#lslaathaug

[lslaathaug]

Art is Work turned 3 today!

[lslaathaug]

All of your poems

come to you in your sleep,

lined up in little rows.

Scraps of paper,

rows of text,

letters jumbled

into incoherency

like a tongue-spoken prayer,

from your heart only God could

understand. Van Gogh

dreamed his dreams

and then painted them.

You write your poems and then

dream them—

if words were art, maybe yours

would be “Sunflowers”, yellow

and churning

returning to you with each chance

or “Starry Night” blue cyclic

yearning for perfect light

Or a self-portrait, still but buzzing

with particles and piecing eyes

of who you were

in that moment—

and these flights of fancy

may find you in your sleep,

but some day, dreamer,

you will be awake

and dangerous.

[lslaathaug]

You’re better at showing love;

I’m better with telling you, “I love you.”

Somewhere in the middle we meet.

I’ll tell you how much you matter 

in the grandest of terms, and you’ll 

show me in the tiniest of ways. 

I’ll describe the Milky Way 

as an ocean of lights

reflected in a tea cup,

and you stop the car and

point up at the real thing.

[lslaathaug]

Mourning Ritual

The sun said to me this morning,

You have to break.

You have to change.

For your sake, the world was shaped,

and you are stardust and ashes—

the fuel for the dawn

that must come after.

[lslaathaug]

Like a flower you want to bloom,

but even in March

the snow still falls.

It coats the earth

and freezes your roots.

They keep speaking of spring,

and you keep waiting

for something that

hasn’t yet come.

So, you settle for

the bare glimpse of sun

peeking through the clouds

and making the snow shine

like crystals—and

despite the cold

you feel it too,

the possibility.

[lslaathaug]

Sometimes your mind is too strong

and you want to break

the things you love

because it all seems to anyway

But sometimes the spark

of an orange sky

reminds you to hold out your hand

to the only kind of fire

that won’t burn

[lslaathaug]

Interesting, What Remains

of what people remember about us,

the only parts of us that may have long lives

like the stars blinking and waking

as night closes in. You long to

rearrange the stars and write

down the names of whom you loved,

so the whole world won’t forget

even if the ones you named do.

You need to learn to let go, they’re right,

and you’re not even sure what

you’re holding onto,

because the stars

won’t let you hold them.

So, you find a book instead,

the pages heavy with memories

of where you’ve walked

and the parts of you you’ve lost.

But you hope to stop and light a

candle before you eat

and hope those you know

will follow it like Polaris

to your table. They’ve come far,

like you, their bodies worn

and broken but dutiful.

This body of yours, owes you

nothing, not even

the parts that hurt.

So eat and be done,

let go of your lightning

and rest while the clouds roll

over the stars.

(Heavily inspired by Melissa Stoddard’s poem “Fascinating, the Parts of Us”)

[lslaathaug]

You tell me poetry is too personal,

and you showed something

without showing something,

a dusty outline on the shelf

where an object once was,

a shape behind the curtain.

Maybe a wild animal pacing

or a caged bird unable to sing.

A slippery and impossible to

describe idea, but it found you

and you the artist

itch to open the package like artists do

but the subject is closed, and the lights

go out in the auditorium.