A writer’s world; my created world. A poet’s home; my written home…
I always want this poetry inside me.
I never want to lose my desire to rhyme.
I have to use these strung-together letters to see
How we all use the meaning of words to define our time.
Life always has a question mark at a chapter’s end.
Its exclamation points can be both good and bad.
We try to figure out the message we really want to send
As we lose track of the sentence structure we had.
As we learn to live and read, we’re given rules and syntax.
But just as we take on the task of diagramming verbs and nouns
We find that punctuation has left one too many cracks
In the foundation upon which we build our paper houses- our towns.
We pour our stories into the ink flowing between the lines
Which become our erected walls separating the past from the present.
We pray to God that the jumbled letters won’t collapse as we climb–
Over our own run-ons– leap over fragments and hide under dents.
The ink runs, the pen bleeds, and the marker smears.
Life rips the paper, burns the edges, and crumples the best.
But through it all, the faded pages still wear our tired cares
So that the imprint of our thoughts can give us denotation and rest.
Words form every thought, frame each emotion, and display
All the mysterious meaning we say comes from above.
Letters make up every question in every language and so we ask
How each question and answer can crease and fold but point back to love.
So we try; we write. We add pages to our lives of loose leaf paper;
All the while, we try to use our typed truths to maintain our masks.
— Written by Sandy Heights
