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

 

Where I strayed only yesterday

It was a black, dark road, if i do recall

where the wind couldn’t rustle the trees at all

and the passers by passed hoping they wouldn’t be brushed

and the roses gleened but had never been touched

There were fruits made of steel swelling from blistered branches

these woods were once ablase by a rogue box of matches

the moon is coated with acid from these parts

where the sounds of the animals can break empty hearts

once there was a lady who thought she’s lost her way

but stumbled on the path she’d intended to take

as she came toward fields where grass glows in the dark

she sighed a great sigh having reached her daring mark

she heard this is where the anguished always come to die

where you’ll never see the stars above the haze about the sky

she thought she could find solace in this sort of toxic space

since the city made her panic from the expression on it’s face

she took a place by gloopy river, spread her skirt upon the rock

she dipped her hand, was made to shiver, a fish her hand did knock

she sang soft and sweetly to cool her pulse of dread

a song marked by abandon to the many listening dead

“lilies never grow where they can not find a spring

birds never land where they can’t see other living things

but i prefer the lifeless for their manners and their fright

i’d rather meet the dead than the living in the night”

upon this scene i stumbled, entranced by the vision of her

she spotted me in the open and i watched her in the blur

she called to me to join her and patted at her side

but i turned and ran, embarrased, for i’d come to the woods to die

written by: Sarah C Louise

Praise

Animals were here before us,

And in the way we model our behaviour after our parents, who also observe the creatures as a study of good life.

There are two creatures I study, contradictingly, intensely:

Ravens and Pups.

Magesty is the Raven, who’s corporeal frame contains thick knowing flesh.

Calmly, the raven permeates the glow of languishing sun in a flash of mortality.

The ravens live in such a way that standing on a hectic road in Clairview is standing on the stage of the MET, and when they make a sound, we listen desperately as we would to a profound scientist in a TED talk.

But the dog is a creature more deserving of praise, though they are as the pine cone in a boreal forest.

They stop to smell the crampt mound of dirt of the lone tree along Jasper, to the begrudging of a defiant woman who takes the opportunity to admire the shoes of a free lady swiftly passing by (a raven woman four inches above cement).

Dog burried in the soiled soil, hunting for indications of other creautures inner workings, suddenly leaps, having discovered! Back to the path, it says in wriggling, and offers a sweet smile to open sky.

Written by: Sarah C Louise.

She enters as an angel; she exits as a monster

A porcelain Gem of hair and heart
The room is warm with a new wind
But the glasses are heavy on raw ridges
And clouds of pink perfume glow goldey
In a haze of flustered fancy.
The cracks in the gem are coated cleverly in cheap paint,
A well rehearsed trick of survival.
But with the rain from tears of jovial juice, the sunset loses its sun and the flaws become the features,
And the cold of the corporeal storm slams shuttering weights between words and simple conversation.
Crowds clutch cups of comfort, pouring their hands into stable suitors, or escaping to bathroom stalls where the air is a sweeter honesty.
How does one run from a stale war?
She seems a thrill to inspire beauty above belief, but became a monster reminder: we are messy.
Written by: Sarah C Louise

What’s in an age?

This is the age of vanity.
We track our progress by approval.
We give up knowing for little, frugal tastes.
We honor our schedules without a trace of identity.
And all the magnets drawing us to offer up our dignity win.
This is the age of idolatry
People distract us from the figures that give us joy.
We base our personalities off another’s employed love.
The possibilities of us embodying the features is enough ultimately.
And to watch another’s abandon is sufficient Gaiety to bring back on Monday’s morning for the doorway conversations.
This is the age of minimal.
It takes so long to get everywhere.
It takes much more to act on the care prescribed.
Letters are a burden, so is honour, so is pride, admittedly.
And though there are those sacrificing all for another’s humanity, there’s too many episodes to go, and too many snacks in the pantry, and too much energy required for every action of every degree.
What magic there would be
if we gave up on money.
Gave up on uppers internally.
Gave up on what anyone else defined as free.
And walked under the sun where it is warm.
By: Sarah C Louise