High School Work

Artwork and poetry created for my senior concentration and AP Portfolio during the Winter and Spring of 2004. My concentration focused on the human figure and our reaction to the environment surrounding us. My visual work consisted of pieces which are generally realistic, and through the incorporation of a figure and it’s surroundings I described the emotional impact of the time, place and particular situation in that environment.

The Places You Would Go

Noticing the difference between
a pensive stare
and a focused one,
just in the way your eyes lay, your gaze
transfixed on a point that I can't always see.

Thinking about your heart
and how close the beats must be now
to the shallow breaths that youve been taking.
Now, watch as my breath
falls to fill with yours.

Wondering what it would take
to bring your mind back
to where your body is.
At the same time wishing that I could be
in the very place your thoughts are taking you.

Curious as to where you would go,
wishing either of us knew the way to get there.



for Granny... we miss you.

Winter Innocence

The air seems cleaner in December
with rusty snowpiles catching
the dirt, in summer, falls away...

At this,
I remember being younger
wishing every day was shorter
back flat, laying idle against the backyard
as I watch the colorless horizon fall down on me
and melt into me.

Its ten to seven in the morning
this lot feels emptier than empty
at a time when not even shadows are awake.
My engine hums on idle,
I rest my back against the seat
and watch as my headlights mock the sunlight
that in these stolen morning moments I wish
wouldn't come so soon.

The air seems cleaner when you're younger
with open mouths catching
the snow, with age, just melts away...

The Things She Could Never Say

She holds her head in her hand
because these days,
her neck hangs heavy with the weight of her world.

She's doing her best to ignore
the slow rhythm of their bodies moving in time with the music.
Its taking everything inside of her to divert her eyes
from the foxtrot,
the waltz,
and the tango,
as one young lover is framed in the arms of another.
And the personal space closing between them
becomes far too personal for her to bear.

So many things she wishes she could change
about him, and the way he loves her.
She'd tell him this if she wasnt sure
that it could never come out the way she planned.
Her's was a wordy kind of love.

And so, with her head in her hands,
and her heart to the ground,
she sits, wondering if she'll ever find the words to say
after all of this time,
...you have meant everything to me....
(How sure she'd become that he would never think of her that way.)
Funny how love is limited by syllables, and,

funny, how her syllables are limited by love.