#sparklepoetics

[sparklepoetess]

“Scarlet in the Rain” I made my way down the alley Dressed in intimate things   Buttons undone in a slight V Across the chest of skin and lace That greeted many a passing face Smoking outside with drag queens Laughing about the fetish party That someone worked the night prior The night was late In a midnight disclosure And many a tonic Unsheathed composure And stripped it to the skin Of a naked issue Vulnerable and free And free and vulnerable But I found little words to explain How I came to watch the bloom   Of Scarlet in the rain Morning came to ground me I sat before a large screen Where measurements and lines Stood as still as rigid vines And images were placed And reasonably spaced The need hungered The need watched From over my shoulder While the unseen eye Watched the tension rise In the constant doing Of a heat-dampened crowd I let go what I had to let go And a poem was kept submerged In a sea that chimed too softly To be heard on the shores Of a disenchanted youth So I still found little words to explain How I came to watch the bloom Of Scarlet in the rain The skies lit up with a clamor That shot with fiery light From the base of drunken intrigue And tales of woven night I walked a path of a blue-hued dusk To a garden that licked the moon With rising transformations Listening like the fireflies That watched from thickets to anywhere  And 1960 made its cameo In the tale of two lovers grown In time together Gooseberries and decoctions Filled our glasses in a scene I have yet to understand But it brought me closer To how I could explain How I came to see the bloom Of Scarlet in the rain Her crooked fingers And pain-struck body Moved like a paper airplane That mothered a many vagabond That held together The  subculture of an underground Stretching its petals In its first taste of light Holding her 5th glass of wine  Holding her fresh cigarette  And she smiled at many a humorous soul While sparks showered And each story was told Of our origins and crossings And how we came to know Who we were today And I am to me What others are to themselves This was closer to the moment Where I could begin to explain How I came to view the bloom Of Scarlet in the rain The stages varied in each soul And there was much beauty And there was much darkness Beauty and darkness Beauty and darkness As shattered glass sobered A night of reckless folly Intensity came to cloak With heavy wings An accident which bore More shattered windows Than the one we huddled around And Scarlet imparted her woes Separate of the clamor around her (But not oblivious to it) Of a woman she once loved That took her life Her tragic and beautiful life And I listened to the memories Of someone close to passing Her regrets Her loves Her openness Her loss of herself to time And she handed me a book So I could finally explain How I came to see the bloom Of Scarlet in the rain She was in her twenties Mirrored as if Narcissus Naked with skin of ivory In time of wild merging In a time of wild awakening And she was beauty incarnate  Running through a field In a wet dress While tripping in a sun shower  Free of what burdened her now And pride overcame frailty As she opened the window  To truths she didn't know why  She was telling to a stranger  I held a cube  Of a wish caught in time  And thought about the rest of my life  I thought about what  Still clung to my chest  Like a lead vest  And reasoned the worth of it  And I only knew the scars of life Were scars of a shallow root  That could not touch  The unconditional I thought about my future  My past, the choices that sit across from me And that I am my keeper  And finally I found the words to explain How I came to see the bloom  Of Scarlet in the Rain 

- Sabrina

[sparklepoetess]

”The Velvet Curtain”  Air was held perfectly suspended And the wind waited like the beams Of light that burned in imperishability To finally merge with yours; Reaching across what lies beyond The observable universe As nothing that could bear a name, As nothing that could be explained But through what denied the denial of truth. And it watches from every loving thought Ever kept in copses of color Within the iris of your beauty.

And the hand is stayed In the motion of a river Running through my mind Like a sunrise blazing With auspicious rays Of coral and liquiform gold. The thought keeps Pounding through the stratum Of what I would do When the labrum of your lips Parted like a rift in space And opened like the vaults That held the most precious of words; What I would do to feel them Upon me like a hungry kiss Surging through the tunnels, Diving into the deepest pools Of the boundless human appetite.

And the land is made Of coruscant chambers Built in the writhing archways Of your anacreontic body. Traversing lower, A little slower - It pierces the air In a distant stare And gazes into the élan vital Of what I covet most.

Sayeth unto me What comparison could thrive In a Sapphic mind When the night is drenched With the tension held inside The oracular tone Of a woman’s moan? And I want to know The pulsation of a great elation Rising in your every craven gyration, Sleeping like an esurient tigress In your lodestar eyes. And I listen to the song that sings To the ships of labyrinths Winding and ever-finding The light that burns their sails.

I want to blaze through the corridors Of every sybaritic sensation Extravasating behind the velvet curtain Drawn by the versed hands Of feminine intuition. I want to feel it like the air suspended In what has traveled beyond The observable universe As that which has no name, As that which shook the earth In its commanding presence; As that which cradled eternally Every loving thought Ever kept in copses of color Within the iris of your beauty. - Sabrina  (Photo by Sarah Fimm) 

[sparklepoetess]

There is something within The quiet, midnight hours; The respite when I close my eyes And leave the trembling shell Of a brave new world To sail the untouched seas Of great, unfolding mysteries. Buried by the hands of fretful thoughts, We are keeper and we are the key. Is it possible to be what we are not? How can the limitless not be free?

In the world of barren vagaries, Of symbol and of cipher, The deeply obsessive penumbra Need not become us. Nothing here can dim the light That chooses to burn and ever ignite. The arrows inside the compass Of our wandering minds Spin with extremities That can only point within.     And my love drips like wax From the candle of the unknowable.

We could all have been born A desperate man, Where hunger and thirst And vengeance came first. What makes us all so different? And we cannot seem to know If we are friend or foe. I am a protector of my own destiny When I choose to let love in - And I do not choose it alone. For the dreamers are all dreaming, The fearful are already dead. Is it more than just a shadow That lives inside our head? The dreamers are believing As we walk the world confused, For the ego has its cunning And can keep the world amused. I looked into its time-trapped heart And thought, “Well, this must be the matter of matter. For one to have more, Another must have less.” But nothing is lost by giving love, For it will always return.

On and on it spins inside my mind And they come and go in droves, Looking out and fretting over envelops, And I am looking in. I am breathing deep. I look into a mirror of myself. The measure we give Is the measure we get, And the world cannot silence The voice inside me yet. “Hello! Hello!” I hear in passing, And they tell me their troubles That their heart is amassing. Is this the way of the poet?

A doe traversing the quiet midnight hour Leapt into the meadows of the unknown, And she and I were sailing the sea Of a great, unfolding mystery. - Sabrina  “The Midnight Hour” 

[sparklepoetess]

I recently took a trip back to the land of sand and sagebrush. It was a return to my childhood, my family and so many things that have forever changed the way I will experience this world. It was a journey...it was a spirit quest. It was staring into the face of the past, it was standing across from my shadows. It was like the walls of where I used to sleep were playing memories like old projectors so I could relive them one more time before I could choose to let them pass like the images they were.  I took my camera with me. I documented everything that I could. I asked my grandmother about the Dust Bowl. I filmed gun stores that used to be restaurants. I filmed junkyards, meth houses, abandoned tanks and Confederate flags that people still proudly displayed in their windows and beneath southern skies. I went into my experiences of living as a young, gay artist in small town Oklahoma. I’m just beginning to realize that everything I captured there was only part of the puzzle piece, which as I speak is spread out before me like little shapes on the floor. I just know I have to keep my hands in motion - keep my will focused and mind aware of what tunnels my thoughts are leading me down. I am currently working on editing the footage into some form of documentary...if that ends up being the appropriate word of what this will become. I can’t quite put my finger on it yet, but I also think that might just be the point.  Words have started flowing again, much to my relief. I took my journal and utilized any spare moment to write down whatever I could. Something in me is burning to say something. Sometimes I feel like I’m just the operator choosing which track the train will take - and it will come either way. Our ability to choose even what thoughts we think is a freedom I am just beginning to realize the magnitude of.  I will have much more as I go along, including videos, photography, poetry and whatever else spills through the thin veil of time. Here is a new poem written while I watched the sunset in ancient Gypsum hills: “Dormitabis”  Sapphire sky Highway reflections Streaking by In after-light Terminal sunrise And red-eye rummage Through a mind rising above A pillowed curtain Releasing the embrace That held me like a lake of fire I will come to know myself I will never hold back An ounce of this love Until it spills And fills Every thirsting heart My solitude is my teacher I am my own again Cast not my eyes in such a light To feel I need be so protected From the broken heart Of love reflected   I will stare into the hallways Of deep-root time And splintered residue Suspended Apprehended   And I will come forget A world of idle dreams   Singularity, solidarity Passing through the desert sands I drifted in an airless wind Through miles and miles Of spacious lands With nothing to catch A swift-sailing thought Or the empty hollows In comfortable shells Red-dirt roads Hastened farewells Metallic grass glimmering In gypsum hills shimmering For the rare pair of eyes In oblivious disguise Through a current of untamed will Tears of duality streaming Down cheeks that weathered Dust Bowl survival And the unspoken call to rise For the weary and wild Living what only A woman could know   Of pain and of beauty Of age and of youth The Delphic hearts Of falsities and truth The seeds of toil Reach for the soil To blossom inside The waking spirit With a message of hope   For all to hear it   It prospers in resonance Shooting through me like an arrow Reaching for a moon amused Joyfully confused By the evolution of need   I only wanted love And I needed ever so little Some ember to ignite The chest of this automaton And the very ground I stood upon Something to dissolve The puzzling walls Where I run from my intensity Trapped in a tin can Soaring like a meteor In a constellation of riddles   Frailty, strength And constant renewal The cyclical spirals Of endless perusal The tables where I sat A stranger to myself Now serve guns, munitions And violent transmissions Exchanged between The fearful in slumberous lands With nothing to fill the empty space Except for the choices   Those children will face   I wandered my own experiences And no one else could walk them And I stood across From shadows That to this day tell me   My love alone is not enough But  it is too much To be contained And it is too much To be explained And sometimes it will find its way To swell inside the words you write Swirling like a drop of dye In an ocean of secrets It is one and the same This is what I find   In a red-eye rummage Through a mind rising above A pillowed curtain   I must be what  I seek I will never hold back An ounce of this love again Until it spills And fills Every thirsting heart I will come to know myself - Sabrina 

[sparklepoetess]

I opened the journal again. I have been shown my own duality. I have sat with my own darkness. I have sat with my own light. Canopied beneath the cover of the forest, accompanied by the passing breeze, the running river, the sound of a flute in the distance, I have made a friend of solitude.

I often wonder about the lives of other poets…the parts of themselves they, too, had to embody so fully that words were the only way back. Did they pace to the ends of the earth to clear their mind spilling with visions and intensity? Were they met with misunderstanding by the ones who tried to love them as they dropped some object they half held or responded to something they half heard as a stream of words went running across the skies? Were they prisoners to a silence that held a realm so vast that a pen was like the rain to a thirsting world? Were their emotions like the caged animal that unleashes upon the world an intention whose mastery only comes from great self-discipline?

Words keep me honest. Words bear to me courage in my great transparency to face all things in the shifting spectrum that may come. I only know that I don’t know. So, I write as if all things were a mirror. I write it to the spiders as they pass by. I write it to the silence that looks through my eyes. I write it to the longing that needs a friend to hold my hand and help me navigate this inner realm without a drop of fear. I write it to the knowledge that no one can conquer this for me – and that nothing is conquered alone. I write it until I can write no more.

Love and fear are my teachers. I choose which one to listen to. Only one is real. I have had all meaning stripped and have been left to discover emptiness. I have been left with a taste of everything to climb another step higher in this great ladder of awakening. I have been fraught with the mark of love that left me broken upon the shores where the center calls from its daunting distance, “BRAVE ANOTHER WAVE…”

I have wondered what it is to write – why I even began, and why I could not stop even if I wanted to discard this gift like a box that held memories I didn’t wish to recall anymore. Words have seared my heart with their presence. I have wondered why I have stood in the deepest oceans of hearts that never knew my name. I have wondered why I have been forced to the surface of those who have known me lifetime after lifetime. What is it that I should be learning?

I am the quiet eyes unnoticed in the corner of a room. I am the observer watching with the only question I ever wanted answered. Would you step within the words before me here, and face the changing tides of this human experience we share with a love untouched by the world? For those who brave the gale beside me, have patience with this poet’s heart. The world is so much with it.

[sparklepoetess]

Just a shade deeper, My diamond sky. Eclipse these quiet symposiums To shelter the stars ensconced   Within perspicacious eyes, Curious and verboten. Shield from avaricious ones The drifting touch Across this externality; Across the ulterior heart. Embody this. Keep prodding this. Face what you are. A chant rose unto the trees That canopied descending knees Joining a metamorphic earth. They soaked in illusions, Quelling emptiness in twisted exchanges As tomorrow breached With its driving waves Another thing the body craved. It was spoken freely. As though no ears would ever Absorb those contentions Like some craving sanguisuge Scratching at the door Of a thing no words could touch. A quietness and tension - Refusal and suspension. It kept its pace along the edge Of the deep night. Poets deserted by their words, Looking out and seeing The pulse of life moving and not moving Like some time-lapsed indifference While something greater sleeps In the middle of the unknowable.   No…no words could ever touch it. The new craze of barren accounts Of mass hysteria media Preaching from a ravening nucleus Fed by our emotions. Amass, ye! Anxiety, depression and more! Walk the streets in warrior stance While serpents await their precious chance To drive their fangs in open wounds As heaviness no longer suits you. It comes in waves atop a limitless ocean Pushing and pulling, Expanding and collapsing. You swim unclear While it holds you near. Just a shade deeper, My diamond sky. Shelter the stars ensconced Within a nameless treasure. Shelter the hearts still seeking To see a brother for the light in him; To see through to the right in him. Composing, Enclosing - Embody this. It is a thing no words can touch.   - The Poetess  “Diamond Sky” 2015 

[sparklepoetess]

“Astraea” In the drifting, moon-bathed thought That stirs her from her dreams Is a gear that spins and has her caught In a river with many streams.

In a mist that forms in slumber tides Is a figure that cradles the face Of every thing she coyly hides In lines she cannot trace.

The empire built, she was set free In longing that goes unknown. In love as deep as a boundless sea, She walks her path alone.

Her eyes were made of lucid clouds That washed across chromatic spheres, That sought the truth that want enshrouds As they sifted through her lonely years.

And who would see the question there? Who would seek to understand? The stars that weave within her hair Were reaching strand to strand

To learn how a heart could be half-craved Then cornered like a precious stone, To be another venom braved As she walked her path alone.

A pressure felt across her chest Awoke her from her lover's snare As it pounded loudly in her breast To remind her it was there.

It spilled in a thousand empty words That crossed the lips of negligence, And it flew upon the wings of birds That have not ceased their flying hence.

So, she waved her fingers across the sand To clear a spiteful story grown From comfort that held another hand While she walked her astral path alone. - Sabrina (Sparkle Poetess) 

[sparklepoetess]

My hands are busy today in preparation for my poetry reading tomorrow at the Golden Notebook Bookstore for the Woodstock Poetry Society. I am creating a handful of small sparkle collages for those who could use a little color in their days. It has been an amazing time, and I am just beginning to experience the endless possibilities. 

There are also many Sparkle Poetic projects in the works, including a new video for “The Essence of Thought.” If you’d like to see clips of performances, poetic videos or even the sillier things that happen in a poet’s life, you can find them right here. Poetry is my life, and I will always be in the realm of words, but I also would like to take it to different levels and push the boundaries of possibilities. There are ways to bridge together worlds, and I would love to merge film, words and music to make the beauty of language more accessible in an ever-changing world. I have a growing library of audio singles of recorded poetry from my session with Pete Caigan at Flymax Recording, so if you would like a poem to listen to no matter where you you can find them here. And know this: you are helping me build dreams and I am eternally grateful for your presence here. Thank you for being.  And now, a poem for YOU: “Chimerical”  A longing within the deepest of skin Flows like a heedless stream, For there we were, distant but sure That all was like a waking dream.  I gazed in eyes that analyzed, Processing what I contained; I left a gift within a rift. She flourished in what remained.  How could it be that inside of me A mystery is left to explore? Twas all unknown what I was shown, Yet could swear I had known before.  Spiraling gently through passion you lent me, I am consumed by a fire. Heart in hand, here I stand, Frozen in the wake of desire.  Casting a web in midnight ebb, Ensnared in a huntress’s trap To be devoured, to be empowered As the strings which hold me snap.  Beyond the cells where beauty dwells, An intimate moment lingers; Suspended in air by thoughts we share, It settles upon my fingers.  A kindling spark from a luminous park, I send my love to the moon So that all may see my reverie In the smile where I swoon.  I rubbed my eyes in welcome surprise And gave myself to the night; Floating through clouds, swimming through crowds I sprouted wings in flight.  Touched am I by immortal sky, Rouge embers in the dark, I shall enhance a minute’s chance - A chimerical moment in a park.  Softly descending a moment’s ending, I release myself to the infinite; Always connected, by love directed, Always existing within it. - Sabrina Miller  (Photo by sarahfimm)