banana froth and acid.

Sometimes my imagination gets the best of me. Usually, it is quiet, docile, and well adjusted to the life I am told to lead. But sometimes, when I am most myself...that is most the me that I would be if I did not have so much practice at being 'well rounded', 'well behaved' or whatever form of civilization someone has decided I need, anyway. Sometimes, when I am most myself, my imagination sneaks up on me. Today, it was making banana bread. The bananas and sugar were all whipped, frothy and ready for the dry ingredients. I began to add the cinnamon which popped the frothy bubbles it fell on, mesmerizing me.

And suddenly there was a city in my bowl beset by acid rain and it was doomed. And then? Then I realized I had added well past one teaspoon of cinnamon in my zeal to destroy the miniature city below. All the same, the bread was very tasty which I guess is what really counts, right?

10 of 10

I have two tool boxes.
One I use to fix airplanes
And the other?
I fill with colors and all of the tools
I need to explain how I see the world.
I keep painter’s tape in both.
Not that I have ever tried to tape an airplane together
Or even that I use it so often in art.
Rather, it is a reminder that these two worlds
Are not so far apart. 

Artists need tools and precision.
They work in this same world after all,
With its limits, tangibility, and laws.
Mechanics need imagination and creativity and longing too.
Who else made the impossibility of flight possible?
It was not for a love of law,
Though maybe for love.

Or maybe just to tell gravity
That it was not the only authority we may appeal to,
That the ground does not own us,
And that we will decide how far is far enough.
So I keep painter’s tape
To remind me to always question
If the limits that are set
Are the limits that have to be.

Do they serve a purpose?
Can I color outside of those lines?

Painter’s tape is such a brilliant blue
That I cannot look at it
Without wondering if I too may try
To sail straight through the sky into the sun
In a last glance with only smoke
And wax tears to show behind me.
Perhaps not,
But only if I find my bearings.
Fly over the prison wall,
But stop at the sun.


My two worlds are held together by this blue
This brilliant, unmistakable blue.
And each gives the other context,
A strong foundation to build on
And a little something to look forward too,
If only in my mind's eye.