The Widening Gap
We don't talk about it - this expanding gap between us. We smile across it and give a friendly wave. We shout greetings back and forth, and talk about our day.
Sometimes we even stretch our legs and jump across. But lately we've had to scramble to get across, and have been bumped and bruised by our efforts.
The tie that binds us stretches like a rope -
and we can use that to guide ourselves across - perhaps with it we could have built a bridge.
But here's the question: which side do we stay on? We've started to build separate lives, separate dwelling places - who will abandon theirs? Do we try to meet in the middle?
What kind of home can we expect to build precariously perched there?
Even now a streaming rush has filled the gap --- a flood of reasons why we should stay apart. And although I can swim, it's not something I care to ford any longer.
cjp 10/03
The Tools Of The Muse
Give me a pen, one that flows as if liquid inspiration is contained within. I scoff the typewriter and the keys, feeling they as stagnate objects cannot feel my body's warmth as my thoughts, so easily trapped inside extend down through my veins and under my skin to drip like sweat from my tightly clenched and readied hand.
The indentation of my nib on paper proves to me the inspiration of my scribery, a thing smoothed-surfaced printing can't compare with. I care not to make my journey start from there, although most assuredly it is where it will come to rest. For what is jotted in haste by jagged hand has yet to be refined, reviewed, revamped into its more final, more presentable form.
But creation begins before refinement, before containment. At inception it cycles through my brain already beginning the sorting, refining, and rejection process.
When hands are busy but thoughts are free, that's when visions come to me --- they tumble and turn, awash with life and I must soak and wring them out, hoping not to lose the shape, the hue, the scope of what in my mind's eye once was seen.
cjp 10/27/03
