deadpaper
 
fiction
poems
 
about deadpaper
     
lois wilson
 
   

Lois Wilson was born in Kobe, Japan, where her parents were missionaries. Since coming to the U.S. as a teenager, she has lived and travelled in both the east and west coasts of Canada and the U.S. and finally settled in St. Augustine, Florida, to be near her sons and their families. It is her dream to go back to Italy one day to live and write.

Her books of poetry include Suicidal Lizard, Moon, Sustenance, White Space, I am a Cockroach, and Knots, all of which can be ordered through loiswilsonpoems@yahoo.com.

The following selections are from an upcoming collection, The Soul Beneath.

 
   
from The Soul Beneath
 
   

So I saw her walk
white hot eyes
staring ahead
lost finally

after all those roads

lost within her own mind
scrambling frantically
for reason

the picture without color
the vision smeared

the tragedy of a
soul

unconnected

-------------------------------------------

the dreams ended
as all dreams must
but the memory
of you my
love
who crushed
and devoured me
and turned my instinct
for survival into
cast iron

you bring me back
after every
violation

to life
life
life
yet again

-------------------------------------------------

it stretches far
far beyond
what I ever conceived

the soul
pushes out against
limitless boundaries
(who would have thought it?)
beyond that
infinite capacity
for pain
guilt
love

until the soul
sees light
through its strings
threadbare, breaking

-------------------------------

stayed away so long
entire stages passed
even my lifetime

and songs gone
new ones created
(unexpected)

feeling as though
my soul
was rushing to catch up
to a race long ago begun

panting
lungs burning
there I glimpsed
a single worn
half-buried in dust
signpost

I kept going

------------------------------------

my soul was unplanned

and unrepentant
at the questions that
caused my eyes to
stare
and my energy to
pound at walls
(I didn't know who built them)

I turned from my punching bag

the girl next to me said,
"Look,
her knuckles are
bleeding."

-------------------------------------------

the soul search becomes
extreme

surely I already know the value
of the single seconds

I do not need the
constantly
shifting
existential moments

like the boulder
under which
I now whisper:

"The darkness stretches out hands
I did not request"

----------------------------------------------

I hear the summer return
in the late night barking of the dog
as someone walks by
who did not come before
whose voice or face I do not
know

the scattering of leaves
before the rain
leaves my heart
in discontent

when the morning comes
and eyes close at the sun
I dream
of wandering

------------------------------------------

it comes to the edge
again and again

pushing up from
deep under

looking up

eyes blinded

looking up

and the ground
falls