HAZY

June 14, 2012

Hazy face, hazy dreams.
I am never what I seem.
There is one, and there are two.
Both of which are me, not you.
Though your shadow casts its gaze,
Upon my weak and weary face-
You cannot reach me.

One of me is stronger, harsher still.
The world is hers, but she herself, has killed.
A hard exterior, soft within,
She breaks so easily beneath the skin.
With your knife, you graze her wounds,
You chip and cut and make blood ooze.
But there is another.

The other, she never bleeds.
As hard as rock, her heart as thick as orchid leaves.
She wafts through life, so stoic and still.
You can't break her; you never will.
She feels no love; she feels no pain.
Her every experience feels the same. 

It's her shadow you must watch out for. 

Blackbird

Go, go, go, said the bird: human kind
Cannot bear very much reality.
Time past and time future
What might have been and what has been
Point to one end, which is always present.
-T.S. Eliot, "Burnt Norton"


April 18, 2012

The smell is overwhelming,
As last night's carnage hangs on the bedpost-
A testament to his conquest.

It wasn't the bird's fault, of course.
She wasn't aware she couldn't sing at night,
That singing was for mornings only.

The woman touches her soft feathers,
Sees the vacant look in her eyes.
She wonders if it would have been better,
Simply to imprison her-
But he would never allow that.

Suddenly the room is spinning.
The wings disintegrate between her fingers,
as the sun shines through the glass windowpane.
She's trapped again today.
If escape were an option, what would she choose?

Thread

Thread
Katie M. Moss
1/17/2012

She said I don’t’ know when I’ll get there, to that place I’ve often seen--
To that place inside my dreams,
A little thread, within the seams.

Every day I hear its call, a little fainter
As I watch the snowy sidewalk,
As I gaze into the street.
To that place inside my dreams.

There it’s bright and never cloudy,
It is silent, warm, serene.
No one tells me anything,
Stitched in that place inside my dreams.

To be sure, you’ll never find it
‘Lest you drink this potion down
Says Irene the white angel,
Who flies without wings.

She flutters around me.
But she cannot wield my dreams.
If she could, I wouldn’t let her,
For they are built especially for me.

Night falls. I crack the shutters.
I ease my way between,
See my harried, troubled eyes
A product of moon beams.

They will never touch me now
With their filthy hands of hate
With their potions, ties, and keys.
I will fly into the night,
I will whisper softly, please.

I will slowly drift away,
Into the clouds of misty dreams.
To the place of in-between.
Say goodbye to everything.

Embers

EMBERS
Katie M. Moss
October 8, 2011

The circle never ends,
It always begins
From a point of no return
From the last place you felt heat.
From the time you felt peace.

Those fires burn dark and smoky,
Stone red and embers crying
For heights they’ll never reach.
For a space they’ll never breach.

Fingers clasp at the nothing
That surrounds you and embodies:
All of us are essence
Slowly drifting and dispelling.
Slowly fighting as we’re fleeting.
Disappearing while we sleep.

A dark hallway shrouds your coming
Where keys no locks will fit
No doors will open for you.
No lights to show the way,
No home for you to reach.

Cobwebs and shadows growing
Surround you ever nearer.
I linger there before you
In places you won’t reach.
…A life that can’t be breached.

I knew you once,
I knew you.
As your shadow,
Oh, how easily I seeped.

Your life you’ll spend forever
In search of those who’ll know you
For hands to clasp in the darkness,
For a cool breath to ease the flames.

Memphis: A Prose Poem

By Katie M. Moss
September 1, 2011

She sits in the corner, there.
A misty fog glazes her down-turned eyes.
A fly buzzes above her unkept hair,
And a smile grazes her parched lips.

She sees me looking now, catches my familiar gaze.
She gives me a hard stare.

I loved her once, in a different time, a different place.

She was better kept then. Her eyes still had the hope of years to come,
Lingering around the not yet wrinkled edges.

Tonight I can’t see the spark of memory in them.
The summer days, floating on that drawling Southern river,
The nights filled with fireflies and moonshine.
Things were simple, then.

She left for Memphis once, a long time ago.
She was gone for two months.
No one ever knew what she did, who she met.
But when she came back, she wasn’t the same.

Sometimes she would hum strange melodies,
A faraway look in her eyes as she stirred the dinners she made for me,
Once I finished in the shipyard.
I liked her best at those times.

She was a different woman then, mysterious even.
Her brows would knit together, and I couldn’t decide if she was trying to remember,
Or if she desperately wanted to forget.

Tonight I can still taste those homemade pies
She filled them with fruits so sweet,
I almost couldn’t bear it.


She’d slowly kiss me after,
The taste lingering on her tongue.
Then we’d slide into the front porch swing.
Our motions swaying in tandem with the wind, the trees.

We’d stay outside until sunrise,
Until I carried her inside.
She clung to me at those times,
In the same way she clings to that dirty, old suitcase now.

I nod at her, a nod of knowing
Of recognition.
She blinks her eyes.
They clear, only for a moment, as if the cobwebs of the present are broken,
And she can live clearly in the world of her past.

She walks over to me,
Steady, determined, stone-faced.
She says, “Funny thing, seeing you on a day like today.”
I shrug. “Life’s funny like that,” I say.

“You going somewhere?”
“Yeah. Thought I’d take the next train. To Memphis.”
She shifts her feet,
Glances down at her scuffed-toe shoes.

She begins to walk away, takes a look back.
“I’m sorry,” she says, “that you never knew me.
That you never knew Memphis.”
I shrug again.
She doesn’t know I’m going there today.

She takes ten determined steps,
Counts them out in a whisper,
Her voice trembling.
“I’m sorry,” she says again,
As she steps onto the tracks.

***************************************
The 10:40 train to Memphis arrived right on time.
She went right along with it, as she hummed a little tune.

(Found @ TerraGalleria.com)

Aura

Aura

By: Katie M. Moss

18 February 2011

Distortion--

It's what I feel as the static of the day crashes around my brain.

Around my hands the aura is deep red. Survival-oriented,

With a dirty brown overlay: the color of my Insecurity.

The season is changing again,

But my fears never do.

They shadow me- seek me out.

They know where I live, sleep, love.

I will never reach my ideal self.

I will strain, and strain, and strain for perfection.

I stand on my parched, cracked feet,

Balancing my weight on my two largest toes.

Tomorrow I receive the news,

My life in another's hands.

My heart as designed by others does not complete my soul.

Does it?

Terabithia

Terabithia

01.26.2011 

Walking into the woods behind my house in the golden summer south,

I see them as much more, because I am a child.

They provide another world where kings, queens,and fairies dwell.

In each leaf is a story— one that I can tell.

I grab my younger brothers by the arms and coerce them into play.

The light through the trees warns us of the end of day.

But we will not retreat now from our lean-to castle kingdom,

for magic happens as the sun meets earth.

We will never be as free as we are now,

Where we make our own laws,

and we're protected by the trees. 

**One of my favorite books as a child, Bridge to Terabithia, inspired my brothers and I to make a secret fort by the same name in the woods behind our house. This is a poem dedicated to that place.