PAD Challenge #9 For Poetic Asides (Two for Tuesdays)
1.Write a slow down poem. Could be about reducing actual traveling speed or speed of living or some other interpretation.
2.Write a never slow down poem. Some people love living in the fast lane and believe it’s better to burn out than fade away. If you’re one of these people or want to write about one of these people, then this is the prompt for you.
The Beginnings of We
Thoughts race, trying to keep pace
with memories, emotions that spill
out like flood drowning all it encounters.
Blood is only color of handprints
on windows of her soul. Locked in,
can’t even begin to know where to go,
totally blocked from finding an exit.
She calls me and her words trip
over one another, flipping each other
aside, sliding past before being
completely uttered. My ear, too long
shuttered, can’t keep up with deluge.
Tell her to breathe, find release slowly,
in and out. But she is a blowing horse, stuck
on circular course, hasn’t yet caught
sight of finish line. Growing belief
that she will never find home, so begins
to falter.
Haltingly tells me of white noise, inside
her head, and poise that will certainly end
in Void of unknowing. Time that gets lost,
cost in hours, sometimes days, then coming
to in haze of not knowing where she has been,
what might have been done, or what she
might have been doing.
Look back on it now, and know
that was beginning. Moment, when
she stopped being a stranger, and I
became more than I’d ever been able
to wager, as without thought I said,
“We have to slow this all down, find
a way to ground you.” We did.
The beginning was there in the music.
Elizabeth Crawford 11/9/10
Soul's Music 
Hi Elizabeth, I must admit that I really can’t figure out in entirety what this is about. Perhaps a beginning of a close friendship, or I may be totally all wet. It feels important though, pulls me in, know it is something deep. And not totally pleasant.
Mary, this set of poems, actually a series is about a friendship, a relationship. This particular poem is about the beginning, when two people recognize that they have moved beyond the boundary of simple acquaintanceship, and into something different, deeper. I know that it is confusing. But, there are hints within the poem itself, which may be explained later. I don’t know exactly where the prompts and the poems are taking me. I’m just following as best I can. And trying to trust the process at the same time.
Elizabeth
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