Plain as Day

Bursts of clarity like shackles

The staggering light of opportunity freezes bones

Yet I know it is possible to walk open paths

Intimidated by those who made their maps early and can navigate deep waters or torrential forests

Without harm or setback

The more we watch the slower we move

And then 20 years into careers finding that we’ve wondered lost in the land we’ve never known

The dream of standing tall through life is a simple direction to youth

And to those who lived a little it’s an affront to pride

“They wouldn’t understand”

But the illogical theory is that of the defence wishing to justify fear while wishing to be free of it

“Pity me for I have never been told the way!”

And who ever was?

We either learn to keep on or learn to occupy the cell

I find I’m swaying in the doorway

Living days of bright decisions, taking charge of my situation

And living days of stagnation, unoccupied like a breathing pause

I never thought I would understand the complication

But it lives beside me at night

The “Don’t do anything hard” impulse,

Becoming as delicious as a Rocket for dinner,

Until I realize it would slowly be my death.

Written by: Sarah C Louise

 

This space

This space

Gradual manifestation of warm

We chose it for the windows

And the Lazy Susan

Wood panelled doors, floors, cupboards, and more

My grandmother would’ve liked the decorative covers on the light switches

There was an aim

Unstated but cemented

We’d hoped to be peaceful together

In our first attempt at the long-haul

Notes in lunches

Sketches on the whiteboard

Hallway hockey with Wicket the Cat

I’ve worked at coming home in many spaces

But cowered to some degree add every interval

If I stretch out here I am not afraid for my life

We’ve made progress there

And in the earthy tone furniture

Also in bringing out grandma’s China on any day

She would have liked that we use her tea pot to make hot Toddy’s

There’s supposed to be two people owning the space

But we’re shy to build a blanket fort just yet

And the humming of the fridge always makes it feel like it’s not ours

Ours would be silent

And sea foam green

And ours would have a purple hallway

Why not?

And ours would constantly have records playing

We forget the player’s there in the corner by the cat tower!

And ours would smell of roses

Not the previous tenant’s patchouly fetish

And ours would be filled with dogs

Not limited to our precious kitty

We’re Link in the Temple of Home

Finally finding the Compass but nowhere near the final test

I know will wake up one morning in the same bed in a different house

With the same cat by a different window

With the same hum from a different fridge

And assume we are dreaming

But for now the floor is hard,

The walls are vertical,

The cat is never quite at ease,

and we are not yet home.

Written by: Sarah C Louise

Dodo

Surrounded by yellow patterns

Shaking night and day

The healthy are on prescribed for their madness who see the sun as gift and delight

We creep in streets and in malls, in schools and in offices

At least for myself I can creep more freely, unbound by punishments dodo knew

Locked up in cages, unoccupied, like larks pride from forests for a grotesque study

I can profess in my world the honest horrors of existing in shackles and face praise for my bravery

How I wish I could have creeped beside dodo, who would’ve understood why the pattern moved

Neither her nor hordes of others were blessed with families with ears and hearts behind their walls

She remained languid in her chamber, views of Ponoka between bars, with grandchildren who carried her image through nightmares and regrets

What was her tournament?

Absence of a pen?

No paints to colour time?

No stage to raise her hands?

She could’ve been free, making her husband pass out and creeping over him without delay (at last!)

Dear innocents! Madness is but a clear view!

The walls are putrid! Society too!

We shouldn’t know cages when we carry bigger truths

The key to depression’s door is acquiring value

Dodo was a prophet with no soapbox for to stand, but if I could have known her we’d have creeped hand in hand

Or perhaps I’d prefer not to say what could have very well been the case: despite our similarities perhaps I would’ve feared her face

I’d like to think that if I made it to Ponoka’s mental hospital we would have sat together and talked about it all

Written by: Sarah C Louise

Taking Time for Another Dream

Ever the wanter

One-sided, tracking my mind toward dreaming

When I see music it makes me long

For all of the moments when I was undone

Getting by is making time

Slotting out a pause to gleen in that bliss

whatever tired promises I make myself,

At least I am making something

Making space

In figurative mind

And actual room

Bursting with aching

When is my chance?

It’s no wonder I’m a maker

Without diligence I am rotten

Withered at the roots

An empty medicine

Trees crying at my site

I know, at least, it is better

That I took a lot of time.

Sleeping through the Revolution

Noiseless number

Minute space

Waking from dreams of edited moments

Laging Saturday

Without the needed space for grounding.

Already, I see the next three years

And I’m tired.

Breadth of thought is the direct decendant of peace

And yet madness is familiar as the Friends theme song.

It is too easy to take a break

And whisper “oh no” as months snap by

Beers and movies

Shows and pizzas

Body unlived,

Wasted, unexercised.

Drained from last-minute McDonalds-lunches.

Spirits feed on air!

But these windows can’t open,

Repairs cost too much.

My heart needs a boost of trust

Art waits for me,

longing for my care,

Colours crying in impassioned outbursts

DRINK ME UP I’M HERE TO DRINK IN

But my imaginings of their ferocity are more exhausting than the trek to get there.

Laziness, poison of the earth,

beauties and riches require effort!

In wallowing I die early

Calling crows to feast quickly,

Begging for purpose I’m too weary to find

Loathing my empty, exhausted mind.

Birds and Pretty Cells

These houses

Warm, with windows evenly dispersed

Experimenting with yellow-tones on stucco

The possibility ot reach out for the hand of a neighbour from fourth-story windows

And chimneys that never chanel smoke

They look idealic

But their polished railings are warts

Perfect house numbers are perfect festering wounds

When they chopped down their trees they ripped out their hearts with a smile

When they filled the facade with imitation stones they boxed themselves in laughing

Yet all I can hear here are birds in ancient branch runways

Chattering about berries and wind

Thriving in what remains

A nest to every canopy

And an obvious absense of plaguing polution (otherwise known as homo sapien)

None with a window cracked to admire the sunday song

None with a camera ready to capture the miracle cleaning

None tending to tired Christmas waste obstructing actual joy

Just the birds and pretty cells

Somehow filling the same street.

Written by: Sarah C Louise

A Morning’s End

Is work my murderer?

A tournequet digging into my spirit?

Thos parts are scraps now for crazed dogs

I seem to recall

Faint as ocean horizon

The energy was sharp!

Tangible.

Without withstanding time as a factor of capacity.

I would dream worlds.

My limbs are forgotten.

Stiff in brain.

Over-operation.

I built some buckets for collecting memories

They knock overy at times though!

Would  I ever know passion from my spirit again?

It feels like the myth of Utopia:

Nice and nothing

My vision burns with fatigue

After sleeping 12 hours

Hot and hindered

I used to be unusual!

Now I have netflix in my schedule!

And can lose a day looking at the sun.

Will life ever burn lead-white?

Will dreams ever actualize the way my lover lays with my in the night?

Will I ever have anything to say ever again?

This is the sort of problem that makes doctors laugh and babies cry.

This is the sort of horror which makes global warming a project instead of a crisis.

This is the fire that kills

The sore that festers

The thought that poisons.

I suppose the cure could be poetry,

If I can keep this up.

I can dig through store toward daylight

I might be able to slash shadows into pieces.

There could also be a revolution if I eat vegetables instead of hashbrowns.

The thing that truly dampens is options.

anything can happen or has happened.

So much occurs or can occur.

And yet I start my stale day with familiar toast and comforting coffee and words I wrote in four other books.

What makes this time different is that I am older

And I give one shit less

and have seen myself dig through metal before instead of stone.

And came across true love when I was certain I had not had loveable in my DNA

And pushed through on projects slightly after hvaing nothing to show.

Maybe my time is going to be later

Once I’ve dug through time itself

Or maybe my time will come when wormies make a feast on my flesh.

Or maybe my time is now

With this pink pen and this page and this toast and this coffee and this wondrous through that my skill of managing is my power,

Because, through all of the awful days, art has somehow prevailed.

Against all odds, Sarah C Louise made art, and some if it rocked the wave-lengths,

And some of it met only tired minds

But at least she didn’t stop

No matter how much she longed to be devoured by nothing

Given to the air for Emily to hear

Sweet Emily

You cracked grail of wonder:

How glad I am that you found pen and page often.

I see your thoughts speak between familiar letters

And know myself for it.

Life bodes less chaos, for you paint tail and head of strange visions that form flesh and freedom

Great muse and doctor!

Sewing oddities and perfections with nib and ink

I wish to know how you would have laughed with morning robins at the sun’s glare on shallow pools!

Or how you might have prepared your tea with chilled hands!

Or how your monstrous ideas unraveled between your eyes as you looked upon ordinary stones!

My worth overthrown by each one of your hundreds,

I’ll never dream in your quality,

But languish in your shadow like dog without leash, lovingly lingering without command.

Forever I will be your student, simple as I am!

Forever, mother metaphor, I will hunt for your truth with heart and finger.

Made mostly of magic,

more mysterious than most,

my glass is yours

in an immortal toast.

Written by: Sarah C Louise

Painted She.

I think, this morning, that I will paint a picture

In imaginative brushes and exposing colours.

One that describes it all and yet looks like a bundle of dried branches.

Abstract.

You ready?

Let’s begin.

First the yellow, because bright beginnings feel like strong ends.

I stroke face and nose until all I see is lisa simpson glaring.

Now for red

Bright as well, but bursting too.

Hot with suggestion and light with satisfaction.

What would swirling strokes say of nose and lips?

There, she is starting to call, fighting between fibres and primers for identity.

We are on the right track.

And now for purples, because they always suggest long-avoided desires,

And isn’t life just one big long-avoided desire???????

We can see definition now.

Can’t you see it?

Form defined by shadow.

She is sitting. She is wishing.

What is that question shreiking through her eyes?

She has been wrong, not wronged as we had always thought.

Blues will guide us now, for when trouble strikes blues carry knowing of despairity.

What is blue without red?

Dismay.

But here we see something colder:

she is looking at her probability.

It is likely she will never move from her place. And it is more likely that anyone who sees her believes she never will.

But blue.

In blue we see tense muscles, the first clench, and face hot with weight,

Pounds in skies and water in winds.

And in her questioning we see lift.

Inevitably, we wonder: where can she escape to? How can she progress from shackles and confines and straps and disgusting doubt?

Keys don’t exist, and clues are lies.

But we sign the painting with one final stroke.

Here in the figure we see signs of “hope”.

Written by: Sarah C Louise

I Don’t Want to Look There

crazy lies

wide open in the living room

i never saw that the carpet wasn’t clean

we washed our dishes after our meals, but the food was soiled from the dinner conversation

soup of tears

furiously tearing steak from t-bone

delighting in the bright flesh

we spent Christmas in a veil

hearing the story of the birth of Christ from a man who’d never read the bible

the aching confusion

are they my family or am i in danger

are we here for each other or stuck here together

in gelatin memories

she tells me it’s abuse when i describe standard story-time

she tells me it’s trauma, how my father tucked me in at night

she tells me my instinct is to freeze, like a rabbit, when i describe the first time i was touched

the answers are in Sunday Family Meetings and my lost blankie and the routine trial for exposing who “hid” the remote

but i don’t want to look there

where light is pale and placid

where the door to my room was an open invitation i didn’t send

where i thrashed together the chipped and crusty character i refer to as my personality, when asked

not until i build my spine

Unfortunately, though, we are low on time and i’m not covered

written by:Sarah C Louise