Poet Didn't Know It

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.

Ms. Hurston, 

I can feel the music too.