trailblazer It's a picturesque scene: me in the wooded glen Just me surrounded by forest: no women, no men At first I look to the sky but the trees block my view So I look instead to the ground and with what my feet can do I take a small step forward just a teensy tiny step and suddenly I'm running and I'm almost out of breath and suddenly I'm invincible and I intend to stay I follow no path yet I still know the way I call myself the trailblazer mud smeared on my face ready to receive the world and achieve my mighty place © Dana L. 2013

why I am not a social creature (after Frank O'Hara's "Why I Am Not A Painter) I am not one for talking, I am quiet. Why? I think I would rather be alone than in a crowd. Well, for instance, my friend is having a party. I drop in. "Sit and stay" she says. I sit; we sit. I look around. "There are so many PEOPLE here." "Yes, they're all our friends." "Right." I sit and the minutes tick along and I keep sitting. The socializing is going on, and I sit, and the minutes tick along. I sit. The party is finished. "So many PEOPLE." All that's left is just the two of us, "Our friends," she says. What am I? Some days I am thinking of the way I am: introverted. I sit alone and think. Pretty soon my brain is teeming with doubt. My brain is a jumble of misery, not ease. Unsure of what I am. Then it whirrs some more. There should be so much more, not of dread, but of how wonderful quiet is and thoughts. Days go by. It is even in my art, I am a real person. I have lived some more and I haven't said anything about doubt yet. It's years later; I say to myself: I am a PERSON. And one day at a party I see my friend, and other PEOPLE aren't so bad anymore. © Dana L. 2013

World War Infinity sometimes it’s hard to make it through the day and people tell you that I can’t believe you’re complaining right now because other people have it so much worse and you have it so much better so how do you have the right to complain and it is at this moment that I think to myself something along the lines of fuck off because when it’s one of those days where all you want to do is lie in bed and stay there for months, to curl up beneath your blankets and revel in the only thing left in your #life that gives you warmth, when you feel as if everything about you is crumbling, when your #life is tainted with salty ash, yet everyone around you is a granite statue sweetened with normality and showered in collectedness because on days like those days when I tie my shoes because my world is ending and maybe a knot on my shoe is the only part of me that can keep it together and I tie up my hair because even a strand in my eyes could be a big enough obstacle and I shakily step onward because this is a battle I refuse to lose because there is a sliver of me left, despite its miniscule size, that will not stop fighting don’t tell me that I don’t have the right to complain when every day is world war infinity: filled with stubborn battles that refuse to end unless I am the loser and every day is a platoon of obligations that are running away from me to find a better-fit commander when every day is filled with the racket of cannon-fire and grenades: all thrown at me and every moment is another painful step toward a bleak and possibly non-existent victory just because you cannot see this war I’m fighting, well, that doesn’t mean it’s not real. © Dana L. 2013

Untitled The wind blows in the trees and rustles the leaves that billow at my feet. My scarf twists and turns like it yearns to latch onto you. Like it yearns like I do. I watch you walk past, your feet in the grass and my head in the clouds wondering how I could ever approach you. I am twenty sorts of strange from my soul to my ribcage and then further down to the dirt of my shoelaces. And I don’t think you need that so I stay at your back hoping I’ll arrive at a mindset where I can be happy. You don’t glance my way and that is okay because I can’t talk to you and people don’t flock to me and why would I want them to? I’m miserable at interaction and our interacting hasn’t really happened it would be a chemical reaction set for disaster a pending doom. Because differences can be dealt with but my odd behavior is failure by nature and it refuses to fit with a mold like yours. © Dana L. 2013

Anxiety There is a slight tapping on the girl’s desk. Just a mild echo of fingers bouncing up and down, up and down upon the neatly finished wooden surface. The desk consumes an area much too large in relation to the already cramped bedroom. The girl’s eyes are clamped shut, almost an attempt at isolating herself from the ostracism of the outside world. By the time she realizes that it is indeed her own restless hand causing the noise, the tapping has transformed instead into an unwarranted symphony. It is feedback into microphones and the scraping of cutlery on ceramic dinner plates. The tapping of her fingers desist, but a new tightly wound knot secures itself around the girl’s stomach. Ideas gnaw through the girl’s brain and fly out of her head only to plaster themselves onto the walls enclosing her. The ideas reconstruct themselves and take new, physical forms. They are demons perched watching and waiting to prey on her. Doubt, a short and portly fellow, sprouts devilish wings and swoops down on the girl’s desk, snatching her pencil away from her grasp. An impish cackle billows down from above, only further interrupting the girl’s progress. Frustration slithers along the walls of the room. Although initially quite small, he seems to grow exponentially each time he completes the circuit. The room is brimming with him, a reddish tinge simmering beneath a smoky gray exterior. Everything he touches is left tainted with a smidgen of dusty black. Fear much prefers creeping to slithering. He is like Peter Pan’s shadow: hard to define and hard to catch. He has a particular fondness for chasing around Doubt and Frustration, prodding and provoking them when they begin to still. Fear likes to catch the girl unprepared and watch, laughing, as she mentally tears herself apart. Even when all the other’s have gone, Fear lingers behind, stealthy and typically unmentioned, his slim, but muscular figure disguising itself in the cracks on the ceiling. Self-worth, despite usually being obedient and loyal, hides in the corner, desperately scrambling at the floorboards as if to tunnel through them and out of the room. Her ears are flat against her head, contradicting the angelically grayish white fur sticking up haphazardly, resisting taming. The scratching issues a chaotic and deadly noise, unpleasant to any ear. The bedroom stinks of betrayal. The girl forces her eyes open, finally mustering enough strength to confront her demons. Her eyesight burns holes in them until them are nothing but ash on the walls. They’ll return, of course. Like phoenixes they will rise again from the murky soot, ready to reclaim their victim. But their victory day will not be today. Self-worth joins her once more, and the girl retires, finally, to her bed. The tapping now a dull drumbeat in her ears, the echo of anxiety. © Dana L. 2013