Chasing Visions

Tears of a Clown

Questions with no answers forgotten

Problems unresolved left alone

Fresh things gone rotten.
Unwritten lines replaced with time

Memories of color

Turning to black and white.

Oblivious care,
There's nothing there,

Departed to somewhere

Grey shaded mare

The absurd of unsaid words

More silver than gold

Hidden secrets,

A confession untold.

Grip of steel, lifesaving tip
Achilles' heel, a lost trip

Faith gone to Hades.

Smudged wedding gown,

Another back and forth,
From north back down

Turned around
And met the tears of a clown.

That darn Cat

They come in all colors and shapes.

But the cat knows the flakes.

Every morning I hide vitamin C

Every evening I see

The darn cat knows its food too well.

The crazy thing will only drink

Water from the sink.

We go round after round.

I want the cat on the ground

It found a way around

Don't touch the glass table,

Go back to your cradle.

Paw after paw

Waiting until it gets dark.

Making its mark.

It flies from the cupboard,

Dangles from the curtain cord,

Claws its paws

On the refrigerator.

It knows how to open the door,

The butter lands on the floor.

The cat is an excellent skater.

But the smell will be greater.

You want to be home sooner than later.

The jam is for the ham.

Don't let the cat find it.
Heaven forbid!

The teaser opens the freezer.

I am so going to scream

When it eats my ice cream.

The stupid thing sticks its paw into the jar

And paints the wet bar.

I curse when it goes after my purse.

But then it crawls on its belly towards me

And meows its apology.

Odyssey

Racing in circles

Against the clocks of time.

The arrows move fast

And we won't last.

How stupid it seems -

Dancing on beams

Try as we may

We don't have a say

Our hair will still turn gray

Night becomes day

500 years of Sistine

An everlasting scene

Perfection of a moment grand

Captured by human hand.

Inside your Mind

What would I find

If I could tour your mind?

Take a ride

Across points and lines

Colors and signs -

Explore the depths

Of what happened before?

What if I saw more?

Stranded ashore,

A locked door

Hidden from view,

Something large asleep.

Ghost of the Night

Haunting, taunting your mind.

If I could I would

Pick a fight.

I wouldn't make a sound,
But stand my ground.
And I won't back down.
I know what I need to beat
The heat inside your mind.

Snow Falling on Cedars

So many choices, so many chattering voices,
Keeping our eyes on the door

Wanting something more evermore.

Some of us wander all their lives

Some of us simply do not have the time

To wonder about how now why when

Too much keeping them occupied.

Driving through hot places,

Dealing with white spaces

Stacking trophies on book cases

Land of a thousand dead faces

Looking for a connection

Amidst the extra ordinary selection,

Longing for the extraordinary complexion

Going through reflection,

Objection and rejection,

Building up high walls for protection.

Stuck at intersection.

Green light, red light, warning sign

I wish I knew what's on your mind.

What would we find

If the snow fell on cedars tonight?

Red Light World

We live in a red light world

With nothing but our soul.

The kiss of a stranger,

Feeling the touch of danger.

Someone behind the locked door,

We don't know who they are anymore.

Hits or misses,

A thousand kisses.

A woman's hand,

High in demand

In this strange, strange land.

Disconnection under soiled sheets,

Moving to electronic beats

Show me your sale pitch.

Lets talk about the hard sell.

Man, it's all shot to hell.

An exchange of intimacy,

The brush of anonymity.

No impenitency

In this city.

We live in a red light world

With nothing but our soul.

A phone call
That was all
It took
So much for a book.
Many choices
But they are all the same.
Gluttony,
Lots of puppetry.
Losing her balance,Her grace,
For he hit her in the face:
"You are so easy to replace."
They are all watching,
It is all so entertaining, so eye-catching.
Losing her touch
She knows
She cares too much.

© Colleen Yorke. All rights reserved.

Camouflage

Paper thin,
Bristling raw.
Someone is waiting off the shore
Faded colors of something else
Hiding it so well.
A blurry exit sign.
It is getting dark outside.
She looks away,
Another mask falls.
It was just another day,
Tomorrow has already begun.
The only way out is in.

© Colleen Yorke. All rights reserved.

Socrates' Cup

Socrates' cup
Or a Colt
If she chooses to be bold.
The reflection of a possibility
She doesn't recognize.
Alea iaca est.
House of cards,
A scream buried inside.
Resilient to what's next.
Cut to the bone,
But still on hold.

© Colleen Yorke. All rights reserved.

Candyland

I walked a minute in her shoes
But they would have never fit
For I will never take the cues
And choose to live in a zoo.

More a question than a curse
I rather be a comma than a full stop
How could it get any worse?
Living in candyland is easy
If you are a lollipop.

She can't walk
He calls for a taxi
To take them from sixth to eighth
Money talks.
More wine someone, anyone?

The whole world is going insane
When you are a candy cane.
Plastic surgery, white teeth
More bust than butt
When is enough enough?

© Colleen Yorke. All rights reserved.

Cliffhanger Ending

He hangs his little dream on a coat hanger

Slides it between hope and faith.

It turned into a clanger.

An occupying wraith.

He sorts through the others:

Nothing seemed to fit now

Who was he anyhow?

A guy fell from the sky

Faster than the speed of sound

Between hope and faith
Something changed.

He came to the party too late.

© Colleen Yorke. All rights reserved.

A Kingdom For What is His

She listens for a heart beat
Far in the distance,
The rhythmic regularity of existence -
A succession of consistence
Or resistance?
"I wanted this, " she said.
A kingdom for what is his.
Sunlight hits her eyes,
Shines on unseen places
She knows where to find
The white spaces
Life will go on -
Counterclockwise.

© Colleen Yorke. All rights reserved.

Neverwhere

Between sunset and sunrise
Dipping your feet in the spaces
Between the written lines,
Resting in the cracks of moonlight
Just beyond the pines.
You would like to know
What goes on in my mind.
One step forward,
Two back,
Circling.
Crossing the lines,
Dotting the I's,
Let's not go there
If this is a game
All the same
Then you don't play fair.
You say you don't care
And we are neverwhere.
Ambiguity
It's a pity
Too much of this already
In this city.
There is a way out,
Right or wrong,
But you keep a checklist
And you think fate is a myth.
Tell me again,
What is all this about?

© Colleen Yorke. All rights reserved.

The other End of the Line

You are a walking contradiction

You live life between truth and fiction

You hide from the living

And go after the dead.

Black are your shades

White are your gates

Colorful your dates.

Your appetite is unsated

Your mind alveated

Your life unrated –

You tell me:

"It’s all the same,

Memories can be replaced."

Is it fate, or a terrible mistake?

Your style more or less safe

Dancing shadows

Of highs and lows

To you

I am just another story

Lost in an echo.

A haunted heart

A bulldozed road

Out of Africa

He leaves his house
In a gray suit.
Every Wednesday at high noon.
He is a lonely man
Without a plan.
He needs a week
To prepare for Wednesday
He tells me.
The post office is across the street.
He has a love.
She lives in Africa.
They met five decades ago.
In Capetown.
She was only 18.
With a heart of gold,
"I should have stayed."
He shakes his head dismayed.
"But I was young, cocky and proud.
I am 78 now.
Anyway, I need a week
To prepare for Wednesday."

© Colleen Yorke. All rights reserved.

The Answer Is In the Question

He asks too many questions.
He is good at asking questions.
Very good.
He wants to understand her mind.
He wants to know why
She thinks the way she does.
"If I keep asking,
You eventually will have an answer for me."
He gets close once or twice.
He is strong.
And very, very good
At what he touches.
She is overexposed, raw -
But she doesn't mind.
He is close, but not inside.
He could be though,
If he went back
To where it all began.
The answer is in the question.

© Colleen Yorke. All rights reserved.

Going Home

"I produced ten CDs of silence."
-"How unfortunate."
I should have left then.
But I didn't want to give up that easily,
Even though his hands were already walking
Over to the next appointment.
Paper after paper following
To a neat stack on his desk.
"It is silence of the special kind.
Dreamy, airly silence,
Threatening silence,
Harmonious
And disharmonious -
A piece for everyone
Who wants to return to music
And shut out the noise in their lives.
Don't you want to listen?"
- "Where are you going?"
His hands have finally stopped walking.
"I am going home,"
I replied.
Even silence does not free us
From being human.

© Colleen Yorke. All rights reserved.

Vixen of the Night

Dark, beautiful, mysterious -
Melancholic and imperious
Well, people certainly were curious.
"Eine Fremde", some people would designate.
Une femme fatale, others would exclaim.
Vixen of the night
Big and dark her eyes
Raven black her hair.
I followed her everywhere.
I have been trying to meet her for years.
Softly she tiptoed into town.
Now she is here.
And then
The very next morning -
She disappears.

Nika

Nika's natural hair color is hazelnut brown. She likes changing it. It is mahagony now. She was blond for awhile to see if guys liked her better. They did, but not the ones she wanted to talk to. So Nika went two shades darker. The first wardrobe change was a fiasko. A red stop sign paled compared to her bright new headdress.

Panicked she called me and her gay friend Paul, our fallback guy with all things relating men. Paul, a hair dresser in Beverly Hills, always had juicy stories about some Alpha personality who woke up one day and decided to change, starting with her hair. Two hours later she would be in his saloon, crying, asking him to fix the impossible.As Paul worked on Nika’s hair and I stood by for moral support, Nika began telling us about her dating experiences.

Nika succumbed to an online dating site a little over a year ago. At first she found it thrilling to meet men from all caliber from various neighborhoods in Los Angeles. A surgeon, a prosecutor, a professor, a writer, an aerospace scientist. She dated him for several months, before he decided to trade her in for a blond bank teller with a degree in Animal Sciences. We all received our personal share of Nika’s emotional Mount Everest. Back in the dating business, Nika is feeling a bit more pragmatic. She is open to dating older men now. "LA is full of interesting men, I should be able to meet one", she chirps in a good mood.

Paul is done: “There you are. Neither blond, nor brunette nor redhead. Mahagony.” A flip of a hand-held mirror, Nika is examining Paul’s work of art carefully, combing through every strand of her new persona. “Now I will finally meet interesting and normal men. I mean mahagony isn't haha-cute blond nor do-not-touch-me brunette, it is keck." Paul, the honest good soul, and sometimes blind as a bat, feels he needs to pass on some additional Marsian wisdom before I can stop him: “Actually, Nika, the interesting men you are trying to meet work all day and go out at night to party hard. And they like blondes. Or girls with sleek black hair."

I shift my feet nervously. I am bracing for a familiar explosion. Nika is quiet. Awfully quiet. Then she straightens up and in voice allowing no further argument, she declares: “Trust me, I will find a partner. This is the hair, I know it.”

I look at her. I remember a teenager with purple hair, who - being assured of my absolute loyalty not to tell - confessed that the plumed hair was just the right color for a dance with a star athlete four years her senior, Spence. Yes. After decades of knowing Nika, one thing I know for sure: Life never gets boring with her.

I wonder what hair color she will go for next.

© Colleen Yorke. All rights reserved.

The Rush of Youth

A face full of wrinkles

She was young once.

Famous for her golden hair
And seven little black dresses
She liked to wear.
Dancing all night long.
Those years are long gone.

The rush of youth.

As a young woman sailed past her,
A rapturous breeze lightly touched the older one.

Then as the young one was quite out of sight
A truck appeared.

The front-seat passenger leaned out the cabin
And he shouted: “My god, are you beautiful!”,

In the reflecting mirror she saw his smile.
A face so full of a lived life.

Full Circle

You're such an inspiration for the ways.
A little less red,

More white,

Something growing inside.

Picket lines and picket signs,

But you tell me it is alright.

We all have a choice

Except I had too much wine.
Seeing the unheard you know

Tasting the truth, it's mild

Some things are best left unspoken,
Afraid to be broken,

Twenty Timezones

Miles from everything they know,

With millions more to go.
Detours and mistakes,

All the times someone hits the brakes,

Hoping something would change.

It hardly slowed the pace.

Crossing tram lines,

Strangers holding hands at midnight,

She has been here since 1969.

Someone is always keeping time.

Blinked her eyes once or twice,

And they were gone.

She is only a clock,

16 tons of stone,

148 names,

Twenty time zones,
She has been here since 1969,
Amidst order and chaos,
Amidst the lost and the found,
Faithfully keeping everyone's time.

Inside the Grey Zone

Somewhere outside black and white,

Hidden amidst the vast unknown

Lies the brink of the grey zone.

An incisive gaze,

Breaking and entering this forbidden place

When there is still time to turn around

Before it is too late

The eerily fog draws them in more,

Much deeper than before.

He knows

Somewhere outside black and white

She is in it now

With no other way out.