No rules

Don't label my emotions

Or name my words,

For there is no wrong way to be human. 

Life is an abstract painting,

A strange haiku

With one extra syllable. 

Just put it on the paper. 

Or get in line at the museum

And wait your turn for the tour

Through someone else's colors and ink. 

- kjsmith

G'night

I wanted to tell you a story 

About the night. 

The one where an owl hoots 

Way off in the distance. 

And the neighbors cat stalks 

Shadows of mice. 

I sit here, on the porch steps 

Arms around my knees. 

Chimes, soft music, out of tune 

with a missing piece.

The velvet sky littered 

with clouds that the wind threw away

Stars between them 

Just pieces of the constellations 

That made ancient men wonder

And dream. 

Maybe tomorrow night

The wind won't forget to take the clouds 

And I'll see more than just 

The Three Sisters through the trees. 

Lost in Translation

Marichit Garcia's post on her Ink & Water page (see link below) about jumping from one pool into another is so eloquent, as usual. Like music. My knee-jerk reaction is to share it on my personal Facebook page, but I hesitate, because most people there wouldn't 'get it'. They aren't used to that type of communication, not on my page or from me personally. 

And that got me thinking...

The way all my creative tribe write and express themselves is the way I have always talked to myself in my head. But that's not how words come out of my mouth. The life of my soul has to be translated into another language for the 'normal' people I interact with. Translated or hidden altogether. 

Today, I realized that I'm two different people. And I have been pretty much my entire life. The artistic and eloquent automatically translated before it ever leaves my head. 

There's a memory from when I was eight or nine years old and we had free time in class. I was drawing and coloring some crazy abstract thing full of swirling lines and another girl asked me why I was coloring 'that way'. I explained my idea, which was making patterns within each section. By changing the direction of the crayon strokes I could make a pattern within a pattern. She looked at me with a blank stare and said, "But why are you coloring that way?"

"Never mind" I replied, realizing she wasn't ever going to understand. So, I  quickly learned to 'dumb down', translate, become the generally accepted version of normal. I got tired of saying 'nevermind'. Most of the people in my life only see the parts of me that don't require explanation or translation. 

I wear an entirely different skin most of the time. I don't dislike the other skin. I've known her for a long time now. She's fun-loving and smart-assed and drinks too much tequila.  

I don't mind being her. After all these years that skin fits well. But it's nice being part of a creative, accepting community where I can shed the mundane and write stuff like this. Where I can be magical and eloquent. Where I don't ever have to say 'never mind'.

https://www.facebook.com/inkwaterwall/

Just Another Day

The house is quiet so it's easy to begin writing before I even sit down at the computer. I let my mind begin to wander. While in this state I discover things about myself or my characters. 

I'm beginning to come to terms with my dark side. I'm not afraid of her anymore. The understanding that I'm just not that 'nice' was tough at first. The world doesn't see that side. They see the funny, sociable side. They wouldn't understand the darker part, the melancholy part. When I was young, that's the part where my poetry came from...my best stuff came from that version of me. I spent years forgetting she was there. 

Now I usually write from somewhere in the middle. It's an almost physical sensation of putting myself in a bubble. A Venn diagram of me. I sit writing in that overlapping section. Easily able to reach to either side. I step out of the center to make lunch or let the dog out, then go back to the overlap. When I'm truly in flow, I'm completely on the dark side. And it's fantastic. I realize this sounds clichéd but it feels like I'm standing on the cliffs with the wind whipping through my hair and waves crashing on the rocks below. My blood hums through my veins and in those moments, only those moments, do I feel like myself. Real. So real. So perfectly me. 

I don't share this lightly. I know it sounds a bit insane. But...

Hell, maybe I am. I don't care. 

I like sitting there, on the dark side, with fabulous things flying from my fingers. 

~Kim

Notes

I hear the music. 

Made by the staccato tapping

of my fingers on the keyboard. 

Playing all the letters.

Swaying to the rhythm

Of sentences.  

Dancing with words. 

Gray

     I hate gray. Not so much as a color, but as an atmosphere. Certain grays shut me down...cause my internal doors to close. 

     But, there are acceptable grays... grays that open me up, that bring contentment to the surface...

     The gray of driving down a lonely, empty road in the fog. The sun, not yet above the invisible horizon. No other headlights coming at you as proof of life. Just you. Pure, untouched solitude. That's a good gray. 

     Then there's the gray of a walk in the woods on a drizzly day. But that gray is made better by the green and brown aromas. The wet earth, the dead leaves, moss, soggy lichen on a fallen branch. It's not a bad gray. 

     My personal favorite gray would find me walking along a rocky shore on an overcast day, particularly just before a storm. The wind whipping through my hair, leaving it damp and salty. Seabird tracks in the sand with my own. Clouds rolling in and over. Waves breaking over rocks. The air tickles your nose with it's stormy effervescence. It is in those gray windswept moments that I can feel the earth. It's majesty undeniable. I am whole. Every cell humming with something I can't really name. That's the best gray. 

     Today, if the sun comes out, I'll sit on my porch steps and turn my face up to my patch of blue and let all the yellow soak into my soul. 

~ Kim

(This was written and posted originally in That Curious Love of Green - Creativity Salon in November of 2015)

https://www.facebook.com/groups/937099189691204/

Her

She's so much more than he knows. 

Deeper than he dreams. 

Smarter than he fears. 

She is formidable. 

Not calm. 

And adventurous. 

Not acquiescent.

She won't whisper. 

She'll rage. 

She doesn't heal. 

She'll roar. 

She's a warrior, a lover.  

Intelligent and ridiculous. 

She's the moon, 

And all the fish in the sea. 

She is more, 

So much more.

-Kim