pinprick stars arise
the glimmers in the west
fade to darkness call
the world goes down to rest
but rest not yet, dear world
darkness comes too soon
the stars ought not proceed
the rising of the moon
the sky's gold in death
and sun in its last
more beautiful than birth
but its colors soon pass
sunsets fade
shadows fall to night
but now awake the dawn
i'll wait for morning light
Sunday, October 21, 2012
Somewhere Special
Prompt: Tell a stranger (in detail) how to get to your favorite place.
There's more than one way, I guess. Are you looking for scenic? Good, because they all are. If you're going to keep standing in the driveway we're never going to get there, you know. Oh, and it's going to be a bit of a bumpy ride. We're going inside my head, after all.
If you've never done trans-cognitive travel before, I suspect this is going to be a bit of a new experience for you. Anyways, you'll wanna start by taking a deep breath. Deeper. You'll want to feel the clouds tickle as they slip into you lungs; you'll want to breathe so deep you feel the birdsong in your soul. No, not hear it. Feel it.
Ready? Breathe. Deeper. Close your eyes. It's easier that way. Close your eyes and pick one of the paths of light you see. Pick one and run for it. Run for that light, that light that lives in the darkness behind your eyes. My eyes. Can't yet? It's okay. Take your time.
If you manage to get that far, you might run into a mountain, standing directly in the middle of your way. He's not always there. If he's not, you'll have to come back another day, but if he is, you're gonna have to do some climbing.
So pick a rock. Pick a rock and get on top of it. (I usually go for the one with streaks of marble and music notes in it.) Then climb to the next one. And the next. Climb until you've almost forgotten that breath you took, almost forgotten the birdsong in your soul and the clouds in your lungs, climb until you reach the place where the mountain flowers grow, stretching across the peaks, spreading across heights like a rippling, white sheet, like a pure white dusting of perfect snow.
Take a left. Look forward. There's a door there. But it's locked. I'm afraid you can't go any further. You made it to imagination, but that door's mine.
You'll have to look for your own.
There's more than one way, I guess. Are you looking for scenic? Good, because they all are. If you're going to keep standing in the driveway we're never going to get there, you know. Oh, and it's going to be a bit of a bumpy ride. We're going inside my head, after all.
If you've never done trans-cognitive travel before, I suspect this is going to be a bit of a new experience for you. Anyways, you'll wanna start by taking a deep breath. Deeper. You'll want to feel the clouds tickle as they slip into you lungs; you'll want to breathe so deep you feel the birdsong in your soul. No, not hear it. Feel it.
Ready? Breathe. Deeper. Close your eyes. It's easier that way. Close your eyes and pick one of the paths of light you see. Pick one and run for it. Run for that light, that light that lives in the darkness behind your eyes. My eyes. Can't yet? It's okay. Take your time.
If you manage to get that far, you might run into a mountain, standing directly in the middle of your way. He's not always there. If he's not, you'll have to come back another day, but if he is, you're gonna have to do some climbing.
So pick a rock. Pick a rock and get on top of it. (I usually go for the one with streaks of marble and music notes in it.) Then climb to the next one. And the next. Climb until you've almost forgotten that breath you took, almost forgotten the birdsong in your soul and the clouds in your lungs, climb until you reach the place where the mountain flowers grow, stretching across the peaks, spreading across heights like a rippling, white sheet, like a pure white dusting of perfect snow.
Take a left. Look forward. There's a door there. But it's locked. I'm afraid you can't go any further. You made it to imagination, but that door's mine.
You'll have to look for your own.
Friday, October 12, 2012
Heartsong
I thought I'd write a haiku, and then this poem would be over quickly and I could move on with my life. Because haiku is easy; it's just five, seven, five, no rhymes, just syllables. So I sat down to write it, and I started thinking about subject matter, and I realized that I wasn't going to be able to write a haiku. My spirit cannot be contained in five, seven, five. My heart - the essence of my writing and my spark - cannot spill itself in five, seven, five. Because I am a speak aloud poet, I am a speak a aLOUD poet and I will not constrain myself to five, seven, five. That's not to say that haiku can't be beautiful, but the people who write them have hearts that work better in seventeen syllables than mine ever could. Because I am a speak aloud poet and one of the problems with transcribing speak aloud poems is knowing where to put the line breaks, because if you hand someone a chunk of a paragraph, they'll say, "That's not poetry," and if you break it into lines, into pieces that were never meant to be, you won't have a speak aloud poem but a word. Word. Word word. Pause. Stop poem and I will not break my heart for that. I want to write poetry with lines so long they make Walt Whitman laugh with joy and Emily Dickinson blanch with horror because my lines are longer than north and south and I am farther than east and west and I am a speak aloud poet, I am a free verse poet, and I am not here to tell you how a butterfly flies and I am not here to tell you why a tree grows and I am not here to tell you about boy meets girl meets love meets somewhere over the rainbow. I am here to tell you who I am and that I am free. I am freedom because I am a speak aloud poet, I am a free verse poet and I will not be silenced. I will not back down because of can't, couldn't, shouldn't, wouldn't, haven't, hadn't, mustn't, don't, didn't; I will not keep my silence for them because they cannot hold me. And that is why I cannot write haiku, because
five, seven, and five
syllables in a haiku
but I am a speak aloud poet, I am a free verse poet, and this is my heart.
five, seven, and five
syllables in a haiku
but I am a speak aloud poet, I am a free verse poet, and this is my heart.
Thursday, October 11, 2012
Library
Prompt: Go to a special place and write for a while
I'm sailing on a sea of words. I hear the page turns of waves and breakers, and I see people, others like me. Some on rafts, others rowboats, but most on yachts, so high up they no longer feel the salty splash of a stray sentence, so far gone all they hear is jazz music and computer keys.
But there's a woman to my right. Like me, she sails in a modest vessel, not too big or small. She dips her hands in the spray, smiles as the sun warms her face. She waves at me as she passes, noting my stalled boat. Do I need help, she asks. Am I stuck?
No, I tell her, waving back. I'm just enjoying dipping my toes in the table of contents. She laughs, shouting back that I'd better start catching soon. There are fish everywhere, she says as she zips on by.
I nod, but I don't get out, not yet. I just stare, stare into that sea, that ocean of sentences, and trace my fingers through its depths.
A yacht passes me, the wake from its huge tower of ship rocking me and my boat to and fro. I look up, and high on its deck I see a man, tall and stern. He's staring out, but not at the sea, not at the words. He's staring at the horizon, other things on his mind. He's watching the sky, not the sea, a distance written on his face. The ocean is just a means of travel, after all.
Fish are darting beneath me now. They look up and long to be held and admired before they are thrown back in. They are the kind of fish that revel in their captivity; they are the kind of fish that ache to be touched.
I brush my fingers across their fins, my hands against their spines. But I do not hold them. I do not take them up into my ship, even though they long for it.
A seaman's ship wanders slowly past. His vessel is full of fish, which he tosses into the ocean, each to their own place among the words and the water. I wish to be that seaman, loving all the fish as his job, but I cannot find even one fish to look at. But maybe the fish are not why I am here.
Those who come to the ocean do it for a reason. Some come for the fish; some come because it will take them where they must go. Seamen come because they must, but so few come simply because they can.
I take off my shoes, dropping them into the boat's hull. I sit on the edge, and swing my feet wide over the words and the water. I jump, splashing into the sentences and fighting my way back to the top.
Floating on my back, I stare up at the sky, and I know why I am here. I let myself sink, words and water washing over me.
I do not come for the fish or the travel. I come for the ocean, and I'm drowning in its words.
I'm sailing on a sea of words. I hear the page turns of waves and breakers, and I see people, others like me. Some on rafts, others rowboats, but most on yachts, so high up they no longer feel the salty splash of a stray sentence, so far gone all they hear is jazz music and computer keys.
But there's a woman to my right. Like me, she sails in a modest vessel, not too big or small. She dips her hands in the spray, smiles as the sun warms her face. She waves at me as she passes, noting my stalled boat. Do I need help, she asks. Am I stuck?
No, I tell her, waving back. I'm just enjoying dipping my toes in the table of contents. She laughs, shouting back that I'd better start catching soon. There are fish everywhere, she says as she zips on by.
I nod, but I don't get out, not yet. I just stare, stare into that sea, that ocean of sentences, and trace my fingers through its depths.
A yacht passes me, the wake from its huge tower of ship rocking me and my boat to and fro. I look up, and high on its deck I see a man, tall and stern. He's staring out, but not at the sea, not at the words. He's staring at the horizon, other things on his mind. He's watching the sky, not the sea, a distance written on his face. The ocean is just a means of travel, after all.
Fish are darting beneath me now. They look up and long to be held and admired before they are thrown back in. They are the kind of fish that revel in their captivity; they are the kind of fish that ache to be touched.
I brush my fingers across their fins, my hands against their spines. But I do not hold them. I do not take them up into my ship, even though they long for it.
A seaman's ship wanders slowly past. His vessel is full of fish, which he tosses into the ocean, each to their own place among the words and the water. I wish to be that seaman, loving all the fish as his job, but I cannot find even one fish to look at. But maybe the fish are not why I am here.
Those who come to the ocean do it for a reason. Some come for the fish; some come because it will take them where they must go. Seamen come because they must, but so few come simply because they can.
I take off my shoes, dropping them into the boat's hull. I sit on the edge, and swing my feet wide over the words and the water. I jump, splashing into the sentences and fighting my way back to the top.
Floating on my back, I stare up at the sky, and I know why I am here. I let myself sink, words and water washing over me.
I do not come for the fish or the travel. I come for the ocean, and I'm drowning in its words.
Wednesday, October 10, 2012
Because You're Never Too Old to Have Imaginary Friends
By this point, you've probably noticed that I spelled ash wrong. Either that, or I was trying to be unnecessarily artistic by adding an e to it. I suppose that both of those statements are, to a point, true. I did spell "ash" wrong, and I was being kind of unnecessary about it, but because this blog's title and description are so obscure sounding anyways, I suppose I'd better explain.
Ashe does not refer to the powdery residue left after the burning of a substance, nor does it refer to a tennis player who won the the U.S. Open in 1968. Ashe is one of my three imaginary friends. (Yes, I have imaginary friends. And proud of it.) Allow me to elaborate.
My three friends all live inside my head. First, there's Keith, my internal editor. We actually have a fairly healthy relationship; he points out my grammar mistakes without being too overbearing, and is sensitive enough to know when he's not wanted. (See: NaNoWriMo.) Keith is a good guy.
And then there's Dominic. (Where do I even start with Dominic?) He's my muse, and he's quite thorough about it. I imagine him wearing bermuda shorts underneath his toga, smiling a evilly mischievous smile (with a good dash of punk thrown in), and holding a box of toothpicks rather threateningly. You see, Dom and I usually get along, when I can use all that rambunctious energy he's got for something good. However, he's got this annoying tendency to poke me in the back with those stupid toothpicks when he wants me to be creative. The only problem is he never tells me what he wants me to do, only that he wants me to do something. I couldn't live without him, but living with him is hard enough.
Finally, Ashe. She's the one that tells me what she thinks of my writing. My critic, I guess. I can't publish or show anyone my writing unless it goes through her first. So this blog, Ashe, is a collection of things that Ashe has approved; in other words, things that I want to share. Writings, thoughts, musings, stories, or whatever, they've all got a place here, on Ashe.
But wait; there's more! Ash is what's left after the flame dies away. If that flame is the imagination, then the ash it leaves behind is the things the imagination drives us to do; it's the works we create and the thoughts we think. Nothing anyone does is ever totally original, but that's okay, because imaginations need something to fuel them. They take that fuel and turn it into something else: ash. It's not a perfect metaphor (because ash is kinda worthless outside of metaphors and Mistborn), but it works for me.
Ashe does not refer to the powdery residue left after the burning of a substance, nor does it refer to a tennis player who won the the U.S. Open in 1968. Ashe is one of my three imaginary friends. (Yes, I have imaginary friends. And proud of it.) Allow me to elaborate.
My three friends all live inside my head. First, there's Keith, my internal editor. We actually have a fairly healthy relationship; he points out my grammar mistakes without being too overbearing, and is sensitive enough to know when he's not wanted. (See: NaNoWriMo.) Keith is a good guy.
And then there's Dominic. (Where do I even start with Dominic?) He's my muse, and he's quite thorough about it. I imagine him wearing bermuda shorts underneath his toga, smiling a evilly mischievous smile (with a good dash of punk thrown in), and holding a box of toothpicks rather threateningly. You see, Dom and I usually get along, when I can use all that rambunctious energy he's got for something good. However, he's got this annoying tendency to poke me in the back with those stupid toothpicks when he wants me to be creative. The only problem is he never tells me what he wants me to do, only that he wants me to do something. I couldn't live without him, but living with him is hard enough.
Finally, Ashe. She's the one that tells me what she thinks of my writing. My critic, I guess. I can't publish or show anyone my writing unless it goes through her first. So this blog, Ashe, is a collection of things that Ashe has approved; in other words, things that I want to share. Writings, thoughts, musings, stories, or whatever, they've all got a place here, on Ashe.
But wait; there's more! Ash is what's left after the flame dies away. If that flame is the imagination, then the ash it leaves behind is the things the imagination drives us to do; it's the works we create and the thoughts we think. Nothing anyone does is ever totally original, but that's okay, because imaginations need something to fuel them. They take that fuel and turn it into something else: ash. It's not a perfect metaphor (because ash is kinda worthless outside of metaphors and Mistborn), but it works for me.
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