Posts for June 26, 2015

Poem 26, June 26

Muse

While I struggle to write, after words come slow,

she comes to me & wipes sweat

from my brow

& stands behind me until I write.

Until I write,

she stands behind me, & somehow

knowing I have written a poem, neat

or unpolished, she will touch my soul & go

to the place she came from, into the dark night,

or light of day, & when images & the word

follow her & my internal voice

calls out to her, she returns, places

her arms around me until I write.

Once she brought so many words, like a herd

of cattle, scattered across my room, choice

fat ones, louse infested with tear streaked faces,

too many hungry calves & then she left me to sort out

the ones fit for a love poem

& since that night, that fitful night

I have not seen her.

The cat
has accomplished 
more than I,
having already stepped out
to the edge of the 
bottomless ravine.
Curiosity pulled it somewhere down
over the ledge
and I am still here,
clinging to the guard rail
with a safety belt
strapped to my waist.

lies between me
and my writing desk, it

towers over me like a bad 
dream.  One where I am trying not to be ripped
arms, heart, mind, soul, swept
up like Fay Wray spread hands fanned 
hiding my beauty, my fear (my love) of Kong

to a place of uncertainty and small words.

I resist,
stay in my softness.  My laptop
warms my thighs,
sings me Vivaldi.

hope springs about us
bouncing off walls and ceilings
makes it hard to hold much of 

hope for yesterday
to chew on another’s ass
it should ignore you 

hope is infinite
unless you are immortal
it doesn’t matter 

hope has four letters
if you play the stacked deck right
the postman brings one

I often looked
But had to admit –
There could be no cure.
Part of it was war.
The world had
Ended once already.
It had come and
Changed us
By happening.
How many had died?
No one knew.
Heard the numbers –
Thought IMPOSSIBLE.
Only ghosts and
Walking wounded
Have the answers.

Found poem from the prologue to A Paris Wife: A Novel

Yoga class is a universe of different rules–
breathing into a part of the body
to open and relax is as real
as a sweating glass of water in your hand.
Setting an intention for the class
and for the day is normal, expected.
Staying with a posture,
awareness of the breath,
releasing–are part of the bones
of this world,
integral as oxygen
in the air.

“Weep no more today.”
We return from the Kentucky Theatre
And A Night at the Opera—

sweet group therapy
and the magnolia by the back door.

There are views that are waking; eyes
without sleep.  It all feels
so green; I feel
as if Jordan tumbled west
with the gravity, the rising
of lucid hills & gnarled bark
of Europe.  Your people do not speak
my broken language, with tongues
unraveling the taste of maze-like
streets & verdant jardines.  Eden–
the linguistics of wandering
vines & limbs, fighting back
against an urban sprawl.

& all below, it is green—I am
green, silent, perspiring,
while I wait–
for a bed, for a bath, for
the girl, greener still
but with blue
in her distant
& waking
eyes.