Father

I am half listening as he calls me down to dinner.

But the preciousness in his call always rings out to reach my ears.

He pokes his voice into the echoes of the long stairway and I can hear him shrinking.

The chords of his words take less from the silences now

As if the world has already heard all he has to say.

The fire in him,

Is now only a single glowing ember, quivering and threatening to blow out at the gust of a bad day.

He is tired most days.

But he still squeezes my hand just as tight when we pray at the table.

He is the defeated warrior who still loves what is true.

The cold rips through his days like flash floods of all the things he wants to forget.

He reminds me to write about lovely things like fire and San Francisco.

Sometimes he walks up slowly and wraps me in his arms

Like I am made of just sleepy summer vapors,

and the faint hush of a child on tip-toe,

Ready to slip away through his embrace like too many other things.

My own arms now return his stronghold and my hands lock around him as I rest in his warmth.

I hear my heart whisper then.

Telling him that he is still here,

Telling him that the world is not finished with him yet

Strings

I was up late last night.
He had come over to stand in the hollow corners covered with posters beneath my slanted roof tops.
He sat on a chair and began to move his wrists, to pluck the strings of an acoustic
making all the music that I never could.
"Hey can I listen with you?"
I don't want my ears to close up just because I'm not beautiful
or just because I'm not worth it.
he bends over all his melodic notes and plays for me the songs of yesterday.
He chuckles when he misses a chord
but his ears stay silent as he knows when the music flows.
I cross my legs and feel a warmth rise up in me as he plays me this sacred knowledge.
His passion makes me smile.
The happiness of simplicity crashes around his strings and makes them throng with something as heavy as the sun and as genuine as a Christmas morning.
I touch the walls of this night because they're coming closer.
We're making last week seem like a race we both finished and tied.
I'm thinking now that maybe it was.
I write this in a rush of gratitude at not having to feel rushed.
Poetry falls from my eyelashes like sound leaks through the calluses on his fingers.
We both have dreams to live life with the little things
that happen in mornings, evenings and afternoons
on summer days
or between snowflakes.
He lays back in a chair and tells me that someday, someone is going to remember me because
I'm a memory.
I tell him that he might have just made my day.
I tell God that night to bless this kid with a word from Jesus so that he might have a reason to stay awake in mornings.
And also that he might remember this day.
and keep humming these songs tomorrow
so that I can hear them echoing across that race that we won
and those dreams that we shared
all just until the snow finally falls on me.
And so I hear my prayer being lead back to me
and I know that as long as I don't let my ears close up,
whether about being beautiful or for worth,
I will always hear the beauty that walks around me.

Marrying the Sea

People tell me I love the oceans too much.
They tell me to marry the sea.
I say I would if I could.
Because it takes more than a love song at the end of the day to be in love.
It takes the breezy shore to blow you away and the cold waves to make your body ache.
and for the blue to take you away and love you for a while,
then set you on the dock
so you can turn your face to the day.
So you can take on the years with the salt water running through your veins.
Your feet touch what you thought was too sharp to run on.
You came with all that you are.
you came with cuts on your feet getting deeper in the sand.
You left with your scars clean and those lovely calluses that you collected from the walks you took with your sorrows.
The sea always turns you inside out
crashing into your blood and laying you down.
The oceans tell me I'm okay here.
The waves remember my soul and the blues wash me away.
Weighing my hands down to lay my sorrows at the shore,
left to congeal with the foam and broken shells.
This is what I dream.
This is me marrying the sea.

Crashing and Falling

I am whirlwinds and I am broken suns.
I am hollow shells and the beginning of nights
I am 3:00 in the morning.
I am empty cello strings and white porches.
I am cliffs and edges.
I am waves on canvas.
I am crashed into you.
My hands hold itchy blood.
I long for love.
I am in the mirror and the window.
My soul is tired.
My footprints show the blisters.
I drifted in the rain.
And here I am.
My days cry like flags in the dust when I hang them on shelves and forget to lift them again.
I long to be the sunrise in the night.
But I am the one waiting to be bright.
When I crashed, I fell.
Just like I always do.
Come to my side this day
And pick up the hope I spilled before.
Bring me a storm to make me feel strong.
Bring fire to my blood
And let it burn long.
I am sprawled where you have been.
Show me my world.
Teach me what my heart already knows.
I am a leaking engine.
I am the loudest sigh,
The song on repeat.
I long to be hit with the wind,
The kind that reminds you that you’re still alive.
For air to creep through my skin and lift up what’s inside me.
Turn me inside out and back again.
Give me something bright to scorch my hands and breathe my dreams.
Give me new fields and hold me in them.
I am the first frozen puddle
And the first to melt.
Please know that I have come from dirt and dust.
Please know that I am still listening for my heartbeat.
Please know that I am bruised and do not ask me how,
I will tell you later.
I am burning sage.
Can you see me through the smoke?
I am brash boned and shattering stars.
I am not here to say “I am weak”.
I want only to fall into your arms just once
With all that I am hanging from my shoulders.
With the nails clanking and the metal shards glittering,
With my heart shouting and the sunrise coming.
With the wheels spinning and the waves crashing
Crashing
Crashing.
That day I crashed into you.
I fell into you.
And I hoped to God that you would catch me.

Future

Edit

future

by Melissa Wood on Friday, March 4, 2011 at 10:12pm

I will be slow to slip my hand away from the old door knob.
I will descend the deep steps with the same heaviness and hesitation.
And I know that my feet will linger on the last one.
But still, my heart or my head will speak then
And silently cheer on the launch of my feet from the ledge, and down the sidewalk path,
Through to the next open doorway.
I will be on my way.
The setting of sights,
The vast undertaking.
I will be scared to death.
Leaving this fortress I have for so long called home.
But I am sure that the back of my mind, or maybe my heart
Will be singing of the freedom I would then be looking to;
The song always there to remind myself of why I am here and why I will be “there”.
And why I have taken my heart with me this time.
Ready to carry its heavy weight to my next “home”.
Marking foreign lands with who I am.
I will go to be the pioneer and the patriot.
To lose, to fear, to love, and to live in the next new place.
And the place after that,
And the one after that.
I will take so much with me.
And bring back so much more.
Yes, I will bring it all back to them.
Show them my heart gone scarlet and buzzing with stories, philosophy, and fancy words.
I will sit at holidays and answer their questions for hours.
Because I am the trail blazer now.
I am the next conqueror.
I am new.
But then as I sit there,
I will walk back through the years,
Tracing back each act of grace, of progress, of
“just one more year!” and then “just one more month!”, and then, the final day.
I will peal back the layers
And find where I stepped off that ledge.
And I will look to see that the imprint of freedom is still on those steps.
To see that it was all worth it.
To see that what I have become is a sacred being to me.
I will have left behind what I know,
To go and be washed in new truths.
At least I will say that I did it.
That I marched forth with only wide eyes, tenderness, and a bit of strength,
All wrapped up in hope.
Hope that I would still be that pioneer.
That passionate soldier in this youth.
Still left standing mid-knock at new doors,
Even after all the others have been shut.

Let Me Break Your Heart

Let me break your heart.
Just once, I want to tear it in two.
These walls I have climbed to get here have left my heart dangling in the hollows of my chest.
I will make you a stranger.
I will spin your head till it screams.
I will fill your lungs with silence
And I will lose you in the dark.
Like so many have lost me in this dark.
Just once, I said,
I wish to stand tall on your soul shouting “No, no you cannot have this,
you cannot have me.”
I want to leave you without words
Without awkward chuckles or pauses to slip into and hide inside of.
I will leave you with nothing but your breath
Left curling in the rain
Following after me and my silhouette.
Oh, just let me break it.
Just let me be the one you can’t have,
The one that walked away,
The one that will not take the time to whisper after you
Or mutter your name into nothingness.
Just let me disappear.
So that you may stay and sit and want me.
I want the love songs to haunt you.
I want my eyes to pierce yours and make them gleam and blur.
I want my smile to light your fickle heart on fire.
I will boil you.
I want to march through your mind and across your dreams,
Leaving your heart homeless.
All I ask is once, one time.
One time, let the music play and let the green of my eyes wash over you like the night
Kisses the stars,
Only to then be executed by the sun arising.
I am bright.
Just once, let my light blind you and rob your heart of all rational emotion.
I will strip you of all that is logical and unquestionable.
Your heart and I will play all these games.
The ones you know so well.
And when we’re done,
Your heart will kneel before me in exhaustion,
Wanting only truth.
But all I asked was once.
Once for you to chase my love.
Wanting it.
Needing it.
And never getting even one slice
Of this heart of mine.
Beating away in the hollows of my chest,
As I run,
And you follow.
Just once, I said.
Just let me have this night,
This dance,
This date,
To blow you away
And break your heart.
Crushing,
Shattering,
And leaving you alone to pick up the pieces.

Waiting for Light

I have been thrown about in broken sunshine.
I have been afraid for so long.
I have fallen so far backwards into empty deserts of nowhere.
I ache with what I have left.
All the rest is gone.
Leaving only what I’ve buried down deep, deep, deep.
Like water glasses on wooden tables,
These things make rings that choke whatever beautiful somethings are still inside me.
I have been so heavy.
Dragging sorrows in my wake,
Banging them down ever deeper
Into the hollow heartbeat that is me.
It seems I am not solid anymore.
All this searching has me fading away.
What have I been waiting for all this time?
Waiting and waiting for the daylight to reach me and light my heart on fire;
Waiting for newer waves to seep straight through to my pile of heavy things;
 Waiting to wake up.
I want to remember me.
I am trying to let my songs bring me back.
I am trying to listen.
Here I am.
Place my heart in the street and let it face the sun.
I reach out to the air just to try and touch something in flight.
These days I walk home in the middle of the street just so I can feel braver.
These days I only remember my weariness.
Teach me some freedom to dig out whatever parts of me that are still breathing.
Bring me back from the ledge I have fallen over.
Take me to where my wounds can heal.
I am bleeding out but only getting heavier.
Let me float like a child’s paper airplane.
Make me as light as its wings.
Write me out for everyone to see,
And wipe me clean.
Maybe then I will hear what truth has to say,
And it will tell me more stories that I have missed.
I swear I just need to see the daylight.
I just need to really see it.

"And God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes; and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain: for the former things are passed away." Revalation 21:4

Hello!!!

If you are reading this then you have somehow stumbled upon this impulsive-on-a-whim-just-wanted-to-see-what-would-happen blog I just made. It's still a bit of a work in progress so forgive me if there is a lot of changing around of colors and layout and what not over the next week or so. I don't really know what I want out of this blog to be honest. for my poetry to be discovered? maybe. To see what people might say about what I write? probably. to just have the sort of inexplainable feeling of putting creativity out into a big unknown world. yes, I think so. maybe people will read it, maybe they won't. but it can't hurt to try right? 

 I am not a really a special sort of person. There is not any great reason why you should keep reading this if you are. I'm just a college freshman from Portland, Oregon with some things to say. I congratulate you for reading this far. I hope I won't disappoint you. I'll try my best to keep a regular flow of posts on here. I'm hoping it will give me some more incentive to keep writing on a regular basis. The next couple of posts on here will be poems that I have written in the past. I hope they will be enjoyable. 

Thank you again for reading this. I hope this project will end up meaning more than just a result of my impulsiveness and desire to write. Although I suppose that's not such a sad thing either. we'll see where we go from here. signing off, 

-Melissalanious