TL Boehm - Writer

80's mall hair, wave bands, I was a geeky Stevie Nicks wannabe - drawing unicorns on my Geometry folder and penning sappy lyrics in the library during lunch...we all start somewhere and this is where I was at 16. Peace and enjoy.  (artwork at left circa 87 TL Boehm "Sometimes the Rain Falls") Picture - High School 1982 - my junior year.

The human heart is a prism, refracting love in myriad colors that dance across the surface of our souls. Shift the beat slightly and love is dark crimson – a vivid life force. A slight turn and it is warm – inviting – the golden smile of a dear friend. It becomes the color of your baby’s eyes when he or she lies cradled in your arms. Flaws, inconstancies of the heart prism shatter the light muting the colors until love may not even reach the surface of our thoughts. 
The media and entertainment offerings that inundate our field of vision use only some of these shades of love, mixed with lust, anger and other emotions that darken the brilliance we were meant to enjoy. Romance and passion intended for God’s people is diluted until the concept of love is a transparent blur we wipe away from the surface of our lives like dust on a window glass.
Yet real love is the driving force in the spirit of a human. We are uniquely designed to give and receive strong, powerful life giving love. It is the color of our existence, the palette of our souls. It is a blessing, and a gift. Let it wash over you in the full spectrum of vibrancy again. Allow yourself to love and be loved as God intended.

You Keep Me Satisfied

Sexual satisfaction
It’s a mutual reaction
Baby give me this and more
You must have a potion
You heat up my emotions
You can open up my door

I want every inch of you
To keep me satisfied
Only you can reach that part of me
Way down deep inside

I’m so glad I found you
Wanna wrap myself around you
Every single night
You set fire to my soul
With you I lose control
Only you can make it right

Wanna feel your skin on mine
Your lovin’ is so fine
You take me past ecstasy
There is no other man
To make me feel like you can
So do what you want to me

TL Hughes Boehm (written for the Hubby)
4/6/88

Lost In the City

See the trash along the street

The broken glass crunchin’ under my feet

Children’s tears are the rain

Echoes the pain

Each time another hope dies

And the billboard signs

And broken white lines

Are my trees and flowers and skies

I’m lost in this city

One sinner in a burnin’ hell

Lost in the city

Like a man in a prison cell

Hear the sirens in the night

Thousand dangers away from the light

Sometimes I feel

Like I’m starting to reel

On the verge of an endless fall

There’s a light at the end

Of the tunnel but then

I don’t see it at all

See the houses tumblin’ down

Old men sleepin’ on the cold hard ground

And the women who walk

And the preachers who talk

‘Bout the sin and the lust and disgrace

People tryin’ to sell

Peace of Heaven and Hell

Get me a ticket out of this place

TL Hughes (Boehm)

© 1987

3/13  7/16/87

You flaunted rainbows

Violet air

Wrapped round your face

And your hair

Trickled down your back

Like Auburn rain

We cast seed pearl dreams

In acid streams

Shaking the foaming wreckage from our feet

Carnage dripped from the folds of your dress

Leaving tide pools in foot prints

Auburn rain

We fell

Hot sparks from a burning match

Into frigid waters

I frantically broke the ice

But you never surfaced

Your skin fell away from mine

Auburn rain

In your wake

I tread water

Toss pennies into wishing wells

Like waterfalls

Of auburn rain

I read your spirit

Through bitter wine

Tear soaked words

Dripped down yellowed pages

Flowing red like blood in my veins

Bitter acid

Auburn rain

TL Hughes

12/86

For Evonne

Selfless Portrait

I see myself
In faded pictures
That freckled girl with Daddy’s cornflower eyes
New penny hair
That scrawny monkey
Who dangled from trees and jumped on the bed
The one who devoured whole pizzas
Whinneyed like Man o’ War
And sung like Karen Carpenter
The one who was gonna be a veterinarian
When she grew up
The honor student
I left her in Jacksonville in ‘79

Now
I see a stranger in the film
The freckles faded, the eyes grayed.
That penny has been in a pocket for a long time
I deprive myself pizza and bed time romps
I cried when Karen died
The dreams and grades dropped in old scrapbooks
With the horses and wishes I never had
Wishing I never grew up and away
Wishing I could be friends with this new face
I want that little girl back

TL Hughes Boehm
12/86

Selfish Portrait

I know you
Sitting in a mud puddle
All by yourself
Sucking on your toes
And wondering why life is so hard on you
The world is a bad tomato
Thrown in your face
And its stained your favorite shirt
Your dad is an alkie
And your mother’s morals would send the pope
Screaming back to Poland
All your friends are pregnant
But you couldn’t sell your virtue for fifty cents
On a street corner in Vegas

Yeah I know you
I see you looking back at me
From every mirror
Or piece of glass
What are you gonna do
When the hot desert sun
Takes your mud puddle
Away.

TL Hughes Boehm
12/4/86

Walking alone

Through forgotten fields

Of heather

Just before dawn

The mist still blankets the field

Wrapping me up

In its clammy fingers

I used to come here often

To clear my mind

To sit in the midst

Of these violet bells

And listen

To their silent music

No music now

The bells have fallen

From the heather

Their withered remains

Rustle dryly beneath my feet

No life in these fields now

The sun rises

Slicing through the fog

A steel blade of light

Stabs the last trace

Of purple in the distance

As the mist thins

The purple takes shape

As I draw nearer

It becomes familiar to me

A faded gingham frock

Lavender and white

Against the straw-like heather

My best friend

How strange to find you here

In my private place

How long have you been here

Asleep

Perhaps waiting

To surprise me

I kneel quietly beside you

And brush back your auburn hair

Expecting your smile

And you greet me

With dark empty places

Where green eyes should have been

Your jawbones bleached white

By six years of neglect

Gape at me in wonder

Slightly dazed

Amazed perhaps

That death could come so subtly

Tell me best friend

Was it the ring

On your fleshless finger

That strangled you

Or my absence

Would my touch

Resurrect you?

Or would your bones crumble and scatter

In the wake of my breath?

Did you come here

To save yourself

Or say goodbye

Tell me best friend

Can there be new life

After death

TL Hughes (Boehm)

11/15/84

Mother and I stand

Outside in thick backyard summer grass

Waiting as the world quiets

In the dusk of an August day

She straightens

Raising the old cornet to her lips

Notes flow

Liquid brass

Effortless

From twenty years of practice

I am the echo

Repeating the notes

Hearing that perfection of sound

Echoing inside as well

The sun sets fire to our bells

Molten red for an instant

Then disappears

Lights coming on across the field

As the last note of taps lingers

Carried away

On the cool breeze of night

TL Hughes Boehm

12/13/84 (I was 19 when I wrote this)

-For mom and Grandpa Lindquist

Little Rock Air Force Base Elementary #2
Even abbreviated
Covered two years of my life
 
Ms. Maybelline Hill, 4th grade
            Pink brocade dress
            Red tinted hair
            Skin the color of a boot heel
            “Is you talkin’ again chile?”
            “Where yo’ pencil at?”
            “Go stan’ in the corner”
 
I lived for recess
            No playground equipment
            Except tetherball poles
            We seesawed on them
            Until the day metal met bone
            And Suzie became Frankenstein
            She deserved a knock in the head anyway

Other girls skipped rope
            Double Dutch
            Build the tower
            Blue bells, Cockle shells
            Eevie Ivy overheads

We were more creative
            My best friends were
            Lizzie Borden and Dracula
            I was Lucrezia Borgia
            We were the “in” crowd
            Till Evonne grew out of her cape
 
It was a good year for epidemics
            Strep throat
            Mumps
            Chicken pox
            I got chicken pox for my birthday
            Tons of ‘em
            And a scar where Spot bit me
            And broke one
 
I was happy to see summer
            Sirens every week
            For tornado sightings
            Air so damp your hair never dried
            And economy sized bugs

We liked gross places
            Seven girls
            And a quarter mile of drainage pipe:
            A perfect day
            We frog-walked
            Through spider webs and blackness
            An occasional splash
            When a foot slipped
            And a rear landed in stinky muck
            When something wiggled under your hand
            We came up onto the street
            Thru a manhole
            Didn’t want to go back through
                        Two weeks later
                        Snake eggs found
                        In the bilge-green water
 
I got stuck in Mrs. Bishop’s 5th level class
            Salmon lipstick
            Raid scented perfume
            And a voice that crackled like glass
                        Cracking pencils
                        Playing cards
                        And talking out loud
                        Against the law
I spent a lot of time with her
            After school
            Writing times tables
            Till I could recite them
            Till she gave up
            And called me stupid

I wasn’t stupid
            I won spelling bees
            And essay contest
            Read Galaxies instead of Images
            And knew all about the Freedom Train
 
Another teacher for music/art/PE
            PE was kickball
                        I stayed at the bake of the line
            Or four-square
                        I was an “A” player
            Or concentration now beginning
            Starting with a number
            From the beginning

Music class was better
            Me and Evonne knew all the words to
                        “Philadelphia Freedom”
                        “Jive Talkin’”
                        “Bohemian Rhapsody”
                        “Why Can’t We Be Friends”
            We rode the Soul Train every week
                        We could Bus Stop and Hustle
                        But we were too young to Get Down
            And our biggest topic was
                        Did they really stab a girl
                        On “Love Rollercoaster”
                        Or was it the keyboard player screaming?
            I didn’t care
                        As long as I had my soul
 
                                   TL Hughes Boehm
                                   10/27/84

In a lost generation
The stark realization that despite my evasions
I face confrontation with my imagination
My expectations become hallucinations
Even the most brilliant dreams
Pale in the face of reality
Only the sickest plans of man
Escape the clutches of obscurity
Only the most twisted mind
Will hang on to sanity

Is there no hope for the lost generation?
Are we our own victims of civilization?
Have we stopped caring for our destiny?
Have we given up on eternity?
I just can’t believe that life is this way
Or am I the one who’s been led astray
I just can’t believe the whole world’s gone blind
But then maybe I’m the one who’s out of my mind
Is there no salvation in the civilized nation?

A world in confusion
Chasing illusions and demented delusions
Gruesome revolutions become solutions
Mental pollution rots old institutions
Even the most stable nations
Have started to disintegrate
Only those who still have dreams
Dare to toy with fate
And the psychotics who walk the streets
Are the ones who run the state?

A sick society
Full of drunken sobriety and faceless notoriety
Gluttonous propriety and churches of impiety
Form a monotonous variety of effortless anxiety
Even the healthiest attitudes
Can no longer thrive
Only war and prejudice
Manage to survive
In this hell incarnate
Only death remains alive

TL Hughes (Boehm)
1/18/83

I’m gonna go to my room tonight

Shut an’ lock the door and turn out the light

I’m gonna crawl in to be like nothing is wrong

And pretend that you aren’t really gone

Come back to me, I can’t live without you

Set my love free, I can’t live without you

I’m gonna stay in the dark behind this locked door

The light in my life doesn’t shine anymore

The flame went out the day you left me

So if anyone wonders, you know where I’ll be

We had a love once but not that is through

‘Cause all of it died the day I lost you

Hope the new love you found keeps you satisfied

I just couldn’t please you, God knows how I tried

Chorus to fade….

TL Hughes

1980

I remember where I was when I wrote this, crouched on the floor beside my bed with the night light on...listening to a song called "Borrowed Time" by ONJ....first set of lyrics I wrote.