Cacti Chapter Three

The clouds finally open up on Odessa, Texas, releasing thousands if not millions of tiny kamikaze droplets hurtling to the parched ground below. This is rain. Not a shower or a drizzle, but the rain that Odessa waits for every year. It will continue to fall for hours to come, and once back in '96 it lasted days. That was a particularly bad year. This year is a bit more mild, so people only expect about 10 to 15 hours of downpour. The amazing part is, as soon as you step out your door and open your screen, you would swear it hadn't bled an ounce.

The ground eats it all.

The Old Man sat and listened to the rain, even though there was no window to hear it fall against. There was no ventilation shaft through which any outside event could echo in. There was no orifice in the entire room, save for the door, which remained closed and did not even come close to fresh air when opened. The only piece of furniture was the chair, occupied by it's final resident. It was an old featherback chair, but no singular detail would constitute its age. There were no tears, and no patches. It did not complain when the Old Man shifted. The chair simply maintained its place and duty in the universe, not uttering a sound. Yet after constant exposure the chair seemed to almost scream old, and then drive whatever connoisseur that happened to be inspecting it mad from lack of reason.

But no one inspected the chair.

It was the Old Man's chair.

Ya dig?

White spotted fur from some larger feline ran up the sloping sides. Perhaps some barbarous caveman had slain its original owner high up on a mountain people now climbed for fun. Perhaps the caveman wasn't killing for food or defending himself either. Perhaps every other caveman, cavewoman, and cavechild had either left the mountain or starved. And perhaps this one man was left, blind by bloodlust, killing his opponent only to stand over the body and savor the steam rising from it.
The Old Man leaned forward. The red cushion underneath him bulged back but gave no sound. He rested his elbows just above his knees. and for but a moment froze. At only a glance it could have been possible that the end of those armrests were skulls and the Old Man some horrid cannibal king, but of course not. This is the new millennium, we have the Food Network to tell us what to eat. His left hand twitched once. Still.

Twice. Still.

Slowly his left hand glides through nothingness to his right, and begins to lightly trace the veins under the skin on top of his hand. His eyes begin to lose focus, and he feels every curve and rise. Back and forth his left hand scans the other. Up and down, back and forth. Eventually he turns his right hand over and begins tracing the veins under his forearm. Up and down. Back and forth.

The Old Man sat in the darkness, listening to the rain.

And waited.

---
The smell prevailed over all of Vincent's thoughts, and he barely made it through 2nd Period before he hung up on learning for the day. He cut out through the double doors with the crash bars in the back and halfway expected to see Tommy standing (or levitating) there like some cheap action movie scene where the gun-toting hero finds just the subtly-powerful monk he needs to stop the bald antagonist with all the financial connections.
Instead he found Todd. Again.
Todd Asnew had invited himself to replace Tommy after his disappearance. After all, their names were almost alike, right? That was his introduction. Vincent found that to be a profoundly rude thing to do, but discovered that in addition to a lack of manners, Todd also possessed an indefatigable will and refused to leave any situation he found himself a part in. He let Vincent by only to bounce around and badger him from every other direction as they strided down the sidewalk.
"Didja hear? Tommy's back! Can you believe it?"
"Yes."
"Well aren't you going to go see him?"
"That's just what I was getting around to."
"Oh, well I heard he was wearing some Dali-Llama cloak thing."
"Yep."
"What would he be doing with a cloak like that?"
"Wearing it I guess."
"Very funny. So, do you know where he is?"
"I figured he was still at Avery's."
"Yeah of course! You all used to go there almost every day! Good thinking!" Todd broke off into a run, his busted Keds creating little clouds on the ground like an astronaut with each landing.
That was a lie.
Vincent knew Tommy wasn't still at Mr. Avery's, he had visual proof of the fact. He didn't know where Tommy actually was, but felt confident that he had sent Todd to the one place he wasn't. Vincent thought that bringing Todd to Tommy might make him disappear again.

So he walked.
He walked up the main street in Cosavo with his hands in his pockets, departing only so he wouldn't pass in front of Avery's. As he left the store behind, he thought he saw Todd sitting on a stool drinking a chocolate shake. He knew he would not be bothered again.
His confidence in Tommy's locating powers began to waver once school let out and was almost gone around the time every other Cosavo family was sitting down to a Cosavo dinner of Hungry Man and the Wheel. The first stars were appearing in the pale sky when Vincent finally found Tommy not ten steps behind him, walking in his footprints.
"Did you find it?" Vincent heard himself ask almost involuntarily. He hadn't been thinking about it, but now the question seemed to seethe and writhe around in his mind as if he had been calculating it for years.
A smile began to spread across Tommy's face, one so obvious Vincent thought for an instant that Tommy may have returned crazier than before. Then:
"Yes."

---
The light continued to fade as the two friends stood like gunslingers at showdown. Slowly the smile left Tommy's face. What replaced it was a look of dawning urgency, and as he drew Vincent through the night his eyes began to betray the same darting attention field rabbits exhibit all their short lives. Vincent hoped that all the random directions would eventually lead them to one of their homes. Instead what came up before him in a surprising shaft of open moonlight where they stopped was another flat patch that would normally be passed over like every other square inch of public Cosavo, save for the little white flag flapping with the night breeze.
It was the place where they had buried the bird all those seasons back. It seemed impossible that the little white marker Vincent had stolen from someone's property line was still in the ground, but there it was, shooting back and forth in it's small patch of free motion with the speed of a hummingbird. Tommy seemed to wait for the location to drip its meaning into Vincent's mind, then pulled him down to sit opposite him a little ways away from the flag.
He hadn't noticed just how haggard Tommy had become until they both sat Indian-style on the hard earth. There were lines on his face that should not predominate so much on someone his age. His eyes still had that genius gleam and secrecy, but now they were laced with an expression of unwinding, of pushing a degree that you can't keep up and know you won't have to. If only he had stuck with the oboe.
"Clarence."
"Clarence?"
"The bird. I forgot to tell you but I named him Clarence before I killed him. I don't know if he had a bird name among his bird friends, but I called him Clarence. It would've been a terrible thing to die without having a name, don't you think?"
"Terrible thing, " was all Vincent could reply. Now Tommy's whole body seemed to shake with its condition.
"You...You have to go to. You have to s-. You have to see it, " sweat began to trickle down his cheeks but his eyes never left Vincent's face, save one glance into the night. Then his next train of thought came to him, " I don't mean to say that you have a choice really, that I'm asking you to go wondering into the desert and disappear like I did. No, no, I highly doubt yours will be the same as mine."
"My what?"
"-All I'm saying is that you need to get ready. Prepared, mentally. I'd wager that some pretty messed up stuff is going to happen soon, and I-" again a glance over his shoulder, outside their oval of communication, "You just need to be ready. For anything." Something from his unknown past reawakened in Tommy, and his face cracked a wry smile. "Just remember, 'At the end of the world is a bundle of sticks.' "
"What?"
"A bundle of sticks."
Tommy let his body relax and fall back a bit, and even let out a few chirps of laughter. Vincent was, like most of his recent history, at a loss. At least one of them got it.
"Okay, can you find your way home from here?"
"Yeah. Remember, I've had another three years in this town while you've been off destinying or whatever."
"Very true. " He smiled, and they parted.

---
Tommy didn't linger on his way home, but his didn't sprint there either. He took time to catch a glimpse of the moon through the cloud cover, and once he paused to peek in on a family that still had their lights on. He let his hands rest in the numerous folds of his most recent attire, and anyone that saw him (though no one did) would've pegged him as content in an instant. And all the time under his breath he muttered with that same unbelieving smile, " A bundle of sticks. "
He was waiting on the steps when Tommy came in sight of his house. He had removed his sunglasses and slid them into his shirt pocket, though it was safe to assume that he had worn them until the last shed of sunlight had been phased out. Now his dust-powdered shoes kicked a bit as he sat up, for he had been laying with his upper body on the porch. Then he was fully upright, and saved Tommy the last few feet by calmly coming up to meet him.
" I'm sorry. I know people must be thrilled that I'm back, but I still don't play oboe for strangers."
"I don't want to hear you or your stinking oboe. You know good and well why I'm here."
"Nooo, I know good and well what you're going to do, but I haven't the slightest clue why you're here. Do you see the difference?"
"There is no difference."
Tommy let out a sigh and acquiesced to the moment. He lifted his hands, palm-up, in front of the man and smirked mildly.
"A bundle of sticks."
His parents found his limp body a few feet from their steps in the morning, his necked snapped. There was no trace of the man that nobody saw. When Vincent heard, because everything travels fast in a small town, he wasn't prepared. He wasn't ready. He sat and cried, and thought about Clarence.

Point.

You may think that there is something wrong with me. You may despise my attitudes, my beliefs, even my life. You may strive to have nothing to do with me, and wish I were to disappear altogether. But know this: Before all of this and forever will I be prepared to march to the gates of hell and beyond for you.

The Cacti Won't Serve Me Tequila (Con't)

He found his was to his locker, and then to the door of room 216.

Mrs. Haymaker didn't make him explain himself. Rather, she muttered a curt remark as he slipped into his seat without turning from the board. He had missed half of a lecture on the hazards and problems inherent with nuclear technology. No great loss, the subject was not new to him and Vincent thought that he should have stayed at the stoplight a little longer to see if anything else actually would occur. Invariably his eyes drew out the window.

And centered on Tommy.

Vincent didn't blink or rub his eyes in disbelief. It was perfectly possible that Mike could have gotten away from Mr. Stevens, although the need to escape was incompatible with Mr. Stevens' simplistic and kindhearted attitude towards life. Perhaps he just let him go. Was that so much of a stretch to believe? No more than Tommy being on the run from a man who's one pride in life was never having a spill on aisle 4.

Tommy hadn't changed out of his morning apparel, although the cloth was now pulled up and over his shoulder and he was no longer sweating. Vincent admired his face, particularly because it had a look of such serenity and sadness he would not have thought Tommy capable of. Then his lips pursed and he could've spoken or just mouthed the word, Vincent couldn't tell twenty feet up and a pane of glass apart, but they brought every thought back that should have stayed buried, like digging a time capsule up early only to find it infested with black widow spiders.

The word was shangri-la.

----2-----

To say that Vincent was Tommy's only friend in his early years would be a lie. Tommy had done something with every one of the Cosavo kids at least once, and most enough things to be called a friend by them, but he never spoke about shangri-la to any of them. Only to Vincent, and always to Vincent. Vincent never spoke of it to anyone else either, not feeling it his place to do so. It was just Tommy's thing, being a prodigy and having a destiny.

"No they got the name right but that's about it," he told Vincent once while out on his porch when the weather had just begun to cool off. Vincent had raised the issue that shangri-la wasn't real, and even if it was he didn't know what destiny it could offer, and Tommy had kindly pointed out that the historian's had no idea what they were talking about.

"Oh it's beautiful all right, but it's not even in the mountains! At least I don't think it is," his voice faded as he watched the moths and flies mindlessly barraging the lantern hanging just by his old screen door with the hole in the bottom mesh from his forward roll when he thought the house was on fire.

"How do you know if you've never been?"
"Because it's my destiny."
"Why can't your destiny be in the mountains?"
"It could be, but it isn't."
"How do you know it's not in the mountains then?"
"Because it's my destiny."

Frequently Vincent would just give up fishing for a deeper answer and just let Tommy watch the lantern. Other times he would go into the conversation determined to give Tommy a new destiny, one that would get him out of Cosavo and get him happy. It wouldn't be that difficult if Tommy would just play for the right people. He was a prodigy because like all good prodigies he did something easier and quicker than eveyone else who had to spend years leaning the trade. Tommy's thing turned out to be the oboe. He could do the whole playing-after-one-listen thing, and he could sight read flawlessly, but his real standout talent came out in his original pieces, which he never wrote down and never played twice. Of course his parents had pursued his gift mercilessly, but not without a staggeringly difficult problem. Tommy absolutely refused to play for any man in a suit who came by to hear him. Then, he stopped playing for any man who came by in normal clothes bought from a store Cosavo didn't have. Finally he just stopped playing for anyone who wanted him to, and every time a note sounded through the house there would be a mad scrambling to find and start taperecorders to prove his ability. And it wouldn't be hard to write his own ticket either, as apparently the last generation had produced a dazzlingly low number of professional oboists. Of course Tommy had a very simplistic reason for dashing his parents hopes of making their son and their name famous.

"That's not my destiny. You know that."
"Why can't it be your destiny though?"
"Because it isn't."
"You just don't want to succeed."
"What is success?"
"Success is doing what you love and being happy and hopefully making enough money to cover all that."
"How could I be happy if I didn't follow my destiny?"
"Well you're happy when you play, aren't you?"
"Of course."
"Then why wouldn't you be happy playing later?"
"I would be, but that's not my destiny."
"You're insufferable."
"Then why are you still here?"
"Because it's my destiny."

No matter how many times Vincent ended the conversation with that, Tommy always laughed. And the laugh was always different than his laugh at other jokes, and yet consistantly different. Vincent played it as just one more mysterious facet of Tommy Womack.

If this was all that Tommy and Vincent had said about Tommy's destiny, then there would be no jump in Vincent seeing the shape of the words again. Unfortunately, it wasn't. He quickly produced a sharpie from his backpack and scribbled a large blog, then brought the blob to his nose and stared at the preexisting blue lines on the paper.

"Excuse me, Vincent, but why is it that you simply cannot wait to get high until after my class?"

His eyes peeked over the top of the paper, then he crumpled it and stuffed it deep in his pack. The lecture resumed and the sharpie idea had failed. The forgotten smell permeated his thoughts now and forced him to remember.

He remembered the sound of powdered ground under his feet, which was unusual because he had never thought about it before. His whole life had been on dry, dead, thirsty ground. He remembered the wind forcing his hair down into his eyes, and his terrible need of a haircut, but all of his shirts were dirty and he didn't want to be itchy for an entire weekend. Tommy hadn't come to school that morning, and Vincent had been en route to see him when there he was, a full two miles from his house. He was standing with his back to Vincent, and his head was bowed. Vincent altered his course to meet him but before he did Tommy took off around a corner. Vincent ran after him, but Tommy was fast when he wanted to be. Out of breath, Vincent decided to wait for him at his house. Actually, Tommy had beaten him there and was facing his house, propped up with his forehead against the peeling siding. Vincent approached him cautiously this time, but he was stoic. He lightly touched Tommy on the shoulder, and he at first stayed as he was, then whirled around and fell with his back smacking the building. In his hand he held a dead bird. It was small enough to fit in his palm, and its head was absent. Blood filled Tommy's left hand and was now forming a small bruise on the ground. Tears were streaming down his face as he struggled to speak.

"I-it was still a-a-live when I saw you, so I had to run. I couldn't do it with you there, I couldn't!" His head fell to his chest and he lifted both of his hands up to Vincent as if offering him the dead thing. He noticed that the missing bird's head had been in Tommy's right hand, its black eyes casting no glare from the sun. He was speechless. And he couldn't look away from those eyes. So gone. So empty.

"I had to do it!" he screamed at Vincent, "I had to!"
"Wh-"
"I had to!"
"But wh-"
"I HAD TO!" his head dropped again as the sun started to drop and the first of the moths began to appear around the lantern. No one said anything. Then:

"I had to be comfortable with death. It is my destiny. I am sorry for the bird, but I have to be okay with this."

---

Vincent spent that night with Tommy. They buried the bird where he had caught it, and Tommy washed his hands and the spot by his house before his parents came home. Tommy's room was panted the shade of navy that he felt was closest to the sky at night, and for his last birthday he had requested a skylight. He almost never spoke after the night fully came down around them, and just lay listening to the stars converse. Vincent's eyes were almost permanantly shut when Tommy said to no one in particular.

"I think I killed her."
"Killed who?"
"My sister."

If the world was a perfect place full of uncrushed violets and white wedding gowns, Tommy would have been the Womack's second child. As God willed it he wasn't. Stacy Womack came out of her mother's womb and onto this earth as cold as the waiting room her father paced around and around in.

"You didn't kill her."
"Yeah, I think I did."
"How could you?"
"I think she had to die so that I could go to shangri-la."
"That doesn't make sense."
"I think God asked her if she wouldn't mind and she died."
"It wasn't your fault."
"I hope I can make it and prove her right."
"What?"

It was the first time Vincent had ever heard Tommy express anything but certainty about his destiny, and also his last because when he turned his head Tommy was fast asleep and somewhere else.

-----chapter 3 under constuction-------

Wish #388

Maybe one day

I will get to see her eyes

Up close

Before I close mine

After Rose

Take a gun,
To the battlefield,
March for fun,
Show off that gun you wield,
Take a bow,
When you are good and healed,
And for those that aren't,
And those that won't,
I will write you rose after rose,
After rose.

Waveright

Who I am,
Can't see,
Can't hear,
Can't speak,
About anything,
With and degree of certainty,
Who I am,
Has no idea,
Of even my own thought patterns,
Distrusting,
Misleading me,
Hopeful,
Cursed under a ship while the waves rock,
The lightning,
Make me rise,
Clenched willpower,
Misleading me,
To believe I am strong,
I am strong,
To take on You,
In your own ship and crew,
I'm sure you wouldn't tell me that,
We are mapless and forlorn,
Spread about but do you,
Feel,
Anything?

I imagine it,
That,
You close,
Then swept away,
Apathy spiking drinks,
Secretes up through the earth,
Her own gift to ease man with his heavens,
His passions and loves,
Misleading me,
But it's easy,
It's so easy,
To believe in it,
That,
Her,
All spent on a park bench,
Can you stand it?
Can you swim?
With the earth,
The fireflies and judges,
To make right,
Everything,
Misleading me,
To null that,
It,
Me,
Me,
Me,
Please never me,
To sink ships with deceitful lighthouses.

The Cacti Won't Serve Me Tequila Part One

There are things that are worth it. There are people to die for, and there are moments that deserve the whole of one's effort. There are times when the scales don't balance out at all, and you just go with it. Screw scales. There are things that are right. There are things that are worth it.

---

Vincent was the first one to see the new Tommy Womack. Well, there is a slight possibility that Mrs. DeVae saw him on one of her frequent peeks out into the world of the living, but one of the downsides to being a recluse is the inability to tell anyone of any perculiar findings one may happen to lay eye on. And surely animals would have had to watch the child slowly making his was towards civilization, if only for the interest in a potential feast. It's a wonder he wasn't jumped by an especially bold Diamond Currant snake or even an impatient vulture. In fact, it would be a while before anyone even had the idea to ask him where he came from or what he came out of.

As things fell, Vincent was the first to lay eyes on the long lost prodigy of Cosavo. His jeans were blown almost entirely white from the sand his bare feet currently advanced upon, but they were about the only clothes Vincent knew. Some type of cloth was draped around his midsection, but it most certainly wasn't the cotton tee that all the Cosavo brawlers sported when it got "dog hot". Tommy was also completely bald, a less than understandable change from the unkept blonde locks he had previously sported from birth. His chest, still not fully through wrestling with the tail ends of puberty, shone with sweat like just about every other part of his exposed body. And he was marching. Not the military style, arms and legs straight march, but a flawless pace nonetheless, each step overtaking exactly the same amount of distance as the previous. If he kept up, he would walk right through a stop sign and then right through Vincent.

That was, if he kept up. It is imagineable that Tommy did not forsee Penelope Kepler screaming at the top of her 12 year old lungs and Mr. Benson shouting with his 58 year old pipes that the guru looked uncannily like that Womack boy what disappeared back then, and that Stevens should stop his sweepin for just a minute to come and see. Vincent followed the sound trail as it unfolded, all the time glancing back and finding Tommy just a few paces closer, until Stevens hoisted him up with one arm and ran back into his store with Tommy so limp over his shoulder he could have been paralyzed.

Confident that no one else would be wandering out of the abyss that morning, Vincent upped his pace so that he would just be late enough to miss all the names before his own on roll call.

I Bet You Know You Don't Know

She struts,
Alone in her room,
Back and forth,
Back and forth,
Around her twin bed,
Reeling,
At the future,
There's everything she can do,
About it.
She windowshops her dreams,
On a very crowded sidewalk,
Making it happen,
Trying it on,
Bullets don't phase,
This one,
Just One.
She is BEAUTIFUL,
And I struggle,
Hoping and not believing,
Of some weakness,
That would make her need me.
Dark hair,
Life's Eyes,
And here I shuffle,
Making sand castles on everyone's beaches.

(Dedicated to Fran for calling me up out of the blue and giving me a literal need to write something new)

Look At Me I'm So Brave!

So scared,
It was for nothing,
So scared,
It will all fall through,
So,
Scared,
It will never happen at all,
So Scared,
They were all kidding,
So scared,
The crazies aren't crazy,
So scared,
This isn't a tunnel,
So scared,
It will drag,
It will drag,
It will drag,
So scared,
And doing nothing to show it.

Round 12

Raise your hand if this weekend is throwing as many punche at you as it seems to be at me. Okay, now raise your hand if you deserve them as much as me. Sorry hands.

When I Dream

The impossible,
The irrational,
Love,
Comradery,
Destiny,
All dreamt in their own times,
So much brighter,
More guilded than what,
My eyes forsee,
But closed,
There is such a thing as hope,
A singular silhouette,
Projecting,
From a top I cannot see,
But the mound,
Man,
Slumped over himself and all history,
Look (Love) above!
Look on what has overcome!
All the years,
Centuries,
Of doubt and apathy,
Unlocked only when,
Separated from his kind,
Man drifts,
Fumbles for one of the ways,
To this creature,
Dreamer of all dreams,
Down off his mound,
(For he was formed of it)
Settled in a mammoth,
Unending observatory,
Double library,
With all the pages self-authored,
Here he tells me,
Enthralled of his life,
Takes me in,
Becoming a part,
A bird,
A pirate,
Anything imaginable,
And more,
For a time,
Before the books close,
The eyes open,
Mortal once more,
Living out the day,
Till next night,
Next unending,
Ever cherished,
Dream.

Is It Time?

Faltered,
The hesitant step,
Waiting too long,
The perfect,
Simplistic burden,
Of never giving up,
Blazing a path that isn't there,
Only seeing trees,
Tall evergreens,
Traced with falling snow,
Imagine her at the edge,
Imagine everything that keeps,
Falling,
Wanting to fall with,
Finally discovering what waits at the bottom,
Broods,
Over things dreamt in a deep sleep,
Is it time to wake up?
No, not quite yet,
Reflect,
Buried in the snow,
Nothing moves,
Speaks,
Listens,
But the sky,
Crying clean,
Growing old itself,
Thin,
Forever widowed from the earth,
The expanse,
We are doomed to inhabit,
None to low,
Nor high,
Why are we allowed to be,
Alone,
To that depth,
The Optimists are waning fast with the moon,
Is it time to wake up?

Ramblings #2

The little wisp,
Upturn of hair at the very end,
I fight with it,
Plead on mental knees,
But still it entrances,
Captivates,
Lures,
Me to a losing gamble,
I am a fool,
To be snared like this,
Foolish
Delirious boy,
Yet I sit,
Stand,
Float here,
With my knowledge,
Tending to it,
Like a windowsill fern,
With plenty of sunlight,
Bright and green and lush,
But for the wind,
Ever faithful,
Honest wind,
Will knock and shatter,
The little clay pot,
The wisp of hair,
And with my knowledge,
I wonder,
Doesn't the plant live on?

Amnesia

I have forgotten,
how complicated things are,
how hard it is to comprehend,
and how many things you could really be saying.
I am lacking,
that desire,
Need,
for fulfillment from others.
I have the sea,
the sounds of crashing waves,
hunting gulls,
blazing wind,
I have the feel of wet sand,
Sinking,
and the hard mountain rock.
I am, for lack,
simpler,
basic,
ecstatic,
at all I have to find,
and share,
if you will have it.

Update

Oh, and just in case anyone's wondering, the novel is NOT dead, on the contrary it has just been given a surge forward and the future seems promising! (as far as this level of writing goes of course) Unfortunately I don't plan on posting any of it so you'll have to AIM me for excerpts (all 4 people who read this, you know my AIM sillies.)
~bluez

Dropping the Ball

I love,
the failures that I find,
myself committing hourly,
daily,
annually.
they bring me closer to earth,
sinking my feet below the soil,
humbly cutting tender flesh,
on jagged rocks that have never seen,
light.
remember every mistake you committed,
when we made a decision,
firm resolution to get it right,
and we are,
getting it right,
right up to our necks in life,
choking on laughter,
breeds tears,
of experience.
I think I would like to succeed,
sometime.
now I'll play with the children,
outside accomplishments,
and wonder,
at everyone and everything,
all stars in the night sky.

Noor's Super Awesome Cloud Adventure

The following is dedicated to a fellow lover of love, liver of life, and dreamer of things far below what will be the least of her accomplishments:

This is a story,
The story.
Of a girl.
Noor.
Noor=girl.
In the middle of her sandwich,
When It called,
It
It
It called.
Time to go,
They all said "no!"
But It said "go!"

She went.

Above the sky,
She took care of the foster children there,
The stars and planets,
They were very appreciative,
Even the sun,
No longer the brightest,
Was content to foil this girl,
But It said "go!"

She went.

To the natural nature,
The green stuff,
Dirty Earth.
She put out forest fires,
Told the rest of the wildlife that in fact many people could prevent forest fires,
Revolutionizing the preservation effort,
But It said "go!"

She went.

"Under the Sea",
Gave that lobster to a Maine fisherman,
Then went under the Oceans,
Renewed the Great Barrier Reef,
Tamed the Stingray menace now friend,
But It said "go!"

She went.

To another world,
Would they like her?
Would there be a they?
There was.
A They.
They liked her and,
As before,
They loved her,
And she healed them too,
Without doing a thing,
But It said "go!"
She said "no!"
And the echo,
The chorus from behind,
Was unanimous.
All the love,
From two whole worlds,
Now lay focused onto this one girl,
Noor=girl.
She stopped listening to It,
It stopped asking,
It stopped.
Sans It.
And her wings,
Bright robin's egg blue wings,
Took her where she wanted,
To the Clouds
To the trusted,
Where there were no loud noises,
Only the sound,
That glorious sound,
Of muffins,
And their enjoyment.
And her,
And friends,
There.

~!Fin!~

Painting the Chief's Daughter

You with your ancient face,
Your artistic bent tightens your brow,
This is your element,
You are working.

And I am working,
Working this out with my eyes,
If I could paint I would paint you painting,
But God knew I could not cage birds.

You sit by the window every time,
Don't even sit but let the paint fill the stool,
And me my head rests on our old couch,
The one we willed up together when I said you really shouldn't.

I pour the last of the red wine for you,
Wrap my other hand around your waist,
Your skirt waves in the swift air,
Quietly you continue.

I love the Indian that shows in your skin,
Your mother's necklace and your sense of surrounding,
It's amazing we're together,
That the god of this world would accept that.

This one is done,
Your gentle release back to me is how I know,
I transfer the wine to your seasoned touch,
Watch the other birds on their wires.

Take up another canvas,
And I will return to my perch in the middle of the room,
You have so many ideas to get out,
So many lives to live through other means.

So.

What is this?

It's Kinda Chilly

It's so fucking cold. That is the main thought circulating around his head as he sits at the edge of the dock. He kicks his legs back and forth in an effort to keep warm, and the water has gone down too far to even worry about skimming it. He thinks about jumping down the side and walking along the newly exposed coast, but opts against it. Because it's so fucking cold. He studys the light of the moon on the water, but he never was sure what this kind of studying really entailed. He thinks he's studying the water. He wishes he could draw, but that is sadly filed under the emmense list of things he cannot do. But he has a good memory, and feels that he could recall the water quite vividly for at least a month, so he doesn't feel so bad for not being able to draw. He lays back to study the stars, and wonders what he's going to do this weekend. Adolescence is always a 5 day struggle for a 2 day pass to a fair where half the rides aren't half as impressive as the flyer hinted. But still he hopes he has something fun to do. If it were warmer he would just sleep where he was, but it's so fucking cold he thinks he should get inside while he still can. He staggers up and heads back in, taking in the night one last time. There are times when it's good to be alone. It makes him feel younger, more childlike. But as old as he was, and as old as he would get, there were things waiting to be worried about, and he would get to them. But it's so fucking cold tonight, he needs the warmth in ignoring the unimportant things.

Needy Aren't We?

I hope eventually I'm needed,
Required in even a minimal capacity,
I think that is the single greatest thing someone can be,
But maybe that's only because I haven't been yet.

I don't know how many of you I need,
I don't count because it makes me feel weak,
Knowing I depend on so much,
(it doesn't go well with the loner mentality.)

I don't know if I'm all that excited for Heaven,
What could you possibly dream for there?
And I think I hold too much onto all those lives,
I have lived so much more outside of this.

So what does that make me here?
I guess that explains the innate isolation,
But I really do want to help,
I really do love.

You.

And I always have.