thinking cap

I'm going swimming today.

I found a cave where my mind stays,

this cave of words and books and plays,

everything is illuminated as Jonathan Safran Foer would say.

To feel, to touch, to love, to mold.

These are the moments I crave to hold,

Places and people, mostly young, and rarely old.

Characters and friends that are humble, yet bold.

But there are times when I swim to shore,

of books I come to vigorously adore...

I read a line and then some more,

but all the while I've stepped out the door.

So the line repeats as I read it again,

again and again and again and again.

I feel like a child just reaching ten.

So distracted by memories back then.

My brother was an artist who loved to draw

He also painted and played the violin when he was small,

but along the way he just dropped the ball,

I'm guessing he thought that art wasn't his call

or perhaps it was my father who was so smart and so tall,

that unconsciously made my brother to stall,

to follow his dad down some grander white hall.

I used to imagine a million things at once,

played in a world with unlimited months!

Beads and small animals came alive in my room,

pretend stories were mine to excessively loom.

Food was always a box of popsicles or fruit,

but creating new things were better than edible loot.

Oh! how my mind conjured up incredible days,

where everything happened in impossible ways!

Decadent worlds and swirling rivers,

underwater pearls carved into bow and arrow quivers

constant daylight and new adventures to be had,

even the most minor of details made me glad.

Here I float on the waters of my brain,

remember now the storms of muddy rain,

things got lost and words were quieted,

I left that place and have yet to be reunited.

Now crawling back to a cave not mine,

I decipher new words that glisten and shine,

stories written by authors much more leonine

I waddle to their pond for a brief blip in time,

It's here that I remember something clandestine,

their worlds take me back to one simple line:

but one simple line turns into one million mines

exploding in thought, in fret, and I'm hushed like a mime

steadily breathing I sit back and recline,

dreams filter in like a whimsical wine,

carefully now, observing each sign,

I take to my writing, once again so divine.

-on teetering from getting a doctorate in grad school or writing as a starving artist, hoping both can coexist, but unsure of what may be the more astute or ingenious direction for myself. Going back to the poem I wrote called: "War".