Calculator

I glance at my screen and scribble down the answer.  Then I hesitate and check again, finger rapidly punching keys.  I smile and continue on with my homework.  A face changes, a word darts out.  My eyes glance up.  Indeed.  Once more I check the answer on my screen, type a few more numbers.  Check.  I resume until the person in front of me says something else to change my mind.  And so I continue, checking and rechecking the answer I've concluded for the people around me:  the answer of who they are.

Exploring

Climbing through the pages, sticking picks into the spine.  Discovery takes place with each new letter that I find.  Some books are a gentle hill, sloping through familiar paths; others present steep and exciting drops, treacherous new heights.  I stick a flag in deep as I reach the top.  Done.  Slowly beginning my descent, the flag flickers grimly in the back of my mind, calling like a siren.  The time will come to return to these peaks.  For what foolish climber thinks they can discover all the mountain offers in one trip?

Blossoming Thoughts

I snip and hem, trimming away all that is not quite right in the garden.  A leaf sticks out at the wrong angle.  Clip.  A flower looks close to dying.  Snip.  One too many twigs here.  Clip clip.  Slowly I trim away the garden of my mind, not realizing that soon there will be nothing left.

Txt Msg Poem

Flowers grow in rain and sun, but you know the battle's won, when you find a flower sitting on a rock it's splitting.

Imitated Valentine's Poem

There are worlds in your eyes.
        Have I been there?
               Seen pictures?  I am lost
       -- mapless
            should I look away
         -- but if I do, then I
                 will lose the rest of me.

Sentences of a Dream

I walk across the plush, green hills of my home, my shoes making soft indents in the spongy grass.

All the commotion of the harsh, raucous bangs seems off next to the wispy clouds swirling above.

Self-Portrait

I grew up in a room of colors with fictitious worlds painted on my wall.  In my head more worlds collide; twisting and shifting before my view.  I smile as it consumes my reality, locking away time and holding my attention.  It is my reality.  I frown at the slinking, vaporous blackness hovering just barely out of sight.

The tendrils of darkness reach for me, almost brushing my arm.  My heart thuds and I gasp, pulling away.  My gaze falls back to the soft light coming from the surrounding nations, a refuge from the dark.  The darkness retreats leaving sorrow to fill its place.  Tears briefly sting my eyes and my vision blurs, but I clench my jaw until it passes.  The light worlds spin and their lights dance, once more entrancing me.

Suddenly my eyes jump into focus and I am confronted with sheets of paper and the ink of the book I’m supposed to be reading.  I scan a sentence or two, but it isn’t long before a word catches my gaze.  The word wavers softly.  Something stirs inside me and once more I am back to my worlds of light.  But a tremor runs through me as I realize I’m on wrong side.  The light from my nations twinkle dimly from the far horizon.  Then the fear fades slightly, an unwilling smile twitches my lips as the dark starts to take hold.

I flinch.  Cream paper and hard black words confront and reassure me, but the dark still lingers, waiting.  As it gradually creeps nearer, I plunge into my worlds of light intentionally, fleeing from pursuing Blackness.  The darkness hisses and shrinks away, but it is not without cost.  I watch in dismay as another part of my nation of light is darkened and dragged slowly.

A sharp, piercing, screaming tone penetrates my consciousness.  My worlds vanish, shattered by the ringing bell seizing my attention.  I sigh and stand up.  It is time to create another daydream; one to replace the part of my light nation that is now shadowed, twisted, and grotesque.  I walk the halls, and though it is the same as before, it somehow seems different.  As I walk, passing students and classrooms, I am once more confronted with the question of reality.  My worlds echo inside and my personality swishes and revolves around them.