Empty Pages

When you've sat and stared at an empty journal - or past, really - or an empty screen for long enough, you realize you are too tired for writing.

Hello, empty page, what say you?

...

Ah yes, that's kinda the point, isn't it?

...

How many stitches, how many times must the needle enter and exit before the quilt is made? Every shudder sets the thread painfully free - what freedom is that? Blind, bereft of beauty, a thread without an eye. Love is not the luffing sail, but tacking into the wind. Oh, and it's such a wind that drives dreams through the sky above the clouds of sea, into a world where setting and rising sun meet.

...

Well?

...

Almost Christmas eve, and the rain hammers the walls and windows without relief, a lullaby that settles the house into a Christmas silence, where not even the rodents dare disturb the Christ child's sleep. 

...

Good night to you, too. Isn't it all just doodles, anyway? Why this congestion of thought that stumbles forward like a sinus headache, and none of it parseable into coherent thoughts I may ink. Good night, deer, nibbling at frozen grass near the trees. I hope I enjoy this as much as you.

I think I'm going to suffer being sick at Christmas.

The sky was bruise black, today, an eeyore hide of sky, not the jaundiced bruise of impending tornado. And the rains dutifully came, washing our sighs away, and breathing new scents of pine into the mountain air. Does the night smell of lightning to you? I can see it in the doe's eyes.

Blank

Blank. I cannot remember, anymore, what I dreamed of writing, discussed writing, or actually have written this last week. Everything swirls together, a beautiful misery. I'm sleeping, dreaming, writing, thinking, seeing, ingesting words, and jettisoning everything temporarily superfluous, extraneous, inessential. And it's a race against my leaking intellect. Will I realize the race continues without end, surrendering first? Can I lose a game that exists only within? Or, perhaps, not even there?
Even the words are blank, like fake bullets the target ignores, or disregards - a nuisance, a distraction, a trifle, a red herring, if you please. Color me... disinterested, they say, child's play. They turn away into the sea, a vastness unexplained (by me, at least).
The moon's a mistress made of me, grasping at my tides, I, a pendulum in lunar sway. This lunacy, I plead - do the ocean's truly rise and elsewhere must recede: a teeter-totter, I see, I saw, now my vision's clouded intimately. I loved once, and lost twice, and regret thrice, afore the rooster crowed; and I love thee Lord, but scarcely feed myself. The wolf's teeth are canine white, angler fish's lure so bright, dart frog saturated with color, belladonna - doth beauty's embrace only destroy?
Fairy tale me is no hero, but the crooked man, swallowing stories for life. Not mine, the princess, nor battles won, riches gleaned, the dragon slain. No, I quite believed a different tale. If, knowing everything of everyone: dreams, desires, hopes, prayers, experiences, I expect I'd love them, wholly, unconditionally. The double standard is this: I believe if you knew the same about me, I cannot believe the same, or anything near. There is knowing... yet, understanding is supernal, a celestial gift. This I hide behind lest you enter the shell and find the sea.

Knowledge forbidden?
Suspicious, reasonless. Why should their Lord
Envy them that? Can it be a sin to know?
Can it be death?
(Milton - Paradise Lost)

Empty Envelope

Empty. Blessing or curse? Tabula rosa, I'm not thinking - am I? Candle flickers, rain bullets rebound from glass inevitability, cider sits half-empty, all empty, a night as silent as the moon hiding behind these clouds. In the rainy night: no clouds, no stars, no moon, no sky, just a blank slate heavens, unthinking, leaking, a perfect mirror for my mind.
I stood in an alley of trees, the smell of fall finally arrived. Fall sits, patiently awaiting the heavy rains, where the redolence is freed. Emptied, a heavy breeze carried the rain and a torrent of leaves, and I simply stood, catching the leaves as they traveled by, pelted with colors. Even a barrenness, an emptiness is beautiful sometimes: a ghastly beauty, a transparent, phantom elegance like dust and cobwebs in abandoned homes, like ancient, cracked mirrors, a winter wheat field,  shrouded in heavy mist, hands having given a gift, winter trees with fallen leaves, violins, wordless and minor in an eerie whisper, wisps of fragment dreams come morning, silence before a storm, the wordlessness of knowing, staring at the ceiling on long, quiet nights, mountain devotionals.
An emptiness of something makes room for a fullness of another.



may I be, awakened from my slumber
you slice, with gentle knife,
my blankets and my cover
whisking me from beneath
my veil of mystery
unwrap me in your soft
fingertips, smooth 
my wrinkled edges and smell
a delivered world
pen-kisses, thumbprints, a lick
of love, each dot, jot, tittle,
our hands held distantly
caress me, hold me in your eyes
closer, fondly, my heart as paper
in your tender hands


my heart is rent and sent as missive
mailed down rainy river
in return I found a pen
which doth my blood embitter
my ink-blood blue
pen-heart stained, too
please current soon deliver

Well, that was uglier than the first...
Listening to the rain: is there anything more peaceful?


Knowledge forbidden?
Suspicious, reasonless. Why should their Lord
Envy them that? Can it be a sin to know?
Can it be death?
~ Milton - Paradise Lost

What if earth
Be but the shadow of heaven, and things therein
Each to other like, more than on earth is thought?
~ Milton - Paradise Lost