Long Time No Chat

It’s been a while since I used this sweet little blog. Life has been busy. We lived in Florida for two years. We had a beautiful pink house by the beach. I could see the water and listen to the waves from my porch. Definitely the experience of a lifetime. I miss it.

My daughter is in the double digits now. She’s growing up so fast. Right now we’re enjoying summer break and spending time together. She is so smart and kind and creative. She has always been an absolute joy. We are immeasurably proud of her.

I’m still a poet, but I’ve gotten really into film photography. I love instant cameras and cheap disposables or holgas. I am somewhat obsessed. I paint too and make collages. Art is so therapeutic.

I finally took the plunge and got an iPad so I can do digital painting too. I adore Procreate. I get every brush I can find.

Life is good. We have changes coming to our family, and we are all so excited. Oh, and we have two dogs now. The last time I really used this blog we didn’t even have one, but now we are a two dog household and I love it. I have been stretching and growing creatively. If all goes well I might be publishing a book this year.

The sampling above is a sliver of what I’ve been doing. We have taken great trips, I’ve learned new skills (I cook and bake and I’m learning embroidery!), and my husband is doing great in his career. All in all, I just feel super blessed and grateful.

Kitchen Knife

In the crisp, cropped morning –
gold daydreams at the edges.
I hurry to class
fantasizing about books,
about the secret haven of birds,
about a candy leopard.

The future ripples like
accommodating grass
with each turn I make.
Each choice is a wind setting out
over the plane of my uncategorized existence
like a ray of light.

What lies in the center of beauty
but a fawn sleeping soundly,
her mother still 3 days away
from the hunter’s gun?

Amiable maps will reveal
the road to catharsis,
but hide the rambling path
of permanent joy
that I have to cut into the brush                     myself with a kitchen knife.

Tendrils, Fence, Sneaking around after dark

Tendrils of ivy are hatching in God’s drawings of the South. The South is a forest green. New England is blue. The mid atlantic is cream.

Fake things bother me. Even fake blood.

The spirits were behind the children, not in front of them. 

Trick or Treat!

Sorry, nothing left.

I snuck under the fence into the field, hiding from the horses. If you stood at the crest of the hill you could see Blacksburg, Christiansburg, and a bit Radford twinkling in the dark. Somehow we spooked the horses, and I had to flatten like a piece of paper underneath that electric fence again ASAP to get out of there and escape.

Performance

Performance is the worst possible backseat driver.
Performance puts in long hours,
But quite frankly it’s needy.
I want to go right,
But I can do things better on the left,
So I fly left.
My little metrics pusher guiding my wheel.

Performance is born of pride and pressure.
I, Little package of blood and bone, need to find my own place to go.

Subcommittees

My subconscious is a group project with many subcommittees.
Hopefully there are people much smarter than me
Making some of these decisions.

As it stands,
I have my hand in an oil can
While building a house from matches.
At night I fear silence so I whisper my anthems to God,
I spend the day trying to be a kite-
And then burning every kite in a 10 mile radius because I’m mad I failed.

The wind in the conifers beckons,
Yet the subcommittees have all voted no,
And I cry in my yard

and don’t understand why I do

The Eaters

The day is clean shaven,
Presentable even,
When the city eaters and their svelte gray machines
Enter in through the back M- across a complicit river.

When the streets failed under the filmy force,
The people had nowhere to walk.
They stayed in their apartments and watched the world burn –
Carefully-
Because the landlord didn’t secure the railing

Once the grocery stores were chewed up and spit out
By an Eater called Fin
I fled to sleep.

Red

Desiccated red like a rose picked apart
By the sort of angry young man who would tear the wings off a butterfly
For free.

Red speaks to me in a cracked voice.
She was a sultry with a temper.
Now her skin is a desert.

She tells me to avoid the heat of summer and grasp spring-
Before the boys become men by the river

I lay in bed at night thinking about that rose
And her love for me.

Life

Hey guys. From now on I am using this blog for art and writing. I have another blog I will use to write more personal things, so family, faith, mental illness, and parenting will be discussed over there. This blog is a creative diary and portfolio. I want two separate blogs for two separate purposes. I have noticed in likes and comments that some of you are here for art or writing, and some like the personal posts. There is very little crossover. Time to separate these things.