Stranger.

With your hollow eyes

I almost didn’t recognize

The face that was my own

A mirror reflection, polished glass

Now shattered, frozen, neatly

Ordered cubes tinkling against

The corners of your hardened smile

I always told you not to leave

Your happiness out in the sun, or

It would dry out, etched with fissures

Filled with darkness, but you, you

Must not have heard me, because

I passed you in the subway station

And I didn’t recognize you

I don’t think I ever will again. 

Shandi Bleiken 2012

Amazing Grace

Water to my wilderness

The wending waves of soul saved song

Entangling a heart still racing fast

Across a streaming desert sand

The spray now in my eyes, the grit

So fine and dry to dust the lashes

‘Cross the back that falls beneath

The reign of that which falls from crying eyes

Spilling now with blood soaked fears

Water to my wilderness, a word from

Shattered tongue, the fragments fall

Down to my face and in the desolation

Echoes sounds of water striking

Hallowed ground.

Shandi Bleiken 2012

12:50am

Why she tries to create beauty

Defined by the definitions of those who have never seen beauty

Carved into granite eyes are lost

Consequence of the darkness

Falling from the yellow sky

Sunglasses in the spring

Glasses for the sun now drink it

Deep, I pray the Lord my soul

To keep and if I should die before I break

I pray the Lord my soul to scrape

From the ends and the cracks

Of all I was and

Smear me out across the sky

Violet, indigo, orange phoenix fire

So why, her fingers fly

With pauses meant for intermission

As if she needed shifted permission

From the blind leading the blind

Into the catacombs at night

So now she’ll write, so now she’ll write

Into the night, into the night

And there will be no

Pause, for broken phrases and empty gazes

This is her waltz for beauty for pure beauty’s sake

Dance among the stars

Footprints pages with Jupiter and Mars

She left some stardust on the floor

It will be there in the morning.

12:20am

The shadows of the wooden fan on the ceiling

Blue lit darkness

Her fingers play the melee of music

That only sightless eyes will see

A tessarae of madness

Bought with sanity it—

Written without gazing

On the contents of furnished

Fingers, whirling, the dervish

Dances onwards Christian soldiers

Moved up this mountain, move

Up this mountain

12:39am

I leaned back closed my eyes

And wrote like the war was ending

Wrote like the men were coming home

From the misery

 That I cannot fathom

In their hollow eyes

Where bullets rest

Blowing embers

Of the nothingness

We desire

I leaned back and wrote like

Tomorrow had come at last

And all that was

Had never been

The past erased

My story underscored

With no marks

No blemish

Nothing

I leaned back

And I wrote

To the sound

Of raging vocals

In my headphones

And I felt

The violin

In my bones

Eating my marrow

With delicate agony

And I felt

The words

Drowning out the air

In my lungs

And I Wrote as if

I would never write again

This may be a terrible idea but…

…. I am going to write as many pieces as I can, eyes closed, music loud, half asleep.. just letting my fingers take me where they will. 

Strange is a guarantee. Quality, doubtful. 

Consider this a warning.

Fare Thee Well

This is not over,
(but it might be the end).
Fingers entangled
Now fraying like twine
So I sit here and unravel
Until my toes are tangled
My fingertips mangled
And somewhere in the distance
The drums bangs on

A roughewn door stoop
Humming the clockwork symphony
These knots are not new
But now bathed in my blood
I sit and unravel and watch
Twine will travel, down
That old path, while somewhere
In the distance the drum
Bangs on

A dragon streaks across the starlit sky
But my eyes do not lift from the
Fire in my fingers as I sit and unravel
A sky like crushed gravel, sings
And somewhere in the distance
The drum has stopped.

Shandi Bleiken 2012