A Dead Language

We are all drawn
One way or another.
It doesn’t matter who we are
Or what we want to be.
There was a time when
My confidence would fill a room.
There are simply so many things
I so easily assume.
One is you, the other is me.
And I’ve never really lived
For just myself
I’ve live for the world and from the world.
You suggested distance and so
I plead with a distilled silence
Still I try to make it
I think I can still make it somewhere
Between here and where I’m meant to be.

– Jennifer Barajas

Already I know the evening, the dawn.
The sights are immeasurable
The singing angels even stop to pray
Giving promise
Giving praise to an anxious day
Warmth, trembling exhales
Pour from my sight
I pool together,
I let in the light.
Perpetual light,
Not drowning in days of sacred darkness.
Not dying in a desperate power
Such thoughts distress my mind
With my unsatisfied heart
I devour fading strength
Even though it was abstract,
Your spirit moved upon my self-seeking void
That is crowded in moments of time
And you are the one word
That gives me definition.

– Jennifer Barajas

So the rain came
Before you hand any chance of finding me
I can see you
You just can’t see me
The greater the distance
The more my life it seems
Unraveling
Somehow unnerving
I thought between here and there
You’d find me
We’d begin our journey
Really just beyond the nowhere
So what if I so often love
So what if this is my one true above all that lives,
Breathes and disguises itself as honesty
You appear often and unyielding
As I sent for you
As I was for you
Spend your life as me
Feel what it’s like to starve but
Still walk among the living
Once you’ve been cultivated and all the words have been said
You will find me
Not amongst the loving but slumbering with the dead.

-J. Barajas

It’s hard to know
You don’t think the world of me
Though this isn’t much of a world
But enough for me to grow on
Whether prospering love or livid rage
Now, I am much more defined
Much more easily placed
My long buried passion
Becoming the waking wonders of my weary day
Tomorrow’s love
Tonight’s frustration
So I carefully rearrange
This life, this day
Myself
I’ve learned,
There is no other way
-J Barajas

I remember once was lovely
But I lost it in the pouring rain
I’ve made it by
Living gently and loving whole
So I flew
I lit up the night sky
What happens when I am no longer young
I never was and neither was young
And so I never really lost anything
Except maybe words
They said I still had time
They said I had a choice
So on I flew
I never wondered
I already knew
-J Barajas

So soon
Does yesterday become tomorrow
Finding us older, not yet wiser
Sometimes not so strong
Courage always wavering never seeming
But always smiling, sometimes beaming
Even building tall seems sorrowful
As if done in an after thought
Somehow mastering the art of time
Rendered mute by my own volition
Evoking nothing but apathy
Even in the simplest of souls
But my lackluster heart will not be swayed
I promised to try
I promised to try to live
That promise dies with me
In a midnight farewell that blooms
Only in the dark wanderings of my soul
-J Barajas

I originally wrote this poem in May of 1996 but have recently revised it. It’s funny when something like this can take you back in time, to a moment, a feeling. And it’s easy to just pick up where you left off.

I devour the memories
Even though I was never there
I wish I was the one
That possessed the loving stare
You gave blindly
That’s how you described it
With those innocent eyes
Under my forgiving skies
Wishing for what already is
May sound like a waste of time
I guess I wish for it
Under different circumstances
I suppose I can settle for second best
I might have to
It’s all you have left to offer me
And it does seem as though you do so-
Regrettably….
J. Barajas

What a sense of relief

Your touch has placed

Upon my listless heart

What kind of madness

Has corrupted my mind

And still you thrive

No quite in vitality

More with grief

I can’t believe the life you manage

The soul you somehow keep

I am hardly aware of your beauty

Hidden, while I weep

And I weep

Prospering outside

Prospering deep

-Jennifer Barajas

The bed where she lay
How closely she resembles
The thoughts that I pray
How the day lasts so long
Much further than expected
When there are words to be said
And promises to be unmade
Hours she stretches
Rolling over to days
How like water
She ripples
A stillness so labored
It soaks up oxygen
Weighing down over time
Drowning in oceans of heartache

-J.Barajas

His hair was golden
To me
It was the sun
But now, oh but now
You could say he’s a fallen man
Maybe a falling man
Quickly descending
So fast, he can’t even breathe
Almost mad but still capable of earthly things
Carefully, oh so cautious
Changing nothing
All happening inside possible
Maybe terrible moments of genius
When he was everything and
All he ever could be
Nothing missing
Not a tremble
Not a beat
So hungry he wouldn’t dare to eat
He knew fever and splendid misgivings
It is all that he was
But what he is- is not for me
Maybe for angels
For something ethereal
For something that will know
Just how to set my spirit free

-J. Barajas

Through skies young and old
I have been born
I have been born bold
Fate be kind
And fortune be gentle
On my sensitive spirit
I have been lifted
Beyond any means of returning
Praised by any reason possible
Everything I ever knew
And I ever wanted to know
Definitely what I’ve overlooked
Wanting no more than justice
And having little faith

-J. Barajas

Miserable defeat
My unsound retreat
From all that I love
And all that once loved me

The Queen of all lies
In my worthless disguise of merriment
That wanders and follows then dies

A life beyond riches
Adorned by days of love
Pure and true

It’s just your shadow
That’s what I have
It’s all I have left of you

Once your quiet amazement
You willing intent
A life of dignity lay before your eyes

And I
Banished from time to time
To this life of mine
An uncommon adventure
Clothed in a pitiful rhyme

-J Barajas