I finally finished my first piece for the "Tower of Dioramas". This poem/piece was a result of a tarot card writing prompt from Cynthia's workshop.

Child of Worlds


Child of Worlds
Paint your face.
Scribe talismans across your bare chest.
Mark the backs of your hands.

But when you make your mask
Leave hollows for eyes
To measure the cacophony,
          the roiling glitter
          the blitz of color and light
                    the dazzle of possibilities
Offered to any guileless outstretched hand.

Child
Keep your eye on things--
          the ferocious,
          the zealous,
                    even the brave.
Suspect the swagger.
Shake the tangled glint of enticements.
Mind the ferment of too much,
          the faint of too little,
The giddy bliss of too much,
                    the silent terror of nothing at all.
Be wary of the tarantella--
          the dizzy, screeching, thumping drum dance.

Child
Sand your fingertips
Rough your touch to feel beneath the polish
          for throbbing pulse
                    for ice.
Raw each synapse so it bristles at artifice,
So it thrums in the presence of true things.

Child
Look up.
Find sun, taste rain.
But tattoo that secret name across your heart.
Paint holy words on the backs of your hands.

Child of Worlds
Paint your face.