Sherri ⁷

The flame of rage that burns in this world. The earthly anger that casts shadows on our souls. I’m grateful our souls can’t burn with us, though. They’re not of this world. But, they can smell the smoke. They breathe in the #ashes. #vss365

The #caprice of corrupt men who revel in being feared, who gouge the earth with their malice. Or the caprice of a butterfly, flickering the air with its holy whimsy. Then stopping to rest, sitting elegantly on a leaf while you marvel at its wings shaped like prayer hands.#vss365

I take #stock of our reality. It slaps me in the face with a sharp, uncaring hand. The air feels weary with the fading scent of more hopeful days. I escape to nature, my safe place in the midst of madness. My heart yearns to laugh again. My mind only wants to weep. #vss365

A maple tree grows #exhausted from too many thoughts and nowhere to put them. Its red leaves release and flame, kindling the air, clotting the stream. I watch in sad wonder at its silent burn. #vss365

That painful place in all of us, too hidden and deep for even a whisper to escape. A barely #bearable place. And, still, we can’t help ourselves, sometimes we take a walk in its ruins. #vss365

The angels are sad that we hoard our fears in heavy piles inside our hearts. They are willing us to take back our #power, to release the weight of them, to climb the mountain and hurl them down like stones. #vss365

A soul torque radiates in my lungs. Poetic syllables, flat and paper-doll thin, seek shape through my bone and skin. Transforming into poems with a pulse. With blood, and breath, and a living spirit. Escaping through the #doorway of my heart, to exist in the world. #vss365

The #chance you take when revealing your fragilities to the world in a poem. Your wounds visible to others, like the cut side of a pear, exposed to the air. Each of your wound words oxidizing while they’re read. #vss365

Too many people in power these days take on and off their morals like #articles of clothing. And their moral clothing isn’t high quality, either. It’s a cheap knockoff that mimicks the authentic. Stitched together with lies and complicity. Its brand name is Greed. #vss365

My soul is always with me in my dreams, which swell in the night like the sea, washing over us in waves, our fingers interlaced. And better yet, I’m #conscious she’s always there inside the bare bones of my poems. Her essence glows onto my writings like the moon. #vss365

Arbitrary is not a word that describes nature. Every action in nature is part of an organized system, even if it’s chaotic. It’s mysterious but never #arbitrary. No deviation. The flowers open with the sun, the rivers flow to the sea. The moon pulls. The roots drink. #vss365

As dawn wakes to greet us, our shadows, they leave us. Yet, so closely they trail us. They cling to our footsteps, when we reach they #elude us. They thrive in the sunlight, but as day turns to twilight, it is then they invade us, overtake and suffuse us. #vss365

Life is fast, like riding in the back of a car as a child, with the window open, the scenery flitting by. A blur of trees and fields and blue, the slender telegraph poles rushing #past your eyes, their wires resembling a music score, each perched bird a note on the staff. #vss365

The striated clouds stretch across the sky, linear and gray. Each cloud gently overlaps the other, like stacked pages of parchment, their torn edges revealed. I #yearn to lift just one edge of that ancient sky paper, to see what wisdom is written on its page. #vss365

All these heavy thoughts rotating inside, fogging up the cosmos existing in my mind. Sparkly, taunting stars, so far and out of reach, and here behind my eyes, another #constellation dies. The sands of time are soundless, and useless in the end, as my fragile axis spins. #vss365

I’m grateful for my shadow self who notices burnished light on morning trees. She hears #pungent colors, sees swirling sounds, leaks asymmetrical thoughts through my pen. She lives raw inside my heart, an organic neverland, and helps keep me sane in a flat, generic world.#vss365

The most #malignant despair of all is self-pity. It spreads through the heart so swiftly, so deadly. #vss365

When I can’t find my colors, I seek out nature. I breathe out my grays and breathe the blue sky in. I soak in the red passion of a cardinal’s #jovial song. I rub my weary hands with dandelions, hoping their wildness, their sunny yellow, will absorb into my skin. #vss365

As #sentient humans, life is a constant spiral that curves round and round through pain, heartache, joy and triumph. The irony is that we must live it on a linear timeline within the curves, finding ourselves, at times, stuck in dark corners. #vss365

September lurks and peeks through August’s cloying curtain. The #audacious heat begins to soften. A tired honey bee loops away from where you sit, its buzzing fainter and fainter. Green leaf stems twitch with a first premonition, sensing an ending. And a new beginning. #vss365