Category: Uncategorized

Prayers rise like mountain dew
One prays by clasping hands,
Other by entwining hands like vines,
Someone pleads almighty placing hands side by side,
Surrendering themselves.
Their path differ
Their language differ
But the question is
What’s the difference
In their devotion
For the only one
That’s the final destination.

Some seek guidance in Bhagwad Geeta,
Some in Quran,
Some in Bible,
Reading words of wisdom noble.
Divine messages enlightens a human,
With endless thoughts,
Like sun that lightens the endless sky.
River of love and compassion flowing from
the sacred pages, timeless and wise
Yet the question remains:
What’s the difference

In the books
When the message is one,
Leading to the one,
The final destination.

Everyone seeking blessings from the only one,
With variety of names.
Everyone leading to same destination,
Through different paths, with patience.
The final question remains:
What’s the Difference
In everyone’s God.
If not,
Why drops of blood
stain their paths.
The question still remains
What’s the Difference?

The season is changing.
It can’t be helped.
Complaining won’t stop
leaves draping my car
under a blanket of
bold orange and blood red.
The wipers work,
but that doesn’t dissuade
the smell of
pumpkin spice lattes
that infect the nose.
This seasons lack
of subtlety
is annoying.
The change.
The slow kind like the blend
from winter to spring,
is soft on the
senses
as a cashmere blanket
or a lovers embrace.
Still, I’ll drive with
the windows down,
embracing the stinging wind,
the shade from leaves
coloring my skin
whatever it desires,
and bits of blanket
permeating through
The car.

Smooth slopes to travel down
For the dripping tears rarely released
My blank face in its reflection
Dumbfounded by her reaction
To my question
She turns around
To hide what you can see in her eyes
The image of her sons, brothers, fathers, and uncles
Wrapped in white cloth
By the thousands
In her choked cries
I hear their voices before they become a memory

Smooth slopes to travel down
For the people who ignore her tears
For the people who ignore the men wrapped by the thousands
In her voice, I think back, they weren’t the grunts of men
They were laughs of children
Cries of newborn babies
Wrap yourself in warm white clothes
Don’t forget that your position
Is a privilege

Smooth slopes to travel down
For my tears when I’m alone
Not created by the thousands of wrapped bodies
But by the turning of their cheeks
At the sight of a people’s disappearance

Smooth slopes to travel down
For people who think souls aren’t equal

Maggie wrote often.
The section between Dearest and Love always
detailed the important events of her week:
She bought a digital watch.
She gave up smoking.
She observed from her telescope 10,000 lumens penetrating a cloud in the shape of man with whom she once danced.
She also bought a hat that she called a fedora.
She also gained weight.

Last November 23rd on or about 2:30, I went to visit Maggie.
She was still in bed.
Her rubber tree looked heavy and unsettled.
Her fern was turning yellow.
(I suspect she over-watered it but was never really sure.)
I suspect also that her telescope that was pointed towards the bedroom rather than the sky was faced to avoid certain constellations.
Certain facts of motivation and perception.

During the next month, these events occurred:
She read a book on self improvement.
She bought silk flowers, an unreal lavender.
She bought a hat that she called a hat.
She had her house fumigated for insects.

She observed from her telescope certain undiscovered comets and stars whose points intersected with lavender light –
Constellations shaped like men and women locked at the elbow.
The men and women she
used to see in movies and in restaurants when she used to go out.
I suspect she also started smoking.
She also ate infrequently.
She also wrote down all her dreams.

At family dinners I sat next to Maggie.
And no matter whether she called Mom Mother or dad Father.
Or seemed uncomfortable addressing me entirely,
She always dressed in floral prints, an unreal lavender.
She always wore a hat that she called a fedora.
She always observed the couples passing,
Comparing them to constellations she’d seen through her telescope.
This has to do with a fact of motivation and perception —
A hungry man might see in them a ripe bowl of fruit.

During the final week of Maggie’s life I received three letters.
They detailed the color, weight, and texture of each of the plants in Maggie’s house.
The leaves of each were now brown and had tiny arteries that broke off independently
and barely crackled as they fell.
She rarely remembered her dreams but woke with the sheets scattered about her.
There was a colony of ants breeding in her kitchen.
After the first extermination they became resistant and bred in swarms.
After trying ineffectively to drown them she wrote that they were amphibious.
(I suspect that they were not but was never really sure.)
After Tuesday came Wednesday and so on.
The clouds reminded her of a couple but she couldn’t remember whom.

Clouds have a way of doing that to some folks.
After a while they all blend together and float through your sky like the
arid procession of days which is your life.
And I suspect it was that way with Maggie.
Nevertheless, her death itself was unequivocal.
Nevertheless, when I think of this sky,
Or this particular stretch of clouds —
How person might see in them an entire globe.
Or a woman riding bareback,
or a desert winding before her like the arid procession of days that is her life.

And another person sees just a comet ripping around the sky,
reminding her of someone –
A sister maybe.

C Leigh Silverton June 18, 2001

Ripping off a bandaid doesn’t paint the right picture. It’s more like taking a couple of perfectly unique pages from two completely different books – maybe one an intellectual mystery, and the other a soulful romance – and expending an entire hot glue stick binding them together so that the only way to engage in an exercise of violent separation would result in catastrophic metamorphosis of flittery bits of plasticky paper flying everywhere. You’d then take this novel composition, now like the Latin on a penny, and bury it under the earth for a thousand years to pinch and squish and crimp under a millennia of sediment deposition until, finally, they might resemble an indistinguishable sheet. Then, and only then, would the phrase “ripping apart” suffice. But no longer is it possible to sunder page from page, a reverse alchemy of paginal compatibility; instead, a tear creates a pair and each new leaf retains the fabric and the fiber of the other. See, the bandaid metaphor just doesn’t do it justice.

With each year I worry more of you will disappear from me
Only able to hear your voice and laugh in short videos on a screen
I wish I could believe I’d see you again
But the thought of a god angers me too much
To even entertain the possibility
Cause if he does exist why would he take you from me?
This weight of losing you so early never seems to dull
Every time I tell a story of you
realizing how much time has gone by
Mark how old things are by when you passed
This sick twist of a knife every time I need to tell a new person you are no longer here
Any milestone I pass
Mothers day
your birthday
the day you died,
My graduation
This harsh reality never ends
This rage toward the universe
For taking you away
There are many things I can forgive
but this is not one of them

The walls are thick, the silence loud,
Beneath the weight, I’m not allowed
To speak, to breathe, to voice my pain—
A prisoner to love’s cruel chain.

The days are long, the nights are cold,
A story hidden, never told.
His words, like daggers, pierce my soul,
I wonder if I’ll ever be whole.

I smile for others, wear a mask,
Pretend to live, pretend to ask—
For help, for mercy, for release,
But all I feel is sharp decease.

The bruises fade, the scars remain,
Yet still I’m trapped inside this chain.
I tell myself, “It’s all my fault,”
A truth that cracks, yet never halts.

The love I sought, the dream I held,
Now leaves me fractured, weak, and quelled.
The hands that promised to protect
Are the same that hurt, that desecrate.

I’ve learned the dance, the careful ways,
To hide the pain, to mask the haze.
And though I weep in silent tears,
I hold the hope that one day clears.

I long for peace, for breath, for light,
To break this cycle, end the fight.
To find the strength I’ve yet to know,
And let the healing come and flow.

But still I wait, and still I stand,
A heart that trembles, a shaking hand.
For one day soon, I’ll find the door—
And step outside to live once more.

We are the faults of our waking breaths.
Our fear comes through the hearts of those who’ve loved us
To watch the stars, knowing we will be there one day
Is that the only thing waiting for us?

Worshipping the beating of the heart
Praying it stops the dropping of the knees
Looking at the moon, its light piercing my soul
Where are you, my love?

Lost in the darkness of her gaze
Looking back at the moments shared with the Sun
Perching back and forth, sending out a warning
Have you forgotten me?

To the day when death takes us
The hug of the blissful angel of death
Is it too soon? Why not tomorrow?
Do you remember me?