Author: lisajhaugen

writer by practice @stardateindefinite

02.11.23 what are you having?

We tell each other,
with caution, with admonition
with wry sarcasm
“don’t drink the kool-aid.”

Ha! Check your cup.
You might not remember what anything else,
what freedom
tastes like.

It might sometimes taste like
Kool-aid. Or Tang.
Those sweet childhood elixirs
that were as satisfying to taste
as to mix:
watching the way water,
with the addition of practically nothing,
could swirl and shift and become
a simple sort of mana.

Until we were persuaded, that is,
by the additions, the dilutions of others
into drinking something just as alluring,
but casting very different light.

We do need to taste both sides, all of us,
as we mature, we grow.
Our tastes do change.

But freedom never does.

01.31.23 mirror

If instead of looking above your peers,
you’d looked down, seen the way
all my furious, defiant, confrontational passion,
primed and ready,
froze in terror when my eyes found your face
so pure, so full of vibrance…
I wonder what would have happened if
I’d kept my original course
intercepting your path,
instead of jumping aside,
ducked down, crouching in fright
behind the legs of our peers
as you passed.

01.29.23 promise, my favorite prison

Sometimes in idle moments
I compose with irreverent humor
the most entertaining vows
I can think of. Here’s one:
“I commit to your keeping
my merciless determination
to focus on the very best of you,
to find goodness and rightness
and sensibility and brilliance
in everything you say and do,
no matter how stupid.”
And then I laugh not only at my own
anticipation and wit
but also at myself,
realizing I’m doing it, again.
Sometimes I cry for the exact same reason. 
The impulse to share
this little bit of absurdity
with you is as strong, as easy,
as natural to me as if
we were, in fact, friends.
In touch with one another;
as if nothing else
has ever been the case.
And so I continue,
to the best of my ever-growing
ability, to dutifully ignore
the apparent reality
that we’re not,
and skip along
with my happy anticipation, anyway.

The defense rests her case.

01.23.23 go away

These aren’t the droids you’re looking for.

Move along.

When I reviewed it a second time. I had to stop at my morose, unintentionally affected intonation of the word “abandoned.” Aaand the line that follows. I just could not handle the cringe factor and laughed at a far more amused new round of omg go away! Whyyy, whyyyyyyy?!?! Lisa just delete this, for god’s sake!

Nope. As much as it makes me squirm in near agony, I’m keeping it, for god’s sake!

That I couldn’t hear myself the first time around, and can hear it so clearly now, just a few weeks later, is really saying something about all the release work I’ve been doing. Pent up emotions affect everything we say and do, however insensitive we may be to it.

So, yeah, seriously just move along. Go away. Nothing to see here.