Duck, duck, & Goose

I see you ducking & hiding

as if this could keep you safe

of course, most enjoy a good game

of hide & seek-

except when there is no-

body looking

for you

the pain sets in,

nesting in the corners

where you have stashed secrets.

Fleeing from danger

is both fight & flight

instead of planting ones

self in the belief of growth & resilience

where you are

is never where you choose to be

there is disregard

for the hidden

wanting to be found

under a shroud of a woven

textiles you gathered,

that felt like encryption,

yet your secrets strobe across

all of our four heads

illuminating the dark valleys

spreading across your scape. 

Painting by Carel Fabritius, 'Hera hiding during the battle between the gods and the giants' c. 1643 in [Public domain].

ill at ease

Ill at ease
does not mean a discomfort
to the point of nausea
aroused in a state of self-satisfaction.

I suppose it is comforting to know
that this same word, Anxiety,
is on everyone's nerves
and coming out through the lips as
verbal indigestion, along with a liver and onion
aftertaste.

How many times have I needed to scream
a curse word
with the most volume possible to project outward,
to release some other demon
banging on the walls of my soul to escape,
as if my sound would shatter
gates

and makes me ill
swallowing this thought back like moonshine.

That was not a question.

Our survival depended upon this fine line between
cooperation and fugitive, patient and shaman,
poetry and prose
words and thier usage.

We made statues of security and braced ourselves
with agendas, acting in stone, we planned, we waited,
we toiled and cried over the temporal state of
poison, we consumed all we could with-
stand.

Resistance said not a word
about its origin.

Damsel in distress

When the guards eventually abandoned their posts
this is when, creeping out of overflow,
the words gush forth in a rip current-
coalescing in magnetic links-
weaving white sheets with
brown knots, by her dirty hands;
the escape plan finally hatches
and she knew she would now
let it all out.
Deliberated and free
to mouth the lyrics
all wrong.
She sings them
hums them along
in sweet harmony with self,
knowing all the words
had been mis-taken.






Image of painting by Evelyn De Morgan, Hope in a Prison of Despair (1887) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

S. Cape

Up Back
C    &  m          a          a
o        see          l o n g w a y
m          a        l o n g               out
e           n          n                        h
            d e r i n g                        r      c
                                                y o      o
                                                   u & me
                                                   g
                                        any w h e r e (but).

Image of painting by Juan Gris, 'Still Life with checkered tablecloth' (1915), [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons. 

Sad today, more sorrow tomorrow

Squeezed my eyes so tight

I crimped my nose

trying to seal the heavy drapes

eyelids

the event horizon

line of eyelash hairs

black holes that hope

when

I open-

s  l  o  w  l  y  

to rearrange the world

around me

or just wishing to warp

and disintegrate my reality

I wish to be taken

hostage for a dream

it would seem most simply

escape is what I mean

I find myself thinking

of my keys

prism pavement

welcoming

the open road

to just go

a  w  a  y  

get lost

which I've found

you cannot do 

accidentally

to night 

I fight

gravity

pinned in place

notching another

non event rising day.

Image by Chameleon, via Wikimedia (Public Domain).