The Nature of My Heart

4/22/2010 Posted In , , , Edit This 0 Comments »
Today is Earth Day, but every day in April is a part of National Poetry Month.

So in honor of both, I dug through some old poems of mine to find one that contained some references to nature. Here's one:

~ Sparrow ~



by erica davis


Why did we come together?
That's asking why does the wind blow
How did things fall into place?
Well, ask me how does water flow

If things weren't meant to be
Then tell me how to say good-bye
Before a butterfly can live
Another phase and form must die

It's like the dreary forest
In winter's dull shadows of gray
All the leaves are falling
Nothing moves or motions where they lay

In the hollow of a tree
A sweet, dark sparrow sits oppressed
He did not leave when winter came
He stays to tend to his old nest

Overhead he hears a song
A tune that promises of spring
But see, if he can ever leave the cold
He must outstretch each wing

In the east a garden blooms
Jasmine's scent fills up the air
Sunbeams peek through dewy palms
Shimmering on a land quite rare

The garden waits for him to come
She sings her song for him to hear
With every drop of sparkling rain
Sheds a warm and lonely tear

Flowers waiting to gathered
Branches waiting to be perched
Fertile soil needing planting
Corners wanting to be searched

Why did we come together?
So the dark rain clouds could form
Making us appreciate
The rainbow after this brief storm

Why else would night bring stars
Illuminating earth from high above?
What purpose has their radiant glow
If not to just inspire love?

Why else would fire burn
Scorching us with her intense red heat
If not to fuel our passion
Causing elements to merge and meet?

Why else would showers fall
If not to calm the world for just a time
So we may sit and stare, reflect and share
Reconnect the mind

If land can shake from underneath
If live volcanoes can explode
If winds can blow away a city
Then our own love can unfold

If waves can rise to higher levels
If sparks can burst into the sky
Then our own fears don't seem quite so large
So sparrow, why ask why?

Zombie Omens: What Dreams Are Made Of

8/03/2008 Posted In , , , , , Edit This 4 Comments »


Yes, this is long, but if you value my life you will read it.
So I'm having the strangest dream that involves spirits and zombies. I'm in an unfamiliar old house, with familiar people surrounding me (mi familia), and there seems to be some kind of malevolent spirit present. The spirit first shapes itself into a small rodent, which alerts my dog in the dead of night. We go chasing after the rodent and it appears that she has picked up the scent from behind a bedroom door. It's dark and I can hear her scratching at the door, then yelping and running back to me. When she comes into the light, I am horrified to see that my dog's face is all bloody and her nose and one eye are missing! So now I'm uber-pissed and set on defeating this bitch of a spirit (I sensed that it was female in nature). To protect itself and make it harder for me to attack her, the spirit proceeds to jump into the bodies of my family members, turning most of them into menacing puppets. My sister was the leader of them all. Obviously this spirit underestimated me because I begin to chop up my family members one by one. They were demon possessed after all. While I'm at it, though, I have the idea to drug my mother and one of my aunts. I figured the spirit would bypass them being uninterested in human bodies that weren't functioning properly to begin with. Therefore, the Spirit Voted Least Likely to Plan Ahead runs out of bodies to inhabit and rises to the ceiling, floating there as a useless mass.
~
It's daylight now, and set on reviving my mother and aunt I somehow gain a new level of strength allowing me to lift my mother all the way to the car parked outside. When I return to the house, my aunt is missing, but so is the spirit and the bodies I had defeated! At this point I'm just concerned about my mother, but look who's blocking the front door: my gang-leading sister. Only now she's a complete zombie and reeeeaalllyyy evil. I could tell because her hair had turned blond and that's just unnatural. She tells me to give up and I start whining about how unfair this was seeing as how I had already considered myself the winner. Nevertheless, I'm willing to keep fighting, and as I'm lifting my axe into the air, a little boy with curly hair runs to my side. Apparently, I had a son now. I can't bring myself to display such violence in front of him (a touching Kill Bill moment), so I tell my zombie sister to meet me outside. Once there, I see all the other family members I had sliced and diced, waiting to eat me (which kinda hurt my feelings). Suddenly, a skinny man dressed in all black comes out of nowhere and kidnaps my son from the house! So I'm running after this man as he literally flies away with my little boy. Once they disappear, I just stand there looking up at the sky in horror...
~
Then the weirdest thing happened: As I'm waking up from my dream, I hear a male voice speaking to me in a throaty, slightly robotic tone. You know how those demons in films always sound as if they have three voices speaking at once? That's how he sounded, and what's worse is that there was a strange keyboard accompaniment that began and ended every time he spoke. His message to me:

You wander in your mind and this will cause great weight to you

You wonder in your mind and this will cause great purpose too

Without a place to start

But you must play your part

For your confused poet nature will bring success to you

Now someone please tell me what that meant? It doesn't seem ominous on its own, but if only you could have heard it. It was like a demonic hip-hop slash radio broadcast alert composition. And what is a confused poet nature? The fact that this rhymes also adds to the freakishness. Did this come from my own mind or was it a message from a demon god? And if this was an omen from a demon god, was his goal to enlighten or further confuse me?

Pain Passes On

7/25/2008 Posted In , , , , Edit This 2 Comments »

Lounging across my futon with the low fan blowing over my shoulders and the crystal touch lamp dimmed, I realized that maybe I was becoming a big girl. I mean, there I was actually lying in bed alone. Just two months ago, I wouldn't have been able to do that. Usually the comfort of another warm body is a strict requirement to falling asleep peacefully, and if that body isn't in my bed with me I'll go to another room to find one. I admit, I still prefer not to sleep alone, but now, I can. But this entry is not about going to sleep. It's about waking up. It wasn't too long ago that I lost someone very close to me. Not in life, not in death, but in distance. That person is no longer here next to me and the after-effects of them leaving me left me in a subtle state of shock. That first night alone, I tried to prop a pillow next to me and lean against it, the way I would have with him. I tossed and turned for two hours before concluding that my broken heart would not let me rest. I rose from the bed, gathered up my pillows, and crept into my mother's room where I would at least feel safe. Then I woke up. The first thing I thought about was him. Then that familiar, sick feeling set in. The feeling of weariness, of nausea, that heavy tightening in the chest. Classic heartbreak. What made it worse was that there could be no closure, no reconciliation, no relief as long as he wasn't there, for his dramatic departure was the traumatic cause of my pain. Abandonment, the worse type of betrayal. Strange thing is, there were minimal tears. Mentally, I was doing better than most in my efforts to stay strong and recover as quickly as possible, but damn those physical side effects. And this feeling never went away. It stayed with me all through the day in whatever I did. I couldn't shake it off no matter how I distracted myself with "other things." But nothing was worse than waking up to a new day, yet with the same sick despair. It completely intruded upon my life and I began to fear that this hurt was beyond me; that I couldn't do anything about it and it was not going away on its own either.

~

Then one day it did. I woke up, in bed alone, and the first thing I thought of was....nothing. I looked at the clock, then out the window, and casually stretched just like anyone else does. I slid my laptop out of the way with my lower leg and contemplated over whether to get up or keep reclining lazily. I don't believe I realized at the time that this morning was different. But now, reflecting on that moment, that day, and every day after that, I can only wonder who, what, where, when, and why? Who helped me to feel better? What caused my hurt to subside? Where did the despair go (out the window)? When did the gradual change begin taking place? And the biggest question, why did the pain go away? Really, nothing changed. There was no event that brought this on that I can remember. The damage is still done, so why then am I ok? They say time heals. I always believed this until that last "incident." That last "incident" was a killer; a real blow to the heart. I couldn't see a day ahead that wouldn't begin with grief. But now, I wake up and I'm not tortured by the memories. Anyone who has ever been wronged against knows what a blessing that day is when it comes. And here I am, able to snooze all alone by choice, just like a big girl, because I know that after the vulnerable state of sleep has ended, I'll wake up just fine looking forward - not looking backward and not looking to my side. I really don't know how, but pain passes on. Thank you God.

Soundtracky ~ The Prequel

7/23/2008 Posted In , , Edit This 4 Comments »
“This isn’t right,” she confessed to the ceiling fan as it whirled around in slow deliberate circles, cooling the naked flesh below. She lay flat on the bed covered only by a thin nylon sheet and her sleeping lover’s embrace. To her right, the digital clock spoke of urgency. 12:04 AM....2:19 AM....3:33 AM. Time was escaping her and important questions still dangled in her head, impatiently awaiting answers. Her eyes scanned the room, strewn items revealing signs of a passionate evening: his faded jeans draped over the desk chair, her favorite sweater crumpled in a corner next to her purse, soiled pillows tossed to the floor. She looked to her left where her lover had found the most peaceful rest. Yes, he should be at peace, for she had made him feel so secure, so wanted. In her quest to mend his broken heart from past offenders, she had lied not only to him, but to herself. She did care intensely for this fragile boy, but “I don’t love him.” She knew it, the ceiling fan knew it, but how could her lips even begin to form the words to tell him? This question had tortured her as the clock moved forward without concern: 4:18 AM, 5:01 AM. She knew that he would soon awake with the sun, eager to carry out their weekend plans. She couldn’t let that happen; last night had already been a beautiful mistake. The room had grown cold and a weight had settled on her like a heavy blanket. Perhaps she did not truly care enough to give him the owing explanation, or perhaps she cared so much that she couldn’t bear to see his tears. But either way, she knew what she must do. She slid the ring off her finger and placed it on the pillow. And with a regretful, but resolute heart, she gently unwrapped her lover’s arm from around her waist.