O! Reason Not the Need

Prompt:

A station wagon A house with a leaky roof A half knit baby blanket A mango

Remember when we were in the 7th grade and we wanted to travel the world?

When now was as distant a fantasy as the stories tucked deep into our minds, When bits of string coiled into a promise might has well have been an unbreakable vow? They called us fruit because we were always in a bunch-- I was sour and she was bitter and you were sweet and ever-ripe. We argued, said we’d never grow into these names, but they were so sure that they knew better. And you know what? They were right.

We were half knit dreams tangled with each other and the headphones in our backpacks, Dropped stitches triangulated into a future that could-have-been. We were children, so anything we made was tossed aside as a fantasy All our shoes were baby shoes--never worn because they were too busy being disassembled for parts

We were constructionist--we took what was given to us nodded politely and plotted our revenge. You were always the biggest dreamer with the loudest screams in the pack, Saying crazy things you’d grow up to be in an age when we couldn’t think past seventeen Giving us a metric: If she was to dream for the stars day in and day out, We’d have to at least gaze into them once in awhile. And you know what? You were right.

And one day you sat us down and you said, Once we graduate, let’s rent out an old station wagon and travel the world. And let’s shed our skin in each new town and find ourselves within the costumes we wear. Let’s give the world something to talk about. Let’s give them something to live for.

And the next day you left with your family. Nonsense and missteps dripped from your shoulders You left for a land immortalized in drudgery and boredom. And we all forgot about the day before, when the heavens were not a limit But merely a metric for how far we’d gone. And a baby shoe became a baby shoe. And a leaky roof became a leaky roof, Instead of a start of an adventure.

None of us knew how to drive but we knew we would eventually. (I still don’t. You learned immediately, as if this was a prophecy you needed to fulfill). And above all, despite everything, through what we couldn’t possibly comprehend, We knew the following: We would grow to an age we then considered Adult. And we would still be a bunch. And we would still dream to the sky. And we would still long, deep within ourselves, for the same silly things we longed for in the 7th grade, when the now we live today was as far away as Dorothy’s Oz When the you we knew were as close as Kansas.

1

There is irony here.

It’s implicit, in this attempt to evaluate what is inherently intimate,

What may not be interpreted by an incomer

At least, not interpreted well.

Pale shimmers of syllables seen solely by one;

A brilliant idea, or ill-conceived inanity?

2

Quixotic.

God, I want it, but it’s quelled.

Amidst fearful fidgets, persnickety pizzazz

Quintessential, yes, but juxtaposed.

Against hoards of disentangled dissidents.

Frippery and fop, freewheeling, fun.

Different.

Frankly, I’m flummoxed.

By how perfectly poised, yet predisposed to disregard are my peers.

By how skittish, shrinking, shy am I.

3

Sordid scandals of silk and surmise

Sacrilegious sacrifice for a sumptuous surprise

Serenity? In this economy?

Superstition parts for sensation,

Stepping on cracks to satisfy the impulse.

In summary, my seraglio is in the summery.

Up on scaffoldings, in the sun,

A pastiche of sex and self-esteem,

Dangling snake-limbs for the sense, the stimulation.

A panchaea of superfluous satisfaction.

4

Metagenesis: the blooming backlash of the faint of heart

Hesitation in flora to devote to a doctrine,

Magnifying (magnificently!) by means of generational flipping and flopping.

How gloriously the most gentle of germs dedicates genome to doubt,

Dividing and multiplying parthenogenetically on Mondays,

and from gametes to growth by Friday.

5

Abracadabra!

Restrained alliteration makes way for rhetorical rambunctiousness.

Unravel the riddle, and what do we uncover?

That the act isn’t yet up.

We revel in ambiguity, the rabble in uncertainty,

As the ragtag rapscallions we

Resurrect antediluvian arts for your amusement.

Appreciate it yet?

Rather rest by rivers, riparian rippling?

Or adopt with us the absurd?

6

Your lachrymose limbs, broken and lacking,

Occupy worlds invisible, in which licentious bacteria breathe.

Bioluminescence blooms in our veins,

Lives of vivacity and vigor live within our bones.

Our blood once lured beasts obsolete,

Orchestrated opulence in vessels of power.

Our molecules occurred at the beginning of the world,

And will leave only at its last word.

7

This nacreous kind of violence--

Tantalizing treacle turning noxious on the tongue

Never to be noticed, not truly, not in time

Till chamberlains turn to a torrid cacophony of venom.

It is kismet for those to turn to cinders,

Once verbalized complaints are created,

But temper is tricky, and conduct, all too commonplace

To take note of these contrived corpses.

8

Effervescent

Understanding

Understanding, uncommon, unassuming

An erstwhile umbrella, under which you may harbour,

Under which you may rest.

An effervescent doze.

Anon, a fortress, for the meek for a week.

Protected from misanthropes until the end.

Understanding.

Efflorescence.

9

An instance of wake within lethargy

Iridescence on the edges of life, isolated not from life or limb entirely.

Weaving, waving, etching imagination onto sentience, illumination onto the veil

An invented impression interrupted by lucidity

Lucidity injected with a wistful wish

Zigzagging betwixt void and zenyth

Words omitted to the zenzizenzizenzic

There’s a certain swimming silence in our minds.

I can hear it, slinking softly sideways from student to student,  heavy hearts hefting, not hurting,          just                  exhausted

“eccentricities” she says and I agree Scents of summer tentatively tiptoe through the halls Sun screen        chlorine regret                indecision Simple? Hardly.  More harrowing, helping heavenly hell-beasts, we, essence of something smaller, cannot tell between tales and truth

(they laugh)

“Silly students!” they will say. They won’t want our meticulous madness, our mesmerizing modicums of mounting mediocrity. My, my! How hypocritical.

When you, tidy tittering teachers, tell sorrowful stories dancing dreadfully near dangerous of success from simpering simpletons but only if they’d buckle down!

“Focus,” she says, then, “Foci,” which begs the question: Can one pluralize a concept so profound yet not found even once within these walls? I say why even try? We memorize, contemporize, prioritize grades over health, over sleep, over worked, overstressed, overdressed, and, for what?

Enough!

Enough of these cyclical graphings, going in fruitless circles, sadly spinning about with no time left to think, ponder, learn?

Lilypads

Drift on the surface of a smooth, green lake

Waiting for someone to break the stillness

There is a piano floating on a lake.

The keys are half-submerged, and the fish are tapping out licks of jazz.

Drunken melodies bob across its wake as the Steinway cuts a path through mangroves.

The lightest of sun showers tickles the strings, fills the body with liquid light.

Minnows make their homes in waltzes that careen and swirl in tiny whirlpools.

An old, three-stringed guitar at the lake’s floor swims along, strummed by strands of seaweed.

Rope swings braid themselves into ballets as the orchestra dives beneath the trees.

Handel would be proud, I thought idly, as a carp finds its calling in composition.

His dream finally realized, in a molding, soaked coat of what once was probably ivory but is now something akin to barnacle,