On female midlife crises

"Being happy in middle age cannot happen unless you work out what you want first. 
But knowing what it is, and fixing it? Not the same thing."

by Sharon Horgan

"There is a fantasy that hits you in mid life when you're in the middle of all the working, and the responsibilities, and the mortgage, and that is:  'Could I set fire to my life - just leave it all behind - escape, radically downsize?' And it is tempting, but not many people have got the balls to actually do it."

by Sharon Horgan

"I think a midlife crisis turns up when you exceed your ability to live up to other peoples' expectations."

by Maree (program participant)

"Women live a long time. I'm going to live a long time and I need to start seeing my life as the middle of my life - not the end of my life. And the women I met - they didn't just think: 'This is crap.' They got hold of their lives and shook them. Getting older and saggier and closer to death ... it's not the cheeriest thought, but it is a chance to make some drastic changes and I don't think women did that before. I think they would pop a valium and just go quietly mad behind net curtains. I think a fully blown, well executed midlife crisis is the way forward. And if that doesn't work, I'm just going to hit the gin."

From "Sharon Horgan's Women: 'On the Verge of a Midlife Crisis'"

Sharon Horgan

My opinion is that women who have tried all their lives to please others and do the right thing would be far more likely to have a midlife crisis. I think a crisis might occur once their children are grown, and they have a little time to themselves to look around them and to start putting some of their own long-held plans or desires into place. Perhaps they largely skipped a rebellious phase in their youth. 

More:

- "The female midlife crisis" [Sydney Morning Herald] January 27, 2013

- "The rise of the female midlife crisis" [The Telegraph] March 27, 2011
- "Midlife crises: Middle-aged women have them too" [Mail Online] March 2, 2011

Midlife Crisis Quiz [GoToQuiz]

http://www.gotoquiz.com/midlife_crisis_quiz

My results: You are 29% likely to be experiencing a midlife crisis.

You might be experiencing a midlife crisis, but it's not very likely. You may have some regrets about your past, and may at times wish things could be different, but overall you're a calm and stable individual with a bright outlook and realistic goals.

A question

A voice said, Look me in the stars
And tell me truly, men of earth,
If all the soul-and-body scars
Were not too much to pay for birth.

by Robert Frost

A pinch of salt

When a dream is born in you
With a sudden clamorous pain,
When you know the dream is true
And lovely, with no flaw nor stain,
O then, be careful, or with sudden clutch
You'll hurt the delicate thing you prize so much.

Dreams are like a bird that mocks,
Flirting the feathers of his tail.
When you seize at the salt-box,
Over the hedge you'll see him sail.
Old birds are neither caught with salt nor chaff:
They watch you from the apple bough and laugh.

Poet, never chase the dream.
Laugh yourself, and turn away.
Mask your hunger; let it seem
Small matter if he come or stay;
But when he nestles in your hand at last,
Close up your fingers tight and hold him fast.

by Robert Graves

Rooster © Jennifer Phillips

My kids when they were small

My kids - Taken at Christmas 2007 © Jennifer Phillips

Darkness falls

At the dying of the day

darkness falls

suffuses my mood.

Turn away from that old moon

Its glow wavers, falters

an uncertain light.

My path twists in the shadows

I stumble.

No fireflies to guide me.

A turning back -

choices from years ago

before I knew who I was.

Some memories 
cannot be rooted out like weeds
no matter how much I will it.

I loved him once, I love him still
Perhaps I rarely could
Perhaps I always will.

School my heart - unruly thing
against these feelings
Recover the riches before me.

The trees sway - 

I disappear

into the darkness.

© Jennifer Phillips (All rights reserved)

Dark pathway © Jennifer Phillips

Tonight's supermoon

A supermoon is when a full moon occurs when the Moon is at its closest approach to the Earth.
Tonight's is as close as the Moon will get all year.

Tonight's Supermoon - 23 June 2013 © Jennifer Phillips



Neil Gaiman

"In last year's commencement speech at Philadelphia's University of the Arts, Neil Gaiman likened a life in the arts to being on a desert island, putting messages in bottles and sending them out, hoping against hope someone might find them, appreciate what's inside and send something back - 'a commission, or money, or love'. Don't be discouraged, he told the audience, if in the beginning you send out hundreds of bottles for every one you get back. Eventually if you are persistent and lucky, the tide will turn."

by Tim Elliott in "Breaking Boundaries" - The Saturday Age - June 22, 2013.

Neil Gaiman's 2012 commencement speech - Philadelphia University of the Arts


Sleep my little babby-oh

Sleep until you waken

When you wake you’ll see the world

If I’m not mistaken…

Kiss a lover

Dance a measure,

Find your name

And buried treasure…

Face your life

Its pain, its pleasure,

Leave no path untaken.

by Neil Gaiman, "The Graveyard Book"

My daughter when a baby © Jennifer Phillips

"Have you ever been in love? Horrible isn't it? It makes you so vulnerable. It opens your chest and it opens up your heart and it means that someone can get inside you and mess you up." 

by Neil Gaiman, The Sandman, Vol. 9: The Kindly Ones

"I've been making a list of the things they don't teach you at school. They don't teach you how to love somebody. They don't teach you how to be famous. They don't teach you how to be rich or how to be poor. They don't teach you how to walk away from someone you don't love any longer. They don't teach you how to know what's going on in someone else's mind. They don't teach you what to say to someone who's dying. They don't teach you anything worth knowing." 

by Neil Gaiman, The Sandman, Vol. 9: The Kindly Ones

"May your coming year be filled with magic and dreams and good madness. I hope you read some fine books and kiss someone who thinks you're wonderful, and don't forget to make some art -- write or draw or build or sing or live as only you can. And I hope, somewhere in the next year, you surprise yourself." 

by Neil Gaiman

"I believe in a personal god who cares about me and worries and oversees everything I do. I believe in an impersonal god who set the universe in motion and went off to hang with her girlfriends and doesn't even know that I'm alive. I believe in an empty and godless universe of causal chaos, background noise, and sheer blind luck."

by Neil Gaiman, American Gods

"Life is a disease: sexually transmitted, and invariably fatal."

by Neil Gaiman

Source: http://www.goodreads.com/author/quotes/1221698.Neil_Gaiman

Neil Gaiman

Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone

Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone,
Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone,
Silence the pianos and with muffled drum
Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come.

Let aeroplanes circle moaning overhead
Scribbling on the sky the message He Is Dead,
Put crepe bows round the white necks of the public doves,
Let the traffic policemen wear black cotton gloves.

He was my North, my South, my East and West,
My working week and my Sunday rest,
My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song;
I thought that love would last for ever: I was wrong.

The stars are not wanted now: put out every one;
Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun;
Pour away the ocean and sweep up the wood.
For nothing now can ever come to any good.

by W. H. Auden

Clock, Car, Photograph © Jennifer Phillips

I love him

"I love him for what he was, for who he is, and for who he yet may be."

by Jennifer Phillips

Viaticum

Just my name. 

Urgent and clear,

a sober plea-

pulled me out of the deep

into the past

out of time

into terror. 

It was you now

afraid of the dark

edges pushing in

pushing out 

sound. 

Weightless,

void. 

If I could now

I would now pull 

the dusty curtain back 

one last time. 

© "Neon Veil" (All rights reserved)

© Ayumi Hasegawa (Ayumi Yoruko)

Island in the sun

Hip hip (repeat x 4)

When you're on a holiday

You can't find the words to say

All the things that come to you

And I wanna feel it too

On an island in the sun

We'll be playing and having fun

And it makes me feel so fine

I can't control my brain

Hip hip (repeat x 2)

When you're on a golden sea

You don't need no memory

Just a place to call your own

As we drift into the zone

On an island in the sun

We'll be playing and having fun

And it makes me feel so fine

I can't control my brain

We'll run away together

We'll spend some time forever

We'll never feel bad anymore

Hip hip (repeat x 3)

On an island in the sun

We'll be playing and having fun

And it makes me feel so fine

I can't control my brain

We'll run away together

We'll spend some time forever

We'll never feel bad anymore

Hip hip

We'll never feel bad anymore

No no

We'll never feel bad anymore

No no

No no

No no

by Weezer

This Thing

We took this Thing we’d made
out of its box - 
this tempting enchanting Thing,
played with it awhile.
We did, 
Played, we did.

But it got too big for us -
started to writhe and grow,
have Wants and Needs.
It did, 
Grow, it did.

And so it came to pass
that we were distracted,  
in thrall, addicted. 
Strayed too close to its licking flames.
Enjoyed the heat a bit too much.
We did, 
Strayed, we did.

But smoke stung our eyes
and we could not see
to kiss the stars
and universe goodnight.
It hurt.
It did, 
Hurt, it did.

So we fought this Thing, our Thing - 
thrust it back in its box, 
struggled to close the lid.
We did.
Struggled, we did.

This we did to save the others
and perhaps to save ourselves.
We did this Thing.
We did, 
Save, we did.

© Jennifer Phillips (All rights reserved)

Box © Jennifer Phillips

Dreamer's lament
The tenet of the heart
Smoke screens
Promethean heat
We'll be fine
This Thing - the end.

Good riddance

Another turning point, a fork stuck in the road

Time grabs you by the wrist, directs you where to go

So make the best of this test, and don't ask why

It's not a question, but a lesson learned in time

It's something unpredictable, but in the end is right,

I hope you had the time of your life.

So take the photographs, and still frames in your mind

Hang it on a shelf in good health and good time

Tattoos of memories and dead skin on trial

For what it's worth it was worth all the while

It's something unpredictable, but in the end is right,

I hope you had the time of your life. 

It's something unpredictable, but in the end is right,

I hope you had the time of your life. 

It's something unpredictable, but in the end is right,

I hope you had the time of your life.

by Green Day

Billie Joe Armstrong

Memories of happiness

"These memories of happiness are fleeting things, reflections in a stream, glimpsed all broken for a second and then swept away in the current of grief that is our life now. I can't say that I ever feel what it felt like then, when I was happy. But sometimes something will touch the place where that feeling was, a touch as slight and swift as the brush of a moth's wing in the dark."

From "Year of wonders: a novel of the plague" by Geraldine Brooks

Moth's wing © Jennifer Phillips

Passing clouds

Our words met
before we ever did.
Now you are distant
these words reach out -
passing clouds instead.

Your words glisten
like pearls in shells
scattered on the shore
of my week.

I thread them
like beads of tears,
and one by one
they fall with
evening's light
along this string,
close to my heart.

I watch the moon toss -
a ghostly galleon
in cloudy seas,
pulling the tide
to you, this night.

© Jennifer Phillips (All rights reserved)

Ghostly galleon © Jennifer Phillips

We met

We met in a flash of light

a moment stolen from the night

You and me - blinded in synchronicity

I can not see you,

You can not see me?

So we travel in the darkness of different roads -

searching for our selves, moving towards each other.

And our eyes adjust to the light of our moon.

© "Neon Veil" (All rights reserved)

Moon © Jennifer Phillips

Radiance

We will succumb

to the bifurcation 

along our beloved

Rubicon.

Eventually

one will escape

and the other will fall

at the Horizon--

as moon is torn from sun.

Till then

spinning, 

treading,

unwavering,

in our tempest.

© "Neon Veil" (All rights reserved) 

Primal

No sound,

movement,

a riot 

of silence.

Love arrives. 

Exactly. 

At last.

When the poem 

ends.

© "Neon Veil" (All rights reserved) 

Naan

With a scythe of crow,

shadow sharp from heel to toe,

we harvest fields of moonlight. 

The fat of dreams crackle and hiss

our tandoor is hungry for our bliss,

the bread of love is made tonight. 

© "Neon Veil" (All rights reserved) 

Naan Bread © "Pie O My: A Slice of Life"

Wěn

Of your 

singular savour, 

my mouth 

dreams. 

Lush lips- 

tenderness between 

devouring 

sweet Nai Bai, 

and fiery Baijiu.

© "Neon Veil" (All rights reserved) 

Keep your feet in the mud and your head in the clouds

Quote from David Bromley

Clouds © Jennifer Phillips

The tenet of the heart

Has wine turned to vinegar

on her tongue

slipping from a kiss?

UNFIXED.

The gamboge moon

suspends memories and casualties

from our love war.

Gravity has weakened

the ideal. 

WOMAN.

In the lover’s paradox

emotion is nothing but an illusion

and the distance between soul stars

can never be bridged.

These shambolic objections

in our celestial play

confuse reality with truth.

Our calculus is measured

by the waiting

of two hearts

who must

BELIEVE.

© "Neon Veil" (All rights reserved) 

Vincent Van Gogh, The starry sky, 1889

Dreamer's lament

Amoureuse

Strands of light upon a bedroom floor

Change the night through an open door

I'm awake but this not my home

For the first time I'm not alone

Reaching out I touch another skin

Breathing out as he is breathing in

Deep inside I feel my soul aflame

Can my love ever be the same ?

I should have told him

I'd do anything if I could hold him

For just another day, for just another day

His love is something I will not forget

When I am far away, when I am far away

I feel the rainfall of another planet

Another planet

Close together in the afterglow

I remember how his loving flow

Turned the key into another world

Made a woman of a simple girl

Daylight comes as we both know it must

Soon my fantasy will turn to dust

But I would give him anything he asked

If my love could be my last ?

I should have told him

I'd do anything if I could hold him

For just another day, for just another day

His love is something I will not regret

When I am far away, when I am far away

I feel the rainfall of another planet

Another planet.

by Kiki Dee

Kiki Dee

Imagine

Imagine there's no heaven

It's easy if you try

No hell below us

Above us only sky

Imagine all the people

Living for today...

Imagine there's no countries

It isn't hard to do

Nothing to kill or die for

And no religion too

Imagine all the people

Living life in peace...

You may say I'm a dreamer

But I'm not the only one

I hope someday you'll join us

And the world will be as one

Imagine no possessions

I wonder if you can

No need for greed or hunger

A brotherhood of man

Imagine all the people

Sharing all the world...

You may say I'm a dreamer

But I'm not the only one

I hope someday you'll join us

And the world will live as one

by John Lennon

John Lennon

Allegory of the campfire

I have gathered 

Spring

Summer

and Fall

scraps of love,

chewed them

and dried them

in the moonlight. 

Darkness gathers around 

our fired heart-

heated kindling. 

Do not blink,

witness the release,

of reconstituted fiery angels. 

These dancing ember dreamsmiths,

wheeling and whirling dervishes, 

paint upon the scrim of abyss- 

naked shadowgraph lovers

who kiss the stars

and the universe goodnight. 

© "Neon Veil" (All rights reserved) 

Campfire © Jennifer Phillips

This thing.

This Thing - the end.

We'll be fine

Dreamer's lament

The idea of a man is sometimes greater
than the man himself.
Once tasted, the fruit easily sours.
Without food for the soul - connection if you will,
COME.

Petty squabbles, constrained endeavours
Pressures and different aims
Tyranny of distance,
missed opportunities.

A smile and scheduled conversation
is not enough to sustain
the careful feeding of regret
or dreams, or the old yellow moon -
compared to youth's golden intensity.

Death star dreams
radiate no longer
All serve to blow soot
on the ideal.
MAN.

Absorbed into the minutae
of daily existence,
awake, alert
and how boring.

When the dreamer
yearns to just drift
in a warm night river
along the milky way
of myriad constellations.

Just floating, and holding hands
gently swept along in the current.
Life is a party we were brought to uninvited,
but being here, I suppose we can at least try to
DANCE.

© Jennifer Phillips (All rights reserved)

Starry river - http://www.desktopnexus.com/

The tenet of the heart

Ink stains

My pen leaks 

black ink

on my fingers,

my pillow.

A spreading stain.

I spit on a tissue

and rub at it,

but the stain remains.

Dark thoughts come

spinning the wheels

in the night,

trying to gain traction.

Part of me enjoying

the dark complexity

I have made - 

asked for perhaps.

Was it enough?

Part of me lost 

and searching.

I lean at the edge 

of the abyss, and peer.

Was it enough?

Faded ink stain a map to nowhere 

on hands already etched 

with the journeys taken

over the span of my years - 

a life's tableaux.

Was it enough?

© Jennifer Phillips (All rights reserved)

© Coated Arms - 2013 Year of Combinations

Words

You fill a gap in me

that's words

that's a way of looking

at things.

There is a space between,

an ache

when your words

are absent.

Part of me is lost

or lonely.

The alive part

lies sleeping

like a giant begging

release from a fable.

Words, unlike food

sustain the soul.

Food's for the body.

Try to fill the gap

in your soul

with food?

Never enough.

You'll just get fat.

Words can reach

your depths

your soul -

calm,

save.

Save me!

© Jennifer Phillips (All rights reserved)

© Austin Public Library

The mad ones

"The only people for me are the mad ones,
the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved,
desirous of everything at the same time,
the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing,
but burn, burn, burn, like fabulous yellow roman candles
exploding like spiders across the stars
and in the middle you see the blue centrelight pop
and everybody goes 'Awww!' "

From "On The Road", an autobiographical novel by Jack Kerouac.

Candles © Jennifer Phillips

I wait

There is a tightness 

in my chest.

Spirit collapses - 
a paper bird.

Feel the crush of it
and gasp.

Words explode

Friends evaporate.

Trapped in my 

storming mind.

I seek 

and do not find.

I need and you 

come up wanting.

I cannot go back

I cannot go forward.

So I lie and wait

For what?

© Jennifer Phillips (All rights reserved)

© Mark Menzies - MarkyBon

After swimming

Dancing in the dark

wind near the banks

of the Santiam

a simple black dress

hanging tentatively

upon a limb

reminded me of desire

that can not be tamed.

© "Neon Veil" (All rights reserved) 

Black dress © Jennifer Phillips

Test to find out if you are ready to have kids...

Originally posted on UK parenting website Mamami, the 14-part test will have you holding your sides with laughter.

Test 1: Preparation

Women: To prepare for pregnancy

1. Put on a dressing gown and stick a beanbag down the front.
2. Leave it there.
3. After 9 months remove 5% of the beans.

Men: To prepare for children

1. Go to a local chemist, tip the contents of your wallet onto the counter and tell the pharmacist to help himself
2. Go to the supermarket. Arrange to have your salary paid directly to their head office.
3. Go home. Pick up the newspaper and read it for the last time.

Test 2: Knowledge

1. Find a couple who are already parents and berate them about their methods of discipline, lack of patience, appallingly low tolerance levels and how they have allowed their children to run wild.
2. Suggest ways in which they might improve their child's sleeping habits, toilet training, table manners and overall behaviour.
3. Enjoy it. It will be the last time in your life that you will have all the answers.

Test 3: Nights

To discover how the nights will feel:

1. Walk around the living room from 5pm to 10pm carrying a wet bag weighing approximately 4 - 6kg, with a radio turned to static (or some other obnoxious sound) playing loudly.
2. At 10pm, put the bag down, set the alarm for midnight and go to sleep.
3. Get up at 11pm and walk the bag around the living room until 1am.
4. Set the alarm for 3am.
5. As you can't get back to sleep, get up at 2am and make a cup of tea.
6. Go to bed at 2.45am.
7. Get up again at 3am when the alarm goes off.
8. Sing songs in the dark until 4am.
9. Put the alarm on for 5am. Get up when it goes off.
10. Make breakfast.

Keep this up for 5 years. LOOK CHEERFUL.

Test 4: Dressing Small Children

1. Buy a live octopus and a string bag.
2. Attempt to put the octopus into the string bag so that no arms hangout.

Time Allowed: 5 minutes.

Test 5: Cars

1. Forget the BMW. Buy a practical 5-door wagon.
2. Buy a chocolate ice cream cone and put it in the glove compartment. Leave it there.
3. Get a coin. Insert it into the CD player.
4. Take a box of chocolate biscuits; mash them into the back seat.
5. Run a garden rake along both sides of the car.

Test 6: Going for a walk

1. Wait.
2. Go out the front door.
3. Come back in again.
4. Go out.
5. Come back in again.
6. Go out again.
7. Walk down the front path.
8. Walk back up it.
9. Walk down it again.
10. Walk very slowly down the road for five minutes.
11. Stop, inspect minutely and ask at least 6 questions about every piece of used chewing gum, dirty tissue and dead insect along the way.
12. Retrace your steps.
13. Scream that you have had as much as you can stand until the neighbours come out and stare at you.
14. Give up and go back into the house.

You are now just about ready to try taking a small child for a walk.

Test 7: Conversations with children

Repeat everything you say at least 5 times.

Test 8: Grocery Shopping

1. Go to the local supermarket. Take with you the nearest thing you can find to a pre-school child - a fully grown goat is excellent. If you intend to have more than one child, take more than one goat.
2. Buy your weekly groceries without letting the goat(s) out of your sight.
3. Pay for everything the goat eats or destroys.

Until you can easily accomplish this, do not even contemplate having children.

Test 9: Feeding a 1 year-old

1. Hollow out a melon
2. Make a small hole in the side
3. Suspend the melon from the ceiling and swing it side to side
4. Now get a bowl of soggy cornflakes and attempt to spoon them into the swaying melon while pretending to be an aeroplane.
5. Continue until half the cornflakes are gone.
6. Tip the rest into your lap, making sure that a lot of it falls on the floor.

Test 10: TV

1. Learn the names of every character from the Wiggles, Barney, Teletubbies and Disney.
2. Watch nothing else on television for at least 5 years.

Test 11:  Mess

1. Smear peanut butter onto the sofa and jam onto the curtains
2. Hide a fish behind the stereo and leave it there all summer.
3. Stick your fingers in the flowerbeds and then rub them on clean walls. Cover the stains with crayon. How does that look?
4. Empty every drawer/cupboard/storage box in your house onto the floor and proceed with step 5.
5. Drag random items from one room to another room and leave them there.

Test 12: Long Trips with Toddlers

1. Make a recording of someone shouting 'Mummy' repeatedly. Important Notes: No more than a 4 second delay between each Mummy. Include occasional crescendo to the level of a supersonic jet.
2. Play this tape in your car, everywhere you go for the next 4 years.

You are now ready to take a long trip with a toddler.

Test 13: Conversations

1. Start talking to an adult of your choice.
2. Have someone else continually tug on your shirt hem or shirt sleeve while playing the Mummy tape listed above.

You are now ready to have a conversation with an adult while there is a child in the room.

Test 14: Getting ready for work

1. Pick a day on which you have an important meeting.
2. Put on your finest work attire.
3. Take a cup of cream and put 1 cup of lemon juice in it
4. Stir
5. Dump half of it on your nice silk shirt
6. Saturate a towel with the other half of the mixture
7. Attempt to clean your shirt with the same saturated towel
8. Do not change (you have no time).
9. Go directly to work

I will not die an unlived life

I will not die an unlived life.

I will not live in fear

of falling or catching fire.

I choose to inhabit my days,

to allow my living to open me,

to make me less afraid,

more accessible;

to loosen my heart

until it becomes a wing,

a torch, a promise.

I choose to risk my significance,

to live so that which came to me as seed

goes to the next as blossom,

and that which came to me as blossom,

goes on as fruit.

by Dawna Markova

Olympic torch by my 6 year old son © Jennifer Phillips

Ars Poetica

A poem should be palpable and mute   
As a globed fruit,

Dumb
As old medallions to the thumb,

Silent as the sleeve-worn stone
Of casement ledges where the moss has grown—

A poem should be wordless   
As the flight of birds.         


A poem should be motionless in time   
As the moon climbs,

Leaving, as the moon releases
Twig by twig the night-entangled trees,

Leaving, as the moon behind the winter leaves,   
Memory by memory the mind—

A poem should be motionless in time   
As the moon climbs.       


A poem should be equal to:
Not true.

For all the history of grief
An empty doorway and a maple leaf.

For love
The leaning grasses and two lights above the sea—

A poem should not mean   
But be.

By Archibald MacLeish

Anenome's heart

Inside a purple anenome © Jennifer Phillips

Fireflies

You would not believe your eyes

If ten million fireflies

Lit up the world as I fell asleep

'Cause they'd fill the open air

And leave teardrops everywhere

You'd think me rude

But I would just stand and stare

I'd like to make myself believe

That planet Earth turns slowly

It's hard to say that I'd rather stay

Awake when I'm asleep

'Cause everything is never as it seems

'Cause I'd get a thousand hugs

From ten thousand lightning bugs

As they tried to teach me how to dance

A foxtrot above my head

A sock hop beneath my bed

A disco ball is just hanging by a thread

I'd like to make myself believe

That planet Earth turns slowly

It's hard to say that I'd rather stay

Awake when I'm asleep

'Cause everything is never as it seems

When I fall asleep

Leave my door open just a crack

(Please take me away from here)

'Cause I feel like such an insomniac

(Please take me away from here)

Why do I tire of counting sheep

(Please take me away from here)

When I'm far too tired to fall asleep

To ten million fireflies

I'm weird 'cause I hate goodbyes

I got misty eyes as they said farewell

But I'll know where several are

If my dreams get real bizarre

'Cause I saved a few and I keep them in a jar

I'd like to make myself believe

That planet Earth turns slowly

It's hard to say that I'd rather stay

Awake when I'm asleep

'Cause everything is never as it seems

When I fall asleep

I'd like to make myself believe

That planet Earth turns slowly

It's hard to say that I'd rather stay

Awake when I'm asleep

'Cause everything is never as it seems

When I fall asleep

I'd like to make myself believe

That planet Earth turns slowly

It's hard to say that I'd rather stay

Awake when I'm asleep

Because my dreams are bursting at the seams

by Owl City

Adam Young

Desert rain

Your kisses 

fall like rain

over the parched terrain 

of my body - 

I part blushed 

like a desert bloom.

My lake fills -

cleft ravine

becomes a torrent, 

a storm under your flow.

You dive blue sky breathless

into the depths -

come up gasping, yet replete - 

a fish between your jaws.

© Jennifer Phillips (All rights reserved)

Rain on parched terrain © Jennifer Phillips