A Moment of Clarity

You step outside the door in search of a moment of silence

The party continues inside

Muffled laughter and music reach your ears

But you find a kind of solace in the quiet

And a comfort in the solitude

Its winter and the air is brisk, your breath clouds before you

The cold reminds you that you still feel

Your lungs expand, the air refreshes you, clears your mind

The goosebumps grow and your body begins to shiver

Once again you are reminded that you are alive

Looking up at a starless sky

Darkened by an absent moon and thick with cloud

You take in all the darkness that surrounds you

Then the snow begins to fall and you find yourself smiling

And you remember all that is magical and beautiful in this moment

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I wrote this for my Dad as his Christmas gift. It is my first attempt at poetry, please don't judge to harshly.

Midnight in the City

It’s dark but she waits anyway. Sometimes it feels like she’s always waiting for him. Why should today be any different?

A bus goes by in the night, it’s passengers few in number. Either coming home, or leaving it. The faces and bodies only a blur as the bus rushes by. It isn’t until this moment that she realizes just how late it is.

The darkness comforts her in some way. She feels invisible and because of this she feels safe. If no one can see her, no one can hurt her.

Maybe that’s why he’s late. Maybe he can’t see her. She’s blended into her surroundings. She has become the park bench she sits on. Still and quiet in the night air. She has transformed into one of the many maple trees around her. Her limbs swaying ever so slightly in the breeze, her windbreaker makes an almost inaudible rustling sound like leaves.

She lays across the bench and stares up into the night sky. Of course she can’t see any stars. The lights of the city have concealed their presence and it makes her sad. She loves the stars. They are so numerous, reminding her of how small her planet is in comparison to everything else that is out there.

She’s on the verge of going home. He’s not coming tonight. Why keep up the charade of waiting? On some level, she knows that he’s never going to come, but still, she waits night after night. Her hope lives on, despite the many reasons she has to give up.

Laying on the park bench, if she stares hard enough and long enough maybe one day she’ll be able to look past the orangey glow of the city lights and find the stars again. And they’ll remind her that their is a whole universe out there left to be discovered. That their is a whole universe of hope left.

She removes herself from the bench and walks toward the bus stop, leaving behind her tree form and the non-existent stars. The bus is coming down the road, it’s headlights alone on this city street for the moment. As it gets closer, she looks back at the bench, her bench, one last time to see if he’s waiting. She knows he won’t be there.

Finally, she breaks her gaze and climbs on the bus, and in doing so, becomes yet another faceless blur in the night.

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I'm not quite sure what this is. It just sort of came out. It's very rough, I only started it in the last 30 minutes but I felt the need to share it.

I realize it's different in comparison to some of my earlier posts, but I think maybe that's a good thing.

You can like it, you can hate. I'll I'm asking is that you try it.

- Brandy

My decent down the rabbit hole

Last night I dreamt I was Alice and I was falling down the Rabbit hole. I just kept falling and falling, for what seemed like hours. And as I fell, my life passed along beside me, like a movie real.

It started off with me in color, toddling along at two. Grinning with my school bag at five, a toothless smile at 6, as I fell the image of me began to grow older. Suddenly I was ten listening to the Spice Girls, then 13 and in High School. And as the images of me grew older, the color the picture began to fade.

What was at first bright, colored filled images and scenes, slowly began to fade to paler colors, where only a select few items had any color at all, then slowly to a world of black and white. A world without any colors at all.

Without really questioning it, my dream self knew exactly why the color was fading from my memories. I was growing older, and in doing so the joys and freedom of youth was going with it. The scenes where the colors faded most were images where ideas like responsibilities, expectations and obligations came into my life.

The loss of color was in many ways a loss of innocence. As we grow older, with the growing weight of our newly discovered obligations begins to weigh down on us, going unnoticed to the unsuspecting eye, our lives begin to lose a bit of the child-like color they once held, until eventually, no color remains.

I do not mean for it to sound as though I am complaining about the responsibilities age brings. I appreciate, and am willing to accept whatever roles life may have for me. All that I am trying to say is that I wish that certain aspects of childhood did not have to fade away. Society sees age as such a burden, and people do their best to avoid the visual signs of it in the appearance of their bodies, but what about in their minds? Is it right for our memories to lose their color?

Where does the laughter go? J.M. Barrie wrote that “When the first baby laughed for the first time, its laugh broke into a thousand pieces, and they all went skipping about, and that was the beginning of fairies.” But where have all the fairies gone now? Is it any wonder that people stop believing in fairies? As we grow older we begin to have to face the realities, not only of our own lives, but within the world around us. Is it any wonder that the colors begin to fade? The truth is not always easily welcomed.

Poetry of Success.

Poetry does not need rhyming or rhythm. It does not require a fancy hand, or elaborate wording. Poetry does not even need to be written down or spoken aloud; it is in everything around us. In a babies cry, in the laugh lines of an old woman’s face, in a little boy’s toothless grin.

There is a world of beauty around us, a world filled with unspoken poetry, but many of us have grown too blind to see it.

Our lives no longer travel the same paths, our heads are no longer in the same places that they once were. I sometime wonder what our childhood selves would think if they could see us now. How many of them would be disappointed in the people we are becoming? Would they look on us with shame?

We live in a world where material goods are praised above all else, but why? Why should our cars and houses and the size of our televisions matter so much. Why can’t dreams and love and laughter be the currency of our success?

Then again, what do I know of the world and all its wonders. Maybe I’m wrong…maybe…But whatever the case, I hope that one day my childhood self can look on me with pride, knowing that the person I have become, is the person I once dreamed to be.