Church

I don't need a ritual

To teach me how to worship

All the worthy things in the world. 

No god to teach me to love. 

I know these things already.

In my bones, my blood. 

My soul. 

No devil owns me. 

No angel watches. 

I walk the path on my own. 

Unencumbered 

By historical interpretation. 

Enlightened

By my own instinct. 

Such characters

     Characters come to me almost daily. Sometimes they sneak up on me at the grocery store, tap on my shoulder, say a shy hello. Other times they bust down the front door and punch me in the face. 

     I write these characters immediately as I stumble over them. Just a quick scene, short paragraph, sometimes a poem. Getting them on the page, in some form, is important. They may not end up in any finished project, but at least they've had their day in the sun and I have them here for future reference. 

So today, I'll show you these two...

***

Vivian:

She was one of those Coco Chanel ladies...you know the type..."You can never be too rich or too thin". 

She was 'old' money. Straight tweed skirts with Ferragamo flats, cashmere twinset and a Hermes scarf tied snug against her neck.  Her hair was done in an elegant bob that she kept tucked neatly behind her pearl studded ears. She owned a brownstone on Chestnut Street, and a cottage on Martha's Vineyard with weathered cedar shingles and a crushed shell driveway. 

She preferred the Vineyard. She was alone there usually, her friends having deserted her after the divorce. There was no one left to judge her, so she'd sit out on her lawn watching the waves come in to shore and she'd drink beer straight from the bottle and then belch really loud. 

***

This one came in a poem: 

No Halo

You know her. 

Or, at least, her type. 

The one whose smiles

Hide daggers. 

Whose bitterness lingers

At the bottom of the glass. 

That last sip of cheap-ass wine. 

She pretends to be

The blue eyed angel

Serene and benevolent

But there's no halo

No wings.

Unless bitches fly. 

The last time I checked, they don't. 

Most people see the best

But I cannot. 

My intuition, this x-ray vision

Lays her truth open to the sun 

Her righteous superiority exposed. 

She smiles sweet evil and it's 

The last lie she tells.

Thanks for reading! 

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.