Urban Habitat

The Second Life of a Poem

Life’s been a slump as of late. Ths feeling of stuckness, of fighting up a hill that never ends when I can’t see the top… where to go from here? It’s unclear sometimes, even though I think I’m better than where I was a month or so ago. I have more projects, more things to do for joy than for some alterior purposeor just for money. Not that money is unimportant, or necessarily bad; it’s just that I want to do things for me, not for someone else’s dream to earn my keep, persay.

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  • [arena]

    She stood, arms bloodied, against the stone wall. Red dripped down the gold of her armor and mingled with dropped fur and dirt. Her eyes followed steady crimson drips up, up from the ground to the gleaming white fang of the lioness. The crowd jeered. She was meant to die here, by the teeth of…

  • [disappear]

    I finally got up the courage to enter the flower shop. There she stood, recognizable even after fifteen years. Dark hair just to the shoulders; a smooth and quiet way of moving that drew my eyes. I doubted I was so recognizable after all this time and was glad for it. But I swear, I…

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  • healing mint

    Mint is a ubiquitous plant out here in western Pennsylvania. In fact, bushels of it grow against the sidewalk on my street, and a friend recently plucked a full plant, root and all, while clipping the leaves recently – and gave me the little plantlet. She’s been living in a gorgeous ethereally silver pot next…

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  • [welcome]

    The hush of greens melts my heart. I step into the space, wid-open, protected. Like a bird in flight, my heart is free; my bones light. The light hits differently on my retinas; there is no work to put in. The thoughts flow like water in a stream, water through a trunk. I am welcome…

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  • [sensation]

    Cloudlike, fluffy and airy but the color of gathered dust; a light pressure against my hip or shoulder in the morning, like a raindrop hanging off the windowsill, a tiny bit of matter ready to drop percussively to a splatter. This little lovebug, dark like the night, rests against me, takes my support, like the…

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