Category: Poems

Hot Berry Dream. (19.3.21)

zoebrook1 Comment

Falling, falling, falling.

Down. Up? Stop.

Whites meld other colors. Blues. Deep purple. Chasing playful passions.

Passions in the air, twisting vines of design across the fading white colors.

A blink is a century, wait. Bees make the colors and wipe them across the sky.

There is nothing but sky and working bees.

What else would you stand on but sky?

Sky in front, behind, is peace. Calm. Anxiety.

Behind is guttering worry, pressing on the senses but staying just out of consciousness.

Can’t see the peace behind. Only see the beauty in front, found after a fall.

Bees migrate between the worlds. Their passions trailing off at the precipice, wilting until their bee returns for them.

If their bee returns for them.

Emerging and returning bees bring the ingredients for the colors made to be wiped across the sky.

A passion barrels toward you. Hits you square and knocks the sky out from under you.

Falling.

Symbolistic metaphors.

Falling.

Pick your poison.

Falling.

Teach yourself which metaphor you see.

Fell.

…

Jerked awake hot and sweaty next to a bed not slept in. Foreboding and hope tangled together as unsupervised ropes, a jittery urge to do something, choose something.

Which thing? No matter.

Follow through on change, there will be.

Tea first, then decide. The kettle whistles. Cup clinks on a saucer. The fruit cup glitters with fruits.

Picked up on a whim at the market, couldn’t possibly hurt. Hot berry’s visions only a myth.

Then why does the hand shake as it brings tea to the lips?

What did you see? What did it teach you?

Which change will your choice bring?

It must be chosen after tea.

Escape. (13.6.7)

zoebrook1 Comment

Intricate. It’s the word I think when I see anything around me. Complicated, when I think for a minute more. Connected. Always connected, everything. My life. Something I can’t see. Sometimes I can’t realize.

Intricate plans with complicated connections. It’s what I see. What I feel. What will never leave me. Remember. Memories. So many and so complicated. Always there lurking when you look.

.

So many won’t look, can’t. Aren’t capable. They sit in towers, surrounded in white. Soft, never knowing. Not quite understanding what they drop upon us from their towers is more than a line of words or a plain order. It has to be, for us who live at the feet of towers.

.

He climbs and climbs. The white is endless. The escape of the tower is necessary and imminent. But forever he will climb. It is the work of some, the goal of some, to climb. It does not matter whether you reach the end, or if you even want to. It only matters that you climb, that you try, that you reach for the imminent yet elusive escape.

…

This piece was originally written for the Seattle Acquarium’s Creativity Inspiring Conservation creative writing course, and was displayed during their 2013 student art reception.

The statement written for the program:

This was written as a response to a picture of a frog climbing in a white bucket, and to me it represents a struggle to change you environment, and a kind of out place sense in your world.

Seen. (13.7.9)

zoebrookLeave a comment

White glass jellyfish

Sharp contrast black backgrounds

Surrounded with deep complex beauty

Children circle in their delight

Air wafts in sweet

Salt tanks

Divide your senses

The pink anemone brushes at your fingers

They love their job

The otters hitting their shells on the wall,

It’s always fun.

Pipes

Beams

Cords

Complex

Unseen

Hiding magic.

Mesmerizing.

Motion in the water.

Vibration in the floor.

Alive

Full of Life

…

This piece was originally written for the Seattle Acquarium’s Creativity Inspiring Conservation creative writing course, and was displayed during their 2013 student art reception.

The statement written for the program:

I think seeing complexity, contrasts, and connections in things always leads to a deeper understanding, no matter what it is you’re trying to understand.

Vividly. (19.4.26)

zoebrookLeave a comment

Exploration

New forms

New combinations.

.

New bounds

For capturing beauty

Motion

Emotion.

.

Imagining process and creation

Its own delight

Even as the eyes arrange what they see

World of fantasy

.

What is it that others see

In this beauty?

.

Vivid

Touch, Taste

.

Tantalizing

Texture

.

Bright

Joyful

Real.

When She Looks At Me. (18.2.25)

zoebrook2 Comments

The woman – perhaps?

The woman in the mirror.

When she looks at me.

.

A passing glance,

or a laugh.

Forced or true.

.

Mocking wet eyes,

angry crystallized sadness.

.

If

the image is distorted

When she looks at me

despaired.

Then

When she looks at me

soaring,

Is it too?

.

.

It’s not a mirror in my mind I see,

when I think of me.

Something more of an ideal,

mix past and future, maybe,

and pure, force of will

applied to sense of self

.

The woman in the mirror,

when she looks at me,

it’s not that me I see.

.

.

The image of me I see

I wonder

if anyone other sees

.

perhaps if it is not

the distortion is not my mind

but yours.

Quiet Deafens. (19.3.18)

zoebrookLeave a comment

Standing still after a shower, sensations of water running down your skin.

Listening to the click and pop of an open soda sitting next to you.

Listening to millions of tiny snowflakes hitting the ground around you.

The rush of wind, of cars, of heartbeats.

.

Quiet is loud, sensation is strong,

When you tune in.

They take over all in the end.

When will you tune in?

The Woman Dipped In Ink. (19.2.12)

zoebrookLeave a comment

Red dress. Black dress. White dress.

White dress, black flowers, red petal tips.

She drifts through the world. Rain pelts the glass in fat, running droplets as she watches. Their streams distort light, views through the window. Inside, and out.

Her fingertips trail down the pane. Longing, loneliness in her eyes.

Ink seeps from her. Constant, viscous, pooling. From her fingertips, heels, hair, tear ducts, it seeps and runs from her, pooling in places, sticking in others. Reflecting slick highlights.

As she drifts, the ink runs like tears around her. It fills her footsteps, dissipating in rain and evaporating into black stains in the sun. It’s left dark and unseen on anyone she touches, without her knowing. It bubbles up through the skin at her throat, sliding down her chest through her dress’s weave without leaving trace, but marking the whole world around her.

The rain is a mild, warm background noise in a cold city, accompanying her tapping footfalls as she walks through the alley slow, barely feeling the rain. The edges of petals on her soaked, summery dress the only spots of color in the scene.

Soaked in experiences turned potential, is this

Her beginning or her end?

She walks, a lifetime of untold stories no longer contained, flowing away from her in fine rivulets.