Bottles, playpens, strollers,
And colorful toys mark her happiness.
Memories, imagination, manipulation,
And dead dreams mark her sadness.
 

Conversation

The popular belief that you have,

that says I’ll get satisfaction

if I cut out the rambling, get off the segue ways,

and steer away from the tangents,

is intangible at best,

it rests,

on so many high ideals of light sides and dark sides,

and shadows of who we are and who we ought to be

and all that stuff that stifles the not-too-extreme

air of a regular conversation,

with blasphemed, enforced, you-shall-nots and nevers,

endlessly blowing it out of proportion,

as if I crave everything from you like a guru,

as if you know me,

the shadow of truth in that, the nerve in the lingering,

smoldering silence, is that you do,

but let yourself rest here, in knowing me and in being known,

and don’t fall into the abyss of these glistening isolations,

and almost-solutions that tumble forth,

they are not worth it,

they are laced with a kind of poised simplicity

that makes you want to climb a million other tangents in a somewhere-unknown.