Heart of Darkness (It Isn't Just a Book)

I've always, ever since I started being discerning about who I let in my life, said that I'm good at being alone. Now, I say this, and I want you to know that this doesn't mean I like it. One of my very good friends heard me say this once, and he promptly told me that no one is good at being alone. No one likes being alone. No one wants to go through life unnoticed, unrecognized, and unloved, and that is what you become when you are alone. No one is there to tell you if you are a good person or a bad person. No one is there to tell you their opinion on the deeds you've done and the words you've spoken. No one is there for you when you are alone, and it possibly the most unhealthful feeling in the world to feel alone.

And that is what he thought I meant when I said I'm good at being alone. Had that been my meaning, he would have been right. But I don't like being alone. I'm simply practiced at it. I know how to survive long periods of time without contact with the outside world. When the task asks me to act the shut-in hermit, I do it without question and with uncanny finesse. It is like the saying goes: once bitten, twice shy.

There is safety in loneliness, despite how detrimental it can be to one's psyche. No one can take advantage of you, no one can break your heart, and no one can betray you. For a long time, I was convinced that it was all anyone ever wanted to do to me: all they wanted to do was use me for their own ill-gotten gains. I will admit that I am gullible. I still retain some innocence, and despite my protestation, I will even go so far to admit that I can be something of an idealist. And it isn't a bad thing. But in a world where people are so easily corrupted, it isn't the smartest thing either. So I broke off from my friends and from those I deemed too fallible to keep safely in my heart. After that, there was a long time when I had no friends, only myself and my writing to keep me company. Obviously, I went a little mad.

I've never addressed this dark point in my life. In that time, I didn't write poems. I wrote fan fiction and played video games and made a fantasy world for myself: an escape from my solitude. It was only last spring that I was able to reemerge from my seclusion. Now, almost eight months later, I will attempt to speak on that black time. I will try to convey the anger and the fear that I still strive daily to overcome.

Walking Through the Fires Unhanded

If ever I had tried to love, it was with an open heart and open mind,
and I thought the best of all I touched, believing so strongly
that the light I carried would shine bright enough to touch them,
to kindle little lights of their own.

But woeful was the girl who did not understand that darkness
is sometimes our closest companion. Our shadows are thick,
full of our hatreds and hurts, and we are daunted
by the prospect of letting in what small sunlight there is for us,
since with the sun comes the painful truth of seeing what monsters we harbor.

Since I was ignorant of whatever monstrosity festered and grew in my soul
as I was continually refused, the day it grew to match my height
was a shock, a stalker hiding behind the curtains leaping out with a knife.
However, death was not the foe that claimed me.

Black anger, tart and putrid, filled me, and all of a sudden,
I was the darkness. I walked through shadows as if I was one,
and they knew me too as one of their own, welcoming me to their
pitted ranks, their humble existence.
And no longer was I counted among human company.

So still, I waited for the light to capture me, and it was an unending game
as I eluded the candle that flickered once in my heart of hearts.
Until one day, my shadow-friends took fright from a glance my way.
I chased them, pursued them with anguished cries, but could not coax them.

It was that day I realized:
the candle had been there all along.

Waiting for the Full Moon

Today is the day of the new moon, and it is overcast where I am. I am sorely missing the nights when I could walk outside, and not worry about being lost in the darkness for the light of the full moon above me.

Why are we so fascinated with the Moon? Back in the day before we could travel in outer space and use technology to uncover the secrets of the world around us, it was understandable: the Moon was a mysterious orb in the sky, and no one really understood its purpose other than it was what we could expect it to reflect the Sun's rays back to Earth and illuminate our night skies. It inspired a ridiculous amount of mythology for the ancients and today, it is still apart of our urban legends, despite the fact that we pretty much have all the facts and knowledge of it that we can really gather.

Obviously, as a writer and a lover of lore, I am obliged to write about the Moon.

Diana and the Hunt

Through the night, she passes, her glowing face mirrored in
starlight and celestial incandescence: she is the fierce, the wild,
the unnameable force that makes the water dance at her feet.
She is the dauntless nature that summons the tide.

Her cries are those when her face is fully shining and the wolves are her voice,
calling to their Sister to lead them into the night,
where prey and playmates come out to join them in their dance.
They are the lovers of joy and family, and she is their matriarch,
shooting fiery arrows through the night sky when the weather is warm,
to celebrate their fraternal bonds.

Dark comes a time, on every other fortnight, when she hides herself,
her shame at having let herself go too much,
indulged too abruptly in the splendors of the Earth below her.
But it is when the sullen lowing of her children breaks her heart,
a warding away of her solitude,
that she is coaxed back to us, back from the velvet void above us.

She dances above our heads, watching over us as an elder sister would,
guiding us through the shadows.
Diana waits and watches, arrow nocked and ready
to slay the beast that hunts her little friends.

Speaking of Thoreau...

I definitely took a day out, deciding to channel Henry David Thoreau: only my version of Walden is not a pond in the middle of a deciduous forest. My Walden is a little park that I helped raise funding for about seven years ago, full of Douglas Firs and cedars and all other manner of mosses and ferns and vines that belong to the Pacific Northwest. While taking my walk along the very unkempt trails (they used to be very tidy until I stopped volunteering for school's sake), I did what I always do: I think.

The next morning, I sat down and wrote for a while, and being that I was up earlier than usual, I noticed that we'd started getting frost in the mornings, much to my delight. Of course, I wrote about that too. I know it is only two days after my last post, but these two poems were too good and too irresistible not to post, and I'm feeling a little proud of myself for getting two poems out in the same time period.

The First Frost of a Northwestern Winter

The first frost comes with surprise -
like an ice cube slipped down the back of your shirt,
see how the world gasps under its touch.
Like a neophyte's first kiss, new and epiphanic,
the magic of the auroral freeze is only seen
in the few brief small hours of dawn.
It is the glow of a sleeping lover with hands peacefully
tucked beneath a yielding cheek, innocent out of context,
but surely reminds us of something more consuming and dark.

And then the Sun rises over the foothills, and
the spell is broken.
The frozen ground shudders, warmth pulsing through,
and her eyes flutter open, slowly as the dream fades.
The world comes to life, stretching, awakening, and any memory
of the cold stillness is gone into the night.
Life has resumed, and the frost melts without apology.

Still, it is no secret, that for some time to come
the frost will return, insatiably and vehemently obstinate.
And, like the sweetheart we keep soundly in our arms as we wait
for sunrise to break the enchantment on our hearts,
we shall wake and expect it with almost dependence.
We shall hope for the ushering comfort of winter.


Transcendentalism's Call

Passing over root and moss-ridden stone,
my boots would carry me beyond the walls of society.
Though my pockets are heavy with tinkling car keys,
a phone that has kept strangely quiet for a good amount of time,
and my Zune that I've whimsically put to the sappy task
of playing love songs: softer ballads for a softer realm.
Techno-Gaga-dance music holds no court here in my kingdom.

With every step I take, I find something new.
The feather of a Stellar's jay, silver-blue-gray in the green bracken,
The rustling of a foraging squirrel as he prepares for the Deep Slumber,
and the markings of cerulean paint on a tree, deemed unfit to live,
simply because it is in the way.
I regard the red splotch on my palm,
the one that my mother has me convinced marks me as a healer,
and I look up at the limbs above me, high enough to be three of me.
I've been tending, ministering to the creature of the earth,
for longer than I have time to tell.
So I breathe a hope, touch a blessing on the marred trunk,
with bark crispy and gray, ridden with lesions and lichen.

I hear an eagle's brusque call overhead as she circles.
She's hunting, and I consider my own predatory instinct.
I all too often leap before I look, a wild cat in the brush,
and almost as frequently, the bewildered look of frustration
crosses my face like wildfire as my prey slips through my snare.
This is my punishment I receive for not sharpening my claws
and for my impatience with stalking underfoot.

The sun is still high in the afternoon, and the wind
is brisk, invigorating my nerves like a caress, voiding the need for caffeine.
My walk becomes an impulsive sprint - I wish to feel alive,
the air whipping my face, the earth falling behind me.
I feel free, unbounded, and all too quickly,
the close wood becomes an open meadow.
I halt, unfamiliar with this change.
Like the beast I'm channeling, I creep back in,
aware that in the clearing I am exposed,
vulnerable to whatever is lurking in the shadows of the trees.

Finally, my trek ends, and I return to a shiny white Outback,
a vehicle that has served me well as my bearer to this freedom.
And now, I begrudge it the odious task
of bearing me back to civilization.

Jane and I

Seriously, you need to read Jane Hirshfield. She is one of my all-time favorite poets ever (following Sara Teasdale, Robert Frost, and followed by Langston Hughes and Henry Thoreau, all of whom you should read). Before I get to my own poem, I'll give you one of my favorite Hirshfield poems.


For What Binds Us
BY JANE HIRSHFIELD
There are names for what binds us:
strong forces, weak forces.
Look around, you can see them:
the skin that forms in a half-empty cup,
nails rusting into the places they join,
joints dovetailed on their own weight.
The way things stay so solidly
wherever they've been set down—
and gravity, scientists say, is weak.

And see how the flesh grows back
across a wound, with a great vehemence,
more strong
than the simple, untested surface before.
There's a name for it on horses,
when it comes back darker and raised: proud flesh,

as all flesh,
is proud of its wounds, wears them
as honors given out after battle,
small triumphs pinned to the chest—

And when two people have loved each other
see how it is like a
scar between their bodies,
stronger, darker, and proud;
how the black cord makes of them a single fabric
that nothing can tear or mend.


I just find her style so provocative and real and down-to-earth. Poems should speak of the gravity of every day things that go unnoticed, should tell us a story that is both ours and not ours. She evokes images of horses with scars and bumps that, in real life, would make us believe that they are ugly or unimpressive, as well as with the dirty mug and the rusty nail, but she paints a deeper picture, one with feeling. The mark of a true poet is that you can feel exactly how the writer is feeling as you read their work without ever seeing a description of their emotions.

So here's one of mine, in respect to the little things in life.

The Bull and the Virgin

Under bare feet, callused and brown, the grass cringes from the weight of a human body,
springing back piece by piece, slowly reverting back to what it once looked like.
But it is not the same.

In white cotton, with a hem ripped from jumping fences, she floats,
a little cloud too small to rain, too pure to spark lightening.
Her eyes are that of the sea: they are old and knowing, and one can see
she has seen much in her young life.
Almost too much, as the storm lingers beyond the horizon of her irises.
And the split hairs that rain down from her crown are also sign that she,
as well as any wild thing, has more to care for
than the petty details of image.

The bull is mad, angered and fierce.
He is a proud beast, snorting and huffing in steam and stink.
A festering obstinacy keeps him steady, his feet firm stalks in the ground,
hooves that are rough from long treads through the craggy hills that led him here.
He stays true to a course he plotted out long ago,
and his cage is his realm, never his limitation.
Only the beauty can enter his domain without becoming a victim
of sharp, silent, undeniable suspicion.

Her hand, bleeding and burnt, heals slowly,
but there is much to be gained from the company of animals and of the earth,
too much to stay away for good.
Her eyes are decided
as they descend on those of her companion.
His eyes are soft and doting as they turn on his mistress, much less
the furied balls of dark flame that would mark a man walking dead.
They remain in their Eden for a spell before they must return
to the harsh reality of life.

Only When It Rains

In so many pieces of literature, the rain has been used as a tool, a metaphor, for the washing away of old sins, grudges, bitter emotions, and allows new, brighter sentiments to take their place.

It is pouring as I write. For the first time in a long time, I begged for my God to release me from my anger. It doesn't always show, and not for lack of trying, but I have become so angry over the last year. So I walked out into the deluge, and I cried for the washing away of my burdens. For all the things I have said against where I live, the one thing I count on is a good autumn shower.

The Cleansing

It started as a sprinkling, some cloud god flinging little token droplets down.
They dot my eyelashes, dust my hair, and my irritation grows tenfold.
My world has come to that: an irritation, and I seek to be rid of these vexing details.

I picked up my flute, a tarnished piece with the fingerprints of a twelve-year-old
crisscrossing over the keys. I'm looking at the past, and I wonder why I stopped.
My lips know where to go, how to push the air over the oval opening,
and my fingers dance, in steps of a waltz, a ballad
that my eyes have never seen, but my heart has always been sobbing.

I think of the rain outside, and I see myself in that rain, playing with the wind,
the rain drops on the silver like dew on a cobweb.
I put the flute down. My heart is breaking, but I deny it, dismissing my song as garbage.
My heart has been a stone of Provencal marble since my sunlight burned out.

I hear the rain, and I curse a bitter sigh. It comes in droves of drummers and cymbals.
It is dark outside, but I care not for the dangers of the unseen.
I face what fear is left in my heart, and I am outside.
The aggregate concrete under my callused soles is slick and frigid.
My hair, that dances and rebels against all attempt at good behavior,
sticks to my neck in veins of mahogany and coffee.

I blink hard and quick, and the rain melts my fortress of burned bridges and repressed love.
My palms are Mary's agonized pleas, but I do not ask for the return of a good son.
I ask for the return of sweeter days, softer words, and lighter laughter.
I ask for the purity I once knew as my own.
And it ends in a downpour, and I am, for the moment, at the mercy of fate.
I look to the skies for redemption.

You Are as Free as You Let Yourself Be

I'm at that point in my life where all I can think about is how I would love to be out on my own. My own place, my own furniture, my own food, and a dog (I've decided on either an Australian Shepherd or an Australian Cattle Dog). My mother will possibly skin my cat or throw him to the coyotes if I don't take him too. All it is now is just preparing, applying to the school, looking for a suitable car, and eventually looking for a place to live. It is going to suck, financially, but I've accepted that. I've also accepted that, if I don't get started on this new life, it will never happen. Carpe diem.

East of the Mountains
People say, we're in a drought.
When I'm east of the mountains, the place where the sun knows no fear,
I can look at the grass waving in the wind - picturing them emerald -
and I know by the browning golden blades that people are right.
Nonetheless, I feel unraveled here, untangled as the sky and land meet
in a symphonic union, the hills rolling and skating against the blue haze.

In this place, the sun is a coward, between the storms to the west and the wall in the east.
Helios runs and hides, and the sky is an ashy ceiling, with no surprise.
St. Helens sits in her fury to the south.
My cage is a Douglas fir forest, and you can't blame me when I tell you:
It feels so small here.

You knew my frustration with this hell-mouth, and so, like a monarch,
you headed south, fleeing, knowing that if you stayed,
you'd be held prisoner like me; you'd be bound to the darkness, despite your love for me.
I felt the impulse to grab your ankle as you flew, to chain your wrist to mine,
but who was I to clip your wings when I too sought liberty?
East of the mountains, there is another place I am bound, but not by force.
It is by pure fascination, by a familiar spiritual understanding.
I told you of my infatuation, and I still hope you'll remember enough
to come back that way, to go beyond your fears.

She looks at me, informs me of my lacking sanity, and I swallow an angry retort,
quite the horse-pill to be sure.
She says, they're in a drought, and though I know this is true, I look at her
with sharp eyes and tongue bitten, thinking,
what does she know except for this salty scrap of gray and green?
What does she know when she's never been east of my mountains?
All she really has ever known is fear.

As Much as I Rip on Guys...

...Girls are crazy catty. And I am one. So, despite my vehement insistence that I am a saner female than most, I will admit to one small insanity that is allotted to me for the sake of my gender. I have a ridiculous superiority complex when it comes to being a member of the feminine community. And when regarding other women who are not exactly up to my standards...I can get a little snooty.

It's a work in progress. Realization that you have a problem is the first step...

Darkness is My Rival's Eyes (A Queen Bee's Lament)

I walk through washed out hall, amongst the various, nameless drones,
and my head is held high bearing the invisible crown as I was taught to.
I turn to observe a work station where one such drone always has a smile for me,
when she catches my eye.

My eyebrow raises, a bridge to let the ships go under and daring all others
- namely her disdainful self - to cross me.
She ducks her head down, eyes cast at her fingers, and I feel the lioness in me growling.
I have already won the contest.

For good measure, I retreat to the powder room, all decorum and ceremony withstanding,
just to make sure I am as regal as I want her to see.
My hair is a wildfire, a diadem of fury, and my eyes are fierce blazes,
with emerald eyeliner to complete the predatory visage.
I tug the hem of my shirt so the look is complete,
and then I enter in splendorous confidence.

I go to my tower, my look-out, to watch them all buzz in procession around our little hive.
All is well.
There are two behind me spewing utter nonsense, and so I ignore their blathering-on,
their he-said, she-said stupidity.
Then she appears from the staircase, like a cloud of gloom on the horizon.
She gives me one hurried glance to be sure that it is I sitting in the window sill,
and she makes her escape to her addled companions.
All the while, I sit, shoulders back, chest out, and chin held high as I peer down at my world.

She thinks she is safe from me. But as I leave,
I make sure she remembers
What she did, and
Who I am.