

(4/9/2010)

5 shorts

A place I know not--
this distant land of asphalt.
People commute to work,
barely acknowledging each other.
So many is the population,
and so few are the friends.

----------

Never resting, this city.
Always, there is a lone civilian
wandering the streets,
even at the darkest hour
in the dampest monsoon rains,
or the on chilliest blustery winter days.
Always, someone is traversing the streets.

----------

Lunch break -- people rushing.
Time clocks to punch,
they push their way
to the front of the line,
order their turkey on rye,
and scuttle back to
the drone of their uneventful lives.

----------

Tiny specks of dinner
resting on the grout
inside the grooves made
by the cheap tile floor,
waiting for tiny
black arthropods
to come feast on the
delectable entrees.

----------

tick, tick, tick
Like cold molasses,
time stretches by.
The hour lasts an eternity --
next month is a dream.
(My desperate need to escape
the here and now)
Wander the house in search --
looking for something to distract,
to occupy this mind.
To help me forget this need,
this impatient need for speed;
to fly into the far away future.

(4/1/10)