Awake

Awake.

The moon is up there

shining right through into my room.

Too bright,

it's glow is the mother of all fluorescent lights.

It's ugly

a pale gray of desolation.

There is no life in it

for it is only aglow with the distant light of the sun.

This ghost will not leave me be.

I check the clock,

five in the morning.

Sirens sound in the streets below me

but they are no longer background noise.

These blares become piercing, alarming

as they should be.

How dulled have I become,

that I hear these alarms,

these announcements of death and despair,

and I can go back to sleep!

or continue to shower

or tune my attention back into the TV

So I lay awake

watching the ceiling grow brighter with the sunrise

The sirens pass into silence

and again I forget to hope

or even wonder

if everything will be okay.

Alliterated

At attention

in amazement

after the attack

is alleviated

all is above, not around

the aforementioned antics.

Blonde buds

bloom barely

bit by bit

before brandishing

the brightest

beautiful blossoms.

Can I catch

catastrophes,

curb chaos,

crunch consequences

of the cold

with only calm considerations?

Don't detract from

their doom,

don't distract

the demons of the day

with a dismal defense

don't delay

daunting darker desires.

Tugging the Line

Balloons are tough to avoid heartbreak with.

You hold a bright orb of color

lighter than the air,

bouncing along above you on the end of a ribbon.

And its company is wonderful,

but there's that constant

tug on the line.

It yearns to float up

beyond your reach.

And you want to let it go,

although you will miss it dearly,

for freedom is all it wants.

You hold that freedom

dangling in your hand.

You let the ribbon slide up

out of your clenched palm.

And the moment it drifts up,

just out of your reach,

regret hits you like

a big yellow cheese bus.

It grows smaller and smaller

you suddenly feel responsible

for all of the trees

it nearly misses

and the gradually thinning atmosphere

pulling its insides

slowly out.

Freedom becomes the impending

pop!

You wonder if you should have

just held on...

Snowglobing

I'm sitting on my windowsill overlooking Central Park, watching the snow just fall and fall and fall. From twelve stories up, if I tilt my head at a slight upward angle, the trees disappear from view and all that's left is a solid white sky with little peppered dots of snowflakes drifting through it. I woke up in a snow globe this morning.

There is no slanted roof or gutters here to catch these little flakes and clump them together into one white mass. Instead, they float right up to my window and dance around. The wind conducts their movement as they fall fast and then rise up again suddenly, slowly suspended in midair. I sit, front row in a one person audience to this wintry ballet.

And it's funny that I've despised the snow for so long, refusing to see it in this light because of its chilling, bitter season. But every flake is really just a lonely raindrop that shivered as it fell from the clouds, becoming frozen in its liquid motion as it drifted down. Like everything else, they are bound by the cold.

And I'm frozen too, sitting by the window watching the stiff beauty of a dead season. But now I see through it; the snow will melt into water again, the trees will bud and paint the world in green again, and I will get up again and look at other things and move to other places. But for now I will drift with the snowflakes until I slowly thaw and melt back into motion.