Computer screen
Windshield
Camera lens
Glasses
Mirrors.
The world comes to me through
a pane of flat glass.
If what I see through my television screen
isn’t real,
is anything?
I will take off my glasses and walk outside
and look.
That will be real.
Fuzzy,
but real
Sometimes I paint what I see.
Sometimes I paint what I feel.
Sometimes I paint figments that grow in my mind.
Sometimes I paint figs that are real.
When flowers begin to spawn dragons,
and dragon ships sail upside down,
when trees have eyes and snails sprout wings
You know that I’ve finally found
that niche in my psyche that whispers
of worlds on different planes,
and tells me to capture them quickly
or they’ll never be seen again.
Yes, sometimes I paint what is
and sometimes I paint what could be.
Sometimes I paint the world.
Sometimes the world paints me.
#213
Some would have us all believe externals do not matter,
that everything resides within and we control our fate.
the former may be true but I tend to doubt the latter
‘cause minus forty’s deadly no matter what your mental state.
It isn’t safe to disregard what’s really real around you
and think you can control the laws of physics with your mind,
but yes, you can ignore the window dressing that surrounds you
and walk right by the foolish ads, if you are so inclined.
The trick, it seems to me, is knowing what is or isn’t real
and knowing what to pay attention to, or leave alone.
Adjust yourself to fit the facts no matter how you feel.
Adjust the fiction to fit yourself and all the stress is gone.
#111
I’ve been wondering of late
why I try to change my fate
when I can never know or see
what my fate will really be.
If I don’t really know for certain
who or what’s behind the curtain
how can I know the default or
if my future has been altered
or if I’m naively treading
the very path that I’ve been dreading
towards the fate that was laid out
before I started on about
embracing change, chasing dreams.
or switching horses in mid-stream.
If all my paths lead back to me,
I make my own reality.
#31
The sleight of mind that palms
truth up a sleeve and
replaces it with hope and horror
and so the illusionist dreams
reality out of anticipation and fear.
Reality, the illusion.
In the dark of the night,
when I switch on my light,
my bedside window is an echo of white.
Like a dim extension
of my room, it blends in,
reality merging with bedroom reflection.
At a glance I don’t know
what is quilt, what is snow,
and out of my bed a poplar tree grows
as the snow sings again
its mirrored refrain,
a white counterpoint to a white counterpane.
I wrote down the year today
as nineteen instead of twenty.
as though some errant, swirling time warp
tapped me on the shoulder.
New memories came like visions
from temporal cognoscenti,
and transcended the divisions
between now and then and older.
Which made me wonder what would happen
if one day the time warp hit
straight on, full force, and pulled me
deep into the eerie vortex.
Would it be a hurricane’s eye
where once and future engrams flit
like flying cows and spinning barns
whizzing past my quaking cortex?
Would patterns form and fray and fade,
emerge, then merge again to form
the multiverse of maybes
that spawned my personal, perfect storm?
The brainstorm of the century.
The wormhole to what’s never been.
The one way ticket, first class seat,
to the nearest loony bin.
“Two thousand twelve, two thousand twelve,
not nineteen anything” I say.
I grip the pen as if an anchor
to my actuality.
“I have too much to do to ride
time’s crazy centrifuge today.
the future past is soon enough
to face my own reality.”
#295
My CD "New Traditions" is available for listening or digital download
My CD "Breathe" is available to listen to or for digital download
Linda Studley is a writer, songwriter, independent recording artist, and sometime graphic artist living in Northern BC, Canada
Linda Studley 