poetry

297: Symphony of Sorrow

| Aspergers Girls

The glacier unleashed above the surface, exposed to the elements, withered and melting, as ice teeth drip in sun dagger’s game

The fortress unmoved in storm, harbored deep into the rooted ground by intertwined redwoods eating away at the past through methodical digging

The opening beyond the passageway, circumventing the avenues of darkness, though blind, a serpent worm hollowing and sharpening the narrowness below

The salutation circled on parchment dry, driven in passion by black-tipped feather dancing its way across the pages of time

The window frame broken, cracked over with windy days turned blizzard, and painted false with robin-blue, layer upon layer, until chipped and exposed the ruined beginning bleeds

The casual handshake of palms fleshy and ripe, with sweat and history intermingled more than the strangers that touch

The blanket hung upon the clothes line, overlapped and moving in the breeze as ghost sheets whisper their jealousy, wanting the warmth to move through them, like champion fingering the goblet of victory

The breath of the sailboat, weeping for the coming of wind, where tossed and turned the sails shall bellow in defense, when all about the observer grins, thinking the movement enters sweet without cost

The misery belonging to one, the performer across dimmed stage, spinning in the absence of light, invisible to the onlookers, if audience ever entered

The broken, spread out for picnic, picked apart to bone, and left for the army of insects to devour the remnants of screams harbored in the feast of gluttony

The fear reaper, echoed shadows of past, silk and web interwoven to glisten and capture, to call forth and entice, until prisoner bewildered in entrapment pleads for escape

The moment, shaded eyes beseeched lost maiden and all searching tumbled outside of tethered pockets, pebbles touching down into river rapids, one after the other, exiting their chamber of ages

The stallion and steed, a chance glance past the soured fields and dank sky, remembering once together they moved free as drifters in hope’s lullaby

Until now, each as forgotten tune joins to create a symphony of sorrow, their music precise and purposeful, reaching into the severed opening of lost child, and soothing the reflection of their collective pain

~ Samantha Craft January 2013

293: Backwards Appeal

| Aspergers Girls

good hair dayhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cVGYssHra2c

Yesterday I wore this fabulous red sweater.

I was feeling very confident, as I was having a good hair day, and my husband had saturated me with compliments, at least twenty since I awoke.

And after a hot sauna meditation and hot soak in dead sea salts, I was literally glowing.

With my cheeks rosy and love of self content, I set out to do errands. Time to redeem a gift certificate, a rebate check, and buy some food staples.

At my third stop, at the grocery store, as I was pushing my half-full cart down the snack aisle,  I felt an itchy sensation at the nape of my neck. I reached down, and found the sweater tag. My cheeks blossomed into a full crimson then.

And all at once a rush of fear came over me, as I realized my sweater was on backwards!

 I, quickly, without calling too much attention to myself, turned my cart around and made my way to the back of the store. Retreating into the bathroom, I had a good look at my sweater in the mirror. I gasped, while trying to laugh. But no laughter came.

The way the sweater was set, the back stitching in the front of me, I looked like I had two torpedoes jetting out.

Before, while dressing at home, I’d merely thought the way the sweater set against my chest was just the way the sweater was made, and that I ought not to have fretted about the design. I needed to get over my fears, and wear clothes without insecurity. Who cares if the cut of the sweater accented what was naturally a part of me? I had thought to myself.

 But now that I could tell for certain the sweater was on backwards, I thought for sure, people would have noticed, and been laughing, not only at my backwardsness, but at my pointy boobs.

Inside the store bathroom, still contemplating my silliness, I twisted the sweater around; only to find, that my under blouse, a little sleeveless black thing, was on inside out!

At this point I looked down at my boots, convinced I’d probably placed them on the wrong feet.

I know it doesn’t matter in the end. People at the crowded Big-Box Store probably didn’t notice, and if they did they got a good laugh. And I’m all right with giving others a good laugh. But I can’t help but think about those two older men who stopped me in my tracks in the grocery store, prior to my discovery; how they played dodge with my shopping cart, like we were two familiars partaking in a friendly game: “Try to get passed me with your cart!” Can’t help but think how ridiculous I must have looked with my front side all pointy and pronounced and all, as they tried to engage me in conversation and keep me from moving: me and my signature red chest.

It’s just plain crazy-making, the way I cannot dress my own body. Likely an after shock of having never liked or played with Barbie Dolls. I should have taken note, or at least practiced.

I still haven’t learned to stop praying for humility and release of pride. Seems I cannot go anywhere without being reminded of my unyielding humanness.

Here’s to red torpedo ladies, and all things fashionable.

May you, if and when you wear your clothes backwards, accentuate the positive.

It’s on backwards in this photo…heheheh Before I knew

good hair day

But You…

You are a flower that I cannot release

You stretch and root, your scent carried into the vein of me

I am your vase, your soil, your moisture, your sky

But you do not know me

I hold you day upon day, carry you where I go, smile at your beauty

I watch in admiration, as you unfold, as bud becomes bloom

You move where I move, bend where I bend, all the time unaware

Because you do not see me

Your vessel completes me, the fullness of you saturates

Your sweetness carries my every step closer to the heart of you

I reach to touch frail softness, nature’s perfection

But you cannot feel me

I turn to you in the darkness, cradling you at my side

I blanket you in the coldness, devouring the fire for your warmth

I comfort you in the rain, soothe to extinguish my own wants

But you cannot detect me

You scream in silence, and I am beckoned

I scream aloud, and you are lost

Together we collide, without ever joining

But you do not understand

I am your gardener, your life-giver, your equal, your maiden

You are my knight, my king, my answer, my calling

We are one in the meadow, rising together

But you do not recognize me

You sleep as if I am silence

You wake as if I am phantom

You speak as if I am death

And I remain flower wilted at your door

~ Samantha Craft 2012

291: Insatiable

| Aspergers Girls

Insatiable

To dig out and find the inner pieces

To gnaw and break apart what is

To salvage every last bit

And swallow each morsel whole

The remnants each

The pearls of fiery ache

Heated and raw

Glistening

I bleed upon me

Droplet by droplet

Guts and nodules sucked

Marrow disintegrated

Upon tendered flesh

Burst by spidery-spindly fingers

Man’s brimming bounty

Enter, I demand

Like captive to prison

Trapped and chained

As thorn upon finger

Pricked

Each cornerstone

Every last portion

Impregnated in plunder

Every finger tongued

With saliva secreting

Till decimated carcass

Thusly seasoned

Pampered

And evaporated

By jagged teeth and forked tongue

By teat of slurp

By throat of swallow

By reticulum of beast

Be gorged

Menaced by murderous mouth

Drowned in bile and brain

Tethered alongside passing mortality

Outcries for mercy’s reign

As I nurse upon my release

Unyielding pillager of plentitude

Until

With the severing of last limb

Young haughtiness returns

Obliterated-nothingness spawned new

Into fierce inferno blue

A setting sun of satiation

All carrion turned soot

And I

Carved through and vacuumed

Am tar-feathered firm

Made pierced gull without sea

To endlessly roam

In the gaunt hauntings

Of unyielding want

~ Samantha Craft, January 2013

sun trail

290: Torn Open

| Aspergers Girls
wiped clean
Torn Open

Torn Open

If I were a painter, I’d paint you as the river flowing through my heart, my arms outstretched in acceptance and need and want, my body limber and bleeding, the blood the very essence of my unquenchable desire.

The water, being you, would be the clearest and the sweetest, and the very richest, pouring through the canvas of me as melted butter across warm sugar-cakes.

I’d take you into me, soak in your yellow-sunshine, and swell into a catapult of expectation fulfilled. The rest of me, the part I’d left behind, outside the door that shelters our space, I’d call forth then, one by one and piece by piece, each part carrying in another puzzle of my completion.

And there, gathered on the floor, I’d rest, my every angle dismembered, broken, and waiting to be reassembled by you. In doing so the echoes of my desperate longing would be answered, and silence would ensue, if not forever, then for a moment, long enough for the splinters of my callings to rest and form shape.

There, in the silence, in the peace, I would wait, no longer afraid or without, no longer in pain.

Though broken and scattered, I would be whole. Though taken and left out, I would be home. Though ripped apart and tangled, the very heart of me missing his place, I would beat with a life so full my dreams would sing.

Like soldiers I would take flight; winged butterflies, a spectacle of starlit ghosts twirling and rising all at once to the trumpeting of our destiny.

You would whisper then, to me, this sugar-spiced dumpling of one form or another, in all my mystery, in all my guise; you would whisper sweetness so pure that my spine would tingle and take his place, amongst the pieces lost.

Here you would draw, your finger thick and calm, your voice trembling through the vibration of your flesh; and I, as ink, would appear, my design clear and precise, my meaning known and wanted.

I would not whisper, for the voice of the room would be yours, and yours alone. Your silhouette dancing in the shadows like a raven whom pecks the ripest seedlings from the foreground, a painter himself merging and forging to create substance for this soul.

Red would drip new, droplets of amulets and silver-tipped gold. My paint yours. A keeper of chance you be, diving into the gentleness and hope of tomorrow with the tip of your brush, a quail’s feather topped in delight.

Scribbled across white, I be.

Designed in the fashion you forbade and forbid, both ruptured and raptured at once.

I would burst for you, and you alone. My hungry voice rising to be heard above the quiet you created. Until, as serpent uncoiled and ram diving thick, I would come forth, rebirthed and complete in the making of you.

For where you dipped and twirled the horsehair and blanketed warmth, the artists stick and brush, I too dipped. For where you danced, I too danced, like a stallion in the moonlight free, my mane flowing beyond and touching the edges of your silhouette.

For in creating me, you both created self and dream, mister and misses. My sacrifice, though felt eternal, well worth the storm.

My endless searching, my endless calling, my escape into nothingness and a gentle calm, all part of the canvas you set forth. For if not for you and me, for my pain and your finding, then still I would pierce myself atop the mountain top, one knife after the other, alive but dead, awake but asleep.

For it was not until you called, until you came, until you saw me and claimed my existence that I truly was. Not until your coming destroyed me and brought me back again that I was truly born.

For in the existence that I know, you are my maker, my shaker, my taker, my master, my everything beyond the sun. In knowing you, or the part of you that held me, I have at last held myself.

And though the tears have etched and molded, created someone I know not, someone beyond my very self, alas I remain in awe of my beauty, inspired by creator you.

So please, as you whisper farewell, as you close the door, my fallen pieces reassembled and transpired, know I weep not so much for the loss of what was you, and what I thought I knew, but for the finding of myself.

~~~ Samantha Craft, December 31, 2012

Happy New Year….may you above all, having found the beauty of you, spread your light upon the waiting world. Blessings ~ Sam

288: Winter Comes

| Aspergers Girls

dark tree

Winter Comes

Winter comes, as it often does, his cold face upon my flesh, burning,

And I am made as pine forest swollen thick, my endless branches covered in frozen stillness,

Swept across the carpeted white, my dreams shiver, the darkness rising with each fallen crystal,

Caressed, I was, in the tenderness of autumn’s promise, in the savoring of summer’s waltz,

In the incandescent spotlight of springing flower fields,

Dance, as we did, two drifting leaves upon the shadow of self,

Spun, as we did, our golden orbs woven true, one onto the other,

Until the sunlight ceased, and dawn dismissed her rays,

Like dripping-orange of long ago trails of children at play,

Come swing, come hide, come find me beneath the arching limbs,

I called, even as the last glimmer of day scurried down beyond the mouth of valley,

Even as the night embraced, father moon stretching arms about the stars,

I called, lamb of the vast sky and seeded land,

We mingled then, daughter I am, wed in delight to son of the mountain quake,

We quivered there, as two arrows set out together, to claim a destination,

Fine marksman he be, who willed us so, the child of the horizon stretched and bent into your clay-flesh,

Still, even as we clung in unison, our echoes the same, our landing near, one questioned,

Still, as if by chance the widow bleeds black and the talisman finds master, one denied,

And so dark winter claws came, as happens when beauty is stung, his steps the thickest snow marked in red,

And I as captive, deserted by the richest earth himself, had no choice but to follow,

My feet, my hands, my breath, my bosom, reborn rapacious, where your light was meant to live.

~ Samantha Craft, December 2012