Flinging words at the page

I have run out of paintings to post with my poems.  I have a few that I haven't photographed, and I am working on a new one that is constructed of 1/8 inch wide strips of paper cut from the text in Interview magazine.  It may take me the rest of my life to finish it...  Meanwhile, two poems containing the word "fling..."

ANGELS TRAVELING TO THE HOMELAND

sometimes I long

to do nothing more exciting

than wear a hat, 

study the tax code,

and wait for visions.

sometimes I put on my pink pants,

daring to dance around the edges

of the social scene, managing to fling myself

through life as though through 

the temptation of a plate-glass door, 

demanding more

than the typical shatterproof woman

has any right to.

but behind my ribs,

behind the cage of these silent bones,

I am filled with dazzling words,

vibrant, colored threads of sound.

at night I am vocal,

tying random images together,

but in the daytime I bend,

and when I contemplate the end of being,

I forget taxes,

I forget pants,

I forget words.

STILL

Between the caring and the not caring

it is the fluctuation that makes life hard.

One sets the stage for disappointment,

while the other lets the necessary energy leak out

slowly, until movement becomes impossible.

Swinging like a pendulum surely winding down,

we eventually end up stymied, barely pulsing

near the center, in that static phase,

perhaps what we wished for 

when we craved contentment in the first place.

Full circles.  Empty hearts.

And we blame it on hormones,

and things that happened to us as children.

I've tried to build strength,

tried to brace myself against sudden drops in altitude.

But I seem to have a crack in my breastplate, 

a small opening where my good intentions seep out

quite unnoticed till I need them

with the desperation of a bleeding hand.

I feel as though I have written this before.

Nothing new to say, no revelations,

no new sensations,

yet I follow the string, and like song lyrics

thoughts flow down the page

willing themselves to become art.

Filled more with stop and start than meaning,

lines gain momentum until I notice their accumulation.

Then my hands try to be still.  Try to be still 

when you're churned up inside.  Not easy.

My hands flutter like birds.  They want to fly.

They want to leave their shadow ciphers on the ground

to be found centuries later and marveled over.

But these words are temporary

and I probably won't print them out.

I won't spring them on the world

anymore than I will fling myself over the edge.

I worry that such writing sounds like the whining

of a pitiful dog.  Devoid of beauty and voice,

only sentiment remains.  But sometimes it seems okay

to write about unimportant things,

like the way the sun shines 

on the girl's hair in the window of the coffee shop

and the fact that there stands a pyramid of oranges 

off to one side.