That way lies madness, dear.
Keep your eyes on the path you chose.
What might have been?
What could have been?
All dangerous conjecture.
Embrace today.
Celebrate this self, right here.
Right now.
Embrace what is.
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.NaPoWriMo Day 2 The official prompt from napowrimo.net today: Explore your own “Road not Taken”
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Ignore any ads below. Unless for Fluevog shoes, I do not endorse them.
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creating ourselves means choosing
if I want to be a person whose home is full of original art
I must begin by buying supporting artists
if I want to be a person who is confident enough to wear red lipstick
I must put the lipstick on my lips.
If I want to be a person who dances in the rain
I must head outside during the storm.
Whatever I desire
I must dare.
in the story I read
every family was the same
and every person took off their mask
of sameness at the end of the day.
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in the story we’re living
every family’s struggle’s different
we put on our masks each day
to save each other
One small change today
One gift of time
One contribution to a cause
One life-lesson contemplated
One old idea reconsidered
One step toward wisdom
won each day.
(A cascade poem)
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What it is,
what it isn’t,
converging in a secret wish.
She knew
from the very beginning
what it is,
didn’t let anyone
force her to accept
what it isn’t,
held herself together,
past and future
converging in a secret wish.
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The form of a cascade is to create a free verse first stanza, and then repeat subsequent lines of that first stanza at the ends of the following stanzas, cascading the lines from the first stanza throughout the poem. This form was created by Udit Bhatia.
Outside the change room,
she looked into the mirror.
Lovely,
polished,
dynamic,
and classy
in the pale blue duster jacket.
Perfectly suited her colouring.
Stunning.
“I love this,” she sighs.
“I love these on other people. I just know that I would never wear it.”
I am aghast. “You could wear it to the grocery store!” She could wear it anywhere.
But no. She left in an orange dress, that made her complexion blotchy.
I have no business being sad, that she put away a pale, blue jacket, that suited her,
because of fears I’m imagining for her.
“Do you imagine I’m conservative?” she asks.
“It doesn’t matter what I think,” I shrug.
But she looked damn fantastic in that blue duster jacket.
Win win you think
and she knows your thoughts,
that you don’t imagine
hers differ.
They do.
She wants you, coming and going.
Sit beside for both parts of the journey,
find moments of connection
have those conversations
that are skipped in the day to day.
Those too rare times when you’re together
with nothing to do but hear each other.
She wants words and laughter and plans.
You leave early. A note on the counter:
meet you there.
She puts her foot on the gas pedal
and travels lonely,
as usual.
Win?
or lose?
-Archbishop Desmond Tutu in The Book of Joy.
Max and Jenn were in our grade eight classes
and our grade nine classes,
but then, they were not.
Where are they? asked the teachers.
Whispers replied to one another in the back rows,
I saw them outside The Royal Anne.
They’re turning tricks. Doing drugs.
We blinked at one another that our peers
would make such choices,
muttered, How terrible.
We slowed down our lives to peer into the
accident scene of their lives
from a safe distance,
but did any of us go downtown,
and offer them a different option?
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This is a forty-year old memory. Where are they now, I wonder?
Today
Your Snow White beauty
Is cut with a sharp edge of
Street smarts.
You’ve seen
Too much.
Tomorrow
Will the visions
Scar your face with darkness,
Cigarette creases
And add black anger to your eyes,
Aging you with
Exponential bitterness?
Or will your words
Poured out upon a page
Erase the stresses
And sculpt your beauty
Into timelessness?
Shawn L. Bird 