Fingerpainting with God

Folding my words

Into a paper airplane,

I dream of cargo holds

Along its college-ruled belly

And perhaps a bomber’s bay

Where one hole-punched corner

Tucks securely beneath the wings.

Drag, roll, yaw, and pitch "check.

It’s lift that hides under my bed

With all my fanged and furry fears.

I want to talk with God

With this tangled tongue of mine

To ask Him questions

Before the sea

About the mountains leaping like rams

About the hills leaping like lambs.

Fly, words

Fly, unsettled thoughts

That dare to aim for Heaven

That dare to hope for answers

Which come.

I circle them

I rest upon them

In measurable discomfort,

Your words, shaped like rocks

That I did not ask for

Rocks that I cannot hear,

Vast, windswept,

And bound to the earth like me

Shadowed in the sunset like me

Trying to tell a story

Like me

Settled and still

Beneath a swelling whisper

As I tremble at the tale

Of your fingers dipped in rocks

That pooled about them

Like ribbons of taffy

And leapt into mountains

Like rams

And slept in the hills

Like lambs.

Reviews

[Ern M. Yoshimoto]

wow! quite a ride you took us on there. there are so many things going on it can feel quite bewildering. but that is a mental state i know very well. this barrage of thoughts an images captures that feeling of confusion and numbness; trapped in a world that makes no sense and refuses to even budge in your favour. these lines:
I want to talk with God
With this tangled tongue of mine
stuck out to me. we need some guidance, some salvation, but unable to find enough mental clarity to ask for it properly. it's a sharp-edged carried by a almost musical rhythm. i rocked out to this.

[Joli Dy]

You leave the best reviews, Erin. Thank you. This made my day!

[Lorry]

I like the idea of making our words fly, which is what I believe our imagination to be. It makes more sense thar they become paper aeroplane time machines thanks to our writing, ready to be unfolded and read or recorded to fly once more.
Perhaps if you find the right wind your words will soar to the heavens and land at his feet. Well, we can hope, can't we?
😃

[Joli Dy]

We certainly can, Lorry. Thank you. I appreciate your words more than you know!

[Paul in the Buff]

I can imagine you in your youth flying a paper airplane adorned with questions for a greater power to give answers to. Throwing it to the wind, and with each time it tumbles to the ground, you take a higher vantage to give it more wind, to buoy it higher, and make its flight longer in hopes that it would finally return with the answers you sought.

And as you progressed to a higher, and higher ground, with your paper airplane of hope ever failing to reach its intended destination, as you looked down upon the land you now stood above, the answers suddenly came to you.

And that's why you are who you are today, doing exactly what you do.

[Joli Dy]

Have I told you lately that I love you, my friend? I do, you know. Thank you for your faith in me.

[Paul in the Buff]

I love you too. I know who you are. My faith in you is infinite.

And it's ok to love. Love shouldn't be so hard. :)

[Joli Dy]

Yeah, I heard that before from someone I trust.

[Perdition]

I imagine you holding this desperate and crooked, single-engined piece of paper folded with only these worlds shaped, words paced that only you can shape and fold and thrust into thoughts, only you can trust it, create in spear something bound beyond this realm, and perhaps beyond its mark of time and space, into the galactic parameters where winter marks its boundary by the question. The cliff of Sophocles they call it, and only you can heave this concoction far enough from this ill-begotten raft called Earth and over the ears that linger into the rock-built house of Panentheism...even further still than our minds can distill. Rendering it softly beside that sleepy-eyed God that spies from his long-forgotten sheets of stone, hills, and mountain, that "long ago" dimension (remembers it only being yesterday he lit off that candle). Falling up through earth a winged samara, snow, and flake, bursting past our carnivals called life...Perhaps Brahma himself in his sleep of consciousness stirs and wakes from his dreams and "pillows", the "Mind and Manifest" from here the weight of your story is displayed down into pools of stone-dipped fingers. I walk with an injured sway in a dark-colored body-length jacket, just far enough away like someone who walks into dusk and is never seen again. Again, this thing creeps untouchable; if not for you, I would have already signed my transfer card to the egress and onto the star only recently found and declared as Icarus. I wonder why? LMAO. Shall we sip on some winged-tip holiness and interface made up of that unknown consciousness yet, or should we wait? Come, get up off of the hill already, let's get Marina, we have many conversations still to write here yet, and those funny horned rams are not getting any younger ~

[Joli Dy]

My God, you are interesting to me. It's like you've been set to a particular wavelength and I'm so drawn to it. Typed words on a screen beside many other words typed, but yours are shiny. I want every conversation yet to come. I hope you are well today, breathing in cool, crisp...potential? I taste it on the air. And exhale the stale. I'm exhaling most of the tainted air of my yesterdays. Breathing is such a work in progress. Thank you for your words today. I craved them like cherry pie.

[jacob erin-cilberto]

"Like ribbons of taffy" is such a perfect line.

I like how you brought in the similes of the mountains and the rams and lambs...
and the difference with the two...Rams not so docile, lambs usually are.

the words folded like a paper airplane...even though on paper, the words can crush...like bombs from a flying machine...I see two people hurting each other...rams dueling and then becoming lambs and finding understanding and love.
This is a really strong poem Jo, and the title really fits it....how much of what happens is god's plan and how much is so random like a fingerpainting that often makes no real sense.
j.
j.

[Joli Dy]

Thank you, Jacob. I love that you share what you get from a poem. It's so helpful to get constructive feedback. Grateful.