Drums and Storage Totes

I have been going through fifteen years of boxes.  We moved a lot in my twenties and I am amazed at how much paper can accumulate and multiply in Rubbermaid bins if you do not pay diligent attention to it on a regular basis.  Not unlike the run-on sentences I am prone to producing, it just goes on and on and on.  I have, over the course of the last year, gotten rid of about half to three-fourths of my "stuff," not including paper, and about 70% of paper items have gone to the great mulch pile in the sky.  It's funny the things we hang on to, the things we don't.  The below poem was written on a scrap of paper.  So far, I have four file drawers in a large industrial file cabinet full of scraps of paper with scribbling.  If even one of them nets a poem or even a sentence that means something to someone, that will make me sigh with relief, as it will mean that I am some sort of writer.  And that would be very cool.

Note:  If you are wondering whether or not you are supposed to do something, look around.  Look around your home.  If you are surrounded by piles of paper with your own handwriting scrawled all over them, perhaps writing is the hobby or sanity saver for you.  If, while clearing up the wreckage of my young adulthood, I had found box after box of sewing patterns, I would be making a dress right now.  If you look around your house and you don't see yourself, look around inside your head, and note the things you love and tape down.  Please remember, as a friend so awesomely reminded me the other day, the only person who can see through your eyes exactly is you.

Okay, this ends our Lifetime Afternoon Special moment.

(scrap of paper #49823 or something)

All my life, emotions pulled taught

threaded, strained, toughened.

Emotions beaten by you, beaten

Out of me like a drum, pounded

And glared at.  Resented.  I will not

Allow you to play –

Your score is overplayed;

Your job to keep time, keep the beat, finished.

I walk away now with just what God gave me –

Those very sections you hate, the

unique beats, the

Skins I wear, stretched and bound.

About my soul…

Bound around my soul.

Your rhythm, not mine.

Your timing is off, off, my spirit won’t dance to it, not anymore.

Sm 5/18/2002

Until next time....SEA 1.28.2013