Yoga Class
Tuesday evening

I enter, cautious and inexperienced,
Ready to learn and grow.
Instead, we roll our mats out and sit down
“Notice and breathe” the instructor’s voice sounds

Confused about the concept, I sit and think
My mind is immediately swept away
By a glowing chariot, strings of silver light harnessed by an insatiable spirit:
My imagination.
I think of tomorrow and yesterday,
My spoken word poem, lying unfinished and forgotten,
An orphan in the arms of darkness,
Thrown aside like an old doll in favor of a newer, fancier, engagement.
It still seems like vernacular throw up on the page,
and the janitor has long gone home.

I wonder how I’ll be able to summon enough courage to present it tomorrow,
Since my words always seem to drown in the overbearing ocean of
chaotic classmate conversations
Coached by a cacophony of characters,
creating countless cliche comments.

All I wish for is my words to meld together,
To forge like the strongest metals into
An Excalibur or Vibranium shield
My syllables to arrange themselves
into perfect rows,
like well-trained dancers,
ready to spin on command

My sentences to pirouette around each other
never faltering,
Until speeches wait, on the precipice on my tongue

Notice and breathe

Language - Immaculate

sounds dripping from overlooked corners

sticky and soft

as they envelop you and whisper

letters swirling down the drain of rhetoric

forgotten in a second, in the blink of an eye

words stretch for miles like saltwater taffy

sentences are endless beaches which i could wander forever, and I do
Getting lost is a part of the process

This poem is a work in progress,
and I doubt i’ll ever finish it,
more of a scripted stream of consciousness
A distant cousin of a spoken word.

“Clear your mind” the teacher’s gentle command sounds miles and miles away

I balk at the concept.
Clear my mind?
I can’t even find my way to it,
For all the useless clutter that litters
the passageways of my brain.

I suppose the time for spring cleaning has arrived.

As I sift through thriftless artifacts
gathering dust on the shelf of my hippocampus,
I notice glowing orbs.

“kind of shady,” i decide, as i move towards them anyway

My hand reaches out and suddenly everything is

colors.

they

permeate my brain
perfume my thoughts

my glasses make me colorblind -
i cannot fully understand the beauty
that touches my imagination
in ways i can't explain

Each pigment unique,
Each alluding to a certain
feeling, idea, or movement,
so to speak

pink is sharp, unkind,
but like spun sugar,
softly blooms on someone’s cheek
much like the cherry blossoms on my street

White is soft but strong
valiant like a knight,
fighting to keep its castle safe.
It has never developed a strong relationship with me,
not unlike an absent father

I have always favored blue,
for it’s the color of the sighs deep inside my mother’s eyes
From the comfort of my bedroom walls
To the frosting on my birthday cake
Or a pale, delicate robin’s egg
balancing in the palm of my hand
It’s always there
to welcome me home

Purple’s dark, mysterious air
Always seemed to draw me in
whenever faced with a difficult decision,
“purple!” i’d say
And everything would be okay

yellow always seemed to be
thin
pale
like the faded cloth shielding us from the
harsh rays of the stoic summer sun
not worth more than
just one glance.
But now i see it in a different hue,
Warm and eternal
A buttercup: bright but fragile,
Swaying to the music
That only i can hear

through the clouds and showers
in the troposphere of my heart
i take off my glasses,
and summer has dawned
In all of its colors.

The instructor’s melted chocolate voice slowly drags me out of my reverie
back to reality.

It’s over.

“Thank you,” I say.