Pixie Pheonix Poetry

The walls aren't solid anymore

Made hollow by their greed and supposed sustainability

.

The walls aren't solid anymore

Particle board and plaster

Pressed and glued chips of wood

Covered in a laquer and called 'good enough'

.

I miss the days when I could hammer in a nail.

Back when walls were made of maple, oak,

Hewn from trees tended, grown,

And raised to house hundreds.

.

I miss the days of solid walls

When they held through the good days and the bad.

Became saturated in memories of tired, exited feet.

.

The walls aren't solid anymore

Hollow through their core.

"It's progress," they say

"A sign of innovation."

.

The walls aren't solid anymore.

Meant to be replaced as they fall apart.

.

The walls aren't solid anymore.

===

Reading key: Inner voice. Outer voice. An other voice.

===

When was the last time i felt awake?

Solid, In my own skin?

Present and in the world, time slips through my fingers.

Shards of glass i can scarcely feel.

.

I felt awake as a child.

Only dreaming when asleep

Or when seeing the world through the car window - hazy and unclear. But vivid and vibrant with something new

.

When was the last time I felt awake?

When every day slips over skin as a silken dream,

Spun into a haze of confusion.

Plodding steps taken because I had to.

Why?

Why must I continue?

Because I had to move forward.

Why?

What must I reach?

.

No clear goal or horizon set

I wander through a desert life.

Pockets of awareness,

My own oasis,

Scattered through with a mirrored haze of what 'could be' and yet 'never was'.

.

When was I last awake?

I feel I started drifting as a teen

Though my goals had felt so clear

.

I found myself a jellyfish amidst my peers

Seemingly engaged but never a part of what I could see

.

Perhaps that's when the sands began to gather

Began to drift across my view

.

When you have no roots, you erode away.

Left to flounder until the water rises

.

And then?

You drown

.

.

.

.

When was i last awake?

.

.

Oh Child; when you last opened your eyes

.

.

.

And SAW.

.

.

.

(A creative essay based on a true story)

The summer winds blow hot and dry, siphoning even the faintest remaining moisture from my body.

The sky is blue. The trees are green.

I lay rocking in a pink hammock, tied between two trees, swinging from the gusts of winds that blow hot from the west.

It's supposedly cooler than it was a few days ago. But it feels hotter.

It's the wind.

There is no cooling breeze, carrying the faint moisture, an echo of water in the wind. Instead it blows as a furnace. Seeking to cook me alive.

The sky is blue. The clouds are white. But the dappled lighting turns yellow against my skin.

Yellow-green is for tornados. Or maybe hail.

Dark green, bordering on grey, for thunderstorms.

Red for an oncoming storm at sea.

Yellow is for fire. Soot and ash on a blistered wind.

The sky is blue. The grass is green. And the light is yellow as the west wind blows hot.

A column of smoke to the north-west. Close enough to see the dark blooms puff in the center before joining into a single imposing billowing cloud.

The helicopters swing low overhead. Coming in shifts, every 5 minutes their propellers rattle my windows, shake my bed, and leave my bones aching.

I'm inside now. The faint taste of ash on my tongue.

I watch the fire from my phone. Keeping up to date on how it grows.

Its tripled in size in 20 minutes. Burning over 200 acres. A mere 2 neighborhoods away.

The evacuation order does not come.

I lie in bed and watch the choppers fly low enough to be just above the tallest tree on the street. The shadow it casts blankets my room until the light comes through again. Yellow for fire. Yellow for ash and soot and devastation.

400 acres.

They say the main flame is contained. But sparks light up new ones close by. Its taken the field I used to walk my dog. Back before we moved across the main road. The field sits behind the school at the end of the old neighborhood.

Our old neighbor is out of town, visiting family. My brother checks on their dog.

500 acres. There is one neighborhood between us and the flames. The one we moved from.

Everyone has their sprinklers on. Hoping to keep the sparks from catching.

They say it started in a house on the hill. Where the people with money, or those who live like they do, reside.

They say it was an unkempt garden. Set away from the main home. Withered from the heat, unweeded and unmaintained. Tender sprouts left to choke and crisp and die. It's said they had plenty of glass decorations in their garden. To keep away the birds I suppose.

As though there was anything to steal.

The garden hadn't been tended well enough for that to be a threat. There was nothing for the birds to eat.

But there was plenty for the summer sun to catch.

Glittering glass in rainbow hue, caught the sunlight, that bright summer sun, and scattered it about. I imagine prisms of light and color danced around the withered garden. Between dying tomatoes and failed squash. Blind and uncaring to their thirst. They danced and danced, taking what little water remained from their bodies. Until the heat was too much. Their bodies too dry. The thirst too great. And they caught fire.

527 acres. 20% extinguished. 90% contained. And none of the large houses on the hill were lost.

I go to bed with smoke in my throat and soot on my tongue. And a prayer to not need my inhaler on my lips.

I awake to sirens, and smoke from the east.

I live and watch

As my body falls apart.

Muscles failing to support

The broken bones of shattered wings

And broken dreams.

.

Hurt if I stay,

Hurt if I leave.

But if I stay I have support

Found in the rods that now surround me.

In the shackles that will never let me fall.

.

And so I sit inside

And gild my cage,

In favorited colors

And splashed with gold.

And through my day

I try to sing away the pain.

.

Two steps

Four steps

And then I hit a wall

6 steps

Seven steps

Enclosed within

Unable to see

As sounds lie muffled

10 steps

Twelve

The more I walk

The less I see

24

Or was it 28?

The walls around me

Thick

Unyielding

Yet ever moving

33

34

I could be walking in circles

36

42

And I would never know

44

Nature's maze

50

Endless fog

Of words, rhythm, and rhyme.

Of random vowels,

And blessed syllables.

Planets, stars, sun and moon alike pulling me deeper into the depths of your soul.

Your eyes are a labyrinth, in which I would take every wrong turn.

Diving in I seek to know you,

To come to an understanding.

Then I see it, the beast you worked so hard to hide away within yourself,

deep

Deep inside your heart.

I catch only a glimpse and that is enough.

Enough to know that it was never the facade that drew me in.

The space to be kind is hard won. With bloody fingers, nails broken and torn from clawing away at the boundaries set by the cruel and incompetent, The ignorant and the naive.

The price for kindness is courage, being steadfast. The cost is being willing to bear hatred and abuse. The price demanded is defending your actions again and again and again.

People say it costs nothing to be kind.

But while kindness may not always require currency, there is always an exchange. It can take everything, to afford to offer freely.

Crackled glass and jagged holes

Fill me up with gold

.

Soothe my sharpened edges

File 'til they're smooth

.

Make me forget

I was ever

Broken

.

And remind me

What its like to feel

I need to be reminded,

That the weights I carry,

These stones I bear,

That the temple atop the hill will be worth the strain of the climb.

Or else I'm inclined to ask,

bound to question,

When are the promised gains,

From red to gold,

And gold to white;

Mortal to divine.

To trade one plane for another,