Not All Those Who Wander Are Lost

This Journal Is Closed.

All entries will be moved to GreatestJournal (www.greatestjournal.com) under the username horizonxchaser. All future entries will be posted there.

For explanation see my post on silverladys9sf over here.

For my Beloved Grandma, Helene Silver
26 July 1922 - 21 July 2007

( Helene )

I scatter crumbs of my heart on your paths,
Hansel and Gretel trails leading Home.
Golden poppies elegantly unfolding
at the feet of silver and green aspen
rising like Grace to a sky dreaming of approaching fog.

Where cool Japanese lanterns
hold court among languide shadows cast
by low sprawling trees
reaching over still ponds quietly reflecting iris
I follow the pull of memories.

Too many footprints I've left to retrace them all.
The wind through the aspens ssshhhs over my
heart, rippling light and shadow through leaves.
It sounds like water,
it sounds like green.

All my secrets told here,
soothed by breeze and light and leaf.
Each time I am renewed.
Long after I am dead and forgotten,
the aspen trees will whisper my heart to the wind.

Ok, so I got sick of waiting to update stuff. I posted everything I've written up to now and backdated. This will be a handy post to guide you to those entries so you 1) know they're there and 2) can read them at your leisure. Please do. It makes me sad when I write something and then don't get any feedback because I forgot to post it right away.

So here we go: First lines of poems are in parentheses, since they're untitled)
1. Home in the Arboretum NOT A POEM
2. Untitled poem (stifled, heavy)
3. Untitled poem (torn pages)
4. Untitled poem (do you not feel deeply?)
5. Untitled poem (I wish you were in my heart at this moment)
6. Untitled poem (I saw a cardinal yesterday)
7. Untitled poem (sound should carry over water)
8. Untitled poem (They escape.)

Thank you!

[Actually, I have a lot of stuff that I need to update, but if I do it all at once people won't read it, or it will change how different things are read. So. One thing at a time, and we'll start off nice and easy with a haiku written weeks ago.]


the scent of jasmine flowers
on heavy warm air
summer approaches gently

They escape
--emotions.
Can't recall them
once fled,
like tides flowing out
exposing raw heart like secret coves,
rock cushioned with algae or anemonies,
urchins burrowing deeply into tide pools.

sound should carry over water,
I watch the pelican's dive
...silence.
The sun's final rays of the day
assault my weary, aching eyes.
In this world of gold and teal
I'll just breathe.

there are places more worth going,
dreams reaching out incandescent hands.
our lives intermingled swiftly flowing,
in an infinite hourglass we're both stars and sands.

I saw a cardinal yesterday
red seemed out of place
--an autumn-winter creature
in this hot and humid state.
a rush of air and wings...
gone.
i wanted to be home.
no cardinals there,
i don't know them.
Maryland cold and golden leaves
is where red birds should be.
we're both lost, bird.
what are we doing here?

I wish you were in my heart at this moment,
experiencing all these emotions,
all this life.
I want to grab your hand,
charge into frigid breakers
knocking us off our feet.
If you could see how small we are
it might hurt less,
might seem more miraculous to be alive.
Then, perhaps,
you'd smile for me.

do you not feel deeply?
or maybe you're just running
from the sensation.
They want to trample you,
emotions like storms
and tsunamis
crushing you with weight and strength.
They're bigger than you,
any of us.
Fed over millenia by each soul,
how they've grown beyond comprehension.

Facing this onslaught,
in a quiet place with cool air and the sound of water
as my heart is crushed
again and again
--I feel I'm alive.
If I didn't exist,
my heart could not feel like this,
suffocated hurt with no way out.
In the midst of it all,
there is relief, even a small smile.
I don't want to be afraid of living.
I want to overflow with my own life.

torn pages.
soft-ripped edges
whisper of moments,
heart-borne words scrawled hastily
half-successful attempts to capture emotions.
the absences on the page
recall as much as
any thought-formed memory
fading into the mind's dusk.

i feel as if there were dreams.
have they been borne away by dawn,
riding the rays of sunbeams,
scattering to fading stars?

in the grey morning,
drawn out carefully from that obsidian night
enclosing those heavy winds white with salt,
you linger in my thoughts
as though you were in some far-distant place.
echoes of you in my mind
quietly diminish
as ripples on a glass-still pond.

Featuring: Just Six Spaces, Yellowcard, Tantric, Crosby Stills, and Nash, Gipsy Kings, Naked, R.E.M., Gipsy Kings, Taking Back Sunday, Cannonball Adderly, Gary Jules, Finch (acoustic), Train, Gipsy Kings, Stroke 9, Cannonball Adderly, Lucky Boys Confusion, Tennis no Oujisama, Cowboy Bebop, LBC, Ingram Hill, Fiona Apple, Don McLean, Jeff Buckley, Stroke 9 (acoustic)

NOTE: This entry was made by chopping up another entry and trying to pull out the better pieces of it. Unfortunately, the subject changed a lot, so most of these bits are entirely out of context. I hope anyone reading this can still enjoy it or get something from it. Also, sometimes I've deleted people's names because I thought maybe this was too personal (for me or them) to share with whoever may choose to read this entry. It's really hard to follow, but I feel there are a few gems in it. Do your best. Sorry.

Also, due to the chopping up, I had to change the structure of the entry, and so the songs aren't in there anymore, except for a few quotes.

( Read more... )

I'll stop with this song, this broken hallelujiah, a soft breath passing over dry lips.

...just in time, this song comes to end it.
Tear Me In Two (acoustic) - Stroke 9

The skyline of my city is in this song, the contours of my heart. They're all the same.

"...and then you save me..."

stifled, heavy,
pressing on my shoulders
a dead weight in my lungs.
It drags on my eyelids
slipping forward to hood my eyes,
a prize falcon hooded before hunting.
In this luke-warm air,
thirst unquenched,
my thoughts reach tentatively toward you
where I'm always most comfortable,
my mind always keen,
the omnipresent, overwhelming
sensation of being alive.

your face is crawling with words
unvoiced;
beneath skin writhing,
a nest of clicking insects.
too much unspoken, and hungry
they devour delicate flesh.
decay grips you
those lips once warm
[...]

No picture can capture how I feel wandering the Arboretum. Today the air is flawlessly clear. The sun is warm, rays falling to earth and covering everything like sugar. The smells--gardenia, skunkweed, grass, pine, redwood, slowly rotting magnolia petals, wet dirt. Even with my nose stuffed I can smell this mixture of scents that is home. The breeze washes over my skin like gentle fingers, kissing me cool. This is my secret garden, a paradise of green and flowers and water. Tourists and others wandering past are still not in the same place I am. My heart was forged on these paths, its landscape matches this park. These hills and trees are arms enfolding me, the leaves rustling in the breeze ask why I ever left, plead for me to stay.

I've rediscovered, as I do every time, my serenity, my heart, strength, self.

Thousands of times I've chased hawks through these trees, lolled in the thick sunshine, rolled through the grass.

No, I can't capture it--this feeling, this moment. I wish I could bottle it, sip it carefully in moments when I'm lost, but I guess I'm glad I can't.

Okairii. (I'm home).

what a grand age
to capture imaginations so.
300 standing,
how we've let them blaze in our minds,
or ten thousand men,
marching, fleeing
homeward
hard-pursued.
it makes your heart race,
hungry for adventure.

( Carmina Burana song translation Part 2 )

Note: This translation was never reviewed in class, so there are some holes and places where it's kind of icky.

Latin song translation numero uno. From Carmina Burana. There are a couple more, but I don't know if I'll post all of them as some do not make any sense. Anyway. Enjoy!

( Bacche, Bene Venies )