knit and purl

knit and purl

................

I was walking around cold.

My spinning yarn unable to hold the knots

Necessary to complete the row.

My skin craved a cloak, not knowing it was already coated

Saturated and dripping through the pores from the toxins

Deep underneath implanted and growing roots

and sprouting up through the flesh and circumstances

The carotid innocence and cast away hopes

Under the guise of sparkling eyes and faith

What everyone tells you will surely come....someday.

The endless years of freezing and hiding underneath

The soil was dry with no room to move

My ankles cemented by the wispy tendrils holding me down

Head above the murk, I could still dream through clouds

Of despair and supreme solitary - borne of anger

Mostly toward my scars and the ability to keep cutting them open

How I tripped into your lap I am curious to know

The chasm of want I thought to be carefully disguised

Blew wide open and skinned me alive

My aching and wanting rattled through my bones

Shocking me back into possibilities

One light stroke of my hair sent off billions of dormant mines

Still I stood like a soldier, waiting for it to come, bracing

Blasts from up above, or perhaps down below this time?

My heart hoping for peace and final calm

A white flag coming to comfort me and birth

Passions or resurrect lost hopes and dare I say


love.


Only when I was enthralled, even hypnotized by that mirage

They came.

First one, then more.


Into the storm of bullets I still didn't want to believe

I had nearly talked myself out of expecting them

They taunted me and proclaimed their falsehoods

While tricking me into enough doubt, just enough to keep me waiting

So they arrive with special gifts

Just like my fear told me they would

Wrapped in a facade so beautiful

So glimmering, shiny and bright

The textile I had unknowingly crafted in the interim

Took shape and just when I realized


How warm

How soft

How smooth and promising

How comfortable it was


The bullets tore through it

Each knit blowing wide apart

My fingers reaching out aimlessly to grab it, protect it

but

One purl loosened enough to

Unravel all of it in a second

So fast even faster than it was built


My blood pouring through my chest and down

Into the feet sinking back to the bitter dryness

The ugly dank soil and the slimy roots

Wrapping their way higher this time

All the way to my knees

Pulling me back

Crushing my determination

To find some light again


While my dreaming eyes looked skyward

Triumphantly

Demanding to gaze through blinding waters

Simply trying to focus on what was once there

Even if it never was.

V e r t i g o

................

Spinning and twirling and
not finding roots and wanting them, but not knowing if they really exist.
Because how do you know if you never knew and it was all just a dream or a
fantasy or something you read in a book or saw on tv or in the movies up on the
big screen? You're supposed to identify and be the girl, the dame, the
bombshell and then what? Then you're stuck with that and it is a lonely place.
Because you want to connect and you want to be loved like the bombshell, but
you think too much.



Then you wonder to yourself, if that bombshell even ever gets love or has roots
or if she's just a prop. She's told what to do and put in her place and never
valued for too long because she's just wallpaper, she's just a prop, she's just
entertainment.



Even she doesn't know what roots are because she's fighting the longing and the
disappointment of never being something, never being real, never being valid or
taken seriously. Never seriously special in that fall through the floor,
hand-in-hand, don't ever let go of me and I got you too and we're together
against the world kind of way. The one time she found it and the one time she
let go and the one time she tried, no every time she tried, it was a tsunami of
confusion and disappointment.



She's still on the big screen and she's still beautiful and that is what she
has and that is really nothing, but she'll keep on going and trying in her
little comfort box and let them define it, let them make her and mold her and
be entertained by her.



She's still got the box when she goes home, she's still got the box and maybe
it is filled with the answers and they are small answers to larger problems and
temporary love and temporary relief. She holds on to the box because it worked
for someone else didn't it? It is all just a fantasy but she keeps hoping and
tries not to pray too much for fear of disappointment, but there's only one
thing she can count on being consistent.



It can't be held inside that box, but she still holds onto it and she slowly
walks to the parlor and gets dressed and puts on her face just to face another
day up on the big screen.....