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Out of My Skin

Poetry Index

Out of My Skin
Monarch
A Matter of Scale

Heat Wave
Poet and Pet
Awakening
Rebirth

A Reasonable Life

Snapshots 2006
Haikus
Hush and Listen
Faces
Lizard Thoughts
Thunder
White Rose
Mother of the World
Finally

Poems 2005 —
Passion & Discontent
Absence
Blind
Dance
Dry
The Wake of Disaster

Evening
Mama's Tears
Nude
Old Furniture
Pertoglyphs

Rest
Saved
Sounds of an Empty Promise
Entertainment
Sycamores
Three Quarters
Vientos del Mediterráneo
Weavings

Battle
Giving In

Poems 2004
The Dissappearance of Lao Tsu
Nameless Beauty
Commuting
Memory Game
Every Little Thing Counts
Landscapes of Yo Yo Ma's Brazil
Miles (to Miles Davis)
The Colors of Piazzolla's Tango

War and Peace
Making Friends
Old Glory
Kabul Update
Take Heart
March Madness

Poems 2003
Johnny Cash
Between Heartbeats
"Naked Poetry"
Sunflower Sonnet No. 1.5

New York City
My NYC is not your NYC
SanitationWorker, NYC
Gentrification
Passing By
Belly-button Renaissance
West Chelsea

Poems 2002
Crisis
Finding Each Other
Kindred Spirits
Meteor
To Our Youth
At Sunset
Questions
Hollyhock
Holland in Winter

On Society
Mirrors
McKinney X-Tex
Lady Liberty
Making Friends
Old Glory
Walking

Life's Lessons
Child's Life
Crashing Surf
In Search of the Unknown
Love at First Sight
Holding Hands
Grandpa's Tools

Musings
First Snow
Impressionism
Anonymous
Downcast Eyes
Sagrada Familia

In France
French Gardens
Air Show
Cell Phones 01-04

Churches
Lovers in the Castle



Awakening

Asleep while storms build,
in peaceful slumber
we dance in fantasies,
senses dulled;
nightmares lurk
in the clouds of our pleasures,
of our comforts and beliefs,
of our habits and routines,
thunderheads, gray and billowing
suppress cries and screams
until lightning strikes the earth —
a deluge of reality spills over
into life,
a dream created
by careless desires and denial;
crises finally breach
the dam of our complacency.

We awaken angry and in shock
our dreams so rudely interrupted,
long neglected debts
exhaled like bad morning breath
of indignation and fear;
shaken in naïveté and disbelief
unsteady, as the ground beneath
shifts, we stumble in despair,
in an unfamiliar room
with blank walls
and no door,
in a garden choked by weeds
sown by our own hand,
grief of imagination shattered —
our protective shelter now exposed
to the elements
and to the pains of others.

 

© 2009 Richard Sidy


© 2009 SNS Press
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