Penitence
My
perseverance was a plague, a perplexing
Plague
which propelled
You away.
My pitiful
pushing was an attempt
At piercing
and penetrating
Your heart.
I thought
with pushing and pleading,
Perusal and
passion,
I’d win.
But it all
proved pernicious.
A pathetic
plan, that lead
To pathos.
Crush
I have
learned about
The falsity
of romance;
Love at
first sight isn’t real,
It is a
protrusion,
A fantasy.
Yet I find
myself longing
For the
quixotic.
I yearn to
be jittery,
To give and to catch glances,
To play.
I desire
the jocundity
And the
felicity that comes
With the
uncertainty
And the
stupidity
Of infatuation.
CS
Raggedy Ann sits on my desk;
She is an old porcelain figurine
Wearing a dress painted yellow and blue,
The dust has settled in the cracks of her orange hair.
My mother painted her. On the
Back are her initials: CS.
Christy Stultz.
Her maiden name was Christy Chinn,
Her name now Christy Heywood.
Christy Stultz.
This name represents a time in between;
A liminal space after her childhood and
Before she became the mother I
Know her to be.
A time in my mother’s life
Which remains a mystery to me,
A time I will never fully understand.
With a child, a faith, and a determination
Which kept her going, she was experiencing
Things that would make her
The woman she is now.
Summer
Rides
The summer
after graduation,
I felt trapped
in my town.
I couldn’t
stand being home,
Or being at work
Or any place where people were
around.
I wanted to
be
Alone.
I used
to tell my parents
I was going
to a friend’s house.
My mother
worried
About the "burn-out" friends I spent time with, but
She had no
reason to worry.
Most of the time I took
My sister’s
car
And went
for drives.
I would let
the windows down
And listen
to Stairway to Heaven,
The smell
of wet alfalfa
And roses flowing
In
and
out
Of the car with the wind.
These were
moments
Of peace
And freedom
And joy;
Moments I wanted to last
Forever,
But I knew
they would end.
I would
have to go back home
Or go back
to work,
Trapped in
a world
I didn’t
want to be in anymore.
I longed
for a world of my own.
I longed
for the solitude
And freedom of
Independence.
"Music. The great blobs of purple and red emotion have not touched him. He has only heard what I felt. He is far away and I see him but dimly across the ocean and the continent that have fallen between us. He is so pale with his whiteness then and I am so colored."-Zora Neale Hurston
To Zora Neale Hurston
I can feel the colors of the music:
Red
Blue
Yellow
Green
Orange
Purple
Pink
As the melodies mix with the harmonies and
The rhythms Pow
Boom
Da,
The
shades mix together:
They
S
W
I
R
L
They
N
A C
D E
They
P L A Y
Creating a climax of colors
In my body.
In my body.
Ms. Hurston,
I can feel the music too.
