Words into Matter

Fright Dreams

2009-07-29T22:50:00.000-07:00

White wood cribs in the country on sunny days of gloom
Witness toddler tears and babies violent earth shaking fears
Of being left alone, abandoned and lost
While mother descends to oblivion at her babies cost
Abuse upon a sibling; never by a parent
But by a monster for real
Brings inner wailing still
Tantrums rage too big for baby’s britches
Existence invalidated by her insistence
To be
And to be heard
Hushed notions as ignored plights
Silence caught eternal
Found escaping as words for help
Whispered screams of breath
Panting between head explosions
Snot and tears: the fever of truth
Can sometimes be found in fright dreams of heroes
Power lost in a cry, smothered, hushed and left to die

- Lisa Olivas

The Runner

2009-07-10T22:07:00.000-07:00

You move as a poem unfolding
Desire on the skin
That visceral quiver within
What thoughts go through your mind as you allow the sun to warm your lips, as you lay, arms resting over your face?
The early morning summer of your youth is peacefully restless
You run as if you could tame the wind
You work; exertion to exhaustion
You care so deeply, your ego is left in the dust of your tread on those long runs that beckon
You’re up early every morning
Drying the last supper dishes left unwashed from the night before
Making the coffee and mixing the batter for pancakes
You’re up late every night
Wondering where your destiny will lead
Keeping vigil to hope
But you can’t shake that indestructible confusion that you try to net, call down, and name
What disturbs you?!
There is chaos in the silent peace that you once knew
And I can smell it
A roaring awakening is upon you
But fear is making you run

- Lisa Olivas
copyright 2009

Gods and Demons

2009-02-22T21:15:00.000-08:00

Though are souls are divine
And our path to God winds around opposite ends
Our hearts and blood are one
Unite and shake in the same fear
And choke on the same snot
From the same wound
As siblings of our mothers disease

Demons of pain and anger
And ancient fear
Taunt from the corner of reality
Come haunting and possessing
Angel-kissed bruises

The Gods that kept us alive
And temporarily insane
To make the pain go away
And the Demons that bring it back today.

- Lisa Olivas

The Joker

2009-02-22T20:41:00.000-08:00

I saw a twinkle – star burst
In the eye of the skull
And felt the familiar warm pain of deception
Where sadness oozes from the hollow cavity
From the cranium of an empty dream
Where the geneses of the personal divine
- once considered holy
Are gutted from the beginning
Eviscerated and tossed
Dream entrails used as party streamers
Their vibrancy a mockery
Tied to the handle bars of the carnival jokers two-speed
Who is it that mocks our dreams by day?
And then soothes our loss by night?
With antics and hysteria
And chocolate covered needles
An impresario of theatrical trickery!
Performs the foreplay to the inevitable
Final scene of cunning and terror
This is the whimsical ride of lost dreams
The wild card of fate
Driven by the joker, Death itself

- Lisa Olivas

Touching the Border

2007-10-10T19:39:00.000-07:00

I can touch the border
With fingers of hope
The horizon where my life ends, and another begins
Such that my soul has been awakened
And I can remind myself of what is possible: An alternate existence

- Lisa Olivas

EMPTY

2007-10-08T20:58:00.000-07:00

No Paradox To Obsess Over

No Crisis to Tend

No Extremes - Only Equilibrium

No Giddy Joy

No Anxious Pang

No Delirium

No Longing

No Surprise

No Grief

Empty Wholeness is Eternity

No Matter How Brief!

- Lisa Olivas

Your Personal Cause

2007-10-07T22:29:00.000-07:00

Dancing toward its center
The flame of life
A truth refined
Defined to death
Sets ablaze a path
Of ambiguity
As God
God-As fire
Burning bush
Burning path
Old testament
Your old testimony
Now lost
On the journey from then to now
Flames from The Wisdom
Flames from The Testimony
Yield no smoke for the ordinary
Bastard who creates smoke signals
Out of the contemporary
Philosophical idioms,
Philo-crap-ical idiots
But burn for purity’s sake
But burn only from within you
The point of the flame
The flaming point?
You burn for a cause, not yet strong
Your cause burns inside
Ablaze
Dancing toward its center
Waiting to be refined,
Fed, and redefined
As God-Is

History Undefined

2007-10-07T13:16:00.000-07:00

History Undefined

and all the pretty things once familiar
are washed away by the torrents of rage and war
and the sterile scientific
shattering the once sacred objects of life's ritual
left abandoned and exposed by the unrelentless modern

and all the walls of the temples of earth,
that once echoed the whisper of the divine
idols and gods of pre-tech society,
are destroyed

the mystery is left to wander
carried as seed by wind
any effort to restore the ancient
is left for those in want
who search through meaningless debris
designing a calico past
for us all to believe in
so that we can calm the guilt of our inhumanity

- Lisa Olivas

Coeur Brise

2007-10-06T21:38:00.000-07:00

A soul drunk in despair touched by an unknowable love affair; caught sober over breakfast coffee steaming from hot mugs
The previous night’s curious wants now nude in the barren reality of day
Light forcing eyelids to accept another course in lonely desire
In his pain he burns the eggs and cries until the hash browns have turned to mashed potatoes
Then sits before me, fork unsteady, eyes dodging intimacy, choking on biscuits and gravy and trying to smile through unrelenting torment
And I’m trying to swallow my broken heart.

- Lisa Olivas

All That Matters is All That is

2007-10-06T20:31:00.000-07:00

Can we go now – freely – to that place?
Where nothing else matters?
Where all pre-tensions and self-created complications don’t exist?
Please, let’s go to that “Oh My God Place!”
Where we can finally see with the eye of heart
Where we are not just good enough – but perfect!
And all that matters is all that is…
LOVE

- Lisa Olivas