Tower clock, ding-diing-ding-ding-diing-ding-ding-ding; goooong, goooong, gooong. I’ve heard it echo from a past life while I’ve been away. The same chime chimes at the last college and in the last town where I lived my last life. At last, I’m at the precipice of another last. I’ll hear this chime when I walk. Graduating class of Now. I’ve been here an hour. I’ve been here forever. But I’ve never been here before. You can’t step in the same chime twice. Even when I’ve gone, I’ll be here. The chime carries me through its breeze into the trees swirling through the leaves are dropping around me… alas the most impossible redeeming constant has embodied me. Scholar. Can it be so?

my sweet old etcetera

able to do more than i

their heads shall never be placed on my stake

and instead shall reign forever over

the dying impecuniosity of this empire

driving them to riches

i was never dead enough to claim

with my own toiling dulcet sweat

they could not find me even odd from the twelfth window

even prime on the third try

i have gladly resigned

to the puissance love has over me

they watch me bend under their hands

i ache in obedience

until a merciful kiss of turns 

the tables (dreaming,

et

  cetera, of

Your smile

eyes knees and of your Etcetera)

the tea leaf told her so

in the half moon light

of a pomegranate cloudless sky

dripping beads of sweet

memory into the roots

of her mother-like hair

with all that red underneath

the panting pouting blonde

which caters to the norm

of her social southern california

sphere of influence is fended

off with her umbrella imagination

the day the tea leaf told her so

and she called that god

it was a cold spring night

and all that existed

was her and the soaring stars

she could not see

too many lights lined the streets

in a neon blinking sea

her muggy hand swirling tealeaf tea

cast the shadow which fell over her

for another five years

she could not hear

over the neighbor’s wailing

and the cars were sailing

past her apartment door

whose frame she stood in

embracing the heat of the hot mug

on the cold night

and she called that god

she harbored a suspicion

that the tealeaf was right

and drank it down with urgent need

that mimicked and ancient greed

for some sort of mystical explanation

she stepped into what she could not see

and sang along with what she could not hear

shimmering sheer belief carried her

through the tormented year of grief

and delivered her to

the redeeming door of joy

and she called that god

a little girl was born

with her mother’s red hair

a little boy took his first steps there

a little bird made a little nest

under the steps of her unrest

a big surprise a little change

a ring around the interstate

a nightmare survived

mourning after the

longest-darkest-hardest night

and waking up in plain blurry sight

of all her dreams come true

and she called that god

©Robin M. Miller 2008

pleasegirldontyoudieonme:

(via pikeybrat-deactivated20120223)