Ripples

Her nose relished the taste of steam as she settled into the bathtub, and felt the caressing heat of water soaking into her soreness and carrying it away like a colony of sea ants on a mission for ache-food.

She watched the water flow in to accommodate her shape. Her thighs and breasts were islands, her stomach a great sandbar between them, her hands and feet ships sailing and docking alongside them, her hair a forest of reeds and seaweed. Every breath she took sent a triad of concentric ripples out  onto the otherwise still surface of the water. Every inspiration was a suspension; every expiration released energy out, rippling, rippling.

Suddenly, she was struck with the idea that she could move the water, push it, make an impact, make it express her.

She started slowly, swaying subtly, watching water slosh to and fro as she willed it. Shifting up gears, she pushed the throttle and threw water and flesh around like a failed juggler in a butcher shop. The movement became increasingly chaotic until she realized that she was no longer so much moving the water as it was moving her. In her climb to power beyond her capacity, she'd been overcome by a force that just dared her to mess with it.

She threw down her guns and threw up a white flag, and her body swayed to a stop as the water regained its composure and smoothed down its hair, ever so slightly ashamed of what it had just done. When they were at rest, both agreed to never revisit that moment again; but each secretly remembered how hard the other could hit, and nothing was ever the same again.

And the only witnesses to this moment of violence were a water spout that could not see, faucet handles that could not speak, and a towel that could only hold one of them.

Derivative

Every time I write anything,
a voice in the back of my mind
in the red velour and gold cord box seat
shouts "Derivative!"
while another says
"Well there's certainly nothing integral about it!"
because apparently my inner critic
is Statler and Waldorf,
and my high school math teacher,
all at once.

But the thing about "derivative"
is that it's only self expression
that gets that label.
Destructive things are negative tropes,
harmful things perpetuate stereotypes,
cruel things need to end;
but love poems and songs about beauty are all
"derivative."
So really, there's no harm in it at all.

Think about it.
If I write a poem about beetles and cars,
or a girl in a bathtub
and someone says
"It's been done,"
that doesn't make me any less unique
or my contributions any less valuable,
or my words any less valid.
It just means I found my own way
to the same conclusions as someone else
and can now share that thought bubble
as equal partners in creativity.

When you and your neighbor end up
unknowingly exploring the same theme,
it just means that theme was worth
the extra effort of exploration.
So of course all great works,
all heartfelt works,
are derivative.
If they weren't, they wouldn't be all that great,
would they?

So next time Statler says "Derivative,"
I'll thank him
and present Waldorf with a calculus textbook.

Parking Lot, 9:47pm

A sea of beetles at my feet
iridescent blue and orange
under the crude oily grime of city streetlights
sitting waiting in their hard shells
but one wrong move
and their liquid insides spill onto the concrete

I think they realize that
because they aren't moving
but I can feel movement
a quiet storm of energy
beneath a plexiglass exterior
restless lymph
swirling cytoplasm
a great big secret
a kinesthetic mystery masked
under solid simplicity

I wonder if they know
how beautiful they are
as the train rolls on into the night.