Seems Like My Kind of Heaven

From this summer’s-fall’s Art SPeaks I jotted random lines down that others shared from their free wirtes. I created a Cento to share on Sunday at the Art SPeaks Reading. It was FUN to do. I edited and changed some of the words to fit (revised pronouns, singulars and plurals)

Seems Like My Kind of Heaven

(A Cento from Art Speaks poets, season 2024)

In the cavern of our creation,

rub the brow of the edge,

walk against the current,

a contrast of bruising up against

chaos in order, order in chaos.

The meeting is in the moment,

the unknown beyond our kingdom,

a frigid isolation of everything

fading into sallow alleys,

wherever we’ve been bent out of shape,

backs against the cool wall —

shoulders worn by work.

Send it somewhere else,

to someone else’s bones.

Meander the stream of ashes

gentle, like ripples –

Let dreams play in our fuzzy heads,

hopelessly exhausted,

startled by the circle of white.

Allies, close, adversaries closer,

cousins of the same coin.

The scent slips in like a shadowed visitor.

Let it be not what it is, but what it should be,

this thickness of light,

a glass blown moment,

alive in our keeping,

the symmetry of our intersections,

a kind of linen gathered up in a fold

like the kindness of grandmother’s gingham.

Her fingers of light saturated with peace,

alive in our keeping.

Dance in this light of familiar space.

Born a needle with your love,

spread kindness like a shaft of sunlight.

Wow us when we are wilted,

not in labored breath

but as a howl,

a cry for life.